For those who read last month's column and are anxiously awaiting the footwork training program I promised, let me offer my apology. In November, I talked about the importance of footwork to a tennis player's success and promised to outline a program for improving your movement in my December column.

Well, I sat down at my computer a few weeks ago with every intention of writing that column. I began as always, typing the title of the column and the date that it was written, but as I pressed the keys that formed "December 1999" my fingers abruptly stopped. That in and of itself was not unusual as I am not great with the keyboard and often stop to retype a misspelled word after the "spell-check" alerts me of my error. This time, however, was different because there were no misspelled words. My fingers stopped and my eyes focused on "December 1999" and it suddenly hit me: this column would be my last of the 1900's!!!.

I am truly a sucker for nostalgia so it was impossible for me not to sit back in my chair and reflect on not only the past forty years (my lifetime), but particularly the last thirty, my life in tennis.

When I was ten I was given a gift by my parents, the game of tennis. I reluctantly accepted the gift and I say reluctantly because I really had no interest in the sport. Like any other young boy, I wanted to play baseball, basketball and be "cool." To be a junior tennis player in 1970 was definitely not considered "cool," so I resisted.

After a few gentle pushes, I relented and took my first tennis lesson and in those thirty minutes my life was changed forever. I knew soon after I wanted TENNIS to be a major part of my life, for the rest of my life.

Thirty years later I am still living my dream. I have been very fortunate to have been able to turn my passion into a career and after thousands of hours on the court, and millions of balls struck, I can truly say that I still love the game of tennis. I love to play it, teach it, read about it and will forever be grateful to those who gave me that gift.

So, as I began to think about the last words that I would write in the 1900's, the idea of a footwork program sank in a sea of memories (it will resurface next month). I felt that I should come up with something profound for my last column of the 1900's, so what I would like to do is offer a few random thoughts and observations of things that I have learned (so far) and that I think players of all ages and levels might find useful.

Here we go: