Issue 06: Watch the Hour Before

What Tennis Teaches Us

Watching players practice has become my favorite part of going to a tournament. It's best in the early rounds, when the practice schedule runs all day and the top players aren't just warming up. From the side of the court, it looks like they're working on the parts of their game that they, and their coaches, think need attention.

At the DC Open this summer, I watched Naomi Osaka actively work on swing volleys, her net game, and adding spin to her second serve. Jess Pegula seemed to be on the practice courts longer than anyone, day after day, all the way to the final, as if she wasn't leaving until something felt right.

What surprised me was how familiar it all looked. The drills weren't exotic: crosscourt patterns, volleys, serves into a target. They were more or less what we do in our lessons; they're just so much better at them. You watch a Grand Slam champion and think, what's left to improve? And there she is, hitting the same ball again and again, missing, adjusting, missing a little less.

A match is the finished product. Practice is the workshop. The shot that brings the stadium to its feet was built out of hours that look exactly like this. Most people at the practice courts are waiting for an autograph at the end. By all means, get one. But watch the hour before.

An Idea Worth Borrowing

Anders Ericsson spent his career studying how people become extraordinarily good at things: violinists, chess players, surgeons, athletes. In Peak, written with Robert Pool, he argues the difference lies in deliberate practice. Its hallmark, he writes, is that “you try to do something you cannot do.” Then you do it over and over, paying close attention to how you're doing it, where you're falling short, and how to get better. He also points out that ordinary life rarely hands us that kind of focused repetition. If we want it, we have to build it ourselves. Ideally, not alone. In Ericsson's account, deliberate practice is designed and overseen by a coach or a teacher who knows what expert performance looks like and how it gets developed.

Malcolm Gladwell later popularized part of this research as the 10,000-hour rule. But Ericsson's conclusion was never about the volume of practice; it was about the kind. Most of us rehearse what we're already good at, because it feels like progress. Deliberate practice, he writes, “takes place outside one's comfort zone and requires a student to constantly try things that are just beyond his or her current abilities. Thus it demands near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable.”

What Caught My Eye

In the spring of 1981, Martina Navratilova lost to Chris Evert 6-0, 6-0. She was already one of the best players in the world. That summer she started training with Nancy Lieberman, the basketball star, who told her she was wasting her talent by not working hard enough. So Navratilova ran sprints on a basketball court. Renée Richards came on to sharpen her strokes and tactics, and a nutritionist, Robert Haas, rebuilt her diet.

People called it “Team Navratilova,” and they didn't mean it kindly. Some of her peers thought the diet, and the posse, were ridiculous.

In 1983 she lost one match all year. A year later she put together a 74-match winning streak. Before long, everyone else was training her way.

Today, nearly every player on tour has someone standing behind her: a coach, a hitting partner, a fitness trainer. It's easy to forget that the first woman to show up with a team got laughed at for it.

See you next Monday.
— Simona

One More Thing
For those who love practice, basket after basket. The Next Hundred →