| Patrick Howlett | July 10th – August 17th 2014 |
| Organized by James Gardner |
Room for Improvement:
In every club or school court in the country, games are taking place all the time between players who are doing their best. And yet any experienced coach watching one of these games for five minutes could very easily find some quite elementary piece of advice for each of the two players which, if acted upon, would improve their respective games tremendously.
It might be something very simple; for example one player might be watching the front wall when the ball is behind him, while the other never returns to the centre of the court after playing his stroke. It might be something technical; one player keeps missing his backhand shots, because he is trying to change his grip and cannot do it in time, while the other is unable to get the ball out of the back corner, because he moves in reverse towards the wall and has no room to ‘lever’ the ball out. It might be something tactical; one player might always be playing a particular kind of shot from the same position in the court, while the other is continually hitting the ball too hard, so that both are easily forcastable.
Whatever the errors, they are things that the players have forgotten or have never learned. The vast majority of players in this country have not had any real coaching, and it is not easy to pick up tips for your own game by watching top-class matches, interesting and helpful thought this is. Consequently, I want to feel that anyone reading this book has come to do so because he would like to ask questions about how to improve his game, but does not really know what is wrong, what questions he ought to ask or where to begin.
-R.B. Hawkley
Patrick Howlett is an artist living and working in London Ontario. Patrick studied at Concordia University, and at The University of Victoria, receiving an MFA in 2006. Recent exhibitions include How Hummingbirds Choose Flowers at Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto in 2012, and Part Time Offerings is on view at Museum London until August 17th. Patrick teaches in the Department of Visual Art at Western University and is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery.
