Tennis as a Wisdom Practice

A purpose always helps people get somewhere. Mine was extrinsic. Wins and rankings. As Carl shares in this book, those goals are not necessarily what get you where you want to go. Also, when you get there, you may find that where you wanted to go isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There may be something better at the end of the rainbow. Not unlike the protagonist in Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist, who discovered that the journey truly is the goal, you may discover that competition delivers life lessons that are much more important than your win-loss record. (Location 55)

decided to proceed for reasons both personal and political. I’ll put aside my penchant for self-deprecation and state without adornment that I view this book as an exercise in healthy self-confidence, born of the desire to co-learn in community. (Location 167)

First, its point of departure is Timothy Gallwey’s iconic The Inner Game of Tennis. Basically, Gallwey ‘discovered’ that there is an inner dimension to the game, which leaves me unsure whether to hail him for his insight or to bemoan a culture that somehow managed to obscure a truth that in retrospect seems obvious. Both are in order, I suppose — but this is hindsight speaking. (Location 202)

I was aided and abetted in my practice by the occasional toke of marijuana which, far from distracting me or causing me to subside into gales of giggles, helped me stay focused while also delivering the occasional insight of real value. For instance, I tend to be an arm player who doesn’t engage his hips and core enough. (Location 286)

The sport can be as fertile a spiritual learning ground as the martial arts. It may not come to us on a platter labeled ‘Wisdom Practice,’ but that’s what it is if you choose to see it that way. We need a new story about tennis. (Location 344)

muscles are barely on the cultural radar. (Location 377)

Every moment is precious on the tennis court, too, and not only because our time is limited there, as it is in life. We improve faster and compete better if we stay fully present to every possible moment. (Location 395)

Emotions are chi, pure energy. Boundaries are li, structure, the walls we build to channel and direct our chi. On the tennis court, you want to be left-brained as well as right-brained, li as well as chi, poised as well as passionate. You want to ride the boundary between them. (Location 421)

The Yin and the Yang of It In the Taoist tradition, the universe is powered by equal energies, yang and yin. Yang is focused, directed, forward-moving. Yin is receptive and embracing. They are complementary: Sun and moon, act and be, penetrate and receive. Masculine and feminine, as per the ancient tradition.[3] (Location 439)

As my opponent is going through his preparation routine, I give myself two instructions: Get still and then react quickly. This is strong yin making way for strong yang. (Location 454)

Serving provides another example. You get power on your serve from an explosion of kinetic energy that you direct up and at the ball. It’s not a purely yang activity, though. Usually, there’s also a moment of stillness. Typically it comes when the ball has been tossed into the air, the tossing arm is still extended, and the body is poised for the strike. For a fraction of a second, you become more like a statue than not. That tossing arm is like a mast on a ship, still and steadfast in the wind — your kinetic chain, unleashed, is like a wave washing over it. Yin and yang are complementary. We learn to invoke them as needed as we get better at tennis. (Location 457)

fear those high on the totem pole – is a slave mentality and the opposite of useful. (Location 480)

Roger Federer, who is a font of wisdom as well as genius, once said, “I respect everyone and fear no one.” (Location 481)

Note: do not be afraid be ready

It was about 6:00 in the morning, but chronological time as we usually experience it had stopped existing. The tree outside my window was all trees throughout all time — its leaves were all leaves throughout all time — the birds in the sky had been soaring there throughout all time. Shock had taken me out of my body and into forever. I was inhabiting the Eternal Now. (Location 496)

For some people, their default habitat is up the mountain, above the storm and fury of everyday reality. For others, their natural habitat is in the valley. Philosophical traditions are made of this. If you’re a romantic, you embrace the passions of the immediate Now. More classically-inclined people see things from more of a witness perspective and are predisposed to focus on higher-level patterns and principles. (Location 508)

Tribal rivalries are made of this, too. If you’re an alpine sort, you might be inclined to view valley-dwellers as ‘drama queens.’ And they, in turn, might dismiss you as ‘not in touch with your emotions.’ (Location 511)

I’ve grown older, I’ve come to believe that healthy aging takes us up the ladder of abstraction away from passionate engagement and toward the infinite and more distant and eternal. (Location 512)

The body knows what the heart resists. One of the tasks of old age is preparing to die. We do so by heading up the mountain. Passion isn’t for the old. It’s for people who are procreating, for people who are politicking, for people whose world it is now. (Location 514)

Competitive sports perform an important social function. They provide a largely or completely safe outlet for aggression. When we compete on the tennis court, we’re inhabiting an archetype that’s been with us since humanity’s first days. War! Combat! (Location 517)

Tennis drags you into the Immediate Now. (Location 520)

We compete well to the extent that we resist getting completely sucked up by the Immediate Now. We fail at this when we lose our sense of context. Every point in a tennis match is nested inside a game, which is nested inside a set, which is nested inside a match, which is nested inside many matches, which is nested inside life itself. The more we can maintain this sense of context while in the heat of battle, the less likely we’ll be to fret over losing a single point or game. We’re less likely to worry about ‘dying,’ so to speak, because we know that we’ll be reborn in the next game, in the next set, in the next match. (Location 521)

The quicksand of excessive urgency becomes a meadow we can frolic on. (Location 526)

Every tennis player aspires to be ‘in the zone.’ During these rare and exalted moments, excellent performance seems to flow forth effortlessly without extraneous thoughts or fear. We experience ourselves as beyond our normal flawed selves. It feels borderline miraculous. (Location 539)

What does the experience of enlightenment feel like? Damned if I know, but I’ll hazard a guess. Everything flows easily, naturally, effortlessly. It is a place of peace, of acceptance, of deep and abiding equanimity, where one easily inhabits one’s best and wisest self and the extraneous noise is dialed down to zero. Bad outcomes are promptly let go of — ditto for good outcomes, too. Full flow state becomes the norm. (Location 546)

the pursuit of the zone in tennis, which is something every serious tennis player yearns for, is actually the pursuit of enlightenment, draped in sweaty secular clothes. (Location 552)

Steve’s observation put me in mind of Vitas Gerulaitis, who famously said at his post-match press conference when he beat Jimmy Connors after sixteen consecutive losses: “No one beats Vitas Gerulaitis seventeen times in a row.” (Location 599)

Note: lmao

When the racket strikes the ball, it is the tennis equivalent of where the rubber meets the road. Its success is determined by many factors, including technique, energy, and attitude. Failure feeds failure in this moment — success feeds on success. (Location 755)

Whenever the racket meets the ball, the strike can be fueled by either confidence or doubt. Some axiomatic truths flow from this: •  Unsuccessful shots fuel doubt,  successful ones fuel           confidence.  •  People perform worse from the ‘doubt zone’ and betterfrom the ‘confidence zone.’ (Location 764)

Note: and the way to get confidence is by creating stability and optionality in the wind up

or seven senses: Sight, sound, hearing, touch, and taste plus two late additions, body awareness (proprioception) and movement and balance (vestibular). Tennis is a sight-centric game. “Watch the ball!’ is the first thing our teachers tell us. That’s the sense we prioritize when we step onto the court. It’s a sensible habit. It’s also worth experimenting with. During a hitting session with my friend Steve Macy, I decided to focus on hearing the ball hit the racket rather than seeing it. I continued to watch the ball, of course, but in the context of a new instruction set: I was to judge my shot based on how it sounded, not on what I  saw or on where it went. (Location 862)

Thus was born what I now call Easy Listening Tennis. It’s a great way to calibrate your game. (Location 871)

Note: weird name can ignore it's just increasing the number of senses that are active - starts the section well with all senses but only pursues one - it's more like "use all your senses" and one way to train is to focus on a particular one or to pick different focal points just look at their feet for a game or just the racquet i do this when watching live sports

He dropped balls for me to hit with the instruction, “Swing as hard as you can.” Other than this session, I can probably count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I’ve hit a groundstroke as hard as possible. There’s always been an intervening consideration: Get the damn ball in! (Location 873)

Note: lol i was literally writing about this framework in the context of power and control and a good exercise to focus on one at the exclusion of the other - we do plenty of control drills and warm ups, but less on power

Instead of aiming for control and building up power, aim for power and build up control. (Location 881)

Note: this is what i was doing on the serve with bernhard that felt instinctive to me but confusing to him - he kept saying control first then add power

Right Is Wrong. Good Is Bad (Location 893)

Our brain sends wrong messages when we’re trying to get better. Because the old way is familiar, we tend to see it as right, correct. Because the new way is unfamiliar, we tend to see it as weird, off, wrong. This makes us cautious to a fault. Although we’re actively trying to get better, we tend to trust our internal guidance system (“Wrong! Stop!”) too much and to therefore cling to the status quo. (Location 895)

The Moral/Physical Divide (Location 899)

Note: weird distinction - metaphysical vs physical feels better

Watching one of these, it occurred to me that there was a future for an off-court practice that married tennis with tai chi — call it tennis tai chi. I envisioned it as laid out in a standardized, transmissible form, like other martial arts — start with the forehand, proceed to the backhand, then go to the volley, and so on, all performed in super-slow motion. The benefits of tennis tai chi would extend to both the tai chi and tennis sides of the fence. Practitioners would get martial-art benefits by practicing the form. They would get tennis benefits by executing the strokes correctly without having to worry about details like timing the strike and hitting the ball in. It would be an exercise in art for art’s sake, in form for form’s sake, and in tennis executed for the health and beauty of the strokes themselves. As far as I know, tennis tai chi exists nowhere but in my mind. It is an idea waiting to become a business (not mine!) as well as an idea waiting to be picked up and developed by individual tennis players who think it might be fun and also —  who knows? — make them better. (Location 939)

we can and should be our Primary Care Person. Our doctors are best seen as consultants, not commanders. (Location 956)

Just as we can’t solely rely on others to keep us healthy, we can’t solely rely on others to make us better tennis players. We have to be our own best analyst and advocate. (Location 967)

What if we were to tear down those walls and adopt a cross-category lens instead  of focusing on just the forehand, just the backhand, just the serve, just the whatever? What, in other words, if we were to be more holistic in our pursuit of error detection and correction? (Location 1006)

Ascend toward the general. Descend into particulars. (Location 1042)

I’d come to Philadelphia bearing my age-old question, which over time had evolved into my old-age question: Where do I fit in? On paper, I hadn’t done well, but I left feeling good about the answer. (Location 1259)

Note: reminds me of my life long quest to just find out where i stack - to see what you've got - to test your mettle

How many balls have I hit per session? Surely more than 1,000. That adds up to a million and a half separate practice opportunities. That’s a whole lot of ball-striking for very little progress. Pursuing mastery is such a slog that I’ve wondered at times if it’s worth the effort, especially when one is of a certain age and fighting entropy along with technical and physical shortcomings. (Location 1268)

The reward lies in the journey. A famous — and, for the 1950s, sexually suggestive — line from a Cunard steamship company read: “Getting there is half the fun!” Well, sure — and it’s all the fun when there’s no final destination. That’s what a practice is, after all — an ongoing commitment to the doing, not the getting done. (Location 1274)

The lack of positive feedback we get about our progress can actually be seen as a positive. “No appointments, no disappointments,” the famous spiritual teacher Muktananda is reputed to have said. When session after session passes and we don’t feel like we’re getting better, it returns us to the basic verities. Do it for the doing of it. Keep plugging away and trust the process. Persisting becomes an act of faith, and at the end of the day, it is faith — in God, in one’s friends, in one’s personal choices, and for me, faith in the practice of tennis — that fuels and inspires us. (Location 1282)

I adopted tennis as a formal if somewhat idiosyncratic spiritual practice — as a moving meditation, if you will — because I wanted to get better at tennis. (Location 1288)

Note: yes exactly

Being consciously physical. One way to compensate for negative thoughts is to get more embodied. Bounce! Skip! Activate those bones … (Location 1350)

Conscious humans shed stories. People who stay unconscious about the narratives they impose on the world tend to stay stuck inside them: (Location 1365)

It’s my Childish-Mind that’s the bullshit artist. (Location 1386)

Note: not a fan of this usage of childish for me childish is more emotional and less filter and less understanding of the world here it's more like the lies we tell ourselves as self conscious adults

Negative energy is infectious, and tennis is a shared activity. When I play against an opponent, I am also playing with them. We are in a sort of dance together, and when I’m swearing loudly at myself or otherwise letting the world know how unhappy I am with myself (or my opponent, or the gods), it can make the game less fun for them. (Location 1460)

Note: one reason people don't like novak - less joyful than nadal or fed

Are you a dancer or a dominator? It’s been said that reality is what you make of it. That’s certainly true on the tennis court where our relationship with the person or people across the net has a double aspect. As noted above, they’re both our partner and our opponent. (Location 1584)

#13: Are you more into control or into freedom? (Location 1605)

“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you, it was meant to be.”    - Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Location 1606)

A tennis racket fits this definition neatly. It makes our arm longer and enables us to smack the ball much harder and further than we could if we were using our hand. (Location 1609)

Make sure it doesn’t misbehave — hold on tight, as it were — or enable and encourage it to do its thing. Release the kraken, so to speak. (Location 1617)

Recently I had a sort of mini-revelation — there is another way. I could shift my paradigm from control to liberation. (Location 1622)

Note: i mean it's obvious - to me at least - this is how i feel

#14: Do you have enough li in your game? (Location 1628)

Structure is what allows energy to achieve its fullest potential. Think of the tango, which is the sexy dance it is precisely because it’s so rich with li. The erotic energy emerges distilled and steaming through the tight formal structures of the dance. (Location 1634)

Note: need to have a cool dance choreographed for the wedding - a medley - tango, merengue, etc - will be fun to practice for too

#15: Where do you draw your energy and inspiration from? Again, I’ll offer myself as an example. I draw energy and inspiration from three distinct sources. First, from myself, or rather from my own ego ideal. Who do I want to be when I play? I imagine a person who is gracious, self-contained, bold, and impervious to pressure. Gary Cooper, if you will, or Brad Pitt. I then (Location 1654)

Note: being as smooth as gary cooper is way better than this title

“Be beautiful,” I tell myself, which while perhaps not the most memorable catch-phrase of all time, is certainly better than “Be best.” (Location 1663)

Note: random political dig to throw in here this book would be 10x better as just the spiritual parts

What happens when I tell myself this? First, I lighten up. There’s humor in it because ‘beauty’ is usually associated with females, and — trust me on this — I would not make a pretty woman. Next, I slow down. Striving to be beautiful, or at a minimum graceful, takes me off automatic pilot. My mind and body separate in a good way. I perceive my execution more holistically, for one thing, and for another my execution is hitched to a more inspiring goal than ‘hit it into the forehand corner.’ It’s an esthetic goal, and it’s premised on the notion that esthetic excellence translates into excellent outcomes, too. Lead with beauty and you win even if you lose. That’s how I see it in those moments. (Location 1665)

Note: kill the dumb jokes make it important

Beauty is the sort of pleasure we partake of when we’re not caught up in a struggle for survival. It’s for our downtime, for our wine-and-sunset time. Importing it onto the field of battle is an interesting exercise, but it only works sometimes, and briefly. (Location 1671)

Note: weird let down at the end here

#16: To what extent do the following get activated when you play:  Beginner’s Mind, Childish-Mind, Worried Mind? (Location 1674)

Note: nice but not sure why we need worried mind just a version of childish mind which itself is a nice jux to beginners mind so much fluff in this book

Childish-Mind, by contrast, has only noise in its head. It isn’t something to aspire to. Childish-Mind is what happens when we get stuck inside the narratives that Beginner’s Mind has no place for.[7] (Location 1682)

#17. How loud is your Monkey-Mind? ‘Monkey mind’ is a Buddhist concept. (Location 1697)

Note: not needed? seems like same as 16

#19: How important to you is the pursuit of excellence relative to the status quo? (Location 1724)

Note: weird hedging here take a pov

#20: Are you drawn to tennis as a wisdom practice? (Location 1735)

Note: is this rhetorical make the damn case for why it should be this

Get my return of serve deeper so my opponent wouldn’t start his service points in an offensive posture. Disguise my intentions better. Play from on, not behind, the baseline. Make sensible decisions about how much to tax your body. (Location 1800)

I did so feeling blessed. How often does one happen onto a public court only to find reasonable facsimiles of the young Anna Kournikova and Ana Ivanova banging the ball two courts down? (Location 1878)

Note: banging two courts down lol

A victory by TKO. My quarter-final opponent was (Location 1931)

At the end of the day, and toward the back end of a life, playing supersenior tennis inevitably becomes a meditation on mortality. Every competitor is, in their own way, raging against the dying of the light. (Location 1969)

If tennis is a wisdom practice, I asked myself, what can it teach us about death? I was on a quest of sorts, and quests always start with a question. This must have been a good one, because my mind promptly came up with an answer. (Location 1975)

Note: second sentience isn't needed

What if death wasn’t an enemy? What if we positioned death not as a problem, but as a partner and a friend? (Location 1978)

Life is literally inconceivable without the concept of death. You can have love without marriage, despite what the song says, but you can’t have life without death — it’s the shadow side of the coin. (Location 1980)

Focus. Breathe. Play it like it’s your last point ever. And then I keep plugging away. (Location 1990)

Note: terrific