This week was all about continuing to battle that old fiend… Serving. Turns out it’s actually a pretty important part of tennis. Who knew?
We started, as always, with some fun warm up cardio to shake off the work day. Then we split into teams of three and spent the lesson repeatedly practising serves, trying to put together everything we’ve learnt over the last few weeks.
As usual, some serves absolutely astonished me. They went exactly where I wanted them to, felt natural, had good speed, and everything in my body worked together perfectly. Others… well, let’s just say consistency is still a work in progress and the occasional unsuspecting pigeon may have feared for its life.
Andy unveiled what I now call the Serve Guider 3000, a cutting edge piece of tennis technology of his own invention. aka a hula hoop attached to a plastic pole with duct tape, soon to be seen on Dragons’ Den. However, credit where it’s due though, it genuinely helped all of us get a much better feel for bringing the racket up closer to our heads and getting better positioning instead of waving it around somewhere behind us.
I also discovered that I add what I personally considered a rather jazzy flourish to my serve by flicking out my back leg with the force and momentum. Apparently that’s absolutely fine during the serve itself, but when I absentmindedly did it while standing still, I was informed I looked less like a tennis player and more like a flirting princess. Not exactly the vibe I was aiming for, but the road to greatness takes many forms.
Overall, it was another great lesson with lots of laughs. I also got to properly test out my new racket. I can’t say it instantly transformed me into Federer, but after taking lessons since the end of last year, it felt really nice to finally own a decent racket of my own. Silly as it sounds, it made me feel a bit more part of the club.
I say this a lot, but being part of the tennis club is just genuinely awesome. Making new friends, having a laugh with the coaches, and for one hour a week not worrying about work or adult life, just hitting some green furry balls around – real me time.