Never Let Good Enough be good enough!

I have said this before but it always bears repeating. When you become successful not everyone is happy for you. Players struggle with this and often I hear from my athletes that their former best friend was now an enemy of a much improved player. This is difficult and I do not know if really I am the one to be imparting wisdom on this subject as it bothers me as much as anyone when someone I thought was my friend is no longer my friend because I am threat to them. So here are a couple of quotes I …

Two athletes come to me for a lesson. Athlete one is ranked on the pro tour. Athlete two is a C player who wants to play tournament. Both athletes start the lesson portion after warmups the same way. Athletes one and two gets my stationary drop and hit drill on the forehand and backhand side. Why? I want them to learn how to hit with their lower body, not their upper body. Some teaching pros throw in a step but I do not. It is easy to step, shift your weight forward, and hit a shot. It is also easy …

The game within the game is always fun. In the 90s while coaching the USA team our number three player was matched up with a player from Canada. Our guy was cruising. He won game one, and was ahead most of game two but he began faltering, ran out of gas and lost a close game two and a tie-breaker. Almost one year to the day the two were rematched. The match progressed much like the past year with one exception. This time our guy did not falter, but won in two games. Toward the second half of game two …

Question I get all the time is, “Can I be an open A (or whatever level), by June of next year?” My answer is the same; I have no way of looking into an athlete’s heart. I have seen improvement where I thought it was impossible and I have seen no improvement when I thought it was a no-brainer. This is up to how much work you put in. Someone said once in a camp, “I cannot kill the ball off the back wall. I worked thirty minutes on it and I still cannot do it.” A pro I was …

My racquet company can beat yours! Congratulations! We all get it! You are sponsored and you are loyal. Here are some does and don’ts. Do support your company of course and give shout outs to them on Facebook or Twitter or wherever is great. Don’t bash another company even if they have done you wrong. I have been with two companies less than one year, one for 30 and one for ten years and none of those companies were bad to me. Were they perfect? No, so I left on my own terms and I am grateful to all who …

They are still out there!! I got this from an athlete I work with. Someone was out in the hinterlands giving a 1970s style treatise on the pendulum swing. Well-meaning people are still out there teaching antiquated pendulum type mechanics. If you hit up to down you are inviting injury. That is the number one reason to teach bio-mechanically sound technique. This is not an opinion but a scientific fact. That loop de loop swing invites shoulder, back, and elbow over-use injuries. Why is this still happening? Mostly from well-meaning people who are teaching others to play the way they …

Keep’em in the back-Jack! Where do I come up with these ideas? Well, from coaching folks mostly. Here is one. Player A makes splat after splat from deep court on the backhand and forehand side and is way out in front the entire game. Everyone is “ooooh and aahhhhh” over junior but me, not so much. Why? Player B is keeping A, in this case Junior, in the backcourt. Sure enough player A barely wins the first game and does not win the second. Why? Because they are matching their opponent shot for shot from 38 feet away. Eventually the …

In past years talked to many athletes who were feeling very down. One particular case a racquetballer lost it and went off on the ref and basically had a mental meltdown. I was pretty much like “Hey, it happens!”. Then I began to realize something else was at play here. In this day and age of facebook, nobody wants to be disliked. It is almost like a big high school out there. Back in the good old days our videos were not disseminated world-wide! Now I am not condoning poor and boorish behavior on the racquetball court but I think …

Are you a side-stepper? I guess I am having some effect on athletes because several have emailed me about the crossover step. I preach constantly about not stepping to the sidewall yet it is pointed out to me that several pros, including ones I teach do exactly that, especially on the backhand side. Okay-let’s go racquetball 909, graduate level. If you recall in racquetball 101 I preached keep your feet parallel as much as possible. “As much as possible” is the key phrase. As a squash coach once described it, “when in emergency mode, throw everything out the window and …