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I began playing tennis when I was 9 years old because that was my dad and I's thing. No one but my dad and I played tennis in my family so it was a way for us to connect and spend time with one another. My dad is a talented tennis player and taught me a majority of what I know about the sport and has made me into the player I am today. Before I started, I knew nothing about the game. I did not even know where to properly serve from, let alone hold a racket.

We started with the basics, the rules. Rather than going straight to the tennis courts, he taught me how to play from the ping pong table in my basement. He did this because 1) he did not want to spend the money on nice racket unless I was truly interested in the sport and 2) because this was a perfect example on how to use a skill that I already knew and to apply it to a new one. A few times a week after school we would go into my basement and rehearse the rules of tennis while using a ping pong table and paddle. From here, I began adjusting my grip on the ping pong paddle to learn how to conduct a forehand and backhand. Until it was summertime, my dad and I would continuously play ping pong a few nights a week to prepare me for summer.

Since I stuck with the sport all winter, my dad decided to buy me my first tennis racket and take me to the local tennis courts. This was the ultimate test to see if my skills and knowledge from ping pong transferred to the tennis courts. Ultimately, I was a natural and experienced a positive transfer. The knowledge I learned while playing ping pong in my basement applied perfectly and benefitted my performance on the tennis courts. I believe that this transfer of learning was successful because of the identical movement patterns that occur between ping pong and tennis. Although tennis requires much more power and full body movements, the wrist movements are the same. In addition to these physical movements, the rules are quite similar as well, i.e.: serving on the right side first, if a ball lands on the line it is in, only allowing the ball to bounce once, etc.

This gif reminds me of when I first began to play ping pong with my dad. He would stand behind or next to me and demonstrate the movement that was required to hit the ball. As stated above, this repetitive practice with pong led to a successful, positive transfer with tennis.

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As mentioned in the post labeled 'From the Basement to the Courts' I began playing tennis with my dad at the age of 9. Since there was only two of us, I virtually learned how to play solely singles. When I got to high I was offered a spot on the varsity team as a freshman. The only catch was that the varsity coach was looking a doubles player not a singles player. After thinking about it for some time, I decided to switch to doubles because I wanted to be on varsity. Although the physical motions and movements are identical to playing singles, the mental aspect of doubles is very different. My partner and I were both previously singles players and had no previous experiences as a doubles player, which required for constant learning and reassurance.

In the beginning, we needed constant verbal reinforcement. Our coach was constantly helping us and directing us on where to move and how to work as one. We eventually began to show dramatic gains since we finally began to figure out how to work as a team rather than individually. Also during this time, many different strategies were attempted. We had to figure out if we wanted to do an 'I formation' or a 'standard formation', who wanted to be a primary net player, etc. Since many different strategies were being experimented, this caused some inconsistent days at practice. This stage in our learning is known as the Cognitive Stage in Fitts and Posner's model.

As practice continued, we eventually discovered that the 'I formation' worked great for us and that I would be the primary net player. This strategy was the most effective for us and led to our greatest success. Our movements were the most consistent at this point, and our practices began to show limited variability between them. Additionally, rather than listening to verbal commands from our coach, we began to focus more on the mental aspects and walk through the steps in our head instead. This stage in our learning is called the Associative Stage.

My doubles partner and I ended up being partners for all four years of high school. This time spent together allowed us to improve over time and have our playing become almost automatic. One aspect that stuck out to me was that we could occasionally have conversations when playing. Rather than having it be silent at all times to concentrate on the game, we would call out who has the ball and then also compliment one another after a nice hit was made. We were able to process the information being said by one another and continue to play at the same time. Additionally, by our senior year we could detect and correct errors that were made. As an example, if the opponents lobbed a ball to our side of the court and we both missed it this would be an error. After the play was complete we would quickly talk and state that we must move our feet and go to the baseline when we see the opponent open the face of their racket at the baseline, causing a lob. This stage is the Autonomous Stage according to Fitts and Posner's model.

The picture I have below is of my tennis partner and I! I thought it would be fun to go through some old pictures. This was from our second season playing together after a long tournament

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Every game in a tennis match begins with a serve. This serve is the initial exposure that the opponents have about your skill level. To put it simple, this serve has to be perfect. It must be fast, forceful, and full of tricks. The serve has to be a 'triple threat' as my coach used to say. Although your first serve is your go-to, it is also important to have a backup or second serve ready when needed. This serve had some extra 'spice' too, by adding top spin, kick, slice, or flatness.

Ultimately, my serve was my largest flaw in the game. Opponents would return my serve has hard as possible with perfect placement because my serve had no tricks to it. It was a decent serve, but not worthy of a number one doubles spot.

Before each practice I would come 30 minutes early to practice my serve. Rather than doing ten top spin serves, then ten kick serves, then ten slices I would randomize the order. Each serve is associated with a different grip, so switching serves will force me to reconstruct my previous action plan. This randomization and reconstruction of my serve led to more memorable practice. I had to mentally and physically restructure my movements before completing the next serve. Ultimately, Action Plan Reconstruction Hypothesis changed the way I play tennis and still leaves me with a serve full of tricks and spice.

The gif that is inserted below demonstrates a man serving in tennis. I specifically chose this gif to correlate to the idea that changing grips between serves is difficult and that it may cause error, but overall the performance during the actual matches will be better than if I practiced in blocks.

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I was a doubles player in high school and often played at the net as my partner played at the baseline. When at the net, the tennis ball comes in fast and you must pay attention. Since this is such a quick reaction time, the movement, called a volley, is fast as well. Rather than fully swinging the racket, it is important to lift the racket up and push it forward to hit the ball and aim.

Since the tennis balls are coming in such a quick manner it crucial to know when to put up your racket to volley the ball. If you are too early then you will either miss the ball or the you will hit the ball as you're bringing your racket back down. If you are too late then the ball will most likely hit you or go zoom past you. To avoid this from happening, I had to use my prior knowledge about the tennis ball (such as size) to know when to hit it. This time to contact is called to Tau and relates to the expansion of the tennis ball on my retina. The closer the ball gets, the bigger the image is on my retina. Since I have been playing tennis for over ten years, it is an immediate instinct for me to volley the ball now because I have mentally set an expansion rate threshold which helps initiate the interceptive action of volleying the tennis ball.

The gif below is an example of what may happen to a novelist who is unaware of the fast pace volleys that come during a game of tennis. This instinct done by Tau would be quite slow and overall result in getting hit with the tennis ball or missing the ball completely.

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My favorite part in tennis is hitting overheads. An overhead can also be called a smash and this is when the ball is forcefully hit above the player's head and often causes an ace. I was very good at overheads, but had to learn the hard way that sometimes hitting the ball as hard as possible is not the best strategy.

When I started playing tennis, I thought that the best way to perform an overhead was to give it your all and add as much power as possible. Although power is quite important in this motion, so is accuracy. When I would hit the tennis ball as hard as possible, this would cause a large amount of speed, making it difficult for the opponent to return the ball. One problem that I originally had was that the ball would not land within the lines. Regardless of the power, the ball must be in to get the point. As my skills advanced and competition got harder, I made the decision to focus on accuracy rather than speed. This overall demonstrates Fitts' Law and the tradeoff that occurs between speed and accuracy. Although this was one lesson I had to figure out the hard way, it led to more aces and overall wins.

The gif that I chose resembles how I used to feel when I let speed and strength dominate over accuracy. Since I am not a true expert in tennis, I still have difficulty finding a balance between speed and accuracy unlike professional tennis players such as Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal.