A Tennis Lesson With the World's Top 60 year Old Player

I've written my last few posts on the play of Larry Turville. Larry is the number 1 player in the United States in the over 60 category and was number 1 in the world in 2010.

So, while I was planning my Florida vacation, I decided to google Larry and see where he lived, and if he was still teaching. Turns out he lives in Naples, which is a 2 hour drive from Miami, where I was going to attend a medical convention. And, it turns out that he still does a little teaching.

So, I set up a 2 hour lesson with Larry and hoped that it would turn out to be a nice day since we would be training outdoors of course.
Here is a photo of Larry and me. Remember its not that I'm that short (about 5' 10") but Larry has legit NBA height!

The day of lesson came and the weather in Miami was cloudy at 10 am as I took off in my rental car to drive to Naples. The drive to Naples from Miami is fairly dull if you take the main highway but, as I was driving, the weather was getting better and better. By the time I arrived in Naples, it was a gloriously sunny day. I had a quick bite, stretched, and drove to the address where Larry had told me to meet him.

The meeting place was a private driveway in front of a large private home. When Larry arrived, we introduced ourselves, and Larry took me around to the back of the house where it turns out, there were 5 beautiful clay courts.

He later introduced me to the owner, a nice fellow who apparently in addition to being in real estate, runs a tennis camp of sorts on his private courts.

We ended up having a great 2 hour lesson and I got a chance to get to know Larry a bit. He's giant, about 6 foot 8, and walks and talks with a slow, graceful attitude.
He'd been on the tour in his younger days, and owns a win over Vilas and Tiriac in doubles. After that, he was the head coach at Rice University for 17 years, and now he runs a seniors tennis tour in Florida in the winter.

We had a chance to work on a lot of different things in those 2 hours. Of course, lessons revolve around the needs and desires of the student and I had some specific questions for Larry.

I quizzed him on his slice backhand and how he used it in the lethal pattern which I have described in previous posts. The pattern, to review, is a couple of deep crosscourt slices, then an inside out slice up the line.

He showed me his technique and how he used a slightly different technique to hit the cross court slice as compared to the inside out slice.The main differences had to do with how open you are atacontact ( more open for the inside out slice) and the contact point (lower for the inside out slice).

I was able to get a good sense of this pretty quickly, and have been using the inside out technique since I've come home. I find that its good on approach shots up the line as well.

We also worked on moving left and right for groundstrokes. Larry plays a lot on clay and likes to teach a gentle sliding technique into the ball. I had never done this and found it quite difficult. However Larry was very efficient with this technique and I could see how mastering it could prove to be really valuable. Larry told me that he's available for the occasional lesson in Naples. I've already referred a friend of mine from Toronto who winters in Naples, and he had a great lesson as well. Larry can be reached at lturville@msn.com