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Whacker Advice - Suggestions for Tennis Hackers

Following the overwhelming response to my post about advice for golf hackers , the one comment it received suggested I offer similar advice for tennis players. So here are some ideas to get it started. Whackers... players who aspire to be Rafa, Roger or Serena but remain perspiring, awkward dreamers probably nursing tennis elbows, dodgy knees and arthritic hips, and regularly deflated egos. Grunt. All top players expel a noisy grunt after every shot to prove to spectators, opponents and coaches that a maximum amount of effort has been expended to serve or return a shot. Failure to grunt proves a lack of effort and commitment even if the ball is out or the point lost. At least he/she tried hard to win it. Whackers, on the other hand, have neither spectators (other than those patiently waiting to use the court) or coaches to worry about. So the grunt is solely intended to scare the opponent, to disguise the sound of ball on frame, or it's actually a squeal of pain rather than the sig

The Secrets of Hacker Golf

Social media is awash with professional golfers selling video training courses to help you perfect your swing, gain 50 yards on your drive and cut your handicap. They might help a few desperate souls, but the rest of us hackers already know everything we need to complete a round of golf without worrying the handicap committee or appearing on a competition winner's list. What those pros don't realise is that for us hacking golfers who very occasionally hit shots that if you hadn't seen how they were hit, end up where the pros might have put them, we already know everything we need to know - and more. Unlike pros who know how to time the perfect swing in order to caress a ball 350 yards down the centre of a fairway, we hackers need to assemble a far wider set of skills and know-how to complete 18 holes, about which pros have no comprehension, need, or desire to learn. Here are some of them: Never select your shot until after you've hit it. A variation on this is to alway

BOTH my Grandfathers Caught out by DNA Matching

About 4 years ago I was contacted out of the blue by a chap called Bob who lives in Western Australia. He'd never known the identity of his maternal grandfather until one of his sisters uploaded her DNA to Family Tree DNA. The report came back that it closely matched my mother's brother who had had his own DNA analysed and stored online for an entirely separate purpose. Seems his dad, my grandfather Simeon, had a 'relationship' with an 18 year-old waitress in Portsmouth in 1924 when my mother was 4 years old. He was a travelling salesman and Portsmouth was on his patch. We'll never know if he knew she became pregnant because the baby was given up to an orphanage. Shame on him if he knew and abdicated his responsibility. But we'll probably have to give him the benefit of the doubt, because it happened again to her a couple of years later with another unknown man. Bob shared some pictures of his mother with me. She was the spitting image of my mum. They were wit