Prime Tennis: Triumph of the Mental Game

I've been coaching tennis for 18 years. I've been playing competitively for 30 years. I've been a High School English teacher for 7 years. In "Prime Tennis", Dr. Jim Taylor offers fresh ways of looking at the many problems I help kids try to overcome. As a player and coach, I have heard and attempted to teach the concepts of motivation, confidence, intensity, and focus without any tangible grasp of how to get the message to the student. I think we hope that the player just sort of understands. In "Prime Tennis", these big ideas are analyzed and then formatted to offer coaches and players a means of achieving what Dr. Taylor calls "Prime Tennis". This "Prime Tennis" is control and understanding of the mental side of tennis as a means of becoming a better player. Both parts of the process are valuable. In analyzing these big ideas, Dr. Taylor offers meaningful definitions and examples of how these factors effect our tennis abilities. Dr. Taylor goes on to put these big ideas into a format which he offers as a plan for players to improve. Finally, he gives the reader help in utilizing this understanding of the mental game using visualization, training, and match type situations. This last section is especially valuable as we try to bring the big ideas of focus, intensity, motivations, and confidence to the players. Instead of talking at the player about how these ideas play a role in success, we are now prepared to work with kids in understanding these ideas as a means of helping them succeed. "Prime Tennis" is written with tennis as it's focus. However, as with most high quality instruction books, the process is relevant to career, parenting, relationships, other sports, and teaching. The author offers quotes from some expected sources and some surprises that help the reader to get the point. "Prime Tennis" is a well written, worthwhile book for educators, coaches and players.