A Game of Luck, Resilience and Finesse
If you’ve been playing tennis for a while, you can appreciate the difference between different surfaces. The beauty about grass court tennis is that the lawn is catchy to the eyes, it feels good to walk on and provides you with a hint of nature at your fingertips. To get good at playing on grass, you need to first become one with the court and let it play for you. This involves appreciating the uniqueness of how grass plays; accepting the circumstances while willing to learn how to maneuver, deliver and conquer.
It’s a game of luck: well it kind of is! You can be down 4-1 in the first set and find yourself in a tight tiebreaker 25 minutes later, only to win the set and cruise in the second. How do you create this luck? You believe and you enjoy the surface; you learn to dance. And the more you want to dance, the luckier you get. I know, this is still a work in progress.
Grass Court Tennis: The Resilience Factor
It’s a game of resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, in this case not feeling the ball, not identifying with your strategy and being mentally distracted. Grass can help you change when experiencing any of those difficulties; it provides you with longer points that help you build a groove and feel; in other words, the surface buys you some time. In return, you develop a capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; this is resilience.
And lastly, it’s a game of finesse: doing something in a subtle and delicate manner, in this case introducing backhand and forehead slices from the baseline and on returns of serve; introducing chip and charges and following the ball in to the net more often; serving and volleying at least 1-2x per game; throwing in several drop shots to keep them honest while testing their physical stamina; and most importantly, loving the grass and believing that your matches will turn into your favor. This is grass court tennis.
Have you played grass yet?
Are you Ready? (This is Defeating Stigma Mindfully)
DSM (Defeating Stigma Mindfully) 
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