When Someone Else Is Certain About Your Tennis

This is the final part of three connected reflections. I Called Them Match Experiments began with questions I chose to investigate. Your Forehand Does Not Need to Be Broken to Explore It followed an idea I deliberately borrowed. This part begins when somebody else believes they already know what your tennis should become.

Since early in my development, people have repeatedly told me that I should play a two-handed backhand.

I never made that change. Today, my one-handed backhand is a part of my game that I trust.

That does not mean I refused to touch a two-hander. During one of my match experiments, I used two hands and remained with the solution long enough to notice interesting things inside it. Some of that experience still has value for me, even though it did not replace my usual backhand.

I was willing to explore what people suggested. I was not willing to accept that their certainty had already decided what my backhand needed to become.

Another person’s idea can contribute to my learning without becoming the owner of it.

When expertise sounds like destiny

Advice arrives with different kinds of authority. A coach may have studied movement and worked with hundreds of players. A friend may know our game well and notice patterns we miss. An opponent has directly experienced the problems we create. A stronger club player may have spent years meeting situations we have only just begun to recognise.

Their knowledge can matter. They may see a risk, possibility or limitation that is not yet visible to us.

The difficulty begins when experience turns a possibility into a prediction about our future:

“If you do not change to two hands, you will never have a reliable backhand.”

The player is no longer being offered somewhere to explore. They are being told that one route is the condition for becoming capable.

Perhaps the person does know more about backhands in general. They still cannot know in advance everything about how this solution will fit this player, against these balls, with this body, history, motivation and game. Expertise can guide the search without settling its result before the search has happened.

When effective tennis is treated as wrong

I have coached players whose sliced forehands were extremely effective. The ball stayed low, changed rhythm and made opponents uncomfortable. Instead of becoming curious about why it worked, people around them sometimes mocked the stroke or told them they should always hit topspin.

I find that reaction difficult because the player may be discovering a genuine strength and receiving the message that it does not count because it looks improper. I explored this wider culture in Improper Tennis: sometimes we see the shape of a shot before we see what it is doing.

That does not mean “use more topspin” contains nothing worth exploring. A topspin forehand might add height, margin, angle or another way to respond when an opponent becomes comfortable against the slice. The useful possibility does not require the original slice to be treated as a mistake.

The advice can change from:

“You should stop slicing and learn a proper forehand.”

to something closer to:

“Your slice is creating trouble. I wonder what might become available if you also explore a different shape.”

One asks the player to erase a working solution in order to approach somebody else’s model. The other respects what is already happening and opens another area of search.

You do not owe every opinion an experiment

Remaining curious does not mean making yourself permanently available for correction.

A player has limited court time and limited attention. If every comment becomes a technical project, their own questions can disappear beneath everybody else’s priorities. They may spend a lesson changing a grip because one person disliked it, the next week adjusting their preparation because a video sounded convincing, and the following match monitoring whether their body looks correct.

Before carrying an opinion onto the court, it may help to uncover what is actually being offered:

• What problem does this person believe they are seeing?
• Is that problem appearing in the matches I currently play?
• What does my existing solution already give me?
• What might their suggestion add rather than merely replace?
• Do I feel curious enough to give this question my attention now?

Sometimes the advice becomes useful once the problem is clear. Sometimes it remains an aesthetic preference or a prediction about an imagined future opponent. Sometimes the idea may be interesting, but not now.

Deciding not to investigate something is not automatically fear of change. Just as accepting every suggestion is not automatically openness.

Help without ownership

As a coach, I want to contribute knowledge, questions and environments that help a player continue their journey. There will be moments when I see something the player does not, or when I believe another possibility deserves attention.

That belief does not make the journey mine.

I can explain what I am noticing, why I think it matters and what trade-offs I imagine. I can help create a fair experiment and remain honest about what happens. The player may become excited, uncertain, unconvinced or interested in a different question. Their experience is not an obstacle to my expertise. It is part of the information we need.

This does not mean a player must remain exactly as they are. My own tennis grew because I disturbed familiar solutions, borrowed ideas and sometimes persisted through ugly results. It also grew because I did not accept every confident statement about what I would never be able to do.

Across these three reflections, the relationship changes. Sometimes I created the question. Sometimes I borrowed one. Sometimes somebody handed me an answer before I had agreed on the question.

My learning remained mine when I stayed involved in deciding what deserved exploration, how it would be tested and what the experience meant.