David Ranney's Tennis Blog

Winning Without Knowing You Had Won

I had a funny experience when playing in my last tournament that I thought was interesting enough to put up here.

I had won the first set and was ahead in the second set, and after breaking serve, we then were changing sides. I am sure you have seen the scoring devices that many courts have to help you keep score of the games. When I went to change the score, all of a sudden I realized that I had won the second set and the match was over. I had never won a match before and not known I had won.

But that is only half the story. My opponent also did not realize that the match was over and that he had lost. Needless to say, we both had a good laugh over us not knowing that the match was over.

I told him that I had played some matches that I didn’t know how I had won, but I had never played a match where I didn't know I had won. It was just too weird.

This story really doesn’t have any importance to you in helping you play better and I will let you figure out what it says about my mental abilities. I just thought it was different.

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.