Customer Reviews

Serious Tennis

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book introduces and reinforces this concept known as S.M.A.R.T.S., which stands for Seeing, Movement, Adjustment, Rotation, Transfer and Swing, for solid tennis strokes. While other instructions books in general tend to focus more on the strokes, this book emphasises on the full spectrum of the shots, starting with spotting the directions of the balls from bodily movements (Seeing). It's a book which also combines many other facets of the game, including shot selection/troubleshooting, equipment, drills, playing under pressure and in different conditions, and lots more into a comprehensive yet very readable book. For beginners and advance players alike, this book IMHO is a must-have. FYI, I'm a 4.0-4.5 all-courter.

EXCELLENT BOOK !!

I have a few tennis books from Vic Braden and Brad Gilbert which are not bad but this book is by far the best.

So many club players concentrate only on swinging which is why SMART system is tremendously useful to anyone serious about tennis.

For instance, in the past, I never know there is such a great difference of using dominant eye versus non-dominant eye.
I now can see the ball more clearly and quickly.

This is the best of instructional books out there. The author does not give you a glam rock romp of who he has instructed on the tour, but instead he gives YOU the "I want to be better than average club player" guy some solid advice on more than just tennis stroke production which you probably already have in place in your game. You actually remember the advice in a match, you use it to improve your game that is in place already and you are given tools to complete your game on and off the court. This is the book that took me pushed me beyond a 4.5.

I bought this book as I have mentally been struggling with nerves in match play. There were a couple of chapters on the psycology of tennis and how to deal with nerves and pressure. I found those helpful. The famous sports psychologist, Jim Loehr was quoted in there quite a bit.

While I did not buy the book for stroke production that is the substantial part of the book and they covered every shot imaginable with emphasis on their "Smart" approach. This is a large book that I could see in any Tennis Pro's office as it is great reference material and you could hand out to students who wanted to read more on a problem. Also, there were quite a few references to drills to preform on different shots.

Overall a very good, informative book.

This book helped me improve parts of my game that I just could n't improve further with more court time or match play. The expert advice from leaders in the field of professional tennis allowed me to explore avenues of improving my game that are usually reserved as resources of the pro players. Williams' SMARTS system helped me streamline my stroke production and the expert advice helped me to hone my skills into a completely different level of play. Finally some refreshing and useful tennis reading that you can actually apply to your game! Pictures are great. My favorite chapter, because I find the info in it sticks in my head when I'm playing: Performing Under Pressure - Chapter 9. I would like to take a clinic with this author. Will probably carry this book with me to some matches. I'm looking forward to the updated edition to Serious Tennis!

The author presently coaches in Florida and obviously knows his tennis well. It is similar to many other conventional tennis instructional books. However, it has some things that other books don't take into account. For example, it discusses sports vision which few other books tackle. The concept of eye dominance is seen by some coaches (e.g., Robert Lansdorf, Maria Sharapova's coach) as very important. Scott Williams also makes some interesting observations about footwork on volleys (landing before or after the contact point depends on ball height, etc) which happen to be quite true but rarely commented on. In addition, the author also adds comments from leading tennis coaches or experts. It is a fine comprehensive tennis book that you may want on your shelf simply because it has a slightly different angle on tennis. I have most tennis instructional books and have known or met many tennis authors/coaches; I do recommend this to be one of the finest books over the past decade.