Quiet Please, Meditation Lessons !

"Quiet please" There is probably no other sport than tennis where the umpire had to call it out to the spectators. Ever wondered why so ? Early in my childhood. I had the impression that it was due to the perceived elite class sport norms .

I also wondered the amount of time each player takes before the serve, we used to mimic those rituals like correcting trousers to wiping off the sweat and what not. Recently a 20 second timer was added to it, again can't recollect any sport that has dedicated time for the player to concentrate. The basket ball free throws and penalty kicks are probably the closest though it has own dimension and impact to the game results too. No wonder, in the tennis circuits it is a passing statement that you are as good as your serve on THE day or even your second !

If God Buddha had to choose a game, it would have been tennis and he would have undoubtedly be called the GOAT :)

As an ardent follower, I had my own imagination of the game, picked up as a true amateur years back and still continues to be an advancing amateur, I still admire, learn and aspire to be just be at the court to realize how little I am on the scale and how far that I need to go !

I get coaching lessons on weekdays, sometime along with 10 yo and 8 yo too. A coach does help you to improve your learnability , a stress buster exercise, kicks off the day well, we become students again irrespective of the age.

I also got into the habit of blocking the court late nights on weekends, just being there, alone, applying what I received as tips from the coach; I practice serve and work on other weak areas.

Service is probably the most difficult skill to master in the game of tennis, just because it is all about you and your rhythm - strategy, target, toss, pronation, foot work, recovery. There isn't one game (barring individual ones) where the point and even the tone is fully dependent on your act - an ace can come from anyone and even against anyone and at anytime !

I would call it the "Brahmastra" of the game - and like the famous curse along with it, few gets it right, and most doest get it when they need it.

The time you take to do the serve is all about preparing your mind, many leading professionals had mentioned about it.

"Tennis is a Mental game, Everyone is Fit, Everyone hits great forehand & Backhand." #novak

Our ability to bring all our body parts together to work in a rhythm along with a mental focus delivers an ace !

It's on one of those days, it stuck me with few important life lessons to cross apply this in our day to day life and see how this goes - Got four of them to share here !

1. "Quiet Please" - It's what you tell to the outer world - no one else should be stepping in when you are at a target (of course not verbally, but embracing it within you) - Not playing to the gallery, not worrying about how this rewards me, how others perceive it, You just own it, credit comes later or the thought shouldn't even bother you.
2. "20 Seconds Shot Clock " -Keep that to yourself - use it wisely, how do you get your team to deliver that ace under crisis ? What do you tell to your team and to yourself - (like keeping the toss of the ball, pronation of arm and jump )- how do you get all together, it may work well in silos or would have worked well in the past. Establish strong correlation of team work and objectives, when does one takes it from other, how to set the right toss(if I call as shared vision), how all we re-coupe post the event (retrospection).
3. "De-stress / Bathroom Breaks" - We know the unique and notorious bathroom breaks allowed in the tennis matches - this is the extension of 20 secs, game breaks .Why do even great players double fault under stress ? the mental focus that directs your body parts under crisis is so important, ability to focus on the NOW. Our ability to stay focused on the larger objective and not to load up the resources in one direction. There will be distractions, fatigue, ambiguity around, take your bathroom break and reset yourself !
4. "Play set by set" - Even after down by 2 sets , many champions have bounced back; on the other side many have fallen down and even withdrawn. I hear that some strategically even work out how they want to start the next set. Interestingly sometime it is about experimenting new strategy while still technically losing. Thats fail-fast in action, building agility - knowing what to do when you don't know what to do, Exploit ambiguity early, Call out assumptions and validate early. It's not just about product/systems but even stakeholders. You are back to love all iteratively to win the championship !

Enjoy the game on the court and off court , thanks for reading/watching !