The Left-Handed Project

This is a story of how one player turned the misfortune of an injury into something positive.

Deb Sikora began playing tennis as an adult, just over a year ago.  She fell in love with the game and cherished her time on the court with her doubles partner Pamela.  Together they worked hard on their tennis game through drills and lessons. They joined the Novice League where they gained valuable experience playing doubles matches.  Before the summer began, they both committed to playing on their first USTA team.

When autumn came, Deb increased her time on the tennis court, starting each day with an hour and a half of tennis before work.  Fridays were her biggest day when she took a lesson, participated in a drill, and played doubles in the league. After a couple of months of increased activity, she was diagnosed with a severe case of tennis elbow by her doctor and advised to give her arm complete rest for a month.  

She was devastated.  That day she phoned me with the bad news.  She couldn’t imagine how she could give up tennis just like that, but she thought she had no other choice.

Having suffered the same injury myself a couple of years ago, and challenging myself to play with my other hand so that I could continue to play tennis during the resting time, I suggested to Deb we do the same for her.  I had discovered that playing with my non-dominant hand gave me valuable insights into the mechanics of my groundstrokes, something I hadn’t had to think about when using my right hand. Once I was healed, I was able to use what I had learned with the left hand to develop a new stroke, my two-handed backhand.  Not only did I gain the new stroke, playing left-handed for several months gave me joy because I could continue playing while I healed.

Deb willingly accepted this challenge and thus began the Left-Handed Project.  We agreed to both keep a journal of the process which will be presented here.

Deb’s Journal—Day Zero