The other day your columnist suffered his worst-ever humiliation on the tennis court. I was beaten in the club league by a 12-year-old (only just 12, to rub it in, and barely taller than the net). Battered and out of breath at the end of the contest, which lasted nearly two hours, I berated myself for not using what should have been superior nous and experience, not to mention sheer imposing seniority, to defeat my young opponent. Surely I could have lured him into the net and then lobbed the little blighter? But throughout the two sets, the precocious boy not only outplayed and outran but out-thought me.

You might think the best way to be beaten by a 12-year-old would be well out of sight of anyone else. My humiliation took place in full view of several other club members, so there has been no chance of hushing it up. But one of the tougher and better players in the club, observing from a neighbouring court, had one simple comment: “It’s all down to technique.”

At first this felt like another blow to my self-esteem, or another passing shot down the line: I didn’t think my tennis technique was so bad, or so obviously lacking, though I know my sliced backhand can be a bit floaty. But in the days following the defeat, nursing bruised limbs and ego, I have found it both helpful and positive. Technique, after all, is something that you can work on and that can be improved, even in middle age. Ron, the player who made the comment, has an excellent topped backhand that I have always admired. What I didn’t realise was that he only developed it after the age of 40.

So a couple of days later I finally booked my first ever lesson with the club coach, a delightfully cheerful character who even finds time to read The Slow Lane. An hour later I had acquired so many helpful and, I reckon, easily applicable tips that I wondered why on earth I hadn’t taken this step sooner. One of the reasons was pride. I thought I didn’t really need a lesson; my game might be rusty but all it required was a little dusting and polishing.

Another reason was fear – the fear that I would be so thoroughly deconstructed that at the end of the lesson there would be nothing left of my somewhat homespun but serviceable method but a few useless bolts and dented panels. Or I might receive some version of the famous Irish set of directions for the lost traveller: “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

I was wrong on both counts. I did need a lesson: for the past 40 years I’ve been playing with my left arm and hand dangling around uselessly instead of drawing back the right one on the backhand and guiding it, and helping to turn the shoulder, on the forehand. That small adjustment already feels like a big improvement. As for deconstruction, Christian is too wise a coach to take apart what could never be reassembled.

These technical tennis tips have wider implications. Technique, after all, is a vast subject. The word comes from Greek roots: techne is the Greek word not only for technical skill or technique or method but for craft and art. From the Greek word techne also comes our word technology, which is often opposed to art.

The problem with technique, or the tendency we have to undervalue it, at least in the arts and humanities – to regard it as “mere technique” – comes from its association with mechanics. Technique is seen as something mechanical, a soulless and heartless approximation to the perfect regularity of a machine. Technique has been suspect for many years in painting (associated with kitsch), poetry (a slack version of free verse rules) and even music (how often have I heard someone say, disparagingly, “Oh, she/he’s very good, technically”?). But what if all this is based on a misunderstanding?

For a pianist such as Alfred Cortot, whose editions of Chopin are beacons of musical insight, there is nothing mechanical about technique; it is simply the practical way of understanding and getting to the heart of the music, with the fingers as well as the mind and heart. When he suggests a less obvious fingering, it is not so much in the interests of efficiency and speed as of extracting the richest and deepest meaning from the music. What both Cortot and my tennis coach Christian teach is that working on your technique need not be an inhuman chore; it can be a thoroughly enjoyable way of enhancing the expression of your humanity.

This week I have been observing the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela rehearsing and playing under their dynamic conductor Gustavo Dudamel at Southbank Centre in London. These young players, many from the poorest barrios, have honed their technique to the highest standards. But there is nothing mechanical about either their playing or their approach to music; as the trumpeter Wilfrido Galarraga movingly revealed, the humane discipline of music has probably saved his life.

harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres