The forehand was his bane.

His right wing lacked a natal intuition that bred its structural inconsistency. It was the product of dissension between his skill and confidence. Regularly weak, yes. Often short, that's true. Its true mark was often missed. It was painful to the wrist and elbow and ungratefully gave away every hard-won advantage.

It was two mismatched halves forced itself into wholeness. A queer falter or bobble announced its execution. Then, a tension in the joints wracked the shot, halting it in mid stroke. A frenzy would hurl the shot forward and muscularly tear the tension in half.

And it was all balanced on the back of his heels.

Here's where I come into play.

I grew up in the strange, hard green world of yellow balls and white lines. Its cornered boundaries were familiar to me. With the bisections of lines, I found a place to be comfortable and to be myself.

However, I knew the duplicities of this world as well. Its pompous tradition masks essential secrets of technique and philosophy. Formalities bar many potential competitors from the glories of the tournaments. I saw that a part of him fell under this old, cloying influence, so I sought to liberate him.

I thought the Old Way could not support his quirks. The New Way, the Modern way would then be his path to excellence. I showed him the new forms and modern motions. I passed on contemporary incantations of power and influence. I taught him things that would make the old masters scowl with disdain. I revealed scandalous strategies that were not in any book and tactics that would strain every rule. My bent was to make him my Iconoclast-a conqueror of the Old Ways and a champion of the New.

I opened up and squared off his stance, showed him the position of the attacking defender. I pulled more flourish from his swing and elongated its attack. I revealed the potential of height and arc and showed him new areas of the court in which to exist and play. I demonstrated smooth rhythm and easy, sustained effort.

However, though my warrior earnestly wrestled with these foreign concepts and he strained against the teachings. So faithful was he that he injured his pride and his body by following the unfamiliar twists of my direction.

And for all his valiant effort, the command was not quick to arrive. His intuition was still lost. Something impeded his Natural Progress towards mastery. In fact, at times, he seemed more humbled than ever, trapped and insecure as a neophyte. For as many times as the theories were laid out, mysteries were explained and the frauds were debunked, he would not come into his own skillfulness. Some truly ingrained and utterly basic element made every circumstance unfamiliar and twisted each simple felt rhythm into effortful calculation.

So I returned to the very beginning, the first lesson we all learn in the sport of tennis and spun it around so that John could feel what he had missed from the very beginning.

I placed the racquet in his left hand.

Though he was ambidextrous to a fine degree, the artistry of his nature resided in his left hand and not his right. His upbringing and circumstance trained him away from such leanings and deprived him of what all of us Righties took for granted. As it happened with many of has peers, he was forced to take the world by his opposing hand and as a result his feel for the world was always slightly skewed.

This is not to say that from that moment, we turned on our heels and faced our backs towards all he had invested in. However, here was the missing link, the anchoring point from which all association could be spun from.

I placed the dominant, left hand above his right and let it guide the action by its natural instinct. I allowd his more discerning sensitivities to persuade his choices.

By all conventions, this was patently wrong. Technically, it crossed his arm and deprived him of conventional reach. Yet, technologies have stretched racquets longer and made them less unwieldy.

Aesthetically, it was looked upon as awkward, backwards and perhaps even deviant. I saw many frowning at its production. I fielded many queries on my tactics, even my competence. But I had faith in what I perceived and the only real embarrassment was felt by those who failed to return it.

Its look was unfamiliar but its flight was now true, predictable and controllable. This original delivery was solid and finally unselfconscious.

We could now finally concentrate on the play of the ball.