Can You Improve Your Tennis Technique By Improving Your Tennis Mental Skills Or Do You Need Lessons

Wow, what a question!!

Tennis technique is the major focus for most tennis players.

Do I try to play my tennis forehand like Nadal?

Do I try to have a single handed backhand like Federer?

Should I try to have a tennisserve like Roddick?

What about a double handed backhand & return of serve like Andy Murray?

Has Djokovic got the kind of tennis volley technique I should be using?

Here is the question again -

Can You Improve Your Tennis Technique By Improving Your Tennis Mental Skills Or Do You Need Tennis Lessons?

Listen to or download the call………HERE

Changing Your Game To Play On Clay – pt4

The last tip to help you change to the clay courts revolves around being……

AT THE NET

Remember I said earlier about the use of the hitting behind your opponent when playing from the baseline??

Well, I also said when you get the chance you should attack – and that can mean getting to the tennis net to finish off the point.

Just be aware that playing a tennis volley on a clay court  is different to volleying on a hard court or grass court.

Because the tennis ball doesn’t “go through” like it does on other surfaces, you need to make a couple of small adjustments.

1. Use more angles and short/drop volleys

The lack of depth on your volleys will work in your favour as getting up speed and possibly changing direction will be hard for your opponent as they attempt to get to your shots.

2. Bodyweight into ball

If you do decide to play a penetrating volley, then getting your bodyweight behind the ball and moving it forwards into the ball will help it gain momentum off the court.

So there you have it, some easy to follow tips to help you move onto the red dust of the clay courts.

But don’t just save these changes for the clay courts.

These can work on any court you play on!

Changing Your Game To Play On Clay – pt3

WHEN SERVING

You really need to focus on getting a high percentage of first serves into play.

Because the clay court surface negates the power of even the fastest tennis serve, your second serve may well be vunerable to attack – and you don’t want that to happen.

So, getting more first serves into play will mean your opponent gets less “looks” at your second serves and therefore less chances to attack it.

If you don’t do so already, you need to develop a good spin serve that you can be aggressive on as your first serve.

A slice serve is good but a good kick serve will be better as it will bounce up higher and be harder to attack.

Changing Your Tennis Game To Play On Clay – pt2

The second thing to do when adjusting your grounstrokes to playing on clay courts is to hit behind your opponent more often.

Hitting behind your opponent means hitting the tennis ball back to the same place that your opponent has hit from.

It means not always going into the open court (unless you can obviously hit a winner of course) and has 3 big advantages.

1. With your opponent probably recovering towards the centre of the tennis court the “behind” ball means they have to quickly change direction to go back again.

Doing this on clay is very difficult because of the slippery nature of the surface and so will end up with them struggling to maintain balance and footing and therefore struggling to control the ball.

2. You will also find that you make less errors as this often means a cross-court shot and you are not “over hitting” in an attempt to put the ball away into the “smaller” open space.

3. You will pick up a lot of free points if you can do this well as your opponent is forced to end the point quicker than they would normally want to or they will be forced into a very defensive shot just to stay in the point while they slide around.

Use the variations of this simple tactic and you wil see your results on clay (and other surfaces as well) really pick up!!

Changing Your Tennis Game To Play On Clay

As the Pro Tour moves from the American hard courts onto European clay courts, the tennis players will need to make small adjustments to their game because of the different surface.

The same applies to you!!

Here are a few simple changes you may need to follow when you make the transition to clay courts.

FROM THE BASELINE

The first one concerns your groundstrokes and is…………. to hit them higher over the net with a bit more topspin.

This will not only help with your consistency, but will also help to push the balls deeper into your opponents court as well as getting the balls up at heights that they may find difficult to handle.

It’s well known that this tactic is one of the main reasons why Rafa Nadal is virtually unbeatable on the clay, his consistency and difficult to handle shots are a nightmare for opponents.

Talk More And Win More Tennis Doubles Matches

Ok let’s assume you are trying some of the stuff i mentioned before and it’s a “work in progress”.

That’ fine.

You can still impact your doubles game with this one – comunication!!

You and your partner need to communicate with each other on a regular basis if you want to really get going.

If you watch top level doubles you will see the players talking to each other after every point.

So for you to talk to your partner is nothing out of the ordinary – yet hardly anyone at the club level does it.

Getting back again to my own partnership, we communicated on 3 basic levels.

1. Where we were going to serve (down the middle, out wide, body etc)

2. What the other partner was going to do as a result of the serve (stay, intercept etc)

3. Encouragement for each other at the end of each point regardless of the outcome.

If you can start with these simple lines of communication, you will be very suprised about the effect they will have on your results.

Tennis Doubles – How To Win pt2

One of the biggest myths in tennis exists in the game of doubles.

If I had some money for every time I heard the question “do you want to play on the forehand or backhand?”, I would be very, very rich.

What people really should be saying is do you want to play in the deuce or advantage court??

The problem is a simple one!!

Most people go with the assumption that if they have a stronger backhand than their partner then they should play in the advantage (left) court.

It also goes for the stronger forehand – they get to play in the deuce side (right).

And that’s only when we have two right handed players!!!

The poor old left hander never even has a choice – it’s left court (ad side) for them 99% of the time.

The truth of the matter is that the logic used to make these choices is flawed.

Let’s go back to my “dream team” again to show you how the thought process should run.

If you remember the last post where I described tbe strengths and weaknesses of me & my partner, well I said that my strengths were my net play and attacking returns etc.

This is perfect for a player who plays in the deuce court primarily for the following reason.

Of the 8 game winning points that can occur, 6 of them occur in the ad court.

So, my returns were “important” 1/4 of the time.

Here is where we check your maths

Following that logic you should see that for 3/4 of the time, the returner in the ad court will have a “more important” return.

This is when you want the steadier player (in this case my partner) to be making a return of serve.

NOT necessarily the player with the best forehand or backhand, but the player with the best return.

This is also because just because you are returning in the ad side, it doesn’t mean you are going to get the tennis ball on your backhand!!

As an overall tennis strategy (and don’t forget it’s strategy that wins matches – NOT techniques!!), I was given the freedom to attack the ball when I could without the pressure of too many game or break points.

It also meant that if I was successful and created a game winning point along the way we had the knowledge that we would probably be in the point (because of my partners good returns) and maybe my net play could kick in to nick a service break!!

Let me just throw in at this point, when I played with other people and was the “steadier” player it was up to me to take the ad court – even though my forehand is strong and I was used to playing on the deuce side.

SO!!

Stop this choice of sides based on “strong shots” and start making the choice based on overall strengths and weaknesses.

You will be in the game more.

Break more.

And

WIN MORE!!

Win More Tennis Matches Now!!

Tennis Doubles – How To Win

I think it’s quite strange that most people talk about and even ask more questions about the game of tennis singles and yet much of the time is spent playing tennis doubles.

I played a lot of doubles matches and had 1 particularly successful doubles partnership which I think had all the right ingredients.

Here they are -

Get yourself the right partner

Whoever you play with must compliment you on several different levels.

In my “top team”, I had a good serve and net game and my partner was rock solid on the return and from the baseline.

That worked well because his solid backcourt game (he volleyed as well)  brought my net game into play and he was pleased with the fact that if he made some solid returns etc I was able to make telling interceptions and that was a great combination.

You also need to consider personality as well.

I was quite volatile and excitable wheras my partner was “the ice man”.  Even my best jokes never got him to laugh (maybe they wern’t that good!!).

But, that gave us a situation where I would make the outrageous winners and angles safe in the knowledge that when we needed to tough it out and be solid we could.

Again, it was great for my partner as he knew that if he had a partner who was the same as him, there would be plenty of times in a match where some “shotmaking” would need to be made and it would often be difficult for a player of his type to have that invention.

We also worked well together emotionally.

I did all the motivating and getting us “up” and he did the “keeping the feet on the ground” stuff.

So now you can see how this stuff works.

All the best teams have had a version of this type of thing.

McEnroe & Peter Fleming

The Woodies

The Bryans

What about Federer & Nadal as a pair??? – tell me how you think they would do!!

ALSO – Check out my “Lucky 13″ top doubles tips and a great volley drill  HERE

Looking Back pt4

One characteristic of a grass court (like at Wimbledon) is that is “takes” slice, meaning that the shot is a good one to use on that surface.

It stays low and skids through making it difficult for your opponent.

You will therefore find players who don’t normally slice on other surfaces being forced to slice heaps more when they come to play on grass.

Again, just because you don’t play on grass it doesn’t mean you should never slice the ball (and I don’t just mean when you are in trouble and pushed out wide).

You only need to look at two of the greatest players in modern times who won on all surfaces and who were virtually unbeatable on hard courts.

Federer and Henin both had really good slices that they used for great variation as well as to set up their topspin and to attack the net.

Even a so called baseline topspin ninja like Nadal has developed a great slice over the last year or so!!

So there you have it, 4 great reasons to take some great tactics that most people leave on the grass courts and add them to your game to make it heaps better.

Who said grass was only for cows??

Looking Back pt3

Because grass court tennis (like that played at Wimbledon) by nature is fairly fast it does take away or at least reduce your thinking time.

Most people are scared of this or see it as a bad thing but you need to see this as a good thing.

The fact is that most players actually play worse when they think too much and try too hard.

You need to set targets for yourself in terms of how you want to play your tennis and then – go for it!

It doesn’t matter if you are playing on a hard court – natural free flowing tennis should always be your goal.

Let’s be honest here Nike have been pretty successful because they knew all along that the key was to “Just Do It!!”