US Open: Ask A Great About Tennis Hate

When I met the 1977 US Open champ and British tennis great Virginia Wade, I didn't ask her about her box at Wimbledon that was being auctioned tonight to raise money for CityParks Foundation.  I asked her about Tennis Hate.

Does she have any tips to keep it from creeping all over my psyche like English ivy at the All England Lawn and Tennis Club?

Being human with Virginia Wade."One word?" she asked.

"Sure, if that's all it takes," I said.

"Why are you supposed to be perfect?" she said.  

"Okay, that's seven, but I'll write it like this to make you consistent, Miss Wade: Whyareyousupposedtobeperfect?

"You're only human, you're allowed to make mistakes," she said, and then quickly moved on to other guests at the event.  Maybe it was my quizzical look when she told me I was human.

John McConnell, the former senior programming exective at ABC Radio Networks, hung in there with me a bit longer.  McConnell loves the game, went to Pepperdine on a tennis scholarship.  I asked him about his most memorable meltdown.

Cool in the newsroom, but don't throw your script into his studio: former ABC Radio broadcasting veteran and tennis player John McConnell and me, at the CityParks Foundation fundraiser."I remember when the No. 1 junior in the world threw his racquet over the fence and into my court, just missing me, at the Los Angeles Tennis Club.  I picked up his racquet and tossed it into the swimming pool," McConnell said.  

Okay, Mr. McConnell, that was someone else's Tennis Hate meltdown that you just described. However, it did include two -- two! -- instances of racquet abuse, so I'll take it.  

He probably wouldn't call it Tennis Hate, but McConnell suffered from something approximating it in his years playing college tennis.    "I once was up in a match, 6-1, 5-0, and I lost it," he said.  "I will never forget how bad I felt." 

Second Set Walkabout

I've heard commentators -- I think it's ESPN's Patrick McEnroe -- talk about players going on "walkabout" for a game or a set.  Often the comment is directed at Andy Murray, who, pre-Ivan Lendl, used to become curiously passive in the middle of a set.  I don't know how his new coach, Amelie Maursemo, is going to help there, as she was known to lose her nerve aplenty during her time on the tour.

Still able to smile after getting bageled in the second set by Worthy Opponent Ting. Must've been the thought of bagels.... But why focus on the pros when I've got my own experience vanishing during a match? The most recent was Friday's USTA league match against Worthy Opponent Ting at the National Tennis Center in Queens.

I did my pre-match mental warmup, reminding myself that I get excited -- not nervous! -- when I play matches and that I love to compete more than I love to win.  I also reminded myself that I get to every ball, but in Tennis Story 2.0, I added, "and I make the appropriate shot when I get to it."  

Too many times in my last match I got to the ball, all right, only to sky it or slap it into the net.  

My story started to waver when I saw Ting hit.  She hit with pace.  She could pull off shots in either corner at the last minute, leaving me stranded in mid split-step in the middle of the baseline.  She scurried up to the ball, racquet back, and smacked it.  Note to self: She gets to every ball and hits the appropriate shot, too. 

Hmmm.  What to do?

I noticed her serve was her weakest shot, and I worked  to make the most of my returns.  I focused on hitting down the line, to take away her ability to just sit there and wait for my slow ball to roll into her strike zone.  And I put some spin on my serve, to make it a little less predictable.

 I stood there and watched to see if it was going in.  I should have been watching Ting.

Ack, mein serve.  I pushed a lot of first serves into the net.  I could not find the height I needed on my toss without sending it way over my head.  I double faulted, and handed Ting the first set, 6-4.

And then I forked over the second set, too, gift-wrapped at 6-0.  

Haters, what happened to me?  And how can I save you from the same fate?

Well, my serve didn't just head south...it blew past Coney Island and went all the way to Australia.  I could not control my toss and felt like a white dude at a wedding reception, unable to find a rhythm.  I was no longer seeing the hit.  Worse, I became a spectator of my own serve.  I stood there and watched to see if it was going in.  I should have been watching Ting.  She was setting up and hammering return winners that caught me flat-footed.  

Call it a walkabout, a letdown, a lapse.  It happens a lot in sport.  You stop competing, stop trying to solve the puzzle that is your opponent, and start THINKING.  

Golfer and Caroline Wozniacki dumper Rory McIlroy apparently goes on walkabout a lot in the golf course of his mind.  McIlroy, a favorite to win ths week's US Open, mentally checked out of the Masters, shooting 71 in his first round, then 77 in the second.  Last week, during the Jack Nicklaus Memorial, he opened with 63, then drooped in the second round, finishing with a 78.

"I think I'm first in scoring average on the PGA Tour on day one.  And I'm like 181st on the second day," he said in a Daily News article.   "I don't know if it's because I've got off to such good starts in tournaments where I may be thinking too much about my score, and I'm up early the leaderboard and I might be trying to push too much and keep it going."

Thinking too much, Haters, about the wrong things.  That's walkabout.  My feet are blistered.

A User's Manual of the Mind

Imagine if you could just turn the volume down on your Tennis Hate.  Imagine if you could reach up to your forehead -- or maybe have your doubles partner do it -- and turn a knob, the one that's over your third eye, to silence that voice that's hissing like a tea kettle, "That shot sucked, you've got the worst forehand in the league, you are never going to succeed at this sport, go take up basketweaving, it suits you better." 

My Tennis Hate is at 11 dB. One louder. Photo, artistry: Me.

Worthy Pro Jeff Greenwald wants us Tennis Haters to do just that when we're playing, to think about dials instead of how sucky and freaked out we are that we're blowing easy volleys.  Rather than standing at the service line, thinking of how I'm serving, 0-5, his "mental game changer" method would have me think of a different set of numbers, ones that indicate the level I'm playing at when it comes to intensity, looseness and focus.

"You don't try to relax," he told me in a recent telephone interview from his base in Marin County, California.  "That doesn't work."

Haters, don't we know this to be true?  The more I tell myself to relax, the more I tighten up.  I have whiffed plenty of shots, especially second serve returns, immediately after exhorting myself to focus on this next shot, get this next shot, nail it.  My tennis game is like a 16-year-old.  The more I command it to be a certain way, the more it rebels and does exactly the opposite.

Imagine if you could reach up to your forehead -- or maybe have your doubls partner do it -- and turn a knob to silence that voice that's hissing like a tea kettle, "You Hate Tennis."

Greenwald, a former touring pro, a national and international senior circuit world number one, sports psychology consultant and licensed therapist, has a two-hour downloadable Tennis Hate reduction method called, "Play Out of Your Mind: The Mental Game Changer." It combines some of the stress reduction strategies he outlined ten years ago in his audio course, Fearless Tennis, with his recent work with performance "dials." 

Jeff Greenwald: Feet Intensity, 8; Looseness, 4: Focusing cue, stay down. Photo: Jeff Greenwald.The work begins, Greenwald said, with becoming aware of what's going on in your body and your head on the court and accepting it.  Yes, Haters, embrace the Hate.  It's what I've been encouraging you to do all along!

"The first thing is accepting the reality of the moment, and that offers you options and perspective," he said. Acceptance begins with awareness.  Greenwald advises scanning your body for tension, and just noticing it.  That's all. Hello, my neck feels like rebar and my service arm feels like a 2x4.

 I remember working with Greenwald on this at the US Tennis Congress last fall.  He had me and several other participants do this mental scan before serving or returning serve.  "Just observe how you're feeling, where your muscles are tight, don't try to relax them," he instructed.  "Now, think about your feet.  Notice your toes, wiggle them around in your shoes." I fluttered my toes, noticing how sweaty they were.  Yuck.  

Uh oh, a judgmental thought.  Okay, Amy, so they're sweaty.  Duly noted, let's move on.... 

"Now bring your attention to the ball," he told us.  He was giving us a pathway, a trail of breadcrumbs, out of our heads, into our bodies and back onto the court.

With Play Out of Your Mind, he offers additional tools to get Tennis Haters into their optimum performance state while in the middle of the on court drama.  After becoming aware of the tension I'm holding in my body, and accepting it, I can now take a course of action to dial up....or down....a deeper level of Focus, Looseness and Intensity.

"Say that you are at an 8," Greenwald said about Looseness.  "You're really nervous, really tight." (Man, I'm this way even in practice, let alone matches.)  "If you can go from 8 to 6, you have good chance to win the match."

He offers a PDF file with his audio course with tips on how to find and drill with this concept of dials and numbers.

Hit down the middle with low tension (1) and move up scale to (10), spending 30 seconds or 1 to 2 good rallies to connect level of tension with ball striking.  Stop after you reach (6) on the dial to see/assess and observe tension level. Discuss with partner or coach.

During the Tennis Congress, Jeff had us start with a level of 8.  Some in the group started really nailing the ball well, interpreting Greenwald's instructions as Intensity rather than Looseness or tension.  "I want you to think of how your body feels when you're really tense and scared on court, really nervous."  

 Crank 'em up. Or down, depending. From Jeff Greenwald's Play Out of Your Mind's Quick Start Guide.

Oh, that dial!  My buddies and I started recalibrating.  I tensed my arm up as hard as I could, pulled my shoulders up toward my ears, where they usually reside, clenched my jaw.  You know, my natural on court state.  I couldn't clear the net.  My fellow Congressmembers were getting the same, pushy results.

Greenwald congratulated us on how tight we were.  "Those are great 8's," he said.  Now he had us dial it down to a 2 or 3.  "What does that feel like?  What's your 3?"  

It took a few passes before I could hone in on the feeling.  I wanted to go all spaghetti, but you can't hit a ball that way.  There has to be some flexing of the muscles of the shoulder, arm and wrist as it pulls the racquet into the ball.  But there it was, a feeling of release, of flow, an uncharacteristic smoothness and fluidity to my forehand that I savored in the experiencing of it.  I couldn't wait to hit the ball again.  It was pleasurable.  It was clean and unobstructed by mental chatter or extra, unnecessary clenching. My balls sailed easy and deep into the opposite court.  

Wow.

But my Tennis Hate immediately seizes on a conundrum: How do you play Loose without playing Careless?  How do you play with Intensity while staying Loose?  I'm a Type A overdrive kind of player.  I've told myself, in the midst of a match, when I'm losing and wanting to cry or smash my racquet or just check out, let them win, who cares, thinking that that will take off the pressure.  Thinking that that's "letting go" and being "loose."

No, that's playing LOSE.

"You're hitting the heart of the challenge for many," Greenwald told me.  "You're thinking that the solution is by not caring.  You need to care a little bit about winning and losing…but not so much."

Greenwald says the performance states of careless, carefee and careful are on a continuum.  "You don't want to play careful."  That'd be playing at a (10) on your Looseness dial.  "You don't want to play careless, reckless." That'd be, perhaps, a 1 on the Intensity dial.  "You want to find a way to be more carefree, carefree about the results [of a match or a point], which we only have partial control over, anyhow."  

He said working with his dials of Intensity, Focus and Looseness, identifying what my optmium settings are, and learning to conceptualize getting to those levels while in the thick of things in a match, will help me inch further along the path toward...well, if not Rafa Nadal-like mental toughness, then improvement.  One less expletive rant after my forehand down the line sails long...so long, it's over the chain link fence and into the neighboring softball field at the Prospect Park Parade Grounds.

"The best in the game, they want to win badly," Greenwald said of the pros.  "Rafa wants the ninth French Open title, they want it as bad as anybody else, or more." But rather than focus on a result that is not in their control, Greenwald said the pros have learned how to shift their attention away from results and onto their optimum performance state.  Their own little forehead dials.  

Nobody gives us a user's manual of our mind."

"Rafa takes a freezing shower to get out of his head," Greenwald said.  "[The pros] are like a finely-tuned instrument.  Their anxiety is not so much about losing the match as it is performing less than they can and being in a state that they know won't contribute to best tennis. It's the difference between wanting a particular state or winning or losing that match."

His hope for Play Out of Your Mind is to help Tennis Haters like me find that performance state more often.

"Nobody gives us a user's manual of our mind," he said.  "I have made a great effort to take what we all experience at every level and be as human and practical in remembering how the brain works [as possible], to give people tools where they can adjust what's happening in the moment in an effective way. The zone happens two times a year, or whatever.  Mostly, what we're trying to do is have our worst day be better and our best day happen more often.  I think these dials speak to the experience we all have and can help."

Madrid: Does Nadal Believe He Can Win?

We all know Rafael Nadal, number one in the world, King of Clay and all that, can and should win in Madrid.  He's won it the last two years.  He's 302-23 on clay, what Tom Perrotta of the Wall Street Journal rightly described as "absurd." So why is everyone worried?

Rafael Nadal in a rare moment of defeat with David Ferrer. Ferrer is now 6-27 against Rafa.

Perrotta's article is titled "This Isn't the Nadal We All Know."  On the ATP's website, it's "Nadal Hoping to Banish Doubts in Madrid."  Over at Grantland, Louisa Thomas writes about Rafa's "Land of Nod," as in, nodding off, like he's in the midst of a bad dream and needs to brush off the cobwebs like he knocks the red clay out of the soles of his shoes before serving.

That's because Nadal is heading into Madrid having lost in the quarterfinals of the last two clay court tournaments he's been in, to guys he's routinely beaten.  

Here's how Perrotta sets up the conundrum:

The first defeat came against David Ferrer in Monte Carlo (where Nadal has won eight titles). Nadal had previously beaten Ferrer 17 straight times on clay. Then, last week in Barcelona, where Nadal had won eight titles and 41 consecutive matches dating back to 2005, he lost to Nicolás Almagro, who had never beaten Nadal in his career.

To those of us long accustomed to the logic of Nadal + Clay Court = Victory, just like 1 + 1 = 2, this New Math answer of Loss doesn't compute, especially when there's no apparent injury hampering him.  

Nadal's knees aren't broken this time.  What appears to be broken is his spirit.  He's suffering from Tennis Hate.

Nadal at Barcelona, where he lost to Nicolas Almagro. Not a face we often see on Nadal on clay.

Nadal tried to seize control of the storyline today.  As reported on ATPworldtour.com, he told reporters in Madrid, “When you lose, you have a hard moment, you have more doubts. But that's what happened. I've already said it several times. I didn't try to win Monte Carlo 12 times or Barcelona 12 times. Maybe that isn’t normal. This is the reality of the situation. Maybe it's normal to lose three times in the quarter-finals."

Wait a minute, is Nadal now second-guessing his past success?  "Maybe that isn't normal"?  Yes, it's extraordinary for most people, but it's been normal for him.  

Haters, this doesn't sound like a winning mental strategy to me.  Does it to you?  Hell, I've tried this! I've caught myself saying variations of it.   

• "Maybe I'm supposed to lose to my husband.  After all, he's a guy and I'm a girl, and guys are just better at this eye-hand coordination thing."  
• "Maybe I'm not supposed to win any matches my first year playing on a USTA league."  
• "Maybe I'm not supposed to win, ever, because I am just not very good at this."  
• "Maybe I'm not supposed to win because winning is for really competitive, bossy, control freaks and I'm just here to have fun."

My colleague, WNYC digital editor and 5.0 tennis player Caitlin Thompson, thinks Nadal's back-to-back quarterfinal losses to lesser players means he's in real trouble.  

Nadal's confidence took a hit after his 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 loss to Stan Wawrinka at the Australian Open in January.

"For a streakier player, such as Serena Williams, this would not be a big deal at all," she said in an e-mail. Williams is not as "emotionally invested" in a loss at a lesser tournament than she is in a Slam.  "For Nadal, who famously plays every point as intensely as the last, all losses are equal, which means they're all equally troubling. 

"When I was a junior tennis player, something my coaches tried very hard to instill in me was the idea of belief. Most matches, they'd tell me, were lost or won before the players struck the first ball - the winner having been decided by [the person whose confidence] was stronger. By thinking you could win, you made yourself able to win, and often did win.

"The big players - Rafa and Serena and all the others who dominate the rest of the field - have the biggest belief. And sometimes more important, they're helped out by their opponents lack of belief. Nadal's losing record indicates he's having a hard time - and he knows it." 

Nadal said he hopes the energy he draws from playing in Madrid, a tournament he describes as "special," will boost his confidence. He said he's also training hard, looking to make little changes.

"I don't think I have to change many things," he said. "I think I can change very small things, and the change can be quite drastic and quite big."

This is a great tip, Haters. You don't have to throw the racquet over the fence. I find I load up too much on all the things I'm going to do to win the next point. "Okay, watch the ball and hit through the ball and breathe as you hit and move your feet." And then what happens? None of the above. I'm too busy trying to remember what the first item on the To Do list was to even notice the ball coming over the net.

"I hope that it just works out," said Nadal. That's all you can do in this game, right? That hope-y, change-y thing. Hey, it worked for our nation's first black president. "If things don't come out well, we will go to Rome; if things don't work out there, we will go to Paris

Onward, through May, through the clay.

Think Tennis Hate is Bad? Golf Hate is Worse

Sometimes, the Hate half of my seesaw relationship with tennis soars higher than my Love, and I feel like quitting altogether and taking up another activity. It'd better not be golf.  Frustration with that sport has people walking away in droves.

Okay, now give me a big soccer-sized ball to hit. And a baseball bat for a club. Photo, courtesy of Associated Press/Paul Abell.

A New York Times article notes that, by the National Golf Foundation's own estimates, five million golfers have bent their clubs over their knees and have walked off (or hobbled, depending on how that club-bending knee jab went). The NGF estimates about 20 percent of the 25 million existing golfers will do the same in the next few years.

"People under 35 have especially spurned the game, saying it takes too long to play, is too difficult to learn and has too many tiresome rules," wrote the Times' Bill Pennington.

Golf and tennis share a lot of Hate.  These sports aren't easy.

Golf and tennis are often compared. They're both games for life. You can play from 8 to 80. They have codes of conduct, an etiquette that is not evident in hockey, football, basketball or soccer. Both are traditionally country club sports, with tennis doing a much better job of increasing its diversity. Quick, name another black American golfer besides Tiger Woods. Now, think of tennis: Serena, Venus, Sloane, James Blake, Donald Young, with junior champion Taylor Townsend lurking in the wings.

And golf and tennis share a lot of Hate. These sports are not easy. The defending United States Open champion (golf, not tennis), Justin Rose, told the Times his five-year-old son doesn't want to play anymore because he's tired of failing at it.

The United States Tennis Association saw a similar problem and is about five years into an effort to reverse it with its 10 and Under Tennis program, once called QuickStart. It promotes the use of big foam balls, shorter nets and smaller courts, so that kids can hit more easily and rally longer, and, presumably, boost their satisfaction level so that they stay with the sport. To encourage -- others might say force -- notoriously independent American teaching pros to adapt, the USTA changed the rules for junior tournaments so that they required the foam balls and smaller courts. In 2010, when I reported on this for WNYC, only 50,000 of the two to three million kids taking tennis clinics went on to participate in USTA junior-level matches. Meanwhile, adults were coming to tennis in droves; 350,000 were participating in USTA leagues.

"Very few sports have more adults playing than kids, but tennis is one of those," the USTA's chief executive of community tennis, Kurt Kamperman, told me then. "We want to turn that upside down. We want to keep all the adults, but we really want to see a kids' revolution."

How is golf dealing with its crisis of Hate?  It's turning to tennis.

Yo, USTA, what about also working with what you have, which is an adult revolution? Why not try innovative ways to help adults find more satisfaction with tennis and play more? Why not give them more opportunities to compete, rather than the few open tournaments offered in which a 3.0 player can find herself playing a 5.0 club pro? Ah, a rant for another time.

Photo, courtesy of USTA.com.In the meantime, there's been a lot of ranting against Ten and Under Tennis, especially since the USTA changed the rules for junior tournaments in 2011 to require foam balls and smaller courts.  That has rankled some parents and teaching pros, who don't want to get with the program.  They've included Fox commentator Sean Hannity, who has two kids in the junior tennis circuit, and teaching great Wayne Bryan, father of doubles living legends Bob and Mike. The backlash has been so fierce on social media that the USTA had to convene a pow-wow with Bryan and other top dissenters in 2012 to calm things down.

How will golf address its crisis of Hate? They're turning to tennis. According to the Times, the PGA has put together an "eclectic" 10-member advisory panel that includes former USTA exec Arlen Kanterian, "who led American tennis’s successful effort to reverse a decline in participation."  He was gone in 2008, a few years before Ten and Under started getting actively promoted, but hey, he's the guy to go to if the USGA and PGA want to find ways to boost revenue and audience.  During his 8 years as chief exec of pro tennis at the USTA, Kanterian brought in instant replay, blue courts, a Sunday women's US Open final and Patrick McEnroe as head of player development.  And folks are STILL griping about the woeful state of American tennis, especially on the men's side.

Some golf leaders, including pro Sergio Garcia and golf-ball maker executive Mark King of TaylorMade-Adidas Golf, are suggesting a Ten and Under-style shift for golf, too, for youngsters and adult Golf Haters alike.  They include changes to courses like "pizza-sized" 15-inch holes, juiced balls, shorter rounds, tees for every shot and mulligans for every hole.  There are some who are even trying "foot golf," an unholy alliance of soccer and golf that involves kicking a ball into a hole.  Time to do a Johnny Mac here and exclaim, "You cannot be serious!"

Some golf purists are hoping they aren't. In fact, they're counting on it. 

“I don’t want to rig the game and cheapen it,” said Curtis Strange, a two-time United States Open champion and an analyst for ESPN. “I don’t like any of that stuff. And it’s not going to happen either. It’s all talk.”