Thanks, Dale Dudley!

I taught myself how to play tennis when I was around 10 or 11. I borrowed an old used wooden racket with one of those hideous frames to keep it from warping and read several books so I'd know all the rules. I got our neighborhood kids out to a nearby tennis court where I proceeded to tell them all how to play but we had lots of fun on hot summer days.

I went on to play for my Junior High tennis team and we did pretty good. I "lettered" two years which meant I got to play enough to get a sweater with a big "G" on it and two stripes to indicate I was no "one year wonder."

Jump to high school where of course I went out for the team. I was actually "recruited" by another high school who thought I might actually consider switching high-schools. I guess I thought I was pretty hot stuff.

September 1969 - my first high-school practice. I remember much of it. Lake Cliff park - a really nice park with a lake and tennis courts, baseball fields, and before the Polio scare of the 50s, a public swimming pool.

So did we/I spend our first practice impressing our Coach, Dale Dudley, with our serves and volleys? I don't even think we hit a ball. We spent the entire practice (and several more) doing nothing but drills. Footwork. Racket readiness. Our grip. Even when we started hitting the ball we still did drills. And of course after practice we had to run around the courts several times. Tennis was supposed to be fun - not work!

After a year or two the drills took up less of our time. But I recall he sent me and another player out to a country club where we took serving lessons from the pro there. He either had a deal or paid for this out of his own pocket.

Somehow I managed to play all three years and lettered in two of them which again means I played enough matches to qualify. We had a good team and were semi-finalists for the City High School champs two years in a row.

Once again I was good enough at this stage to be offered a couple of college scholarships - nothing huge but enough to pay the bills at some small Texas schools. But I wanted to go to a big school so I didn't take the offers. The high point of my "career" came a few tears later when I won a large City tournament in singles and beat a close friend in the finals for the very first time. He was a senior when I was a sophomore and was always better than me and a lefty to boot!

I'll make a couple of observations here: while many of the top players right now may have had some "classical training" I think most of them got where they are by having great natural tennis abilities. Watch Nadal - he has unusual form although more traditional than most. I'll bet his first coach didn't try to take him back to square one on his ground strokes or his serve. He was probably already very good before he ever met a coach. Go back to McEnroe - one of the better players of all time. Where in the world did he get that serve motion? Got to be the goofiest thing I've ever seen? Agassi? My coach, the aforementioned Mr. Dudley would have told him he was hitting the ball too high - let it drop lower. All that topspin? Save it as a surprise. Service returns? He stands too far inside the court! You can watch the current crop of players and probably guess with some accuracy which ones are naturals and which ones started with the fundamentals. One final picky thing - obviously Mr. Williams has done a god job of coaching his daughters, Venus and Serena but with both of them I notice two things - or maybe it is one thing. I can almost always tell in advance when they will hit the ball into the net or long. I guess it comes from seeing something in their swing (or back swing or footwork) that tells me they are going to miss. If I were playing against either of them I'd be able to save a lot of energy because I wouldn't be going after balls that are never coming over the net.

Ultimately in today's tennis - which is much more about power than it ever was when I played, natural wins out every time. Tradition and fundamentals will only take you so far.

But now to my point. Through a variety of circumstances, job loss, small children, moving to a new state and out in the sticks where there are no tennis courts, I let my rackets sit idle for a long time. But for months now one of my daughters has been asking me to teach her to play. I finally fulfilled that request (or at least started the process) and took all three to a tennis court last night. Oddly enough, the one who begged, played for only about 2 or 3 minutes and then wanted to ride her bike with some friends.

I played with my teen-aged daughter for about an hour. I am sore today. But you know what? Apart from timing issues - I had plenty of miss-hits - I can hit the ball well, hard, keep it in the court and I even had some speed on my serve. I have not played at ALL for about 17 years! I'm sure I'd have some difficulty winning a match right now, but I think I could stay on the court and play respectably with anyone my age (my knees and ankles won't let me move like I used to) and maybe against even younger players.

And you know why? I think Dale Dudley drilled so many basics into me for so long that even without playing, they are programmed into my brain so my muscles act accordingly.
If I can get my daughter(s) out more often and find the time, I plan on taking this "lifetime sport" up again.

So thanks Dale!