The Inner Game of Tennis

The Inner Game of Tennis

The woman's name was Dorothy, and she had been gripping the racket like it owed her money for six years.

Tim Gallwey had seen the grip a hundred times on the clay courts of the Meadow Club in Mill Valley, California -- knuckles pale, forearm locked, the whole right side of her body braced for combat. Dorothy was a retired schoolteacher, sixty-one years old, and she wanted, more than anything, to stop shanking her backhand into the net. She had tried lessons before. She had memorized the checklist: knees bent, racket back early, contact point in front, follow through high. The checklist was not working. When she thought about the checklist, the ball arrived while she was still consulting it. Then she swung, and the ball went sideways into the fence, and she muttered something she would not have said in her classroom, and her jaw went tight.

Gallwey watched for a moment. Then he said something her previous coaches had never said. He said: stop trying to fix it. Instead, just watch where the ball is when your racket makes contact. Call it out loud. Early. Middle. Late. That is all.

Dorothy hit the next ball. "Late," she said, almost surprised. Hit another. "Middle." Hit another. "Late again." Within four minutes -- four minutes of doing nothing except observing, without correcting, without judging, without trying -- her backhand had completely transformed. She was making contact in front, with a loose arm, following through naturally. Nobody had told her to do those things. Her body had figured it out on its own, simply because her mind had gotten out of the way.