Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you.

Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game, tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.

And now, here’s Ian!

Ian: Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Your place for free expert tennis instruction, that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to you by TennisTours.com and TennisExpress.com.

Thank you very much for joining me on today’s show. I appreciate having you as a listener no matter how you might have picked up today’s podcast, I recommend by the way that you guys use iTunes– it’s definitely the easiest way. ITunes is a free download from Apple and you can subscribe to the podcast in the iTunes store for free. And each week you will automatically download each new show.

So it’s nice and convenient and in my opinion, the best way to get the show every week.

This week I’ve got a special guest on and I’m going to be talking about lifting weights and fitness for tennis. Which I think is a great topic for all of you guys to help improve your game and take yourselves to the next level.

So let’s go ahead and get right to it– sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music]

My guest today on the Essential Tennis podcast is Steve Beck. He is the owner of PowerOfFit.com which is a great website all about motivation and working out and getting in better shape. He also has a podcast, an audio podcast, which is on iTunes and it is called PowerOfFitness. The PowerOfFitness podcast.

Steve, thank you very much for spending some time with me and welcome to the show.

Steve: Thanks Ian. My pleasure to be here.

Ian: So you’ve been really active on the forums on EssentialTennis.com and you write some great fitness blog articles that we post on the fitness blog on essentialtennis.com. And you’ve come to a couple of clinics so you are super involved and I really appreciate that Steve and I’m really happy to have you here on the show to talk about tennis specific fitness topics.

First of all, tell us a little bit about your background as a fitness person and tell us a little bit about your website and your podcast too.

Steve: Sure Ian. Thanks for the opportunity. I started getting into weight training about 17 years ago. And I’ve been through a lot of phases and a lot of changes in my programme and I’ve seen a lot of fads and a lot of things come and go.

And really in the past couple of years, I’ve really just come to enjoy it a whole lot and want to share that knowledge and share things that I’ve accumulated. And obviously I’m still learning– I’m currently studying for my personal training certification through the American College of Spots Medicine.

So I’m excited about getting certified and being able to really do some of the things that I love to do recreationally– be able to help people do that in a professional basis as well.

Ian: Cool.

Steve: And over the past year or so, in getting involved with getting more active with my tennis and staying active with my fitness. You’ve obviously given me a great outlet to share some things and to help people get into a better tennis shape and a better shape in general.

And at the start of the podcast, the beginning or a couple months ago towards the beginning of the year, and I’m still working on that and really the website is in its infant stages– it’s just an informational blog at this point. A plan on the future incorporating more fitness based routines and nutrition into it. And again, just being able to help people, to give people information and help them see the need to get into better shape.

Ian: Great stuff. What prompted me to get Steve as a guest today was a question from a listener and you might remember this listener from last week’s show– his name is Vedron in Croatia and he has got a question about fitness specifically– actually three individual questions that are all very closely related.

Steve and I are going to talk about those questions and if we have time, we are going to get to a couple from the forums as well.

So let’s go ahead and read Vedron’s question. And it goes like this, “My question is about physical training, which I find pretty important even for a recreational player as myself. The thing that confuses me, is how I should approach weight lifting training. Most of the training coaching tips that I Google’d say a tennis player should lift smaller weights and more repetitions during the tennis season and probably bigger weights with less reps in the off season. Is that true?”

He has two other questions which I’ll read, but we’ll answer these individually. Secondly he says, “How many days in a week should I lift during my tennis season?”

And lastly, “What muscle groups should I focus on and with what exercises?”

So Vedron, thanks very much for your great questions. First of all, I’ve had a couple different guests on and I’ve definitely talked about fitness before but I don’t think that I’ve ever focused on weight lifting specifically on the podcast before.

So I’m looking forward to talking about this. I know that it’s a topic– something that I’ve used in the past to really help my game. Certainly when I was still playing full time– it’s not as important for me now, but hopefully we’ll talk about injury prevention a little bit later as well. That’s how it effects me now as a teacher.

So Steve, let’s get to his first question. And he was talking about lifting during season versus off season and he read that it was suggested that he should be using smaller weights and more reps during season and bigger weights and less reps in the off season.

So his first question is, is that true for the tennis player?

Steve: Absolutely not. But I’ll say that with an asterisk on the end.

The first thing before you approach any kind of weight lifting or training program, is you want to involve a professional. And obviously I know a lot but I’m not there with Vedron and I don’t know his physiology. I don’t know of any health risks that he has.

And the same when I give information to anybody online and removed from it, then personally, is you want to seek out a professional and make sure that you don’t have any underlying symptoms and that just doesn’t mean any kind of disease or anything obvious.

It could be some physiological symptoms. If you have shoulder strain or a tear or an underlying injury. Those things are going to definitely come into play. And so just to kind of get that exclaimer out of the way first. And I think that’s smart for anyone when they are looking to improve their fitness level by going into the gym and lifting weights and doing some serious training– or any kind of training. Any time you go in and lift weights, it’s going to be a serious strain on the body so you need to be aware of some factors before you enter into any kind of program– and get some professional guidance.

So I hope that makes sense.

Ian: Let me interject here for a second Steve. What about– I know that a lot of my listeners don’t want to pay what it costs in where ever they happen to live for professional tennis instruction and of course professional training or meeting with a trainer to work out can be very expensive as well.

What are you suggesting here? Do you think my listeners need to be with a trainer every time they work out? Or maybe just once to see where they are?

What are your thoughts on that?

Steve: And that’s a great question Ian. A lot of times if you are a member of a gym or if you just joined some place, they’ll give you a couple of sessions with a personal trainer who will give you an assessment and kind of see where you’re at and find out your baseline so they can measure some results.

So that’s a lower cost way to get an assessment. Also, if you have any obvious concerns, pain or if you are maybe having a weight issue…

Obviously you want to consult your physician too and they can give you a green light.

Ian: Great.

Steve: As so far as working with a trainer, every time you go to the gym, fortunately we live in the information era and obviously you’re on the cutting edge of providing great tennis instruction– great virtual tennis instruction. And there is equally some great resources out there on the internet and in print and other media where you can get great exercise and fitness instruction too.

Hopefully I’m able to provide some of that and there is definitely a ton of resources out there– both online and in print where you can go and get your workout plan together before you every set foot in a gym– which I think is also hugely important. You want to, you know beginning with the end in mind, so look at what kind of fitness [inaudible] you have.

So no, you don’t need someone standing over and barking at you that you need to give them 10 more push ups. Every time you go into the gym. But you just want to arm yourself with information and I think that’s good advice for pretty much anything you are going to take seriously.

Ian: Before we keep going, I want to remind my listeners about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast– and that is tennistours.com.

You guys can go there to find tickets, travel packages, and accommodations to professional tennis events, both WTA and ATP– all over the world. So if you guys are making plans for next year for the grand slams, definitely check them out. They carry tickets for all four of the grand slams along with really cool packages while you are there at whatever city you might be visiting.

So go check them out and when you check them out, use the promotional code essential which will not only give you a discount, but also show them that you are listener of the pocast and you appreciate their support of the show.

Alright now let’s go ahead to exactly why you disagree with his premise of less weight and more reps during the on season and more weights and less reps during the off season.

Steve: Absolutely. The think is, you’re not going to find any serious strength coach today, working for any professional team or any professional athlete. And especially with tennis players, it now seems to be the trend in the last couple of years with tennis players to start pumping iron and lifting weights and working out in the weight room.

I don’t think that you could find a strength coach or a conditioning coach anywhere that is going to say a weaker athlete is a better performer. And it’s just common sense. You see guys– professional football players– they are in the weight room pretty much year round. Athletes — Olympic athletes — whether they are runners or whether they are gymnasts or you know, shot putters or whatever the case may be.

They are always trying to do things to help them to get stronger. By lifting lighter weights, for more reps, you are not going to develop more strength. It’s just a physiological fact.

Maybe you’re going to develop more muscle endurance, but you’re not going to develop more strength and more power and thereby increase your performance on the tennis court or on the basketball court or whatever sport it is that you are going out to do.

Ian: Let me ask you about that– you mentioned that more weight would be for actual strength whereas weight and more reps would be for more endurance.

So in your opinion speaking to tennis players specifically, are you saying then that in general as tennis players, even recreational players, we need more strength versus muscle endurance?

Steve: Well, you’ve got to look at it this way. If you are looking at fitness holistically, as a total package, you’ve got as aspect of tennis which is cardio vascular endurance which takes a different set of exercises to excel and train your body at– running, sprinting and things like that.

And then you’ve got on the other side, the enrobic portion which is the lifting of weights and the increasing of muscle mass and the stimulation of different types of different types of muscle fibers. The idea being that if you want to improve your performance, you want to be working at both of those things and the strength and weight training is going to benefit you in areas that the cardio vascular can’t.

Most of the time, in tennis and I think you’ll agree with me on this, what is the average rally in pro tennis or recreational tennis? I know it’s under 10 shots, right?

Ian: Recreationally, I don’t know.. I’m totally making up numbers here, but professionally I would guess in singles on the men’s side, we’re probably talking 3 shots per point I would guess is probably average.

And recreational players are probably around the same– 2, 3 or maybe 4 at the high point for a high quality match.

Steve: And I’m sure that you see a lot more rec tennis. And even higher level rec tennis, 4.0 or 5.0 level, you aren’t playing long protracted points.

Ian: No.

Steve: So the need for muscle endurance in that performance arena, is not going to be as great as the need for long term endurance performance. [inaudible] hour or two at a time. Or if you maybe have a tournament or something like that– those are different considerations to train like a long distance runner or like you are going to train for a marathon and be successful playing tennis doesn’t make any sense.

Does that help out?

Ian: Absolutely. I think people a lot of times are surprised when I tell them that tennis is not an aerobic sport– that it’s an anerobic sport. It’s quick bursts. Where you want to be powerful and you want to be as strong as possible and then you rest. And the resting period is a lot longer than the actual performance period.

I guess that would make sense as far as what you’re talking about where tennis players need to focus more on the higher weights and less reps.

In general, should tennis players be doing both Steve? Should we be doing both workouts that have less weight and higher reps and workouts with more weight and lower reps? Is there some kind of balance there we should be doing? Or is it one or another?

Steve: Well I think one is going to depend on your physical condition and starting out– and obviously we are talking about people that are going to be all over the board here. We are talking about people who are going to be on the weaker or stronger end of the scale. We’re talking about different body types. Guys that are [inaudible] and thinner and guys that are on the other side– the [inaudible] that we’ve talked about in the past on the fitness blog.

That being said, think about it this way, the stronger your body denotes the more or less, the more muscle fibers that you have and the more you are able to perform and apply kind of denotes how you are able to actively recruit the muscle fibers that you have.

And lifting lighter weights recruits less muscle fibers than lifting heavier weights. And also you’ve got the idea of a term called hyperprothy– opposite of atrophy– which is getting smaller.

If you’ve ever had a broken arm or a body parts that has been immobilized for a while, you’ve seen atrophy. I had a broken arm, and it looked like my grand mother after 13 weeks and I had to build it back up.

And on the other end of the scale is hypertrophy where you are building muscle and you are adding on muscle fibers and I think one of the myths today is well I don’t want to get big and bulky because that is going to slow me down.

But if you look like a guy like Michael Vick or an NFL linebacker who is huge and muscular, those guys are sick fast. And they are fast and are able to perform like that because they’ve done weight training in the gym. They’ve added muscle and they’ve worked on recruiting fast and slow twitch muscle fibers to increase their performance.

Ian: So let’s go ahead and wrap up his first question. In review then, so it’s definitely a misnomer that you should be splitting up his workout between off season and on season.

Just to wrap things up, and I know that you said before, clearly we all have different body types and different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our physicality and how our body is made up and how it’s been trained.

Is it possible to have a rule of thumb when it comes to working out as a tennis player? Or is it always just going to depend on a case by case basis?

Steve: I think the rule of thumb is, and not just related to tennis but any other sport, you want to get stronger and faster. And we do that by lifting more weight and challenging our body.

Now that’s not to say that their aren’t training cycles that we are going to go through that will have us lifting some lighter weights, and that maybe some higher repetitions. But I think as a rule over all, in order to build strength and build performance, you’re going to have to keep continually challenging yourself. And you do that by lifting heavy weights.

Ian: Let’s go ahead and move on to his second question now and that is, how many days a week should he be lifting during his tennis season– while he is actually in season as a tennis player.

Steve: Again, this is going to depend on how often he’s playing tennis. I don’t know if he’s playing 3-4 hours per day or is at 5 days a week. In that case, you’re going to want to scale the lifting back some in order to not wear yourself out and totally be dead on the tennis court.

So it’s going to depend on how much his tennis demands are going to be incorporated into his total training program.

But I think as a general thumb, you can easily do 3-4 days a week and some moderate heavy strength training. And as long as you are rotating body parts and allowing 24-48 hours between exercising the same body part and allowing that muscle tissue to heal from the training– you are going to be OK.

Let’s give a specific example. I’m going to hopefully try to nail right in the middle of my demographic here– so let’s say for your recreational player who is really taking their game seriously, but maybe they are a mom or a dad and they’ve got a full time job and they don’t have time to be a full time tennis player.

So let’s say a rec player who is doing 2-3 times a week on the court playing one or two hours at a time– how often should that type of player be looking to lift weights, to challenge their body, and get stronger and faster?

Steve: As much as possible. And I know that’s going to sound like a broken record, but most people aren’t going to put themselves in such duress and stress with their training that they are going to, I think, take away from any other kind of recreation or sport that they are doing.

Again, you’ve got to keep in mind physical limitations and certain personal factors like that. 3-4 times out of the week, if you’re in the gym from anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, I think that’s going to be perfectly fine.

Ian: Before we get to his last question, just a quick note about the second sponsor of the podcast– that is tennisexpress.com where you guys can go to get all of your gear and equipment needs fulfilled. They have everything at great prices. Free shipping over $75 and they are also a sponsor of the podcast which I really appreciate.

So go check them out and when you do make a purchase from them, please use the promotional code essential which will tell them that I sent you. It’s a great way to kind of give back and thank them for being a sponsor of the essential tennis podcast.

Alright, now let’s go ahead and move on to Vedron’s last question. This could be a big one, so feel free to spend as much time as you feel is necessary here Steve to educate my listeners about what they should be doing as tennis players specifically.

And his final question was, “What muscle groups should I focus on and with what exercises?”

Steve: That’s an easy one– all of them. When I say that, let me just kind of focus in on that for a minute, you want to be doing multi joint exercises and you don’t want to be focusing on things like “I just want to get big huge biceps and do heavy bicep curls.” Obviously, that’s not going to help your tennis performance.

But what is going to help your tennis performance — and I think we’ve talked about this in the past in some blog articles — is developing the kinetic chain. And that’s kind of exonerated in the service motion, right? You start with the legs, the energy travels from the lower part of the legs up through to the upper body and shoulders and to the arm and out through the hand and it ultimately ends up in the tennis racket and ends up hitting the ball, right?

So in order to be more effective in that, you have to do exercises that in my opinion focus on working on the kinetic chain.

Now exercises like [inaudible] and dead lifts and even things like kettle bell swings and exercises like that, are going to be great at developing that.

Now the advantage you get is you are working multiple muscle groups. And I think as tennis players, I don’t think you’ll see any tennis player out there that you’ll mistake for a body builder– I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Definitely not [inaudible] or I remember Peter [inaudible] how skinny he was.

Ian: What about Rafa? For a tennis player, he’s pretty built. He doesn’t literally look like a body builder but he’s pretty cut, right?

Steve: Rafa is a tremendous athlete. But look where he’s placed the emphasis– he’s placed the emphasis on developing his body. I guarantee you that Rafa doesn’t go in and do a bench press with 40 lbs for 50 reps. I can guarantee you the guy is pumping some serious iron. You can look at him and tell.

And how does that affect his tennis? He’s bigger, he’s stronger, he’s faster. He’s able to heal faster. He’s able to stay out there on the court longer. He’s able to blister the crap out of the ball when he hits it which is what we all want to do, face it.

So, I guarantee you he hasn’t spent time just working on his biceps or just working on his quads doing heavy squats.

Ian: I dunno.. he’s got some pretty nice guns.

Steve: He does, but that can come as a result of working and doing those [inaudible] . Take a bench press as an example, you think that just targets the chest. Well, that targets muscles in the chest. It targets the shoulder muscles. It targets the tricep muscles on the back of the arm. It targets the trapezious muscles on the back to some degree. And so you are getting a ton of bang for the buck sort to speak.

When you go to do a dead lift, you are getting the calves, the quadraceps, the lower back, the [inaudible] . It’s almost a total body workout. And you go in and do three sets of [inaudible] with some serious weight, and you are going to be decked. You are not going to want to do a whole bunch else for the rest of your work out period because it’s incorporating some cardio into the exercise, it’s hitting a bunch of muscle groups, it’s forcing those muscle groups to work together to produce the desired effect– to lift the weight from point A to point B.

So it’s getting, it’s taking a kind of holistic approach. I don’t advocate doing bicep curls or tricep extensions and smaller things. You can do that as a supplement to your main lifting which is are going to be the [inaudible] exercises. The dead lift, squats, some sort of variance of those olympic lifting exercises.

Ian: Let’s try to get to one question here from the forums. And then to wrap things up, I have got a follow up question for myself that I think a lot of my listeners are probably thinking to themselves. People will have to write back and tell me but I think it’s a pretty high likelihood.

Let’s answer a question from Toshi in Maryland. He wrote and said, “I would love to hear a good preventative exercise routine and I think this is definitely something people want to hear about. Especially, knees, elbow, wrist and legs. Of course as tennis players and recreational tennis players, you don’t always have the time to work out a lot to keep our bodies really fit and really strong to be able to avoid those kind of typical tennis injuries– tennis elbow and shoulder problems. Maybe your knee or joint problems in the legs.

Can you give us some general pointers for trying to prevent those types of pretty typical tennis injuries?

Steve: Sure thing Ian. It’s a pretty simple answer. I don’t know what specific injuries that Toshi is talking about, so obviously I want to be giving some very general advise here because I don’t want to give him anything that is going to exasperate an existing condition that he may have.

As a general rule, having a stronger more fit– and again, stronger and more muscular body, you don’t have to be Mr. Olmpiad. But again, going out and training– again, going back to those multi-joint exercises — if you look at it this way, what are muscles attached too? They are attached to tendons right? So the tendons have their basis in and around the joints. So most of the weaknesses you see are going to come from those weaker areas of the joints, taking over and compensating for weakness in muscles.

And so strengthening the muscles that are wrapping around and insulating your bones and joints so to speak, is going to be a great way to prevent injury. And I know that sounds kind of juvenile and kind of simple at the base of it, but if you look at it, look at guys like Roger Federer. He has a ton of off court training– he’s not hugely muscular, but I bet if you stood beside him, he’s going to have wider shoulders than you or me put together. And he’s going to be stronger than a large percentage– I’d say 99% of your listener base. And why is he like that? Well he’s like that because he’s spent a ton of time in the gym. He’s as strong as an ox. And look at his injury history– relatively slim or none.

And you look at a guy like Rafa and obviously he is probably one of the strongest guys on the tennis court. And he’s had some knee injuries– some tendentious injuries. But again, one of the reasons he’s been able to overcome that and come back and win three major tournaments this year, is because he probably spends a ton of time in the gym. He spends a ton of time strength training, flexibility training and he just puts in the work off the court that enables him to do what he does on the court.

Ian: OK. I’ve got one more question for you and I’m really confident that this is something that a lot of people have been thinking and that is, that the types of exercises that you’ve really hit the hardest and it sounds like you are really more excited about and think are the best for people to do as tennis players kind of involve– I believe you use the phrase multi-joint exercises? Dead lifts, bench presses are some of the exercises that you’ve been advocating.

I know that a lot of my listeners are hearing you suggest that and are already getting intimidated about going to their local gym or wherever that they like to work out. You know, your average tennis player is not like you were saying before, is not a body builder looking type person.

Speaking from experience, I’m 6’0 and in college I weighed like 140 or 145. And I remember going into the University athlete weight room and having the hockey team and the football team there and I’m walking around and I’m doing stuff like what you’re talking about. I was doing free squats and bench press and all kind of stuff like that.

You are using the bigger weights and I definitely felt out of place. What do you have to tell my audience who is probably not built like a football player or a hockey player and is a little intimidated by going to the gym to do these multi joint type exercises.

Steve: Sure. There are two main things– knowledge is power and knowledge is key. There are some great resources online that will show you the right way to do these things and for one, injury prevention, and two just so you are using proper form so you get the most out of the exercise.

Guys like Eric Cressing is a great resource — [inaudible] is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and he has tons of articles and tons of videos out there that show you the right way to do stuff. And he’s linked up with a lot of sites– there are guys like [inaudible] and [inaudible] who are some leading strength coaches in the industry today.

So there is no excuse for you to not know how to do something. Everbody probably has an internet connection. It’s not go to the library and read a book on strength training and Olympic lifting and learn how to do it right. That will allay a lot of the fears and a lot of intimidation that you may have by just doing the exercise. Because you are going to be worrying about people looking at you [inaudible]

And the second thing is, who really cares? You are not there to please anybody else. You are not there to go up against the 300lb guy in the corner of the room who has been lifting weights since he was in diapers.

So who really cares? You are there for you, right? Think about it this way. When you go out on the tennis court, you get intimidated by guys three courts over who are 5.0 players and are hitting at a great level. And you are worrying about what your strokes look like? Maybe sometimes, but you aren’t there for that. You are there for you and you are there to improve your performance so who cares what looks you get or whatever. You are there for you.

Go into the gym, do your thing and don’t worry about what people look like and what you think people are thinking. I think we intimidate ourselves out of fitness a lot of times, and especially in commercial gyms, because we worry about impressing somebody.

Well I don’t have to impress anybody but me. And I’m not there for anybody else but to improve my performance. I think those are my two keys and hopefully that has been helpful to our listeners.

Ian: Good stuff Steve. Of course, anybody who has listened to the podcast for any length of time, knows that I love mental topics and confidence topics– so I love what you are saying there.

That brings us to the end of our time together. And with that, and really kind of brings me back to the fact that I do listen to your podcast Steve and you talk about a lot of those motivational type topics. Because that’s such a huge part of about why people don’t work out when they do get out of shape. and so if you guys want to hear more information and more feedback like that about working out in general, definitely check out Steve’s podcast. It’s PowerOfFitness podcast and you can find that on iTunes or– do you have the podcast up on your website yet Steve?

Steve: I don’t have it up there. I’m looking at changing hosts for the website pretty soon so that I can make the audio downloadable to the folks who don’t have iTunes or just folks that want to go to the website and listen.

So look for that hopefully in the coming month or so.

Ian: OK, so if you guys have iTunes, go search for PowerOfFitness on iTunes and check it out.

Again, Steve Beck has been my guest. He is an author, and check out his website as well which is poweroffit.com.

Steve, any last words or thoughts for the audience before we wrap things up?

Steve: Just realizing what strength and conditioning can do for your tennis game– I think it can do a lot of things. It can make you faster, it can make you a better all around athlete. It can help you with health issues and living a longer more healthy life in addition to make you a better tennis player which I’m assuming what everybody is tuning into the essential tennis podcast for.

Ian: Absolutely. Alright Steve, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. It’s been great talking to you and hopefully we can have you back on in the future to talk about more ditness related topics– thanks very much. We appreciate it.

Steve: Thank you Ian. I appreciate it and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Ian: Alright. That does it for episode #137 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that it’s given you some ideas on how you can increase your strength and your fitness for being a better tennis player.

It’s a great way to, as I said earlier, take your game to the next level and improve yourself which is always what this show is about.

Before I sign off, let me again say to make sure to check out iTunes if you are just going to the website and downloading the file right from essentialtennis.com, it’s definitely a lot easier to subscribe to the show. You don’t have to keep going back to the website and right clicking and saving the file etc. So check out iTunes. Subscribe to the show on the iTunes music store and you’ll get the podcast every single week automatically.

Alright, that does it for this week. Thanks again everybody and take care. And good luck with your tennis. [music]

[music]

Announcer: Welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast. If you love tennis, and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment–or the mental game– tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.

And now, here’s Ian!

Ian Westermann: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast: your place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis podcast is brought to you by TennisTours.com.

Thank you very much for joining me today, this episode of the Essential Tennis podcast. I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to download today’s show, and give it a listen. I hope that it’s going to helpful to you, and give you some ideas about how you can improve your tennis game, and move up to a higher level of play. It’s always my goal when I create each and every one of these shows.

Before we get to today’s topics, I want to send a message out there to all of you gearheads, all you guys who are infatuated [laughter] by rackets, strings, grips, and footwear and clothing, and all of that stuff. If you’re a huge gearhead, and you’d love to have an outlet for that, I’m looking for a writer to write for my Gear Review blog at EssentialTennis.com. I’ve had a really hard time keeping a writer for that blog for some reason. I’ve gone through tons of them. If you feel like you could be reliable, and you would enjoy writing content for that blog, I’d prefer that if you had some kind of certification or experience actually working with equipment. If you’re a master racket technician, etc. that would be best, but I’m not going to make that a requirement.

Either way, just send me an e-mail at Ian@essentialtennis.com. I’d love to hear from you if that’s something you’d be interested in. This is something that would essentially make you published. You could put it on your resume as being a writer on a tennis website.

So send me an e-mail, and hopefully I can find a new person to start getting some great reviews of rackets and strings, and all other types of tennis gear on the blog.

Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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Alright, let’s get started on the first question in today’s show. It’s a simple one, but one that’s excellent, and something that’s going to create a lot of discussion here on the podcast. Ben G. in Lexington, Kentucky wrote in and said,

“What do you think about a podcast of the worst habits of the worst habits you see in teaching? As in: what are the things the player should go out of the way to NOT do?”

Well Ben, that’s an awesome question. I thought about having a guest on to talk about that’s another teaching pro, but kind of ran out of time in doing that. So I’ll just go through it myself. What I’ve outlined here are–in my opinion or in my experience–the top 3 technical mistakes that recreational players make.

And this is just based on what I’ve seen teaching full-time over that last… I guess it’s been about 6-8 years now, spending 30-40 hrs. a week on a tennis court trying to help recreational players just like you guys listening improve. In my opinion, these are in my opinion, the 3 biggest mistakes that will lead you guys down the wrong path as you try to make yourselves better tennis players. These are extremely common things.

So Top 3. #1: a short and tight swing on ground strokes, both forehand and on backhand side. This is definitely the #1 technique issue that I battle with every single day as I’m on the court, trying to get my students to improve. Most often when recreational players try to hit the ball harder on either their forehand or backhand side, their technique gets shorter. This is what I see most commonly. Not all the time. In my experience, it definitely depends on what kind of background players have playing other sports.

If you’ve already played a lot of golf, or if you’ve played baseball, or maybe lacrosse or hockey–or some other type of sport or game where a long swing was needed to create really good results–maybe you’re lucky enough to go ahead and do it naturally, correctly, which is to make a racket path that goes through the ball with good length so that you can really create the most amount of power and racket speed as possible.

But from what I’ve seen with kind of average level athletes and just your typical person off the street who has decided that they really enjoy tennis and they want to get better at it, when I see that type of person try to create more power, usually their stroke actually gets shorter instead of longer. This is due to their muscles tightening and tensing up as they make their swing. The result of that is a shorter racket path and less racket speed.

Now even thought the racket moves faster because they’re trying to accelerate it more, so they to move it real quickly through the point of contact, even though everything might tighten up and tense up, and their overall length of swing might get shorter, it might be that they actually do speed the racket up ultimately.

In other words, compared to an average paced swing or a rally ball where they’re just trying to get it in play. It’s very possible that, even though they get tighter, the racket might move faster, but in the long-term, that technique is not going to serve you very well. It’s going to choke off your potential to continue making your ground strokes better and better down the road as you keep on working on your game.

This reminds me of–I tell this story a lot. I think I’ve only talked about this one other time on the podcast, and it was quite awhile ago. I was listening to a golf podcast. This is probably 1 yr. ago, back when I was really into golf and trying to improve my technique. I heard an excellent quote from one of the top instructors in the U.S. The person who’s interviewing him asked him, “What was the #1 mistake that amateur golfers made as they tried to hit a good golf shot?”

He said, “Amateur golfers too often try to hit the ball.” [laughter] That should strike you as odd right off the bat! He said, “Amateur golfers try to hit the ball.” That’s a huge mistake! This 100% applies to tennis as well, and in my experiences, really transfers over for amateur tennis players as well.

What he means by that is: rather than making a high-quality swing and using high-quality technique, and simply letting the ball be in the middle of that swing. And kind of just letting the ball get in the way of that good technique, and just focusing on the technique, both golfers and tennis players tend to consider the contact point as being all important.

Don’t get me wrong. The contact point is hugely important. And what happens just before and just after contact is a massive part of what make a shot successful. But what this instructor was talking about was having the contact point be the #1 focus for a golfer, or in this case, a tennis player. So these players can just focus on that part of the wring, and the result is kind of a bracing for packet.

The racket is being accelerated towards the ball just to make contact with it. And very tennis players have this brace: Here comes the ball and I’m going to hit it! And there’s just this quick, jerky acceleration towards the ball. Everything just comes to a halt as soon as contact gets made. There’s a lot of tension there. Everything gets shortened up. That is no good! Both on the golf course, and on the tennis court. I’m going to ahead and stop using golf references now. [laughter] Because I know a lot of you aren’t big fans of golf. But there’s a lot of technique similarities between golf and tennis. Which I found really fascinating as I was trying to improve my swing about 1 year ago.

So that’s #1. Worst Habit, Biggest Mistake #1, is a short and tight ground stroke. Do yourself a favor by focusing on having a long swing. A relaxed swing. Being nice and loose, and don’t even really think about the contact point. Make sure the racket moves through that area smoothly, like you’re just not even really thinking about it. Just focus on the finishing position, your finishing spot of your swing, and accelerate to that point. Don’t accelerate to the contact point. Don’t accelerate up to the ball and then have that be your goal, and then everything stops as soon as you make contact. Accelerate all the way through to wherever you’re finishing your swing, and make that #1 goal on your forehand and your backhand.

Alright, Worst Habit #2 is that recreational players move their racket a lot on volleys. [laughter]

If I could cure 1 technique in tennis across the entire world, it would be this. It just agitates me so much! Volleys should be very simple. They should be very straightforward. There should be no extra stuff in terms of technique. They should be a calm and relaxed redirecting of the ball. That just doesn’t happen for so many players. This is definitely in my Top 3.

In fact, this may be #1. I don’t know. It’s close between this and the short, tight ground strokes on both the forehand and backhand side. It’s a close call for me. But this is a huge one.

Two things that you should not do on your volleys. #1: I hate the word “punch” for volleys. Don’t punch at your volleys. I mean, just think about a punch. If you’re watching boxing or missed martial arts, or whatever, and you see somebody punch somebody else. Or you see somebody punch a heavy bag in training for boxing, or martial arts, or whatever. You’ll see a short, abrupt, intense contact between the fist or the glove of whoever is doing the punching and the bag or the body of whoever they’re trying to punch.

This is not good technique for volleys. You should also not swing your racket, meaning: your racket head and your racket face is moving back and forth across your body like it would for a ground stroke. That’s not something you want to do either. What we want is something in between.

Again, I dislike “punch” a lot. You also should not swing at a volley. That’s not a good idea either, because that’s where things start to get sloppy.

What you want is a smooth and relaxed guide of the ball. You’re trying to guide the ball towards your target. Your racket face should be facing towards your target during most of this technique. Ultimately, what this means is that you want to use bigger muscle grips instead of smaller ones.

Here’s what I mean by this. When you move the racket head around a lot, and you move the racket face around a lot, and you’re trying to accelerate through the ball and swing your racket towards the ball, ultimately that’s from using your hand, your wrist and your forearm a lot. To kind of maneuver the racket, swinging it back and forth like you would on a ground stroke from the right side of your body to the left side or vice versa. That’s from using a lots of smaller parts of your body.

If you use the bigger parts of your body: your legs, your core, your shoulder to move the racket smoothly through the ball, you can guide it towards your target very accurately, and still with reasonably good pace. It doesn’t have to be a weak shot if you use the bigger parts of your body to tell the ball where to go. You want to take the momentum that’s already on the ball. Typically when you’re hitting volleys, your opponent or partner has driven the ball towards you. They’ve hit a forehand or a back hand ground stroke.

Or maybe you’re in a quick net exchange back and forth, and there’s already pace on the ball. It hasn’t bounced yet. You’ve taken it right out of the air, and you’ve got some momentum to work with already. You want to take that energy that’s already on the ball, put your strings behind the ball, and send it back towards your target. Again, I like the word “guide” for this. To send the ball towards the direction that you want it to go.

This is as opposed to the two biggest mistakes. The #1 biggest mistake on volleys is too much moving of the racket, and swinging it back and forth. A second mistake that I feel–listen. I’d rather that you guys punch at your volleys rather than move your racket around a lot. Alright? That’s definitely the case.

So if you guys are going to make one mistake or the other, I’d rather that you’re abrupt and short, and you punch at your volleys. I’d rather that by far, than you guys move the racket around a lot, and actually swing the racket towards the ball. So you know, please punch it [laughter] if you’re going to do one or the other! But I don’t like punch either, because it’s abrupt and short, intense, and I don’t like that for any shot in tennis. So make it a guide.

Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully my terminology there is not too vague, and I’ve explained that well. But that’s definitely in my top 2 mistakes that recreational players make on the court.

So let’s go ahead and go to #3. This is in my #3 out of my Top 3 Worst Habits that recreational players make. #3 has to do with the serve. And I’ve done this on purpose. I’ve done my best to spread this out. I’ve done one on ground strokes. A worst habit for volleys or net play. Now worst habit for serves.

In my opinion, the worst habit overall that recreational players have on their serve is serving too straight, or even downwards, towards their target. A good serve is an upward swing. Even on a flat serve, your technique and your motion should be accelerating the racket upwards towards the ball. Upwards. Not straight. Definitely not downwards. A serve is not like a jump serve in volleyball, or a spike. We’re not trying to hit the ball down at the net. I don’t care how tall you are, you should not be trying to hit the ball down at your target.

Many recreational players hit their serves in that direction. Either accelerating their racket path, the direction the racket is moving, either horizontal, straight out to their target. Or they actually accelerate the racket down towards the target. The only way to make a serve doing 1 of those 2 things consistently is to have a slightly open racket face. So a forward motion and a slightly open racket face. The results, the resulting path of the ball, is a ball flight that travels straight or slightly down. It has kind of a straight trajectory right towards its target. Or as I head, even a little downwards.

It is possible to make a serve this way. So all of you guys thinking about sending me an e-mail right now saying: “Well, the force of gravity and the drag of air, and if you’re a 6 ft. player with this reach, making contact from this height…” Yeah, I’ve seen all the physics reports, and the different [laughter] equations. At what speed, at what height over the nets, and all this stuff. I’ve seen all that stuff, and I’m totally aware that at a certain contact height, it is possible to actually hit the ball straight, or hit it down and make the serve. I see players do it every single day, especially when they hit with a little slower pace.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible to make a serve that way. What I am saying is that when you hit in that direction, the trajectory that the resulting shot travels across, is extremely low percentage. You don’t want to hit a shot from behind the base line that has to stay inside the service box, which is 18 ft. inside the base line, and try to hit it straight. That’s a problem, because a straight trajectory carries with it a very low margin for error. If you hit just a little bit too high, and you hit the ball across a relatively straight line, it’s going to go out very easily. If you’re hitting across a very straight line or trajectory towards your target and a little too low, you’re going to hit the net.

This is the same thing as with ground strokes, and this is why I always teach players first to make an upwards swing towards the ball so that they can curve the ball back into the court. High level tennis players make contact all the way at the very peak of their technique of their serve. It’s an upward swing. In preparation for their service swing, they bend their knees; they drop their entire body downwards; the racket drops.

Those of you who have studied service technique at all on line with slow motion video know that there’s a position called the “racket drop.” That’s to get the racket dropped. [laughter] To get it down below the ball as far as possible. When you watch professional players in slow motion, you will see that the tip of the racket drops well below their waist. They’re dropping it way down below where the ball is.

#3: They tilt their shoulders upwards towards the ball. Big servers have almost a vertical angle from their dominant elbow. If they’re right-handed, their right elbow. Up through their left hand, their non-dominant hand, as they tilt back and create an angle upwards towards the ball. So all of those things: the knee band, the racket drop, the shoulder tilt to tilt upwards towards the ball–all of that is preparing to launch the racket, and launch their body upwards towards the ball. All of that accelerates upwards towards the ball, and contact is made at the very peak, at the very top of this technique.

A lot of times I’ve had players say to me, “Yeah, but they finish low. They make contact, then they come down.” Yes, but that’s only after contact has been made. Contact is made at the very top of all that accelerating up towards the ball, and then the racket comes down. Then the body comes down. Contact is not made with the racket and with the body coming downwards, it’s made at the very top of all of that momentum, carrying up towards the ball. So the serve is an upward hit. Put that into your heads! [laughter] It’s true.

So high-level players make that upward acceleration and at contact, the racket face is flat. At least very close to flat. It might be close a tiny bit, maybe a couple of degrees, but it’s definitely not open is my point. It’s either flat or close to little bit. The resulting shot has curve to it. Whether it’s a flat serve, quote unquote “flat serve,” which any tennis shot is always going to have some rotation on it. Whether it’s a flat serve, or a kick serve, or any other kind of spin serve, a high level player after hitting a good serve creates a trajectory that has some curve in it. Again, just like a top spin ground stroke does. So that curve adds margin for error.

It makes it safer, because you can hit the ball up over the top of that net, and that curve will bring the ball back down into the service box again. That’s a huge benefit when you’re trying to hit a ball aggressively, and still keep it in play.

Alright. That’s a topic I feel strongly about. A topic that recreational topic that recreational players probably fight me on the most. When I have students who just aren’t buying into something that I’m trying to teach them, this is probably the #1 thing. A lot of players resist change in their technique to a more upwards swing. It’s just not something they’re comfortable with or used to. But it’s a really big difference between your average recreational player and a high-level player or a professional player.

OK. In review, Top 3 Worst Habits that I see in teaching: short, tight ground strokes; a swing on a volley or a punch on a valley. Again, I don’t mind a punch that much. It’s definitely a lot better than a swing, that’s for sure. And #3: Hitting forwards or downwards on a serve technique.

So Ben, those are my Top 3 mistakes, and Top 3 things all of you guys listening should avoid at all costs. If you’re not sure if you’re doing these things, get a video camera. You know what? All of you should have a digital video camera. You can get a regular flip cam for $80-$90 now. You can get a HD flip cam for $130- $140 on Amazon.com. You can plug that right into your computer, and see high resolution video. It’s not super fast frames per second or anything, but it’s more than good enough so that you can see what you’re doing wrong and go from there.

Alright. So Ben, great question. Enjoyed talking about it. Hopefully this has been helpful to you. If you’d like any more feedback, please let me know. Good luck as you continue working on your game.

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Alright. Before we get to our second question on today’s show, I want to remind you all about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis podcast. That is Championship Tennis Tours. You can find them online at tennistours.com. They’re a supporter of the Essential Tennis podcast, which I really appreciate. To show your appreciation for their support of myself and the show, go check them out.

And if you’re going to be going to a professional tennis event anytime in the future and you want tickets, travel arrangements, hotel accommodations, etc. definitely check them out first. See if they have tickets for the event that you’re going to. If they do, when you make your purchase, use the promotional code “essential” and you’ll get a discount off your purchase. Plus, it will show them that you’re a listener of the show, and you really appreciate their support. Which will help keep them on as a sponsor of the Essential Tennis podcast!

Alright. Our last question on today’s show comes to us from Vidron in Croatia. Vidron, [laughter] I’m really sorry. I’m probably killing your name, so I’ll go ahead and just apologize up front. I’m not sure what the correct pronunciation is, so please forgive me. Vidron is a 3.5 player. Again, in Crotia. He wrote and said:

“The thing that I want to get advice about is an experiment that I tried on my serve. In trying to develop an aggressive and more powerful first serve while maintaining my second serve at its current level, I decided to change my toss, and throw the ball a bit lower and significantly more in front of my body to create more pace and more spin. But more pace mainly.

Unfortunately, this experiment led to losing my consistency on my second serve, and producing a whole lot more double faults than before. So my question is this: Is it recommendable to have 2 different types of service toss? Is it even possible considering the problems I’ve developed? And keeping in mind all those problems that pro-players often have with only 1 type of ball toss in various parts of their careers.”

Alright. So Vidron, do I recommend 2 totally different ball tosses and techniques? Because that’s what that would mean. Basically, when you put your toss in a totally different spot, it changes the whole rest of your serve as well. You can’t just make a big change to your toss and use the same technique. Everything else has to change to accommodate that new location.

So we’re really talking about a completely different swing. Short answer is no. I definitely don’t recommend that you do that. Mostly for the sake of consistency and unity in your game. And it would mean twice as much work for you to continually try to improve 2 totally different serves than if you used basically the same toss, and small changes in your technique between your first and second serve. If you tossed in essentially the same place between your first and second serve, you could keep things like your rhythm; the rotation of your body; your contact point.

Again, relatively speaking, all of those things could remain the same, whereas this big change that you’re talking about much lower and much farther in front, all of those big technique elements have to be different. So we’re talking about trying to develop 2 completely different service techniques. It doubles your work as a player as you try to continue to become better and better on the court.

I give this same answer when players ask me about something like maybe developing both the one handed and two handed back hand. Something else that I don’t recommend for the same reason: it’s 2 totally different swings, and it’s just that much more to work on and try to improve as you try to get yourself to be a better player. The benefit almost never outweighs all that extra work.

This is especially since most of you listening I assume–probably over 90% of you listening–are just recreational players, people that have a regular job during the day. Or maybe you guys are students, and you have school during the day. You might have a couple of hours a week to practice and play. Maybe 2-4 hours at the most. You guys want to be smart about how you use your time. When you start really spreading out your asset of time, especially on the practice court as you try to improve your technique, doing things like this is just not something that I recommend.

Now this is unless your previous toss Vidron, if your previous toss was really high and it as far behind you, where you were constantly leaning backwards to get to the toss and it was super high so it kind of busted up your rhythm, and you had to wait for a long time to wait for the ball to get down. Unless that was the case, your change isn’t going to lead towards better technique anyway. It sounds to me like you’re trying to toss it low and kind of right in front of you, into the court a couple of feet, and probably making contact lower. [laughter] Basically, exactly what I was describing in my first topic today when I talked about bad habits on service technique. It sounds to me like you were trying to put it low right in front of you so you could make a low contact point and hit the ball just straight out in front of you into the box with a slightly open face to make sure that it makes it over the net.

This is really common technique, but it’s definitely not a very athletic motion. It’s not going to give you a lot of potential as far as developing a higher level serve in the future.

Now a lot of players are very consistent hitting the ball this way. But it’s not a technique that I like. Again, because it’s just not very good as far as fundamental use of your body goes for creating pace and spin, etc. It’s not going to leave you a lot of room for growth.

Now there’s one exception to all of this. I’ve told you that I don’t like your idea. I don’t like you having 2 totally different motions and tosses in general. I also don’t like the idea of the specific technique you’re talking about. However, there’s one exception to both of those things.

Previously, you were really struggling with your first serve, and weren’t making it very often. This big toss change made an immediate improvement. Vidron has told us already that this hasn’t worked out very well for him, but this is more for the rest of you listening. If that big toss change makes an immediate improvement and ultimately you’re happy with the result, and in the long run, you’re going to continue being happy with it, then fine. Go ahead and do it! Go ahead and make the change, and have fun playing. I don’t think it’s the best idea, and I also don’t think it’s the best technique.

But if you see an immediate improvement in confidence and consistency, and you’re happy with where it’s at and you don’t mind sacrificing some long-term potential for short-term success, then go ahead and do it. I want to make sure that I don’t get too rigid and too strict about my views with technique. I know I have the tendency to do that: both on the podcast and in person.

Ultimately, all of you listening, it should be your goal to enjoy the game. To have fun. If you can make a quick, immediate improvement–even if it’s not the best technique and you’re going to be OK with the fact that it’s not the best technique and it might limit you as far as potential a little down the road–go ahead and do it. But just keep in mind, it’s not going to be my #1 suggestion! My #1 suggestion is always to be to learn the best possible technique, and work hard at it, and give yourself the best ceiling, your best change, to continue making yourself a better tennis player. I’m always going to be upfront with you guys about what changes will lead to the most long-term benefits, basically.

It’s always going to be the direction that I come at with my answers to your questions on this show. Those of you who comes out and work with me in person at a clinic, etc. That’s always going to be my perspective, because that’s just the way I think. I don’t like shortcuts in general. [laughter] And tennis is no exception! I want you guys to learn the best possible technique. I just want you guys to know where I’m coming at in regards to that.

So Vidron, thank you very much for your question. Hopefully you’ve got a good idea of what I recommend here. I’m sorry that your change didn’t work out very well for you in general. Yes, I do recommend that you have some kind of unity between your first and second serve. They should be slightly different techniques, but I don’t recommend that you use totally different serves for those 2.

If you have a video camera, feel free to send me an e-mail with a video clip showing me your serve, and I’d be happy to give you some input. Some further input as far as specific technique is concerned.

But thank you very much for being a listener in Croatia. I appreciate it. Hopefully this episode has been a help to you!

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Alright. That bring Episode #136 of the Essential Tennis podcast to a close. Thank you very much for joining me on today’s show. I hope that you enjoyed it, and that it’s been informative and helpful to you.

And in wrapping up today, I wanted to remind you all about the different social networks that Essential Tennis is on. You can get updates on Twitter at Twitter.com slash Essential Tennis. You can also check out the Facebook fan page at Facebook.com slash Essential Tennis. And you can look at the instructional videos that I have posted at YouTube.com slash Essential Tennis. So go check all 3 of those pages out. Lots of good stuff in all 3.

And if you’d like to be friends with me on Facebook, you can check out my personal account as well, which is Facebook.com slash Ian Westermann. Westermann is with 2 n’s at the end, and Ian I A N. I’d love to be friends with you guys! [laughter] As long as you don’t mind seeing my personal thoughts instead of just my tennis. I don’t really post anything about tennis in that. Just personal updates.

Alright. That brings today’s show to a close. Again, thank you guys so much for listening, for downloading the show. I really appreciate it. I’ll be talking to you guys next week in the next installment in the Essential Tennis podcast. Until then, take care, and good luck with your tennis.

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Welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast! If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether its technique, strategy, equipment, or the mental game, tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.

And now, here’s Ian!

Ian Westermann: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast. Your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to you by Tennis Tours dot com.

Thank you very much for joining me today, I appreciate that you took the time to download today’s show and give it a listen; I really hope that its gonna be helpful to you and give you some ideas and thoughts on how you can improve your tennis. That’s always my #1 goal here on the show. Before I get started with today’s questions and answers, I want to thank a couple people in New York City. I was there this past Thurs. and Fri.

I was there at the matches on Fri. I got to see the Brian Brothers win their 3rd US Open Grand Slam title. So I saw the men’s final and I also both women’s semifinals, it was a great time. I want to send a special thank you out to [inaudible] on the forums at essential tennis.com. H e was nice enough to show me around the city on Thurs., and he went to the matches with me on Fri., and gave me a place to sleep! [laughter] So that I really appreciate that [inaudible] , I’m in your debt for helping me out and showing me around.

Also a shout out to Erin and Ben, two other listeners that I met up with while I was there. It was great to meet both of you guys and speak with both of you, and I really appreciate having both of you as a listener in New York City, it was a great time. And today the final sets of play, after the rain, today is Mon., and unfortunately was put on hold due to weather yesterday. So I’m looking forward to seeing that match I know the rest of you guys are as well.

Alright let’s go ahead and get to the show. Sit back; relax; and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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Alright. let’s get to our 1st question, and it comes to us from Masa in Bloomington, Indiana, Masa’s a 4.0 level player, and he wrote and said:

“Federer and Nadal are no doubt two of the best players in tennis history. Both of them have a straight arm forehand. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a straight arm forehand or a bent arm forehand? Which one do you prefer teaching? Do you recommend this technique to average club players?”

Alright. Masa, great question, and this is actually something that I have gone over in the blog that I write–at essential tennis dot com– you guys can go check that out. I don’t update it as frequently as I would like. The podcast definitely takes precedence for me every week, but I do have an article in there about the straight arm versus bent arm forehand, and basically gonna give the exact same thoughts and opinions right here on the show. So which one do I prefer or which one do I recommend?

The answer to that is neither. I don’t care which one you use, and the reason for that is, this isn’t an essential part of becoming a good tennis player, and that’s for the title for my website comes from is, the way that I teach and the things that I teach to my students and to you guys every week when I do the show are things that, in my opinion, are essential. They’re necessary, they’re things that you better be pretty good at or you’re not going to improve your game, and I like to focus on just the basics, essentially.

And how do I know that this isn’t an essential: straight arm versus bent arm, how do I know that if you pick the wrong one, you’re gonna limit yourself, as far as your ability and your potential as a tennis player? Well, because, players in the top fraction of 1% in the world–and that’s what we’re talking about here: you’re talking about Nadal, Federer, I’m gonna use another player as an example as well–we’re talking about guys that aren’t in the top 1%, they’re probably in the top 1% of the top 1% of tennis players in the entire world.

When you look at the USTA –which I think has something like 30,000,000 members, I might be totally off on that, but I believe that’s just what I heard recently– millions and millions of members that are a part of the USTA, the United States Tennis Association, and you look at the spread of players From…I think its from 4.5 and above, we’re into your top 10% of tennis players in the United States, 4.5 and above. 5.0 and above, we’re talking about the top couple percentage points–I think its around 4%, 3 or 4%– is 5.0 and above.

Now, myself as a 5.0 player am not even close, not anywhere close to a professional player. And I’m talking, when I say professional player, I mean somebody who’s 500 in the world. A player at that level is gonna crush me. I’d be happy to get a couple of games off of a player that’s 500 in the world. And that player is no where near a Federer- or Nadal-type player who’s in the top 5 or–I guess for those two–top 3 consistently over the last 4 or 5 years.

So we’re talking about a ridiculous level of player, and the way that I know that what we’re talking about here–straight arm versus bent arm–is not essential is because when you look at the top 5 players in the world, you see different players using different styles. As you pointed out, Masa, Nadal and Federer both use a straight arm style forehand. Djokovic –who’s playing in the US Open final today, just beat Federer–uses a bent arm forehand. Now, some of you out there might be saying, ‘Whoa, yeah. But Djokovic… He’s only got’…what does he have, one grand slam? Well, I probably should have looked that up before the show started.

I’m terrible at stats,but clearly, he doesn’t have nearly the success that Federer and Nadal have had. So I’m sure that some of you guys out there are saying, ‘Well, obviously straight arm forehand must better then right? Nadal and Federer both use it; they both routinely crush Djokovic, or maybe not crush him but at the very least they certainly have a winning record. So maybe straight arm forehand is better.’ No. That doesn’t mean that its any better or any worse, it just means that its his style of swing. Its what has come naturally to him, and so that’s what he uses. He has a double bend in his forehand.

So because these top level players use different strokes, and are still…not different strokes but different styles, and are still able to get to the top 5 in the world should tell you that its not essential which one you use. These players are able to become extremely good using either one, and so its not going to make you or break you either way.

So basically, when it comes to my teaching, I allow my students to feel for themselves, something like this, and then use what comes naturally to them.

I have actually… Thinking back… I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually talked about a straight arm versus a bent arm while teaching a lesson. Never. Not once. And its not because I don’t know about it, and its not because I don’t understand it, trust me, I know plenty about what is being taught online and not online. I keep up to date with these things; the article I wrote on straight arm versus bent arm was at least a year ago–its been a while now– but its not something that’s going to bump up the level of your game dramatically as opposed to other things, and we’re going to talk about what other things I have in mind in just a minute.

But the only time that I will instruct a player to do something that doesn’t come naturally is when its something that is just wrong; and its clearly technique that’s not going to serve them very well in the future, its gonna hold them back in the long run. There are times that all of us have natural tendencies that aren’t good technique, and it just won’t make sense to continue using that type of swing, or that type of footwork, or whatever.

So I’m not saying that you guys should go out there and do whatever comes natural to you, and that’s gonna be the best thing for you, because that’s not true. You guys need to make sure that you understand the fundamentals and that you’re performing them correctly, but straight arm versus bent arm is not a fundamental, and its something that you guys can become very good players with either way, and I think your time is better off spent focusing on things that have a much bigger bearing in how good of a player you become.

So some things that I think are essential to your forehand, Masa, I’ve got 5 different things here that you should focus on, because they’re extremely important. #1: the rotation of your body This is something that many recreational players are very poor at, and these are things that are going to sound really obvious to you guys, especially to those of you that spend a lot of time researching on the internet, watching a lot of slow motion video, and filling your heads with instruction from a dozen different online tennis instructors.

You’re gonna get a lot of stuff thrown at you, and everybody always says, ‘This is super important; this is going to give you a world class forehand. Make sure that you do this…’ and you’ll hear 10 different pros online say that, and tell you 10 different things, and it can be kind of confusing.

Well, let me submit to you guys that these five things I’m going to list here are most important and you need to focus on these things. Anything outside of that until you become a 4 or 5 player really is not that important, because when it comes down to it, the mistakes that recreational players make that truly hold them back are the basic things. So, again, #1: rotation of the body. Turning yourself to the side, or at least your core and your upper body and then rotating yourself back forward again past through the point of contact.

#2: correct racket path for whatever type of your shot you’re trying to hit. Whether you’re trying to drive the ball relatively flat, or hit slice, or hit with topspin, it takes a different path of the racket, and you need to know–and when I say, ‘path of the racket’ that includes the drop of the racket (if you’re hitting top spin or drive), the lifting of the racket, the follow through position, the direction that the racket moves is extremely important, and you have to be good at performing that consistently, correctly, over and over again.

#3: correct angle of the racket face at contact. When you guys miss a shot long or into the net, very often its due to the racket face being a little bit too open or a little bit too closed, and that’s simply means facing too upwards or too downwards, extremely important. Correct use of the kinetic chain–for those of you that are looking for more power or more spin on your ground strokes, using the kinetic chain correctly is huge, and that simply means how you coordinate the use of your body, and I’ve talked about that on several podcasts. I’m not going to go in depth on that right now.

And #5: consistently swinging at a speed that’s confident, but not out of your control. Some of you guys listening consistently swing at a tentative pace, and you swing scared, and you don’t make a very confident swing at the ball. That’s not good.

Others of you hit very aggressively over and over again, and make a lot of unforced errors. You make some really sweet shots too, but you make a lot of mistakes, and so being able to swing at a consistent and confident tempo or speed is extremely important. If you put all 5 of those things together: rotation of the body, path of the racket, angle of the racket face, kinetic chain, and the speed of your swing, you put all 5 of those things together, and do them all correctly consistently, and you’re gonna be and awesome tennis player.

And along the way, whether or not you use a bent arm or a straight arm on your forehand, I don’t care [laughter], and its not going to make a huge difference one way or the other. You guys need to focus on what’s most important to your game, and that’s how you’re gonna make the biggest changes and the biggest improvements. And last thing I’m going to say on this topic before we move on, those 5 things that I mentioned, every pro does those things. Not every pro uses a straight arm forehand; not every pro uses a bent arm forehand; that’s a style decision or a natural choice or path that each player has decided to take.

But those 5 things that I just mentioned, every pro does great and every pro does consistently, over and over again. So its these things that are essential that you guys need to spend the most amount of time trying to copy and improve. Leave the stylistic things alone, and if you guys aren’t sure which is which, send me an email, and I’ll be happy to help you guys out. So Masa, hopefully that makes sense to you, and hopefully that’s a helpful answer to your question. Great question, and good luck continuing to improve that forehand.

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Alright. Before we get going with our next question from a listener, I want to remind you guys about the official sponsor of the essential tennis podcast, and that is Championship Tennis Tours. You guys can find them at TennisTours.com. And they supply tickets and travel packages and accommodations to professional tennis tournaments all over the world. Whether you’re into the WTA or the ATP, either way, these guys have tickets and packages to a lot of different tournaments all over the world.

Again, just about any place that you want to go. All the grand slams, they have travel packages for, so thinking ahead to next season, if you guys are planning any trips out of the country or in your own country–I know I’ve got listeners all over the place.

So if you guys want to go to any of the grand slams or a lot of the ATP 1000 series tournaments, definitely check their website out and when you checkout, make sure to use the promotional code essential, and you’ll receive a discount off your purchase, and show Championship Tennis Tours that you appreciate their support of the essential tennis podcast. So, thank you Championship Tennis Tours. I appreciate your sponsorship, and all of you guys listening, please go. At least check them out and see what they have to offer.

Alright next up we got some questions from Chris in Minnesota. He’s a 2.5 player; two different questions here, his 1st one is:

‘In my matches I have a tendency to start a set focused, but then start to lose focus when the score gets to around 2 to 2 in the set, which allows my opponent to take the set easily from there. Any suggestions on how to keep my mind in the match and not be distracted by things like planes flying overhead, the people playing on other courts, and the pretty girls playing softball in the nearby field?’

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Well Chris here, a very honest guy, I appreciate that. And, trust me I’m right there with you man. It can be really tough to keep your concentration, and this is a very very common mistake and its a very costly mistake.

As you’ve pointed out, you kind of get into a set, you–I don’t know if its just sometimes we get bored, we lose interest, or maybe we just get tired of keeping our mental focus up. It’s very common to kind of let your guard down, but you absolutely must keep your focus on the task at hand if you want to be successful, and the task at hand very simply is winning. We’re there to win the match; that’s why you’re competing, is to see if you’re gonna win or lose against whatever opponent that you happen to be playing that day.

And the things that you have to be focused on to make sure that you are most successful and that you do win the most amount of matches are things like what tactics that your opponent is using, your opponent’s strengths, their weaknesses, what they’re good at what they’re bad at, and you need to be conscious of your own game that day as well.

What are you doing well? What are you not doing well? And basically what I just outlined is tactics or strategy in a nutshell. You got to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, you have to realize what tactics that your opponent is using and then build your own game plan around all of that information, and if you’re thinking about the girls playing softball next to the tennis courts, trust me. You’re not going to be aware of any of those things, and the chances of you winning that match decrease a ton, because you’re no longer focusing on what’s most important, and what’s ultimately going to decide the outcome of the match.

So how can you improve your match focus? I’ve got 3 different suggestions for you, and this is a really good topic, Chris and I’m looking forward to talking about it all 3 of these different suggestions. #1: have a set routine. Have a set pre-point group of actions that get you into a rhythm and keep your concentration.

I think a good player to watch as an example of this is Maria Sharapova, she has a very distinct, and very set routine between points. She’ll walk back towards the back wall of the court, or back curtain, or whatever you want to call it, back fence, of the court after every single point. As she does that her head is down, she’s looking at her strings, and at this point she gathering her concentration and her focus, she also thinking about what tactics she wants to use during the next point.

After she’s done thinking and gathering her concentration, she typically does a couple little hops to get herself moving physically, and get herself pumped up and set. She’ll turn around and then go and get either into her ready position to return serve, or she’ll go into her serve routine, which is a completely different set of actions. You guys all know what her serve routine looks like –I’ve seen Djokovic make fun of it [laughter] a couple years ago. Maybe not necessarily make fun of it, but copy it at least.

So she has two different routines depending on whether she’s serving or returning and she repeats this before every point. Whether she won or lost the previous point, she will always repeat this routine, and this can help you keep your focus. It does not have to be complicated. In fact , the simpler the better, and I want you to come up with something like this Chris and stick to it and make it a habit.

I think my favorite part–well, my 2 favorite parts of what Sharapova does–are #1: she turns her back to the court, kind of shuts everything out behind her, and then she puts her eyes down, and she looks her strings, and she’ll kind of mess with her strings. Its not because her strings have to be straight on the next point. I n fact, if you look at them they’re usually straight to begin with, so it has nothing to do with straightening her strings. I t’s just a habit that she does to keep her eyes down so that they don’t wonder and she doesn’t get distracted by anything else happening around the court.

So come up with a couple of things like that and start to use them between every single point, and a big part of that is developing something that you can keep your eyes on inside the court at all times.

So that’s suggestion #1 Chris. Have a set routine, and I really suggest that you come up with one. Again, don’t make it complicated make it simple, and make a part of that keeping your eyes inside the court.

#2: suggestion #2 for you, make it a personal challenge, and this is my favorite one.

[laughter] Personally, I’m extremely highly competitive, and so I love competing–not only against other people–but myself as well. I love giving myself challenges and then trying to achieve them and I love seeing how well I can do something.

And so, make a commitment to yourself that you will not be distracted. Period. Make that decision before your matches start and tell yourself, ‘ You know what. No matter what happens today, I’m going to keep my mind on what’s important; I’m going keep my focus on the match, and kind of make it a game out of it…”

And times in which there’s something super obvious that’s happening and would be easy to pay attention to beside your match, whenever things like that happen when I’m playing–and like you were talking about you give the 3 examples: have a plane flying overhead, I’ve definitely fallen for that one. People playing on other courts, I think everybody listening has definitely taken their focus off of their own match and watched their teammates or other random people playing. Pretty girls [laughter] that’s not one that I’m faced with very often but it can definitely be a distraction.

Other random things like yelling, kids maybe running around playing something else, maybe a crying baby, maybe somebody talking on a cell phone loudly right next to your court. Whenever there’s something super obvious like that, maybe even teammates of my opponent actually heckling me and actually cheering against me loudly at times that are maybe not even appropriate.

The more obvious and the more potentially distracting something can be, I just kind of smile at those things, and I think about–it can be really easy for me to pay attention to that instead, and to take my focus off of the match, and I kind of almost make a game out of it and I’ll smile and say ‘wow. That can be a really easy thing for me to pay attention to and to break my focus, but you know what? I’m not gonna do it, and I’m gonna be that tough of a player today, and I enjoy trying to be as tough as possible.’

So take this approach to every mental challenge that you’re faced with on the court and great athletes have an attitude always that they will overcome their obstacles, no matter what they happen to be. Whether its a physical challenge, or a mental challenge, a focus or concentration challenge–a quote we’re talking about, ‘no matter what, get in the habit of making it a personal challenge for yourself to overcome things like this, and do it. Start doing it consistently.’

Thirdly, on how to focus better and keep your concentration, keep practicing; and this is just like any other skill in your tennis game. Great mental toughness does not happen overnight nor does it happen the very first time that you try to do your best at it; its a learned skill, and you have to keep working at it.

So the first time you go and try my suggestions, let’s say you make it until 3 to 3 in the set, and then you lose your focus and lose the set. That’s better. Keep practicing. Keep working on it. Keep putting yourself in competitive situations like this as often as possible, so that you can practice your mental toughness, and practice putting into play these suggestions that I’m giving you. Using the routine, making it a personal challenge to do a better job of staying focused, go continue practicing, doing these things, and you will keep getting better at it. So Chris, great question. Hopefully this is helpful to you.

Alright last question for today’s show, and this one also comes to us from Chris in Minnesota. He wrote and said:

‘I’m a 2.5 player, maybe a little better, playing in a 3.0 singles league. I have a pretty limited match experience and I’m stilling working on a more consistent game. So I’m losing a lot of matches. In the long run, I know that getting a lot of match experience will help me, but in the short term, how do I avoid falling into a losing mindset?”

That’s a good question Chris, and it can be really tough to lose over and over again and not get dejected and not get frustrated and not start thinking, ‘wow, is this really worth it? I’m working really hard at this, but I’m still not winning my matches…’ and it seems like the main focus should be on your win and loss record, right? After all, isn’t that really the top measure of your improvement is whether or not you’re winning or losing your matches?

And it seems like that can be logical, but please don’t do that. Please don’t make it your top priority, and a big reason for that is–you know what, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you can always lose a tennis match, and it doesn’t matter how good you play, there’s always going to be somebody out there who’s better than you, and so you can’t put all of your eggs in that basket of, ‘wow. If I lose today’s match, then I’m a failure.’

Because the reality really could be that you could play at 100% of your potential wherever you’re at right now, and whoever you played that day was just plain better. For whatever reason; and so you can’t always use that as the ultimate judge of your success. So what you should focus on instead–I’ve got 5 different things here that I want you to focus on instead of your win and loss record.

#1: the level of your strokes and the shots that you hit in general. If you see improvement consistently, and I’m not talking about huge improvements, but little things here and there, if your technique is getting better, and the resulting shots that you’re hitting are getting better, even if you lose, be happy about that. Be satisfied that you are seeing marked improvement in your strokes and in the shots that you hit. #2: the level of your concentration and mental toughness, which we just talked about.

A specific area of that in your last question, if you’re able to start being more focused and compete better due to your concentration, be happy about that. Even if you lose your matches, you can be satisfied with the fact that you did a better job with your focus and concentration.

#3: your general comfort level competing when it counts. This is a big one; and this is something that a lot of recreational tennis players start off really poor at because they didn’t grow up playing other sports, and they didn’t grow up in competitive environments and it takes time to get comfortable competing in general. If you start feeling more at ease and more confident and in your competitive matches you’re just able to do things more naturally without worrying about it so much, then be happy about that.

#4: your ability to use tactics and strategy effectively. This is something that again if you didn’t grow up in a competitive environment and playing other sports doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people. If you’re starting to be able to put together game plans more effectively, even just simple things–picking out your opponents weaknesses and making them hit more of shots that they don’t like. If you can do that more consistently then be happy about that.

#5: lastly, if your speed, quickness around the court, and your general fitness level becomes better as you continue to compete more and practice longer or harder, be happy about that. So every time you notice small improvements in any of these areas, be happy, and be satisfied, and celebrate a little bit. Give yourself a little bit of a pat on the back and say, ‘You know what? Nice job.’ Even if you lose those matches, tennis is complicated and all of the things that I just listed, all five of those areas, they all have to be improved to reach your full potential.

Don’t expect to get a little better at any one of those areas, and immediately just win all of your matches [laughter], or even win a lot more matches that you’re playing.

So take an incremental approach to it, don’t take an all-or-nothing attitude or mindset and say to yourself, ‘Wow. If I don’t win today’s match, I’m really just not getting any better.’ You have to look at it at kind of a macro level and look at all the small individual pieces that you’re trying to improve and remember back, ‘Wow, remember three months ago when

I wasn’t even able to play 3 sets without getting really tired, or 3 months ago, that would have totally passed me by. I wouldn’t have even noticed that my opponent’s backhand was weaker. I wouldn’t have been able to put together that strategy…’ Take little successes like that and be content with that for now. Now several years from now, I do want you to be winning more matches for sure.

I want you to be playing at a higher level and so all of these little things they should start adding up, and they should start resulting in better overall results, but until that starts happening, be patient, and don’t be too hard on yourself. If your win-loss record is not very impressive, appreciate those baby steps, one small step at a time, and make that your #1 focus, and be happy that you’re making those improvements.

So Chris, thanks a lot for both of your questions. Hopefully these were helpful to you, that’s always my goal of course, is to put information out there that’s going to help you guys get better. So go implement these things and report back. I’d be curious to hear how its able to work out for you, and hopefully these suggestions are able to help you improve the level of your play. So Chris thanks again, and good luck with everything that you’re trying to improve.

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Alright. That does it for episode #135 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for listening to today’s show. I really appreciate having you as a listener, and as I wrap things up here I’m going to try to reward those of you who have listened through to the end of the show here a little bit.

I’m gonna be launching a whole new section of Essential Tennis.com very soon. Within the next couple weeks, probably two or three weeks. And its going to feature a new show. I’m going to be doing a whole other hour of instructional podcast audio every single week. Its going to also include video, and its also going to include a live chat room, and you guys are going to be able to ask me questions or follow up questions on whatever I’m talking about live as I record the show.

And I’m giving away more than I wanted to already, but this section’s gonna be available within the next couple weeks. If you would like a sneak peak at this new service, I’ve actually been doing it kind of secretly for the last–I’ve already done 10 episodes of this new show, just for members of the forum at Essential Tennis.com. So there’s something that you guys missed out on if you’re not a member of the forums already, definitely check out the forums at Essential Tennis.com.

Well, if you would like to join them and get a sneak peak and get a discounted rate– for those of you who contact me this week, send me an email at ian@essentialtennis.com, tell me you’re interested in my secret new show, and I will tell you guys how you can sign up and get a discounted rate before I make it available across the entire site and start really promoting it to everybody, and start making a big deal about it here on the regular podcast, and across Essential Tennis.com as well. So send me an email: ian@essentialtennis.com, I’ll tell you guys how you can get more information about that and how you can sign up and this is really going to be geared mostly toward you guys who have really been helped by the show and would like even more.

I’m going to start off at a full hour extra of instructional audio per week, and I’m probably going to increase it from there and start doing a couple hours a week and so you guys can really start getting even more out of the website and getting even more instructional feedback and more personalized feedback as well, since this going to be a membership type deal. Only members are going to be able to ask me questions to talk about on this show.

Alright so that does it for this week. Thanks again everybody very much for your time. Thank you for listening, and I’ll be talking to you guys again next week. Until then, take care, and good luck with your tennis.

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Announcer: Welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast. If you love tennis and want to your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment–or the mental game– tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.

And now, here’s Ian!

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Ian: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast: your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com and tennisexpress .com.

Thank you very much for joining me on today’s episode of the Essential Tennis podcast. Hopefully you guys notice a big difference in the audio quality. As I’m speaking to you, I’ve upgraded my recording equipment again. It’s just another effort to try and make this show sound as professional as possible.

And I’d like to thank Cliff Ravenscraft. He helped me figure out what was the best equipment for me to purchase. I’m really happy with how it’s sounding. He is the host of the podcast Answer Man podcast, all about being a successful podcaster So those of you listening who might be interested in being a podcaster yourself, or maybe you already are and you’d like some better equipment or tips on how to make your show sound better, definitely check out Cliff’s show. That’s at podcastanswerman.com. Thanks a lot for your help, Cliff.

Alright, we’ve got 3 great questions to talk about today on the show. So sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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Alright. Let’s go ahead and get started with our first questions. Our first 2 questions today are going to come to us from Megan in New Zealand. Her first question is as follows:

“Hi, I was listening to the confidence vs. arrogance/expectation podcast and it raised a question for me. Dr. Cohn talked about those tennis players that don’t have a lot of self-respect that tend to look for respect from others; for example, their coach. This would have to be one of my biggest problems! I was wondering, what if you build up your self-respect and learn to have confidence in your playing ability, but that still doesn’t get rid of the need to not disappoint your coach?”

Megan, that’s a great question. This is definitely an important thing to work on. It’s something that I have very often struggled with in college. I had a hard time mentally in college. Looking back, that was due to several different reasons that I won’t get into right now. But my eyes would very often travel up to the viewing area during points, during matches. Very often in between every point. I can remember having stretches of time where I was just constantly looking up there. Basically, I wanted to see who my audience was. I was curious who had shown up to watch that day’s watch. Were my teammates watching? Was my coach watching? And if I’m honest with myself, I know that I wanted to check out and see, alright. Who can I impress? Who’s watching that I can really work hard for, and hustle hard for? If I hit a really awesome shot on this point, who’s going to see that?

Basically like what you’re talking about, you don’t want to disappoint your coach. And this is a recipe for a disaster. It takes your focus off of what is really important during your match. Your #1 task at hand in any match is to win. That’s what you’re trying to accomplish every time you go out there and compete. When your focus and your attention is constantly being drawn to others, you are constantly thinking about other people and what they’re going to think about you. Whether or not you’re going to win this match, or even how much you win it by.

You put that pressure on yourself to try to make other people happy. You stop thinking about tactics. You stop paying attention to patterns that are happening right in front of you in the match that you’re playing. You stop focusing on your game plan, and you’re not very emotionally controlled either. It takes your focus off of controlling all of those things. Your emotions, your tactics, your game plan. [laughter] And obviously that’s not a good thing!

When your focus gets taken off all of those things and you start thinking about somebody else instead, and you start worrying about what they’re going to think about you, that’s just not going to be very helpful to you. You’re not going to be as successful that way. As if you keep your focus on the task at hand, and on exactly what’s happening right in front of you.

And don’t badly about this, Megan. Like I said, this is something I had a really hard time with in college. You’ll see professional players that struggle with this as well. It’s not uncommon at all to see professional players on TV constantly looking up to their box for emotional support during touch matches. Not that it’s a bad thing to want support and encouragement from those around you.

But when you’re literally in the middle of your match and have just finished a tough point, and you’re looking up towards your coach, your teammates, your friends with that whiny look on your face. It’s like, “Oh, come on! What’s going on here?” You’re basically looking to other people to help try to get you out of the situation. That’s not a good sign of mental toughness. The players who are most mentally tough that you see on TV, they are constantly focused, and they’re not allowing other people around them to break their concentration.

So I have 2 suggestions for you moving forward. To try and improve this. One is a suggestion on how to improve it, and the other one is just kind of a thought. Something I want you to think about as you continue working at this.

First of all, I do want you to continue trying to develop your on court focus skills. Keep working hard at competing for yourself, and maintaining your concentration as you do compete. I want you to realize that this isn’t an all or nothing type skill. You will have to continue working on it. It’s not one of those things where either you get it or you don’t, [laughter] and it’s like a red light, green light kind of thing. And you’re either succeeding or you’re not. It’s a sliding scale. So even though you may feel like you’ve gotten better at this since you’ve listened to that podcast with Dr. Cohn.

And those of you who haven’t heard that episode, sorry I don’t have the episode number right in front of me, but Dr. Cohn. That’s C O H N. He’s been on the show 3-4 times. He’s a mental toughness expert. Really good guest. For those of you who have troubles with your mental game, I highly recommend you go to the podcast archives and download his shows.

But the one that Megan’s talking about, I think that’s only–I want to say a month or maybe 2 months old at the most. However much time since you’ve heard that show that you’ve been working on this, you can still get better, Megan. Don’t think that this subject is something that you’ve conquered and there’s no way that you can make this any better. I’ve got 3 tips for you to continue improving your on court focus, and keeping your attention off of other stuff.

First of all, develop a solid routine to repeat between points. This is something that professional players reference all the time in their post-match interviews. They talk about their pre-points routine, or their routine in between points. This is typically things like–I think one of the best examples of this is Maria Sherapova. She has a very distinct routine between points. She’ll walk back towards the back wall of the court while looking down at her strings. She’ll think to herself what she wants to do in the next point. She kind of has this little hop up and down that signifies: OK, I’m ready. Let’s go! Then she’ll walk up to the baseline, and either prepare for the routine of serve, or do her service routine, which is also very distinct. [laughter]

Ever since Novak [inaudible] copied it and kind of made fun of it a little bit, I think everybody’s aware of it. But anyway, she’s a good example of anybody who has a really solid pre-point routine, and she sticks to it perfectly ever single time. That’s a great way to always calm yourself down. Do the same thing between every point, something familiar, and that can help you maintain your concentration. You can use that time to refocus your concentration on exactly what’s happening right in front of you, and continue to push out whatever thoughts you might have during the match. About your coach, or about whoever might be watching, etc.

#2. Learn to ignore everything going on outside of your court. This can be really hard. There’s a lot of distractions that could potentially tear our concentration away from the match. It could be other matches going on around us. Could be family or friends that are just outside the court watching us. Could be teammates or coach watching us. It could be something stupid, like a kid running around and screaming who’s being distracting. Could be lots of stuff. Somebody listening to a radio. Maybe not even close to the courts, but maybe you’re hearing music. Or maybe people playing a different sport outside the courts. Could be anything.

Any of you who have competed at tennis for any length of time know that some days are easier than others to maintain your focus. Sometimes it just seems like whatever’s going on outside the court, for whatever reason that day, your attention is getting sucked away from the match, and that’s a terrible thing as far as being successful competitively. So continue to work on that, Megan.

And #3 make all of this a habit through repetition. Again, these are things that you need to practice. It’s not an all or nothing kind of skill. So keep working at it and you’ll keep developing the skill, and keep getting better and better at it.

Lastly, I just want to say: it’s OK to want to make your coach happy. Don’t think that you should be indifferent about how your coach feels about you. [laughter] I want you to work hard for your coach and do whatever he/she tells you to do as far as during practice time, whatever. Exercises or drills. I mean, always work 100%. From that standpoint, I do want you to work hard at making your coach happy, and gaining his or her approval. Where it crosses the line is when you actually go out and compete for your coach, and that’s your main motivation is you really want to make your coach happy with you during competition.

So don’t think that wanting to make your coach happy is bad in general. I just want you to be clear about why you’re competing, and I want you to play for yourself out there, and like you were saying, have that self-respect and [laughter] I guess love yourself enough to be playing for yourself. Know that ultimately, you’re doing this for your enjoyment, and it’s exciting to you, and you love the sport. Those are all reasons why you should be competing–not just to make your coach happy.

But wanting to make your coach happy in general is fine. Just be careful about using it as your primary motivation. Using your coach or other people as a crutch during matches. You need to stay mentally tough out there. Fight for yourself and play to win! For yourself. That’s how I want you to think about it.

So Megan, great question. Hopefully this is helpful to you. I’m not sports psychologist like Dr. Cohn is [laughter] but those are my thoughts, so I hope that’s helpful to you. Thanks very much for being a listener. We’ll be getting to your next question in just a second.

First I want to remind you guys about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis podcast. That is tennistours.com. That is the URL for championship tennis tours. I’m going to be with them in NY this coming week. I’m going to be there Thurs. and Fri. I’m going to be at the matches on Fri. That party that Will Hamilton of Fuzzy Yellow Balls is going to be at it. I’m going to be there. And championship tennis tours is putting it on. It’s going to be Thurs. evening. This coming Thurs. is the 9th. That’s going to be at the W Hotel in Times Square. If you guys want to go that, you can either purchase a ticket through Championship Tennis Tours and you’ll receive a free invitation. Or send me an e-mail and maybe I can hook you up. [laughter]

So shoot me an e-mail: ian@essentialtennis.com. If you’re going to be at the Open, or you’re just in NYC, send me an e-mail, and maybe I can get you into that party with myself and Will, and Championship Tennis Tours. But definitely check them out for any tournaments you might be traveling to, whether here in the U.S. or even abroad in other parts of the world. They’ve got great prices, great customer service. Please show them some thanks for being a supporter of the Essential Tennis podcast. I appreciate their sponsorship very much.

Alright. Our second question again comes from Megan in New Zealand. She wrote, and has a question about serving tactics. She said:

“Hi, Ian. I have a question of tactics in the serve. When you serve and you’ve picked out your target and you’re aiming for it, what do you if your serve goes wide, or the ball hits the net, and you have to hit your second serve? Do you stick with your previous target? Or do you change it for the element of surprise? Or does it depend on how far into the match you are? Or the the type of opponent you’re playing? Etc. Thanks, Megan.”

Well Megan, this totally depends on the opponents, and your strengths and weaknesses as well. As do all tactical decisions. They’re all subjective. They all depend on exactly what’s going on in each individual match that you’re playing. As with all parts of tennis, strategy, there’s lots of general rules that you should usually follow. But there will always be circumstances from match to match where you might have to break some of those rules to give yourself a certain advantage based on what your strengths are, and what your opponent’s weaknesses are. This is one of those kind of situations.

There a few things that you should be taking into consideration. I’m going to list 3 different tactical things that you need to keep in mind as you decide where you should be aiming that second serve specifically. This is probably a pretty common thought for most people, because you pick out. Let’s say you’re serving down the T for your first serve. Maybe you just miss it by a couple of inches, and so your opponent obviously know where you were trying to aim that first serve. It’s possible, maybe they’re going to try to get a jump on that second serve, and maybe assume that you’re going to serve there again. Or maybe they’re going to assume you will serve some place else and try to mix it up. It depends on who you’re playing. So there’s 3 different criteria, Megan, that I want you to look at as you try to decide where you should aim that second serve.

#1 Does your opponent have an obvious weakness? As an example: maybe their backhand is much weaker than their forehand. If that’s the case, do not be bashful about going to that spot over and over again. I really can’t stress this enough. I think too often, recreational players think that good tactics, to be a good person at strategy, they have to be sneaky and trick, and always mixing things up, and never doing the same thing twice in a row. That is definitely not true.

I can tell you guys honestly that I have definitely gone whole matches, either singles or doubles–probably at least 1 of each instance–where I’ve only served to 1 place to my opponent. Because their backhand was that much weaker. I’m left handed and so my spin serve naturally curves out to the right handed player’s backhand. I know for sure in double matches, I’ve gone whole matches to certain returners. Either on the [inaudible] side or the ad side, only serving to one place. Because I found out early that it worked. I found out that they were uncomfortable with their back hand. So just exploit it! [laughter] Just go there over and over again. [laughter] Don’t feel like that’s mean. That’s just good tactics.

And don’t feel like you have to change it up necessarily. If they really have a weaker side, then just keep going to the well. And make them have to make a big adjustment, either in the technique that they’re using, or make them have to run around it. Or make them have to try a different type of shot to be successful, or something. But that’s one example of choosing the same target, and that can be really good tactics. If you really have a good reason for going to that same place over and over again. An example of that would be a big weakness. So that’s #1.

Criteria or thing to think about to consider #2: Do you have a pattern of play that works well for you over and over again? Even if it’s not a major weakness of your opponent, a lot of times a certain direction of serve for you followed by another shot can be really successful. I’ll give you another personal example of that. Serving and volleying out wide on the ad side in singles has been kind of a go to play for me on hard courts I have a harder time [laughter] Serving and volleying is a lot tougher on clay!

But where I played tennis in college, our courts were really fast hard courts. As I mentioned a second ago, I’m left handed. Usually my opponent’s back hand was their weaker side. So serving and volleying to my opponent’s back hand, I used to have a really good spin serve outside, as most lefties do, on the ad sign. I would come in behind that pretty often. And you know what? Even if it was my opponent’s strength, their back hand, I would still throw it back there pretty often, even on a second serve.

Megan was talking about second serves. I always had a confident second serve. I would very often throw it in there as a change of pace and to keep my opponent guessing and off guard, even on a second serve. So don’t be bashful about using patterns like that over and over again. If you know it’s a big strength of yours and you’re confident in it, even if it’s the same serve that you tried the first serve.

In this example, I served out wide aggressively, and made those 2-3 aggressive first steps into the baseline, making it really obvious I was serving and volleying. I would very often just go right back to it for my second serve. Hit a confident spin serve out wide, and come right in behind it. That just shows your opponent that you’re not afraid. You know what you’re good at, and you’re going for it. And you’re playing confidently. That’s a message that, if you can send that to your opponent on a regular basis, you know what? Even if they hit a back hand return winner on me, I don’t feel badly about throwing that in there once in awhile. Because it’s really forcing my opponent to stay on their toes tactically. I force them to have to go for that big return serve.

Whereas if I just kind of spun it into the middle of the box and sat back at the baseline, they’re feeling no pressure to even have to hit a great shot. So think about that, Megan. What patterns or specific placements and combinations of shots do you usually use to the best effect? That’s something to keep in mind when you think about where to aim that second serve.

Thirdly, have you spent a lot of time developing your aim and your accuracy and your confidence of your second serve. You need to ask yourself this. All of you listening need to ask yourself this, because many of you who are listening to me right now don’t have the confidence to actually aim your second serve, and go for a target, and hit to a specific place. Many of you don’t feel like your second serve is good enough to try to aim it, and as a result, you’re happy to just hit the box in general. You’re aiming for very general targets. If that’s the case, then I suggest that you stick with whatever your most confident placement is on that second serve to avoid double faults. In which case, your decision is kind of made for you on that second serve. So if you go for a big first serve and you miss it, then your choice is pretty easy [laughter] on the second serve.

If you don’t have a very confident second serve, you’re going to find yourself going ahead and going with whatever the highest percentage placement is, and highest percentage type of serve is for you on that second serve. Even if it’s not the best tactical decision. In other words, if your most confident second serve is just kind of a slow spin serve right in the middle of the box, and your opponent is running around hitting all 4 hands and crushing them, maybe you want to try for a little more on your second serve. But if you haven’t spent a lot of time working on it, and you end up just double faulting as a result when you try to hit to their back hand on purpose, then unfortunately you’re going to have to go ahead and go with whatever generic target is most comfortable for you on that second serve.

So let me encourage you to work hard at developing a confident second serve. It’s really important. You should be able to aim it and place it. If you can’t do that confidently already, start working on it, because it can be a really big tactical advantage for you during a match.

Alright. So Megan, that’s it. Hopefully that was helpful to you. I want to thank you very much for both of your questions that I used in today’s show. I appreciate you being a listener of the podcast. It’s always great to hear from listeners in other parts of the world outside of the U.S. So it was exciting to hear from you. Hopefully today’s show is helpful to you. Keep working hard on your game.

Before we get to our last question today, I just want to remind you about the second supporter of the Essential Tennis podcast. That is Tennis Express. You can get free shipping for any order over $75 from Tennis Express. When you use the promotional code ‘essential’ when you check out, you will support the Essential Tennis podcast by showing Tennis Express your appreciate for helping me out. This is the last week in their trial period. We’re going to be reviewing how many purchases got made in the last 4 wks. Sometime this week. Hopefully, we’re able to work something out for the future, and I’m going to fight really hard to get you some discounts and special offers, and things like that. So thank you for your help as I continue to try to secure them as an advertiser on the show.

So tennisexpress.com and again, promotional code: essential. I really hope that I work things out with them moving forwards, both for the podcast, and for you as well.

With that, let’s go ahead and move on to our last question. This comes to us from Tim in Dayton, Ohio. He’s a 3.0 player. He wrote and said:

“My question relates to judging if a ball is going out or not when I’m playing at the net. It happens so fast that I don’t much time and I often hit that balls that may have gone out.”

So he’s got two main questions here. #1. Does the chance of making good contact affect your decision on close calls? What he means by that I assume, is if you can reach a volley easily, does that have any bearing on whether or not you let it go if you think it’s going to be a close call. Then the second question is:

“What cues should I be watching to help make this decision? Top spin, etc. Do you have any drills to help with this? I know this is basic stuff, but I think it’s a good topic.”

I agree, Tim. It is a good topic. I like basic stuff! [laughter] At the core of a lot of my teaching is just fundamental things. This is one of those topics that probably hasn’t been discussed a whole lot around the internet. It’s how to get better at judging whether or not passing shots, lobs, are going in or not once you do approach the net. I think that’s probably one of the biggest areas that tennis players are worried about or apprehensive that can a lot of times keep recreational players from going to the net as much as they should be.

So to answer you questions Tim #1, he was asking about if it’s an easier shot to make a play at if I can reach it and it’s a relatively easy volley, does that have any effect on my decision to let it go or not? Yes. Absolutely.

An easy volley, if I’m receiving volley from my opponent, or if they’re way out of position–or even if it’s a medium to tougher skill level volley and my opponent is way out of position of the shot I hit I previously, I’ll definitely play a volley that I know might be going out if I’m not 100% sure. If I’m 80% sure that the ball is going out, or maybe if I’m only 30-40% sure that the ball is going out.

And it’s not like I’m running these calculations in my head while I’m playing. I’m just using the numbers as an example here. Even if I’m a little bit suspicious that the ball is going out, or I’m pretty sure, either way. If I have an easy volley, or my opponent is out of position, I’ll just go ahead and play it and play a really high percentage easy volley to the middle of the court if they’re out of position.

Or if it’s a really easy shot, that I’m in good position for, and it may or may not be going out–I’m not positive–I’ll just go ahead and crush it and put it away. If it is that easy. Because it’s just terrible to set up a point well. You hit all those shots that it took to get up to the net. Maybe you even have your opponent really on the run and they’re in a tough spot. [laughter] And it’s really deflating to go through all of that work and then watch their shot go right by your nose, and turn it out to watch it land out, and it lands inside the lane. [laughter] That’s really frustrating. So if it is an easy shot, I will definitely play it. Even if I’m pretty sure it’s going out.

Second question, he was asking about cues to be watching for to make this decision of letting the ball go or not. Spin is definitely a big one. You need to watch the shape of the shot and the direction of swing. If your opponent makes a very aggressive upward swing, and you see that the ball is curving in the air, that’s a shot that you’re going to want to play more often than a shot that’s traveling straight, and that they’ve either sliced or hit flat. Straight towards you. A slice, or a flat type shot, is going to travel farther given that it’s the same speed as a top spin shot. So you definitely want to watch for heavy top spin. It can be easy to be fooled by that, so watch for a top spin swing, and watch for a top spin ball path, which is going to be one that’s curving back down towards the court.

#2. Cleanness of contact from opponent. Especially at a top spin type spin. When they shank or hit off center a little bit, you should be able to hear that and on a top spin swing, very often when your opponent hits it a bit off center, even if it’s really aggressive and they’ve hit it super hard, that will add more spin and cause a really aggressive curve back down into the court. So listen for that.

Lastly, speed and height. Really obvious things, but those are probably the 2 most important factors that you should be looking at. If the ball is traveling really fast and it’s 4 ft. on top of the net, unless there’s a lot of spin on it, it’s probably going to be going too far. Again, really fast is a relative statement. A lot of spin is also a relative term. When it comes down to it, you’re going to have to use your own judgment for this. There’s no set rule about which balls you let go and which you let play. This is something that you’re going just going to have to build your judgment up on. It takes a lot of repetition and a lot of experience.

Drills to help you improve your judgment, Tim, definitely play as many competitive volley games as possible. I’ve got 2 main suggestions for that. 1.) You can just start at the service line and feed straight ahead to a base line partner who’s across from you back on the base line on the other side. And just play it out. I would set a rule that there’s no winners on either of your first 2 shots. So you make that feed. Your opponent can’t hit a clean winner off of their first ground stroke, and you can’t hit a winner off of your first volley either. Otherwise you just restart the point again. That way you at least get into the points and you at least 2-3 shots exchanged back and forth every single point. It just makes for a little bit better, more productive practice. So you can play points out that way. Play a game up to 10 and then trade sides, or just stay at the net if you want to keep working on it.

Or you can both start on the baseline, and have one of you feed a short shot, a shot that lands in front of the service line on purpose. The other person comes forward, hits an approach shot, and then you guys play it out. That’s a way you can work on your approach shot and your volleys in your judgment up at the net. There’s 2 ideas for you for competitive gives. Do it in a competitive environment. Cooperative hitting can be helpful as well. But in cooperative hitting, you’re just trying to get everything back and be as consistent and keep the rally going as long as possible. In competitive games, you’re actually trying to win the point, so it puts that pressure on you to make the right decision. I think that’s where you’re really going to develop your skills at judging where the ball’s going exactly the fastest, and the best.

So in wrapping up, as I said earlier, there’s no real secret to this, Tim. It takes a lot of experience, and a lot of repetition. It’s something that can both be developed and lost. It’s a learned skill. I can tell you that [laughter] my judgment is not even close to what it used to be! I definitely used to be able to tell within several inches where the ball was going to land across a wide variety of speeds, heights, and amounts of spin. [laughter]

My judgment’s way off now. When I go and play a full-speed point and I’m at the net, and I have my opponent hit a 5.0 level heavy top spin passing shot, I definitely let shots go now that land well inside the line. My eyes just aren’t adjusted anymore to the same speed of shot that they used to be when I was playing competitively on a regular bases. It’s something you can lose, and it’s also something that you can develop. So don’t be frustrated about it. The more you work on it, the better you’re going to get at it. Keep working hard at it, and I know that you can improve.

Tim, thanks very much for being a listener. Thanks for your great question. Hopefully this was helpful to you. And good luck with your game! Keep working hard.

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Alright. That’s brings Episode #134 of the Essential Tennis podcast to a close. Thank you very much for taking the time to download today’s show and to listen to it. I really appreciate your support just by being a listener and listening to the show. I hope it’s been helpful to you. It’s always my goal when I record this show. And I hope you guys are enjoying the new audio.

Maybe it’s not a big difference for some of you, but for others it probably will be. I’m kind of a techie. I used to be a sound technician way back in high school in college, so it’s something I enjoy tinkering with, audio quality in general. So I finally made the plunge and purchased some serious equipment. [laughter] And I’m really with the results so far. I hope you –I hope it makes the show more enjoyable for you! It should definitely sound of much higher quality. I’m really excited about that.

Alright. That does it for this week. Shoot me an e-mail if you are going to be NY this coming week, Thurs. or Fri. I’d love to meet up some of you guys. I’ll be going to [inaudible] on that Fri. Again, Ian@essentialtennis.com. I’m really looking forward to that trip. I’ll tell you about it next week.

Until then, take care. Thanks everybody, and good luck with your tennis.

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Narrator: Welcome to the essential tennis podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you! Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment, or the mental game, tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here is Ian!

Ian: Hi and welcome to the essential tennis podcast. Your place for free, expert’s tennis instruction that can truely help you improver your game. Today’s episode of the essential podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com and tennisexpress.com. Well as always, thank your very much for joining me on today’s episode of the podcast I appreciate the fact that you downloaded today’s show and you’re giving it a listen. I really believe that the content in today’s episode is going to be helpful to you. It’s going to help you improve your game and make you a better player.

Before we–ah–get started, I’m really excited about the US Open starting today. Today is Mon., the 30th, and things are kicking off in just a couple of hours up there in New York City. Make sure that you guys check out both, the WTA blog and the ATP Tour news blog at essentialtennis.com. Charles does a great job with the ATP blog and he does daily updates during the Grand Slams. Dana is our writer at the WTA blog. He doesn’t have as much time to do updates, but he does an excellent job over there as well, letting you guys know what’s going on, and who’s winning and who’s not at the Open. So make sure to check that out all during this week and next week during the US Open. Alright, let’s go ahead and get down to business. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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Alright, let’s go ahead and get started with our first topic on today’s show, and it’s a really good one, an interesting one, something that we haven’t talked about on the podcast before, and something that’s probably a little bit more detailed and a little bit more in depth than what you guys will guess, and today’s question, our first question comes to us from [inaudible] in Southern California. He wrote and said, “What are better ways to counter tennis wild balls and bounces during a match? What I mean by wild balls are different slices, miss hits, windy shots, wild bounces on clay, on lines, and on grass etc. It takes me 10 plus shots to get used to different slices and other wild balls. These 10 plus errors are the difference between a win or a loss. Please address the following: #1 backspin shots, #2 side spin, miss hits, line shots on clay–ah–grass, hard etc. #5 uneven bounces on clay, grass, hard courts etc. and then lastly, windy shots that move side to side.”

So, [inaudible] is wondering how exactly to deal with shots that don’t bounce normal.– ha, I guess, ah–when you, when you hit it or when a ball bounces on your side of the court and it doesn’t bounce, you know, straightforward,– ah–it doesn’t, it doesn’t maintain its current trajectory and it makes a goofy bounce in some way or another, based on those many different criteria that [inaudible] mentioned, it can sometimes be really tricky and difficult to to be consistent. It’s not an easy thing to deal with.

Now, I’m going to talk about 3 tennis skills that nobody teaches. I don’t see a lot of instruction about this online. I definitely don’t hear tennis professionals teaching it very much–um–I definitely have seen it in some places, but it’s not a common theme, it’s not your typical topic that you guys are usually going to see talked about in tennis videos or, definitely not in a clinic, if you guys go to a tennis club and you’re looking for instruction. These are not topics that you’re going to hear covered, and this is kind of, this is one of the reasons why I really enjoy the podcast, because while the podcast, you know the audio format might not lend itself perfectly towards technique all the time or strategy, – you know, a lot of you guys are more visual learners and I appreciate that – but what the audio format is great for is things like this, that you guys can learn more about and maybe learn about it for the first time, and go and implement these things into your game. Now these 3 things, it doesn’t mean that some of you don’t need to really work on these things just because they’re simple

They’re not complicated, but you guys will definitely need to work on some of these areas, in order to improve your game.

So, these 3 skills that aren’t taught very often: #1 is judgment, and judgment quite simply is the ability to tell where the ball is going after it’s bounced. Or I guess in general, we could really expand that to be talking about volleys or overheads, you know, other shots that you take out of the air. You know, we could definitely expand the definition to include that as well. So it’s the general ability to tell where exactly the ball is going. And the resulting thing that you guys should be doing once you can tell where it’s going is placing your body in the correct spot on the court so that you’re able to make an effective swing at the ball, so that you’re able to hit the best shot possible.

And everybody has different amounts of natural judgment. And you guys, some of you guys I’m sure, are probably thinking to yourselves, “Well yeah, doh, I mean obviously we need to be able to tell where the ball is going, otherwise we’re going to have a hard time getting it back,” but let me tell you: many of you guys need to work on this.

And you don’t have large amounts of natural talent, most of us don’t have huge amounts of talent to draw from, where you know, we just kind of pick things up automatically without thinking about it first or being aware of it. Most of us are not like that. Some of you guys are and God bless you. You probably don’t have to think about this. Others of you, are going to have to actually make this a conscious effort at first to get better at judging exactly where the ball is going and it’s something that can be worked on.

Now, I have 2 examples here of judgment gone wrong. So, specific examples of what happens when players aren’t the best at judging exactly where the ball is going. And many of you guys will be able to identify with both of these examples right away.

Example #1 would be repeatedly jamming yourself or positioning yourself too close to the ball on either you forehand or your backhand ground stroke. This is something that I see very commonly, both in my instruction in person where I work, and when I watch recreational players in general, when people send me videos to look at of their stokes. I very often see players position themselves too close to the ball. And it’s not something that happens once in a while, it’s a repeatable pattern over and over again. And so their judgment is off. They’re just not seeing correctly where the ball is going and they’re not judging correctly where the ball is in relationship – I’m sorry, where their body is – in relationship to the ball.

A second example of judgment gone wrong would be repeatedly hitting the ball up higher than what your strike zone is, over and over again. And I also see this very commonly, and you guys know what I’m talking about: you’re on the base line in the middle of a single’s or a double’s point, the ball comes over to your side, bounces, you prepare yourself, you get ready to swing, you start to make that swing – that forehand or backhand stroke – and before you know it, the ball is up shoulder height or maybe even higher and you’re making contact well above where your comfort zone is.

Maybe you even identified that it was going to bounce high and you backed up a little bit, but it was still way too high and it became a very difficult shot. Those of you, especially who have one-handed backhands, know what I’m talking about. When the ball is just a little high outside of your strike zone, it becomes much more difficult to hit an effective shot back.

So, any time this happens, it’s the result of not judging the ball correctly. Any time you position yourself too close to the ball, it’s a matter of not judging the ball correctly, and so you have to improve your judgment. That’s skill #1, that nobody really talks about or teaches.

Skill #2: anticipation, having a strong sense of what’s coming next before it happens. And this is something, again, natural athletes just kind of get. And they’re always trying to think one or two steps ahead, one or two plays or shots ahead in a point or in a match. They’re trying to anticipate what their opponent is going to do next to try to beat them. And this is something that you guys can develop, it’s not an easy thing. It’s not something like a stroke where you can say, “Alright, this is how you do it,” and you know–shadow swing and practice it first and then go out and try it with a ball. And there’s not quite the clean progression that you would normally have for a lot of tennis skills, but it’s something that you guys can develop.

And examples of anticipation would be: having a strong sense or a good guess of what shot placement or shot direction that your opponent is going to hit next. Where are they going to aim their next shot? If you’re good at anticipation, you’ve got a pretty good idea based on their tendencies, and their strengths, and the patterns that they’ve shown you thus far in the match. From shot to shot you’re going to have a pretty good sense of what’s happening next. It doesn’t mean you’re always going to be right. Obviously, your opponent could always throw something in there that is a little bit different and catch you off guard, but people who are good at anticipation very often have a high success rate of telling what’s coming next.

And there’s even certain professional players that are known for this. Andy Murray is kind of known as having good anticipation and when you guys watch him on TV, you’ll very often see him start to run before the ball is hit by his opponent, which is part of what makes him cover the court so well.

Example #2 of good anticipation would be– um, I lost my spot. Oh, here we go– shot selection of your opponent. And what I mean by shot selection is not where they’re aiming, but the type of shot. As an example, a drive, a lob, a slice shot, or a top spin– you know, shot–all examples of different types of shots, that your opponent could hit. Taking out the accuracy, or the aim, or the placement of the shot, they could also choose to hit different types of shots. And that’s another type of anticipation.

And then thirdly, lastly, realizing that the ball is about to hit a line on your side of the court, or it’s about to hit the net court, or there’s a strong possibility that’s it’s about to bounce off the net, or it’s some other spot on the court that you frequently get a bad bounce off of. When you have good anticipation you can start to pick up on things like that before it even happens. And again, you might not always be 100% correct. And you might say, “wow, it looks like it’s about to hit the line,” and it might not. Maybe it’ll land inside the line and not touch it at all, or maybe it’ll land outside the line and you’re off by a couple of inches. But my point is that players that are good at anticipating, they have these kinds of awarenesses and thoughts on their mind and they start trying to pick up on these types of things before they happen, so that they can make a good adjustment to be more successful getting the ball back. So that’s skill #2 out of 3: anticipation.

And skill #3 that’s very infrequently taught is, skills at reading what your opponent is doing. And this is similar to judgment and also it’s similar to anticipation, but it’s a little bit different.

Let me explain what I mean: Basically by reading, I’m talking about understanding what’s coming next based on outside influences to the ball. And an example of what I mean by this is the direction of your opponent’s racquet swing, would be one example. So, if they’re starting with their racquet high, and as they make contact the racquet is coming down, it means they’re going to be putting back spin on the ball. It’s also pretty likely that it’s going to be short. It’s probably going to be a drop shot. Not necessarily; they could also knife through it and hit a slice deep in the court as well, but it’s something that you would be looking for. And again, this is very akin to anticipation, but I’m going to put this in a separate classification of reading what your opponent is doing and what your opponent is doing to the ball. Again, close to anticipation, but I don’t think quite the same thing.

Another example of reading would be the angle of your opponent’s strings. When you guys play doubles or if you’re playing singles and you come to the net a lot and you’re worried about the lob, very often you can see the lob coming, based on what your opponent is doing with their strings. Very often, players telegraph what they’re doing next by what they do with their racquet face. And so if you see your opponent running towards the ball with their racquet open already, the ball’s going to be going up in the air, and unless they chop down at it aggressively – it is possible they could hit some kind of power slice, but look for the ball to pop up. That would be an example of reading what your opponent is doing.

#3, the sound that contact makes coming off of your opponent’s racquet. This is a big one that I almost never hear anybody talking about, and this is why it’s so important at a professional tennis event. The chair umpire and event staff is so being quiet is so important. It’s such a big deal, because professional players get a lot of information based on what it sounds like when their opponent hits the ball. And this is something that fans often times don’t understand, and outsiders to tennis definitely don’t understand, and they think it’s kind of a silly thing that everybody has to be quiet.

But truthfully, you can tell a lot about what’s coming your way by the sound that the ball makes coming off the racquet. A cleanly hit shot makes a very different sound from a shot that hits a little bit off center on the racquet, and definitely a lot off center. If it hits, you know, they just purely shank it, that’s good information. You need to know that, because the bounce is going to be very different and the flight of the ball is going to be very different than a cleanly hit shot.

And you can also hear different types of spin. I guarantee you guys, that blindfolded I could tell you guys if a ball is hit with drive, heavy top spin, or a slice, or hit softly, or hit off center. All of those things I can tell you guys, what’s happening coming off the racquet without even looking. I can tell you what type of swing it was, how aggressive it was, all those types of pieces of information, you can tell just by listening carefully and picking out what different sounds mean as far as what’s happening with the ball.

And #4, a last example of reading skills: and that would be the wind. Being able to read what the ball is going to do based on the wind. Both, the direction of the wind and the strength of the wind; both really important factors when trying to tell exactly what’s coming your way.

So, there you have it: judgment, anticipation, and reading. Again, these are really closely related, but slightly different skills, and when you put all of these things together, you’ll have the ability to deal with any possible shot to the best of your ability.

That doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be easy. It doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be in a comfortable place and it’s going to be no problem of getting the ball back. But you’re going to give yourself the best chance to be successful – even when the ball is hit awkwardly to you – by doing all of these different things.

Now, it’s so important, because you can’t even use whatever athletic gifts you have, unless you read and anticipate and judge the ball well. You could have the world’s greatest forehand, but if you consistently misjudge where the ball is going, and you don’t react to the ball until after it’s been hit every time and you’re not anticipating, and if you’re poor at reading what your opponent is doing and what the wind is doing and how clean a contact they made etc., if you’re not doing any of those three things well, you’re rarely going to be in the right spot to hit your best shot.

And so you kind of waste that kind of ability to hit great tennis shots. So, unless you can do those things and know what’s coming, you’re really kind of doing yourself a disservice. And so, it’s really improve at all three of these areas.

Before I move on and finish this topic up, I want to remind you guys about the official sponsor of the essential tennis podcast, and that is Championship Tennis Tours. You can find them at tennistours.com, they specialize in tennis tickets and travel packages to professional tennis events. Definitely go check them out!

They’ve got great prices, and you can get a discount by using the promotional code essential when you check out. You get a discount off of any purchase over 175 dollars. They’ve got tickets to most of the big tournaments around the world including the Grand Slams. It’s not too late to get tickets for the US Open. You can buy individual tickets or packages as well.

So go check them out. And hopefully, I’ll get to meet up with some of you guys next week. I plan on being in New York the 2nd week of the tournament, so go check out tennistours.com and use the promotional code essential. I thank them very much for their support of the essential tennis podcast.

Alright, let’s go ahead and move on and [inaudible] asked me to address several specific instances of what he called wild bounces or wild tennis shots. And now that I’ve gone over the three main ways that you guys are going to best position yourselves and be in the best possible place to hit a good tennis shot, let’s go ahead and go back and talk about each of his

[speaker] specific circumstances and real briefly I’m going to take what I talked about already and apply it to those specific occurrences around the tennis court, so that you guys can tell exactly which part of what I talked about are going to apply to these different circumstances.

So #1: backspin shots. He asked me to address backspin shots. Well, this is all about reading the swing, first of all. If you can read that he is coming down at the ball and that the racquet is open, you know that he is going to be hitting with backspin. And so you should be able to anticipate that a backspin shot is coming based on reading the swing. So based on those two things, you should be able to judge exactly how much spin is on the ball, and then move forwards accordingly, because a backspin shot is going to cause the ball to kind of check up, to bounce, and maybe even go backwards a little bit. And based on exactly how aggressive the swing is, you should be able to read and anticipate exactly how much the bounce is going to be altered. And that’s how you change your game. Based on that you judge where to go and you position yourself accordingly. So that’s kind of working down all three steps there, when your opponent hits you a backspin shot.

Sidespin, same thing: read the swing, anticipate what’s coming, and judge how much spin is on the ball and move accordingly. And depending on what direction your opponent’s racquet moves, you know that the ball is going to curve the other direction in one way or another. Or it’s going to not necessarily curve, but bounce and skip to the right or to the left. You’ll be able to tell based on what direction your racquet, I’m sorry, your opponent’s racquet is moving.

#3, miss hit shots. This is all about listening. And I put that under reading. You’ll be able to tell when it’s miss hit based on the sound and also watching closely. The ball won’t come off the racquet the way it was supposed to when your opponent hits it when they miss hit the shot.

Now as far as what’s going to happen specifically with the ball, they are all different. This is tough. This is a really tough shot, when your opponent shanks the ball, you’re going to get a variety of different bounces and resulting shots from the other side of the court and so this is tough to judge and know exactly where to go. The best thing I can tell you is, try to visually see the spin on the ball.

Very often you can actually see what direction the ball is spinning and you can see it already starting the curve as it travels through the air, and so you can get a read on which direction it’s going to bounce when it hits the court. This is a tough one, but if you pay close attention both, by listening and watching, you should be able to get a decent jump and position yourself correctly.

Fourth one: line shots. This is tough, too. And you’re going to be able to best deal with these by anticipating when it’s about to hit the line, or when it’s most likely to hit the line. And you can adjust the timing of your swing accordingly. Usually when the ball hits a line, it kind of skips, it comes off the court a little faster than it normally does and usually a little bit lower, and so you have to start your swing a little bit sooner than you normally would to adjust for that. And this is just a tough one, because you might have a good feel for when it’s going to hit the line, but you’re not always going to be right. The line’s a small piece of court, guys. It’s not easy to tell for sure when it’s going to hit the line. So if you misjudge that and you’re off by a little bit, don’t worry about it. It’s a really tough one, but it really comes down to watching the ball carefully and anticipating when it’s about to hit the line.

Second to last one: uneven bounces on hard courts, clay courts, grass courts etc. This really comes down more than anything to quick adjustments, because you’re not always going to know when you’re going to get a bad bounce. In fact, usually, you’re not going to know. It’s going to catch you off guard. Sometimes, it’s something you can anticipate, but not usually.

So this is really more a matter of just simply your reaction time. How quickly can you react to the bad bounce? How quickly can you make an adjustment both, with your feet and with your swing? It really doesn’t go back to anticipation and reading and judgment a whole lot, because you just have very small amounts of time to make a change, and it’s almost impossible to tell for sure when you’re going to get a bad bounce. Sometimes you’ll have a good idea of when it’s going to happen, but this is another really tough situation.

And then lastly, windy shots that move side to side. This is something that you should be able to read and anticipate simply by feeling and listening, and watching the ball, and seeing exactly what’s taking place from shot to shot. Now of course, sudden gusts of wind could come about and make it difficult, and you might have to make a last second adjustment, and that can always be tough, but in general, you should be able, I mean, you know it’s a windy day, alright? The fact that it’s a windy day shouldn’t catch you off guard. That’s something that you should have felt already moving into the match.

Of course, each individual shot might be a little bit different, but there’s not going to be huge changes in direction and strength of wind, most likely. And so you should have a pretty good feel based on what side of the court you’re on, what direction the ball is probably going to move, when the wind does catch it. So, this is something that you should anticipate based on what’s already happened that day as you’ve been outside, but again can be a tricky situation.

Alright, so [inaudible] , that’s it. I could have gone a lot longer on this. I’m trying to actually get through my outline quickly, because I want to get to another question today, but really good questions and hopefully I’ve given you guys some things to think about and some things to work on, some things to be more aware of when you’re out on the courts and to watch more carefully for. If you guys can get better at judging, anticipating, and reading what’s going on around you, you will become a better tennis player. Period.

And these are things that recreational players very often either are just not aware of, or they’re aware of it and they just take it kind of for granted and they say, “well, yeah, obviously I’m supposed to try to figure out what’s coming next,” but it’s not something that they really work on and take seriously, because they feel like it’s too obvious of a thing. So if you guys do take it seriously and you really pay close attention and you work on it, you can improve your game. [inaudible] thank you for the great question, I appreciate you being a listener and hopefully, this was helpful to you. Alright.

One more question I want to get to before I wrap up today’s show – and this comes to us from Megan in New Zealand – Megan, great to have you as a listener in New Zealand, I really appreciate you listening and writing in with your question. She simply wrote, “What are the best ways to get heaps of power on your ground strokes and serve?” That’s it. Simple, straight to the point, I like it. Well, Megan, efficient and coordinated transfer of energy from the ground through your core and out through your arm and racquet head is how you’re going to make a lot of power on both, your ground strokes and on your serve.

And this is called the kinetic chain, the kinetic chain. And this is something I’ve referenced a couple of different times on the podcast. I actually did a whole podcast on it, and that was episode #41. I had a medical doctor on the show with me as my guest and we talked all about the kinetic chain and the creation of power using the body.

And the kinetic chain is basically a biological theory of how you use your body to best accelerate and create power in general. And this goes for any sports. Any sport where you’re accelerating something that you’re holding on to. So, golf, baseball, hockey, tennis, anything where power is wanted or needed, the kinetic chain is in use.

And it all starts with the legs, as they push up and pivot off of the ground and into your hips, and into your core. Now that’s where it should starts. From there, the core should rotate and turn your upper body and your shoulders and your arm. And as that happens, from there, that energy should transfer through your shoulder and arm as they rotate and accelerate the racquet towards the ball. And so there’s this push and this rotation, starting form the ground and traveling up your body and out your arm and into the ball and, I’m sorry: into the racquet, and finally transferred it into the ball. All of that must happen in the right order, and it all must be coordinated together smoothly, in order to really get as much out of a tennis swing as possible. Otherwise, your efforts and your energy will be lost, and it will wasted.

And recreational players who lack power, who try really, really hard, and – there’s a lot of you guys listening out there who are going to relate to what I’m about to say – a lot of you guys put lots of effort into swings, a forehand or a backhand or a serve. You try really hard, but the results, the resulting shot isn’t very powerful. And then you look over to the court next to you and there’s some 4 or 5 or 5.0 level players hitting and it doesn’t look like they’re even trying hard. And they’re hitting twice as hard as you, and it’s not fair. And it doesn’t seem like it should be right, because you feel like, “Whoa, I don’t understand! I’m putting all of this effort and energy into it. Why am I not getting the same results?”

And it’s because recreational players very often don’t use this method. Instead of transferring energy up through, up from the ground through their body and out their body to the racquet smoothly and coordinated, they swing as hard as they can, using only parts of their body. And usually it’s the arm and the shoulder all by itself, and they’re just using that part of their body to try to accelerate the racquet super fast. Or, they’ll use multiple parts of their body, but it’s just not smoothly coordinated or it’s in the wrong order.

And very often you guys will see players that do use their whole body pretty well. And they do try really hard, but it’s just all kind of herky-jerky and not smooth. And they just don’t look like a good athlete, when they try to hit the ball hard, everything gets really tight and abrupt. That’s one way to really kill your power, is by not being relaxed and one with your swing.

Or, it could be in the wrong order. And this is a really common thing as well, that I see when I do video analysis, is a player will accelerate their arm and their shoulder first to try to move the racquet towards the ball in a powerful way. They’ll hit the ball and then after contact is made, then their core rotates forwards. It’s like, well, what was the point of that? Your core rotated forwards, but the ball was already off the racquet, and so so they feel like, “Wow, I’m really turning my body,” but it’s a wasted motion, and their energy is not actually going into the shot. The big parts of the body, the legs and the hips and the core all need to start their rotation before the ball is even hit, and then only after the rotation has begun, should contact be made and that’s when you’re going to really transfer all of that energy into the ball.

Now, I’ve talked about… This is all talk about how your body should work together and how it should be coordinated. I haven’t talked at all about correct technique. And that’s a big part of it as well. And usually good athletes, who kind of just get the kinetic chain – and they walk out onto the court and they’re already doing it well – usually they kind of pick up on technique pretty quickly as well, and it’s something that comes kind of naturally.

Many of you listening will have to consciously and purposefully work on coordinating your body together correctly, and using the kinetic chain correctly. Some of you listening have attended some of my clinics, and you and I have worked specifically on this, to try to create a more powerful shot. You guys you know who you are, who are listening to me talk.

For those of you who haven’t worked with me personally: this can be a really tough thing to learn for the first time, especially if you’ve already been playing tennis for many years, you played when you were younger and you’re just starting to pick it up again, and also especially, if you haven’t already played a lot of different sports, where you’re trying to create power. It can be a really tough thing to learn.

So don’t be frustrated, if you’re putting a lot of energy in and not getting much out. I really encourage you guys to get a video camera and check out your technique on video, on the computer, and go frame by frame and see how your body is being used. Many of you are scared of that, but it is the best way for you guys to see exactly what you need to work on and where things are not working the way that they should.

So Megan, that’s the answer. Use the kinetic chain, coordinate your body and your efforts together smoothly and in the correct order, and that’s how you’re going to get the most out of your technique. Both, your ground strokes and your serve, that’s how you’re going to get the most power and the most spin, the best results out of your technique.

So Megan, thanks very much for your great question. Hopefully, this was helpful to you and check out podcast #41 in the archives at essentialtennis.com. Just click on podcast and then on archives and you can listen to that whole show where myself and Dr. [inaudible] talked about the kinetic chain.

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Alright, that does it for Episode # 133 of the essential tennis podcast. By the way, I’d like to point out that the podcast archives are completely free. I do ask you guys to sign up for my newsletter, but I only send that out once a week. I don’t spam you guys and all I do is tell you guys about what’s new at essentialtennis.com and then you can access every episode of the essential tennis podcast for free. It’s up to something like 70 or 80 hours of instructional audio. So, if you liked the show, go start downloading those extra shows and listen to them during the week.

One more thing I want to talk to you guys about before I wrap up today’s show, and that is Tennis Express. Now, I’ve done 2 shows where I talked about their possible sponsorship of the podcast already. I checked in with them over the weekend and I think I heard back from them on Sat. or maybe Sun., and at that point, 4 orders had been placed with the code essential. And I was disappointed by that.

At this point, there’s hundreds and even thousands of you guys out there listening. And I know a lot of you guys are new to this show, so I don’t expect you guys to go and support the show by purchasing anything at Tennis Express or anywhere else, so don’t worry about it, but I do want to just give one more pluck for this, because I was really hoping that they could become a sponsor of the show, but if more than 4 purchases don’t get made, they’re definitely not going to see the value in becoming an advertiser on the podcast.

Now, maybe the show is just not ready for that yet, and maybe my audience isn’t big enough. Trust me, I’m going to continue working on it, I’m going to keep growing the audience for this show. And so maybe it’s just a little bit too early, maybe you guys don’t appreciate me asking you guys to do that. And if that’s the case, then that’s fine, it just wasn’t meant to be. But if you do appreciate the show and you would like to see it continue to be successful and all those good things, then I’d really appreciate you guys checking out tennisexpress.com and make any size purchase, doesn’t matter how big or how small. And when you check out, use the code essential.

You won’t get a discount, but you will help me hopefully secure them as an advertiser. And we can continue to work together to get you guys some discounts in the future. Alright, that does it for this week’s show. Thanks everybody for downloading it and for giving it a listen, I appreciate it. Take care and good luck with your tennis!

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Narrator: Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game, tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here’s Ian.

Ian: Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com and tennisexpress.com.

Thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate you downloading this episode of the podcast and for listening to it. I don’t know about you guys, but I am really looking forward to the U.S. Open. I’m always excited about the Grand Slams coming around, and it’s always just an exciting time in tennis in general, but I’m hoping to make a trip up to New York City this year and I’m tentatively planning to be there September 9th, 10th and 11th. That’s the second week of the Open, that Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

If you guys are going to be around, if you’re going to watch, or if you’ll be in New York City in general, let me know. It would be cool to meet up with some of you guys and you can let me know by sending me an email to ian@essentialtennis.com. I’m probably going to try to hand out some stickers and some bracelets at the Open if [laughter] they let me. If I don’t get kicked out. Not actually inside, but just on the entrance, coming into the tournament, and I’m probably going to go watch on that Saturday the 11th. I’m going to spend a couple of days in New York City. So shoot me an email, and maybe a couple of us can get together.

Alright, let’s go ahead and get back to business. Sit back, relax [music] and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s get to our first listener question, and it comes to us from Adielo in New York City. And Adielo and I are planning on getting together during the Open so I’m definitely looking forward to that. He wrote to me and said, “Right now I’m using a kick serve on both first and second serves. The difference in my technique between the two is a much faster racket acceleration and more aggressive leg drive from the trophy pose on my first serve. The ball travels faster through the air and jumps forward much faster after the bounce compared to my second serve. My second serve travels slower through the air, but bounces higher with similar speed before and after the bounce. Both of these can reach the back fence, but at different trajectory and speed.

What differences should I be seeing between my first and second kick serves? Should I be adding pace to the second serve while landing it further from the service line for safety? Should I be trying to add more height to the bounce of my first serve? Should I add the right to left movement of an American twist serve, or is it just time to move on and add slice and kick serves to the mix?” Adielo.

That’s a really good question there, Adielo, and I want to say that first of all, excellent job developing this type of serve–this kick serve. I’m really happy that you’ve been using this and you’ve learned how to do this first. Spin is the best way to develop both consistency and confidence in your serve. Just in general, I think all too often recreational players go out and they try to figure out how to fit that big, booming, flat serve first, and that’s not the best way to go in my opinion. I think Adielo has done a great job of doing this first.

And spin is so important first of all because it gives you better margin for error. It gives you more margin for error, because you’re able to curve the ball. Just like top spin can make your ground strokes more consistent, even when you attack and try to hit the ball aggressively, hitting with more top spin or even just spin in general on your serve can make your serve more consistent even when you’re being aggressive by putting that curve into the path of the ball.

And specifically in this instance, Adielo is talking about curving the ball with top spin, with a kick serve, and that’s the best kind that you can hit as far as making the ball consistent, as far as making your serve consistent, because it causes the ball to curve back down into the box after you’ve hit it up over the top of the net. So that’s the first reason why this is really good.

The second reason is it allows you to sustain racket head speed. You don’t have to slow your swing down to still have a really high margin for error. And again, that curve is what makes it consistent, and by spinning the ball, you can still maintain a very high rate of acceleration with the racket, and that spin is going to help you stay consistent.

And the way that most players typically start off is they try to hit the ball really hard and really fast on their first serve. You guys all know where I’m going with this [laughter]. And then on the second serve the racket slows way down. The acceleration slows way down, the pace of their shot slows down, and they do that so they can be consistent. When you learn how to spin the ball on your serve you’re able to make a high percentage of your second serves without having to decelerate your swing and lower the aggressiveness of your shot. Now just because you’re hitting aggressive doesn’t mean it has to be flat. It doesn’t even mean it has to be really hard as far as the speed of the shot is concerned. Aggressive–when I say that you can still hit it aggressively, I am talking about the speed that you’re actually accelerating the racket towards the ball.

So I’m really happy that you’ve started off with the spin serve, and that’s usually what I recommend for players to learn first as they just start off with their tennis game. And if you’re listening to me right now and you don’t already have a confident second serve that’s a spin serve, a serve that you don’t really have to cut the acceleration of your racket down on, start working on that now. It’s very, very important.

Now, Adielo is already hitting a spin serve on both his first and his second serves and that’s great. That’s usually what I recommend for players to do who haven’t learned how to hit a spin serve first. Even if they already have a good flat serve is to hit a good aggressive spin serve on both their first and second serves so that they can really develop it as quickly as possible. And develop confidence and consistency in hitting it. So I’m glad that you’re doing that already, Adielo.

And now he’s asking kind of about the next step–he wants to know specific answers to questions having to do with trajectory and bounce and depth and type of spin. He’s starting to think about mixing things up. Well, once you’re able to start controlling these types of elements, and again the depth of your shot, the type of spin, the type of curve, all these types of things I want you guys to start making your choices based on your opponents. And things that you can consider are first of all, how well does your opponent read differences in the type of spin and-or bounce that you are starting to hit towards them. If the person you’re playing just has a hard time reading the differences between when you hit a kick serve or a twist serve or a slice serve, and they just don’t even know that it’s coming until it’s already bouncing, and it knocks them off balance and they have to try awkward shots, then mixing things up between your first and second serve and mixing things up just on your first serve or just on your second serve is a great idea. And altering the depth and the type of spin and all those types of things is going to be a great thing to do Adielo and everyone else listening.

If they’re able to read your spin easily and the difference between a slice serve and a kick serve doesn’t really phase them very much, and they’re able to hit either one just as comfortably, then you’re going to want to move on down the list and try to find other things that make them uncomfortable rather than mixing up the depth and the spin and all that kind of thing. Some people are–you’re going to find that it’s not very effective to try different types of things as you were describing, Adielo.

The second thing to consider–does your opponent have a much weaker side? If so, which of your serves is going to be most effective to that spot. In other words, if they have a backhand that’s much weaker than their forehand, are you able to hit your kick serve or your twist serve or your slice serve most effectively to that spot. And which one of those three serves puts them in the most defense position or makes it most uncomfortable for them to hit their weaker side back. And that’s how you’re going to choose what type of serve to hit to them and exactly how to aim it and with how much pace and how much spin, etc.

In general, you should be trying different looks and you should be mixing up your serve to give them different types of serve to see what works best, and then stick with whatever is most effective.

So basically what I’m saying, Adielo, is it’s great that you’re already starting to control these types of elements. Which one is going to work the best, in other words, more spin or more pace or a higher bounce or more curve right to left– all of those types of factors–it’s going to vary based on who you’re playing. So continue to practice mixing those things up, but as far as which one is best to use is really going to be specific based on who your opponent is and what they’re strengths and their weaknesses are.

Just two last thoughts for you here. First of all, make sure that you always use your most confident and highest percentage serve for your second serve. So whichever one of those types of serve that you’re describing is your most confident, that’s what you should be using for your second serve most of the time.

Now, as I mentioned a second ago, if you find a particular serve or placement combination that really is effective, if you’re able to do that relatively confidentally on your second serve, definitely try that and see if you can do it consistently. But in general you should not need to slow your swing down. And you described in your question that currently your second serve travels slower through the air. You said that you have much faster racket acceleration and a more aggressive leg drive on your first serve. What I think you should be working on is maintaining the drive of your legs and how aggressive your trophy pose is, and the acceleration of your racket. You should be trying to match those elements on your second serve to what you do on your first serve.

Now you change up the direction of your swing to make it be more of a spin serve based on the direction that you’re racket is traveling and how much spin you’re imparting on the ball. But I want you to use your body just as confidentally and just as aggressively on your second serve in terms of acceleration and confidence and how you’re moving your racket up towards the ball and moving your body towards the ball. I want you to try to match as closely as possible those elements between your first and your second serve. We want to have a confidence second serve. That’s very, very important.

Last thought here, since you already have good control over your spin serves, I do want you to start developing a flat serve. In fact, I would take a pretty good chunk of your practice time right now that you’re spending on serves and start developing that flat serve, rather than spend more time on mixing up different types of spins and different depths and different speeds on your spin serve. Not that that’s not important.

I do want you to spend some time on that. But at this point, if you could add into that mix a flat serve as well, a shot with very little spin that you hit at a much faster pace. It’s going to be a lower percentage serve, but one that you should start to work on to throw into your mix. Another tool in the tool belt, so to speak. Another pitch for the pitcher. We want to mix up your delivery, and by having that wildly different–I mean after hitting all of these types of spin serves, throwing in a hard flat serve is a huge difference. And so if you could start to throw that into the mix as well during your competitive flight, that would be a huge benefit for you, and it would be a big, big weapon.

So Adielo, keep up the great work on the spin serves. Nice job starting with that. I’m glad that you’ve been using your spin serve on both your second serve and your first serve. Now that you’ve developed it, really pay close attention to your opponents. See what they dislike the most. Use the spin serve that makes them most uncomfortable. That’s what you should be trying to do in every match. And during your practice time start to develop that flat serve as well.

And also make sure that you start developing more confidence in your second serve so that you can use your body more confidently and use the same aggressive swing you use on your first serve for your second. Just make sure that it’s a spin serve so that you maintain your consistency.

So that’s my advice. Let me know if you have anything further on that, Adielo. Thanks very much for being a listener, and I look forward to spending some time with you in New York City.

Before we get to our next question, I want to remind you guys about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast, that is Championship Tennis Tours. You can find them at tennistours.com, and you can receive a discount off your next purchase of tickets to professional tennis tournaments by using the promotional code ESSENTIAL, and you can get a discount off any purchase of $175 or more. And if you make a purchase of US Open tickets before the Open starts, you will also receive an invitation to an exclusive cocktail party in Times Square. It looks like that’s going to be Thursday, September 9th. Thursday, September 9th, is when that party is going to be. I’m going to be there. I’m making plans to be there. Hopefully [laughter] , I follow through on that.

Will of Fuzzy Yellow Balls is going to be there, and a bunch of fans of FYB and fans of Essential Tennis are going to be there. So it’s going to be a great time. You guys can hang out and watch the matches on TV there and just talk tennis.

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Alright, our next question comes to us from Chris in Wisconsin who’s a 4.0 player. Chris, good to hear from you from the motherland. [laughter] I’m from Milwaukie originally so great to have a listener there in Wisconsin. He wrote to me and said, “I normally always play with my brother who is about the same level as me, but when we play we normally never play matches; it’s just feed and rally. He tends to not feed very courteously and is always high and low and out of my strike zone so I always have to play a defensive shot just to get it in. When I feed it right to his strike zone so he can take a big whack at it, and puts the ball in play with a lot of pace. The problem is that either whether I’m feeding or he is feeding, I’m always put on the defense and he is always right on offense. He is always pulling off great shots because of this, and I’m just trying to keep it in, because I am in a defensive mode. I don’t feel like this is helping me at all. What should I do to change this? Is this benefitting me at all?”

Well Chris, good question, and I can definitely tell [laughter] that this is frustrating you. And I don’t blame you for feeling frustrated. There’s two main ways to look at this: And the first way–we’re basically going to look at this from two different points of view. And the first point of view we’re going to take a look at is the honorable tennis player’s point of view. We’re going to take the standpoint of an honest, honorable tennis player and there’s kind of an unwritten code among tennis players, and especially tennis players of a certain level–I’m just going to say upper- level players–there’s kind of a code of ethics when you’re out on the tennis courts, and I’ve got five different things here that in general, if you’re a decent person and [laughter] you’re a nice guy or a nice girl, and you’re a competitive tennis player, and again especially over a certain level, I’m not going to assign a certain level to that. But it has to do with experience level– amount of experience for sure. There’s kind of an unwritten kind of code, and I’ve put down five examples that are in that code.

#1, when warming up before a match you are expected to rally nicely [laughter]. And I once heard a comment about a certain player in college. Somebody on my team exclaimed that somebody on the other team was undefeated in warmups [laughter], meaning that they went out with kind of a competitive mentality and just beat the heck out of everything, hit really aggressively, would hit winners during warmup, you know this is the time where players on both sides are trying to get into a rhythm and have nice rallies back and forth. Some people just don’t get that. But there’s kind of an unwritten rule or there’s an expectation that during warmups you’re supposed to be courteous, you’re supposed to be consistent, and you’re not supposed to be aggressive. So there’s code-law #1.

#2, when you hit a net cord or shank winner, you put up your hand, even if you don’t mean it [laughter]. And listen, I’ve put my hand up and apologized for net cord winners even when I don’t mean it. I’m going to be honest there. Not everybody means it, but it’s the courteous thing to do.

Unwritten law #3 is that when you hit somebody with a tennis ball you also put your hand up. And you may or may not actually verbally apologize and say I’m sorry. Same thing with the net cord or with the shank winner. But you at least just put up your hand. It’s a gesture of say, you know what, my bad. And again, you may or may not mean it, but that’s not really the point–it’s just kind of a traditional part of the game. I think as tennis players we should all treat each other with respect and that doesn’t always happen out there, but again, I’m just giving you guys examples of things that in general, traditionally, tennis players will typically do, just as a courtesy. So that’s #3.

#4, when there’s a call that is super close or a player is unsure about a call, usually the benefit of the doubt is given, and the call is made good. And hopefully you guys do that. When you’re unsure of a call, I hope you guys give the benefit of the doubt to your opponent, and you don’t just call it out. And [laughter] everybody complains about that player who’s a cheater or maybe we don’t use the word cheater but they always make bad calls. And yet nobody ever says [laughter] wow, I had a close call the other day, and I called it out. And I don’t care what the other person thought. I’m just going to call it out. I wanted the point. You’ve never heard anyone admit to that, and yet everybody talks about the cheater that they played. So listen, my point here is if give somebody the benefit of the doubt. When you guys plan and you’re just not sure, or it was very, very close, practice giving them the benefit of the doubt. It’s just the honorable thing to do.

And #5, when playing a baseline game, you should hit a courtesy feed and Chris used that expression in his question. Courtesy feed means a shot that you hit to your opponent that’s easy on purpose. And this goes for cooperative rallies or competitive points, when you guys are making a feed, just to get into the points and to begin the point and you’re not playing with serves and returns you should be starting the points off with an easy shot to your opponent. And that doesn’t mean you give them a sitter, and it’s high and short and weak. But you should hit something to their strike zone so that you can get the point started.

Now this is unless you have–you’re working specifically on hitting difficult shots and then playing the point out, this should be the case. And on the other side of the coin, when you receive a courtesy feed, it’s good manners and its good etiquette to hit the ball back down the middle again. You don’t take the courtesy feed and take advantage of it and hit winners off of it, because that’s just a [laughter] crappy thing to do. It’s just taking advantage of the courtesy that your opponent showed to you. So you should hit that first ball down the middle.

If there’s a bad feed, it should be redone, and a winner off the feed should be redone. I’ve done both of those–I’ve extended both of those courtesies to my opponents during baseline games. I’ve made bad feeds and said, you know, listen, my bad, I wasn’t trying to hit that good of a shot off the feed. And I’ve also hit winners inadvertently off of a feed and said, you know, here, let’s replay that–that really wasn’t fair. You gave me an easy shot and I just put it away. That’s just not really a fair thing to do.

Now, not everybody is aware of things like this, and you should cut them a break, alright [laughter]. Chris, this goes for you and everybody else listening. Not everybody knows about these courtesies– these unwritten rules of tennis, and some people are just going to be ignorant of them. And they’re going to break all of these rules within an hour of play. And just give them a break. Don’t worry about it. Many people just don’t play very often, they’re not very experienced in tennis, they haven’t played for very long, or they’re just completely unaware of these courtesies.

Now, other players are completely aware of all of the five examples I gave, but they choose to completely ignore it. They choose to ignore the code, and they break these unwritten rules, and they even do it on purpose. Now, this is your chance to work on your mental toughness and kind of make your skin a little thicker on the court. Just let it go. Focus on what you can control. And don’t let it affect your temperament on the court. Don’t let it get you down. Don’t let it annoy you. This is just a good chance to practice, and Chris this goes for you playing against your brother. Just do your best, work on your own game, and that’s my next point.

That was standpoint #1, just purely from a kind of unwritten tennis code point of view, all of these things can be annoyances, but not everybody is aware of them, and not everybody chooses to follow them. And that’s fine. You’re going to play different people with different codes of ethics and that’s just kind of life in general. You guys are going to come across people all the time that just don’t agree with you about what is nice, what is acceptable conduct. You’re going to get cut off by that person in traffic, or that person in front of you is not going to hold the door for you, even though they know that you’re there. And that’s just how it goes. Don’t let it bother you–that’s just life. And you guys are going to be better for it if you can just ignore it and not worry about it.

Now from another perspective, I want you to think about this as well, Chris, and that is from a game improvement standpoint. Not only do you get to improve your focus and your concentration during this time with your brother, but you get to work on your positioning and defensive skills. So rather than sit back there on the baseline and sulk and have a negative attitude about it, and say this is just crap, this is totally unfair. I’m giving him easy shots on the feed. He’s taking advantage of it. When he feeds to me he’s giving me difficult feeds. I’m barely able to get into the points. Well, guess what, why don’t you play at a higher level. Learn how to move your feet a little bit better so you can take those shots and still beat him. Wouldn’t that really ultimately be the most satisfying thing is taking his crappy feeds and figuring out a way to get them back consistently and still win? That’s ultimately the attitude that I want you to come at this from, because this is good practice for you.

Now, since you guys are going out with the purpose of practicing, this isn’t–while on the one hand this isn’t the best practice, because you’re not getting into a rhythm, you’re not maintaining a rally back and forth, but on the other hand, you need to practice difficult shots too. And so if you’re really serious about improving your game, you shouldn’t spend all of your practice time with your brother; find somebody that you can rally with that is going to give you a consistent shot, that’s not going to take advantage of the feed, and somebody that you can really get the most out of your time on the court with. And then go practice with your brother too. And practice against somebody who’s purposely giving you difficult shots. Because you know what, that’s real life. Real life is that your opponents are not going to care whether or not you like it. They’re going to do whatever they can to try to win. And so this is a good thing for you to practice.

When I am running junior clinics at the club where I teach, myself and the other pros don’t let kids complain about the feed unless it’s just super blatant. I mean, we outline before baseline games start, you guys needs to hit a courtesy feed to start each point. The second shot should be down the middle. It’s understood that those first two shots should be down the middle of the court to get the rally going, and so that nobody is taking advantage of the other person as they’re trying to get a rally going. However, we don’t like to hear a lot of whining about bad feeds. And what we’ll watch kids stand there and watch the feed bounce up out of their strike zone without even moving for it and then go, “Oh, that was a bad feed. Refeed it,” and they didn’t even try to back up to let it come back down into their strike zone. Don’t be that person, because you’re not bettering yourself at all by practicing that way.

We do let kids redo feeds, but only if they make an honest effort to get to the ball and hit the best shot that they can. And if at that point the shot in the ball is still way out of their strike zone and they can’t even barely get a racket on it, then we allow them to refeed it. We say fine, that obviously wasn’t courteous. You gave it your best chance, your best shot. You know, you gave it an honest effort. Still weren’t even close to getting it in play. So go ahead and refeed it.

But in general, Chris, I want you to come at this from a game improvement standpoint. Bust your butt, try your hardest, let your partner-opponent offer to redo it if they see fit. And if they don’t, you know what, even if you complain to them and say, listen, that’s just really not nice, [laughter] they’re probably not very likely to change their mind anyway. In fact, they’re probably just going to respect you less for whining about a feed that was a little out of your strike zone, and you weren’t able to feed comfortable hitting it back.

So bottom line here, control what’s in your own hands, control what you’re able to control– that is your effort level, your hustle, your footwork, and concentrate on improving your effort level and your mental concentration and your focus. And if you go out with your brother everytime with that kind of mindset, you’re going to keep getting better and you’ll benefit from your time together. But if you let it bother you, chances are you’re not going to get a whole lot out of your time together. So work harder and keep mentally tough, and you’ll get the most out of your practice time.

So I tried to come at that from two different angles, two different perspectives. Hopefully that’s helpful to you, Chris. So, I mean, while on one hand I don’t agree with your brother for hitting tough feeds, especially if it’s on purpose–on one hand I don’t really agree with that, and that’s not something I would do if I was practicing with you, but on the other hand, not everybody is aware of courtesies like that. Not everybody knows about them, and even if he did, he might not even care, even if you talk to him about it.

So just do what you can do to continue bettering yourself, and let him do whatever he’s going to do. And if at the end of the day you feel like it’s just not worth it to you, and he’s just taking advantage of your time, then find somebody else. I’m sure there’s other people you can find to practice with. So Chris, hopefully that’s helpful to you. Send me an email. Let me know what you think. And I really appreciate you being a listener.

Before I wrap up today’s show, I just want to remind you guys about tennisexpress.com, a huge online retailer where you guys can buy any of your tennis purchases that you might need: strings, grips, rackets, bags, shoes, clothing, accessories, string machines. Anything you might want, they’ve got. And I’m working really hard to get them to be a sponsor of the podcast. They’re skeptical, and we’re just kind of doing a trial period.

So any purchases that you guys have to make this month, do me a favor, go to tennisexpress.com. They’ve got awesome prices. They have free shipping for orders over $75, and when you check out use the promotional code ESSENTIAL.

You’re not going to get a discount or free shipping off of orders less than $75 or any bonus items or anything like that, not yet anyway, but you’ll help me hopefully secure them as an advertiser here on the podcast. And then I can start working out deals for you guys. So do me a favor, go check them out. At least check them out and make whatever purchases you have this month using the promotional code ESSENTIAL. If you could do that I’d really appreciate it, and hopefully next month they’ll be back on as a sponsor. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, that does it for Episode #132 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. I want to thank you guys very much for listening to today’s show. The show is completely dedicated to you guys, the listeners, the recreational players, the weekend warriors, you guys out there fighting every week to improve your game as much as you can. This show is recorded all for you guys. And if you have a specific question that you’d like me to answer, go to essentialtennis.com, [music] click on “podcast,” click on “submit a question,” [music] and I’ll use your question here on the show. [music] Alright. That does it for this week. Thanks again everybody. Take care [music] and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [music]

[music] Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment, or the mental game, tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here’s Ian. [music]

Ian: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com and tennisexpress.com. Thank you very much for joining me today. I appreciate it. Before we get to today’s listener questions, I want to remind you guys about the doubles tactics and strategy product that I was talking about in last week’s show, episode number 130. I am releasing doubles domination today.

Today is Monday, August 16th, and it’s only gonna be up for sale until August 20th, this coming Friday. So if you’re listening to this right now, and you’re a doubles player, and it’s not yet past Friday, August 20th, go to doubles domination right now, and at least check it out. I know obviously not all of you guys are gonna purchase it, but I really strongly believe in the content in this product. You will receive over 5 and half hours of instructional doubles content having to do with tactics and strategy, a 45 page e-book, and also an hour long strategical video webinar. That only purchasers of doubles domination will be able to participate in. So go check it out. It’s all only 47 dollars, less than the price of one lesson. Pretty much any place you guys are gonna go to take tennis instruction. So go check it out: doublesdomination.com. Alright, let’s go ahead and get down to business with today’s show. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music]

Alright, let’s go ahead and get started with today’s show. And we have 2 really good listener questions to talk about. The first one comes to us from Darren in Toronto, Ontario. And Darren, I wonder if you got to go see any of the Rogers Cup this past week. Hopefully you did. That just wrapped up yesterday, good match between Federer and Murray. He wrote to me, and he’s got a question about his volleys. He said, “I have been having a lot of trouble with my volleys lately, and think I have found the problem. I think the problem is that I try to change the direction of the ball too much. For example, when I am at the net on the deuce court, and my opponent at the baseline returns one of my partner’s serve, sometimes I try and poach the ball and hit it towards the opposite net player. When I do this, however, my racket face opens up, and the ball goes [inaudible] or I simply mis-hit it. What can I do to improve my change of direction volleys. Darren.”

Well, Darren, that’s a good question. And this is a doubles question, as you guys could tell based on how he’s speaking about the returner and hitting toward the opposite net player. Let’s first discuss the merits of this specific target in your doubles play, having to do with tactics, specifically, in your doubles points. And when you’re poaching in dobles, the direction that you’re talking about trying is actually the easiest and most natural target to aim for. And he’s talking about being on the deuce side, so his partner is serving from the ad side. The returner is also on the ad side, directly in front of him. And the returner’s partner is diagonal from him on the deuce side, up at the net, over on the other side of the court.

So, if you guys can all kind of picture yourselves in Darren’s position here in this situation, playing a doubles point, when you poach from this position, you’re moving to your left to poach that cross court return of serve from the returner on the ad side of the court over on the other side. Now, as you move towards that return of serve that was struck cross court, and as you poach–and by the way, I’m really happy that you’re poaching and going for the ball. And that’s something that I should’ve added into my outline, but it just came to me just now. I’m happy you’re going for it. And a lot of times, Darren, players will poach and they’ll go for this type of shot where they’re making an aggressive play with their feet to cut off a return of serve, and miss it, and then they’ll just give up. And they’ll say, “Well, I guess I’m trying too much. I don’t want to get my partner mad at me by missing too many of these.” I’m happy that you’re asking this question, because it tells me that you’re wanting to continue doing this. And that’s great! Keep it up. You’re gonna get better at this. I’m gonna give you some drills later to be able to continue improving at it.

But when you move in this direction, when your partner is serving on the ad side and you’re on the deuce side service box and you poach to your left, hitting towards the net player on the other side of the court is actually the most natural place to hit. And the reason is, that’s the direction that your body’s momentum is heading. You’re already moving to your left, your whole body is, so is your racket, and your heading in that direction to cut off the return of serve. And so it’s most natural to just hit in that direction. Plus, it’s really a great tactical target as long as you keep it low. If you do hit toward that net player–and by the way, this is probably what I recommend the most–when players are poaching, making a move over towards their partner’s side of the court–the opposite side of the court–to cut off a return of server, this is the target that I recommend most. Right in the direction you’re moving, towards that opposing net player, and then aim it right down at his or her feet to make them have to hit a tough low volley or half volley.

I mean really, tactically speaking, you only really have two other main options. Option number one is to cut it back to your right, cross court, and hit a sharp angle back to your right in the direction you came from. And this is hitting in the opposite direction that you’re body is moving. And you’re taking a ball that’s angling to your left, and then trying to cut it off to the right; moving to your left, and then you’re trying to angle it to your right. That’s a really difficult shot. And it takes a lot of touch and a lot of concentration to hit it at just the right firmness so that it doesn’t go too wide. And it’s tough to also not mis-hit this shot and shank it, because you’re running to your left, you’re aiming over to your right, it’s tough to really keep your eyes on the ball and not look over to your right to check out your target. So, that’s a tough shot. But definitly, you know, it’s a good target if you can make it.

Your second main option would be to try to take this volley that you poached on, and try to place it between the net player and the returner on the other side of the court. And usually, when players pick this target, the volley just ends up going back to the baseline player that hit the return of serve. And the point gets reset. Meaning that the baseliner now has another chance to either hit past you or lob you. And now we’re back into a kind of baseline to baseline player rally, and we’re right back where we started: with two players on the baseline, and two players at the net. And so you kind of blow your opportunity to try to put the ball away.

So, my point is here, that it’s not your tactics that are the problem. It’s your technique. We need to improve your technique so that we can start making this shot. Because as I’ve just layed out, I think it’s a really good place for you to be aiming. When it comes to technique on volleys, in general, they’re very much over- complicated by recreational players. Usually rec players, when the ball comes towards them and they’re at the net, just simply do too much with the racket. And there’s just not as much control as there should be with the racket head and with the strings to be able to consistently aim and place the ball where it should be.

A volley, first and foremost, should be a control shot. And in doubles, it’s very often that we do want to add some extra pace to the shot. And this situation that Darren is talking about is definitely one of those. You don’t want to cross cut off a return of serve, and then hit a weak volley to the opposite net player, cause they’re just gonna, you know, if they do their job they’re gonna crush it right back at you, and you’re gonna put yourself in a tough spot. So I’m not saying that all volleys should be hit weakly, but just in general, volley technique is over complicated by recreational players.

Now, I’m gonna address the two main mistakes that you’re struggling with, Darren. And one at a time I’ll tell you what’s probably happening and what’s causing those two errors to occur. The first error that you identified was hitting off center, miss-hitting the ball, and not hitting the middle of your racket. And this all has to do with focus and concentration. And I did a whole podcast episode about this quite a while ago. It’s in the archives. And by the way, those of you who don’t know about the podcast archives, I’m sure you’ve noticed that only two episodes are available on iTunes, and only two on essentialtennis.com. If you sign up for the podcast archives on the podcast page at essentialtennis, you’ll be able to access all 130 back episodes of the Essential Tennis Podcast completely free. You’ll be asked to sign up for my newsletter, but don’t worry, it’s not spam. I just send one newsletter per week, and let you guys know what happening at essentialtennis. Once in a while I’ll send more than once a week, but very rarely. So anyway, go to the podcast archives, and check out the episode about watching the ball. Just do a page seach for “watch” or “eye”, keeping your eye on the ball. And I’d really talk about it in detail, but in general, hitting off-center is always linked back to not watching the ball carefully enough. You have to really make quality of contact a conscious thing during practice.

And I’m not gonna get into a lot of detail on it today, but just know, Darren, that you need to do a better job of making good contact. And usually there’s a pattern involved here. When you cross over to your left, and you go for that poach, next time you hit off-center and you don’t hit the ball cleanly, make a mental note of where the ball hit on your racket exactly. And if you don’t know, you’ve gotta start paying attention. And this goes for all of you guys out there. When it does hit off-center, realize it, and then try to figure out where it did hit off-center. Because very often there’s a pattern, in my experience. And a lot of times, recreational players consistently hit the same place on the racket that is not the middle. It’s not the strings. And once you figure out where that pattern is and where you’re consistently hitting off-center, you can help train yourself to get away from that mistake. I’m pretty sure I talked about that in my episode about hitting off-center and watching the ball. But, start working on that and focusing on that during your practice, your time on the practice court, Darren.

Now, number two: The racket face opening up too much. And you talk about hitting the ball too far due to this. And again, very common mistake. And a lot of times, doubles players say that, “Aw, I hit the ball too hard.” when they hit a volley out. When in fact, the actual problem was that the racket face was just way too open to keep the ball in play. As I said a minute ago, there are a lot of circumstances where you do want to hit a firm volley in doubles. You don’t want to hit a weak shot back. And when you do hit firmly and relatively aggressively, it’s important that you get the racket face angled correctly to be able to keep the ball in play without it travelling too far.

So, this is a simple matter of controlling what the racket is doing. And just because the concept of controlling your racket is simple, doesn’t mean that it’s easy to do consistently. And this is –as I mentioned a couple minutes ago–this is essentially where most doubles players and most tennis players run into problems, is they do too much with the racket face. It’s moving around too much. They’re trying to swing the racket at the ball too much, and they lose control of where the racket is facing. And aiming your volleys and being consistent and being acurate is all about controlling where the racket is facing. Period. So you want to keep the technique simple, face the racket towards your target–meaning where the strings are facing–and move your racket firmly towards your target without swinging your racket back and forth suppenating and pronating to open and close your face to add pace. It’s really tempting to do that to be able to hit a harder shot, but that’s where you’re gonna run into problems with your racket facing the wrong way at contact. And it’s also gonna add a lot of mis-hits to the equation as well, as your racket starts moving around a lot. So, do your best to try to take everything extra out of it, and just keep the technique very simple.

Now, I’m gonna talk about practice drills and how you can improve on this. But first I want to tell everybody listening about tennistours.com. They’re the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast. And their specialty is tickets and travel packages to professional tennis tournaments. And the US Open is coming up very quickly. I want you guys to check them out for that. Go to tennistours.com. Check out the individual tickets, ticket packages, and also accommodation and ticket packages for the US Open. If you guys make a purchase through them that is over 175 dollars, you’ll receive not only a discount off your purchase when you use the promotional code “essential”, at checkout you’ll not only receive a discount but you’ll get a free ticket–an invitation to a cocktail party in Times Square during the U.S. Open, and I’m going to be doing my best to be there for that.

I know Will Hamilton of Fuzzy Yellow Balls is going to be there, as well. So it should be a good time. So go check them out, tennistours.com. I thank them very much for their support of the podcast. And remember, make sure to use the promotional code, ESSENTIAL.

Alright, so back to the practice drills, Darin. I want you to do this with a partner. You can do this with your doubles’ partner or with any other tennis player that’s right around your level. I want you to be at the net on the deuce side, just like what you described in your question. And your hitting partner should be across from you–directly across from you at the baseline on the add side of their side of the court. So they’re going to be down the line from you. Again, exactly like the situation that you described in your question.

I want your hitting partner on the baseline to start with the ball. And I want them to feed a volley to you down the line. You’re going to take that volley and hit it back down the line again, back to your partner, and then from there, your partner is going to aim cross- court. So they’re going to feed down the line to you, you’re going to volley, back down the line to them, and then that next shot they’re going to hit cross-court.

Darin, you’re going to pouch on all of them. [laughter] On all the cross-court ground strokes that your partner hits, and I want you to set up a target so that this only takes two of you guys. And you’re going to set up a target. You can use a plastic cone, you can use a pyramid of balls. Just take four balls, put three on the bottom and one on the top to make a little pyramid, and I want you to place that target right around the service line and right in the middle of the deuce side of the court in the direction that you’re pouching towards to your left. So it’s going to be cross-court from where you’re starting on the add side.

So I want you to repeat that like 100 times, focusing on your accuracy. So feed to you, volley down the line, ground stroke cross-court, pouch, and then put that ball right at that target. And I want you to start off at like a medium speed with that volley, and work your way up from there. And get a little bit firmer as you go, but only as you can show yourself that you can be steady and consistent with that volley.

And this is going to help you practice your footwork for the pouch, it’s going to practice your accuracy for that volley and your consistency for that volley. Nothing fancy here, just repetition, practicing that shot over and over again. And you can do this over on the other side, as well, starting from the deuce side and pouching over to your right.

So Darin, hopefully that answers your question. We talked about the off-center shots, the mishits. We talked about the shots that you’re missing long by losing control of the racket face. I gave you a drill there to work on it, and that’s the end of my outline. So hopefully that’s helpful to you. Send me an email back and let me know how your practice goes. I hope that this answer helps you out and you’re able to improve this part of your doubles’ game.

Next up we’ve got a really interesting question from Roger in London, England. He’s a 2.5 player. A bit of a long question here, but I think you guys are really going to find it interesting. I know I definitely do. And I’m looking forward to answering it.

He wrote and said, “I’ve been playing tennis seriously for several years now, have had about 10 group lessons, about 15 individual lessons, and playing around 60 matches. I’m not a natural athlete. Sports have never come natural or easy to me, although I really enjoy watching them. Right now I attend two small group lessons each week, and I try to play a match about once per week on top of that.

Despite this, my progress has been agonizingly slow. This was really brought home to me a few weeks ago when I played a friend from work who had just come back from a tennis holiday. He had never played much tennis before, and beat me in a close match. This guy’s a natural athlete, plays for the company soccer team, and generally has pretty good eye-hand coordination.

My question is this, in your experience, do some students never really get tennis, because their bodies just aren’t wired that way for the game. Can everybody get to a reasonable level–say 3.5 to 4.0 if they spend enough time and effort on learning the game, or is it just beyond some of us?

I love the game and love the way that playing it, even at my level, helps me appreciate some of the finer points when watching the pros, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be any good at tennis and possibly need to accept that. If I’m not going to be disappointed with my progress, I if I’m not going to be disappointed with my progress in the coming years. Thanks very much.

Roger, thank you very much for your brave question. I mean, honestly, it takes a lot of security in yourself and a lot of bravery to ask this. And I assume that you’ve listened to many podcasts before, and you know that I kind of tell it how it is. I’m a pretty straight shooter, and I’m not going to pull any punches here.

I’m going to not take this question lightly, and I’m going to be as honest as I can with you and with everybody else listening. And I’m going to answer this question based on what I see everyday from recreational players. I see, you know, the average Joe playing tennis hours and hours a day, everyday, and I try to help the average person improve their tennis for hours and hours a day. So I feel as though I definitely have some insights into this, and I’m going to tell you exactly what I think.

Now, let’s talk about athleticism and coordination in general. They play a huge, huge role in anybody’s ultimate potential as a tennis player. There’s no doubt about that. Now I’ve heard some tennis players argue that with enough practice anybody can be a great tennis player. In fact, I [laughter] won’t name names, but somebody on the forums at essentialtennis.com not too long ago made the statement that in his opinion he thought that anybody could become a 6.0 player if they put enough time and enough money into it–to take lessons and to train.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, he meant a lot of time and a lot of money. He didn’t mean like two years and a private lesson every week or any thing like that. But it was his stand from his viewpoint he felt as if anybody could reach that high of a level if they really took it seriously enough and put enough time and effort into it.

Well, don’t get me wrong, practice and work ethic are extremely, extremely important, but everybody does have a limit to how good they can be based on how athletic and how coordinated they are. Some people as you found out just pick it up more easily than others, and that can be really frustration sometimes. And that can be frustrating no matter what level of player you are.

I, in my college career, played with players who were a lot more talented than me, and were able to beat me easily without a whole lot of effort, and they didn’t practice nearly as hard as me, they didn’t put in as much effort, they didn’t hit the weight room after practices or between practices, but they would still beat me without any trouble [laughter]. And, you know, while that was definitely annoying, that’s just how it is guys. I mean, everybody has different genes, everybody has different natural gifts. Some of us just pick up sports easily. Others of us can take an awesome photograph and just see things differently than most other people, and are kind of natural artists.

Other people are good at communicating, interpersonal relationships, whatever. Everybody’s got different gifts and when it comes to tennis and being an athlete and being able to pick it up easily, it’s no different. It’s just like any other skill in life. Not all of us can be blessed the same [laughter]. It would be boring if we were [laughter]. We all have different gifts.

Now, I’m going to answer your question can everybody get to a reasonable level next, but first I want to tell you guys really quickly about my new sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast and that is tennisexpress.com. You guys should all be familiar with them. They’ve been advertising on theTennis Channel for a while now, and all over the place–on the Internet. They have everything you could possibly want: strings, rackets, apparel, footwear, stringing machines, anything you could possibly want related to tennis. Ball machines, whatever, they have it over there. And they’re going to be my sponsor for the next four weeks, kind of just on a test basis.

And because it’s just a test, they’re not going to be offering any free shipping, they’re not going to be offering any discounts. Basically we’re just going to see how it goes [laughter]. And to be honest with you guys, they don’t think they don’t think that there’s going to be a whole lot of response. The download numbers for my podcast are not nearly as big as the audience that they’re used to dealing with when they buy time on TV or in Tennis Magazine or whatever. So I’m just laying this out there. So they’re a little skeptical. So we’re just doing a trial period here.

And what I’m asking from you guys is just make your regular tennis purchases over the next four weeks through Tennis Express. I’m not asking you guys to go out of your way and buy a $4,000 string machine, unless you were going to already, then by all means. But use the promotional code ESSENTIAL when you check out at Tennis Express. That will show them that you’re appreciative of their thinking about being a full-time sponsor of the podcast. This is a just a test period. So the next pack of grips that you buy or reel of string, or if you need some shoes, or a frame, go check out tennisexpress.com. They have amazing prices anyway. You guys are going to get a good deal. They have free shipping for orders over $75. And use the promotional code ESSENTIAL to help me out. And hopefully they sign on as a full-time sponsor.

Alright, so moving on with Roger’s question here, and he was asking can everybody get to a reasonable level at tennis, and by reasonable he used the levels 3.5 to 4.0. Well, based on my experience in watching average athletes try to get better everyday, and again is this what I do everyday. This is my job–working with people that are not professional athletes. They’re business people and moms and kids every single day. I can honestly say that I’ve given lessons to a number of people who will never be a 4.0 player, and I feel kind of bad saying that, but it’s just the truth.

And if you ask them they would say of course I’m not. I’m more positive than they are. I’m a very positive person on the court. I want to be clear that I’m not saying this because I’m a pessimist or because I like to make fun of people or put people down that don’t get tennis right away, because I’m a professional and I make fun of them or anything like that. Listen, I’m a strong believer that anybody can improve their tennis game no matter how athletic they are, but not everybody can improve up to the same point. That’s kind of my whole point here. Not everybody has the same potential.

And so I can honestly say that I have taught people that, you know what, even with the best instruction and a lot of hard work on the court, they’ll never be able to compete on a level playing field at a 4.0 level. And that’s just how it is. I’m sorry [laughter].

Some of you guys are probably going to be offended by that. And you know what, if you are, send me an email. I’d be happy to discuss it with you back and forth. I’d be curious to hear what your guy’s reaction to that is. But I’m just shooting straight with you guys–that’s how it is.

Now, that’s not most people. I would say that the majority of people definitely can be 3.5 to 4.0 players, but there’s people out there that tennis just doesn’t fit them well. And that doesn’t mean that they can’t still enjoy it. It doesn’t mean that they still can’t get better. But it’s just everybody does not have the same potential as far as ultimate level of play. So be honest with yourself. Be realistic with yourself about your abilities. It sounds like you are already, Roger. You’ve already picked out a couple specific examples where friends of yours have gone and gotten better really quickly, where it’s taken you a long time to get to that point, and so you’re already starting to realize these things.

And I want to say good job for not getting down on yourself, and I’m glad that you’re not discouraged by that. Don’t be disappointed by this. As I said before, everybody’s got different gifts. I’m not sure what yours is, but I’m sure something comes very easily to you that doesn’t for other people. And this doesn’t mean that you can’t still improve and really enjoy the process of getting better at tennis.

And I like that you were talking about (let’s see, where is that sentence)–you said that “You love the way that playing tennis even at your level helps you appreciate some of the finer points when watching the pros.” I totally agree with that. [laughter] Because I’ve worked so hard at my own game, even though at my level I’m not anywhere close as good as the pros are, the guys that we see on TV. When I go and watch professional tennis it’s awesome, because I know how hard I’ve worked, and I can’t come anywhere near to the same results as what these guys do on a regular basis. So, yeah, it’s inspirational and it does help you enjoy the game as a whole more.

So keep working hard, Roger. Keep studying the game and keep your head up. Keep a good attitude. And thank you so much for your question. I hope I haven’t been discouraging to you or anybody else today. That was definitely not my goal. Just trying to be honest with you guys. And again, I’m not saying that most people will never be 3.0, 5.0 or 4.0, And I’m not going to give a percentage. But I would say that the majority of players, yeah, can definitely reach 3.5. Probably a little less than most people are going to be able to reach 4.0. But it’s definitely not out of reach for a lot of people to get up to that level. It’s different for everybody.

So Roger, thanks very much for your question. I appreciate it. Keep working hard at your game, and thank you for being a listener. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] Alright. That does it for Episode #131 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for downloading today’s show and for giving it a listen. I appreciate your support. And I will talk to you guys next week, where I’m going to answer several more listener questions.

I always appreciate hearing from you guys. If you have a question that you’d like for me to answer on the show, you can go to essentialtennis.com. [music] Go to the podcast page, and then click the button that says, “Submit A Question.” [music] Alright, that does it for this week. Take care everybody, and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Thank you very much for joining me today for episode number 130 of the podcast. I have a very special guest today on the podcast and we are going to be discussing all Doubles topics.
and I have a very special announcement to make on the show today as well. You’ll have to wait and see what that is. But lets go ahead and get to the interview. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction.
My guest today on the podcast is ATP touring professional Ashley Fisher. He is actually currently coaching and is up in Canada getting ready for a tournament there with his Doubles team. Ashley, just to give you guys a little background, has had a career high ranking in the ATP Doubles tour of number 19. He’s played in the main draw of all four grand-slam tournaments, and he’s got a best result in the Grand Slams of making it to the semi-finals and the U.S. Open.
Ashley, thank you very much for sending some time with me and to answer some questions from my listeners.

Ashley: Your welcome, Ian. Good evening.

Ian: Well, let’s start things off by telling myself, my listeners a little bit more about yourself. I just gave a kind of a really brief overview of what you’ve done so far, but you’re a Doubles specialist, you’re from Australia, tell us a little bit more about your background as a player.

Ashley: Well I grew up playing Junior tennis in Australia until I was eighteen years of age at which point I moved over to the U.S. On a tennis scholarship. I played four years of Collegiate tennis at Texas (inaudible) University which was a great experience for me in all honesty if my game wasn’t great in the tour I would have been eaten up and spit out very quickly, so it was an excellent opportunity to stay and hone my skills. Turned pro about 1998 after I graduated, and it was pretty evident to me early on that Doubles was going to be my forte and I progressed through the rankings a lot faster than Doubles and Singles. And in 2000 sort of broke into the top 100 and was able to do an ATP World event and I’ve been doing it ever since. Unfortunately I’ve had some injury issues the last two years, had four (inaudible), two in each knee which has been frustrating, its set me back, I haven’t been able to play at all this year. But the flip-side is it’s given me an opportunity to get into other aspects of tennis. I’ve done some coaching, which I thoroughly enjoy, as well as some commentary for Tennis channel, so it’s opened my eyes up to what will eventually have to happen. I can’t play tennis forever, so in that it seems its been an excellent opportunity to get some experience.

Ian: All right, great. Well it’s an, we’re going to talk a little bit about your website as well, it’s great that you’re starting to get involved in different avenues of the sport. You’re my favorite kind of tennis player. You’ve gone through all the hard work to develop yourself as a Junior, as a College player, you know, you’ve developed yourself enough to where you’ve been able to be successful on the professional tour, and you’re starting to get to the point where you’re thinking about what’s next, and you’re still being involved in tennis. And you’re reaching out to the fans and coaches like myself, and it’s just really good to see, so I really enjoy my time talking with you.
So let’s talk a little bit about your website, which is tennis-update.com. Tell us a little bit about the site and what you are doing there.

Ashley: Well thanks for saying that, Ian. I love tennis and whatever it is, if its playing, coaching, (inaudible), I want to stay involved in the sport that’s given me so much. It’s nice to try and give something back, it’s a passion of mine, I’m a huge tennis fan.

Ian: Awesome.

Ashley: I’d love to stay involved. So this year I’ve had a lot of spare time on my hands with my injury. So one of my little ventures is to create a website. As you said its tennis-update.com, and it’s got a few different purposes, but the main concept is just kind of an inside look at the ATP world tour. I travel a lot to these tournaments, whether its coaching, commentary and these flip-cams that have now come out are incredible so I’m just getting a lot of video blogging, interviews, just inside stuff that fans don’t have access to. Whether it’s locker rooms, player lounges, player parties and just things of that nature that I see on a daily basis that I want to share with fans. And give you guys some insight into what our lives are like, not just on the tennis courts. Yeah, I’m having some fun with it, it’s great experience for me to practice doing some interviews and most of the players are very accessible which helps. Check it out, I think you can have some fun with it. I’ve got a great interview from the Bryan brothers right after they broke the record in L.A., and like I said the players are very open, they love reaching out to the fans. So have a look.

Ian: Yeah I actually just went through and checked out a bunch of your most recent videos that you’ve put up there. And for people like myself who just love the sport, and love to watch professional players, I hope you keep doing it and I hope it’s successful because it is so much fun to get a behind the scenes look at what the players are like when they’re not on the court. How they spend they’re time. Another example of a video that Ashley just put up was one in the training room at the (inaudible) in Washington D.C. They had a rain-out day earlier this week, so Ashley is just chatting with some of the players in the hotel workout room room as they are staying active and trying to find something to do. I think videos like that the fans are really going to respond to well, and they are going to love to see the personal side of the tour like that. We don’t get to see much of that, so I hope it continues to be successful and I hope all my listeners go check it out.

Ashley: Well thanks Ian, you hit the hammer on the head. A lot of the guys have excellent personality’s that often doesn’t come across on the tennis court, so its an opportunity for the fans to see that.

Ian: yeah, I hope it keeps going well. So let’s move on to our main topic today, and that is Doubles. That’s why I have you on, and I actually am announcing today for the first time on the podcast a Doubles product, a course that I have coming out. I’m going to be releasing information about this week and my listeners can go check that out at doublesdomination.com. It;s all instructional having to do with tactics and strategy, having to do with Doubles for the recreational player. And the reason why I have Ashley on today is because he is one of the professional players that I interviewed. He and I talked for a full hour discussing Doubles tactics, and partner relationships, and things of that nature specifically for the recreational player. That interview is going to be a part of the full download of Doubles Domination. I’m not going to go into a ton of detail today about the product. Instead, Ashley and I are going to have another discussion today about Doubles tactics. We are going to be answering some questions today of members of the forums of essentialtennis.com. So, Ashley, if you’re ready, we’ll go ahead and get going with our first question here.

Ashley: Sure! I like the sound of Doubles Domination. I’m looking forward to doing some domination myself on tour.

Ian: All right lets get going with our first question, and it comes from Steve in North Carolina. He wrote to us and said, ‘When do I move up or back when I’m around the service line? I know that I should close in when my partner hits and back-up when the other team hits past me. How does this work?’. And this is actually a whole section of my product and I refer to this as shading, moving up and back and also right and left with the ball. And Ashley, can you talk about that a little bit and tell my listeners how they should be moving on the courts?

Ashley: Yeah, sure. You always want to move as a team – the Bryan brothers are an excellent example. If your partner shifts left than you shift with him or her, so in that instance you’d be cutting off the middle and you’d be having the sideline. You always want to take away the high percentage shots and give your partner the angle. You can’t cover the whole court, you have to give up certain parts of it.
As for moving backwards, as a volley, you always want to try to have an aggressive stance and looking to move forward and get closer to the net. The closer you are the more options you have with angles and so forth. So in most instances look to be aggressive and look to be volleying on your toes, not your heels.

Ian: Okay. As a coach of recreational players I’m definitely always trying to get players more comfortable getting closer to the net. It’s something that a lot of club players don’t like to do definitely first. And that’s definitely, it can be a big negative as a Doubles player. Let’s move forward. Let’s talk a little bit about backing up. When is it smart to back up? Because I think a lot of coaches and pros really preach, ‘get close to the net and close in really hard’, but a lot of times I think they leave out when its smart to back up. So can you talk to us a little bit about when it is a good idea not to be super close to the net?

Ashley: Well are you talking about retreating to the baseline when you’ve already made a move to the net?

Ian: Not necessarily moving all the way back to the baseline, but not as close. So let’s say that you and I are playing a point, Ashley, you serve and I close forwards to try and cut-off the return, but the return makes it past me and the returner has made a great shot. Do you think I should be staying close to the net at that point?

Ashley: Well, the problem with backing up is you open up the court for your opponent. You give them more angles. It’s a lot easier for them to put a ball away if you retreat and give up court. Having said that, it depends how fast you are with your reflexes, how comfortable you are. Do I want to be on top of the net if Fernando Gonzalez is on the other (inaudible)? Probably not, but having said that, that might be my best chance to win the point. To reflex the ball, or if I’m running backwards, then I’m just giving Gonzalez, or whoever it is, that many more options in that big of a court to hit into. So a lot of this stuff just comes down to personal comfort levels and how quick your reflexes are. If they’re not quick, then get out there and work on them. There are some drills, that I’m sure Ian you go into in your Doubles Domination product to assist that. But you don’t see the pros back up too often in Doubles. You don’t want to see the (inaudible) brothers jumping back, they’re always taking the most aggressive option.

Ian: Well before we move on to our next question, I just want to mention that if you guys go to doublesdomination.com right now, you’ll see an instructional video from myself outlining how you guys should be moving with your partner and with the ball, again which is called shading, and actually give away that whole chapter of Doubles Domination for free. So definitely check that out. Let’s go and move on.

Ashley: Just a bit on that point. You almost want to imagine that your partner and you are connected with some rope. So when he moves, you’re moving. You’re always kind of moving as a tandem. Because if you don’t do that, if your partner moves and you maintain your position then there’s a gaping hole in the middle of the court, the easiest part of the court to hit into.

Ian: Yeah, that’s a good visual for my listeners to think about. Good stuff! All right, let’s move on to our next topic and this question comes to us from THM on the forums. He wrote in and said, ‘What are things you consider when selecting a partner, what are some things you do to maintain a good partnership?’. And Ashley, this is a topic that we talked about in our interview for the product. Why don’t you give us a quick overview on what you think recreational players should look for in a partner when they are trying to select somebody to play with.

Ashley: Well you want to look and find a partner that compliments your game and your skill set. Not necessarily replicate it. And by that I’ll give you some examples. Perhaps your serve isn’t the strongest part of your game. So if you can find a partner that is very comfortable around the net and is good at (inaudible) and cutting off balls, then that’s going to help you hold serve. So your looking for someone to really aid your weaknesses and assist your strengths. If you’re a good returner, then a partner who is very good at being at the net and intercepting volleys off your low return. All will help. So look for a partner who is going to help you with your game and complement and assist the areas that you’re not as comfortable. And then as far as – what was the second part? What do you want to do once you have a partner?

Ian: Yeah basically, he said, ‘What are some things you should do to maintain a good partnership?’.

Ashley: Well, practice hard. Ideally, winning matches.

Ian: (laughs) That always helps.

Ashley: That can go a long way to building team unity. Just practice together. Even just put pen to paper every week or to. Sit down and say, ‘Joe, what’s been working well for you? What do you think I need to improve on?’, because sometimes there’s a play you don’t see it quite as objectively when it’s coming off your racket. And don’t be sensitive about it. Look, I’ve been (inaudible) in the world, and I still have plenty of areas in my game that need work daily, so I want someone to tell me what I have to do to get better. So have that attitude, just be honest with each other and go out there and work on it together as a team.

Ian: Yeah I think that’s really key and something that a lot of players can work on. Kind of having more of a humble attitude about it and not taking it personally, and also having the openness to have the sit-down and have that open conversation with the partner and be able to outline things to work on. I think those are huge keys.

Ashley: Raphael(inaudible), has a new coach this week, Paul (inaudible), so (inaudible), he’s got every shot in the book but he still feels that some outside resources can help him. Look we’ve all got things to work on so have some thick skin and the idea is to constantly get better and address areas that need improvement.

Ian: Before we get to our next Doubles related topic, I want to tell my listeners about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis podcast, and that is tennistours.com. You guys can go there to check out professional tennis events, tickets and travel packages. Pretty much no matter where you want to go to watch an ATP or WTA event, they’re going to have something available for you. Whether it’s individual tickets for just individual days or sessions, or full packages that include travel and accommodation, they’ve got really the whole wide range of products available. So go check them out, especially since the U.S. Open is coming up. And I thank them very much for their support of the Essential Tennis podcast. Remember to use the promotional code “ESSENTIAL” when you checkout and you’ll receive a discount off your purchase of over $175. All right, let’s move on to our next question. Coming to us from John in Texas, he wrote and said, ‘When returning serve in Doubles, what are the considerations when returning serve cross courts versus down the line. What about the lob return?’. So, John lays down three main options for returning serve. What kind of different things are you looking at Ashley, when you’re playing or when you’re coaching the Doubles team that you’re working with now. When should players be looking to use each of those three options?

Ashley: Well you need to pay attention to what your opponents doing. More specifically the net man. If he’s moving a lot and cutting off balls in the middle and poaching, you’re going to need to go down his line. Also, if he’s not a comfortable volleyer and his partner is, than you want to go at him, you want to test him out and make him hit volleys. As far as the lob, it’s a very good shot. Again, if you’re playing an aggressive opponent who likes to move in the middle or get very close to the net, the lob is extremely effective. It can take your opponent off the net. And always follow it through. If you get the ball over your opponent, than you run in and take control of the net. As far as also going down the line, if your partner is getting you with a volley serve that’s hard to generate an angle cross court, then that’s often not a bad ball to take straight down the line. Again, just be aware of what’s happening with your opponent, the net, and what sort of serve you’re getting as well. If you’re taken out very wide on the forehand court, than the line is often an excellent option because there’s not much court for you to hit back into.

Ian: I think that the best thing that you said there Ashley was the first thing that you said. It depends on what your opponents are doing and you have to pay close attention to that. I think that’s so important and something that a lot of times recreational players pass up and it almost seems like its too obvious of a thing to be able to watch them and then base your tactics according to what they’re doing to try and beat you. But I know that’s something that you and I talked about in detail in our conversation for Doubles Domination. Do you have anything else to add to that, as far as being able to adjust to your opponents and making sound tactical decisions?

Ashley: Well that’s exactly right. You want to have a game plan, but you also want the ability to assess whether it’s working, and if it’s not, make an adjustment. Every sport in the world has pro sport coaches. They’ll go out there telling the team what to do, but they’re constantly making adjustments. Whether it’s defensive, offensive, you just have to be your own coach out there in tennis because we don’t have access to on-court coaching. Especially in Doubles, you have the opportunity to ask your partner during a change-over, take 90 seconds, say hey, what’s going on out here? Is this strategy of serving to Jones’ forehand working or is he maybe getting a little grooved on it – I can see he’s moving that way, now we need to serve to his backhand.

Ian: All right. Great Stuff. Next question up here I think is going to be fun to ask you. And actually I haven’t asked you this before. Have you ever played the Bryan brothers personally?

Ashley: I have. I beat them last year in the semi-finals of the Sony-Ericson Open in Miami.

Ian: Thataboy.

Ashley: But the Bryan’s have got me on a few occasions prior to that.

Ian: Alright, so this will be a great question for you. Gary in Pennsylvania wrote and said, the Bryan brother twins just won sixty-two overall Doubles titles, a history-setting record, of course which you mentioned already Ashley. His question is, ‘What makes them so good in your opinion? Are there two or three things that stand out in their play, for example, that your typical club or recreational player, or even weekend warrior can learn from and benefit from?’ What do you think?

Ashley: Yeah, there are. Firstly, the Bryan brothers play with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. They love the game. They are constantly bouncing around. And that helps. Being flat in tennis is something that will work to your detriment. You always want to be bouncing around trying to improve your footwork. So that’s one thing they do better than anybody on a daily basis. They bring so much energy to the court which is why crowds, amongst other reasons, enjoy watching them. They complement each others game incredibly well. For two guys that are identical twins, they don’t play identical, its actually the contrary. Bob has a huge (inaudible) serve, Mike has a good serve, not nearly as big. And then Mike is one of the best returners in the world, just takes the ball so early, and Bob again not as comfortable especially with the backhand. Bob’s very good around the net, that lefty, forehand poach, Bob plays (inaudible) courts, and when Mike Bryan gets the balls down, which he does all day, Bob has that forehand volley in the middle of the court. So that’s building on the point we mentioned earlier, is finding a Doubles partner that complements your strengths, and the Bryan brothers do that. Then they move together as well as any team I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if its because they were united in the womb thirty-two years ago, they have like that twin telepathy going where they say they don’t even need to talk to each other to know what the other guys going to do. And it shows, they’re just always moving together, they never seem like they’re caught out of position. They’re a very aggressive team. You can do this at home regardless of your level of play. You can put yourself in aggressive positions, take the middle of the court and don’t be afraid to poach, and the Bryans do that better than anyone.

Ian: Man, that’s like a whole Doubles product right there, that two minute explanation you just gave. And this is my favorite part of interviewing you and the other professional players I talk to in preparing for the Doubles Domination course is that all of your guys were able to so well articulate specific things like that, that obviously professional players do better than anybody else in the world. But recreational players can absolutely take those things and apply them to their own game, and you gave four examples there. Positive energy on the court. Absolutely everybody listening to this show can do that right now. They complement each others games. You guys can find partners that do that, that move together well, you guys can learn how to do that. And they’re very aggressive. So it’s really cool to hear, and especially from somebody again like you, a professional player who has experienced this on the world stage. It’s great to hear that we can apply those same elements to our own games, that no matter what level we are. I just think that’s really cool.

Ashley: Thanks Ian. And also have a short memory. Don’t be concerned with being beaten up a line, or missing a return. Just put it behind you and move on to the next point. The Bryans, they don’t give anything away. You walk by and watch a match and you’re just assume they’re winning just based on they’re body language.

Ian: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. I actually saw them play at the (inaudible), I saw the match that they lost. That was on Friday. Yeah you’re absolutely right. It made absolutely no difference whether they won or lost each point. They reacted exactly the same way. And that’s something that most recreational players are terrible at. They’ll physically look dejected and it’s very easy to tell who is winning or losing a match very often based on body language.

Ashley: Yeah, they win and lose as a team. If your going to get upset about a match that’s fine, but do it when the match is finished. Go into the locker room and then smash your racket or swear. You don’t want to let your partner’s see that they are getting to you.

Ian: let’s go to another question. We have time for maybe one or two more here. Here’s an interesting one from JR Striker on the forums. He wrote and says, ‘what’s the best way to decide who plays on which side, especially if both you and your partner usually prefer the same side?’. What do you think?

Ashley: Well one way to do it is, if you play two back, which some people do, I like to do that often as well when I’m returning, most of the balls are going to go to the middle of the court. If I have a better backhand, I might be confusing myself here, yeah I want to be playing a (inaudible) backhand because the majority of the volleys are going to come to my backhand and hopefully my partner has a better forehand. Again he’s on the outside, so the middle ball, the middle of the court, we’re both hitting our favorite shot. It’s the same with a volley. If I have a better backhand volley, poaching, then I want to be on the deuce court.

Ian: And this is assuming right, that both players are right-handed obviously.

Ashley: Yeah, right. If you’re a lefty righty, then its a good idea to do it the way the Bryans do because they both have they’re forehands in the middle of the court, from the back, and when they’re poaching. You typically are going to have a lot more better reach than a forehand volley, you can stretch out to that better than a backhand.

Ian: Okay. And his second questions was if I’m a recreational player and I’m just being put with somebody randomly for today’s match what if we both happen to like the same side typically. Is there some quick and easy way to figure out who should go where, or is it not that easy?

Ashley: Well, and that happens on tour as well. Sometimes you kind of get a last minute team together just because that’s the only person you can get into an event with and you both play the same side. Someone has to suck it up. Typically the better returner should be on the outside. They’re the bigger points love fifteen, fifteen-thirty, thirty-forty. So if you both prefer that side, go with the better returner. And you can change during match. Play one set and if its not working out, have that versatility where you can switch sides, even top teams on the AT World Tour will do that.

Ian: Okay. Last question we are going to go to comes from Charles in California. He wrote in and said, and I’m actually what your answer will be on this Ashley, he wrote and said, ‘What is the best way to position yourselves when you’re both at the nets particularly regards to covering lobs?’. So maybe you’re up against a team that lobs a lot. And he says, ‘ Should one player be a little further back than the other to cover the potential lob. I’m under the impression that the cross-court player from the person getting ready to lob, should be a little further back.’ So should players be staggered against a team that lobs a lot?

Ashley: Yeah you have it right, that’s the way we’re taught. Typically the vast majority of the time the lobs will go cross-court, yeah you’re going to have a staggered formation just like you mentioned. With the cross-court player looking for that lob and his opponent closer to the net in a much more aggressive position looking to close off the net.

Ian: Ashley, do you play on tour teams that are kind of known for lobbing more than others? In recreational Doubles, the lob is unfortunately one of the most feared shots because a lot of the players dont like they’re overhead a whole lot. At the ATP level, are there players or teams that are kind of known for having good lobs or is it just not a shot that is ever effective?
Ashley: It certainly is effective, it’s under-utilized. Particularly off your return there’s not many (inaudible) has an excellent (inaudible) lob. But Doubles has moved more towards a kind of blasting power strategy technique rather than the old traditional Doubles skills of thinking and using feel and touch aren’t quite as predominant. Now players serve huge, return big, but there’s still plenty of room for the lob, particularly against aggressive teams (inaudible). It would work well against the Bryan brothers because they are so aggressive it’s just the problem is when Bob Bryan serves at 140 mile an hour, its not quite as easy to chip one over head, but if you can hit it, it will be successful. Typically, if you force a player back, if you hit a deep volley forcing back, that’s when a lot of your opponents will go to a (inaudible) lob, kind of fading off in the back foot. So that’s something to look for. It’s a great shot. You want to hold your opponent accountable to all angles and everything on the court. And even if the lob is unsuccessful, it still sends a message to the opponent that you have that shot in the bag and that maybe he can’t crash the net quite as much.

Ian: Sure. I find it really interesting that you would make that comment, that the lob really isn’t used enough at the professional level these days. Do you think that maybe there will be eventually a swing back towards maybe more of a finesse touch, you know, angle, volley, and lob kind of game at the professional level?

Ashley: I don’t. It’s moving the other way, technology, and just the game has become so much more physical. I’m constantly amazed seeing a seventeen year old kid just serving hug and ripping forehands, and its gone to big serving, big returning. I mean the volleys are still very good volleys, but if you look at the Woodys and compare them to the Byrans, they had completely different styles of play. The Woodys did not have big serves at all, but they so much variety and so much feel and touch, whereas the Bryans have a lot of skills, but different skills. They serve huge, return big, get close to the net, yeah, they still volley real well, but you can’t compare the volleys of Mike and Bob to (inaudible).

Ian: Hmm. All right, interesting stuff. Well Ashley, we are going to go ahead and start to wrap things up, and as we do I want to encourage my listeners to go check out doublesdomination.com. Again, I’m giving away a whole chapter of that product this week, on shading. I’ll be giving away other parts of it as well. Just to give you guys a sample of whats in there and how useful and helpful the information is. And again, featured in that package is going to be a full, hour-long conversation with Ashley, all about tactics and strategy, and the whole time keeping in mind the recreational player. So its a great conversation. And Ashley, I want to thank you very much for your time, not only for our conversation in Doubles Domination, but today on the podcast as well. It’s been great speaking with you, and I know that my listeners are really going to enjoy this conversation.

Ashley: Thanks, Ian. I’m excited to see the Doubles Domination product.

Ian: yeah, absolutely. And lastly, everybody make sure you go check out tennis-update.com, it’s Ashley’s website and he’s always updating it with new videos from the tour. Any plans on – I see that you have a member forum there Ashley, obviously the videos are in my opinion the coolest part of the site so far – any other plans for the site coming up?

Ashley: Well there’s an instructional blog section which I need to add to, but I’ll be getting some fellow players and friends of mine just to give little one minute kind of videos on how they think to (inaudible) has some tips on forehand volley. Yeah, that’s a big part of it and there’s a forum where you can chat with other tennis players in your area or anywhere in the world.

Ian: Awesome. All right. So go check it out guys, and Ashley, thank you very much for your time I really appreciate it.

Ashley: Thanks, Ian.

Ian: All right. Well that does it for episode number 130 of the Essential Tennis podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today and I hope that you enjoyed my conversation with Ashley. Go check out doublesdomination.com, it’s up right now and I’m giving away a full section of the product today, I’m actually recording this Sunday night, it’s going to be opened up on Monday. I’m going to be giving away another section of the product on Wednesday, and by the end of the week, you guys will get really a full picture of what Doubles Domination is really all about, and then you guys will have a short opportunity to be able to get in and purchase it and improve your Doubles game. I really believe in this product, honestly, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into it, I really stand behind my instruction, and the content that I put out there, and this is no exception. So I really urge you guys to go check it out. Again thats doublesdomination.com. All right that does it for this week. Thanks very much for listening everybody, take care and good luck with your tennis.

Welcome to the essential tennis podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you.  Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game, tennis professional, Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.  And now, here’s Ian.

IAN:  Hi, and welcome to the essential tennis podcast.  Your place for free experts’ tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com, where you can receive a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis events tickets by using the promotional code: ESSENTIAL.

Well, thank you very much for joining me today and especially if you’re a new listener.  Last week we got a whole bunch of new listeners; a lot more downloads than normal.  I think it was probably due to the topic.  Last week we talked about pushers and being more successful against pushers, always a very popular topic.  So, if you are in fact new to the show I want to welcome you and I hope that you came back to listen to this week’s episode.  If you are new to the show make sure to check it out on iTunes.  That’s the fastest and easiest way to get the podcast every week you can click, “subscribe”, in the iTunes music store and automatically get the show every week when I come out with it on Mondays.  So definitely check that out.

Alright, let’s go ahead and get down to business.  Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

Alright let’s go ahead and get started with our first game improving topic and that always is my goal here on the podcast is to bring you guys information that can help you become a better tennis player.  That’s what this show is all about.  And today is definitely no exception.  Let’s go ahead and start with our first question, which is from Christian in Ecuador.  Christian wrote to me and said:

“I have been practicing tennis since about a year ago.  I took some tennis lessons with a couple of instructors and all of them have told me that I have to improve my footwork.  Sometimes I do not bend my knees enough and I also let the ball get too close to me.  Could you please describe some drills to improve my footwork and place my body at the right distance from the ball?”  Best regards, Christian.

Christian, good question.  This is a great question because first of all, footwork is so important to tennis and it’s definitely one of the most important parts of the game.  Yet I think it’s underrated among recreational players and I think probably especially modern day recreational players who really get caught up I think especially those of you who spend a lot of time online looking around for instruction and for video.  I think a lot of you guys get too caught up in technique.  Not that technique is not important; obviously it’s crucial for you guys to have solid technique to be a good tennis player.  But, one of the easiest ways to tell the difference between an average level recreation player and a higher level one, let’s say one that’s 4.5 or 5.0, is footwork.  Without even looking at stroke technique it’s very easy to pick out players who aren’t as high in level because they just don’t do as much with their feet.  And by the way, if you’re listening to this podcast you’re probably aware of the great video that Will, over a Fuzzy Yellow Balls came out with.  Will and Adam; I should make sure to mention Adam’s name in their as well.  But, they both came out with a really good footwork video just about a week ago and it’s been getting a lot of attention over there, so check that out.  There are some things in the video that I don’t agree with but I think that most of it is really solid and it’s something that you guys listening, really could stand to spend some more time focusing on to make your games better.  You can only be as good as the position that you give yourself to be able to hit the ball solidly.  Now Christian, let’s talk about your problem specifically, which is getting too close to the ball.  And in my experience teaching, this is something that’s very common.  A lot of recreational players misjudge the bounce and they misjudge their distance from the ball after it’s bounced and they end up kind of overrunning and overplaying their position and they put themselves too close to the ball and end up getting jammed up at contact.  The result is usually poor swing mechanics because your core, because your body, your stance, and all of you because all of you is so close to the ball. It makes it impossible to extend your arm out towards the ball as you make contact and when you get jammed up like that and your arm remains too close to your body it’s really difficult to make a fluid, loose and long athletic swing towards the ball and most players end up just kind of pushing the ball back in the play.  To be honest with you guys that’s really kind of all that’s possible.  It’s really tough to still hit a solid shot once you get too close to the ball.  Again, this is something that is not uncommon at all. So, Christian don’t feel badly about it.  I’m going to give you two drills that you can do to help you get better at judging where the ball is and also where you’re body is in relationship to the ball and where the ball is landing and coming back down to.

The fist drill I’m going to describe to you guys I have titled simply, “the catch the ball at the hip drill”.  Very uncreative, I know, sorry.  It does just what the title says.  You and your partner; you’re going to need a partner to do this and not just Christian should be doing this.  I want all of you guys to go out and try this drill.  It’s a really good one to find out exactly how good you are at judging, again, the bounce and where you are in relationship to the ball.  But you guys should go out with a partner and both of you guys should start right in the middle of the service line and neither of you guys need a racquet, so leave your racquet over on the side of the court.  Both of you should go to the middle of the service line, one of you will start with a tennis ball in your hands, and the other person will not. So you just need one ball between the two of you.  The person who starts off without the tennis ball is going to put his or her hands on each hip, so at your side, not in front of you, but at your side right at hip height with your palms facing out.  So, your hands should be facing forwards towards the net and you want your wrists to be touching your hips.  Kind of right at your side with your hands facing forwards.  Now, from that position with each of you on either side of the net, one person with their hand at their hips, the other person with the ball, the person with the ball is going to toss it up into the air so that it lands inside either service box on the other side of the court.  The person who just had the ball tossed towards them; their goal is to catch this ball after one bounce without taking their hand off their hips.  So that means that this player must move their feet quickly and efficiently and very accurately, I might add, to be able to reposition their entire body without, again, their hands cannot leave their hips.  So that means that in order to catch the ball after one bounce this person must position their body perfectly so that after the ball bounces and comes up into the air it comes back down again into either the right or the left hand of the person trying to catch the ball.  So, again, this person cannot move their hands at all.  They have to stay essentially connected to their hips; their right and their left hip one on each side and must catch the ball after one bounce.  Not two bounces, not on a fly, but after one bounce.

And a couple of notes on this:

In order to do this correctly and to do this successfully, you need to be able to move effectively right and left and up and back.  You have to be able to move anywhere and judge where the ball is going to end up within a very small margin for error.  Your hands don’t take up a large amount of space and so you have to be very accurate with how you’re moving your body up and back and right and left.  And that’s the whole point here is to build some greater awareness of where your body is in relationship to the ball.  One more thing, kind of a little rule here, you must catch the ball with the hand that is on the side that the ball bounced on.  So, in other words, if you’re receiving the ball and the ball lands on the deuce half of the court, on the deuce side service box, so the service box to your right you must catch with your right hand.  If it lands on the left service box you must catch with your left hand.  And you guys can make a little competitive game out of this as well, which can actually be pretty fun.  I’ve played this with students and it’s a good workout and really, really good to develop your guys eye hand coordination and your awareness of where your body is in relationship to the ball.  And the way that you play is you both start off in the middle of the service line and one person tosses the ball to the other side; it must bounce inside either service box, the other person must catch on one bounce and without taking their hand off their hips and then after you’ve caught the ball, you toss it again back to your opponent and you can take one step.  So you can take, kind of like in basketball after you catch the ball, you can take one pivot step in any direction you want and toss the ball to your opponent’s side of the court.  And so, you can kind of work each other back and forth trying to win the point by causing your opponent to drop the ball or to not be able to get to the ball.  Now, you want to be fair with this. You can’t use an overhand you know throw and just kind of whip it over right at the court; it’s on the other side.  So, create rules that are fair for both players.  Rules such as, the ball must travel upwards, out of the hand you can’t throw it down, it must be an underhand throw, etc.  Or maybe you could create a height requirement; the ball must travel over the net 2 feet or 3 feet over the top of the net, whatever, but, you guys get the idea.  And this ends up being a good workout and a great way to develop your judgment.  So Christian, I suggest that you try this.  Everybody else listening try this as well. It’s a great competitive drill or cooperative drill, whichever way you want to do it.  And one variation on this; once you get good at doing this from the service line, have one player go back to the baseline and the second player remain around the service line and actually feed shots.  So, take their racquet using open racquet face, a continental grip; just feed kind of high deep shots, but vary the depth, vary the width and have the person receiving the ball still keep their hands on their hips and move their feet to be able to catch it right at hip height, right where they’re leaving their hands, right on their hips.  Now, this is a lot harder than you guys think.  If you’re just listening to me describe this and you’ve never tried it before, either on the service line or on the baseline, it’s a lot harder than you think.  Alright.  Even if you consider yourself to already have really good footwork.  This is like a whole, this is like next level type stuff.  You really have to be extremely accurate with your footwork and with your judgment.  When you first start doing this, you will screw it up.  And you’re going to like run at the ball, and it’ll bounce way higher than you thought and it’s not even going to be close and it’s going to like hit you in the forehead and you thought you were in the right place to catch it at your waist.  You’ll be surprised most likely, I mean if you’re not, write me, please.  If you go and do this for the very first time and you never screw up and you catch it without moving your hands every time, good job.  You’re a really good athlete and you’ve got great eye hand coordination.  You guys will be surprised at how difficult this is, and especially when you go back to the baseline.  And so, it’ll help you realize how much you should be moving your feet because recreational players all too often stand in one place on the baseline as far as depth.  And they’ll move right and left because they have to get the ball before it goes past them.  But, too many recreational players don’t move up and back with the ball very well and once you start having to catch the ball at waist height without using your racquet and without using your hands off of your hips you’ll start to realize exactly how little you’ve been moving your feet up until now unless you’re already a 5.0 player.  But, if you’re a 5.0 player you’re probably not listening to my voice right now anyway.  So, I really suggest that all of guys try this and if it’s easy first try let me know, seriously, and I’ll respond and tell you “good job”.

Alright, let’s go on to the second drill here.  I’ve got another one to help you guys work on your positioning and to work on your footwork.  And this one has to do with varying your contact point.  And this is something that I do specifically with players who have a hard time giving themselves enough space between themselves and the ball.  I use this specifically for players who jam themselves on either of their forehand or backhand side over and over again.  And it’s a definite pattern.  And that’s something that I definitely see quite a bit of.  I really haven’t ever seen a recreational player who consistently stops early, either men or women, you know regardless of level; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player who has plenty of time, but stops, misjudges where the ball is going and ends up being way too far away from the ball and you know, kind of like hesto(15:06) fall over and swing at the same time because they didn’t put themselves close enough.  However, I very commonly see players that overrun where they’re supposed to be and end up trying to hit with the ball way to close to them.  So, this is a drill that I’ve kind of developed to help players break away from that pattern and break away from that habit.  So in order to complete this, we need one person who is hitting, and one person who is feeding.  And the person who is feeding, ideally, you guys really want somebody who can hit you a consistent shot over and over again.  And we’re looking for a ball on either of the forehand or backhand side, whichever side that you want to work on.  That’s about three or four steps away from the center of the baseline.  And the feeder, again, this is important, if you guys have a ball machine that would really be ideal.  If not, we want somebody who can give you a consistent height, a consistent speed, a consistent depth and a consistent width.  And to be a consistent feeder you have to control all of those things. That’s why it’s not easy to be a good feeder.  That’s probably something I should talk about at some point on the podcast, or maybe I should do a video about that; about how to feed correctly.  But, you guys want somebody who can give you a consistent ball.  And once you have that you want this person to feed to the exact same place over and over again.  And I find that most players have problems being too close to the ball on the forehand side.  So let’s say that the feeder is hitting you shots out to your right if you’re a right handed player, again about three or four steps away from the middle of the baseline.  And I want you guys who have problems being too close to the ball to go through this sequence of shots.  First of all, I want you to hit five shots in a row on your forehand side off of these consistent feeds that are way too close to your body.  Alright?  Now, maybe you already do this and so this probably will be very easy for you but, I want you, and even if you don’t have problems being too close to the ball but you just want to improve your footwork and your judgments I want you guys to try this.

So, hit five shots in a row that are clearly too close to your body and too jammed up.  I don’t care if you make this shot or not or where the ball goes.  Just make an attempt to hit a ball after you place yourself too close to it.  Next, hit five shots in a row that have a contact point that are definitely too far away from your body.  Too far away; and I’m talking clearly too far away where you plant yourself, you get ready to swing and you can’t even hit the ball unless you just totally lose your balance and have to kind of fall forward towards the ball in order to reach it.  Because it’s just way too far away.  Now, if you do have a habit of putting yourself too close to the ball, this is probably going to be hard for you.  And in my experience, after I have my students hit five shots in a row that are too close, and then I say, “Okay, I’m going to give you that same feed. I want you to hit five in a row where you purposefully position yourself too far away from the ball.”  And usually the very first time they try it or maybe even the first five or ten times they try it they actually position themselves just right. And they’re thinking to themselves in their own head, “Alright, I’m going to stop myself too far away.”  And they stop themselves to what seems like too far away to them but it actually ends up being just right.  And then I say, “No, that wasn’t too far away.  In fact that was just about perfect.”   You need to double that distance away from you and just make it obvious that you’re too far away from the ball.  Again, the whole point here is not to practice being in the wrong place and making your swing.  The point here is to break you guys away from the habit of being too close.  Christian, specifically here in Ecuador, but anybody else who’s listening who is consistently too close on either side.  The point here it to break your habit and to kind of get away from that muscle memory of putting yourself too close and feel what it feels like to actually make the opposite mistake.  After you’ve done that five times in a row, meaning if you do four in a row that are, “Alright that was way too far away.”  And then the fifth one, it’s comfortable or too close, start over again.  Do five in a row that are too far away.  And then finish it up with five in a row that are just right that are in a comfortable place.  And I suggest that you guys go through this sequence a couple of times. If this is an area that you struggle with, keep going through that sequence. Five shots in a row that are too close.  Five shots in a row that are too far away.  Five shots in a row that are just in the right place.  The point here is to judge where the ball is going and purposefully mix up how you position yourself in relationship to the ball. So that you guys can get away from whatever habit you have, that’s assumedly incorrect here, and learn how to judge and put yourself in the right place.  So we want to break away from your habits, feel something different and then learn what it feels like when it is in fact correct. So, Christian that pretty much wraps it up.  Those are my two suggestions for drills to improve your positioning and to improve your judgment of the ball and to improve your footwork.  All three of those things will get better if you practice these two drills and find a partner to do them with and hopefully this is helpful to you.  I’d love to hear back from you.  Let me know how it goes when you attempt these drills for the first time and the rest of you listening, if these drills are helpful as well, definitely let me know.  I’d love to hear how it was helpful or even not helpful.  If it doesn’t make sense feel free to shoot me an email and let me know.

Before we get to our second question on today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast, I just want to remind you all about the official sponsor of the podcast, and that is tennistours.com.  They are kind enough to support me in what I’m doing here on the podcast financially by being an advertiser and so I ask that you guys return the favor since they are helping me continue to do this by at least checking them out.  At least go see what they have available.  You’ll probably be surprised at the wide range of different tournaments that they have tickets for and also the different kind of wide array of packages that they also have available.  Ranging from hotel to limousine or shuttle service.  Other tickets in the example of the US Open.  A lot of times they package together kind of a freebie for like a Yankees game or a show on Broadway, etc.  So, they have all kinds of different packages available or if you just want to purchase individual day tickets as well for a lot of the bigger tournaments, they have that too.  So, go check them out and see what they have.  If you’re going to a tournament soon, please give them a shot and use the promotional code: ESSENTIAL, with a capital E, and you’ll get a discount off of any purchase over $175.  I thank them very much for their support of the essential tennis podcast.

Alright, let’s go ahead and get to our second question on today’s episode on the podcast and it comes to us from Nicole, in San Francisco, California who’s a 3.0 player.  She wrote to me and said:

“My question is about shots you do as your running to the net.  I tend to get a lot of these because as a 3.0 player with fairly good baseline hitting, my opponents sometimes just barely return the ball back over the net.  You’d think this would be great because the short approach shot allows you to go for a winner but normally these are short wobbly shots that make it over the net and I need to run and hit it back.  Sounds easy enough, but sometimes my racquet isn’t turned right, my balance is off and I can’t decide if I should hit the forehand or backhand side.  Setting up for these lame shots that come over the net is hard and I end up losing the point because the ball flies out of the court or into the net.  Can you give some tips on how to hit these shots?”

IAN:  And then she says, ” P.S., I don’t have problem getting to them, I’m very fast on the court.  It’s just the movement that flusters me.”

Well, Nicole I definitely feel your pain and I think just about everybody listening does as well.  It really really hurts to get a short, weak, easy shot. And to get there quickly you say that you move around the court really well.  It sucks to get that short easy shot.  To get there quickly and then to just miss it for not good reason. And I’m going to talk about both main elements here.  The movement and the technique of actually hitting this shot.  I’m going to try to get both in quickly.  First of all, movement wise, I’ve got two main things here that you need to work on.  First of all you must make a choice immediately about which shot to use.  Either forehand or backhand.  And if you get a lot of shots that land right around the center of the court that are slow and weak.  Or if you’re really fast, even if it’s not right in the middle of the court, it’s very possible you could easily hit either shot.  Even if it is a little bit to the right or to the left of the center of the court.  I suggest that; this is probably the most obvious statement of the podcast; I suggest that you use whichever you’re most confident with and use that shot as often as possible.  Either your forehand or your backhand.  Even if it means running around your weaker side.  So, if your forehand is more confident in general and you on average hit it better than your backhand, I want you to get better at making kind of a snap decision to hit a forehand as often as you can. Even if it means running around to the left, three, six, or maybe even ten feet to get a really easy forehand and to move around it. I’d rather that you have a shot that you prefer and you make a quick decision on which shot to hit than to be really wishy washy about it and kind of wait to the last second and not really commit to the shot and you’ll end up making a lot of mistakes that way.  Now practice on this is going to build your confidence and skill. And as I said a second ago, we want to start making this an immediate decision during your match play.  And so that means you have to practice this during your practice time on the court.  Now, if you happen to be one of those people that likes both shots equally as well, and I don’t think I know more than one or two people who can honestly say that they like both their forehand and their backhand just as well. They hit them both with pretty much equal results.  They feel just as coordinated, and just as confident on both sides.  If that happens to be you or anybody else listening; since your having trouble with this, honestly I would spend a bunch of time maybe the next couple of weeks really drilling one or the other exclusively on the short shot so that you can kind of a more go to shot on this short ball.  It’s not that I want you to have a weaker side and to lose confidence in one side, but it sounds like you’re really making a lot of mistakes due to indecisiveness and just not really sure which one to go for and as a result, your movement and your positioning is suffering.  So I want you to get more confident in either your forehand or backhand side and start making that kind of your go to shots so that anytime you get kind of a floater, short, easy shot, you know, alright, I’m going to hit a forehand on this for sure no matter what and it’s going to be solid.  I’ve hit a ton of these and you can go for it with confidence rather than being unsure of yourself.  So, that’s the first part.  The first part having to do with movement.  I want you to start making a choice immediately about which shot to use.  Secondly, your balance and your positioning, etc.; both things that you mentioned.  This will start to come as well with repetition during practice.  You have to practice this shot on purpose.  Get somebody to feed you short easy shots or get a ball machine to feed you short easy shots.  And you have to learn how to be an athlete and hit an effective shot while moving dynamically at the same time.  And that might be just moving forwards quickly to get to a shot that’s really low and short, but still a relatively easy shot.  It might mean moving around a backhand to hit a forehand while you’re moving forwards, whatever.  But a lot of times these short balls, we don’t give them enough respect because they’re supposed to be easy and yet, we don’t practice them enough to be really good at moving and hitting the ball at the same time as we move into kind of try to put the ball away or finish the point.  It sounds like you’ve got plenty of quickness which you’ve said in your question, you’ve got plenty of quickness.  Now you need to learn to hit these shots with balance and that takes practice. So, another reason to practice this shot a lot. Not only do you have to learn how to take one shot or the other probably more or often and make that decision more quickly.  But you have to develop some more balance as you do so.  And everything will get better when that happens.  And that’s going to come through repetition and practice.  Now real quickly here let’s talk about the technique of this shot because this is a really really common shot for recreational players to screw up.  The short easy shot.  And it’s crappy because, again, it’s an easy ball, it’s a shot that everybody thinks, “Oh I should be able to put this away just like on TV and finish the point.”  And when you miss that shot it’s really kind of deflating. And it’s terrible to miss it. Now, the biggest reason in my experience why this shot is missed by recreational players is because they hit the ball too straight and too flat with a very little margin for error.  Believe it or not, even when the pros hit this type of shot, they’re still hitting the ball with top spin.  Now, it might not be as much top spin as a ball that’s struck from behind the baseline and hit with a big loop in it up over the net to make it safe and come back down again.  But they are still hitting the ball with top spin most of the time. Once in a while they get one so easy that they literally just hit flat right at their target over the top of the net.  But most of these types of short balls are still hit with top spin by the pros.  Assuming that they’re driving it and it’s not dropping so low that they’re playing some kind of slice or backspin shot which can be effective as well. But I can tell from your question here, Nicole, that you’re talking about a ball that’s easy and you’re trying to hit with some aggressiveness. So, you want to start adding some more top spin to this shot so that there’s more curve in the path of the ball.  And that’s going to give you more margin for error and make it safer for you to attack without making so many mistakes. Both into the net and lawn. And there’s two main technique elements that are going to make this possible.   Number one, we need an upward swing pass.  That’s what’s going to lift to the ball to get it over the top of the net safely.  Number two, we need a flat racquet face relatively speaking.  We don’t want the racquet face tilted upwards towards the sky because if we combine that with an upward swing pass you know what’s going to happen, the ball is going to go too far.  And that’s what happens when players miss lawn.   So, basically, anytime you miss a lawn, during your practice when go to practice this shot, anytime you miss a lawn I want you to close your racquet face more.  Don’t change your grip just take your hand and turn the racquet face, turn the string bed so that it’s more closed and make the same swing that you just made a second ago when you missed lawn.  Don’t take anything off of it; hit it with the same amount of confidence.  Every time that you hit the net I want you to accelerate upwards more, not forwards, but vertically upwards. So we need to balance these two things out.  The upward swing and the closed racquet face.  Anytime you hit the net do your best to leave the racquet face the same but hit upwards more aggressively.  Every time that you miss lawn, do your best to keep the swing path the same but close the racquet face a little bit more.  And so we need to find a good balance between how fast you’re accelerating upwards with exactly how closed the racquet face is.  And practice this again and again so that you can clear the net by a good foot or two feet and still keep the ball inside the baseline by four or five or six feet with a confident swing. Once you can do that and you put in enough repetitions that you can also get better balance and get better at moving quickly and making a more decisive choice right away about which shot to hit, you’re going to start crushing these Nicole, and you’re not going to be a 3.0 player for long. Once you’re able to hit these consistently and start to put them away with confidence.  So, best of luck with this.  Thank you very much for being a listener.  Nicole had some kinds words about being a listener of my show as well early on in her question so thank you for that Nicole. Thank you for being a listener and good luck with this.  Let me know how you do.

Alright.  That does it for episode #129 of the essential tennis podcast. Thank you very much for taking the time to download and listen to this show today.  I really appreciate it.  Make sure that you tune in next week.  I’m going to have a special guest with me on the show.  He is a professional tennis player.  Not anybody who’s like a big name, you know, house hold name or anything, but somebody who makes their living playing tennis professionally in the ATP Tour.  He’s going to be answering some questions about doubles and I’m also going to have an announcement about something that I’m going to be releasing next week that I’m really excited about. So make sure to listen to next week’s show to catch that.  Until then, take care and good luck with your tennis.

Welcome to the essential tennis podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you.  Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game, tennis professional, Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player.  And now, here’s Ian.

IAN:  Welcome to the essential tennis podcast.  Your place for free experts’ tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com, where you can get a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis tournament tickets by using the promotional code: ESSENTIAL.

Thank you very much for joining me today on the podcast.  I really appreciate the fact that you downloaded this show and you’re taking the time to listen to it.  I’ve always dedicated this show to passionate tennis players, and if that describes you, then you’ve come to the right place.

Every week I put out a half an hour show released on Mondays that answers questions from really enthusiastic recreational players just like yourself and my goal is always to put out the best possible solid fundamental instruction so that you guys can take that advice, go and apply it to your own game and improve your tennis.  And every week that happens all around the world as people listen to this show and then go and apply the simple suggestions that I give you guys.  Never anything fancy or complicated here.  Its things that all of us can get better at.  And as a result improve our games, myself included.

Real quickly before we get to today’s topics from my listeners.  I want to let you guys know about another great tennis podcast that you guys can get on iTunes.  It’s one of the most popular tennis podcasts on iTunes and it is created and produced by the people over at tennis.com, the same people that do Tennis Magazine, and it’s basically a round table discussion.  The discussion is led by the editors and writers over at Tennis Magazine and tennis.com.  It’s all about tour news so if you really like following professional men’s and women’s tennis, definitely head over to iTunes, just type in tennis and you’ll see the tennis.com podcast.  Definitely suggest that you check it out.  Alright, let’s get down to business.  Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

IAN:  Alright, let’s go ahead and get to our first question on today’s show and it comes to us from Zack in Cincinnati who has listed himself as a 4.0 player.  His question is a little bit lengthy here, but bare with me guys as I read through it.  It’s a really good question and a question having to do with competing against a game style that most recreational player really struggle against.  You guys will start to recognize this right away.  I think the advice I give today is going to be definitely helpful for most of you guys out there who compete on a regular level anywhere between a 2.5 and a 3.5 level and probably most of you 4.0 players out there as well.  So, Zack wrote to me and said:

“I play weekly with an older player, about 65, in his prime he won many local tournaments in the 3.5 level.  Because I am not a member at a club or part of a league I am subjected to playing a lot of different players who are scattered along the lines of ranking.  He is among the lowest level players I play yet I seem to play worst against him.  Most of it is due to the fact that he hits junk balls mostly with little to no pace and very little spin or angles.   I have to rely on myself to generate my own pace on each and every shot.  He has never “beaten me” but rather I beat myself.  I do not want to resort to just hitting his balls back with nothing on them because that would be no fun for me and also set my game back.  This experience is very frustrating because I seem to play like a 3.0 player when facing him yet, if I face a 5.5 or a 6.0 player I seem to play much, much better, almost feeling like a 4.5 player because they use pace and spin.  And spin, it kicks the ball up into my strike zone and I can use their pace and add a little of my own for my own shots.  What are some ways to generate my own pace and spin on a ball with absolutely nothing to work with?  This problem is extremely exaggerated on my forehand side.”

I wrote an email to Zack to get some clarification and just one follow up coming from him, he said:

“My problem with this particular player or at least on most days is that my game doesn’t seem to click at all.  It’s really not a question of keeping my shots in consistently but keeping them in at all.  It’s really hard to describe this problem because, for instance today, I didn’t get mad or upset, I was just simply lost out there.  Nothing is more demoralizing than just seeing any shot you try to hit with pace goes straight into the net or out lawn. Maybe he just has my number and I have to accept that but I refuse to quit.”  Zack.

Well Zack, there’s so many people all over the place, all over the world listening to this right now that are not in their heads in agreement with you and they totally understand where you’re coming from.  Now, I’ve done a podcast on dealing with pushers already and that’s kind of the, you know, the phrase or the word we use to classify these types of players. Players that don’t really do anything with their shots besides just get them in play without a whole lot on them.  Nothing really special. But, they don’t really miss a lot and that’s something that most recreational players really struggle with, so, first of all I want you to realize you’re not alone here so don’t get too frustrated with this.  I understand it definitely sucks.  Alright?  I totally understand that this is hard to deal with but this is the most difficult type of opponent for 99% of players out there that are 4.0 and under. And the reason for that, I wrote down four reasons here why this is so difficult for recreational players to deal with.  First of all, the type of person that you’re talking about playing here is usually somebody who’s very experienced.  As a player who’s been around for a long time they’re very smart.  They know how to figure out what really bugs you and they’ve just been around the block a couple of times.  They’re usually more experienced than the types of players that struggle playing against them.  Secondly, they’re usually very crafty.  They’re very aware of your weakness when you play them.  They have a way of kind of picking out exactly what annoys you and this type of player typically will kind of mix things up and not give you any pace to work with but will give you a lot of different looks usually.  Now this player that you’re describing Zack, you said that this person doesn’t put a lot of spin on the ball, doesn’t use many angles.  You made it sound like this guy basically just hits right down the middle of the court soft and easy. And I’m going to get to that a little bit later. But, typically this type of player is somebody who will put junk on the ball and you used the term “junk baller”, I think here, yea you said “he hits junk balls with little or no pace”. I might reconsider your use of that term.  Junk baller typically refers to a player who puts a lot of spin on the ball and lots of different types of spin to kind of throw their opponents off. I wouldn’t call this player you’re describing a junk baller. I would call them a counter puncher or a pusher.  I would not call this person junk baller if he puts no, you said “he puts very little spin on the ball”.  It’s just somebody who’s just a smart player and very consistent.  That brings me to number three, consistency. Number one, this person’s experienced, number two, he’s crafty, number three these types of players are always consistent and very often it’s not pretty. They don’t have nice looking strokes, these types of players. But, they can typically make just about everything that you hit in their vicinity and the person that you’re describing Zack is no spring chicken anymore not that he still can’t play the game well. Obviously he’s still competing and I hope that when I’m his age I’m still able to run around and play. I think it’s awesome that he’s still playing. However, his number one weapon is his consistency. He probably doesn’t move around the court as well as he used to. But anything that he does get to he probably misses very, very rarely. Doesn’t make very many unforced errors.  And that’s what really makes this person difficult. You have to force him to make a mistake and that’s very difficult for most players around your level to do consistently without making a lot of errors.  So that’s number three, this person’s consistent. And number four I think this is what really bugs recreational players the most about this type of player.  Number four I have written down that this type of player is usually shameless.  You know what, they could care less if you respect them or not.  They don’t care if you walk off the court and complain about them and say, “Aw man he’s just a pusher.” “He doesn’t really have any real shots” “He just you know he hits weak balls down the middle every time.” You know what, this type of player doesn’t care otherwise he wouldn’t be playing. This guy’s just out there to compete, he’s out there to win and that’s it.  He’s out there to enjoy himself and probably loves driving people crazy.  And he doesn’t care what people say about him.  He just loves to be out there and he loves to play and he loves to win. And so that combination, somebody’s who’s experienced, crafty, consistent and shameless.  He doesn’t care how he does it but he keeps the ball in play one way or another.  This is the type of player that everybody struggles with.  Again, I wrote down 4.0 and under is definitely the main level of player that has a hard time with this type of style. But lots of different players do.  Even above a 4.0 level. Now, I’ve got two main ways that you can deal with this Zack. The things I’m going to tell you that hopefully are going to help you out. Number one, and I talked about this in the pusher podcast which is in the archives by the way. I definitely suggest that you and everybody else listening who hate playing this type of player not only listen to this show but go to the archives at essentialtennis.com and download the pusher podcast also. But, number one, you must respect this player is not an option. Respect this player for what’s he’s good at, for what he’s accomplished over his career as a tennis player. Don’t put them down in your head or him in your head about his age, about his tactics, about his style of play, whatever.  If you start to let that get in your head it will throw you off.  It will put you in a negative mood and your outlook on the match will just get worse and worse.  And you just don’t want to be there anymore. And you’ll make more mistakes and your attitude just goes right down the toilet. Now you said in your second email, Zack, that you weren’t having a bad day, you weren’t getting upset the particular day you were talking about and that’s good.  Hopefully you continue to keep that. Keep a positive attitude about it. So I guess this is more for everybody else listening. Don’t disrespect this player and walk off the court and say, “Aw you know he didn’t really beat me.”  Well, yea he did.  He hit more balls in the court than you did. You missed and you don’t deserve to win. A lot of you guys out there need to hear me say that and you need to accept it, seriously. Don’t walk off the court after playing a pusher and say “Well he didn’t beat me, I beat myself.” Well guess what? That means that you didn’t deserve to beat that player. You didn’t have the game. You didn’t have the skills to be able to consistently attack.  And so, you lost.  You got beat.  Whether you’re the one that made the mistakes, or whether your opponent maybe made the mistake is irrelevant. At the end of the day your score was less than your opponent.  So stop disrespecting this type of player. Again, this is not necessarily directed towards you Zack, but my listeners in general, you guys need to start respecting these types of players a little more. Even though they might not have a pretty game to watch, they get the job done. So, give them some respect please.

Now, let’s talk about actually improving your game Zack.  This is what you need to do to actually start beating these types of players. First of all, and you know this goes without saying, but I’m going to talk about how to do it specifically.  You need to learn how to create pace on your ground strokes reliably.  And you’re going to do that in three main ways.  Number one, you need a solid rotation of your core of your body. Your chest and your torso need to rotate back and then around again as you make contact with the ball at least 90 degrees. On your forehanded ground stroke you need to turn to face to the right perpendicular to the baseline and then at least turn forwards as you make contact to be facing forwards towards the net so that your shoulders are parallel to the baseline.  At the very least turning a little bit past that would even be better. And same thing on your backhand side, if you have a two handed backhand.  If you have a one handed backhand you don’t want to make quite as much of a turn.  Well, I take that back, you will still rotate your core but it’s a little bit different.  You’ll turn a little bit farther than 90 degrees initially so that your back is facing towards the net a little bit, but more work is done by your dominate shoulder. You should still rotate forwards. But anyway, in general you need a good rotation of your core on both your forehand and backhand side.  That’s number one, technique wise.

Number two, you need a long and confident racquet pass. Most players who struggle against a pusher can’t generate pace reliably because they have a relatively short swing. And there accelerating the racquet quickly, but they have a harder time controlling where it’s going because they accelerate the racquet really fast over a relatively short racquet pass.  You should be making a long and relaxed swing at the ball and generating pace more with the rotation of your body than the actual acceleration of your arm and shoulder and forearm and hand and wrist.  You should be letting everything from your shoulder down be pretty relaxed. Obviously we want to accelerate the racquet with that part of your body, but really we should be using your core more than from your shoulder down so we can be a little bit more reliable in how the racquet is accelerated forwards.

And lastly number three, I strongly suggest that you learn how to create at least a little bit of top spin to create some margin for error. You should be able to clear the net by 2, 3 feet, hit a solid shot, not necessarily super aggressive but definitely a challenging shot and be able to do it over and over again at that same height at that same pace and be able to hit a good solid shot without over doing and getting all crazy.  And you need to repeat this a million times. Both forehands and backhands and learn how to create, again, repeat a strong rotation with your body, a long and relaxed swing with your arm and with your racquet and good margin for error over the top of the net and be able to do it over and over and over again. And you have to practice until you can do this.  There is no substitute for solid fundamental technique. And if you’re unable to do this now; I’m going to rephrase that Zack, you’re unable to do this now, am I right?  You described it in your question to me. And especially in the second email you that you wrote to me you were describing how every time you tried to put pace on the ball you either hit the net or it goes long.  And that tells me that you have no curve to your shot.  There is no arch in the path of the ball.  You’re hitting it dead straight. You don’t have the margin for error that you need built into your shot so you need to start adding a little bit of top spin making a little bit more of a vertical swing towards the ball instead of just hitting straight through it and trying to power the ball through the court.  You need some more margin for error and that’s only going to happen by improving your swing technique.  There’s no magical fix here. You need to improve your technique so that you can create more reliable results and still be able to hit a solid shot.  Without doing that you really only have two options to try to beat this player.  Number one, you can try to out push or out jump ball this guy, but I don’t want you to do that.  I want you to move past this level where you’re struggling against this type of player.  I want you to improve your technique so that when you see a pusher you and look forward to it because he’s sitting up on a silver platter, easy ball after easy ball.  And you should be able to dominate this type of player eventually.  I’m not saying next week just because you listened to this podcast you’re going to be able to go and crush this guy.  It’s going to take some practice.  But, I do want you to be able to beat him without resorting to just playing his style of tennis. Which quite honestly is probably exactly what he’d like to see. He’d love to see you step out onto the court and try to beat him at his own game. Because that’s exactly what he’s probably comfortable with.  He’d love to push the ball all day long.  So, without improving your technique that’s option number one.  Or, you can just keep trying to attack with inferior technique hitting the ball the way you are right now and essentially just hope that you have a good day and everything kind of clicks for your that day and everything goes into the court even though you’re hitting the ball the exact same way with low margin for error.  And you’re going to have some good days out there and that’s great, but I don’t want you to be satisfied with using a low percentage ground stroke on both sides.  You said especially your forehand and just waiting until everything clicks ones day, and you do awesome that day, and that’s great, but, I want you to be able to be more reliable in how you attack. Just one more thing Zack.  I also want you to work on your positioning.  You need to work on moving yourself to the right place so that you can hit a confident shot.  And the reason why I say this is because you described playing a 5.5 or a 6.0 player and being more comfortable. Now, I’ve got to be honest with you Zack, if that’s the case, well you’re probably not actually playing a 5.5 or 6.0 level guy not legitimately.  If you feel more comfortable against them than hitting against a 3.5, 65 year old guy then I’ve just got to be real with you here; it’s probably not actually a 5.5 level player. But, regardless, let’s just say it’s a strong 4.5 player and that he with more pace and more top spin.  If you’re more comfortable against that type of ball because it’s got more pace so you don’t have to create your own and you said the ball is kicking up more so that’s is going more into your strike zone.  Well, to be honest with you it should be much easier for you to put yourself in a comfortable place against this weak, spinless ball down the middle.  You said he doesn’t hit angles.  It sounds like he just hits a weak ball right down the middle of the court with no spin on it. And because it’s not traveling very fast and it’s got no spin, the ball’s going to bounce up and sit in your strike zone where it’s easy for you to hit.  Much longer than against somebody who hits the ball hard and with a lot of top spin and so the fact that you tell me that you’re having a harder time against this guy than against somebody who hits a strong solid top spin type ground stroke, tells me that your forward is definitely lacking. And you need to be able to identify and read that weak shot coming down the middle of the court. You need to react quickly and get there so that you can hit the ball in a comfortable place and so that you can hit it confidently with that good solid technique that you’ve been practicing.  So, Zack this is pretty much it man. First of all again, respect this type player, secondly, you’ve got to improve your technique and that includes rotation of your body, length of your swing, adding some top spin so that you have some margin for error.  That all has to happen.  And then working your positioning as well so you can get yourself to a comfortable place where you can recreate those solid swings over and over again.  But Zack, best of luck to you. I hope you start doing better against this guy and if I can help you any further definitely let me know.

Before we get to our next question.  I want to remind you guys about the official sponsor of the essential tennis podcast and that is Championship Tennis Tours.  You guys can find them at tennistours.com.  And they put together travel packages and ticket packages and even just individual tickets to all kinds of different professional tennis tournaments. An example of that would be a couple of upcoming events and the US Open series leading up to the US Open.  And an example of that would be the Leg Mason tournament in Washington, DC.  I live in Maryland. I work near DC and I plan on attending that tournament probably a couple of days or nights.  So, go check out their ticket packages for the Leg Mason and if you use the promotional code, ESSENTIAL, you’ll get a discount off a purchase of any ticket or package valued at $175 or more.  So you guys will get a discount off your purchase plus it just shows them that you appreciate their support of the Essential Tennis Podcast. That helps them stay on as a sponsor which definitely helps me out, so, help them and they’ll keep helping me.  And I would appreciate that very much if you guys just check them out and see what they have to offer.  And that’s tennistours.com, and you’re going to want to use the promotional code: ESSENTIAL.

Alright, next up we’ve got a question from James.  He wrote to me and said:

“Hi Ian, I wondered whether you would consider doing a podcast specifically about how to deal with short balls correctly? By short balls I don’t mean the easy type that bounce high, but the difficult low ones that are played deliberately to draw an opponent into the net.  Yesterday I played against somebody who plays a lot of squash and who basically tried to slice almost everything short, draw me into the net and then lob me. This player simply did not have any top spin ground strokes that had very good placement and consistency especially using a slice backhand.  Any of these short low balls were very effective.  I was completely unable to play my normal game.  But, fortunately came through 6.3.   However, I am still very uncertain about where to hit these short balls.  Assuming my opponent is staying on the baseline, is it best to play them deep, short, or angle them?  Also, is there a way of deciding whether it is best to continue to the net or sprint back to the baseline after hitting these balls?  This type of shot also seems to occur quite often against more regular opponents.  So I feel it would be a really good area in which to improve my tactical play.  Thanks as always for any help you can offer. James.”

Sure James! I’m going to try to get through this quickly here since we’re running out of time. I’m probably going to go over time today.  Hopefully that will make up for having a little bit shorter of a show last week. Now, you basically have three choices when dealing with a short low ball like what you’re describing James.  I’m definitely keeping in mind here that this is a shot that’s kind of difficult to get to, it’s definitely dropping.  We’re not meeting this ball at waist height or shoulder height and really able to attack on it. But rather it’s definitely dropping kind of towards the bottom end of our strike zone.  So, you’ve got three choices.  Number one, you can play a slice deep down the line. I’m going to list the pros and cons of each of our three main options here.  Most of my options are going to have to do with hitting the ball down the line.  If you guys don’t know why it’s smarter to hit down the line in an approach situation, definitely go to the video section of essentialtennis.com and I have a video showing you guys why it’s smarter to go down the line on an approach shot.  But I’m just going to mention right now, it’s usually smarter to go down the line.  It’s not always.  There’s some situations where cross court is a good play.  But in general down the line is a little bit better shot to play.  So, option number one, play a slice down the line.  The pros of doing this, the benefits are if hit well it can stay nice and low making a passing shot are a lot difficult.  If you guys are able to hit a nice kind of biting slice that stays low over the net and low to the ground, this can be a really good play to use that slice and taking that low shot and putting back spin on it kind of makes it easier to guide deep into the court and place it easily down the line.  I’m kind of getting ahead of myself here. That’s pro number one. Pro number two it’s easy to aim and direct.  In general, that slice shot is just really direct technique wise. You’re lining your strings up and hitting straight through the ball towards your target.  It’s a much simpler shot than trying to hit a drive or top spin.  And number three it’s relatively high percentage for most people.  Most people have a pretty easy time playing the slice.  Now if that’s not you, if you’re not good at putting backspin on the ball and directing accurately, then I suggest that you work on this James.  Because it can really help out on a low shot where you’re being pulled into the net.  Now the cons of playing a deep slice down the line or number one; if you don’t hit it well that backspin can cause the ball to kind of check up and sit there and become a kind of sitting easy shot for your opponent back on the baseline.  So this is a shot that you need to practice.  If you can’t keep it low already; if your slice shots tend to kind of float up into the air and kind of slow and just kind of sit there then you’re going to want to work on it.  I’m not going to go to the technique now but you want to try to play a kind of a biting lower slice.  And so that’s con number one. If you don’t hit it well it’s just going to kind of sit there.  Number two.  A slice in general travels more slowly than a drive/top spin shot.  Again I said generally.  It is not necessarily true all the time but it’s definitely easier to hit the ball harder and more aggressively when putting top spin on it. And I realize that this a low ball so most people don’t have that shot.  We’re going to get to that a little bit later.  So, slice is a great option for this shot but, one of the cons is that it’s not going to travel through the court as fast.  It’s not going to be as aggressive of a shot as if you were able to drive it or hit a top spin shot.  Alright, option number two.  Hit a drive/top spin shot deep down the line.  And the pro here and the benefit is that you can hit it with more pace and more aggressiveness than a slice and still be able to keep it in play.  Slice backspin causes the ball to float and travel farther through the court.  A top spin shot pushes the ball back downwards into the court. And so if you’re able to get below it even though it’s a low shot; if you’re able to get your racquet below it and hit up on the ball aggressively enough to spin it you can curve the ball back down into the court again and that’s going to allow you to hit with more pace and be able to kind of hit right through the court and pressure your opponent a little bit more than with a slice.  However, there are several cons to hitting with a drive/top spin type shot.  Number one, if you don’t really play it well the ball doesn’t get hit through the court.  The top spin; if you spin it quite a bit and hit kind of a heavier ball; if you don’t hit it solidly that top spin can also cause the ball to kind of bounce up right into the strike zone of your opponent, which can give them an easy to ball to hit a passing shot or a lob on.  Secondly, and I mentioned this before, it’s definitely technically more complicated and more difficult to make and in my opinion it definitely takes more skill to take that low ball, hit it with top spin and make it than it does to use the slice.  The slice is definitely a simpler shot to make. And thirdly, it definitely takes more confidence to hit, because it’s a more complicated swing and because it’s a more aggressive swing you have to really feel confident about going for it.  Otherwise, you’re going to dump it into the net or not put a lot of spin on it and make it float long.  So, it definitely takes more confidence than just hitting that slice and directing it deep into the court.  Alright, and option number three. Option number one was slice deep down the line, option number two was hit a drive/top spin shot deep down the line, option number three is hit a short ball right back.  Just drop shot them as you’re running into the net.  And this definitely takes some touch.  And I’ll go over the pros and cons.  Pros; it can be thrown in as a change of pace/surprise play.  You can mix this in along with some deeper approach shots and catch this guy off guard and give him a taste of his own medicine.  Number two, if you do hit it well, it makes passing shots and lobs more difficult as he runs forwards into the court.  He’s got less room to hit around you because he’s getting closer to you and there’s less room, there’s less visibility around you because you’re taking up more of the court from his vantage point as he gets closer and closer to the net to recover your drop shot.  So those are the two main pros. Con is that if you don’t hit it well you’re just a sitting duck.  If you try to hit it short and you just kind of pop it up and it’s not very short and it just sits up there in the air, obviously, once you just has no ability to hit the ball aggressively and hit it past you you’re just going to be sitting there an easy target.  So that’s definitely the con of trying to hit short right back. So, which one of these three options is best?  Well, when trying to select which one is the best play you have to know two things.  You have to know your opponent and you have to know what they’re good at.  Whether their forehand or backhand side is stronger.  Whether they’re better at passing shots or better at lobs.  Whether they prefer to hit lower in their strike zone or higher in their strike zone.  How mobile they are.  If they can run and hustle and get to a short drop shot.  You need to know all these things and you have to take them into account. And really very often you want to mix these options up to keep your opponent off balance and make them have to hit a lot of different types of shots in order to beat you.  Number two, you have to know your strengths and weaknesses.  So, walking onto the court that day you’ve got to know, do you prefer to hit a slice? Or prefer to hit a drive or top spin shot?  Do you have good hands where you can take that short ball and hit it really short right back and make him have to run into the net himself? You’ve got to know your own game. And you have to know his game.  And then you got to kind of mix those together and come up with a game plan. Come up with a good, solid, tactical plan for that day.  And again, lastly I’m going to mention one more time that you should be practicing all three of these options, James.  So that based on what opponent you come up against, whether it be this squash player guy or somebody else who gives you a lot of short shots, practice all three of these options so that when you figure out what play is going to be the best suited for that day against that opponent you can do it confidently and use whichever of these three main options makes the most sense.  So, James hopefully that’s helpful to you.  Thanks very much for your great question.  Good luck with this. Let me know how you do.

Alright.  That does it for episode #128 of the essential tennis podcast.  Once again, thank you very much for spending some time with me.  Thank you for listening to the show.  I really truly hope that it’s been a help to you.  I hope that it’s been informative and instructional and I hope you’re able to take these suggestions, go and use them on the court and improve your own game. And if it does help you, I’d always love to hear back from you.  Let me know what’s been helpful to you.  Maybe wasn’t hasn’t been helpful.  Any suggestions that you might have for the show.  You guys can always feel free to contact me at Ian, I-a-n, @essentialtennis.com.  Alright, that does it for this week.  I will talk to you guys again next Monday. Until then, take care and good luck with your tennis.