| 22 February 2011
A few days ago there was a New York Times – Business Section headline: G20 Leaders Voice Worries Over Trade, as Recovery Remains Uneven Globally
How can members of the G20 Summit learn something from tennis? And how do we learn something from them? Could we all benefit from less worry? Especially from an uneven recovery? Whether that recovery is from injury or a shot or a series of missed shots or a slump, can we re- learn how to recover? Was our original learning linear or was it uneven? Did your forehand reach its peak and then your backhand? Was there a predictable order? Mine was not. I was a much better strategist before I could hit with power. I knew deception before I learned aggression. Most of my friends – on and off the court – developed in the opposite order.
Not every aspect of our game grows or evolves evenly. My volley was satisfactory through high school and was an immediate liability as I stepped onto a college campus. Its youthful pop-and-placement was worrisome against the more ambitious varsity athlete. It had to grow.
And I must have said hundreds of times the same phrase that’s come out of the Paris economic conference, “strengthening, but is still uneven,” and a “persistent misalignment.” And this bumpy bettering of my game was something I had to accept. We see the pros develop unevenly;
Roddick served from birth and a volley was later found; Federer’s temper came first and led to the concentration; Evert concentration first and then the power and then a new smoothness. There is no order to learning, teaching or recovery. Tennis or economy, each game is unprecedented.
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