Coaching

Today Sylvain and I went to play tennis again, it was a beautiful spring day and without a wet court our game improved, a little. We borrowed what are next to the worst rackets you could imagine without going as far back as the wooden frames of the John McEnroe era. I've played tennis for a long time, taken lessons and still I remain a pretty mediocre player with inconsistent shots and no speed on the court. Still our first time out I decided Sylvain would want to know his shots were dumped in the net because of his flat feet or open stance even if my shots often flew wildly out of court because of my own bad form.

At the end of our play this week I was bored with Sylvain playing his 12 year old boy who needs to "kill" the ball- any sport with a ball, and a boy of any age will decide to try to hit it with bat, club, or racket in an effort to seemingly destroy the ball. Sylvain did this occasionally throughout our game each time usually sending the ball into the net, and at the end I'd had enough "You are not good enough to hit like that!" meaning he didn't have enough control to use his power to accurately hit shots into play. But really he just thought it was fun to try to whack the ball with all his power, it's just that it never went over the net, unless it went so far over the net it also went over my head. Nonetheless, I didn't say what I meant, because what I meant was: stop doing that, I want you to put the ball in play so I can try and hit it back, but of course, that's not what I said, essentially what I said and what he heard was you're not good enough.

After a bit of a row, and some discussion regarding the fact that I am not gifted with his natural athletic ability (his parents are world class runners) he said this: "You are always trying to tell me how to play, and you're not much better yourself."

I made a point of not critiquing his play this week, but obviously our first session had made an impression. At that point I had to laugh because last year just after Sylvain moved to Chile I went home to visit my parents before following him to Chile. I was worried about some unresolved issues that wouldn't be resolved until I got to Chile, so when my parents and I went to play golf, I played terribly. My mother is not a very good golfer, she never keeps her head down and thus never hits the ball solidly so it dribbles here and there. Nonetheless she started giving me unsolicited golf advice and after a while I said, MOM! stop trying to tell me how to golf, when you can't even golf yourself.

The point of course, is that no one likes to feel criticized, and whether you're trying to help, it's rarely seen in that light. When you're preforming poorly for whatever reason, lack of athletic ability, it's a new skill, or you have something else on your mind, unless you ask for support, it's generally not welcome.