Posts tagged: tennis tips

Did you manage to read part 10 last? We looked at improving your smash, I had some great feedback from that blog post. If you haven’t read it yet, click here to have a read.

In this post we are going to look at the player who is the servers partner. Picture the scene, your partner is ready to hit their first serve. You are correctly The Danger Player, as you are the first person that can have a real impact on the point (depending on how good your partners serve is). But where are you standing? Who are you focused on? What are you thinking about doing? Where are you aiming? Three questions that we are going to work through the answers to.

1. Where are you standing? There are two elements to this answer, how far up the court are you and how far in to the court are you. There is no absolute hard and fast rule about where you should be as this will depend on how offensive your partners serve is and how athletic you are. There are however a couple of principles you can follow.
   • In terms how wide you stand the simple rule is you need to be able to cover the trams in one step. At a professional level they probably stand with their outside foot in the middle of the service box, they can get away from this as they read the game fast and incredibly athletic.
   • How far up, as a general rule I would suggest being approx half way up the service box
2. Who are you focused on? The key player for you here is obviously the returner. Focus all of your concentration on them, make sure you are facing them with an aim to try to intercept the return.
3. What do you want to do? Your goal is to intercept their return. If they have not once hit down your line you should feel quite free to intercept the return, they might not even be able to hit down the line – ask them this question. Don’t feel like you need to run across the entire court, just ensure that when you move, you move diagonally forward cutting down the angle, you will not need to cross the centre line to intercept effectively.
4. Where are you aiming? This is simple if you intercept and you make contact with the ball above the height of the net you aim at the shoe laces of your opponent. If the ball is below net height do you best to control the volley back to the baseline. These rules are set – use them and this will make a huge difference to your game.

Tennis Holidays are a great way to make real progressions in your game, it is an intense week of learning new skills in the morning and putting them in to practise in the afternoons. Being able to play for 20 hours in one week means that you can really make changes in your game fast! Our Tennis Holidays our suitable for all levels whether you are a complete beginner through to county level players – everyone is welcome!

Did you manage to read part 9 last week based on improving your volley technique, I had some great feedback from that blog post. If you haven’t read it yet, click here to have a read.

In the part we are going to look at simple ways to improve your smash, specifically at the arm movement. As a doubles player, the smash is an essential weapon in your arsenal since you are looking to spend the majority of your time at the net and closing the net down.

Essential Elements

The key to improving your overhead is understanding, learning, and practising a three essential elements:

1. Unit turn
2. Movement (footwork)
3. The arm swing

In this blog will will focus on the arm movement.

Before I start discussing the arm moevment, I want to stress the necessity to learn and to use the continental grip around the net, on the serve, and on the overhead. The continental grip, along with a good unit turn as described next, is what allows greater racket acceleration and, therefore, ball speed.

The arm swing

The first step to creating a great arm swing, as in all the shots, it is creating the turn position with your feet and torso as described in part 8.

The second step is getting to the tick or trophy position. There are a 2 ways to do this:

1. The racket drop. The racket falls along the side of the torso with the tip pointing more or less straight down at the court, then swings up like a pendulum in to a tick position creating a lot of momentum.
2. The abbreviated takeback. Just like on Rafa’s serve the racket doesn’t drop instead it comes straight to the tick/trophy position

You can use either of these methods but bear in mind if you don’t have much time option 2 would be used.

The third step is the swing to contact. The simplest way to think of this is think as though you are throwing your racket at the ball., if you over think this and break it down in to too much detail you will struggle. If you have a correct relaxed service motion, you shouldn’t have to think about all this too much and it will probably happen naturally.

A simple way to improve this motion is to practise throwing, (as a guide you should be to be able to throw the ball from the baseline to at least the service line on the other side), if you cant do this then practise, if you can do this you should be able to generate good racket speed.

Overall, what makes the overhead difficult is the ability to move in position with the proper turn position. The unit turn and the movement, I believe, are the two areas where the average player needs to focus. The arm swing is important, but as your serve arm swing improves in this area so will your overhead swing. As I mentioned above, conquering the ability to do the cross steps as you initiate the turn will go a long way in making the overhead the best part of your game.

The Overhead Game

There is a great live ball overhead drill that I have used many years with my high school doubles teams to work on implementing the overhead in matches.

One team is back at the baseline and one team is at the net. Your coach or one of the back players starts the point by lobbing to the net players. The lob feed should not be too tough or too easy. The net players cannot let the ball bounce either on the lob or the volleys.

After the lob is hit, the point is live. The baseline players can do anything they want — lob, hit, go to the net, etc.

First team to five points wins, then everyone rotates (clockwise) one position and the game starts again. Rotating the positions gives the players practice from both halves of the court, which is important because of the differences in the angles.

This drill is a great way to just get completely comfortable with hitting overheads everywhere on the court. Even if you are a singles player, it gives you the repetitions and the variety of movement and positions on the court that you need.

If you haven’t really developed an overhead, this game can be difficult at first because so many of the overheads are hit while moving back. Overall, though, it’s the best way I know of to develop those critical cross steps. You’ll know you are getting better when the team hitting the overheads starts to win the majority of the games.

Tennis Holidays are a great way to make real progressions in your game, it is an intense week of learning new skills in the morning and putting them in to practise in the afternoons. Being able to play for 20 hours in one week means that you can really make changes in your game fast! Our Tennis Holidays our suitable for all levels whether you are a complete beginner through to county level players – everyone is welcome!

YOURS, YOURS !!!!!

Hi everyone and welcome to part 5 of our tennis crimes series, todays crime is again one we see all the time on our tennis holidays and focuses within the doubles game and really highlights the importance of communication.

So here’s the scenario, you and your doubles partner have attacked the net. Your approach wasn’t fantastic and your tactically astute opponents have been able to guide the ball accurately down the middle causing confusion and disarray between you and your partner… and here comes the crime, both players shout “yours” and the ball sails down the middle of the court for an easy winner with both players unhappy at their partners lack of assertiveness.

So ask yourself these questions:

1. What does your ready position look like?

2. When should you be in the ready position?

The ready position is the foundation for almost all of your footwork when you are playing tennis. How you move around the tennis court in one way or another relates directly back to your ready position.

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A good ready position

• You want your feet about shoulder width apart, or a little bit wider.
• Your knees should be slightly bent and your weight should be on the balls of your feet, not the heels.
• Your upper body should be relaxed, with your arms and the tennis racket out in front of your body.
• Angle the head of your racket up a little bit.
• It’s also important that your upper body should not be hunched over, bending forward. Your back should be straight so that with your legs bent it is almost like you are sitting in a chair.
• Your eyes should be on your opponent and especially the tennis ball, not looking down at the tennis court.
• Practically speaking, when you are in the ready position you want to be about a foot shorter than your normal height, which is a good athletic height.

“GET READY, STAY READY”

Using the skills you learn in practice and implementing them into a match situation is the toughest thing to achieve in tennis. A variety of factors can hinder your performance such as nerves, tactics or lack of confidence. To combat this we have put together our top five tips to help you unlock your potential in those tough matches!

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1. Working out your own and your opponents strengths and weaknesses

It is key to know your main strengths as a player so when you play a match you are then able to give yourself the best opportunity to use them e.g If your strength is your forehand you should be looking to use this shot as often as possible. As soon as you step on the court and begin warming up with your opponent you should be analysing their strengths and weaknesses. Once identified you can then use your shots to exploit their weaknesses and neutralise their strengths

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2. Staying in the present mentality

In tennis it is easy to let your head drop when things are going badly. It is vital to remain positive at all time – focus on one point at a time and try to visualise yourself winning each point. Trying to remain positive will really help to raise your game and losing your PMA can cost you a match. If you lose a point its in the past, there is nothing you can do to effect it. If you think about the future your brain will run away with you. Focus on the here and now, stay positive and make SMART decisions.

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3. Early Preparation

This is something that unlike most aspects of tennis you have full control over. Be prepared both on and off the court – off the court make sure you arrive on time to the match to enable a sufficient warm up both physically and mentally. On the court make sure you are recovering to an appropriate ready position and taking your racket back as early as possible.

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4. Shot Selection – Attack/Rally/Defend

Be SMART with your shot selection. Don’t rush for a winner, build the point and wait for your opportunities to arise in the point.

Always play the percentages, when things aren’t going your way think of the basics – am I hitting the ball high enough over the net? Am I hitting with enough length

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5. Playing your opponent mentally

In a match situation you need to be able to mentally ‘get inside’ your opponents mind to help influence how they play. You should then pounce on any mental frailties they exhibit – for example if they are struggling with their second serve you should then stand closer to the service line to apply further pressure.

So next time you have a match and you find yourself struggling think back to these 5 points and ask yourself whether you are truthfully implementing them!

Having A Plan

Hi everyone and welcome again to part 2 on our ‘tennis crimes’ series.  On our tennis holidays I think back to what the most common request to improve people’s tennis is, while occasionally people would like to be able to send down a 150 mph rocket 1st serve or learn to craft a stunning slice backhand fizzing off the court, the overwhelming favourite request is “I’d like to be more consistent” or “I’d like to make less errors” both fantastic things to work on, if we as tennis players can achieve these then we will most definitely be collecting more points and winning more matches !!!

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“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! – Benjamin Franklin”

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So what does consistency really mean?

Well for us at active away it can mean a lot of things, I could in theory be consistent at hitting ‘lights out’ winners down the line, however in the long run its probably not a tactic that will pay off. So here’s the crime were going to be looking at today. On our tennis holidays you will often hear the coaches ask questions such as “what were you trying to do with that shot” and here comes the crime……….

“I have no idea what I was doing”

Well if we don’t know what we’re trying to do with the ball the likelihood is that it won’t be doing anything positive. This is often when we find he ball hitting the side fence or even when we start losing balls.

So how do we plan what to do with the tennis ball? Firstly it goes without saying that this is a difficult skill that can take years of practice and repetition. There are an awful lot of factors that can influence what we want to do with the ball and we only have a split second to make the choice, but here are a few to consider.

1. Where you are? Your court position will certainly have an influence on the type of shot you need to be hitting, are you too deep to attack? Are you too wide to go back cross court?

2. Where is your opponent? Again a huge influence when planning your next shot. Are they out if position? Can I exploit the space?

3. What are your strengths and their weaknesses? It’s such a simple tactic in tennis but under used, the amount of times on our tennis holidays we see forehand to forehand rallies, try and find times where you can use your strength to your opponents weakness!

4. The ball you have received. Of course this is the biggest factor in our decision, is it spinning, is it fast, is it high?[divider scroll_text=””]

Practice

Here’s a really simple drill to help you put this in to practice, split every shot you hit into one of three categories; Defend, Rally, Attack.

1. Practise one: Rally with a partner and try to make a decision before you hit the ball. Call out either attack rally or defend using the above 4 questions to help influence your decision.

2. Practice two: Can you play a point and say which tactical intention you have before you hit the ball?

3. Practice three: Could you even play a whole set doing this?

This will help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as improving your decision making process at the same time. In time this will become much more natural, of course Andy Murray doesn’t say “DEFEND” as he chased back to scrape a ball off the baseline but I can guarantee it was something he worked on extensively as a junior making him one of the best tactical players in the game.

So remember on our tennis holidays. The coaches will be asking you “what were you trying to do with that all” if you answer with “I was trying to attack but It was the wrong choice” we can forgive you but if the answer is “I don’t know” you have committed a tennis crime!

You’ve been warned….. We are watching you !!!!!

In the last blog post we talked about our 80/20 rule and ho it helps you maintain a good position, if you haven’t read it yet you can read it by clicking here.

In this blog we are going to give you a few tips on how to move better at the net. This might surprise some people but its a fact: the key to tennis isn’t how well you hit the ball its how well you can move to enable you to hit the ball well.

There are two types of movement at the net vertical (forward and backward) and lateral (side to side) today we are going to give you a few tips on how to improve your lateral movement with you partner. Imagine the situation:

Situation 1: You have two players at the net (you and your partner) and two players at the back of the court:

1. Be strong in the middle – to many times players leave a big gap down the middle because they are worried about being passed down the trams. Try to make sure you can reach across and tap each others rackets in one step. The majority of balls coming at you will come down the middle.
2. Follow the line of the ball – Imagine you have a metal rod attached to both of you. If the ball goes to the player on the left you both move to the left, if it goes to the right you go to the right, you want to make sure that which ever direction you move one player moves to just inside their trams and their partner comes to just inside the centre line, try not to cross these lines.
3. Use your advantage – If you are both right handed try to make sure if the ball comes down the middle the person with their forehand volley will take the shot.

Situation 2: You have two players at the net (you and your partner) and one player up and one player at the back of the court:

1. Follow the same principles as above, the only difference being that there wont be such large lateral movements to be made as the majority of volleys (except for when finishing the point) will be directed back to the baseliner.
2. The principles are the same if you hit a good angled volley to the baseliner you both follow the ball wider, if you hit more down the middle you follow the ball back to a more central position at the net.

Follow these three simple tips and I guarantee you that you will become impenetrable at the net, it will make it so much harder for your opponents to find gaps past you.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and can take a few of these thoughts in to your next match.

Tennis Holidays are a great way to make real progressions in your game, it is an intense week of learning new skills in the morning and putting them in to practise in the afternoons. Being able to play for 20 hours in one week means that you can really make changes in your game fast! Our Tennis Holidays our suitable for all levels whether you are a complete beginner through to county level players – everyone is welcome!

The Second Serve

Hi everyone and welcome to our Blog. If you have been on one of our tennis holidays you will have heard our coaches mention the dreaded ‘tennis crimes’! There are a few simple reminders that can help us all in our quest for a more consistent game. The first one we are going to talk about is the 2nd serve.

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[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]”you’re only as good as your second serve”[/quote]

As the old saying goes “you’re only as good as your second serve”. If it’s weak it’s a huge opportunity for your opponent to feast upon it. Throw in a few double faults and you’re in big trouble. A solid, dependable second serve can get you out of tough situations and can even cause problems for opponents. A truly reliable second serve can allow you to enjoy the freedom of a fully aggressive first serve knowing that the trusty second serve is a rock solid back up. It really is a crucial area and the percentage of points won on the 2nd serve is a massive indicator of the match result.

So let’s look at the crime being committed all too often on our tennis holidays. Firstly the second serve going in the net – it’s a lock up and throw away the key crime! Good flight over the net married with good spin can cause your opponent damage without risking the net. There is simply very little benefit to hitting it low over the net on a second serve – it’s an extremely high-risk strategy with a relatively low percentage reward. As tennis players on the quest for consistency, we are searching out situations where we can achieve low risk-high reward scenarios. The second serve is one such scenario.[divider scroll_text=””]

The stats don’t lie…. While none of the ‘big 4’ occupy the top 4 places in first serve percentage points won, they dominate the second serve percentage points won with Novak out in front. The Djokovic machine rarely makes unforced errors and many coaches and experts alike believe the key to Novak’s success is his second serve.

A good second serve is almost always a spin serve. It just gives you  many more options and keeps your opponent guessing – the same way Sampras kept his opponents guessing. We must practice it guys – we now know how important this part of the game is. There is no need to be weak at the knees, trembling with every bounce of the ball – however do not neglect this area in your practice.

Practice hitting targets with a good margin for error. Can you hit a second serve and make the second bounce go outside the court ? Maybe play a practice match or two only giving yourself one serve !

So…. Remember, the second serve is not our enemy it can be a great friend. Be aggressive but be aggressive with flight and spin !! If you’re on one of our holidays and we catch you hitting the net on the second serve you can expect a timely reminder that you are committing one of our most serious tennis crimes !!!!

All the tennis coaches on the Active Away tennis holidays have been instructed to have their eyes on your second serves!

You’ve been warned….. We are watching you !!!!!