Omni Daily Crush: "The Inner Game of Tennis"
Now that Wimbledon 2009 is a wrap, and the U.S. Open doesn't begin until August 31, I can get down to the business of improving my game instead of watching the greats go at it. Sure, I'd been taking lessons, playing a few games a week, and sprinting up and down the hillside stairs near my house (yeah, right), but it wasn't enough. It's never enough. I required some deeper insights about how one becomes a calm, cool and confident player. So, I naturally I turned to my mom--a former Tretorn 
shod, pom-pom sock-strutting tennis ace who could rip the fuzz off those hot pink tennis balls back in the glory years of the sport--the magnificent 1970s. So I asked her, "Mom, how did you manage (with three whiney pre-schoolers in tow) to learn to play so well?" She replied, "I read The Inner Game of Tennis, dear." What?? She got game from reading a book! I was flabbergasted. Tennis magic from a book. Well, I'm no autodidact like mom, but The Inner Game of Tennis really is everything it's cracked up to be.
This is the classic guide to playing a sport without beating yourself or your over-priced racquet up in the process. The book's philosophical underpinnings--Zen Buddhist principles as served up by author/guru/tennis pro W. Tim Gallwey--are the secret. The heirs to Gallwey's approach include Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, and more recently, Shop Class as Soul Craft. In a nutshell, Gallwey tells the uptight players of this world to dial down the self-critical, self-doubting ego chatter in our heads and develop a heightened state of relaxed concentration and awareness of the ball. You know, the tennis ball, that thing you're supposed to pay the utmost attention to. Stop playing the "outer game," Gallwey instructs. Stop fixating on external stimuli (winning, doing everything right, nerves, your opponent, the foxy tennis coach on the adjacent court), and start directing your thoughts to the "inner game" by trusting your mind/heart and body to move in the naturally proper way, to self-correct without getting up in your own grill, to let things happen in order to unlock all your potential. As Gallwey sagely observes:
You probably get the gist. It's all that "ancient Indian philosophy meets 1970's feel good stuff" that we've largely managed to forget over the past few decades. And, there's something else that we've forgotten over the years: the look and feel of the book's early design carefully amplified Gallwey's message. Its format (unlike the newer paperback edition) is perfectly square. The dust jacket features a close-up shot of a very white, very fuzzy tennis ball emerging from the surrounding darkness. When you remove the dust jacket, there is a lovely embossed tennis ball on the pale green cover. Each of the book's chapters begins with a page featuring nothing but the title and a simple black-and-white photograph of a tennis ball seen at close range--like a meditative icon. All of these subtle touches and repetitions collectively reinforce a primary teaching: concentration (in this case, on the ball). The newer edition is perfectly fine, but lacks these graceful touches, these demonstrations of close, loving attention to the book's core message. Somehow, the format got smaller and the title got a whole lot longer: The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. Now, that's a mouthful. What the current edition lacks in artfulness, it delivers in practicality. It is tidy paperback that can be read on the go. Whether or not tennis is your game, it is worth spending a bit of time this summer improving your "inner game" with this champ of a guide. For those looking for something with fewer ball and racquet references, don't miss Gallwey's forthcoming book, The Inner Game of Stress which hits shelves August 18.
--Lauren
Recommended for readers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pete Sampras' memoir, A Champion's Mind: Lessons from a Life of Tennis, and James Blake's memorable Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life.
