Click here to buy Tennis thing on Amazon

Tag: Crawford Lindsey

  • Technical Tennis: Racquets, Strings, Balls, Courts, Spin And Bounce By Rod Cross & Crawford Lindsey

    I bought this book solely to take advantage of free shipping at Tennis Warehouse. Remember readers, you have to spend money to save money. The book is superb, though perhaps mostly of interest to people like me who are intrigued by the technology, or what’s represented as technology, in tennis. I’ve spent my first year and a half in tennis trying different rackets and strings (not to mention grips and overgrips). At no time have I gotten the sense a given racket made or kept me from being a better player.

    I have developed preferences that remain fairly consistent. The first is for a racket with a head size of 98 square inches. The second is for polys that are not strung too tight, always less than 50 pounds. Finally, I trend away from rackets designed to aid in power because, for all of my faults and weaknesses in tennis, I do not suffer from a lack of power.

    Back to Cross & Lindsey’s book. Check out this quote:

    TENSION AND PLAYER PERCEPTIVENESS
    Virtually every player assumes that he can tell the difference between different tensions. Some claim to be able to identify a difference of a pound or two. Tests have been performed that bring that claim into question. In a test of 41 advanced recreational players, only 11 (27 percent) could determine a difference of 11 pounds or less. In fact, 15 (37 percent) couldn’t correctly identify the difference even when the tension between two racquets varied by 22 pounds. A small number were able to discern a two-pound difference, however. Players were not allowed to touch the strings or vibrate them to guess tension, and each racquet had a vibration dampener to take away auditory cues.

    Using earplugs to further dampen auditory cues lowered the success rates even more. Players were only allowed four hits with each racquet, so the only data the player was interpreting was feel, not an accumulated history of location of ball placement that could be used to deduce string tension. Some players said that they noticed a difference, but then incorrectly chose which racquet had a higher tension.

    Auditory cues are huge but they’re not often a subject of conversation with most players so quick and confident to identify what they feel about string tension. I recall a similar test relating to golf. Many players reported that they prefered the feel of putters made from this material or that. But, when they wore earplugs they couldn’t differentiate even the most dissimilar materials or even construction techniques.

    For me the question is this: Thinking of the average player is it beneficial to believe in the benefit of this string over that string, this tension over that or this racket over another? To jump ahead, I think using the correct racket (correct as regards weight, head size, stiffness) is very important for new, especially young, players. What I’m asking concerns average adult players. My experience leads me to conclude that it can be entertaining but is largely a waste of time for recreational players to believe that the right (or wrong) racket or string will relevantly affect their games.

    With that said, identifying preferences is fine but I contend that mine have little affect on my game, and that’s Ok. I still like what I like. As they saying goes, you can either use the racket you like or the racket someone else likes. Just make sure to keep your focus on your game and not your strings and racket. By the way, I’m not done writing about this book. It’s much too interesting so stay tuned. Tt

  • The smaller the ball the better the (sports) writing.

    I’m not sure who said that but I am fairly sure it’s true. The best sports writing is about golf, of this I think there’s little doubt. The reason for that is simple. Golf writing is either about hero worship, which never gets old, or tragedy, which also never gets old or both.

    Think about the boredom of writing about ordinary good golf:

    “And then our hero hit another ball into the middle of the fairway. Then he hit another ball into the middle of the green. Then he made another putt.”

    Now try this: “Our hero was nervous as he stood on the 10th tee, a tricky dogleg left. Memories of snap hooks into the woods bedeviled his mind as the wind swirled from right to left. He was already three shots behind the leaders with the hardest holes on the course still to be played. He hit a towering drive that was no more than ten feet left of his target line, but the wind freshened right at contact and the ball drifted left of the tree line before it vanished from view. Ten minutes later after having to strip down to his underwear in order to play his second shot from a pool of swamp water, the resulting ball miraculously caroming off a greenside tree into the center of the green, our hero unceremoniously sunk a ten-footer for birdie.”

    A tennis ball is a bit larger than a golf ball and my early reading suggests that writing on tennis is Ok, but surely not to the level of good golf writing. One problem, I think, is the nature of the action. Too little describable time passes between tennis shots to delve into a player’s mindset. But now I am getting caught on a tangent.

    I’m reading these three tennis books. In a couple weeks, I’ll review them. Technical Tennis is the most interesting, surprisingly, though the writing of David Foster Wallace’s String Theory is undeniably excellent and the story of Pancho Segura’s life in Little Pancho is as improbable as it is true.

    Tt