A Physically & Psychologically Healthier Way to Live, Learn, & Play
Beyond Competition

Background

Since I am proposing what some call a radical idea, but I call simple common sense, removing competition from the learning process until players can demonstrate competence in the physical, mental, and emotional fundamentals, I thought it would be good to give people an in-depth look at my background and influences.

Sports from the Start
I grew up playing sports, starting about age five, in a small town in Lancaster County, PA, a rural farming area in the southeastern part of the state. I did a little wrestling (very little), then baseball, basketball, and a little soccer in high school. I did very well in both baseball and basketball for several years. Finally, in 1968 at age fourteen I took up tennis. Although I lived in a rural area, regionally, tennis was a relatively strong sport; there were some good junior and adult players. For three years I took private lessons from a great local pro, John Thomas, to whom I shall be forever grateful. I played on my high school team, where as a senior, our team went undefeated, winning the county championship. I played #2 singles for three years behind the guy who, for our age group, was the top ranked player in Pennsylvania; individually both of us were undefeated for the season. I only lost four matches in those three years. I played local and regional tournaments for two years in the 16 and under division and two years in 18 and under, playing at least eight to ten tournament a year for the last three years. I was ranked both in the Central Penn area and in the Middle States division of the USLTA for both 16s and 18s

In 1972 I was recruited to play tennis for the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA (a Division 1 school.) I played on the team my freshman year and was the second ranking freshman. I played varsity singles at the #5 and #6 position. Playing wise it wasn’t a great year for me, too much fun being away at college. The summer after my freshman year I started working at the tennis courts at the world famous Williamsburg Inn. The following summer, I taught my first lesson at the Inn.

Inner Tennis
1974 was also the year that Tim Gallwey published Inner Tennis, one of the most important books ever written for tennis. Gallwey’s insights enabled me to see the direction that my teaching was going to follow. To me, his approach was the future of the game; learning how, on a consistent basis, to play in the fabled state known as “the zone.” I have been developing and refining these concepts ever since. The one area I differed from Gallwey was that, yes, there is perfect form inside each of us, but it doesn’t just magically happen when we walk on the court. Developing the physical mechanics happens gradually over the course of time. It’s like a sculptor with a piece of stone, the perfect piece is in the stone; it must be carefully brought out.

In the spring of 1975, I completed Dennis Van der Meer’s TennisUniversity teaching program. The job at the Williamsburg Inn was too good, so rather than continuing to play on the team, I continued to work at the Inn. As I’m still in the same profession forty-seven years later, it proved to be a good decision. I joined the United States Professional Tennis Association in 1975 and am still a member today.

I’m a Tennis Pro
After graduating from William & Mary with a B.S. in Geology in 1976, I decided to stay with tennis and moved to rural Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay. I seemed to have a knack for teaching. I found a job at a small, exclusive resort, The Tides Inn in Irvington. This job helped me learn more about teaching and dealing with people. After being there for about nine months, I gave a series of lessons to a hotel guest, a retired Army general, who was just starting to teach tennis at a club in Annapolis, MD. We hit it off and several months later he called saying there was a teaching position open at his club. I interviewed, got the job, and moved to Annapolis in the fall of 1977. I taught there, playing regional tournaments and working with regional level junior players until the fall of 1979.

Off to Europe
In September 1979, I took off for Europe to play tennis. I spent three months playing tournaments in Switzerland and France. I played a lot of tennis, but not as many tournaments as I had hoped. It was a great time, as you can imagine, and I learned a lot about myself and life. I returned to the mid-Atlantic area and got a teaching job at the Whitemarsh Racquet Club in Bowie, MD, midway between Annapolis and Washington, DC. I taught there for two years, continuing to play regional tournaments and working with highly ranked tournament juniors. At this point, I decided that if I wanted to coach on a world-class level and I wanted to speak from experience, I needed to get my game to a world-class level. This was 1981 and I decided to take a year off and work on my game. I went into training and returned to Europe that fall. This time I played a lot of tournaments (13 in 12 weeks.) I played regional and national professional tournaments, mainly in France. I received a pretty high classification (ranking) in France so I usually had a good placement in the draw. In one tournament in the south of France, 900 people had played before I entered the draw as one of the final eight players.

For all the people who are into competition, here is a good story from this trip. I entered a tournament outside of Lyon. I was in a slump, having lost my first match in each of the three previous tournaments. The last of those tournaments was the Czechoslovakian National Championships in Bratislava. I arrived in Lyon with little self-confidence. Then I found out that I was the top seed in the tournament. Not only that, but I was being housed with this family that was so excited because they had the top player in their house. They were friends with the head of the club, so this was important for them, more pressure on me. I had to win four matches to win the tournament. My first two matches I was pretty shaky, but won both of them. In the semifinals I lost the first set but came back to win the match in three sets. In the finals, a couple hundred townspeople were out to cheer on my opponent, the young local hero, trying to beat the American. I was a little nervous, but since winning my first three matches, my confidence was on the rise. I played well and won in two sets. Ah, the thrill of victory!
Read a newspaper article about the tournament HERE

Lessons in Humility
After this adventure I came back to the U.S. for a couple of months to recover from a severe ligament strain in my wrist. In January 1982 I took off looking for computer points to attain a world ranking in a series of satellite tournaments in New Zealand. My wrist had not fully recovered, but I decided to go anyway. Again, I learned a lot on this trip, but tennis wise, it was a humbling experience. There were many good players there also looking for computer points. Upon returning to the U.S. I got another teaching job in the Baltimore/Washington area. I also returned to playing tournaments, once my wrist fully recovered. Even though the trip to New Zealand didn’t garner me a world ranking, all the practice and tournaments in the last nine months did eventually catapult me to playing the best tennis of my life.

Mental Toughness Training
In 1983 I connected with sports psychologist, Dr. Jim Loehr and took his training through Dennis Van der Meer. Dr. Loehr was just beginning his Mental Toughness Training for tennis. He became the preeminent sports psychologist for tennis for many years. I learned a lot about the psychological aspects of tennis from Dr. Loehr and it helped me be a better teacher and player.

During my years in the Baltimore/Washington/Annapolis area I was regularly ranked in the Men’s Open Division both in the state of Maryland (a high of #8) and in the Mid-Atlantic Tennis Association (Virginia, Maryland, and DC) with a high of #18.

California Bound
I had always said that my tennis could take me anywhere, so in September of 1985 I decided to test out that idea and, without a job, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was thirty-one years old. Things were good on the East Coast, but something was missing. I took a chance and I’m still here thirty-nine years later. When I arrived, it felt like home.

Some friends I had met from a summer trip to San Francisco offered me a place to stay until I got on my feet. Soon after I arrived I started looking for teaching jobs and signed up to play the prequalifying tournament for the then, TransAmerica Open, the Bay Area stop on the Men’s Pro tour. I won my first round and then in the second round I played a player who was blowing me off the court and physically far superior to me. I knew that if I didn’t stop making errors, it was going to be over quickly. Fortunately, my opponent thought he had the match won and let up. I came back after being way down in the second set, winning the last two sets. This example clearly demonstrates the importance of the mental and emotional aspects of the game. Interestingly, I learned afterward that this was one of the top players in Northern California. He was soon to be the #1 Men’s Open player in Northern California. I lost my next match to a player who would become the men’s tennis coach at the University of California Berkeley. That was the first tournament I played in California and the last tournament I ever played. I had played tournament level competitive tennis from 1968 through 1985. I learned what I needed to learn about competition and it was time to move on. A few weeks later I got my first teaching job at Baywood Canyon Riding & Tennis Club in Fairfax, Marin County.

Effortless Tennis
After initially titling my program, Tennis for the Body, Mind & Spirit in 1985, I changed the name to Effortless Tennis in 1987. Many people initially misconstrue my meaning, thinking I’m saying tennis is easy. Tennis is not easy. It’s one of the most challenging sports. And I tell everyone that on their first day in the program. Effortless is the adjective that world-class athletes use to describe what it feels like when they are playing in “the zone.” Everything happens with virtually no conscious effort. The zone is where we achieve peak performance. Winning and losing become unimportant, because we are playing great tennis. What else matters?

It Does Work in Competition
The question for competitive people or people who think they have to prove themselves in competition is, can I use this approach to be a winner? The answer is an unequivocal yes! I’ll provide two examples. From 1989 to 1991 I volunteered innumerable hours coaching the Drake High School Boys Tennis Team in San Anselmo, CA. In three years the team went from 1-13 to 14-0, winning the Marin County Boy’s Championship, defeating the perennial county powerhouse and ending their twelve-year consecutive reign. Drake hadn’t won a tennis championship in twenty-five years. All the time I worked with the team I deemphasized the importance of winning, instead focusing on developing their physical, mental, and emotional skills. I told them if they got their skills together, winning would take care of itself, and it did.

During this time I was also taking groups to Club Meds in Mexico for weeklong workshops. After a couple of trips, I connected with Club Med and would stay on to work for the club for an additional week or two. This is where I saw that my de-emphasis on competition resonated with people of all nationalities.

Good Bye to Competition
After these experiences, I was confident of the benefits of focusing on skill development over trying to be a winner. One of the problems I always had with competition was the negative side effects I had witnessed over the years, cheating, intimidation, performance anxiety, choking, limited performance, overly aggressive behavior, and the general snarkiness and condescension of many players to weaker players.

A student on my mailing list recommended reading Alfie Kohn’s landmark book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Mr. Kohn was brilliant and thorough in debunking the myths about the superiority of competition as a method to peak performance. After reading his book twice, I realized that if I were to create the best tennis learning program possible, I would have to eliminate competition from the program. That happened in November 1992. We can’t play our best if we don’t know what we’re doing.

This was a giant leap for the program. Because of the competitive based system, many people have fear, not only around learning sports, but learning in general. Learning in a competitive environment puts too much pressure on people, which, for most, dramatically limits their development and eventually leads them to stop trying. I am directly challenging a system upon which most people’s lives are centered. Throwing people into competitive situations before they have developed the most basic skills of that activity is a crime. How can we expect someone to be able to be successful at something before he or she knows how to do it? That’s not logical, but this is the basis of a competitive learning system. It is the trial by fire, school of hard knocks theory of learning. The only environment that will help people attain their true potential is one based on nurturing, support, and cooperation.

It Works Even Better in Competition
Here’s the second example of how a non-competitive learning system can help people succeed in competition. In October 1991, a mother brought her nine year-old daughter to me. I could see from the first moments that this girl was a natural. She had “it.” We worked together for two years until the middle of 1993 when she got more interested in other sports. We reconnected in January 1996 and began an intensive program for the next two years. All the time we were working in this cooperative context, without any competition. We were developing the skills she needed to be a great player, but without the negative side effects of the competitive mentality. As a high school freshman she won the county doubles crown and lost in the finals of the North Coast Sectional doubles. As a sophomore she won the Marin County Girls high school singles championship. As a junior she repeated as county champion, and lost in the semifinals of the North Coast section tournament. As with many teenagers, her priorities changed and she lost her motivation for her senior season. She still won 85% of her matches, but lost to the girl who was more motivated. Her overall singles record for her four high school years was 57-7. This record, and we never competed once in our lessons. She went on to be a top player in the California Community College system and has been a tennis pro for many years now.

The Last Twenty Plus Years
Since 2001, besides my private teaching practice, I have been teaching my Effortless Tennis classes for the College of Marin Community Education program in Kentfield. Working with hundreds of beginners, intermediates, and non-elite athletes has confirmed how important it is to eliminate competition from the learning process. It is abundantly clear that, until people can demonstrate competence in the physical, mental, and emotional fundamentals, there is no good reason to keep score. Trying to learn and compete simultaneously work at cross-purposes. And people love the approach.

Seeing and feeling the relief that people experience when they realize they aren’t being judged or graded on their performance is quite rewarding. It’s like a giant weight has been lifted off their shoulders. People learn better when they aren’t afraid. Because the competitive system is so much a part of people’s lives and so deeply ingrained into our subconscious, we are frequently unaware of the negative impact that competition has on our ability to learn, to grow, and to attain our potential.

It is a well-established belief that we can attain our potential only through competition, but think about this, how can we do our best when our opponent is doing everything in their power to prevent us from playing our best? It’s not possible! We may play really well in competition, but we can’t play our best. Only when everyone is helping us can we be our best.

Since 2021 I have been teaching students, faculty, and staff for the Recreation Sports Program at Dominican University of CA in San Rafael.

Done My Homework
I’ve been playing tennis since 1968 and teaching the game continuously since 1974. In total I have taught over 30,000 hours of lessons to thousands of women, men and children, ages five to eighty-seven. Over 20,000 of those hours have been since I removed competition from the program. It’s now been thirty years without any competition in Effortless Tennis and it was the best decision I ever made. I’ve done the research and have the experience and the data. The outcome is irrefutably conclusive—a non-competitive learning system is, in every way, physically and psychologically healthier than the current competitive based system. It’s that simple. Come join the party.