Word: braden
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...warm, sunny day in Southern California, and at the Vic Braden Tennis College in Coto de Caza, 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, a few dozen students are watching a most peculiar exhibition. At one end of a tennis court, a ball machine flings one ball after another across the net. Seated on a chair on the opposite side, a short, chubby man, racquet in hand, rises to meet each one, hitting it squarely with a looping forehand. Thwack. Thwack. The balls whiz back over the net, landing just inside the base line...
Victor Kenneth Braden, 60, has a point to make. "See what you can do when you bend your knees and then lift with your thighs as you hit the ball?" he asks his students. The imagery is vivid, but one woman remains dubious. "My knees don't bend that much," she says. "That's strange," Vic responds impishly. "Didn't I see you sitting in the restaurant last night? How did you get into that position? Did the waiter hit you in the back of the knees...
...woman nods, getting the point, laughing. Her classmates laugh, and Braden joins in. Laughter, in fact, is an essential part of the curriculum at the tennis college, where every year several thousand adults take three-to- five-day courses that cost $100 daily. It erupts regularly from the classroom during Braden's unique lectures, which combine show biz, science, humor and psychology. It rings out on the 17 courts and the 18 teaching lanes equipped with ball machines -- and in the four video rooms, where students guffaw as they view tapes of their own just completed drills. Even...
Laughing all the way, Braden has become a celebrity in the sports world. Jack Kramer, the 1947 Wimbledon champion, calls him "the world's best all- around tennis coach," who can improve the game of anyone "from a beginner to a champion." Braden was featured on the cover of the August issue of Tennis magazine. In television commercials he is touting Tennis Our Way, a videotape he made with Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith, and millions of sports fans have chuckled at his commentaries on cable and network TV. The best known of his five books, Vic Braden's Tennis...
Social issues including concern for the homeless and the hungry has drawn well-known personalities including author Alice Walker and jazz musician Don Braden '85 to serve as masters of ceremonies for the Jazz for Life concert since the event's inception six years...