Whether you are out on clay or green, playing tennis involves a lot of mental energy and control, besides physical strength and stamina. Jay P. Granat’s Zone Tennis (World Audience Publishers, New York, 2009) is a rather short but enjoyable book with valuable information, tips, and advice for tennis players – beginners especially – on developing the skills to play in the ‘zone’, i.e. a state of mind that allows playing with optimum calmness, concentration, and control. In its two divisions, the book imparts information on two main kinds of game: ‘Inner mental Game’ and ‘External Mental Game’.
The first part of the book, telling about inner mental game, concerns psychological aspects like motivation, confidence, relaxation, thinking, emotional states, optimism, and even less thought-of factors like ‘wonderful dreaming’.
The author gives brief guidelines on inner psychological states and their desirable form/level for playing tennis in the zone. The second section takes practical performance on the court and gives useful advice on what to consider and how to practice important factors.
Here, Dr. Granat also mentions a few top ranked tennis stars, pointing to their main strengths or qualities. Most part of the book treats single game but the end has a few important guidelines about doubles and issues like selecting the right coach and communicating with your game partner.
Zone Tennis is an enjoyable work about the psychology of tennis in particular but can also be read with interest by any sports enthusiast as Dr. Granat tells how tennis has so much common with other sports, chess, baseball, and boxing to name a few. It is certainly an important book to read for beginner tennis players or those who have been playing tennis for a while and need to get a better grip of the game’s less conspicuous nuts and bolts. Dr. Granat also shares his website and article links that will help tennis players and enthusiasts in playing and/or understanding the sport of tennis better.
ISBN: 0982054092
