So, I went out to the courts today. Just felt like I needed to bash some balls, you know? But then I remembered this thing, this… method, I guess you’d call it, that my old coach used to talk about. He’d mention this guy, Cassius Chinlund, and his peculiar way of training. Never met Chinlund, probably some local club legend from way back when, the kind of guy who had one weirdly effective shot and a whole lot of opinions.
Trying the “Chinlund Precision Box”
Anyway, I decided, what the heck, let’s give one of his drills a whirl. My coach called it the “Chinlund Precision Box.” Sounds fancier than it is. Basically, you pick one service box, and you gotta hit four specific spots in it, in sequence, with a flat ball. No spin, no power, just… plonk. Dead center, then front right corner, then front left, then back by the T. Sounds easy, right? Wrong.
So, I started. First few attempts, balls were spraying everywhere. I felt like a total beginner again. It’s surprisingly hard to take all the pace and spin off the ball and just… guide it. My arm wanted to whip through, my brain wanted to see the ball zip. But no, Chinlund’s ghost was apparently whispering, “Flatter, deader, you young fool.”
- First hour: Pure frustration. I think I managed the sequence maybe twice. And that was probably luck.
- Second hour: I started to get a tiny feel for it. Less about hitting, more about… pushing, almost. Like a really firm volley but from the baseline.
- The Challenge: The hardest part was the transition between spots, especially after hitting dead center, then trying to angle it short without any slice.
Honestly, I was about ready to call it quits. My regular game felt miles away. I was thinking, this Chinlund fella was probably just messing with people. Or maybe he had some Zen secret I wasn’t getting. You know how some old-timers are, they swear by these methods that sound completely bonkers to anyone else. My grandad used to swear by gargling saltwater for a common cold. Didn’t do a thing for me, but he lived to be 90, so who knows?
Then, something kinda clicked. Not in a big “aha!” moment, but I started to feel the ball on the strings differently. I managed to complete the sequence three times in a row. Three whole times! It wasn’t pretty, the balls looked like wounded ducks, but they landed where I wanted them. More or less.
So, Was It Worth It?
I’m still not sure if this “Chinlund Precision Box” is gonna revolutionize my game. Probably not. But it did make me think. Made me focus on just the contact point, on the feel of the ball. Stripped away all the usual habits. Maybe that was the point all along. To get you out of your own head, to make you do something so tedious and different that you have to really concentrate on the absolute basics.
It’s funny, reminds me of this one time I tried to learn how to bake sourdough bread during that whole lockdown thing. Everyone was doing it. I got all the gear, the fancy flour, watched a million videos. My first few loaves? Bricks. Absolute disasters. I almost threw my starter out the window. But I stuck with it, just like today with this Chinlund drill. Eventually, I made a decent loaf. Not amazing, but edible. Sometimes, I guess, you just gotta grind through the weird stuff to find a little bit of understanding. Or at least, to say you tried. I’ll probably try it again, this Chinlund thing. Maybe next time I won’t feel like such an idiot doing it.
