Customer Reviews

Tennis Magic: 150 Magic Tricks Designed To Supercharge Your Game

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

 

 

Magic Tricks? I just want to play better tennis. The title turned me off of the book initially and then the price. It costs about two to three times what other tennis books cost. But I did the "click to read inside" and I felt I learned some good tips right away so I bought the book to see what the rest of it was about.

And the good advice just kept popping out page after page.

The book is not organized by chapters of ideas but rather by question and answers. You find your question and read the answer. I find that I do better with the book when I have an actual question in my mind than just reading the questions in order with their answers. Having that mental conversation makes a huge difference. I'd say this book is actually worth about 20 or so private lessons so it is a good value.

Finally Mallory is an engaging writer. So he keeps you hooked and thinking about what is going on. I cannot say the same for the some of the Pros I've taken lessons from!

Well as a rated 5.x club player I enjoyed the first half of the book as it confirmed some of the basics techniques or tennis. I even found a couple of trick to practice and they proved well on court. However, the second part of the book is a complete ink waste (although I was reading it on my Kindle). The second half is very much similar to this book I once read about the "Secret": think of it and it will happen. It adds nothing new. I was looking at some of the mechanics and ticks I just found comic narration of nothing to take with me on court.

The ideas in this book are very worthwhile for tennis players from beginner to advanced. You likely won't find every tip to be that helpful for you but you can be pretty sure that there will be quite a few that you're going to want to ponder before the next time you step on the court. Very helpful!

The title of this book may put some people off because of the phrase "magic tricks" and the association with them as often being "fake." However, I can assure you that the "tricks" and advice given in this book are quite real and work extremely well.

The book is set up as a question and answer session which works really well for specific questions. At the same time, it is still general enough to work for those just seeking information. Some of the tricks such as "BIC" serve as a basic foundation for beginning players and a great confirmation for intermediate and advanced players. Something like the "Surfer Trick" and the saying "my little wave" are something that everyone, no matter what skill level they're at, can use effectively to help keep their mind on track during on the big points. Then there are some advanced tricks such as "Conquistador" which is a trick that even someone like Vera Zvonerava could benefit from reading.

Overall, it's an amazing guide that coupled with some training can really supercharge your game a few levels. Mallory is a shining example of a truly engaging and hilarious writer that should be taken note of by his peers.

Tennis Magic is simply the best tennis "How To" book I've ever read, and I've read many in my endless pursuit of improvement. Its "Tricks" format is totally unique and makes finding and isolating your specific tennis "problems" the easiest ever. The "Tricks" are not really tricks at all, but very precise tips to improve each specific area of your game. The only problem I experienced with this book was reading too far ahead, which gave me too much information all at once, but the book was so informative I couldn't stop. The best way to use this book is to decide which part of a particular stroke is giving you fits and read the "trick" for correcting it and then going out to practice that one trick. For example, If you're hitting a lot of balls into the net, just look up the "trick" for correcting it in the chapter "Groundstroke Magic" and then go out and practice it. I cannot recommend this book too highly.

I liked the content of this book but unfortunately find the kindle version very inconvenient to read on my iphone 3G (I read lots of other kindle books on the iphone with no problem). Each chapter begins with a set of problems and the corresponding page numbers where you can find the tricks to help you solve them. Obviously, these page numbers don't really mean anything when you're reading the book on an electronic device. The problem is that they aren't hyperlinked, so there's no convenient way to jump around as you would with the normal book. Also, a lot of the pages take a long time to load, unlike other kindle books which do so immediately. Maybe this is because of the fonts used? Anyway, it seems a shame that a little more trouble wasn't put into making the electronic version of this book more user-friendly.

While I was reading this book, I was always considering who the target audience for this book is.
This is hard to answer.

Tennis pros definitive not, no question. But i think it's also no book for beginners, who should find someone, who can judge what they are actually doing. Intermediate players, playing tennis for a longer time will find little, what they don't already know.

Most of the solutions work this way:
Q: I hit my balls in the net.
A: hit a higher ramp

There are many books, that work better for beginners and many books, where you can improve your tennis better than this one.
It's mainly for players, who are playing their "own" self taught style and aren't really interested in developing a proper technique.

I enjoyed this book. The promotional description oversells it, but it's still good and useful.