I recently posted a casting notice for a new short film project I wrote, and was amazed at the insane number of responses I got.  So many, in fact, that it was logistically impossible for me to see even a small fraction of the people who submitted given my schedule.  Of those who I did see, all of them were uniquely talented, well-trained, and tenacious -- much like any competitive tennis player you'll encounter across the net.  I can't imagine what the response (and odds) would be if I were casting, say, Transformers 3.  Point is, it's impossible to get the part you're auditioning for all the time (or even most of the time) no matter how good, or "right" for the role, you are.  So, to state the (perhaps) obvious and confirm what we've all suspected about "making it" in this industry:  it boils down to being in the right place at the right time.  How does this relate to tennis?  

You give yourself the best shot of winning each point by always being in the right place at the right time to strike a ball.  In a word:  footwork.

In tennis, most of the balls you're going to hit are going to be no more than a few feet on either side of you.  So when you're moving to the ball, you want to take little steps so that you remain balanced; are measured for your stroke; and able to easily change directions for your next shot, if necessary.  To actors, I suggest the same thing.  Keep making little adjustments/taking little steps toward your goal(s).  Think of each class, or audition, or student film as a little step toward finding that role in your wheelhouse.  

Sometimes in acting, in tennis, and in life, you have to take giant steps just to have a chance.  But those usually wind up being desperation shots.  The consistent player adjusts, and grows, and maintains his balance through little steps.  And when you get in the habit of doing that, you'll find that you'll increasingly be in the right place at the right time.

Tennis and acting, as with most things in life, can be broken down into two basic tasks:  sending and receiving.  Like life, because there are so many other things that you could focus on, it is sometimes deceptively hard (or easy) to focus on the task at hand.  When you strike a ball, your focus is on nothing but the point of contact (until you've finished your follow-through).  In other words, you are focused only on sending.  Once you've sent the ball, you then focus on receiving:  you split-step when your opponent contacts the ball.  Likewise, in acting, when you deliver a line, you focus only on the specific intention behind each word you send; and when you're done:  listen (and allow yourself to take whatever they give you).  Indeed, you must always do both.  Because if you stop sending or receiving, you'll lose connection with your scene partner and, in turn, the audience, and you'll lose connection with the ball.  So next time you step onto the stage or a tennis court, focus on simply sending and receiving...and you'll relish the moment when you've got mail! 

So says the oracle at Delphi, and my thought for the day.  Whether you're an actor or a tennis player, you need to know what kind of player you are.  Are you an ingenue or more of a character actor?  Are you a serve-vollyer or a baseline grinder?  As actors, we all want to think that we can play any role we want - or, as tennis players, that we have an all-court game.  And that's fine to aspire to and train for - but at the end of the day, who you are (and what you're best at) is your strongest asset and will give you the best chance of getting cast or winning that match day in and day out.  Rafael Nadal, in his press conference before this year's U.S. Open final, rolled his eyes as he joked that he would need to employ a serve/volley strategy to beat Novak Djokovic for the title.  He knew that his game was not matching up well against Djokovic of late (having lost five straight championships to the man from Serbia) but the man from Mallorca also knew that playing his game, the way he knew how (and the way he knew he could), was the best chance he would have.  As we know, Nadal wound up losing that match, but fast forward to today - when Nadal clinched for Spain a date with Argentina in the Davis Cup finals - and the world was reminded of the strength of Rafa's personal brand of tennis.  So remember, for every hard court loss, and every time casting decides to go another direction, there will be other venues and projects and opportunities where your style and your skills and your type will be the best - whether that's a red-clay bullring tennis court, a film set with a boom-mic and close-ups on you, or a certain choice of career.  Your best chance for success lies in those opportunities that match who you most naturally are.  As an actor, would I love to play the military action hero in a big-budget motion picture?  Sure; but notwithstanding my real-life U.S. Army background, I would never get cast for that.  Instead, I've carved out a professional niche for myself by playing the soft, quirky romantic.  Would I like to build my tennis game around an explosive 130 mph first-serve?  Okay; but I don't have it.  I have to try to counterpunch.  Point is, both acting and tennis are numbers games; and you play the percentages when you play your own style (and brand) of acting and tennis.  Because this above all:  to thine own self be true and success will be sure to follow.

That's why in acting, when given a choice, it's stronger to play your actions as if you were doing it for the first time.  Easier said than done.  But the best actors and the best tennis players are able to do this:  to live in the moment, with no history or future to worry about.  While this behavior would be absolutely irresponsible in real life, in the context of sports or the performing arts, it is the best way to delivery a strong performance.  Again, easier said than done.  After today's loss to Novak Djokovic at the Wimbledon Championships final, Rafael Nadal admitted that his four straight prior loses to Djokovic weighed on his mind during his match today.  (This comes from one of the greatest tennis players of all time, who is renowned for his ability to compartmentalize his game and play each point as if it were the only one that mattered.)  Today, Nadal looked past the moment at hand, and that made the difference in his result today.  So, when you're on stage - just as you wouldn't get ahead of yourself on match point or carry the disappointment of a bad line call against you from the point before - live in the moment and that moment will be more enjoyable for you, your partner, and the audience.

Here's the thing about streaks:  they end.  The past 24 hours has seen Rafael Nadal's 37-straight clay court win streak come to an end; and, closer to home, the undefeated record of a tennis team I coach has also been upended.  What does this have to do with Acting Tips For Tennis Players/Tennis Tips For Actors?  

Every great story, every great actor or tennis player, and every great scene or point played, follows a very specific dramatic arc.  Typically:  1) something in your life gets thrown out of balance; 2) you fight to restore that balance; and 3) balance is restored or you change or grow in the process.  In magic, the three-act structure is couched terms of The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.  In the first part, the magician shows you something ordinary: a tennis player, for example (The Pledge).  Second, the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary, like win 37 clay court matches in a row (The Turn).  The third part, the hardest part, is to somehow top all of that once the run has been snapped (The Prestige).  Indeed, Rafa has already "restored the balance" once:  having won 37 straight clay court matches since his early exit at the 2009 French Open to Robin Soderling.  Perhaps that's what people want to see:  how Nadal will respond to this latest call to action and defeat.  I have no idea what Uncle Toni might be telling his young charge right now - but, in the classic three-act structure of modern storytelling, Nadal's loss this past Sunday in Madrid and the end of his streak on clay raises a dramatic question which I expect Nadal will answer in the very best tradition of humanity:  he'll fight.

As actors and tennis players, an understanding of dramatic structure allows us to handle losses with hope, continually fight to move the story forward, and even create moments of magic.

Last week, I wrote about Novak Djokovic's impressive win over Rafael Nadal to seal the deal at Indian Wells.  This week, Djokovic continues his tear in Miami, advancing to the 4th Round by brutally dismissing former world No. 4 and Harvard man, James Blake, by the unsavory score of 6-2, 6-0.  I'm not sure I've ever seen Blake on the wrong-end of such a scoreline, but based on who he was playing today, it almost seemed inevitable.  Indeed, Novak dropped only one game prior to this 3rd Round encounter against Blake; and en route to winning the Indian Wells title last week, also served up three bagels in three straight-set victories over three quality players (all inside the Top 40):  Andrey Golubev, Ernests Gulbis, and countryman Viktor Troicki.  The key to Novak's success?  In a word:  expectation.  

Today's edition of Acting Tips For Tennis Players/Tennis Tips For Actors examines this edge.  Expectation creates energy in a performance.  It creates excitement.  It creates electricity.  It creates enthusiasm.  And in tennis, it creates a habit of winning.  Conversely, a character who is unenthusiastic and has no expectation of success is uninteresting to watch on any stage; and their tennis results will also follow the self-fulfilling prophesy.  I myself was guilty of this when I recently played against a current NCAA Division I player (losing by the same scoreline that Denis Istomin lost to Novak Djokovic in the 2nd Round of the Sony Ericsson Open earlier this week).  My mindset going into the match was:  "This guy's 6'4"; I'm old enough to be his father; he plays top singles and doubles for his school; and, did I mention, he's 6'4"?"  Clearly, I did not expect to win that day; and I forgot the cardinal rule of good tennis, good theatre, and a good life:  have good expectations.  Because even if you don't always achieve your expectations, you'll still be a winner for giving yourself a shot, and because an audience's empathy comes from its identification with your expectations and your pursuit of it.  That's why we appreciate the player with belief rather than the one with slumped shoulders.  That's why we root for the player brimming with confidence, and angrily try to lift the ones that look defeated before it's over.

We've all seen it.  Consider the relative expectations of Roger Federer versus those of his opponents over the better part of the last decade.  Roger exuded an air of royalty whenever he stepped onto Centre Court at SW19, a place he owned from 2003-2007.  During his dominance of the sport, he often won his matches before they started due to a combination of his expectation of winning and his opponent's lack thereof.  There was one notable exception during this period:  Rafael Nadal.  Recently, the pendulum of expectations has swung for another player:  Novak Djokovic.  

As I mentioned last week, Novak Djokovic has now overtaken Roger Federer in the South African Airways ATP world tour rankings (though Roger will forever remain a favorite with this author).  Nole's new found expectations of tennis greatness has transformed him into the latest superstar of tennis and relegated the rest of the field into purely functional roles in the drama.  Most players would not expect to beat James Blake 2 and 0 in front of Blake's home crowd, on his favorite surface, and in a night match.  But, then again, Djokovic has come to expect the unexpected.  And I expect we'll see a lot more of this from the young Serb.  

So what can we learn from these tennis heros (for tennis, for acting, and in life)?  Always expect victory - with whatever you've identified as your objective - whether it's that you'll never miss a shot, that you'll win the tournament, or that you'll get the girl (or boy), or get cast in a play.  Because whatever the end result may or may not be, you can be sure of one thing:  the expectation will be fun to watch!

For those of you who have been following tennis so far this year, you've probably heard of a guy named Novak Djokovic.  This past weekend, he beat Rafael Nadal to win the Indian Wells title and supplanted Roger Federer as the world No. 2.  In doing so, Djokovic took advantage of a tragic flaw in Nadal's game during the final - which brings me to this week's entry on Acting Tips For Tennis Players/Tennis Tips For Actors.  The problem as I saw it was this:  Nadal's first serve percentage was abysmal.  If one of his match objectives was to win cheap points on his first serves, and his tactic was to win them by clocking in serves near 130mph, then - aside from the first set - his tactic failed because he kept missing more first serves than he was making.  Despite these serving woes, Nadal, somewhat uncharacteristically I think, stubbornly refused to take anything off his first serve.  By early in the third set Nadal had been broken three times in a row, losing the deciding set by a score of 2-6.  Thus, my tip for today, as obvious as it may sound, is:  when you are not getting what you want with a particular action, you need to change your tactic.  To illustrate with an acting exercise, say A wants something from B, and the line is, "give me that."  A might yell, "give me that!" all day long to no avail because B is not intimidated by A.  So, A would have to change tactics.  A might then try to beg B, guilt B, or seduce B into getting what A wants.  Each different tactic will necessarily affect A's delivery, but the objective remains the same.  Likewise, in tennis, if your objective is to win some cheap points on your first serve, and your tactic is to absolutely hammer the serve but it's just not going in, you need to change your tactic.  Try getting cheap points with your placement, spin, or even with a surprise change-up.  And even if you don't get a quick point, mixing things up helps to keep your opponent from getting into a rhythm over the course of a match; and it also helps to keep things from getting stale on stage between actors.  So use what's working and change what's not; because there will always be obstacles to what you want (the net, the other player, yourself, etc.) - but if you have the ability to adjust your tactics and not be married to just one way of doing things (especially when it's no longer working), you'll find yourself better able to achieve the objectives you set for yourself.

A-B-C.  A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing.  One of my favorite film quotes of all time (from the screen adaptation of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross) is also my acting/tennis tip for today.

One of the things I love about tennis is that, unlike many sports, there's no such thing as getting a lead and then running out the clock.  You must finish every point, and you must win the last point to win the match.  In acting, you may not always get to have the last line, but next time you're rehearsing for a scene try playing each line as if it were your last.  What does that do to the scene?  What does it do to your objective?  How does it affect your scene partner?  Chances are, it means you'll be pursuing your goal more urgently:  to get what you want on your line; or to force your scene partner to give you what you want because of the way you delivered your line - or, in tennis terms, you hit a screaming winner or you force an error from your opponent with your shot.  In both acting and tennis, it's about playing with urgency.  Nothing should be casual.  Nothing should be without specific purpose.  Otherwise, you're playing recreational tennis - which can be fine - but it's not what people pay to see on Broadway or at Wimbledon.  Watching guys like Federer and Nadal each trying to get the last word in against each other - seeing them constantly trying to top each other with each stroke like two characters in a David Mamet play - was one of the things that really got me thinking about the parallels between acting and tennis and the inherent drama that comes with both when done right.

Conflict drives a play - and a tennis match.  One of the students who I coach said to me when we first met that she felt her main strength as a tennis player was her ability to keep a rally going.  I knew what she meant (and consistency is, of course, very important) but I told her - for the purposes of match play - to work on being good at ending rallies.  Likewise, in acting, don't worry about if or how your scene partner responds.  Get what you want.  That's your job.  It is not your job to make life easier for your scene partner anymore than it's your job to keep a rally going during a competitive tennis match.  End the point.  Get what you want.  And always be closing. 

When facing that decision after missing your first serve, your answer should be to focus on how and where to hit your second serve rather than to focus on not double faulting.  In fact, you are more likely to double fault if you preoccupy yourself with the thought of not double faulting than if you placed your focus on how and where you want to place your second serve.  In acting too, and in life, it is always more productive to focus on doing something rather than to focus on not doing something.  In acting, we call this having a playable action.  In tennis, we might as well call it the same thing.  To illustrate, just think about your serve again.  You can play a kick serve to your opponent's backhand, but you can't play a non-double fault.  It's about pursuing your objectives with specificity.  If your immediate objective in tennis is to pull your opponent off the court with your serve, you can accomplish this by slicing your serve out wide.  On the other hand, if you are just concentrating on not double faulting, you are not pursuing a specific objective or playing an action that has its test in the other person.  In acting, if you're not pursuing a specific objective or playing an action that has its test in the other person, things get boring - because it lowers the stakes and the drama of the scene.  When audience members pay $100 a ticket for a Broadway show or a seat at Arthur Ashe Stadium, they want to see the performer fight to win and not just hope to not lose.  But what the audience thinks is a topic for another blog.  For now, and for yourself, focus on pursuing a positive action rather than on not committing a negative one, and you'll notice a positive improvement in your tennis, your acting, and your life.  

I just got done watching an amazing effort by Italy's Francesca Schiavone in her Quarterfinal loss to Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark at the Australian Open.  Schiavone's gutsy performance even in defeat inspired me to: a) have to say "Brava!"; and b) write this week's entry to my blog on Acting Tips for Tennis Players/Tennis Tips for Actors. 

If you've ever served for a match, auditioned for a big role, or experienced stage fright before a performance of any kind, you know that nerves can sometimes play a bigger role than you on that stage.  One of the best ways I've found to overcome this is to prepare well.  

Brad Gilbert, a tennis commentator for ESPN and former coach of tennis greats including Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and Andy Murray, likes to say that "chance favors the brave."  While I agree with him, I also think it would be more helpful to think in terms of "chance favors the prepared."  As I'll explain, bravery comes with preparation.

In both acting and tennis, you should always work to be as physically and mentally fit as possible.  This means going to the gym, doing drills in tennis over and over again, and memorizing lines for acting. This may seem obvious, but I am always surprised how many people show up to an audition hoping to "wing it" or cold-read the sides they've been given a week in advance by casting.  In tennis, even a champion as great (and with as much raw talent) as Venus Williams was forced to retire from a match for the first time in her storied career at a major because she was ill-prepared to compete at this year's Australian Open. 

By preparing yourself as much as possible through rehearsal and practice, not only will the repetition get you out of your head while at the same time developing a reliable sense memory, but it will build the confidence you need to draw on when you get tight on stage or on the court - confidence that you put in the hard work, and that you can go five sets or get through a five-act play.  Because when you've put in the work, and done the best that you can to prepare, you'll naturally believe and feel you deserve good results based on your efforts.  Conversely, if you have not adequately prepared, you will lack that sense of belief at the moment of truth because you'll be thinking about all the things you could have done to better prepare (but didn't) rather than the task at hand.  Good preparation allows you to leave it all out on the stage.  It allows you the freedom to play without having to look at your script or your player box for help.  It enables you to make bold choices and try different tactics to get what you want because you're secure in the basics.  It sends a clear message to your director, your opponent, and of course yourself about your professionalism, willingness to work, and ability to go the distance.  And that may just make the difference between scoring that "W" or booking that role.

So next time you have an audition or hope to play a tournament, remember that chance favors the prepared!