A Teacher Never Knows …

How I got here

At 11 years old I would bicycle to Acalanes High School, sit in the shade amidst the trees, and watch Blackie Jones give lessons.  He was firm, he was gruff, but equally he loved the game and his students.  His lessons were interspersed with questions to see if the student was following.  And after a while he would toss these questions to me, and that was how it started.  His passion was for the science of the game, the physics, and about his students could know the game well enough to show it to others.  I still remember an afternoon when he and Jeff played a long point with multiple drop shots and lobs and both laughing as it ended.  He encouraged my curiosity and that stays with me today.

Tossing into the swing, the circle of play, kick serve, drop hit full eastern backhand grip backhands (so as he said this would become my strength and inadvertently opponents might actually try to attack it).  I watched him string racquets and saw a life totally absorbed into the game.

ETI 012 | Tossing into the Swing

ETI 013 | Circle of Play

After college I traveled to Florida with Jim Irwin, who was at that time Tom Stow’s assistant pro at Silverado in Napa.  Jim spoke at length about Tom, his methods, his successes and more.  When I returned to Northern California I met Tom, and asked for lessons.  My first lesson was sitting on a stool, attempting to hold still while  volleying.  His expectation, if not demand, was that I hit the ball precisely, with true backspin (no sidespin at all) and directly precisely to the target.  A version of this is now called “toss hit catch”  He demanded perfect posture and balance, turning to wait for the ball on balance, finishing on balance with a subtle hip turn and again full balance, teaching on the theory of golf and likening the ground stroke to a 3/4 nine iron.  His “All Court Forcing Game” was about playing on or inside the baseline, meeting every ball squarely, always moving forward to apply pressure and finish.

Learn to Turn Properly

Tom Stow Introduction

Some years later, living in New Orleans I met Don Kerr.  I was in a tournament, he came up and offered, “You play pretty well for someone who doesn’t know how to move.”  Don was an amputee, coach at that moment for the Tulane tennis team, an internationally known badminton coach and so much more.  We worked very closely, first on the gravity turn which he published originally in the 1930’s.  Then came work on the serve, based on his experience with badminton and how the badminton clear was a  model for the serve.  Tinkering with my serve (as usual) on a hot afternoon in Destin Florida, there was one swing that felt special – he noticed it, I felt it, and we both saw sweat fly up from my fingertips.  A few days later he made a prototype that would measure angular momentum, and whistle when the force of the swing exceeded a preset threshold.  We patented the device and and it game me the centerpiece for a Masters degree project to test the effects of electromechanical feedback on the tennis serve.  Phew.

ETI 046 | Gravity Motion

Unscrew the Light Bulb (on the serve)

Blackie Jones, Wayne Dawson (Chico State), Chet Murphy (Cal), Tom Stow, Don Kerr and for good measure Fred Earle.  Returning to NorCal and the Bay Area I had the good fortune to study with Fred Earle.  We worked together only briefly, but we shared the same perspective about the Pancho Gonzalez serve and how elements of that motion can be taught.  Once when I asked him what he saw in the Pete Sampras serve, he clearly said, “This is the most relaxed delivery I have ever seen.” And for sure to this day I still use his “The 5 Keys to Building Self Confidence.”

ETI 031 | Building Self Confidence

“A teacher never knows when their influence ends.”