I had the benefit of filming nearly 14 hours of Cliff Swain Racquetball Clinic video footage over the last couple of days. As always, I learned a ton of good information that I’ll be sharing in upcoming blog posts. One totally unexpected lesson that I learned, however, had to do with equipment.
Good equipment, it turns out, can lead to a real advantage on the court.
During a rally, I ended up in center court with Cliff in a weaker position behind me. Rather than go for a pinch, which I knew Cliff would be expecting, I opted for the less common off-the-back-wall-kill shot. As you can see in Image 1, this caught Cliff entirely off guard and left him unprepared to pounce on my kill.
A moment later, Cliff had recovered — we don’t call him the GOAT for nothing — and was rushing by me to get to my shot. He was kind of close, so I stuck my arm out to make sure he wasn’t going to crash into me, as shown in Image 2.
This is where it gets weird.
At this point, Cliff’s shirt decided it did not like either my choice to hit off the back wall or to hit toward Cliff’s face. As you can see in Image 3, the fabric on the back of his shirt entangled itself around my fingers in such a way that it was impossible for me to let go. Cliff’s shirt had pulled me entirely off balance only fractions of a second later.
It was only by sheer athleticism and grace I was finally able to disentangle my hand from his shirt and return his shot…which led in short order to Image 4, which shows Cliff and his shirt hitting a between-the-legs winner.
And there you have it: Cliff’s shirt completely reversed the momentum on that rally and set him up to hit the winner. Boom!
Think I’m full of it? You wouldn’t be the first. That’s fine, though. All I’m really trying to say, is that you could grab a Cliff Swain shirt in case I’m not full of it.
*wink*
PS. I’m told that the Cliff Swain hoodies will watch your back while you’re off the court too.
To heck with a great racquet, I need that shirt!
I got two shirts and a hoodie, but now feeling that I should stock up for the US OPEN!