David Ranney's Tennis Blog

What do I Mean when I say Keep Watching the Ball Inbetwen Points

Here are some questions that I received on an instruction in my book:

Between points and games, you say to "keep watching the ball".  What do you mean by this?  Do you really mean watch the ball just sitting there on the court?  Most of the time between points, the balls are in someone's pocket, so I cannot see it.  Or do you mean this figuratively?  As in imagine seeing the ball.

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No, I mean this literally. Find some ball on the court to focus on. If you have the ball in your hand, you can bounce it or anything else as long as you are focusing on it. If you must, focus on a ball on another court. If there is truly no ball anywhere that you can see, then you are excused from this for that short period of time. You can still focus and be aware of your breathing.

It is also very helpful to be aware of both the ball and your breathing. Before I was able to be aware of my breathing when I was playing in a match, I would at least focus on my breathing in between points as well as focus on the ball.

This can be a very powerful exercise but I have to say it is very hard to do but worth working on. One way to practice this if you are playing with a fellow mental game enthusiast, is to just play with one ball for a while. See how many times your mind wanders from consciously seeing the ball when you are trying to do it every second.

Be aware of what your mind is thinking during the time you lose your focus. Remember, this is just another way to keep in the here and now and train your mind to stay focused on seeing the ball. The whole point of this is, if you see the ball, even between points, you will be able to focus on it that much easier during the actual point.

About the “other than conscious mind”

Here is a question I had about what the “other than conscious mind” is.

I stole the name “other than conscious mind” from Dave Dobson as I think it explains better what is going on.

The other than conscious mind is that part of the mind that controls all the organs, muscles, and all the other things that go on in the body automatically and is out of our awareness. It also includes the subconscious mind and the ego mind. Since the mind is what controls everything in the body, every part of mind that you are not conscious of is what Dave Dobson called the ‘other”.

Please don’t get too caught up in thinking that you have to really understand all this mind stuff. Just use it as a tool to understand how to get your conscious mind out of the way and let the other part of your mind control your body and to let it learn how to hit the ball into the court.

Without going into a big description, think about when you walk. Your conscious mind determines where you want to walk but you don’t think about walking and how your legs move etc. You just walk. That is the way tennis should be played.

If you haven’t already, you must read Tim Gallwey’s book the Inner Game of Tennis. He goes into great detail about the different minds. In his book he calls it Self One and Self Two but it is all the same as what I am talking about.

Also, Ron Waite’s new e-book will help you to understand this relationship between the different parts of the mind. This e-book is only $10 and it will help you more than just the mind explanation. Here is the link. www.tennisserver.com/turbo/perfect-tennis.html 

I do not go into all this in my book because Tim writes about it so much better than I ever could which is why I recommend it to all players who really are into the mental game.

Getting a Kick Out of Being An Author

I was playing with a friend, Ann, at the local public park when an adult and two kids (about 11 or 12 years old) showed up to practice. The adult was the father of the kids and we heard him talking to the kids about breathing and watching the ball. When we took a little break, Ann said to me that they must have my book because they were talking about breathing and seeing the ball. I agreed because I have never heard anyone talk about these things except me.

When we went back out on the court, I said hi to one of the kids when he came close and he said to his Dad. “Dad, it’s David Ranney, the author of the book.” The kid then told me he thought the book was awesome and that it helped him a lot.

I thought this was pretty amazing that a kid that young was getting so much value from my book. I must say that these kids were members of our club, were not beginners, and were pretty good players for their age. I have since worked with them on their game.

Anyway, I got a real kick out of the fact that they were really benefiting from my book before I even knew them.

Want to play 1000 Times Better in 10 Minutes?

At the National Indoors 60’s tournament, I was selling my book at the tournament desk. A fellow player purchased my book and after reading the lesson on seeing the ball, he came up to me and asked me if I would give him “the test” in person.

In case you don’t know about “the test”, it is a simple exercise that I give new students to demonstrate and experience how the ball must be seen. Only about 2% get this correct and it has shown me that even if I tell people to see the ball, they just don’t know what that means until they get the results of “the test.”

Since giving the test is one of my favorite things to do, I agreed. As it turns out, he was one of the 2% of the people who got the test correct.

However, I noticed that his strokes were not as consistent as they could be. Being the compulsive teacher that I am, I told him I wanted to show him the Mother of all Tips exercise. This is lesson #40 in my book and you get it for free when you sign up for my free Mini Lessons that I send out every two weeks. So, for the next 10 minutes, I showed him how to do this and made sure he was doing it correctly.

It turned out that he was still in the mixed doubles consolation and he was playing with a woman who he had never met before. Later in the day, he came up to me and said, “We just finished our match and my partner asked me after the match what had a happened to me. She said that my game had improved 1000%.” He told me that he just decided to use what he had learned earlier with me and it made a huge difference in his game.

Now, you and I know that 1000% is an exaggeration, but we also know that something dramatic happened to his play, all because of his ability to see the ball correctly and his ability to do the Mother of All Tips during his match. Now I don’t recommend doing the Mother of all Tips in a match, but he was able to modify it enough so that it worked big time for him.

I don’t expect most people will get such dramatic results but you can expect to see immediate improvement just by doing one or both of these concepts.

When Billie Jean King Broke the Wimbledon Record

Elizabeth (Bunny) Ryan, who held the record of the most wins at Wimbledon for many years, was my first tennis instructor when I was a kid. I don’t know when my mom met her, but somehow my mom and Bunny were friends. When I played in Junior Wimbledon we spent a lot of time with Bunny who showed us around and introduced us to some of her famous friends. She would also come and visit with us when she came to Southern California.

Anyway, this is just background. According to my mom, Bunny was very proud of her Wimbledon record, which, as you know, she held for many years. And, if I have my facts correct, she died on the day Billie Jean King broke her record of the most wins. My mom said that Bunny just didn’t want to be alive when her record was broken. If you can believe this, somehow Bunny knew she was going to break her record and just decided this was the time for her to go so she didn’t have to face the fact that she no longer held the record.

Again, I don’t know for sure if this is true, but it makes a good story and I have been telling it for years whenever Billie Jean King’s name comes up.