Put It Away!

Recently I was working with one of my favorite clients. Ileen is her name, and tennis is her game. I know it’s corny, but it is true. During our lessons we often have great conversations about the game, and the similarities we recognize that it has with life. The internal challenges we must face on and off the court often bring us to the same conclusion; Tennis = Life.

At one of my club’s live-ball events, Ileen had been repeatedly encouraged to “put it away”, or to “drop the hammer” when offered seemingly easy overhead opportunities. After having been unable to produce unreturnable shots, she came to me during our private lesson and requested I help her with her overhead.

After some time spent learning to serve with a proper continental grip and focusing on the pronation of the shoulder, she started developing increased racquet speed. She seemed ready to use these skills on her overhead, so I invited her up to the net to practice.

I told Ileen to start on the deuce side of the net and focus on hitting sharp crosscourt shots to angle the ball away from her opponent. I started to feed her easy, high-floating balls; essentially meatballs. But Ileen didn’t appear hungry. I was offering serving after serving of juicy shots, but she wasn’t having it. Instead of shooting the laser beams I was hoping for, they were more like butterflies joyfully floating back toward my side of the court. I made a few suggestions and encouragements, but after some more failed attempts, I sensed her discouragement and walked up to the net.

“I just want to kill it,” she said. “I want to make a kill shot!”

I couldn’t help laughing aloud when she said that. Ileen is a petite lady with seven adult children and has the most serene, peaceful aura around her. These words seemed out of character.

“That might be it,” I replied. “Let’s find a different way to look at this shot. How about trying to skillfully place the ball out of reach of the opposing player?” I suggested. Ileen agreed. No more of this killing business.

I calmly walked back to the baseline to offer up more appealing balls that were ready to be smashed. But no smashing happened. Something was holding her back and I couldn’t figure it out. I desperately wanted to help Ileen develop her slingshot so she could slay her Goliath, but I was failing miserably. My patience was running thin, and fortunately I was aware of it.  I was even starting to wonder if I was part of the problem.

I remembered witnessing a tennis lesson taken by a very proper elderly gentleman at a very prestigious country club. He was dressed in traditional, all-white tennis attire and the teaching pro was trying to get him to relax.

“Richard, relax please, you are gripping the racquet too tight”, I overheard the pro say.

Shortly thereafter I heard, in a much more demanding tone: “Richard, you must relax!”

She was so passionate about getting her student to relax that she was making me nervous, and I was playing two courts over. A few more minutes go by and she snapped: “Richard, RELAX!”, she screamed at the top of her lungs. The old chap nearly stained his shorts.

With this memory in mind, I walked up to the net ready to surrender. I felt I had tortured poor Ileen enough with countless overhead attempts and it just wasn’t happening. When I got to the net, I did something I used to enjoy as a kid. I took my racquet and made a pretend overhead swing as fast as I could. “Did you hear that?” I asked her. The ‘sshhwoosh’ sound? The air that serves as resistance finds its way through the squares of the woven string pattern of the racquet, and when it does, it makes this distinct sound.

“Make that sound for me,” I requested.

Ileen took her racquet and produced the sound of wind. It was a light summer breeze at first, but then it became stronger and stronger forces of wind. She seemed to enjoy it too.

“Try and make some wind with your shot”, I said on my way back to the baseline for a last attempt.

I hit a nice easy lob for her, like I did many times before, and then it happened! Ileen fired a lightning bolt of an overhead diagonally across the court which would have resulted in a clean winner shot against any opponent. It was a thing of pure beauty; clean crisp contact, and faster than she had ever produced. A huge, surprised smile appeared on Ileen’s face. I fell to my knees and folded my hands as in prayer, and revealed: “Ileen, internally I have been begging you to hit that shot for an hour now, and just when I was ready to give up, you created a masterpiece. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she chuckled, “I just tried to make some wind.”

All my great efforts had no results. When I surrendered my desire, magic happened.

I did nothing. I often do my best work like that.