Paralysis by Analysis

I'm a bit of a literary person, but have been surprised to learn that quite a few of this type have been or are very good tennis players. Richard Wilbur, e.g., the former poet laureate of the U.S. is quick to describe the old image of the centipede getting his legs all twisted up from self-consciousness. Thousands of people always want to ask him how to write a sonnet. In his prose pieces he compared this to the drop-shot. Yes there are a bunch of parts to both, but if you just focus on the thing completed, everything gets simple!

The next day after reading that I had a match point. I said to myself, "Now I'm going to write a sonnet" and I hit the most perfect drop-shot of my life. But my arm was sore for a week! In any case, I have loved the drop-shot ever since and have not had any more trouble with my arm.

Richard Wilbur's hitting partner, the late poet Theodore Roethke, coached tennis at Penn State, it turns out. Roethke says in his notebooks that any many-sided person possesses a number of natural rhythms. Think about that for application to tennis! And how Oscar gets you to the ball at just the right time for you to make such discoveries on your own. Oscar knows when not to get too detailed.

But some people, such as myself, try as they might, are always going to analyze. The secret for them is to press through this wish to something more beautiful and imagistic and right-brain! The analysis itself is usually worthless and even counter-productive until...until it leads to a really simple cue. And everybody with a brain knows how effective Oscar's cues are. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't make up some of your own! This is the direction I'm following. Maybe it's not for everyone, I don't know, but personally speaking, I've never had more fun in this sport, and I'm not kidding when I say that John Escher at 69 would beat John Escher at 59, who would beat John Escher at 49.

Enough about me, though. Has anyone watching the UTube videos of Roger Federer practicing noticed the little
pause just after he straightens his arm on his famous forehand (still good enough to model upon, unforced errors or not). The city champion in Winchester, Virginia had the same pause, and I always thought it silly. No more.
That man was lead detective for the police department, and he had figured something out.