Black Pearls

"Black pearls" is a name given to little tips and factoids that are passed from one generation to the other and are, for one reason or another, just plain wrong. Tennis is full of these, and they have held many of us normally talented individuals back. The talented tend to shrug these off, tending to trust their superiorly designed bodies and nervous systems. Sometimes they believe they are following these bad practices to the letter, but have corrupted and distorted the black pearls into something beautiful. The perfect example is "Step into the ball!" which the talentless hear as a simple clomp-clomp step that happens just before one makes contact with the tennis ball. This doesn't result in dynamic balance, power or consistency. It just encourages more B-C tennis and stunts any growth of which we might have been capable. The talented hear this as "Move your feet!" and "Set your back foot!"

    Black Pearls in tennis

  1. "Step into the ball!" - see above. Also flat wrong when talking about the millennium forehand.
  2. "Don't hit the ball so hard!" - In fact Power begets control.
  3. "Just stick your racquet out and let the ball hit it [in the volley!" - This technique, taught only to the talent-disabled, results in zero impulse and no control whatsoever.
  4. "Follow through in the direction of the target!" - the ball is long gone and keeping the racket face open to the court destroys impulse and spindirection.
  5. "Arch your back in the serve!" The back stays straight and you lean back from your knees.
  6. "Your service toss is too high (or low)!" - doesn't matter. Pros have high and low tosses.
  7. "Keep the racket face pointing at the target!" - the ball almost never goes where the racket face is pointing.
  8. "Racket back early!" - actually turn shoulders early and take the racket back just before contact.
  9. "Don't run through the stroke!" - running is good - it puts you into dynamic balance.
  10. "Use a circular backswing!" - No, use two backswings - a large unit turn and a small backswing proper.
  11. "Hit through the ball!" or "Extend the follow through to the target!" - This destroys balance and prevents the release of stored control and spin forces.
  12. "Turn sideways on the overhead!" - Face the net, and skip to backpedal, don't cross-over-step.
  13. "Don't think when you play!" - Oh so wrong! If you don't keep the cerebral cortex busy telling you at least one positive thing it will go negative and get into all kind of mischief.
  14. "Don't make errors!" - This is probably the most pervasive and pernicious black pearl out there and leads one into "error terror" and away from the Zone. It's right up there with telling a soldier "Don't get killed!" It is pretty instinctive that you don't seek out errors in tennis. You should not consciously worry about or count errors, you should only count good shots.
  15. "Good stroking arises from a kinetic chain." - OK, I really cringe at this idea - that we are a bunch of gears and cogs that transfer force from the muscles of the legs through the trunk, arms, wrists, fingers and racket to the ball. Poppycock! This isn't even good physics. Force and momentum are transfered from the earth to the ball but not by our bones and joints (which provide nothing more than a framework), but through our muscles which are not rigid like gears but fluidic and flexible. Power, momentum, control and spin are propagated through our bodies as a wave. The difference is not semantic, it is fundamental. It has real world consequences in terms of rhythm, timing and basic execution of all strokes in tennis.