Twenty years ago, San Diego State coach John Nelson guided the Aztec men into the NCAA Sweet Sixteen Tennis Championships in Athens, GA.
In many ways, Nelson’s feat demonstrated the power of mind and expectations. He convinced his players they could expect to defeat a Pepperdine team that had already defeated them in the regular season and overconfidently bought its tickets to Georgia.
The Aztecs defeated the Waves, ranked #3 in the nation, and took the trip instead.
Simultaneously, Nelson convinced a young German Aztec tennis recruit, Alex Waske, that he was capable of playing in the World’s Top 100 as a professional.
“He was the first person to tell me that,” Waske told Aztec Tennis Reporter several years later, not long after reaching the Australian Open doubles semifinal and top 100 in singles and helping his German Davis Cup team defeat Thailand.
Nelson’s emphasis on the mind as a weapon in tennis and many places in sports comes through in a book he has coauthored with Mark Beede, a lawyer, educator, and tennis teaching pro.
“Sensei Tennis: Martial Arts (and More) in the Mastery of Tennis” appeared in 2018 as Nelson was winding down his career as head coach at the University of Hawai’i. He retired in 2019.
Blessed with an admiring forward by Stanford Tennis Coach Emeritus Dick Gould, the book is filled with vision, correlating common sense reflections on such subjects as Anticipation, Perception, and Reaction (Chapter 10).
“Tennis, martial arts, and baseball are examples of open-skills perception sports. In each sport, you must anticipate, see and perceive well. Then you need to react quickly to employ skill sets whether in fighting, stroking a tennis ball or hitting a baseball.”
Elementary, right?
But consider this one example: the steps needed to bring your body into the most effective mental position as you practice:
“Remember: Mentally “see” or “feel” yourself stroking and reacting correctly in every situation. Imagine yourself committing mentally and physically before, during, and after, to every shot and every point.”
Sensei means teacher in Japanese. With the aid of Mark Beede, Aztec mentor John Nelson has once again proven himself a master. Together, they implore us: think!
— John Martin