The Michael Ross Rules Of Tennis And How They Apply To Life

As we have now entered the second week of The Australian Open tennis championship, I feel now is a good time to reveal my tennis rules. These are the rules *I* played the game under. I attribute them to the grade I attained (the highest a person can go without turning professional). And show that they relate to life in general as well...

Rule # 1: ALWAYS get your serve in, even if it is weak. The logic behind this rule is, you cannot hope to win the point unless you get the first ball in and make the opponent play the ball.

Sure the opponent might hit a winner. But he also might not. He might hit the ball out or in the net. Or get it back into play giving you a ball to hit. So now you are in the point.

Trying to out serve someone, or make your serve unplayable, is often counterproductive as you give away too many points.

Rule # 2: ALWAYS return serve, even if it is weak. Again, the idea is, you cannot hope to win the point unless you get the ball in play and make the opponent hit another ball.

I watch these so-called professionals, and it's as if it has to be a winner or not. This isn't the case.

The people known to have good returns, actually just get the ball back into play, making the opponent hit another ball.

These two rules are fundamental to tennis, in my opinion. Everything else follows on from these.

I was once playing doubles. Our opponents had huge serves and went for their returns. We were down 5-0 in the final set and I turned to my partner. He had been trying to serve hard (which he really couldn't do) and hit blinders of returns (which often went into the net or out, giving them free points). I took him aside at the back of the court, just before our opponents were to serve to close out the match, and said, "Listen, we can beat these guys, and we should be. When you return the ball, all I want you to do is get the ball back into play. Make them hit just one ball. I don't care if your return has to be a lob and it goes right back to the guy at the net. Just get the ball back into play because we can't win a point unless the ball gets back into play."

Thankfully, he did what I had asked. He stopped trying to go for winners off of every return and just got the ball back into play. Which meant, no more free points for our opponents. If they wanted to win the point they had to hit winners.

My partner hit dinks, lobs, moonballs, you name it. Anything to just get the ball back into play.

In fact, the first ball of that game his return was a lob. And, the guy at the net didn't have good enough footwork to get in a position to smash it, and hit it right into the net. YES! We had turned it from us giving them points to them having to win them.

The final result of all of this was, we won the set 7-5!!! They did NOT get another game. And when we were shaking hands at the net one of the opponents said, "I would love to know what you said at the back of the court at five love." Because he had seen, that after my lengthy chat with my partner, we won every single game, and the match.

So why did we win? Because of my other rules...

Rule # 3: If you can win a point/game/set, you can beat them. At any particular level of tennis, the competitors pretty well have the same ball skills. Sure one guy might have a better serve and the other a better backhand. But overall, their balls skills are equal. So it stands to reason, if you can win a single point, then you must have done something right. All you need to do to win a game is win four points by doing that something right more often. If you are able to win a game, all you need to do is win six to win a set. And so on.

Rule # 4: Most matches are lost by the loser and not won by the winner. Because, invariably, the person who makes the most unforced errors loses the match. And this is what was happening in my example match. My partner was hitting balls and serves into the net - unforced errors. Giving our opponents free points.

When I had a chat with him I wanted him to just get the ball back so they would have to beat us to win, instead of us giving them free points. Which meant, he had to adjust his game to stop the unforced errors. And this is achieved additionally by...

Rule # 5: Chase every ball down. You would think this goes without saying, but it doesn't. Too many players, including professionals, give up on balls.

The biggest offender of this used to be Andre Agassi. I would watch him stop running for a ball. Yet my experience told me he could have gotten it if he had kept on running.

Some might say, there is no point running for balls you obviously cannot get. I beg to differ because, the moment you start giving up on balls - even obvious ones - is the moment you start giving up on not so obvious ones, and borderline ones, and then, ones you could have gotten. Because you trained yourself to give up.

By running every ball down, even if you do not get to it, you send two signals...

One to your own brain to keep going - which becomes habit.

And the second to your opponent who begins to think he has to hit better shots to make sure you won't get them, because you run everything down.

And this is how Lleyton Hewitt wins a lot. He runs everything down and hits it back, making the opponent hit just one more shot. Over time, the pressure on your opponent mounts. They start making more errors (unforced errors) and you get free points you don't have to hit a winner to win.

How does all this relate to life?

Rules # 1 and # 2 are about "being in it to win it." You cannot achieve anything you want to unless you go out and get into it. Likewise, you cannot win a tennis point unless you are in the point. And not getting serves in or returns back, doesn't see you in the point.

Rules # 3 and # 4 are about making adjustments until you have a success and duplicating your success with enough consistancy until you win. It is often said, doing the same thing while expecting a different result is insanity. It equally applies in tennis as it does in life. To win in tennis is about changing what is not working and losing for you, until you find something that works, and then continuing to do what works.

Rule # 5 is about never giving up no matter what. Because eventually, you will prevail. In Hewitt's case, it could be said he grinds the opponent down. In life, you grind down the obstacles that hold you back from success. And in my example match, all rules came into play. We made adjustments that let our opponents commit more unforced errors, and we did this by not giving up and chasing down every ball and getting it back no matter what.

Anyway. These five rather simple rules are all you need to become a good tennis player, or to get ahead in your chosen profession.

Socializing Is Bad For Your Wealth

Everyone does it. It's considered "normal". And yet, the very act of doing it is harmful to your long term prosperity.

When you socialize with other people, not only does it eat into precious time which could be spent in money-generating activities, wealth building activities, or value-creating activities. It costs you money. Money you could have invested and made grow.

Think of the typical girl or boy. Going out means clothes, shoes, hair, transport, food and beverages. At least $50, and more like $100 for the night. And this is repeated each weekend. Amounting to $5,000+ by the end of the year.

But what about the weekday coffee shop foray? $10 a pop there too. Do that a couple of times a week and you've just spent another $960 for the year. Call it $1,000 for ease.

Having people over for a BBQ isn't cheap. Nor is it cost free when going to one.

Maybe an additional $500 a year spent on "parties."

So far, you're into the socializing for $6,500 for the year.

The $6,500 could go towards an investment property. Could help get rid of some of your personal debt at 17% interest (I assume you do have personal debt because everyone does). Could help pay off your home faster, leaving you with access cash sooner.

But that's just the money you had already earned and then spent. Now let's look at the time factor...

The regular Friday night out loses 5 hours, let's say. That's at least 250 hours a year. And on top of this, is the time spent on Saturday recovering from the Friday night shin-dig. Some people lose the entire day, but I think an additional 5 hours will suffice. Bringing the Friday night loss to 500 hours a year.

Coffee shop outings lose 2 hours a week, 100 hours a year. Bringing the total lost hours to 600.

And each time there is a BBQ/Party, more hours are lost. Let's say an additional 100 hours throughout the course of the year. Bringing the total socializing time lost to 700 hours.

If you earn $12 an hour, that amounts to a lost income of $8,400. Which means, if you had spent that socializing time in gainful money making efforts - job/business - you could have made at least an extra $8,400 that year.

Combined with the $6,500 of money the socializing cost you, brings the total revenue loss to $14,900! Which is an amount that could fund 3 investment properties which would be worth, approximately, DOUBLE their buy price after ten years!

So if these properties were bought for, say, $180,000 each, after ten years they would approximately be worth $360,000 each. Giving you a net worth of $1,080,000 (yes, over one million dollars)!!! Plus throwing off spare cash as the rents more than take care of the repayments and other holding costs.

If socializing had been the norm over those same ten years, roughly $65,000 will have been spent on the unproductive activity, and roughly $84,000 in potential income will have been lost. For a total loss of about $149,000.

What a difference hey? Without socializing you will be a millionaire. But with socializing, you will have blown $149,000 and have nothing to show for it.

Now look at the wealthy people. The truly wealthy people and NOT the ones who buy all the ornamental magnifiers on credit. You will find they did not spend vast amount of time socializing while building their wealth. And now that it is built, they can socialize, if they choose to.

Compare them to the "in debt up to their eyeballs" crowd. They appear to live to socialize. And you could be mistaken for thinking that they think their sole purpose in life is to socialize.

Oh they might realize they need to build wealth. But that will come much much later in life. At a point where they will then also realize - or rather, think - it is too late to effectively do anything to better their situation.

Me? I am the non-socializing type. I just cannot relate to the conversations of the majority of people. I think they spend a lot of time in trivial pursuits of no benefit to anyone.

"Let's get together and have a good night of drinking" and similar. And if you do bother wasting time in such a thing, the conversation doesn't benefit you - or them. It's useless talk. Often delving into the mystical mumbo jumbo. Crystals, runes, one-ness with the universe, or some such jibble. Maybe they are into the prima bullshit artist John Edwards pretending he can communicate with dead people. Or they feel they want to weigh in on gun control (while they know nothing about the true results). Or how "they" should do something about "this or that or some other thing" - with it always taking money out of my pocket for their good works. It will also sink into some kind of bitch session about someone at work, the neighbor, how hard done by they are, and all about their illnesses. Typical small talk. With the obligatory laughter moments - where something is said and everyone laughs even though it wasn't funny.

Oh. How drab.

Do they talk about investing? Only so much as to warn against it and that all types of investment are too risky and blah blah blah. As if they, who have never invested in anything, are experts.

Do they talk about business matters? Only to complain about how the business owners rip them off at every turn. Never for a moment realizing that it is business owners that make the world go around. And without these hated businesses owners they wouldn't even have the jeans they love to wear, or the beer they guzzle down.

How dull and boring.

It's like my local fruiter. Dribble on with some kind of jibble or another. Until one day I ask him if there was any talk of anything important like business or high finance deals, or investing. Now he just says hello to me and nothing much else - apart from the odd story about what some customer may or may not have done. He runs his business but doesn't want to talk about anything other than the usual bland poddy stuff.

But I digress. This is about socializing and its detrimental effect on your wealth. Next time you are about to indulge in trivial socializing, stop and think about how it effects your wealth in a bad way. Maybe you can make a change for the better - better for your relationships as you will now be spending time together (and if you can't do that without other people around, I question why you are together), and better for your pocket book. All you then need to do is learn about the various ways you can invest your money. (Business, property, stockmarket. Note: Financial Advisors ONLY know about stockmarket and make most of their money by recommending stocks. If you want to know about the three types of investment - business, property, stocks - you need to go to the people who are into the things you want to know about, or buy yourself some books from the book store and read up.)

Socializing = poverty, hardship, struggle.
No Socializing = excess cash, better financial position, road to wealth.

Take you pick.