The Rabbit: More Idiosyncrasies -- From Another Player You Have Never Heard Of

Hello, my friend. I enjoy these conversations...of how life is much like tennis; and tennis is much like life. Let us review, we took a close look at the game of Dusan Vemic -- an obscure player with a monster serve -- and we gleamed that one can be successful in life by doing just one thing well.



What can we learn from Robert Smeets, another rather obscure player I discovered on my travels. Looking at Smeets, he appears to be the quintessential gym-rat; the kid the coach throws the keys to the gymnasium to and says, 'Lock up whenever you leave.'



If you were to ask someone to explain Smeets game he would say something like a runner, a retriever, the Energizer Bunny. Smeets is the kind of player who does not quit; he would run out -- and return -- every drop shot; he would return your biggest serve. He is the type of player who would break your spirit because shots that you figure to be winners, he would return.



Smeets has the kind of game that everyone loves because there is a lot of the common man in him. If he were not playing tennis he would be wearing a hard hat and carrying a lunch pail.



So from Smeets, we learn -- in tennis and in life -- if you run down one more ball, if you just get the ball back over the net one more time you would be surprised how many more matches you would win.