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Sports equipment maker Yonex’s founder dies at 95

Minoru Yoneyama, a former prisoner of war who founded Japanese sports equipment maker Yonex, a favorite among pro tennis players, died on Saturday at the age of 95.

Yonex’s rackets have been used by such tennis stars as Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Kimiko Date, garnering worldwide attention for a company that started out making fishing gear.

Yoneyama was born in Niigata Prefecture, north of Tokyo.

No stranger to adversity, he entered into business after being released from a prisoner of war camp in Okinawa. He was part of a Japanese suicide unit meant to ram explosive-laden boats into American transport ships, but never received an order for a mission.

In 1946, Yoneyama started making and selling floats for sport fishing. He began producing badminton rackets in 1957, and they remain one of the company’s mainstay products.

U.S. tennis great Billie Jean King serves with a Yonex racket at Wimbledon in 1982.   © Getty Images

In 1958, Yoneyama established Yoneyama Co. to focus on rackets. It moved into tennis in 1969, followed by golf in 1982. The company was renamed Yonex and moved its headquarters to Tokyo.

Yonex secured contracts with King and other leading tennis players by asking them what they wanted in a racket, then improving the performance and design step by step until they were satisfied.

Yoneyama’s motto was, “If you fall, pick yourself up as a bigger man.”

His resilience was put to the test when a racket factory burned down in 1963. In just three days, the company was able to put up a new facility and resume production.

Yoneyama also played an active role promoting athletic activity through the Yonex Sports Foundation.

China’s Shi Yuqi in action at the Yonex All England Open Badminton Championships in 2018. Beyond tennis, the brand is well known in badminton-mad Asia.   © Reuters

Being confident

Being confident is the ultimate prize for any trader; some call it being in the “zone”, some others talk about finding the “Holy Grail”. What it really means is that, as for any performance based endeavours, trading will satisfy you only once you reached the state where “you know what you do”. Trading is not different from any other demanding undertaking, it requires mastering the different stages of the learning curve and the quality of this learning process depends on how focused and disciplined the trader is in honing his acquired skills. Once the trader has identified, through practice, what markets, methodology and timeframe he is comfortable with, he will slowly gain confidence in himself by systematically repeating all of the steps that constitute his trading plan until it becomes part of his personality. Just as for a tennis or a golf player, being confident makes the difference between winning and losing, so it is for the trader. And, just like the tennis or golf player, the trader can only gain this confidence through a well worked out set of skills, a battle plan and the continuous practice at a performance level. Losing focus or relaxing the discipline will very rapidly threaten the trader’s confidence. Hence, it is of the utmost importance to understand that this virtuous circle has to be maintained during every trade. And here we touch the challenge for any trader: only the repetitive and focused practice of his plan will ensure that he will stay confident in his trading. This can only be achieved through a balanced and healthy way of living and a sound detachment of the day to day results.

Winning the Loser’s Game

In the book, Investment Policy: How to Win the Loser’s Game, author Charles D. Ellis discusses the interesting conclusions of Dr. Simon Ramo on playing strategy. Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Tennis Player (New York: Crown Publishes, 1977) identified the difference between a winner’s game and a loser’s game.  Over a period of many years Dr. Ramo observed that tennis was not one game, but two: one played by professionals and a very few gifted amateurs; the other played by all the rest of us. After extensive scientific and statistical analysis, Dr. Ramo summed it up this way: Professionals win points; amateurs lose points.
In expert tennis, the ultimate outcome is determined by the actions of the winner. Professional tennis players stroke the ball with strong, well-aimed shots, though long and often exciting rallies, until one player is able to force an error by his opponent or to drive the ball just out of reach. These splendid players seldom make mistakes.
Amateur tennis, Dr. Ramo found, is almost entirely different. Brilliant shots, long and exciting rallies and seemingly miraculous recoveries are few and far between. The amateur player seldom beats his opponent; rather he beats himself all the time. The ball is fairly often hit into the net or out of bounds and double faults at service are not uncommon. The victor in this game of tennis eventually gets a higher score because his opponent is losing more points.
As a scientist and statistician, Dr. Ramo gathered data to test his hypothesis in a clever way. Instead of keeping conventional game scores—love, 15 all, 30-15, and so forth—he simply counted points won versus points lost. He found that in expert tennis about 80 percent of the points are won, but in amateur tennis about 80 percent of the points are lost through errors. (more…)