I learned a lot of very valuable skills from tennis. Many of them have helped me get to where I am today, and I still use them on every day. Here are just a few of these important skills:
- Hand-eye coordination: I attribute all of my success in my other sports to tennis. After hours of practice to hit the ball just right every time, picking up every other sport was a breeze. Basketball, lacrosse, field hockey, you name it. While I lacked the years on the field that my friends had, I found myself quickly catching up to them in skill. I picked up field hockey my junior year of high school, and found myself recruited for college a year later. Some of my college tennis teammates had never played another sport in their life, but when given a basketball, they were naturals. The art of watching the ball translates to any ball sport, and tennis makes you really good at it. Whether or not you stick with tennis until the end or you switch to another sport, your tennis background will help you toward success!
- Vision: In tennis, you are the only one out on the court, and it takes more than just being able to hit the ball over the net to win. The sport requires you to place your ball in a specific spot with a specific type of spin. While that shot may win you the point, most of the time it’s a set up for the next shot or even two or three shots down the line. As a tennis player, you learn strategy and how to put together plays. You realize where you should be during the point to maximize your chances of winning. This translates into other sports and into life in general. In other sports, I quickly picked up the concept of off-ball movement on the field. I realized that my current action of passing the ball is only a part of my job, and that where I position myself without the ball is going to help my team to success. While sports and life requires us to live in the moment, we are also required to think ahead and plan our steps toward reaching our goal.
- Hard Work: Tennis requires constant practice and perseverance. To not only improve but also maintain your tennis skills, you must put in the hours on the court and give it your all both physically and mentally. During college, I quickly realized that my serve required more attention than what I was getting in practice. I took it upon myself to serve four buckets of serves every week to make sure that my serve wasn’t a liability and was an actual weapon. Tennis makes you comfortable with hard work. And while it doesn’t guarantee winning (for there is always one winner and one loser in a match), hard work prepares you to always put your best foot forward at any give moment.
