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Show 3 j.. ACF Jl ' DIG Bill Tilden opened up an interesting inter-esting angle on the matter oi concentration recently in a long discussion dis-cussion we bad upon this importanl topic. It wa Tilden'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 en ISr A and then there's the green. But in tennis you have to map out your tactics or strategy several strokes ahead. You work to g?t your opponent into a certain cer-tain spot where he can't make a return. re-turn. This may call for many strokes, here and there. In Bill Tilden tennis you have extended concentration. concentra-tion. In golf and baseball it 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 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," Tilden 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 it 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 as Tunney, Gibbons or Greb. Concentration is the most important impor-tant fiinclp word in sport but few even know what the word really means. Knute Rockne used to tell me "I want my teams physically relaxedbut 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 olavs its Dart. 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, "each member of that Army squad was listening to every word I said. This squad was trained in discipline. Al Michigan and other places I found no such response." Ask the average golf instructor. He will teU you that 80 per cent oi his pupils never concentrate on any lesson. They can't even remembei what they were told to do. Who have been the great concentrators in sport? Big Bill Tilden was one. Sc was Bobby Jones. So was Waltei Hagen. So was Rogers Hornsby. Sc was Ty Cobb, possibly the greatest of them all. So was Harry Greb. And so is Byron Nelson. Victory by Putting During the recent Nelson-Snead golf match for wounded servicemen, we ran across numerous instructor! and asked for any tips they might have to offer the unwary swingei trying to break a 90 or an 85. And here were the main suggestions: 1. On the long approach putt, firs-decide firs-decide on the speed of the green-fast, green-fast, slow or normal. 2. Get what yon lhlnk is the line 3. Now concentrate entirely ) stroking the ball. |