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Show r IG Bill Tllden opened up an inter - esting angle on the matter ol concentration recently In a long discussion dis-cussion we bad upon this important topic. It wai Tllden' s idea that tennis ten-nis called for more concentration than golf or any other sport, for this reason: "In golf you play the game stroke by stroke. You know where your tee shot should go , and then there's the ftvK!1 green. But In tennis 1 you have to map " ' . v J Out your tactics ?f . or strategy several ivjt 7jjg&' strokes ahead. You work to gM your y- Vi.A opponent Into a cer- L-Aj , tain spot where he lit.' .-':.? can't make a re-turn. re-turn. This may call fff for many strokes, here and there. In Bill Tllden tennis you have extended concentration. concentra-tion. In golf and baseball lt is more limited. It is usually only the next Play." Greasy Neale, coach of the Philadelphia Phila-delphia Eagles, disagreed with this, as far as football goes. "In football." Greasy said, "we frequently run two or three plays to j set up the third or fourth play. This, of courrse, is up to the quarterback, quarter-back, or whoever is running the team." "I know," Tllden said, "but In football you have 11 men to figure with. In tennis you are all alone. Just as you are In a boxing match where It Is man against man not team against team. I still say that tennis, for the Individual, calls for more concentration than any other single sport." At this point I recalled a story that Ty Cobb had told me. As a rule baseball is played hit by hit or run by run. The main part of baseball's concentration is on the next play the pitcher, the man at bat or the defense. But Ty Cobb once told me of three games he had won against the Yankees In the old days three plays he had planned over two months ahead. "All I worked on," Ty said, "was the right opening. You have to wait for that. I just happened to spot certain cer-tain weak spots In their defense and when the right time came lt was a push over. But I still had to remember re-member what these weak spots were over a period of two months." This Is what I call the peak of extended ex-tended concentration. But there were never many Ty Cobbs hanging around. Mind on the Game Few people connected with sport, and this includes both coaches and players, quite get the point on concentration. con-centration. Concentration happens to be the ability of thinking of the right thing at the right time. "Do you know," Tommy Armour once asked me, "that not one man in a hundred can concentrate for more than a minute at a time?" I checked later, and found this was 'true. I mean full concentration. The so-called human brain isn't equipped any other way. It only operates op-erates in spots or spells. For example, ex-ample, Jack Dempsey could concentrate concen-trate against a big, slow-moving heavyweight. But Jack was never so hot against a fast boxer such ai Tunney, Gibbons or Greb. Concentration is the most important impor-tant single word in sport but few even know what the word really means. Knutc Rockne used to tell me "I want mv teams physically re laxedbut mentally keen." The angle an-gle here Is that teams mentally keen are physically relaxed. For the brain or the mind or whatever It is dominates the muscular system. II Is from the brain that the message comes. Certainly the subconscious mind plays its part. But It Is the acting, conscious kind that plays a much larger part. Hurry-up Yost once told me that he would rather coach an Army team at West Point than any other squad. "Why?" I asked him. "Because," Yost said, "eachi member of that Army squad wai listening to every word I said. Thli squad was trained In discipline. At Michigan and other places I found no such response." Ask the average golf instructor. He will tell you that 60 per cent ol his pupils never concentrate on any lesson. They can't even remembei what they were told to do. Who havci been the great concentrators Ir. I sport? Big Bill Tilden was one. Scj was Bobby Jones. So was Waltci! I Hagen. So was Rogers Hornsby. Scj I was Ty Cobb, possibly the greatest' of them oil. So was Harry Grcb. Audi so is Byron Nelson. ' Victory by Vuttinp During the recent Nclson-Sneod golf match for wounded servicemen, we ran across numerous Instructor!; and asked tor any tips they might have to odor the unwary swlngei trying to break a 90 or an B5. And here were the main suggestions: 1. On the long approach putt, lirsi decide on the speed of the green-fast, green-fast, slow or normal. t Gel what you think Is the line 3. Now enneentrate entirely n stroking the ball. |