Tennis, Anyone?

My husband Lindsay and I were fortunate enough to take a real vacation last year.  (A friend of mine defines "vacations" as destinations that do not involve visiting family.  Visits to family are called "trips.")  At any rate, we went on a vacation and stayed at a hotel with a tennis court.   I'm not a great player, but I try to get on the court once a week.  When the sound of the ball hits the sweet spot on my racket (and that happens sometimes) it's a pretty amazing feeling.   And I love the little skirts you get to wear.

When I learned the the hotel offered a free hour with their tennis pro, I jumped at the chance to try to improve on my weekend game - and maybe even undo one or two bad habits I had learned over the years. As it turned out, I was the only hotel guest to show up for the free hour, so it became my own private lesson.

What a gift. We worked forehand and back hands and serves, of course. He ran me around the court, and I was actually starting to feel like I was learning something that my weekend tennis partner would notice in our Saturday rallies. But with each stroke we focused on, the instructor repeated the same phrase over and over again: "You aren't following through."  Even my double-handed back hand - a more often than not sure-fire winner - garnered the same lackluster remark: "You aren't following through."  Huh?  How is that possible?  "I feel like I am," I defended.  And then he showed me where my racket stopped, and boy was he right. I wasn't following through.  To correct this, I started to bring the racket all the way back and then all the way across my body until my arm crossed my face and was near my opposite shoulder.  The power was amazing.

What a metaphor for my life.  Follow-through.  Kind of a scary concept.  Following through requires courage - a mentality that says, even when you don't feel like it, even when you think it doesn't matter, even when you feel discouraged and think it's pointless, follow-through.  It's a mental game.

This certainly applies to acting.  Working on your mentality is just as important as working on the story.    My acting coach, Diana Castle, teaches this brilliantly.  She talks about being the master of our mind.  And implores us to take Rilke's first "Letter to a Young Poet" to heart:

"This before all:  ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night:  must I [write]?  Dig down into yourself for a deep answer.  And if this should be in the affirmative, if you may meet this solemn question with a strong and simple "I must", then build your life according to this necessity. . ."

To me, this "I must" burns in every champion.  The U.S. Open is in full-swing right now (pardon the pun) and I recently watched a series of interviews with some of the tennis greats:  Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Serena Williams.  They all have their different strengths and weaknesses.  But mentality is the linch-pin.   When asked how much of his success was about the mentality and the will, Connors agreed emphatically, "That's it.  Every body plays good tennis; it's what you bring over and above that."  That's the common denominator in terms of winning and losing.  Follow-through.

With fall around the corner, I'm determined to follow-through, to see where it takes me, to take on a champion's mentality.  I  doubt I'll be playing in Wimbledon next July.  But who knows what other doors may open?  Maybe that's where the fear comes from.  What if one's dreams really did come true?