Today I am shifting gears and announcing a little side project that I am embarking upon. Put another way, this little “Fiend at Court” side project now has a side project.
Brent Abel is a tennis coach and holds seven “Gold Balls” which is the prize for winning senior national Category 1 tournaments. He retired from club teaching in 2005 and now coaches exclusively online. I have listened to a lot of his free content and I am extremely impressed with his ideas on playing the competitive game.
Brent Abel’s webtennis.com, is currently in the midst of a series of free webinars with the legendary player and coach, Dennis Ralston. Ralston won the NCAA championship in singles and doubles. He also won the Davis Cup as both a player and a coach. His coaching resume includes professionals Chris Every, Yannick Noah, and Gabriela Sabatini.
Unfortunately, the timeslot for these webinars are smack dab in the middle of a very busy part of my work day, thus I have been unable to follow them in their entirety. I have been able to catch a few minutes here and there and what I heard during those stolen moment for work was fabulous. The entire series is to be packaged and released as a paid product. I will be first in line.
In the interim, to satisfy my sudden desire to learn from Dennis Ralston, I have turned to my bookshelf and pulled out a book that he wrote in 1977. “Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis” is long out of print, but used copies are still circulating in the secondary market.
When this book was published in 1977, I was turning 10 years old and very much in the formative stages of my tennis career. Some of the contents of the book has decidedly gone out of fashion. For example, the primary use of the continental grip on ground strokes. Pushing those parts aside, there is still a wealth of wisdom that is still very much relevant to the modern game.
The thesis presented in Ralston’s book is that for a player to make a significant change in level of play that a 6 week plan of action is needed that focuses on one specific area. Over the course of the next six weeks, I intend to construct and put myself through a six week program derived from Ralston’s book. I will publish my experience with the process every Sunday.
For week zero, I have selected my area of focus: Getting Quicker on Court. In the book, Ralston makes the statement “You’re Quicker than you think.” Quick… is not exactly a word anyone would ever use to describe my court movement.
I am super excited to embark on this journey of discovery and revisiting some of Ralston’s coaching ideas from that bygone era. If I happen to improve my court movement in the interim… that would be a bonus.
- Ralston, Dennis, & Tarshis, Barry, 1977, Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis, Simon and Schuster, New York, New York.
- “Who is Brent Abel?”, https://new.webtennis.com/wtrs-brentabel, viewed May 24, 2020.
- Dennis Ralston, International Tennis Hall of Fame, viewed May 24, 2020.
