What to focus on?

[mrhalley]

There are several places to focus your attention during a stroke:

1) the ball as it hits your racket (watch the ball)
2) The ball as it hits the ground (bounce - hit)
3) The ball as it leave the opponent's racket
4) A place on the other side of the court (via cones)
5) A place over the net (via Landsdorp)
6) Body mechanics

Which is correct?

[johnyandell]

Good question. I think as a rule of thumb you need not to think or "focus" in that respect on mechanics verbally. You should visualize what you are trying to do based on well established keys--either technical or tactical. So it's eyes on the ball and mind's eye on the execution, if that makes sense. Track the flight of the ball at least with your peripheral vision including the bounce, flight, etc, and imagine visually what you are trying to do. It's a potent combination.

[bottle]

Paralysis by Analysis Revisited

I recommend the book "Blink," by Malcolm Gladwell, to anyone who wants to learn better tennis. The same instincts that can cause you to shoot the wrong man or elect Warren G. Harding president can be trained and redirected. You can be a better wine-and-food taster, a better tennis player, and a better person all at the same time.

Vic Braden's appearance in the book touches on the ESP of predicting double-faults. Also, Uncle Vic uses his interview space to reiterate a tenniset
that he has never changed: The strings of a racket don't roll over the ball during contact. Of course, on a forehand, to "windshield-wipe" powerfully,
some people roll with an overdeveloped forearm, some with the whole arm,
and others with both along with their entire body. The minute anyone rolls
whole arm in the contact area the racket face must close. This merely means that the strings were closing at contact but weren't closing fast enough to roll over the ball in high speed photography or influence the contact event.

Also, if you were moving your hand forward from your body, your racket
was rolling open. So maybe, if you were really lucky, the conflicting rolls
canced each other out and you obtained the pitch you wanted (it might help to be a deeply religious person). Which brings me back to "Blink." Gladwell is psychologist-expert-successor to Timothy Gallwey on quick decisions, speed chess and the nature of instinct-- on what anyone does in the first two seconds.

His theory of "thin-slicing," not a tennis term, one might mistakenly think,
applies to the accumulation of too much knowledge, information and detail.
We already know the truth lurking behind this, I guess, but let's say it again.
One must always look for the cue, the handle on too much stuff. We must
edit, edit, edit. The surprise, thoroughly documented by Gladwell, is how often this is better done not in years, months or weeks but in micro-seconds.