Essential Tennis Podcast #95

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Speaker : 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: 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 somersetsportsperformance.com.

Thank you very much for joining me today. It’s been a couple episodes since I’ve had a guest on the show. And today i’m going to have one back on. We’re going to answer some listener questions together. And we’re going to go ahead and get ride into it. So sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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My guest today on the Essential Tennis Podcast is Will Hamilton from FuzzyYellowBalls.com. FuzzyYellowBalls. Com specializes in video tennis instruction, and they’ve been a great resource for amateur tennis players everywhere and trying to improve their game.

So Will you are great fit on the show here and we’ve had him on the show before. I can’t remember what the topics were the last time I had you on, but it’s definitely a great show. So I’m really happy to have you back. Welcome to he show.

Will Hamilton: Well, hey and thanks for having me back. I think we were talking how to play a lefty, which is obviously

Ian Westermann: Oh yes.

Will Hamilton: Right up or alleys since we’re both lefties.

Ian Westermann: Yes, that’s right yes. I remember that show that’s quite a while ago. I apologize it’s been so long since I’ve had you on last, but I’m sure we’ll make up for it with some amazing content here, right?

Will Hamilton: [laughter[ Yes, I'm sure it's amazing.

Ian Westermann: Alright, let's go ahead and answer some amazing questions here. We've got two questions that Will and I are going to talk about today h aving to do with tennis. And at the end of today's show we're also going to be giving you guys a brief look into the new content that Will has been putting out on FuzzyYellowBalls.com. But first let's get down to some questions and our first one here comes from the Poster the Pronator on the forums that essentialtennis.com. And here's his question.

He wrote and said, 'I imagine that there's many listener's of the ET Podcast who coach in some way or another. My question is this: How do you keep passionate and fresh about your game when you spend hours on court each day? I used to coach 5 days a week and found that come weekend competitive time, I just didn't feel like being in the court anymore. I wanted to spend my weekend just far away from work as possible. When I realized I was no longer enjoying the sport I'd loved for so long. I retired from coaching. Obviously others still maintain the passion for playing at the same is coaching. How do you do this? Are there any mental techniques or strategies?'

So Will what's your first reaction to the Pronators questions there?

Will Hamilton: My first reaction is that they sounds like the pretty common question. Because coaching can if you're standing in the court for 8 hours a day gets-- it can just be difficult when you're outside in the sun and you're on your feet, but you're not really moving around. I mean, standing on the court feeding or playing or kind of 2 different animals and are a lot of times when I would play a lot when I was actually in competition and I would feel fine walking off the court, but then you stand there and you're feeding and not really moving. A nd I've never stiff or I don't know if you got the same problem, but

Ian Westermann: Yes, I think that's probably the number misconception actually Will of amateur players who know a tennis pro or who work with a tennis pro. I've had the comment or questions so many times from somebody saying to me, 'Wow, your game must be awesome. You get to play all day long. That's great.' And no. I t's actually the opposite. Teaching is so terrible for competitive game if you're teaching tennis full time, because it's basically--like you said--there's a lot of standing around. Yes you do get a good among exercise, but even then. A good tennis pro is able to tone back his level or her level to match appropriately with whoever to be happen teaching. So it's not the same thing as playing it's just kind of a mental and physical drain a lot of times.

Will Hamilton: Yes, I mean there's different situations where--like you said you spend a couple weeks coaching you don't really play competitively and then you try to play a match and you can't keep the ball on the court.

Ian Westermann: Yes.

Will Hamilton: It takes a little while to get timing back.

But do go back to the Pronator's question. I don't really know if there's a silver ball. One thing that I've always remembered from a talk that Wayne Bryan gave was when he was bringing Mike and Bod he was very, very focused on once they were off the court they were-- Mike and Bob were off the court--they weren't going to talk about tennis. They weren't going to focus on the sport. They were going to do something completely different and Mike and Bob ended up getting really in the music and that was sort of one of their outlets. I guess they've just released an album.

But it's pretty important in my view to have something else. Something else that you're passionate about, because if you can completely just engage from tennis and spend some time on a hobby, or some other interest. T hen what is it, 'Distance makes the heart grow fonder. ' That is the expression?

Ian Westermann: Yes. Absence I believe.

Will Hamilton: Yes, exactly it's essentially you just need to be doing something else so that when you come back to the sport you're fresh and that certainly doesn't apply to tennis and got applies to pretty much any profession or any other sport where, if you spend 8 hours a day on it you need to be doing something else. I mean Andy Murray I guess plays 7 hours of play station to think as much from this. [laughter]

Ian Westermann: Nice.

Will Hamilton: Probably to his detriment, but.

Ian Westermann: Yes. I agree with you Will. It’s important to have other things in your life. If you’re going to be– not only a coach, but wants to play competitively a well– you’ve got to kind of pull the plug out once in a while and relax and historically I haven’t been terribly good at this. I come home after teaching all day and work on the website. And I’m lucky that I haven’t got burned out yet, but I’m very careful to listen to myself. To my body and to my brain, because I can definitely get over work and I start getting to the point where I just need down time. I’ve got to just stop and not think about it anymore.

So Pronator you need to come up with some kind of hobby or something else to do where you’re not thinking about it. And even back when I was playing in college myself and my other buddies on the team– we had so many other activities and different sports we play. We will go play basketball, we will go play ultimate frisbee. We’ve played a lot of pingpong and these days I’m playing paddle tennis, flat form tennis. I play golf. A nd these reaches all ways and other athletic things that are still fun and still competitive just like tennis is, but ways that you can get your mind of it. And even those of you who are listening who are not teachers or pros or coaches, those of you who just have a passion for the game and play a lot, I recommend this for you guys as well. If you’re practicing your tennis for more than 6 or 8 hours in a week–which I know a lot people listening are–it’s important to go and take a break sometimes and take a week off and just rest and do some other stuff/

And I like the phrase the you use well the Absence makes the heart grow fonder. That’s absolutely correct. I recently took a week off from work over Thanksgiving and I didn’t missed work very much at all. I’d be honest. It was to great away and just relax. But when I came back and step down the court from my first lesson at 6:30 in the morning I can help, but think to myself, ‘Man this is awesome. I’m so lucky that I’m able to do this. ‘ And those of you who– even who don’t coach and teach–you can get that kind of a feeling as well if you just take a break once in a while.

Will Hamilton: Yes, let me ask you this with the website and see if we have the same experience, when obviously the website probably in tennis, but do you planning that, that is sufficiently different enough or are you still stay engaged? Even if you get out of the court after teaching a 10 hours and just spend a couple of hours on the website. It seems different in a way to you?

Ian Westermann: Yes, good question and obviously its within the same room of work. I guess you could say ‘And that is instructing tennis or teaching tennis. ‘ But yes, that’s the finally that you bring that up about that up and I think about it. Yes. It’s a very different feeling thing. The work that I do in the website it’s for–it’s kind of hard to explain without trying to offend somebody, but the work I do on the website is for people who really have a strong passion for the game. And so it’s kind of different clientele. The people that I work for at my job, it’s more of a social atmosphere and it’s a very different kind of teaching. There’s a lot of different layers to what I do at the club where I work. And the work that I do in the website is very much cut and dry. I’ll tell people how it is the first time. I don’t worry about sending people or politics or anything. And so it is very different. Did that answer your question?

Will Hamilton: Yes, I was saying I feel like the web angle is also just–I don’t know if inner disciplinary is the right word. I think it’s the good one, because it’s just the web is kind of it’s entirely different angle than coaching and posting your video. You have audio like this Podcast.

Ian Westermann: Yes. Will Hamilton: The coding HTML like does in behind any website you’re putting together. So I just feel like it’s very separate. From my experience at least. When I’m working on the website it doesn’t feel like to a degree that I’m coaching or that I’m working on tennis.

Ian Westermann: Yes, that a good point too.

Will Hamilton: I don’t know if [inaudible]

Ian Westermann: Yes, the work I do on my site is a combination of hobbies that I’ve had in the past actually. So that’s another good point. Back when I was in high school and in college I worked as a sound technician for awhile for many years actually. Both in churches and auditoriums in college. And so doing this Podcast is something that I actually enjoyed doing a lot just from a technique side of things and an audio side of things. And video has is been something I’ve really enjoyed as well. And finally doing some video stuffs.

So I bet it’s probably through for you as well and the video that you do. I mean it’s fun to play with the technology and–although I know that Adam who’s your sidekick does a lot of the technological stuff–but it’s fun getting in there and actually creating stuff isn’t it?

Will Hamilton: Absolutely. I mean, Adam will figure out how to do it and help teach me what to do. [laughter] So that’s the basic developmental process on it.

Ian Westermann: It’s a good deal you got there.

Will Hamilton: Yes it’s a great deal. I can’t complaint. But yes you’re right. I mean I wouldn’t know what a croma key is or how to do it or how to light yourself if it wasn’t for trying to put together all those videos.

So yes, I mean again to go back to prior. I think just keeping things interesting and new regardless of what are you’re focused. You’re still focus on tennis or you’re doing something that’s more of a hobby and I think that is an extremely important aspect to staying passionate. If you kind to get in a rut, and things become monotonous you’re going to lose focus and you’re going to lost passion. If you always feel like you’re moving forward and again doing something new doing something interesting then I think passion shouldn’t be a motivation will be too much of a problem.

Ian Westermann: Alright, I think that’s sums it up pretty well. A nd Pronator hopefully that answers your question. A nd hopefully that’s going to be an interesting discussion for people listening. Not only people who coach and teach, but just really people who are passionate about their games. Who are just players as well. And the interesting thing I think– and Will pointed this out when we first started–is this can apply to really anybody in any profession it’s important to get away and relax and think about other stuff for awhile. You don’t want o get burned.

Alright, let’s go on to the next question and it comes to us from Dan in Seattle, Washington. He’s a a 3.0 level player. Dan wrote and said, ‘I didn’t grow up playing and I feel like I’m analytically challenged to understand what is happening to whom when I play. I come off the courts and can’t always explain why the winner prevailed and what weaknesses were exploited. After my last doubles match my opponents commented that my partner won every point he serve in the 10 point tie break. And
I was shocked at this acuity and envious of his observational power’.

I like that phrase observational power.

‘I hadn’t known the fact of course. Is there a way to better develop my ability to analyze the results on the fly? Would charting or keeping stats on another player help develop this? I feel like if I had that skill I could adjust faster when my opponent is beating me with the common or reoccurring weapon. Thanks and all the best, Dan.’

So what do you think Will?

Will Hamilton: Well, my first impression would be that on FYB we focus on–t he very first thing to do is talk about the fundamentals. To the point where probably is a bulk of record to a lot of people. Whether it would be forehand fundamentals, backhand fundamentals, surf fundamentals.

There’s also fundamentals to strategy. And my first piece of advice would be: Do you understand the basic strategy involves in a tennis match? The dimensions of a tennis court. How that applies to your shot selections. Where you should be positioned based on where your opponent hitting the ball. What is the high percentage shot base on the ball you hit them ? And so on

And if you understand just basically and fundamentally where these high percentage shots or whether its low percentage shots are then that will give you a sound strategy. A strategy that not only applies at the 3. 0 level, but also the professional level. I mean there’s a reason that every single pro point for the most part is constructing around a cross court rally. It’s a neutral rally and then some other stuff goes on where one player is jacking position or try to take control the point. But there’s first of all the fundamentals of strategy that you will need to master and then once you have that in your back pocket then I would move on to analyzing my opponent.

Ian Westermann: So and first of all, let me–yes, I agree with you Will. And I’ve been accused many times of repeating myself to often both on the Podcast and in my teaching in person. And the fundamentals or the essentials if you will. I think are

Will Hamilton: I think I [inaudible]

Ian Westermann: Yes are what most players need to focus on it. They want to improve their game. And most players out there listening are around the 3. 5 level or so and the way you guys are going to advance and Dan here who asked the question is a 3.0 level player. Dan where you going to advance are by paying attention to the fundamental things and so I certainly agree with that Will.

Now I’m going to put you on the spot here whether what’s an example of 1 or maybe 2 things that you would say are part of that. What would be a fundamental tactical thing that Dan and other players listening have to understand and have to learn?

Will Hamilton: Well, I mean the first it would have to be– like I was saying with the cross court rally being the foundation of any winning tennis strategy. That’s just because you put the ball across court. The court is longer in that direction and you have a bigger target to hit to the net is lower in the middle of the court.

And the other one– I’m sure many of your listener’s are put it directionals. The type of ball, based on how the ball is coming at you–that’s going to makes certain shots easier than others and you obviously know the concept of inside versus outside ground strokes. And it’s similar to how if you’re playing baseball, if the pitcher throws you a ball, you’re batting and the ball is moving towards you and just like moving into you. Then those balls are going to be easier to control. Those are called inside ground strokes. And you could do more of that in terms where you want to place that ball, but if the ball is moving away from you and essentially that means I figure out I wanna describe this. It basically and think of you’re in the cross court rally and your opponent hit you the ball back cross court is going to move across the plane of your body and then it would get farther away from you if you didn’t hit. I hope that make sense.

Ian Westermann: Yes.

Will Hamilton: It’s hard for me– it’s easier me to describe it visually.

But in any event, those balls are harder to get leverage over. Harder to control. It’s easier to make errors trying to change direction on those balls. So if you get an outside ground stroke, essentially you want to just go back cross court with that balls.

So essentially with this always talk boils down to: is if you’re in a cross court rally hit the ball back cross court unless you have a good reason to change direction of the ball. And a good reason is typically just a weak shot that you can–that ‘s easier to hit basically. That’s short. T hat’s it’s up. That you got some time to prepare for.

That would be the #1 thing. I think is people step on the court and they’re like, ‘OK, well my opponent is in this position I’m just going to hit the ball away from them. ‘ That’s actually a recipe for errors. Trying to run your opponent. Trying to hit away from them is an extremely common tactic and a huge mistake in most part. If you watch Pro Tennis a lot of the time those guys just go cross court for a couple of shots. Even though it’s essentially right back to their opponent and the reason is, because they are hitting outside ground strokes, and changing direction is probably going to do a mistake or a ball that the opponent can export.

Ian Westermann: Yes the directrionals are definitely a very, very important thing to understand when putting together single strategy. So a little bit different in doubles. It’s not quite as cut and dry as it is in singles when having a rally back and forth from the base line. But the directionals are something that I’ve really believe in strongly. So it’s definitely a good stuff

And Dan I’m going to give you a couple of other things here. A little bit different thread then what Will is talking about. I think that the most important things for you to pay attention too Dan are I’ve got 3 things here. You need to know and you should know this before the warm ups are done. The strengths and the weaknesses of both of your opponents if you’re playing doubles. And singles is a little bit easier, because you’ve only got one person that you’ve got to pay attention to. But you’ve got to know what you’re opponents or opponent’s like and what they’re good at and they don’t like and what their bad at. And at the 3. 0 level obviously this should be pretty easy to pick out if you watch many tennis players. If you’ve been watching tennis for very long at all, it becomes pretty obvious what people are trying avoid and so this is extremely important information, because you can effectively build the strategy around information like this. You can avoid what they like and make them hit what they don’t like. And this is good place to start. And along with different with knowing different patterns and the percentages like what Will is talking about. Cross court most of the time is going to be the way to go on your return of serving doubles. And that’s because the nets lower the court is longer. And that’s the way you should be going most of the time. And then beyond that you wanted to get into the point and figure out how you can make your opponents as uncomfortable as possible. And that’s basically what good strategy comes down to. Anything into that Will?

Will Hamilton: Yes, I think the strengths and weaknesses is definitely an important thing to understand. I think equally as important is when you lose typically– should say taking step back– most people don’t realize what their opponent is doing to neutralize them. And most people step on the court and say, ‘OK. Well my forehand is my best shot, so I’m going to fill a lot of forehands, because that’s how I win a match. ‘

Well, that’s probably works most of the time, but against a particular opponent that might not work as well. The opponent might have a shot that their cross court forehand to your forehand for whatever reason is out to your strike zone. And you’re kind of go to is not as effective as normally is. So understanding what your opponent does to diminish your strength or to neutralize you is valuable, because than you say, ‘OK. Well, I need to make some sort of adjustment. What am I going to do to put myself in a better winning position?’ So like you were saying, absolutely you need to know your opponent is good at and bad at, but you also need to know what they do to you so that you can work around whatever they maybe to neutralize your best shots.

Ian Westermann: Yes, absolutely. And I think a big mistake that tennis players make is that they get so caught up with themselves and they’re just thinking their own technique. What feels good? What feels bad that day? I think players get caught with themselves. A nd they don’t pay very close attention to what’s going on the other side of the court. And that includes both the strengths and weaknesses that I was talking about. And now Will talking about as well, is paying attention to specific things that your opponent is doing– as you said Will -yrying to neutralize your shots and if your opponents any good. There will be doing to what Will and I are talking about. They going to be putting together a game plan/ And if you guys are totally caught up in what’s happening on your own side of the court. You going to completely missed what’s happening with your opponents and you’re not going to be able to make those adjustments that Dan was talking about. And a good strategist is able to constantly evaluate what’s going on. What their opponent is doing. And this has, it does have something to do with your own game guys. Don’t get me wrong. I mean you need to walk on to the court with the good understanding of what you’re bringing to the table. But really it’s more important to know what your opponent is doing so that you can then use your strengths and your skills, and use them accordingly.

So Dan you’ve got to learn how to pay attention. Watch what’s happening on the side of the court. And then be able to make adjustments accordingly and to answer one of your questions directly Dan. No I don’t think you need to go out and start charting matches. I don’t know maybe t hat can help you though.

Will Hamilton: I wouldn’t chart either.

Ian Westermann: Yes. I mean there’s a difference between paying attention and becoming a statistician and keeping track of stats. And you don’t need to know percentages when you’re walking of to court and you don’t need to know that you want 4 out of 9 points that you came to the net. Or whatever. It doesn’t have to be specific. They’re just need to be a general paying attention and understanding of what’s going on.

So don’t go out and chart. Just get on the court. Play more matches. Gets some more experience and open your eyes up to what’ going on the other side of the court.

Will Hamilton: Yes, I’d say the one statistic that I think would be fine to keep track of, and actually probably should keep tract of this unforced errors just make a note that the unforced errors you make each side, because that is the number leak so to speak

Ian Westermann: Yes, that’s the good one.

Will Hamilton: In people’s game. So losing those points by making mistakes. And if you just eliminate and if you’re cognizant. I mean Ian how many unforced errors did you make the last time you played a match? I mean how you,

Ian Westermann: 0 [laughter]

Will Hamilton: Yes 0 that’s what you say? Nice.

Ian Westermann: Just kidding.

Will Hamilton: Yes, I know. We don’t I probably show the next time I put a match and then where I’m making too many error, but if you are actually cognizant ‘OK I made 11 errors just stat then you can work to reduce that.

Ian Westermann: Yes.

Will Hamilton: At the level up to 4, 5. Most people don’t have a big enough game to hit winners consistently, or hit good enough shots where you’re always on the run and you’re always pressured. So by simply eliminating errors from your game there’s only really 1 way your opponent can win points and that’s by hitting a winner or

Ian Westermann: Yes.

Will Hamilton: Hitting forcing you into an error and that’s why pushers win so many matches at 3.5, 3. 0 level. It is eliminate the major leak in most in that level at the 3. 0 level. It’s unforced errors. So don’t make errors. A nd that’s sounds so simplistic, but it’s amazing how effective it is.

Ian Westermann: Absolutely.

Will Hamilton: And other sort of tangential points I would not focus on your technique when your playing a match. That’s another thing a lot of people do and takes your focus off your opponent, yourself in terms of what you’re strategy should be. And if you’re thinking about your technique then you’re probably going to start making mistake. Always that’s happen. I don’t know if that’s my experience. I don’t know if that happen with you as well.

Ian Westermann: Yes, I can put agree well and this is a big mistake people like can golf as well. It’s they get on the court and start trying to fix their swing and it’s the right from their focusing.

Will Hamilton: [inaudible]

Ian Westermann: Yes, exactly and listen guys take the focus off to yourself whether be your technique, your strengths and weaknesses whatever. You know what’s you’re bringing to the table, and you don’t have the time to sit there and try to analize your technique and how your swinging at the ball. It’s too late for that. You’re going to have whatever you have grooved. Whatever you hit enough to be a habit and to be second nature. That’s where you going to have that day to play with. And you’re not going to learn anything or improve anything on the fly while you are playing the match.

So I think the big thing here Dan is you need to focus on your opponents. Pay close attention and know the percentages like Will was talking about. Know the patterns of play and what’s smart shot to go for and what’s not . And you can start winning more points in more matches by paying close attention to these things.

Will Hamilton: Yes and also add real quick that— his is some of the attention as well–that people always do, I’m not sure how many questions you get about the mental game and how do I prevent myself from joking and how do I stay positive. But if you focusing–on technique is a perfect way come apart mentally, because you’re start missing a couple of shots and then you get frustrated. And the way you prevent yourself from getting frustrated or being confused or feeling helpless is you understand basic strategy and you are always thinking about what your opponent is doing. What you were doing and you’re trying it comes kind of a problem solving situation. You have a basic framework for a plan. You’re trying to implement it and making adjustments along the way. A nd if you have some sort of road map or blueprint, then you’re not going to feel like you’re out in the wilderness and you’re not going to feel like, ‘What will I do here? I’m helpless, this is helpless. ‘ And that’s the main way people start coming apart.

Ian Westermann: I agree. Good stuff Will. And Dan hopefully that answers your question. And if you have anything further. Feel free to send me another e-mail or you can post on the forums at essentialtennis.com.

And Will thanks very much for helping me answer these questions today. And before we wrap things up I want to talk to Will a little bit about the new section of his website and that is FYB Premium. Will tell us a little bit about it.

Will Hamilton: Well, it’s essentially a very focused way of learning tennis. What we had on our normal website FYB.com. And this is sort of something that I feel a lot over internet instruction that is somewhere unfocused. People ask questions kind of been above or what do I do to fix my kicks are for example. And what we wanted to do is kind of take a more logical to teaching a game. Almost like our college course where concepts start building on top of each other so that you would know– go back to this kind of Blueprint as map. It build your game of in a logical phase and not just technique, but also strategy. And as you move through you’ve obviously get more advanced, but you’re never learning something that you’re not able of implementing, because the stop they came before serves as the foundation for the later concepts.

Ian Westermann: Nice. So it’s sounds like you’ve kind of put together– I guess a learning system or a road map to success for the tennis game ins general?

Will Hamilton: Yes, I mean Want to go back to what were discussing earlier. You were talking about analyzing your opponents strengths and weaknesses. And that’s something we addressed in the section called. We divide up like a premium in the blocks essentially, which are kind of like the premium chapters in the book and block 6 we call SLOT which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. So that the SW strengths and weaknesses.. A nd in learning how to evaluate the strenght and weakness of your opponent. You first need to have the news from other perspective and understanding of basic strategy. And that goes back to those inside and outside ground strokes court positioning. What high percentages which low percentages. And once you understand that stuff that source is the foundation for learning how to evaluate your opponents so that you can exploit your opponent’s weaknesses and a fundamentally sound matters.

So you’re not–for example if you knew your opponent had a bad backhand and a good forehand. You would think, ‘OK, well I’m going to hit everything that are backhand and that is generally true, but if you’re in a forehand to forehand cross court rally and you say to yourself, ‘OK, well now to go on their backhand. ‘ You might be hitting a low percentage shot down the line and that would be a mistake. Because you’ve probably make an error even though you’re going at their weaker shot. And it you would presume it’s not so weak that if you get a bad ball. They wouldn’t be able to do something with it.

Ian Westermann: It’s tough well I strongly suggest that my listeners go check it out.

And real quickly before we wrap things up. Will I know that you had a special offer going as well for an instructional series and please tell us about that. Has to do all about the forehand, correct?

Will Hamilton: Yes, it’s just a free e-mail course that we put together, because last year we went to Indian Wells and we feel flattered and adore those folks. And got some really cool footage and haven’t really use it like we wanted to. Ato we kind of went back and look at forehand fundamentals videos that we put together about a year ago and we updated some concepts and we basically took–I’d say 10 prior I mean we have obviously Federal and adore Roddick, Rodesko, Bonevac a bunch of demanded women– and we on our website we talked about the 5 fundamentals of the forehand. So we go through all their shots and show you that each of these pros is doing those 5 things that we’re talking about. And then we compare their strokes the pros to some amateur players that we filmed to demonstrate that –like we’ve been talking about these whole time. It’s the fundamentals that virtually everybody needs to focus on and it’s not smaller stuff like do like Pronator as a hit by forehand or ‘What’s that angle of my risk?’ That stuff is loudly secondary to these 5 things and our goal with the course is approve that.

Ian Westermann: It’s tough. Well as Will and I been talking here. My web guys got the link up. If you guys go to essentialtennis. Com and click on just about any page on the website, the videos, the Podcast pages, all 5 at the written blogs you also see around the right hand side a little add for the forehand videos and just click on that and you guys will be taked two page you guys can sign up and it’s totally free. A nd I’ve suggest that you guys do that and take advantage of it. It’s really good contents and good instructions. So definitely check it out.

Will anything else before we wrap things up here today?

Will Hamilton: At the top of my head, not really. And thanks again for having me on. Don’t focus on your technique when you’re plan to match. Mentioned one of those things we talked about before. That’s something that people do all the time and can lead to a lot of mistakes.

Ian Westermann: Alright, Will it’s been great to having you back on the show. And hopefully in the near future we can have you on as a guest again.

Will Hamilton: Yes, absolutely I’m looking forward to it.

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Alright, that brings the Essential Tennis Podcast episode #95 to a close. Thank you very much for joining myself and Will today. And hopefully you found those topics interesting and our conversation is helpful.

Real quickly before I wrap things up. I just like to do a quick shout out to a couple of very special on the Essential Tennis forums. John in real life, Howard and Royce. All 3 of those posters just in the last couple of days passed 1,000 posts on the Essential Tennis forums. So I wanted to give all 3 of you guys a shout out and all 3 of you are very important and an intricate part of the community at Essential Tennis. So thank you guys so much for your passion for the game and for how much time you’ve spent at essentialtennis.com.

Alright that does it for this week. Take care everybody and good luck with your tennis. [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #94

Download: Word Doc | PDF | Kindle | Text

Speaker : 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 technique player.

And now–here’s Ian!

Ian Westermann: 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 somersetsportsperformance.com.

Before we get to today’s instructional questions on the show, I’d like to just make 2 quick announcements.

First of all, I’m very happy to announce that I’ve finally launched a video section of Essential Tennis.com. You guys are going to want to check this out immediately. I’m really happy to finally get some video out there and I plan on keeping up with this and putting out a lot of content for you guys. It’s 100% free at the moment. So definitely go take advantage of it and you can check that out at essentialtennis.com/video.

Secondly, before we get started, you guys have heard me talked about the clinic in Palm Springs, California. And it’s definitely going to be a go and I’m excited about that clinic. It’s going to be a great time. There’s still spots open and this is the last time I’m going to offer them. The dates on these are January 2nd and 3rd Saturday and Sunday in Palm Springs. The price is $350 for 2 days of instruction with hotel room included. This is a really excellent deal. It really is. For 2 full days of instruction. And currently there’s only 7 people signed up. So if you’d like some 1 on 1 instruction and attention from myself. If you want to improve your tennis game and travel and be in a wonderful place in the middle of the winter as well at the same time. Definitely, send me an e-mail and let me know if you’re interested. And you can let me know at ian@essentialtennis.com.

Alright. Let’s get down to business. S it back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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Alright, let’s get started with today’s show. And we’re going to kick things off with the question from Ashley in Australia. Who says that she’s a 4. 5 level player.

She wrote to me and said, ‘Here’s my question. Do you think that there is any etiquette involved when the rally has started? As in: do you think that there are things you should or shouldn’t do during the rally? I’m not talking about waving your arms around or making noise, etc, but about game play.

Here’s my example. I was recently playing doubles in the doubles final and our opponents were better than we were, one of them in particular. Our decision therefore was to keep the ball away from this guy as much as possible. The result was we looked like we were toughing this guy by smacking balls down the line with him continually. If allowed win up it was in his direction. If we were both at the net we drilled him. We got some funny looks for these sort of tactic. I’ve played a lot of tennis in my time, but have never specifically set out to target of player in this fashion.

Do you think this is legitimate means of winning or it is a poor etiquette? The same thing goes from mix doubles. I was playing the match and then the opposition male–the opponent male– felt quite comfortable smashing forehand than the female at the net. Is this of breach of etiquette or unacceptable form of winning?’ -Ashley.

W ell, that’s a good question. Ashley and there’s kind of 2 different kinds of tennis players. Recreational tennis players. Not everybody has the ability to play as a tennis club whether a member and nice facilities etc. Some people have to play at public facilities, public courts, and it’s just kind of playground rules out there. There’s not really a whole lot of etiquette involved. I’m not slighting people who only play at public courts in the list. However, when you get involved in a club with different members and different groups of people, a kind of politics comes in to play. A nd so it just kind of depends on what type of tennis you’re playing. And there’s going to be basically one of two scenarios that you going to find yourself in and you have to make decision for yourself which of these 2 situations or scenarios that you’re in when you’re playing your tennis match, and what’s most important for you in the scenario that you’re in. So let me describe this.

The first scenario is the club play or social play. And this is where the #1 priority really for everybody in the court is just to be there for enjoyment, to get some exercise, to have some social interaction, to just have a good time. And fill their time a little bit during the day with something enjoyable. And in this setting nobody should really be singled out exclusively or picked on. And there is a little bit of etiquette involved here, because everybody’s there just to have a good time and this is just kind of a style or a flavor of tennis if you will. And this happens that every club in the country or across the world usually is in Australia. And I’ve never played tennis at a club in Australia, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that it’s very similar to here in that people are joining tennis club for relaxation and for recreation, and so in this kind of scenario or setting, n o I would say it’s kind of look down upon to be super competitive and– by the way what you did in your match that you’re describing was great tactics. It was good strategy. However, if this was during a social match– just a weekly kind of game at your local club–then yes I can understand why people would look down upon that tactic.

And last thing I’m going to say about this specific scenario is that the best player on the court really bears some responsibility to make things close and fun and once in a while at the club variety somebody won’t show up for their doubles group and I go out and fill in. I t’s my job to just make things even make things fun. My side of the court is still going to win, but I’m not going out there to flex my muscles and prove that I’m the best, etc. It’s my job to make sure that the points last as long as possible and everybody has a good time. And so if you”re in that kind of environment in the club play then that should be your goal. Is to just have fun and to make sure everybody in the court have fun.

Now the second scenario is tournament or competitive and when you’re talking about entering a tournament where everybody has entered for the same reason– and that is to compete and to kind of judge and compare yourself to other players–the #1 priority is to win. P eriod. That’s why you’re there and that’s why everybody else is there. Is to win is to go out and compete and the purpose in competing, the #1 purpose, is to try to win your match when every point possible. So any and all tactics here completely fair game. Assuming that there was in the guidelines that the rules of tennis of course. And you talk about waving your arms or making noises or trying to destruct your opponents on purpose. No, that’s obviously not fair play. That’s against the rules. And so I’m not saying that’s okay at all. It’s not. However, anything within the rules of tennis that you can be use to your advantage is completely fair game. All the players on the courts signed up to play their best and to be challenge, and really by holding back and not playing a winning strategy, you’re kind of insulting them and don’t do that. Don’t be nice and try to be too political and try to make everybody happy in this scenario, because everybody is there for the same reason and that’s to try to win. So in this setting no. It wouldn’t be appropriate to hold back. And if you get funny looks in this setting where it’s competitive and everybody is trying to win. Well, these people are not very mature. Tennis players are not very mature competitors and they are kind of missing the point.

And so I think you absolutely did the right thing i f this was in a competitive environment. There’s only one exception to this in my opinion. And that would be if both of the players that you’re playing against–you and your doubles partner–if both players that you guys that are playing against are just not even close to your level and they are just completely out classed and it’s obvious that you and your partner are much stronger then in that scenario I would say be a good sport and don’t embarrass them completely and go a way out of your way to win literally every single points if it’s obvious we’re going to win no matter what. Then in that scenario I would say be a good sport. Don’t over do it and don’t embarrass them. B ut even then they do need to be taught a lesson and they need to know that they were not signed up for the right even. They are not in the right place. And so you should beat them soundly, but I would not go way out of your way and take it super seriously and get a golden set in both sets and that shouldn’t really be your goal is to completely put somebody down emotionally and physically.

B ut on the other hand if they signed up for the tournament, they are putting themselves in that position. So they should know that they were not in the right place. And they should signed up for the lower class next time or lower level or etc.

But that’s my answer for you Ashley and hopefully that make sense. So it depends on the setting. Is it club play? Is it social play or is it tournament/competitive play? You need to figure out which of those 2 environments you’re in, and figure out what’s most important to you. Is the improvement of your own game more important than everybody else on the court being happy? And if it is, then go out and do whatever it takes to win every single point. If it’s more important to you that the other people on the court leave happy, and you guys are all friends and you want to be cordial, and you want to keep everybody happy. If that’s more important to you then you need to play accordingly.

So it’s kind of up to you and it depends on the situation you’re in. But Ashley, thanks very much for your question and let me know if you have anything further on that. Hopefully, that make sense. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, next stop we’ve got a series of questions from James Northcas in the UK and he’s got a couple of questions about using a ball machine for your practice play and a lot of really good questions here. I’m looking forward to this topic.

His first question was, ‘I recently acquired a ball machine and wondered if you could offer some help with how I might use it to it’s full potential. I am practicing with it for about 5 to 15 hours per week. And I’m trying very hard to keep my practice sessions as structured as I can. For example: I usually spent equal time on my forehand and backhand. Aim for specific areas on the courts, and try to achieve specific goals. As an example 10 shots deep cross court in a row. ‘

Let me stop right there and congratulate you James, because you’ve really got the right idea here right of the bat. And this is something that bother’s me a lot i n watching players try to use a ball machine where I teach –and in every club where I’ve taught– a lot of players waste their time and you’re doing an excellent job with the basics here. So may people go out with the ball machine and they just hit shot. I mean literally. Sure that’s sounds obvious, but they are wasting their time, because they are just swinging at the ball whatever happens to come. They have no target. They have no purpose. They are just hitting shots and they are not focused at all. There’s no goal and there’s no target or purpose. They waste their time, and even worse than that, they’re further ingraining bad habits.

So I just wanted to stop right there and say ‘Cheers’ on starting off with such great habits to begin with. I really want you to keep that up.

Now here’s his first question. He says, ‘I’m also trying to practice as many different shots as possible. Such as lobs, volleys, overheads, half volleys, etc. However, I’m not really sure what proportion of my time I should devote to some of these m aybe less frequently used shots. ‘

That’s a good question, James. I would say that the answer to that question depends on your skill level and your specific skills. Where you’re at in your tennis game. And I’m going to be–throughout several answers here to James’ questions–I’m going to be giving some ratios. And these are just general guidelines. I’m not saying that my feedback here has to be exactly perfect or precisely followed. I’m going to give you guys some general guidelines and my reasons why.

James, ultimately it’s going to be up to you to decide how much time to spend on each type of shot. But basically–and again, this depends on your skill level–what percentage of time you should spend with more extra shots. Like the lobs, the overheads, t he half volleys, etc. And in my opinion, the lower level player you are, the more time you should be spending on your basic essentials. What I mean by that are ground strokes, volleys, and serves. You’ve got to be competent in at least those 3 shots to really go out and enjoy tennis at its fullest. Or at least get started.

If you’ve got a big hole in your ground strokes. If your backhand ground stroke is terrible. O r if you’re not comfortable with the net at all, or if you’re always worried you’re going to double fault, and you’re not confident with your serves. Those are 3 biggest area of your game that you’ve got to be comfortable with as early as possible.

So if you’re at a 3. 5 level or below, and if you’re not familiar with the NTRP rating system here in the U.S. , basically an average level player is right around a 3.5 level. So if you’re an average level player or below, then, in my opinion, you should really be spending 90% of your time on the basics: ground strokes, volleys, and serves. If you are above that level–and especially well above that level– if you are upper level player, if you are a 4. 0, or a above, if you are a 4. 5, then you do want to start working on those other shots besides the basics. Shots that you are going to have to know how to use at a 4. 5 level, if you don’t have a good half-volley, or overhead, or lob. You are not going to do very well at a 4. 5 level of doubles, or even of singles . More so in doubles, you kind of need these extra utility shots.

So, if you are above average, if you’re a 4. 0 player or better, then I would say you should be going about 70/30 or so, still spending most of your time improving the basics: your ground strokes, volleys and serves, but spend thirty percent of your time on other stuff as well. Shots that you’ve noticed that, in the middle of your point plan, doubles or singles, you kind of notice, wow, that’s a shot that I miss pretty often, if I could make that shot, I’d really be in a lot more points. I wouldn’t lose so many points when I’m in this situation. So, you kind of need to do some detective work and figure out which of these utility shots is really going to help you out the most. And then yes, definitely spend some time on it if you are above average level. So, it depends on your ability level. That’s my answer to that.

Next up he asks, “Also, would I be better off working on my bad shots, or good shots?” That’s an awesome question, and you’re smart to be wondering about how to split up your time. Both in the essential strokes and more utility strokes, and now between your strengths and weaknesses. It’s important to do both.

Typically, I see players when they are a little more focused, and they’re actually working on specific things, which you’re already starting to do, which is awesome. A lot of times, people make one of two basic mistakes. They ignore their weaknesses, because hitting what you are already good at is a lot more fun. [laughter] If you are really good at forehand ground strokes, It’s really fun to take a half an hour and just crush forehands, over and over and over. It feels good, because you are being successful, you’re hitting you’re target, over and over again. You’re hitting an aggressive strong shot and it feels confident, and that’s a lot more fun. It’s a common mistake for people to go and work on their strength, and spend all of their time doing that, because it’s not nearly as much fun working at what you’re not good at. And so people a lot of times will shy away from their weakness, and it just keeps getting weaker and weaker compared to the stronger parts of their game. So, don’t make that mistake!

Also, don’t make the mistake of ignoring you’re strengths, because maybe you are bit of a perfectionist about improving you’re weaknesses. This is the other side of the spectrum. Somebody who says: ‘Well, my forehand ground stroke is awesome. I don’t need to work on that,’ and then they spend all of their time on their backhand, because their backhand is weak. A couple of weeks or months later, their backhand is a lot better, but they’re not nearly as confident with their forehand anymore, because they haven’t spent any time practicing it. So, it’s important to work on both what you are good at already, and make sure that you keep up with that, but yes, you do need to work on your weaknesses as well. That is very important.

Now, i’m going to give you a ration again based on your level. If you are a beginner on up through an average player, if you’re a 3. 5 level player or below, I would suggest 60-40 or 70-30 towards spending a little bit more time on your weaknesses . It’s really important to bring the level of your game up evenly so that you don’t have any big holes.

And so, I would suggest definitely spending some time on both, but I would like to see you spend a little more time on what your weaker at to hopefully even your game out. B ut do try to improve everything. Spend some time on both your strengths and weaknesses. But spend a little bit more time on your weaknesses, so 60-40 or maybe 70-30.

Now, if you’re a 4. 0 level or above, I would really suggest evening it out, and making it about 50-50. Spend equal amounts of time continuing to be confident and be good at your strengths, and definitely spend a lot of your time working on your weaknesses as well, because everything needs to continue to improve if you want to move up another level from where you at already in at more advance to level. Like a 4. 0 or 4.5. If you’re a 4. 5 level player now, it’s really going to take everything. Everything is going to really have to move up a whole another level to really bump up to a 5.0. So we don’t want to leave anything behind. So at that point I would really suggest spending about 50-50?

Alright, next ball machine question is: ‘My other uncertainty is which speed settings to use? I usually go for about 45 or 50 miles per hour and medium heavy top spin–which I am comfortable with–and seems to simulate my normal play. Would I be better of using higher more difficult speeds or working at lower speeds in order to group technique?’

Well, that’s a good question James and I think most of your time should be hitting against the speed that you see most in competition. That’s really where you want to be most comfortable is at your level of play. So I would definitely suggest spending most of your time there, but if you want to spend some time and challenge yourself more–and kind of give yourself to look at the next level of play–I think that’s good too and so again I’ll give you a ratio here. I think in my opinion you should probably be about 80-20. Don’t spend half of your time getting shots from the ball machine that are way outside the level that are typically to see. I think that’s a good use of your time.

But if you do want to spend some time kind of having some fun and trying to really challenge yourself and try to return shots that are really high level–above what you normally see–I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact as probably going to be helpful for you down the road when you star facing higher level opponents. So I would say about 80/20. Spend about 80% of your time at least on just hitting shots that you normally what have to in competition, because that’s really where you want to be most comfortable and confident. But go ahead and have some fun and bump it up little bit too.

And last ball machine question here. ‘Finally, do you have any specific ball machine drills that would be of benefit?’ And my answer to that is no. I don’t. And the ball machine is such a useful tool guys. And you should be using the ball machine to pick out specific things for your game that you need to work on and so this totally depends on what you’re trying to improve, James. And you’ve already got the right idea. You’re already so much farther had than most players when it comes to utilizing the ball machine. So I just want you to keep up what you’re doing.

No, I don’t have anything specific. I mean specific for what? I could give you a 10 ball machine drills for every single stroke: forehand, backhand, volley, half volley, overhead, return serve whatever. So I could wait too much to go into specifics. So I’m going to tell you, what I’m going to tell you is that keep doing a good job of identifying of what you do need to work on, your strengths and weaknesses, and split up the time in a good way. That’s where you going to be best use of your time. And continue doing the good job with things like having the target, having the goal and just keeping your focus and concentration out there and that’s going to be the best use of your time.

So James, thanks very much. Really good questions, man. And I’m really proud of you for how good of the job. You’ve already doing with the ball machine and you’re really making good use of your time and James said he’s doing between 5 and 15 hours per week on the ball machine. That’s hardcore. Y ou’re doing an awesome job and definitely keep up the good work. Let me know if you have any more questions.

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OK. The last question for today also comes to us from James. A different topic.

And the topic is the ‘art of disguise’ as James put it. He says, ‘This is something I know very little about, but a topic that I thought would make a very interesting Podcast. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on when and how to create disguise on various tennis shots. ‘

Good question, James. And I’m going to try to go through this pretty briefly, and give you an idea of what I think about that. And I’m going to starting off by telling you the 3 most often disguised shots. And probably the most useful use of disguise in tennis. And when I say disguise, I mean legitimate disguise. Meaning you’re trying to show your opponents and then do another. So were kind of get a little bit trickery going on not something that I normally can down. I’m going to talk more about the
at in a couple of minutes.

But the 3 most useful shots to disguise or first of all the drop shot and I lover this shot personally. I have to admit. I likes in the pros use this shot and this is probably the #1 disguised shot in tennis. Definitely it’s a pro level. And you’ll see them disguise this by setting up their body the way they normally would for a top spin drive shot that they would normally hit shot with a lot of spin– and this is typically done on a short weaker shot that they’re inside the baseline on. Otherwise, it’s really not a smart play at all. But you’ll see a player do this when they are inside the baseline. They turn their body make a good full turn bringing the racket up like they’re getting already to crash it and then open up the racket face. Drop the racket come underneath the ball and hit the soft drop shot and hit it really short. This is probably the number 1 disguise shot you’ll see used and probably one of my favorites.

It doesn’t always work for everybody all the time. In fact I would say doesn’t have a terribly high success rate even at the pros, but it’s a lot of fun to hit when it does work.

The second most often disguised shot is the lob. It’s kind of similar set up when 1 player is at the net and the other is at the baseline maybe in doubles. And you’ll see this disguise by again the player on the baseline taking the racket back and rotating their body like to getting ready to really drive it. And then there’s really a little bit different technique. The face again will open and the ball gets lifted up. Or you can hit a top spin lob and keep your phase close and just swing upwards and really accentuate the upward swing to really hit the ball way up in the air and have a top spin down close to the baseline. Hopefully on the other side, but that’s another shot disguise that you can disguise and make it look like you’re getting ready to drive the ball and hit it hard, but actually end up hitting it softly, and either coming underneath the ball and opening your face or brushing the ball, but brushing it way up into the air to try to hit over your opponent at the net.

And the 3rd most often disguised shot– and this is probably debatable depending on your definition of the word ‘disguise’–but the serve is very often disguise by good players and when one kind of different use of disguise is not so much being tricky, or sneaky, or kind of showing one thing and doing another. It’s not so mush of that as is it just really mixing it up and just really being versatile and maybe from the same toss is probably the best way to do it. Making the same toss, but being able to hit every part of the box from that same toss or maybe even being able to hit every part of the box with different types of serves both spin serve and the flat serve from the same toss. That’s the good way to disguise your serve. And something that all of you guys can work on right now and something that I wouldn’t say is trick or you’re kind of be sneaky. It’s really something that’s very practical that you guys should all be working on.

Now shots that you should not try to disguise. And again when I say disguise I’m using the definition of kind of being sneaky or tricky or trying to do a bate and switch in your opponent when you’re showing one thing and then you do another. You should not be trying to disguise your ground stokes, meaning: trying to set up and make it look like you’re going cross court, but then go down the line at the last second or something like that. That’s not something you should be trying to do. You should also not be trying to disguise or be tricky with your volleys. These are shots that we don’t want to be tricky or sneaky with. You want to be good and solid with your fundamentals. And you should be practicing being intentional and being able to hit certain places on the court on purpose. A nd we’re going to win most likely based on those types of shots where it doesn’t mater who knows where you’re going. It doesn’t matter if you’re opponent knows so much of tennis tactics. It has nothing to with being sneaky or crafty. B ut it’s just a matter of doing the fundamentals well and doing the fundamentals solid and doing them correctly over and over again. That is how you’re going to win the majority of your matches. You’re not going to win whole tennis matches based on being sneaky and disguising your shots. You’re not going to win your whole match based on that.

And so for that reason I would be careful James–and everybody else listening–how much you work on these types of shots and you know what there fond to hit and there are fun to work on. So I’m not going to say don’t ever do it, because I do it myself. So it’s not something that you should never work on, but I would spend the whole lot of your time trying to disguise shots and be sneaky.

So James that’s my answer to that. And if you have any more further specific questions on that–or maybe on specific one of those examples different strokes–let me know I’d be happy to talk to more about it, but those are my general thoughts and feelings.

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Alright, that does it for this episode of Essential Tennis Podcast. And isn’t that fun guys? We’ve done almost 100 episodes of the Podcast and all 3 of the topics today were completely new. We talked about disguise, on shots–which we’ve never talked about before. We talked about competitive etiquette and we also talked about using the ball machine as well. All 3 of those are completely new topics on the Podcast and just goes to show you guys how deep the game of tennis is. And there’s unlimited topics and the things to talked about that’s part of why I enjoyed this show so much. That’s a big reason why I enjoyed the sport of tennis so much. And if you’re listening to me right now I know that you agree with me. It’s just a lot of fun to work together and continue to improve.

And speaking of which I’ve got a special shout out today on the show and my shout out is to several players who I’ve just gotten bumped in their rating here in United States. And we have a standardize rating system the NTRP. And I’d like to give a shout out to several forum members who have bumped to the next level since being members at Essential Tennis. And I’m really proud of them and there’s more than the people I’m just about to announce. This topic just got started in the forum of Essential Tennis, so I apologize to everybody in the forums who I’m not going to mention.

B ut people who have already posted there and said that they have moved up to a new level are Sally, Fightfen, Bibi, Charles O. And also Atomic. These are all guys people who have worked really hard and improved their game and I’m really proud of you guys and really happy to have you a members on the forums.

So excellent job and if you’re on the forums and you also got bumped up make sure to go to the competitive results forum and post and let us know if you got bumped. So good job guys.

Alright that brings today’s show to a close. Thank you very much for listening. Take care and good luck with your tennis.

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Essential Tennis Podcast #93

Download: Word Doc | PDF | Kindle | Text

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 SomersetSportsPerformance.com.

Thank you very much for joining me today, and episode #93 of the Essential Tennis Podcast is going to be a special holiday edition. The two6th of November is Thanksgiving here in America. I’m out of town this week–and when I say this week, I’m releasing this Podcast on Friday November 20th, and then my wife and I are going out of town. We’re going to be away from home all next week, which is the week of Thanksgiving. So my time is very limited.

I’m away from my studio if you want to call at that next week. So I’m releasing this Podcast early and there’s going to be a little bit shorter version, because I just don’t have a lot of time during the week to record the show. So please excuse me for that, but I know a lot of my American listeners are very busy as well.

But I still wanted to get a show out. So it’s going to be a little bit shorter shout today. I just have a little bit of a message for you guys on the other side of this quick break. A nd I’m going to be answering a listener question as well about different grips and the full Western forehand grip specifically. So sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instructions.

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Alright, let’s get started with today’s show. And in doing so, I would like to send the message out to all of you listening to the Essential Tennis Podcast. And whether you’ve been with me from the beginning of the show when I first started about year and a half ago, or maybe you’ve just been listening for a couple of weeks–or maybe this is even your first show, and I don’t do this every show if this is your first show. But just in the spirit of–and I was thinking on my drive home from work today that I really am thankful for this show and for my audience. I want to tell that to you guys. And again the reason why I’m not doing the full length show today for Podcast #93 is that I’m out of town for Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving in the United States is a time for us here to stop and reflect and take a break and think about and remember all the blessings that we have, and all the reasons that we have to be thankful even in up and down times. Even in bad times when everything is not quite going your way whether in your own household, or maybe in your country, or maybe even in the world as a whole, there’s still so many things that we can be thankful for. And it is important to stop and reflect and think about that, I think. As people to be thankful. And that what’s Thanksgiving is all about. So about giving thanks for what we have.

And so I just wanted to give you guys a quick shout out all of you, all of my listeners. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to communicate and to teach all of you who listen about the sport of tennis, which I myself love and all of you love as well. Otherwise, you would not be listening. You wouldn’t be taking the time to actually download the show and listen to it. So I want to thank you guys for the opportunity that you’ve given me to speak to you. And you’ve given me that chance by giving me part of your time, and giving me your attention, and many of you are even giving me the opportunity to change your games. And you’re listening to the instruction that I’m giving you and going out and improving and writing me back and telling me about it and that’s such a rewarding thing for me. I never want to take that for granted and think that it’s all about me here, because it’s not–it’s all about you guys, the listeners. You guys are the ones that are improving your tennis and I’m just really happy, and thankful to be part of that.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving I’ll wrap this little dialogue up. I just want to thank you guys and all of you who are listening right now. I really appreciate it. And all of you who are in the United States I hope that you all have a blessed Thanksgiving holiday.

Alright, now that that’s finished, let’s go ahead and start talking about some tennis. And I’m looking forward to talking about this topic and we’re just going to be one topic today, but I think it’s a very important thing for all of you to understand. And this topic has to do with the grips. It’s important to understand what’s certain grips are good for when it comes to ground strokes the frozen cons. And we’ve discussed this in the past probably briefly–and probably with some detail–but as with everything as I continue to teach I get better and better describing and explaining some things, and I think this is one of those areas.

So let’s read the question and this is comes to us from Roger in California. Roger wrote to me and said, ‘I have recently started using a full Western forehand grip to hit my forehands, and sometimes the grip between a semi and full Western. My coach told me that it’s a bad grip to use and not use it. I asked him why, but all he said was, ‘Because it’s bad. ‘ I did all the research and have found out that it’s hard hit low balls with that grip. Is there anything else with the full Western grip that could be possibly be bad as a coach yourself if I’m able to use the full Western forehand grip without a problem, would you recommend that I stick with it or should I try to avoid using that grip?’

That’s a very good question Roger. And I’m going to explain here the frozen cons of the Western grip and exactly why. And you don’t say here how old you are or what kind of coach you are talking, but I’m going go ahead and assume that you’re talking about a school coach, probably high school. Maybe college, but I’m going to go ahead and guess you’re a high school student. A nd a lot of high school tennis coaches are not terribly qualified. And that’s not to put down or knock high school coaches, because we certainly need them. T hey don’t volunteer their time usually. They do get paid, but it’s not very much, and it’s usually just set enjoyment for the game and usually they are player of themselves, but they are not really a qualified teacher. So it’s too bad that you’re coach wasn’t able to tell you why, and it was a good thing for you to ask why. And those of you who are listening you should aks why. You need to understand why certain things are and are not. And your coach is on the right track here Roger with what he’s telling you, but I’d be happy to explain to you exactly why.

So, first of all the full Western grip is a very extreme grip. And I mean extreme it’s a very far over grip. Ad let’s talk about why exactly.

First of all, the actual bio-mechanical reason why it’s extreme is this. Back in the old days everybody used a Continental grip. And a Continental grip is very easy to use to put them all back and play, because it puts your palm right flush and parallel with the racket face. With the strengths of the racket. When you hold the good Continental grip and you open up your hand, your palm becomes parallel to the racket face. So it’s very easy to direct the ball and tell it where to go.

Now a full Western grip puts your palm completely 90 degrees around the grip on the bottom of the grip, and if you go to a full Western grip and open up your hand without moving the racket, you’ll see that your palm is now perpendicular to the racket face. Your palm is facing up towards the sky when the racket face is facing forwards, OK?

So there’s a description of exactly how these grips change. How your hand is facing. How your palm is actually facing in relationship to the racket face. And this is very important. And the reason for that is there’s two main ways. There’s two main forces that we can put on the tennis ball for ground strokes. And one of those is drive. And drive simply means hitting the ball forwards towards your target. Drive in it’ purist form means hitting the ball without much spin. Without spin. Just driving the ball forwards towards your target. If you want to drive the ball very well and all you want to do is drive the ball without being able to hit top spin, then the Continental grip is for you.

Now top spin is created by swinging upwards as opposed to forwards. When you swing straight up, you make the most top spin possible. Now if you’re only concern with making top spin then the full Western grip is for you, because it faces your palm facing up. And so it allows you to swing upwards very aggressively and very steeply.

If all you are concerned with is driving the ball and just hitting the ball forwards, then the Continental grip is for you, because it puts your palm parallel to the racket face and so you can push your racket and swing your racket forwards through the ball towards your target and drive it flat.

So these are kind of the two extremes over on the forehand side and there’s all kinds of grips in between the Continental grip and the full Western grip. The two main ones being an Eastern forehand grip and a semi Western grip. Those are both in between the extremes of Continental–which is for driving–and full Western which is just purely for top spin, because your palm is facing straight up.

So hopefully that makes sense to you Roger. First of all, we need to have a good understanding of why and how these grips are good for what exactly before we really understand whether or not this grip is for you. So those are the reasons why Continental is good for hitting flat, and full Western is good for hitting top spin.

Now I personally prefer something in between those two so that I can have the ability to both drive the ball and hit with top spin. And everybody I teach I want them to be well rounded and to be able to hit whatever shot is necessary to perform well and to win points. And in my opinion, having a Continental grip is very limiting, because it’s going to really set you up to hit flat, but it’s going to be very difficult to hit with top spin.

Now is top spin impossible with the Continental grip? No, it’s not. It’s possible to hit top spin with the Continental grip. Just not to the same degree in the same extreme is with a Western forehand grip.

Now if you have a full Western grip just that mean it’s impossible to drive the ball and hit it forwards strongly? No, it’s not impossible, but just like Continental grip use a difficult to hit with top spin. A full Western leaves it difficult to drive the ball and hit it forwards.

So by nature these two extreme grips are going to make certain shots difficult. And that’s just the reality of how you positioning your body with the racket. You’re positioning your hand in different ways and different angles relative to the racket and so that leaves you with certain choices–or certain types of swings– being most conducive and being easiest to do.

So hopefully you’re following me Roger and everybody else listening.

So is this grip right for you? Well, I haven’t seen you play before, so I can’t tell you for sure. I haven’t seen you swing at the ball. But two questions that I would like you to answer for yourself in deciding whether or not you should use this grip. And the rest of you listening obvious these applies to you as well.

First of all, are you able to drive the ball and create pace on your own? And a good example of this is Roger when you receive a short shot–a weak ball–on your side of the court are you able to put it away? A symptom of somebody who has the grip turned over too far very often is that they’ll received a short weak shot on their own side of the court, and they have a lot of trouble putting the ball away or finishing points, because the faster and faster they swing, the more and more top spin they make–and the ball just ends up spinning faster and faster and faster, but it doesn’t really go through to the air any quicker. And so the ball rotates more and spins faster, but somebody with the very extreme grip very often times has a lot of trouble driving the ball and hitting the ball with speed and with pace.

And that’s where driving the ball all about it’s been able to hit pace on the ball and be able to pressure your opponent not just by curving it and spinning and looping it, but by hitting through it and pressuring them with pace.

So are you able to drive the ball and create pace? You need to ask yourself that and answer it honestly. And the rest of you guys who use the full Western grip I’d like you to ask yourself that and answer it honestly.

Secondly, the second question is: ‘Are you able to hit shots in a variety of different locations? Are you able to hit high shots comfortably? Are you able to hit shots at your waist comfortably? Are you able to hit low shots comfortably without switching your grip? Using that full Western grip?/ and you’re correct in doing your research that a symptom again of having a full Western grip is that low shots are typically uncomfortable and difficult to hit.

A symptom of somebody who hits with the Continental grip is that typically they have a hard time with higher shots, because the racket face is not very closed, and so it’s difficult for them to hit the ball confidently without it going too far when the ball is high in their strike zone.

I would like for you to have a grip that makes it easy to hit in a variety of places relative to your body. You should be trying to hit the ball in the same place over and over again, but it’s not always going to happen. So it’s important to be able to hit high shots, low shots, and shots in the middle comfortably.

So ask your self those two questions Roger. And if you can answer ‘yes’ to both of them. If you’re able to create pace and if you’re able to hit both high, low and middle shots as far as height is concerned comfortably, then I would say go ahead and stick with it. If you’re able to hit these varieties of shots and do it all with that same full Western grip–then by all means go ahead and stick with it. And I would recommend switching if you’re able to do versatile and do all of these things already.

Now if you answered ‘no’ to one of those two questions or both of them. I would highly suggest that you will get switching your grip to something a little bit more moderate. Just a semi Western would make it much easier to drive the ball as compared to the full Western.

So Roger hopefully that answers your question. A really good question and definitely let me know if I can help you any further with that.

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That brings episode #93 of the Essential Tennis Podcast to a close. Thank you very much for joining me today. I appreciate it. And two quick things before we wrap up the show completely.

First of all, if you are in the Destin Florida area, let me know. Send me an e-mail. That’s where I’m going to be next week during the week of Thanksgiving and be cool to meet up with anybody who might be living in that area and maybe go out and have a drink and chat about tennis. So let me know. My e-mail address is ian@essentialtennis.com.

Secondly, two shout outs and they are going to Dan and Doug at Forest Crest Tennis Club in North Seattle, Washington. I sent several e-mails back and forth with Dan earlier today who’s a fan of the show and I appreciated hearing from you Dan and he asked me to give a shot out to his friend Doug who turned them on to the Podcast originally, and appreciates him telling him about the show.

So to both of you guys thanks very much for being listeners. And I’m working on doing a clinic in the Seattle area. So definitely stay tuned on the show and I’ll let you guys know more details as I find out. But big shout outs to Dan and Doug in Seattle.

Alright that does it for this week’s show. Thanks again everybody for joining me. Take care and good luck with your tennis.

Essential Tennis Podcast #92

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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 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.

Todays episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by somersetsportsportperformance.com. Thank you very much for joining me today and I would like to kick off today’s show by telling you guys about something new that I’m going to start working on and hopefully many of you will be excited by this.

I’m going to start doing video analysis and video tennis lessons online. This is something that I have avoided doing in the past, because of time commitments and I want to make sure that whatever I do here in the site I can really commits to fully and I found the way to be able to do this without a whole of time commitments and investment on my own parts.

So hopefully I can start getting a lot of these out. Now if you would like to be one of the few first people to have their video analyzed by myself, whether it be for stroke analysis and technique or point play and strategy singles or doubles you can do that.

And I’m going to analyze for free the first 10 people who send me their videos. Now in order to do this you need to put your video up on Youtube and again this can be of either a stroke technique of a specific stroke or it can be video of yourself playing points either singles or doubles. And I will analyze that video for you and put it back up on YouTube for you to view and receive instruction from me for free that way.

So the first 10 people to send me their video or link to their video on YouTube will get free analysis from myself. All I have to do is send me an e-mail to ian@essentialtennis. Com and in the subject line just write video analysis. So first 10 people and if you’re not one of the first 10 don’t worry I’m going to start to make this service available pretty soon. I’ll let you guys know how exactly you can get analysis from me in the future. So lets get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instructions. [music] [music] [music]

All right, let’s get started with todays show and I’ve got three great listener questions to answer today that I’m looking forward to and our first one comes to us from Betran Ben who posted his question on the forums. Ben wrote and said, “Hi, Ian. I am around to 4.0 level self rated. I have a decent topspin forehand, backhand volley serve and overhead. Recently I lost many matches that I was ahead in, won the first set, in base line rally’s until my opponent started to attack the net in the second and third sets. I’m so desperate to look for a way to fight back. I think their strategy works well due to the following things– 1. The tennis balls got flat and bounce less in the second and third set. So I did not hit as hard as in the first set. They can start to hit an approach slice shot and go to the net. I was not as fresh as in the first sets. So my shot had less pace and less consistency. And made it easier for them to handle. Usually I got 70% of my passing shots are lobs in the court once they came up to the net. However, since they can put away 50% of my 70% shot in the end, they won the math most of the time.

I lost to this player, but the matches were close. So I’m sure I will play them again sometime soon. I would appreciate it if you could tell me what is the best way short term and or long term to beat this strategy. Thanks is advance. Ben.”

Good question Ben and no doubt playing somebody who is a net crasher. Somebody who loves to come in to the net can be difficult in singles. It really puts a lot of pressure on you being the person who is back on the base line and trying to hit a good shot passed them or over them and that’s part of the reason why I enjoyed coming to the net so much. It really challenges your opponents and in this scenario your opponent is the person challenging you. So it can definitely be tough to beat this kind of person.

Now to kick things off here. I’d like first of all I don’t like excuses. I tell my s tudents to put away excuses all the time whether it be a destruction on the court or maybe I congratulate them on a good shot and they missed the next one and say, “Oh, thanks a lot for telling me I was doing well. Now I screwed up. ” I don’t like excuses and I think you saying that the balls being more dead in the second and third set is an excuse. Now certainly there can be a difference, but I don’t think that any wear and tear on the balls over one or two sets after the first one is a legitimate reason for losing.

Over a three set of play there is not going to be a large enough difference for you really to get enough thrown off very much especially since you are a 4. 0 level. Even if there was a large difference and how the balls were playing between the first set and the third set, y ou really should be able to adjust accordingly and most of those adjustments are going to be in your foot work and being able to to get up to the ball that’s not bouncing as quite as much.

So I don’t want you to use that as a crutch or as an excuse. I’m not mad at you. However, I think you should take responsibility for what’s going on here. And that’s only part of what you said the problem was. I’m not saying you’re completely making up excuses here. However, I don’t think that’s really a legitimate reason.

Now moving on to the rest of it. I’m definitely going to give you some feedback here on what you need to do to be able to beat this type of player consistently and you’re on the right track. You talk about hitting passing shots or hitting lobs, but I’m gonna give you three main ways to be able to defeat this player who’s rushing forward towards the the net.

First of all, to begin with, you need to do your best to keep your ground strokes deep in the court to begin with. Don’t give them any easy opportunities to approach. So after the first set and you say you’re tired. So maybe we need to work on your fitness a little bit as well Ben, but we need to be able to maintain a solid level of play
from your ground strokes. We cannot give up weak short shots to your opponents even if you’re tired and even if the balls are not bouncing as much. You need to stay relaxed and you need to hit a good solid consistent ground stroke deep in the court back to your opponent if they like to come to the net.

The deeper you can keep your ground strokes. The more difficult it’s going to be for them to approach. Now there’s many ways that you can keep your ground strokes deeper, one I just mentioned, make sure that you stay relax and this may be part of why you’re getting tired and worn out in the second and third sets to begin with. Make sure that as you engage in a ground stroke rally with your opponents you keep your body your body relaxed and allow the racket to swing freely.

So many recreational players play with a lot of tension and a lot of stiffness in their body and if you can stay relaxed, it should help you quite a lot and keeping the ball deeper in the court. So stay relaxed. Also make sure that you’re using your core well. And you’re rotating the big parts of your body which is your core, your torso, your abs, your chest or shoulders. That means to rotate into every shot well and again keeping those parts of your body relax. So let the racket swing freely.

So use your core well. Stay relaxed. Also keep the ball high over the top of the net. I’m not talking about 6 or 7 feet. However your average ground stroke and the 4. 0 level should probably be three or maybe 4 feet over the top of the net to keep the ball deep in the court. If your ground strokes are traveling a foot over the top of the net. They are not go very deep into the court and that’s going to give your opponent an easy opportunity to approach and since this person likes to approach. We want to take that away from them.

So make sure your lifting the ball and it’s traveling consistently three feet over the top of the net and lastly make sure that you keep the ball in your strike zone and your moving your feet well. If you’re allowing the ball to be low down below your knees or high up above your shoulder as you engage in a rally with this player. You’re going to be coughing enough a lot more weak shots that are going to give them opportunities to come forward into the net.

So all of those things I’ve just mentioned. Staying relax, using your core, keeping the ball high over the net and keeping the ball in your strike zone on your side of the court. These are all things that are going to help you keep the ball deeper to your opponent and hopefully take away their ability to approach easily. Now even if you do all of these things well it’s still possible that they will still come into the net. So its not going into immediately keep them off the net. Just because you’re keeping the ball deep. It’s very possible they will still come forward. So it’s not a fail safe, it’s not going to complete defeat them completely most likely. However, this is going to be a good first step to beating this player– is keeping your ground strokes deep to make it more challenging for them to come forwards to the net.

So that’s number 1, keep it deep to begin with. Number 2, work on your passing shots. Number 2 and 3 are basically I’m going to be telling you to work on the shots that you are already trying, but we need to hit a little bit higher quality shot since your opponent is beating you when you’re attempting these shots.

So number 2 is you need to work on your passing shot and I want you to do this by playing competitive points with a practice partner and I would suggest you do this by both of you starting on the base line and you feed your practice partner, your opponent during your practice play. Feed them a short ball on purpose. Make sure that it bounces in front of the service line and have them approach and come into the net. Hopefully, you can find somebody with a good net game to help you practice this, but I would suggest that you both start on the base line. You feed a short shot to your opponents. Have them come forwards and approach and then play out the points and you need to practice hitting confidence, full speed passing shots over and over again. You can do this without keeping track of score at first just to give yourself practice and repetition to help you build your confidence, but eventually I want you to do this and keep tracks of score and play a game up to 10 points as an example and every single point you feed your practice partner a short shot and every single point they come to the net and you just pass. Just hit passing shots. Don’t even lob and just practice hitting strong aggressive passing shots. This is the shot that you need get better at if your opponent is beating you consistently when you try to pass. That’s number 2.

Way number 3 that you’re going to get better at beating this player is working on your lob. And your target for your lob should be passed the halfway points between the service line and the base line. Between the service line and the base line there’s 18 feet of space. Most players are a little bit surprise to hear that. There’s quite a bit of room between the service line and the base line. I would like for you to aim about halfway back between the points in the base line. That gives 9 feet, 9 feet of space between the baseline and your targets. You’ve got a target area of 9 feet back deep in the court.

That’s where you should be aim with your lob and I would encourage you to get some kind of targets. Some kind of way to kind of mark off that area of the court. You could lay down some towels back there or make a line with a bunch of tennis balls halfway between the service line and the base line and actually practice hitting that area on the court. . practice hitting it deep over and over again.

You could also use this as point play and you could do this without keeping track of score or with keeping track of score. I would recommend that you do it both ways and the way I would set these points up is by starting with you and your opponents again in the middle of the base line. Feed a short shot. Feed an approach shots of your opponents have them come forward and hit their approach come back to you. Hit a ground stroke to your opponent to give them a volley and then after their volley once they are up at the net, then lob.

So there’s going to be several shots here before you lob. Your feed which is short and approach shot down the middle. A ground stroke hit by yourself back to the net player. That’s the third shot. They will hit a volley and then you will lob. So we’ve got a sequence of 5 shots here and you and your partner both need to be under control and keeping the ball in play up until that 5th shot which is going to be your lob at which point I’d love for you guys to play out the points, but up until that 5th shot be cooperative, keep the ball in play, get into the point jut like you would during your match play against this opponent and then work on hitting your lob on the fly.

I would really recommends to you Ben that you work on your passing shots and your lobs independently at first. Practice hitting them with confidence and then eventually play out some points against your practice partner and mix it up and try to keep your partner guessing and hit passing shots sometimes and other times hit lobs and practice hitting them both solid and well and confidently and this is how you were going to beat our opponent t hrough these 3 ways.

And briefly again they were number 1, keeping the ball deep to begin with. To keep your opponent pushed back. Number 2 is working on your passing shots and number 3 was working on your lobs. If you can improve in all 3 of these things just a little bit each, you’re going to start beating this person that you’re talking to me about.

So Ben hopefully that answers your question and I’ve given you a lot of stuff here to work on and I expect you to get out there and work hard at it and I guarantee you it will pay off. If you go out and you actually practice what I’m describing and get the reputation and practice hitting these shots confidently. Your game is going to improve and you’re going to start beating this type of player more often. Thanks for your question Ben and good luck. [music] [music] [music] [music]

All right. Next up we’ve got a questions by David in Seattle, Washington. David wrote to me and said, “Hi, Ian. I just started listening to your Podcast. It’s a wonderful source for us tennis nuts– great job. I have two questions. One, I had a hard time playing with one of my opponent. He is kind of similar to my level. Every time we player matches if he is losing then he will start hitting deep moon balls to my back hand. By the way, both of us are right handed.

Since I’m using an eastern backhand grip it’s hard for me to return these high balls cross courts deep back to his backhand. He takes advantage of this by going to the net and finishing the point. Could you please suggest a good way for me to handle this situation? And then question number 2. My slice backhand isn’t going forward a lot. It usually just bounces straight up or a little forward. I’m not sure if it is a grip issue or not. I used a continental grip from my backhand slice, in my right. Thanks. David. ”

Well, David good questions and yes the backhand that you describing– the high backhand ground stroke can definitely be one of the most difficult shots in tennis and you said that you were using an eastern backhand grip. So I’m assuming here that you’re a one-handed backhand player. David didn’t say, but I’m going to ahead
and assume that based on how you describing, how you hold that racket. So given that you’ve got a one-handed backhand and your opponent is giving it’s you high back deep in the corner, positioning on the shot is extremely important. Where you actually put yourself on the court to be able to hit this shot back is really going to determine how easy or hard of a time you have actually returning it.

You should be doing whatever possible to hit every backhand at waist height and I typically refer to this as a players strike zone and those of you listening in other countries might not find that phrase familiar, Strike Zone. It comes from baseball here in the US or other parts of the world. Baseball is becoming popular as well such as Japan where right now I’ve got a couple listeners, but strike zone is basically where it should be easy for to hit the ball and in baseball that’s between the knees and the chest and it is pretty similar to strike zone and tennis as well. We want a ball to be struck somewhere in that area and right around waist heights is usually pretty ideal from most shots and the one handed backhand is definitely not an exception to that.

So in order to get the shot in your strike zone David. You’ve got 2 main ways of doing it. You’ve got 2 main option. Number 1, your first option is to back up and allow the ball to drop after its bounce on your side of the court. If you’re just standing on the base line and your opponent hits a pretty solid deep shot that’s bouncing up high and you just stay on the base line and allow it to be a shoulder height shot or higher. Well, that’s your fault.

Yes, they’ve hit a good shot and going to give them some respect for that, but your first way of dealing with this should be to back up and allow the ball to drop. Let it get up to the peak of its bounce. Let gravity do its job and pull the ball back down again and back up far enough that the ball gets down to waist height. If you back up and the ball is still above your waist. If you’re still trying to hit a backhand at shoulder height, you didn’t back up far enough. Continue to back up until the ball drops down to your waist again. Now this could be a lot of work, because you’ve got to back up quickly before the ball gets to you. And allow it to drop down to waist height. Hit the shots and then move back up to the base line again and it’s possible that you’re going to have to repeat that process over and over again. So be it. That’s really just what’s you have to do to be a good player. You’re going to have to use a lot of foot work and move quickly and put the ball in a comfortable position to hit over and over again.

This is probably the easiest way of doing it. It’s just to back up and allow the ball to drop. Now there’s a second way that you can do this as well and that is called taking the ball on the rise or taking it on a short hop and we’re going to do that by taking the ball right off the bounce and before the ball is able to rise above waist height. Now this is little bit more difficult of a shot timing-wise, because we’re taking the ball right off the court, right after the bounce and hitting it at waist heights. So timing wise, this can be a tricky shot, because we’re hitting it on its way up off the bounce before it gets up above waist heights and so you’re really have to position yourself very precisely.

And just on the right spot so that you’re both not hitting it really, really low below your knees like literally right off the bounce. You’ve going to be a little farther back than that to allow it to rise up a little bit higher, but you also don’t want to put yourself too far away from the bounce, because then the ball will rise up too high and you’re going to end up hitting a high backhand shot again. So you have to put yourself in just the right spot and it can be difficult, because you don’t a lot of time between the bounce and when you actually make contact. You’re going to be making contact with this shot pretty quickly right after the bounce and so putting yourself right in the right spot can be pretty tough.

However, taking the ball on the rise has a lot of benefits as well. It puts the ball in your strike zone as suppose to letting the ball come up above your strike zone around shoulder height and then trying to make contact there. That’s one benefit, you’re able to hit the ball in a comfortable spot. Secondly, it takes time away from your opponent as opposed to letting the ball come up and letting it drop again. When you take it right off of the bounce, you’re taking time away from your opponent that you would be using to back up and let the ball come up, let it come back down and then hit the shot.

So if they are trying to come in to the net and you take it right off of the court, right off the bounce, y ou’re catching them a little bit more off guard, they’re a little bit farther away and you’re going to make things a little bit more difficult for them by taking that time away from them. It also keeps you in a much better court position. You’re not backing way up behind the base line to allow the ball to drop. You’re taking it at the very least right at the baseline or maybe a couple of steps behind the base line if the ball is literally bouncing on the base line. You may have to be a couple feet behind the base line in order to let it come up to your strike zone, but that is as opposed to you backing all the way up to the curtain sometimes or the back fence depending on where you are playing to actually let the ball come up and then come all back down to your waist again. So your keeping yourself in much better position and you’re taking time away from your opponents and we’re putting the ball in your strike zone.

So taking the ball right off the bounce on the rise has a lot of benefits to it, but again this is a difficult shot timing-wise. So I would encourage you David to practice both of these. Practice backing up and allowing the ball to drop down to your strike zone and also practice taking the ball right off of the bounce on the rise, again hitting the ball at waist height, but right after the bounce and not allowing it to get up above your strike zone. Those are your 2 main options to hit the ball in a comfortable place and not allow it to get high to your back-hand side.

Now to answer your second question. You’re talking about your backhand slice and this can be very useful. This is basically our 3rd option which is allowing the ball to get up a little bit higher and hitting a one-handed back-hand slice instead of trying to drive it or hit a topspin shot from waist height. And yes, continental grip is correct for this shot. Yo don’t want to keep with an eastern backhand grip. You should be switching over to continental. That’s definitely the way to go.

Now if it’s not getting very much drive and you’re not getting very much depth with that backhand slice, make sure you’re using y our shoulder to drive through the shot and you’re not using your wrist or your forearm which are both quite a bit weaker than your shoulder and your core. You want to be using the big muscles of your body to really drive through this shot and hopefully get it deep so that you challenge your opponent back again and you don’t cough up these short weak shots that are allowing him to come forwards and attack to the net. And also make sure that you’re not using a racket path that is predominantly downwards or sideways and you say you’re right handed, so that would be a racket path that’s left to right putting a bunch of side spin on the ball or a very high-to-low which puts a lot of back spin on the ball and again spins the ball a lot that typically results in a short weak reply– it doesn’t go very deep in the court.

Sounds like this might be your problem with the backhand slice. Make sure that you are swinging your racket predominantly forwards, out towards your target with a slightly open racket face to create some good depth and not cough up the short ball.

So David that’s my response to your question. You’ve got basically 3 main options. Allow the ball to drop to your strike zones. Take the ball on the rise in your strike zone or improve that slice by hopefully improving your racket path and making it a little more of a penetrating shot. Thanks for the great question David and good luck. Feel free to write me back if you have any further questions. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s finish up today’s show with a good question from Jason FC i n the Bay Area of California and this is a difficult question that Jason asks and I haven’t left my self a whole lot of time to talk about this, but I’m going to try to be clear on my thoughts and give you guys a good idea of what I think is the answer. Quickly here. Jason wrote and said, “Not many people can afford to hire a personal instructor or attend tennis classes. The internet is a good source for free instruction. There are thousand of videos and articles that offer help on improving your tennis game, but how many of these video are really going to improve your game? Which brings me to another question. How will you know if the information that you are getting from the internet is good for your tennis game? Is there a way to tell which ones are good and which ones are misleading? Having little or no knowledge about tennis, it’s hard to tell which ones are really going to boost your game. Any tips on getting the most out of online tennis instruction? Jason. ”

Well, excellent question Jason and I’ll start off my answer by saying that I’m not going to bad mouth or list.. . Here’s my list of tennis websites that give bad information and here’s my list of tennis websites that give good information. I’m not going to do that. I don’t think that would be very tactful or tasteful or very professional, but I will give you guys some guidelines and let me start off by saying that there’s definitely a lot of good information and a lot of good instruction on the internet and it’s just like any other topic online.

You have to judge for yourself if it’s good information or not and as Jason said that can be difficult, because not all of us are experts on whatever we’re trying to find information on. That’s why we’re looking for information on the certain topic to begin with, because we’re not experts. And we’re looking for good solid information. And while there is good information online. Yes there is also bad information. There’s subpar tennis instructions online. And there’s tennis instructions online that is just plain wrong. I’ll definitely say that. There’s incorrect tennis instruction all over the internet.

And this is one of the reasons why I started Essential Tennis, was I looked around at what else was available. And I was for the most part I was very surprised. I was surprised that the how popular and how much action, how many views on YouTube and how many comments and etc certain instructional videos were getting when I felt like the instruction was just plain wrong and so I thought to myself geez. I should be able to do this pretty well and give good solid fundamental information and hopefully get some traction as well and gain an audience when people who are giving misinformation are actually getting popular in the first place.

Now I’m just going to give you Jason, 3 main ways, 3 tests that you can hopefully run to get a general idea of whether or not what you’re watching or listening to is good. First of all, way number 1 to judge what you’re looking at online is does it make sense. And the way that I teach the game of tennis is very common sense. It’s very common sense oriented and it should be logical and it should just hopefully just click in the way that it is presented. It should be explained simply.

It should be explained in ways that a lay person can understand and apply to their own tennis game and if it’s extremely complicated and just doesn’t make sense and you have more questions at the end of the video that you watch or at the end of the audio that you listen to, than when you started, you should probably shy away from that instruction, in my opinion.

Number 2. It should be applicable to your level of play. There’s a lot of tennis instruction online that shows Roger Federer hitting a forehand and getting extremely technical with very small details, small parts of the swing and there’s a lot of people trying to apply very detailed and technical things that the pros are doing to an average level, recreational players game. A lot of times, I don’t think that’s very appropriate when you guys look at the 3.0 level player or a 3. 5 level player, it’s not the angle between the player’s forearm and bicep. It is not the angle of their elbows or the angles in their arm that’s going to make the difference between being the 3.0 player and a 3.5 level player. It’s going to be the simple, fundamental, easy, essential things that are going to make the difference between being a bad tennis player and a mediocre tennis player. And most of the players looking for instruction online are average level players. There’s not 5. 0 level players looking for instruction online, because they are 5.0 level players.

For them to really get to the next level of play they are probably going to be more spending time on the courts and drilling and playing against high level players then they are going to be looking for tips online trying to improve their game.

So you guys should be looking for instruction that’s applicable to your level of play and it’s not just ‘here’s how the pros serve and looking at little things. It should be the big fundamental things that the person is teaching if you are in fact an amateur player. If you’re an average level tennis player which is around to 3.5 level.

Now number 3. There should be specific examples and instances of good players actually performing what’s being taught to you and this one, the third one is more on the lines of looking for misinformation and there are lots of videos on YouTube of tennis instructors teaching bad technique. Technique that in my opinion is actually opposite of what you should be doing. And the way that you root these things out and it takes a little bit of work and effort on your part is by listening to what they are talking about and watching and seeing what they are giving in terms of instruction and then actually watching good players and observing them and seeing if that’s actually how they do it.

And I know it kind of seems simple, but this how you root out information and instruction that’s actually the opposite of what you should be doing and believe it or not there’s plenty of instruction out there that’s the opposite of what a solid player does.

So these are kind of subjective things guys and just like anybody else online, these are my opinions. And I like to think that my opinions are valuable and they are helpful and they have proven to be so, because listeners of this show do improve their game. I hear back from players everyday and every week all over the world that are getting better and what I teach is just the simple fundamental things and that’s usually how most players are going to improve their game.

So you guys should really just be looking for somebody who’s teaching the fundamentals and really pay close attention to that. Don’t get caught up in the little details and the little quote tricks or tips or complicated things that the pros might be doing. Don’t get me wrong. You can learn a lot from the pros, but the biggest things that you guys can learn from the most part are the basics and that’s how really you guys are going to improve your game.

So Jason hopefully that wasn’t too convoluted. Hopefully that make sense and is actually helpful to you. And I’d be curious to hear your feedback on that. So good luck Jason. Good luck to all of you and your quest to finding instructions that really helps you and that’s really what I am trying to do here on the Essential Tennis Podcast is give out the best information possible to really help you guys improve your game. [music] [music] [music]

All right, that does it for episode number 92 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today. I truly appreciate your support of the show by downloading the file and listening to the show. Hopefully it’s been helpful to you. Just two quick shout-outs here before we wrap things up and both of these shout-outs go to our most recent sign ups at the forum at essentialtennis. Com.

The first one goes out to Mark and Garrett in Houston, Texas. They are a father-son duo. Garrett is 11-years old and he and his father Mark are both working on their tennis games together. Sounds like really great team as they continue to try to improve their tennis games together. And they signed up under the screen name of Mark Pyke on the forums at essentialtennis. Com.

So welcome to you two and they sound like really enthusiastic and passionate tennis players. So I’m looking forward to their posting on the forums and also Ichiro in Japan. First forum sign up in Japan. So Ichiro really good to have you on the forum as well and I look forward to you posting a lot also. So welcome guys.

That does it for todays show. Take care everybody. And good luck with your tennis. [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #91

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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 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 Westerman: 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 somersetsportsperformance.com. Thank you very much for joining me today. And before we get to today’s content on the Essential Tennis Podcast, I just want to remind you all about the two most valuable free parts of Essential Tennis and virtually everything is free right now.

In the future we will have some paid content, but in my opinion the two
most valuable parts of the website are first of all, the Podcast Archives, where you guys can access all of the back episodes of the Essential Tennis Podcast and in there, there’s over 50 hours of tennis instruction for free. On just about any topic you guys can possibly think about. So go check that out. Go to essentialtennis.com/podcast and click on the archives and sign up it’s free.

Secondly, I want to tell you guys about the forums where the most passionate tennis enthusiasts at essentialtennis. Com go and meet and talk to each other about their games, their technique, their strategy, their competitive results– it is just an awesome place for tennis enthusiasts to come and it’s just a warm and friendly community. So definitely go check that out as well. Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

All right, let’s get started with today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast. And our first question comes from Robert in Washington. Robert wrote to me and said, “I have a question about my USCA tournament play. I noticed that my tournament games are completely different from my regular games.” And then he says those are ladder matches which I assume are just at his local tennis facility– his local tennis club.

He continues and says, “I am much conservative in the USTA tournament games compared with my other games. In USTA tournaments usually I hit a lot of moon balls and lobs. My cross court shots are also soft. Although I won most of the matches. I hate the way that I won the matches. I do completely different things in my other matches– a latter match. And those matches I hit hard cross court and down the line shots. I can kill short balls. I guess it is more like a confidence issue. What is your suggestion in improving my USTA tournament matches?”

Robert that’s a great question and this sort of topic is something that I’ve talked about with David G. on the Podcast before David Grumping who is a mental tennis expert. So I highly recommend that you go to the Essential Tennis Podcast archives and listen to all the episodes that he and I have done. I think we’ve done 5 episodes on mental tennis issues like this. Now that would being said. I’m happy to give you my thoughts here and how you can improve and I’ve got a good outline for you to follow.

First of all, yes this is 100% a mental tennis issue. This has nothing to do with your technique based on how you’re phrasing your question here and how you’re describing the differences between your ladder matches and your USTA matches.

What you need to do here is build what David Grumping calls mental muscle and I’m going to keep on using that phrase, because I like it a lot. When you want to make your body stronger. When you want to build your physical muscle there’s certain steps that you take. There’s a certain formula that you follow and I’m going to give you a very similar formula to follow to build your mental muscle as well.

So I’m going to give you a 4 step process here to be able to build your mental muscle. First of all you need to target the area that needs to be strengthened and this is the same thing with your physical muscle, your physical strength as well as your mental muscle. You need to figure out what’s weak and we’ve already done that. We have found out that for you, your confidence during more important matches or real matches, “USTA matches” where there’s a little bit more importance– it’s an outside event. It is not a club match or a club event where you are comfortable and you’re familiar. This is different. This is a little bit bigger stage and so we found out that when you get to this level of play, you lose your confidence in your game.

So we’ve already targeted exactly what needs to be strengthened. Just like in your physical muscle if you find out that your abdominals are not strong and they are little bit flabby. And so we’ve kind of targeted an area and we know what we need to work on. We found that out in your tennis game. In your mental tennis game.

Step number 2. Find the right exercise to actually fix the problem and this is important when you find out that your abs are lacking and your physical muscle. You don’t want to go and then do bicep curls at the gym for half an hour. That’s not going to help you out. So we want to target the problem specifically and on purpose. And so you need to go and play more USTA matches. You don’t say how long you’ve been playing or how many USTA matches you’ve played, but we need to play more of these and target it.

Number 3. We need to have work out plan and we need to stick to it. This is very important. Now that we know what the problem is and now that we know where we can go to work on the problem. We need to have a specific plan of attack to be able to actually work on this problem and build your mental muscle. And so this is where when you go to the gym to work on your abs, you would actually have a list of exercises. Right here is what I am going to do today to target the area of my body that needs to be strengthened. I’m going to do X, Y and Z exercises to actually build it up.

And so you need to figure out what parts of your game you need to do better, specifically in order to over come the anxiety that you have or you’re getting tentative during your USTA play. We need to target that.

So write now some goals for each match. Have a game plan. As an example, you need to write down a goal of hitting every easy forehand aggressively. When you get a weak forehand or backhand you say that in your ladder matches, you have no problem hitting that aggressively. What we need to be able to do that in your match play as well. So before your USTA match go write down several goals like that. When you get a weak forehand, you will attack on it and then probably just as importantly is actually having a plan.

You need to stick to it and same thing when you’re in a gym working on your physical body. Don’t go for a week solid and really kill it and do a great job and then the next week kind of lose your concentration and start working on areas of your body that are already strong. That’s not going to help you. You need to stick with what’s weak and you’ve got to build that muscle up. That’s step number 3.

Step number 4 is and again this is very, very indicative or very similar to what we would hear advice be on actually building your physical muscle and that is you need to repeat this again and again and again. You’ve got to build up your muscle over time and it’s going to take time. This is how you condition both your body and your mind is by identifying what’s weak. Finding the right exercise to fix the problem. Having some kind of work out plan and sticking to it and then once you have that plan and you’re able to implement it, and we find out that it is working. You’ve got to stick with it until you actually achieve your goal. And if you find the problem which we have and you go out and start working on it, but you give it up after a little while, more than likely you’re going to go back to being unconfident and tentative just like you were before Robert.

So it’s very important that you stick with it and you actually commit to it and this is a big part of getting better at tennis. If you’re listening to this Podcast I know that you want to improve and you’re not going to do that by getting the information in this show and not doing anything with it or doing something with it and following my advice your first time out and then getting lazy and lackadaisical and losing your focus the second, third or fourth time and then just giving it up and saying, “Ah, well. I’m not really doing a great job at this anymore. ” And let’s move on to something different and this seems interesting. Let’s try out working on this new part of my game. Stick with it guys and Robert that’s the only way you are going to improve your mental muscle and get mentally tough during not only your club matches or your ladder matches, but during USTA matches as well.

So Robert in Washington hopefully that answers your question. I enjoy talking about my mental tennis type of topics like that. So thank you very much for writing in and feel free to write back if you have any follow up questions to that. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Next up on episode number 91 of the Essential Tennis Podcast is a question from Francisco. Francisco has a couple of questions about his serve. He wrote to me and said, “On my serve I actually serve top spin on my first serve and second serve. The thing is that when I serve my first serve top spin, I tend to not get it in, because I’m trying to be more aggressive. So shall I just go ahead and back off a little and make it in or should I try to be aggressive? I sometimes think that I should go ahead and take my chances with a flat first serve and then hit a top spin second serve. I don’t know what to do really. I have lately been losing my first service game, because I am making too many double faults on my first service game, but then in my next service game I will do better, because I do not try to be so aggressive. ”

Well, Francisco good question and I’m going to answer a couple of those questions briefly. And then really talk about what I feel is the main problem here and yes I think a good combination is an agressive first serve, whether it be flat or top spin or slice or however you like to hit your serve, but you should be pretty aggressive with your first one and then you want to be confident and consistent with your second serve obviously. So I think you’ve got the right idea here. You want to be aggressive with your first and then consistent with your second, but without being too tentative. Now you’re talking about your problem here with your serve as if it has more to do it to your first serve and I disagree with that. I think the real issue here is your second serve.

When you talk about being too aggressive witt you’re first serve in your first service game by double faulting a lot. Well, that’s not really a problem with your first serve. That’s the problem with your second serve. Be as aggressive as you want in your first service game on the first serve, but we need to put the second serve in play. So I feel like what you really needs to work on here is being more consistent with your second serve without having to let up a ton and be really tentative and weak. So let’s talk about the second serve and it sounds like you’ve got the right idea here in hitting top spin. And I’m going to lay out a couple of guidelines here basic second serve theory that I want everybody listening to understand and then I’m going to talk to you guys and you especially Francisco about how to diagnose your second serve technically and figure out what’s wrong, s o that you can actually fix it and work on it and make it more consistent and more confident.

So first up basic second serve theory. First of all a spin serve that curves into play particularly top spin, some slice in there as well is what we’re gong for it. And so you’ve got the right idea here Francisco. We want good spin on the serve to actually make the ball curve in the air and have it curve down into the box. So that we’re not trying to hit directly at the box and barely clearing the shadow with the top of the net. So you’ve got the right idea. We want some spin here to make the ball curve. Now the spin is created by swinging upwards towards the ball and keeping your arm and hand relaxed to let the racket face become flat in contact.

We’re going to talk about this more in depth later on, but technically that’s what we’re looking for. And lastly it should be a confidence swinging. You’re not going to make enough spin on your second serve to actually physically curve the ball u nless you’re relax and you’re swinging at the ball confidently. This should not be a shot they were pushing into play. You should be making a good not necessarily aggressive, but confident accelarated swing towards the ball. So those are the basic things that we need to be successful and to be confident on the second serve. Now your double faulting too much Francisco. So here’s the 3 main ways you’re going to be missing that second serve and we’re going to talk about how to fix it so that you can go out and work on your second serve and make it better. Make it more consistent.

So the first way that you could possibly miss you second serve is by missing it long, by having to go too far. And I didn’t read to all of Francisco’s question and another part of his question he talks about going out often. And he doesn’t say it to the right or to the left or long, but I’m pretty sure that he’s telling me that he is missing long a lot. So you really want to pay attention to this part Francisco, so that you can fix this part of your s erve technically as far as your technique is concerned. And he asks if tossing too far into the court is going to cause the ball to go to far and no that’s not what causes the ball to go too far in the serve Francisco? What causes a serve to go long and travel too far is your racket face been open at contact. Now by open, I’m talking about angled whether it’s a lot or just slightly. Angled up towards the ceiling or up towards the sky. At contact we want the racket face, the strings to be perpendicular to the court surface. We want there to be a 90 degree angle between the court and your strings as you make contact. That’s very important. If your racket face, meaning tilted back towards the sky or towards the ceiling. And you make a good upwards swing towards the ball which you should be doing. The ball is going to waft up too high, it’s going to angle too high and it’s going to travel too far. Even if there is top spin on the shot. Even you have spin on the serve. It’s going to go too far. So we’re going to fix this by staying relax. By allowing the racket to swing up towards the ball loosely and allowing it too close.

We need the strings too close and meet the ball flat up at the top of your swing. If you’re accelerating and the ball is going too far it means your face is too open and usually people are tight and tense and they are hitting the ball with an open racket face and you’ve got to relax and let your arm and let your hand swing freely. You’ve got to be relaxed. So when you missed long it mean your face is open.

Number 2 into the net. When people miss a serve into the net, it is from one of two problems. Either you did not swing upwards enough or your racket face is too closed. Usually it’s the first one. Most amateur tennis players are not very good at making an upward swing towards the ball. In the back of your swing your racket should drop and then from there the racket should swing upward towards your toss, upwards the ball to get a lift on the ball to make sure it gets over the top of the net.

If you hit the net often you’re probably swinging very straight towards the box and that’s not how good players swing. Good players did not hit directly at the box. It’s an upward swing towards the ball. So if you’re hitting the net a lot, this is probably why? It also could be that your racket face is actually tilted down too much and it’s too closed, but in my experience teaching and coaching club level players, amateur players, it’s usually not from that. It’s usually from not swinging the racket in the right direction. They are trying to hit too flat and too straight.

So the first way that you can miss is long. We talked about that. The face is too open. Second way is into the net. Third way is right or left. And this is the most simple out of the 3 or the easiest to correct. It means that your stings are facing the wrong way. And you need to adjust the racket face in contact b y turning your hand or your hand in your forearm to adjust the angle on the strings.

Now by combining an upward swing and a flat racket face at contact. You can curve or arch the ball over the top of the net and then down into the box again and you can do this confidently. You can accelerate at the ball confidently and actually make it curve. If any of these elements are out of whack– if your face is too open or if it’s too closed or if you are not swinging upward towards the ball to get it over the net or if you’re strings are angled to the right or to the left. You’re going to miss the serve. And the only way to get good at this is through repetition. You’ve got to get out, understand these different elements of the serve and then practice over and over and over.

Your second serve should be a shot that you can swing at confidently, but make 7, 8, 9, 10 times in a row without missing. So Francisco hopefully you understand more clearly now exactly what you need to do with this swing. And hopefully you get out there and practice and you find out exactly what’s causing your second serves to go out and you get more consistent. If you have any follow up questions on this feel free to let me know. [music] [music] [music]

And our last question today is also from Francisco. He wrote also in that same message and said, “The second question is that I have never had problems hitting my forehand, but then today I shanked two relatively easy returns of serve and I hit a really bad forehand into the net which was also easy. It ended up messing up my rhythm. I still won my match, but I lost my confidence in my forehand. When this happened I tried to move on and say to myself, “It’s just one or two s hots, but the areas kept on creeping them. What should I do? Was it lack of focus or keeping my eye on the ball? I don’t know what happened. ” That’s good question Francisco. And this is a difficult topic.

And this is a difficult question to answer, because all of us in tennis all of us have a bad day here and there whether it be in our tennis game as a whole or having to do with the specific stroke. And I know what it’s like to suddenly lose confidence in a shot that usually works very well for you. Two times in my competitive tennis career, once in high school and once in college. I completely lost the feel and confidence of my most confident shot typically which is my forehand ground stroke. It’s the shot that usually I can hit confidently and aggressively from anywhere in the court and from just about any position and again once in high school and once in college for about 3 or 4 weeks each time.

For whatever reason I just completely lost the shot. I completely lost the stroke and my feel for the shot and it was terribly frustrating, because I’ve been used to taking that shot and hitting it very confidently and all of the sudden I just felt like I didn’t know how to hit my forehand anymore and it was awful. So I know what you’re talking about here as far as suddenly losing a shot and there’s not always a good way to deal with it immediately.

Like I said when this happen to me I lost the feel for my forehand for like 3 or 4 weeks and it was just gone for a while and it took me a lot of practice and repetition to get my confidence back into the shot again. And so I’ve got a. . there’s basically two ways that you can fix this Francisco. You can either fix this by hitting your forehand a ton of times the way that you normally would.. Just get a ton of repetition, get a practice partner or a ball machine. Go out to the court and just rally for hours and hours and hours. And just get your feel and your confidence back. Who knows how long it’s going to take? And hopefully by the time I’ve answered this on today’s show, you’ve already got your feel back for it, but I want to answer this question for people listening who may not know how to fix this or how to go about fixing the losing shot that they are usually confident with.

So that’s the first and that’s kind of the easiest way y ou could deal with this is to just go out and get a ton of repetition the way that you normally hit or the second way that we can work on this is by taking a few steps back and work your way up to full speed again. And start off easy and slow and work your way up towards whatever speed that you used to hit your forehand at. Whatever confidence level that you used to hit your forehand at and this takes more patience. I like that process better personally. Taking a few steps back and working your way up again, but not everybody has the same patience for this as I do. And when I teach somebody that is a good athlete and for whatever reason they just don’t get a shot.

And I’ve worked with people very recently who came in and great athletes, good overall game, but they just get unconfident and squirmy about a certain shot. The forehands specifically I’ve dealt with students just recently like this. And in my opinion the best way to deal with this is to take a couple steps back, start up slow and work your way forward gradually. So here’s a drill that I suggest that you do Francisco the next time this happens or if you’re still struggling with this.

First of all, start on the service line and rally with a partner who has good control of the ball and this is something that in general and let your player are uncomfortable with often and just don’t like to do and that’s rallying from the service line slowly, use your forehand grip and rally inside the service boxes. So if the ball goes passed the service line, it is going too far. You need to be slow and relaxed. Continue to rally back and forth, back and forth at a slow pace until you get 20 in a row t hat land inside the service box and I would do this both down the line and cross court.

So if you are rallying with a partner who’s right handed, you guys would start up hitting cross court using only the deuce side service boxes standing on the service line and rallying back and forth so that the ball ends inside only the deuce side service boxes again and again and again and again with a slow rally. Rally to those two boxes. Only those two boxes until you’ve gotten a rally of 20 in a row. Once you’ve done that go down the line and now your partner’s going to be hitting backhands and again you’re going to hitting forehand. And aim for just those two service boxes and again get 20 in a row.

Once you’ve done this, back up to halfway between the service line and the base line. And have your friend just feed easy shots to you. Don’t rally this just have your friend feed you easy forehands you’re standing between the service line and the base line and now I want you to make your target between the service line and the base line anywhere in that rectangle called no mans land and make 10 shots in a row to no man’s land on the opposite side of the court.

So now you’re making a little bit more aggressive swing, but you should still be losse and relax. We’re not trying to hit this shot hard or fast and hit 10 forehands in a row between the service line in the base line. Once you’ve done this and you’ve shown that you can consistently control the ball and where it’s going with your forehand a little bit deeper target. Once you’ve done that 10 times in a row, now go back all the way to the base line again and go ahead and start to rally. You can do this with the target at full speed from the base line.

Now there’s 5 things I’m going to tell you that are going to determine whether or not this is actually useful to you Francisco and whether or not it’s going to work out for you. First of all, be disciplined as you do these drills. Don’t cheat and don’t cut corners as you rally from the service line for example it’s kind of be very tempting for you to maybe miss a shot that’s just a couple inches wide or long and you count it and say, “That was close. ” Keep going, keep in track or maybe one of you guys will hit the volley and the ball is going to go too far, but somebody who volley’s instead of letting it bounce instead and you guys keep going. Just no, just do it. Do what I say. Rally 20 in a row to actually bounce inside the correct service box and don’t cut corners on this. Just make sure that you do it correctly. Secondly, if you start to shank the ball again. If you start to hit the ball off your frame, find out exactly where it’s hitting on your racket and make adjustments accordingly.

Don’t over think it’s too much, just adjust for your racket is, find the strings and continue to rally slow and relax. And that’s my next one. Number 3 stay relaxed and calm, stay loose. You should be doing this in a relax manner. Your body should be loose no tension and just stay relaxed. Number 3.

Number 4 this could take a while be patient and stick with it. What I just described, the drills I described sound very simple and very easy if you’re having confidence issues with your forehand it’s very possible that completing those two simple rally’s, those two simple control drills back and forth. It’s very possible that could take you an hour. Be patient and just stick with it. Don’t get frustrated. Easier said than done obviously, but take your time and stay relaxed and don’t get frustrated. You’re developing your feel and your control. This is number 5 and allow this to happen. It might feel uncomfortable or tight at first. it might not feel natural. Just trust me on this and do these drills and you’re going to develop better feel and better control for your forehand. So start off very slow, work your way back steadily and by the time you get back to the base line and you’ve completed those first two drills hopefully you’re more relaxed and you have a better feel for where you racket is, where the ball is. You’re not shanking the ball anymore and you’re able to kind of get back into your forehand.

So that’s my suggestion on how to work through this Francisco and anybody else who’s dealing with a specific stroke that they’ve lost confidence in and you want to build your confidence back up again. I would strongly suggest that you find, you create some kind of progression like this. Where you start up very easy, very simple, under control back and forth and slowly progress towards a more and more full or aggressive swing. This is the best way to do it in my opinion. You could also just try to bash your way through it and stay at the same speed that you always hit at and just try to find your feel again, but in my opinion that’s probably not going to quite as effective.

You’re not doing any thing different. You’re just hoping to work through it and find your feel again which you probably will eventually. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to find the stroke again. You’ll going to find it eventually either way, but in doing the way that I’m suggesting you’re working through it one step at at time and you’re really being aware and you’re really been conscious about what you’re doing and I just feel like it’s a much better way to approach it.

So Francisco hopefully that’s helpful to you. Thanks very much for your great questions and good luck with your tennis game. Take care. [music] [music] [music] [music]

All right, to finish up today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast, I’d like to do a shout-out to the 5 most recent sign ups at the forums at essentialtennis. Com. And these are our newest members who have come in and already started to post. It’s always exciting to see new people. So Carol E. Renata, San Jay, Grasscourt and Flame You. Welcome to you guys. It’s so great to have you guys aboard on the forums and already have you guys post in and becoming part of the family there at the Essential Tennis Forums. Hopefully you guys continue to post and we look forward to seeing more of you. All right, that does it for this week show. Thank you very much for tuning in. Wherever you are I really appreciate your support by downloading the show.

Let me know if you have any questions about your own tennis game. You can always e-mail me ian@essentialtennis. Com and that does it for this week. Take care everybody and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #90

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

Ian Westerman: 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 somersetsportsperformance.com. Well, thank you very much for joining me today on this episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast.

We’ve got a great topic that’s going to fill today’s entire show and that topic is serving and volleying and also returning and volleying, coming in and specifically in doubles, but you could apply today’s show to singles as well, but it’s going to be a great episode.

Real quickly before we get to that. I want to remind you guys about the Essential Tennis Podcast archives and there’s two main ways that you can get the Podcast in general either on the website at essentialtennis.com/podcast or on iTunes. Now in both of those places you can typically get the last 2 or 3 episodes. However, if you would like to access every episode of the Esential Tennis Podcast including today’s which is the 90th. If you want to be able to access all of that information you can just by signing up for the archives at essentialtennis.com/podcast. So check that out. All right, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]
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All right, let’s get started with today’s show. And I’d like to pick things off by just saying that I really think that you will get a great deal out of today’s Podcast. We’ve got an excellent question here that Sally has written with and I’ve really taken a lot of time to outline this topic and this is going to be very comprehensive. We’re going to be going over a lot of things in detail. So if you’re smart, get out your pencil and paper and notepad or something and take some notes here as I goes through this Podcast. If you have the opportunity too. Obviously if you’re driving and listening to this I do not recommend that whatsoever, but if you have the chance takes some notes here.

Now today’s topic is going to be all about coming to the net after a serve or after a return of serve and I’m going to read through most of Sally’s question here and give you guys an idea of what she’s getting at. So she has two parts. And the first past was, “How do I be balance on the transition between serving and getting into the box. The 40 yard line where we hit that first volley or half volley is the hardest part for me to feel balance especially with my backhand. I think I serve and run in goofy and I’m not sure when to stop or what shot to expect. Last night in my match I remember serving and then my first few steps were kind of swerving with my feet close together. I know what you’re thinking. I run like a girl. ” OK. OK. Now I wasn’t thinking that Sally. She continues and says, “But I specifically need help on how I should run and step after my serve to be in balance and be in good court position so I can judge and decide about that first foul or half foul. Should I run in being kind of low like a big ape? I know that sounds funny, but seriously. Should I run in low with a wider stance?” And then the second part of our question was, “Also can we talk specifically about the backhand half volley?”

And yes we’re going to get to that Sally. And I’ll tell you guys ahead of time whether outline is going to look like today. We’ve got 4 different sections that I’m going to cover and answering Sally’s questions and this question was posted in the forums at essentialtennis. Com and there was actually a good discussion back and forth which was posted awhile ago. This was posted originally back in July. And there was conversation back and forth. We had input from other people and some other follow up questions too. One from Howard.

So we’re going to get to a lot of these topics. Having to do with balance with the split-step, with serving and vollying and we’re going to talk about the half volley as well and we’re going to do this in 4 main sections. I’m first going to talk about why the serve and volley or return and volley is the best strategy in doubles.

Number 2. I’m going to talk about balance while moving into the net and that’s really going to be the biggest section here.

Number 3 I’m going to talk about the technique of the half volley. How to hit the half volley correctly and lastly we’re going to put it all together and I’ll have some finishing thoughts. So those are the 4 main sections of today’s Podcast for you guys following along at home.

All right, so let’s go ahead and get started with the first section in Essential Tennis Podcast number 90 and that first section is going to be why the serve volley or return and volley is the best strategy in doubles

And I want to start of with this today before we talk about specific things having to do with the split-step and hitting that first volley or half volley, because I just want want you guys to understand that it really is a good play. And there’s 3 main reasons why the serve and volley or return and volley is in my opinion the best play, the best over all strategy that you guys can try to implement in your doubles play.

First of all it hurries and pressures your opponent. The sooner you get to the net and the faster you get to the net, the less amount of time that your opponent have to react to your subsequent shots and I see a lot of times players that are an average level of play will sit back at the base line, because they are more comfortable there and I understand that you want to be comfortable when you play, but on the practice court, you guys should be practicing moving forwards quickly and right away. And the serve and volley or return and volley is really the best way to do that.

Secondly it puts you in an offensive position rather than defensive. When you sit back at the base line and you’re in an defensive position almost just by definition, because you’re far away from your opponents side of the court and your far away from your opponents relatively speaking. The person who’s up at the net has the offensive advantage, because they are close and they get to put pressure immediately on their opponents as opposed to hitting the ground stroke or a lob back from the base line where your opponents have much more time to react which we talked about in the first one.

Thirdly, my third reason why in my opinion serve and volley or return and volley is the best strategy in doubles is, because it’s just plain fun. And I enjoy serving and volleying so much. There is so much action immediately it kind of thrown into the thick of things and you have to be able to react very quickly and there’s just a lot of action. And I enjoy that a great deal. It’s so much fun.

I can’t imagine playing doubles and staying back every time. Once in a while you have to do that strategically when your opponents are really beating you up up at the net. Once in a while it is smart to stay back, but in general serving a volley or returning a volley is just a lot of fun to do. You get right into the middle of the action right away. Now if you don’t do it correctly it can hurt you just as much as it could possibly help. So we are going to talk about next, how to correctly move forward and it’s going to be really the bulk of today’s show.

It takes away your own time when you don’t do it correctly and it puts you off balance and the combination of those two things gives your opponents the advantage instead of it giving it to you. Which was the whole idea of serving and volleying in the first place. [music] [music]

Moving on to part two of today’s Podcast. We are going to talk about actually using the split-step and how to move forwards into the net in balance and not being out of balance and crazy and just not being able to make a very good shots as you get approached with that first shot from your opponent after your serve or your return of serve.

Now first of all I would to tell you guys the 3 most common mistakes that people make to lose their balance while they are moving forwards to the net and listen to this and try to figure out if one of these issues is your biggest problem.

The 3 biggest ways that people screw up when they are serve and volley or returning volley are first of all not split-stepping at all and running right through the shot and the big mistake and this is probably the number mistake that I see doubles players make, is they will hit that serve or that return and they have the right idea. They start moving forward. They try to get to the net, but on their way up there they don’t ever balance themselves. They just continue to run forward towards the net and if the ball is hit either to the right or to their left or at their feet or if they get lobbed and the ball get hit over them and no matter what happens they’re going to be in trouble, because they’re in the process of actually striding and running and trying to get to the net.

And they are not prepared to move to the right or to the left or forwards and balance or definitely not backwards, because they are running forwards. And this is a big, big mistake a very common mistake. That’s the first one. The second common m istake that I see is people’s split-step, but it’s either early or late. And we’re going to talk about the timing pretty soon, but they’ll either split-step too soon and waste time that they could be using and getting forward up to the net or they split-step late, the balls already on their way to them and and again they have the right idea and they move forwards. They did split-step, but the ball is already on it’s way and so they don’t have very much time to actually react, because the split-step has happened too late. After contact has already been made.

And the third most common mistake that people make to lose their balance while moving forwards is their split-step at the right time, but their feet then get frozen. They make a good split-step , it’s even at the right time. However, they just stand there and let the ball come to them.

So those were the 3 most common mistakes that I definitely see as people are playing doubles or even singles and serving and volleying or returning and volleying and coming forward.

Now let’s talk about how to do this correctly. And this is where really the details are very, very important here guys. And I’ve split this up into a 6 step process and you might be saying to yourself. Well, 6 steps that’s a lot. It’s going to be a lot to remember? That’s going to be difficult for me to implement into my game. And you’re right. This is not an easy thing to do well. It’s not easy at all and I’m not expecting you guys to listen to this Podcast and to go out to a doubles match tomorrow and do all this correctly.

I don’t expect that at all and you shouldn’t either. Don’t just because you’re listen to this show and you understand what I’m telling you. Don’t think that tomorrow you’re going out and do this perfectly. This is going to take some time. It’s really going to take some intentionality on your part on the practice court. It is going to take repeatition before all these things start to happen automatically.

It’s very possible it will take you quite a bit of time to be able to actually practice this enough that it becomes part of your game. Enough that you can actually do it during match play. So with that being said let’s go forwards and you guys are going to get to learn how to do this correctly and again there’s 6 steps here.

First of all, finish your serve or your return of serve first. Here’s what I mean by that. Often times I see players hit their serve or their return of serve and before the point even started they knew it. They had the idea. All right, I’m going to hit this first shot and I’m go to immediately go into the net. And so they’ve got that in the back of their mind and they rush themselves before their serve is even done or the return is even finished, they are already starting to move their feet. They are already trying to get into the process of moving forwards quickly and as a result the serve or the return of serve is a poor shot or it’s a missed shot and they get too far ahead of themselves and those of you who watch NFL Football. American Football, I see this all the time in football where a receiver has the ball coming right to them and start running down the field before they even catch the ball and so they kind of have their priorities mixed up.

You need to make the first play first and then move to the second one. Don’t start running before you hit the ball. Make sure that you hit a good shot first. So that’s step number 1. Make sure that you hit your first shot before you start running forward. Step number 2. Know your plan of getting to the net and commit to it. And what I mean by that is basically the opposite of step number 1. I very often times see people hit their serve or hit their return and stand there and watch it and try to figure exactly how good of a serve that I just hit there and I try to evaluate and figure out exactly what’s happening before they start moving forward, but that’s a mistake too.

That’s basically the opposite mistake as the first one. This person is wasting valuable time and is sitting back there on the base line when they could be moving forward. So don’t make that mistake either. You need to finish your return of serve or your serve and then don’t hesitate or watch your shot move. Start moving immediately. That’s step number 2.

Step number 3. Move initially in whichever way you think is fastest for you. And Sally was describing several different ways that she could possibly be moving forwards and some of them sounded more awkward than others. You need to move in whichever way is natural for you and whichever way you can move the most athletically towards the net. I personally finish my serve or my return of serve and I’ve got a very long stride. I’ve got long legs. And immediately stride out and take two to three steps or so. Full steps before I actually make my split step, but I do this right away, a nd I do it quickly and it’s what’s most comfortable to me and everybody’s got different body’s, everybody moves a little bit differently. And so you need to use what’s most comfortable for you. Whatever you can use that’s as fast as possible. We want to finish that serve or that return of serve and get in as quickly as you can.

So keep that in mind and move whichever was is comfortable for you that’s number 3.

Number 4 and this is really the most important part of this 6 step sequence of things that you guys need to do in order to move forward and do it successfully. Step number 4 is make your balancing move before your opponent makes contact with the ball achieving a balance stance and weight as they hit the ball. It’s the timing that’s really most important here guys. We don’t want to split-step early and waste time that you could be using to move forward to the net. You don’t want to split-step late either, because the balls already on its way to you before you use split-step and you’re going to get rushed after your split-step.

The balls going to be right on top of you after finishing your split-step. So the timing here is extremely important. You want to initiate that split-step, or whichever other move you want to use. And we’ll get to that in a second, but you want to initiate your split-step right before your opponent makes contact with the ball. And in order to do this effectively you need to be watching your opponent and when they start to swing. Whenever they start to swing and the racket starts moving forward towards the ball that’s when you want to start use your split-step. And ideally you want to be in that balanced position that a split-step is supposed to put you in as they make contact. So that we’re making the best use of our time. We’re moving forwards for as long as possible right up until they hit. Right when they hit we’re split stepping, the balance is great.

And now we have the most amount of time possible after they hit to be able to move towards the ball. So the timing here is very, very important. You want to move forwards as far and as fast as possible, but not past the point of when they make contact. You want to split step and land in that split step as they make contact. Now you can use whatever split step type of move you want and there’s a lot of different terminology out there and different types of steps you could use and examples of those would be a staggard split-step and that means the right or left foot landing first and the other foot landing second.

You can use a regular split-step which is kind of more I guess it’s more of a hop and landing on both feet at the same time. You can use a shuffle step meaning both of your feet kind of shuffle and bring your momentum to a balanced, not necessarily a stop, but you’re balancing and holding your momentum and getting your self balanced so that you’re in a good right position. That’s the shuffle step and to do that you can make a bunch of little steps with both feet and you can use a break step also which my buddy Royce was talking about in a previous Podcast. I don’t care which of those you guys use. Which type of split-step or balancing step you guys use is not essential. The essential part is the timing of it and doing it at the right time and doing it correctly. It’s all about the timing. So that’s step number 4.

Step number 5 is now identify your opponents shot and immediately move towards the direction of the ball whether it’s forwards for a short ball or a weak shot to the right or to the left. If your opponent hits a wide or down the middle or back if your opponent lobs. After you’ve gathered yourself in your split-step which was step number 4. Identify quickly where the ball is going and move right away towards the ball. Don’t stand there and let the ball come to you. You want to initiate and move towards the ball. Go intercept it whichever direction that happen to be. That’s the point of the split-step to be able to allow you to move in any direction possible and step number 6 the last step.

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After hitting that shot start over again. Start the process again at step number 2 which is knowing your plan. Okay and I want to move that forward towards the net and then go to step 3, 4 and 5 again, And so you repeat this process every time that you hit the ball back to your opponents side. So real briefly here– Step 1. Finish your serve or return of serve first. Step 2. Know your plan of getting to the net and commit to it. Move right away as soon as you’re finish with your first shot. Step 3. Move initially whatever way is fastest for you. Whatever way is most natural and most athletic for you to move forwards, move that way. Number 4. Make your balancing move as your opponent makes contact. You want to get your self balanced as they make contact to the ball. It’s all about the timing. Step 5. Identify your opponents shot and immediately move out of your split-step, out of your balanced position. Immediately move towards the ball after you identify where it’s going and step 6, s tart the process all over again.

So that’s your 6 step process for correctly moving forwards, for using your feet correctly as you move forward towards the net. Hopefully that makes sense and that should really pretty much cover everything. That’s pretty comprehensive. Next step we’re going to be talking about the technique of a half volley. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s next talk about the actually technique of hitting that half volley. After you guys have hit your serve or your return of serve. You have moved forward correctly and quickly. You’ve split-stepped at the right time and got yourself in balance. Now you’ve got to actually be able to hit that first shot. It could be a volley or a half volley, but definitely the shot that gives players the most amount of trouble is a half volley and Sally requested that I talk about it. So I’m going to tell you guys what I feel is the best technique to use for this shot and there’s really two main ways of hitting this shot in my view. There’s a more simple way of doing it and another one that’s more advanced. And Sally is a 4. 5 player, so I definitely recommended to her the slightly more advance way of doing it and I’ll explain both of them to you guys. The simple way. The simple technique of hitting the half volley is really just like hitting a regular volley. You should make contact with the shot with an open racket face. The actual path of the racket or the swing of the shot should be short and compact, very controlled and you want to direct the ball towards your target. So it should be very, very simple.

You should not be trying to hit the shot back with lower to average level tennis players and we’ll say any player on up through like a 3. 5 level. The most common reason why a half volley is missed is by just missing it completely. And I’m talking about like the ball comes down at their feet their rushing into the net. They’re trying to serve and volley and it just passes them right by. They’re not ready for the shot. Hopefully the splitstep will take care of that one.

The second most common reason why these level players miss half volleys is, because the balls just hits off their frame. They’re trying to do too much with the actual swing of the shot. They’re trying to hit it too much and they end up mishitting the shot or hitting it somewhere that they didn’t want to go, because they’re just trying to do too much. They are kind of panicking and throwing their racket at the ball and it’s bouncing right in front of them and it’s just difficult to make a shot that way. So if you are a 3. 5 level player or below, I strongly encourage you to keep it very simple. Put the racket down there. Open the face. Make sure you make contact and just block it over.

You might end up popping up a couple at first too much a little bit higher than you wanted, but let me ask you which is better? Missing the shot into the net because you shank it or popping it up and giving your opponent an easy shot. I know that more competitive of you hate the idea of giving your opponents an easy shot and I’m not suggesting that that’s the way you hit this shot, but it’s going to happen once in a while fine. Pop it up and give it to them. Don’t miss it into the net, because you’re not hitting the middle of your racket. It happens all the time with average level tennis players and you’re going to keep the ball from popping up by adjusting you racket face slightly. If it goes too high close it a little more. The contact should usually be made with an open face.

Now the more advance way of doing this is more like a mini ground stroke. And that is you should be making contact with a flat racket face instead of slightly open and contact is made with the racket lifting upwards to clear the ball over the top of the net. These results in a more competitive shot. You’re able to hit the ball a little bit more aggressively, a little bit firmer and keep it a little lower, but it’s a little bit tougher this time, because we’re trying to lift the ball up with an upward swing and this should still be compact. We’re still not trying to actually in part top spin on the ball. However, it’s definitely more of a ‘Swing’ than the simple way of doing it which is opening the face and blocking it back.

And I suggested this for Sally, because she’s above a 4.0 level. Once you guys get up to that level you will need a competitive advantages in shots like this. And so if you’re above a 4. 0 level, I suggest that you’d try to learn how to hit a half volley this way with the flat racket face and a little bit more of a lift with the racket and directing the ball just over the top of the net to keep it low and keep it competitive to your opponents.

So technique-wise, those of the two main ways that you guys can hit this shot, the half volley. Keep it simple no matter what way you were doing it. Make sure you make good contact and we’re just trying to keep this ball back in play towards whoever is farther away from you and we’re trying to keep it low so that we can stay in the point and hopefully get closer and put the ball away as the point progressive. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, I’d like to now wrap things up by finishing with some closing thoughts having to do with serving and volleying and the half volley and the split-step etc. So I have just 3 quick finishing thoughts here having to do with those topics. First of all, understand there’s big misconception among many doubles player that when you hit a half volley, it was a bad choice or it’s a poor shot, because there’s kind of an attitude that a lot of tennis pros teach doubles with and that is, any time the ball drops to your feet you screwed up and usually it’s a comment like, ‘Oh, you didn’t close in close enough. The balls is at your feet. You didn’t get into the net fast enough.’ That’s a fallacy.

When you play doubles you’re going to get half volleys. So you’re going to get shots that gets hit to your feet. It’s just part of the game. Yes, I do want you to close forward. I do want you to get close to the net, but anytime you play doubles, you’re going to get shots that are down at your feet regardless of your position or how fast you are. It doesn’t mean that it was poor shot selection. It’s just part of the game. So please understand that first of all.

Secondly, if you move into the net without split-stepping, you can get closer to the net and you can avoid some half volleys, but it will be at the expense of your balance. Please understand that. I would much rather that you split-step and hit a half volley in your doubles points and be under control and balance then rush in and hit a volley without very much balance. And those are very often the two choices that you’re presented with
in your doubles play. You have the choice of either getting in faster and closer and probably hitting more volleys, but being under less balance or using a split-step, being under more balance and probably hitting the couple more half volleys. You’ll going to be better off with the split-step and learning how to hit a good half volley and being in balance instead of constantly rushing your self and being off balance as you try to hit volleys or half volleys or overheads or whatever.

When you split-step correctly, you make all of those shots easier. That’s #2. Number three. After missing a half volley or volley. After doing this serve and volley process and starting to move forwards up to the net. Don’t give up on that strategy just, because you miss a couple and this is really important guys. I want you all to get more comfortable serving and volleying and returning and volleying. So don’t wait for a shot or two for the point to develop. When you miss a volley or half volley. Don’t sit back there at the base line and give up on the strategy and say, ‘I’ll just wait for a couple of shots and see how things develop and when I get a short ball I’ll come forward and then I’ll get up to the net. ‘

Well, I’d rather you get in there and keep pressuring your opponent. When you wait back on the base line you are giving your opponent the first chance to get up to the net and that’s something that we don’t want to give away if we don’t have to.

So let me encourage you guys to keep going with this strategy whether it would be in a just practice environment or in an actual competitive match. Keep the pressure on. Now obviously on the other hand I want you guys to be smart. Don’t stick with a losing strategy. If we’re getting beat by going up to the net again and again and again. Don’t stick with it and so there’s a certain point where yes, it is smart to stay back. Don’t continue to get lobbed. Don’t continue to get passed or beat at the net when you’re in an actual competitive match. You’ve got to switch things up sometimes. So I’m not suggesting that you always stick with the strategy no matter what, because that would not be smart.

There’s going to be times for every type of strategy depending on the situation. However, very often players get held back, because they don’t ever get comfortable serving and volleying and they don’t ever get good at doing it correctly. So I don’t want you guys to stay back and sacrifice being good at this type of doubles play. I do want you guys to get better at this. So at the very first sign of trouble, don’t head for the hills and stay back. Stick with it for awhile. Give it a good chance, e specially in practice. Keep practicing this. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, that brings episode #90 of the Essential Tennis Podcast to a close. Thank you very much for joining me today. I very much appreciate your support by downloading the Podcast and by anything else that you do. Whether you’d be talking to your friends and playing partners about the show or about the website or posting on the forums or e-mailing back and forth with me. I appreciate every thing that all of you guys do to help support the website. Real quickly I have two shout-outs for today.

First of all I’d like to thank Nicolas in Illinois who donated some cash to Essential Tennis this past week. Thank you very much Nicolas for your donation and that money will definitely go directly towards making Essential Tennis a better place for everybody and secondly I’d like to give a shout-out to John Paul in Hawaii. He and I have been an e-mailing back and forth about a couple of different questions that he’s had, so Aloha to John Paul in Hawaii. Good to hear from you and someday I’d love to visit Hawaii. So John Paul hopefully someday we can actually hit out there in the Island state. Alright, t hank you very much everybody for listening. That brings everything to a close for today. Take care and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #89

Download: Word Doc | PDF | Kindle | Text

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 summersetsportsperformance.com.

Thank you very much for joining me on today’s show. Before we get today’s topics and guest, I would like to let you gusy know about two quick things .. The first one is a new blog at essentialtennis.com and that is the WTA tour news blog– news all about the women’s professional tennis game. To check that blog out, a ll you have to do is go to essentialtennis.com/WTAnews.

Next up, I just want to let you guys know about the upcoming Essential Tennis Live show which will be airing this Thursday at 8:30pm EST. Myself and my co-host Ron Miller are going to be talking about the NTRP rating system this week, the pros and the cons of the system, what’s broken, what needs to be fixed. If you have an opinion about that topic and would like to talk to us live during the show, check it out. Again this Thursday, at 8:30pm EST. To find out where to go, just go to essentialtennis. Com/ live. Alright, let’s get started with the show. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

My guest today on the Essential Tennis podcast is Dr. Patrick Cohen. Dr. Cohen is at sportspsychologytennis.com and hosts a tennis podcast of his own , it’s called the tennispsychology podcast and you guys can find that on his website or on the iTunes music store. He does a great job with that podcast and if you guys go check his podcast out on iTunes, he’s got 46 episodes, all archived there. So a lot of great information about mental tennis, the mental part of the game in tennis. Dr. Cohen, welcome to the show.

Dr. Cohen : Thanks for having me in, I enjoy talking to you once again about the mental aspects of tennis.

Ian : Absolutely, and it’s such a big part of the game for recreational players , average level players and high performance players as well. And I know that you spend a lot of time working with national ranked junior players on the mental game specifically so I know that you’re going to bring a lot of value to the listeners of my show. So thanks very much for spending some time with us..

Dr. Cohen : Great..

Ian : Alright, let’s go ahead and get started and we’ve got three questions here that hopefully we have time to get too and these all come from listeners of the show who posted their questions on the forums at essentialtennis.com. Our first question that we’re going to talk about comes to us from Joe in Louisiana. Joe wrote and asked, “I’d like to turn the mental tennis subject around a little and hear about how to recognize mental issues in my opponent, aside from the obvious. And how to exploit them.’ What do you think Dr. Cohen?

Dr. Cohen : Well, it’s definitely a part of I think playing tennis, is being able to react to your opponent. However, you don’t want to get so stuck on what’s going on with your opponent that you forget your game plan and you forget your strategy on what you are doing out there.

What do you want to look at, what do you want to observe? I think the most obvious thing is when a player is upset– when your opponent is upset , you know you have the momentum and you have the kind of mental edge at that point.

And you can take advantage of that. One of the things I see, the problems that player’s make is , they get out to a lead in the set, maybe they get out to 3 love or 4-1 or whatever it may be and sometimes they see that their opponent is down, they see their opponent as frustrated and then they let off the gas. They take their foot off the gas and they try to coast. And that could be very dangerous in that situation .

I think when you see that you have your opponent down, and your opponent maybe frustrated, I think that is the most obvious thing that you can see, well that’s one where you want to put your pedal to the metal as we say and you want to play even at that point or you want to go ahead and harness that momentum that you have to finish off the set or to finish off the match.

In addition, I think you can see changes in confidence in players as well , that’s another thing that you want to look for as well. Even how a player walks onto the court … Some players walk onto the court , they look like they own the court whereas other players walk on , they look kind of meek or look not very confident. They have their head down, their shoulders are slump . So you can certainly use that to your advantage in terms of knowing when you have the momentum because if your opponent doesn’t have the momentum, then they look rather like they are lacking confidence in their game.

That should give you the momentum. If I turn it around a little bit when I talk to my players, I never want to allow your opponent to see you down or see you frustrated or lacking confidence. Because you are giving them energy. You are giving them momentum. So if you are on the other end of that, make sure that you keep your reactions neutral to bad shots, for example. And you don’t show your opponent that you’re frustrated or that you’re lacking confidence or you’re down. Because now, momentum is shifting big time. What is your whole take on this Ian?

Ian : Well, I think you gave a lot of great advice there and I agree that the number one way to tell if you are doing something correctly, or doing something well, is by watching your opponents physical response and really it’s their emotional response to whatever happens to be occuring during the match play . And yeah, physical cues that you mentioned walking out on the courts and looking timid or unsure of oneself but even between points, maybe after hitting a particularly good shot against your opponent and they get frustrated , maybe they hit a poor shot and get frustrated and it really, at the top level of junior tennis or any level of junior tennis I guess we could say .

I would assume you see this a lot Dr Cohen, is kids who are really very competitive , not terribly emotionally mature yet, and so I would assume that a lot of times you see emotional outbursts at points of time during the match when they get frustrated. Their opponent is doing something that is being effective and their way of doing it is kind of dealing with it is being outwardly frustrated. Is that fair to say? Do you see a lot of that?

Dr. Cohen : Absolutely I just recorded a video on this particular topic on my website at sportspsychologytennis. Com and it is the highly competitive , the athletes that work very hard and their game, put in a lot of time that want to win really badly , there most likely to become upset quickly with their game when they hit a bad shot or when they are getting beat. They hate to lose essentially .

Ian : Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Cohen : So yeah, you can certainly watch for some of those cues but once again, I don’t think you want to really depend upon exploiting their lack of mental toughness. Once again, when I mean depend upon, Ian, I think you can get to a point where you focus too much on their reactions after points and after games and on the change-overs. Rather than controlling your own emotions, controlling your own confidence, between points as well.

So, just be careful that you just don’t get to lopsided with your strategy is to go out and exploit your opponents lack of mental toughness. I don’t think that’s a good strategy. You can certainly , as we’ve said, look at the cues that are going to help you gain the momentum and gain confidence. But don’t get so obsessed with what your opponents reactions are that you can’t make adjustments yourself..

Ian : Yeah, I think sometimes we can sometimes caught up with maybe enjoying our opponents downfalls maybe too much. And maybe playing for that a little bit too much and kind of trying to egg them on. Those of us who are more competitive who are listening and I can definately say that I’ve been guilty of that. I think the best advice that you gave there Dr. Cohen, was remember your game plan , remember what you were doing well that got your opponent frustrated. Don’t deviate from that for the sake of getting them more angry. Just keep the pedal to the metal and also don’t let up and say ‘Oh great, I’ve got this match won”, and relax. Lots of good tips in there and excellent stuff. Let’s go ahead and move onto our 2nd question and this question comes to us from John and he wrote and asked, “when playing doubles what tips can you give me to help the situation when my partner starts falling apart mentally?”

Dr. Cohen : Great question. I just witnessed this yesterday as a matter of fact where a saw some players playing team tennis in an advanced team tennis league and the two players were essentially they were frustrated with each others game. It’s so critical in doubles and I think it’s so critical to be able to support yourself. And support your partner at the same time because you’re not only playing for yourself, part of the pressure in doubles is that your playing for your partner as well so some players are very very in-tune with the ‘I don’t want to disappoint my partner. I don’t want to let down my partner. ‘ So when they hit a bad shot and they lose the point, it’s almost twice as hard to take for them because they hit a bad shot. Their person hit a bad shot but they also are letting feel like they are letting down their partner as well.

So that’s why it is so critical for the partner to come in and say ‘hey it’s OK. Let it go , let’s get to the next point. ‘ So any interaction at all. I think the worst thing you could do would be to just go back to the service line, or go back to your return of serve position and not say anything to your partner that’s really falling apart and is frustrated. You have to say something, you have to attempt to interrupt whatever negative script that your partner has in his or her head.

Even if it’s just a neutral statement, like ‘come on let’s go. come on let’s get to the next point. ‘ You have to be able to get them in a state where your OK with their mistake. That everybody is going to make mistakes so just saying something like you aren’t perfect , we’re going to lose points. It’s OK . As long as we focus on the next point with full confidence and full focus , you know we’re still right in this match. It’s so critical in team play or doubles play. I see it over and over again where players essentially can feed off their negativity or you have a very positive player that can turn the whole thing around because that partner is trying to lift up the partner that has the tendency to get down. .

Ian : I agree. I see this pretty commonly as well where one player will make a bad error and their partner does the classic head drop and like shoulder slump and just make the [inaudible] movement with their body. And that is not going to help your partner out. You guys need to be supportive of your partner emotionally and take responsibility and take responsibility for their emotional state. You’ve got to help them out and all the tips that Dr. Cohen stated there are definitely very important. So, Dr. Cohen, what would you say to the player who says ” well you know, I’m doing my best, I’m trying to be supportive. I’m trying to give them neutral or positive feedback even after they are making a mistake. However, they just keep on getting more and more down on their selves. They keep getting more and more negative . What does John do in that situation where their partner just can’t pull out of that negative tail-spin and they just keep on getting more and more negative. What would you say to that? .

Dr. Cohen : Try to get them to laugh or seriously or have fun. I think when a player having fun and laughing, that’s going to override any of that negativity and it can be kind of a stress reducer right? We know that laughing can reduce stress as well. So if you can find a way to play a little games, or just laugh at it with your partner and get them laughing like it’s OK. I think you’re going to be able to pull them around , that would be plan B in my opinion. But, when a player is frustrated and when they are down, they are certainly not having any fun. They are being too serious and they are not having any fun with their game. And frankly, it’s not a lot of fun to play with that type of player, right?

Ian : I agree. And our next question is actually going to deal with that. The player who maybe takes it a bit too seriously and is really hard on themselves but I think that’s good advice actually . It can be very difficult to reason with that type of player who just kind of seems really set in their path of being negative and really just having the idea that this is just a bad day. And nothing is going my way. Every shot is poor and you guys are going to play with people who just kind of fall into a negative attitude like that quickly. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t see it coming the advice to make them laugh but I do think that’s a good idea. So anything else to add to that before we go to our last question Dr. Cohen?

Dr. Cohen : No, I think when you’re not as serious and you’re having fun, that will take care of a lot of issues. .

Ian : Alright, good stuff. And with that, let’s go to our final question, which is from Dana from Nebraska, and I’m happy that Dana brought this up because it’s something that I personally have struggled with as well in the past in my competitive play. And he wrote and said “how can I keep from getting down on myself. Or what can I do to get myself back out of the slump when I do get down on myself. When I miss a couple of easy shots that I should’ve made , I get really down.

I see pros missing shots in their matches so I know perfection is impossible , yet I seem to think I should be perfect. ” That starts a downward spiral, I tense up, and start missing more shots and it feels even worse in doubles– I feel like I’m letting my partner down, so I tense up even faster . And this is such a good question, and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about a second ago , Dr. Cohen, that kind of downward spiral and being a perfectionist and as I said, a second ago, this is something that I have struggled with myself thinking that I shouldn’t miss shots which obviously is unrealistic. How do we deal with that? For those of my listeners that are kind of a perfectionist by nature, how can we get ourselves out of that trap feeling that we should make every shot and getting negative when it doesn’t happen. .

Dr. Cohen : Well let’s start with the positives. And the positive as a perfectionist is you do many things well and I know you are very motivated, I know you are very committed and you’re trying hard all the time and trying to give 100% effort. So there are some real advantages of that perfectionism when it comes to your practice and your practice happens and your work ethic and it’s probably one of the reasons why you’ve been able to succeed at some level in your tennis game. But there is a huge downside to perfectionism and it seems like 8 out of 10 athletes that contact me to work on the mental game, are in this mold of perfectionist. Because they see that how much it is getting in the way, they realize how much it’s getting in the way. What’s really interesting, is this person’s rationalizing as… What’s the name of the person asking the question?.

Ian : Dana.

Dr. Cohen : Yes. Dana is rationalizing that she see’s that the pros miss shots, they know that perfectionism is impossible yet she seems to think that she should be perfect. There is two or three should’s in that question, and that to me is at the heart of the issue. The should’s are the expectations that you take out on to the tennis court that I call those, setting yourself up for frustration. In other words, perfectionist set very high, or what I call strict expectations or demands about their performance. About how they should play, whether they should win or lose obviously a match, how they should hit the ball, how they should serve. And then when they don’t perform up to those expectations, and in this case , it’s missing a couple of easy routine shots.

When they don’t perform up to those expectations it makes it very difficult for them except, so there is really no level of acceptance about their performance when they think their under-performing or they aren’t performing up to the expectations. So that’s the very first part of it, is that you have to learn how to manage those expectations. I can talk all morning on this particular topic, because there is so much that goes in to perfectionism, but when I say manage those expectations, I’m not talking about confidence. Most of the time, athletes have very very high expectations , but low confidence. I call that the confidence expectation connection. And that’s the recipe for disaster. The recipe for success is to have very high confidence without the expectation that is attached to that. And athletes by and large group those two concepts together like they are one and the same. If expect to win , or I expect to play perfectly, then I must have confidence. No.

Expectations are demands that you play upon your performance , they turn into pressure and they also turn into self-judgement, self-critical or self-judgemental behaviour. When you’re not performing up to those expectations. So you identify the expectations and demands . In this case, it’s easy for me to see to see that she should not miss easier routine shots. That’s just unacceptable. So that’s an example of the expectation that is embedded in this question. Now, my process for this is to be able to turn that expectation into what I call something that is more manageable or a more manageable goal , or a more manageable objective. I call that a process-goal.

So maybe it’s as simple as having good foot work for example. Something that’s a little bit more manageable but it doesn’t have the demand of I have to execute that routine shot 100% of the time. So you try to tweak out the expectations and you replace them with things that are more manageable that the players are going to do 9 or 10 out of 10 times on the court. And then it’s a lot mroe difficult for that player to be judgmental #1 , and get upset when they think they are under-performing. So as I said, there is so much that goes in to the whole thing about perfectionists because a lot of my programs that I do with athletes are addressing some of the downsides of perfectionists. .

Ian : Well, I got to tell you Dr. Cohen, I had probably three of four ‘aha’ moments while you were talking there. And that was some really great information and especially for myself personally, where you were talking about the difference between setting expectations for yourself and that as opposed to being confident and those two things not necessarily being the same thing. That really makes a lot of sense and yet it’s something I’ve never heard anyone talk about before is that connection between expectations and confidence.

So, how do we train ourselves to be confident rather than setting expectations in stone and saying, like you were talking about having the word ‘should’ in there. I should make a short easy forehand. I should make it so when it doesn’t happen, there is an automatic feeling of failure there . How do we replace that with just being confident and maybe telling ourselves, ‘I can make that shot. ‘, or that’s a shot that I’m good at and not necessarily attaching a pressure of having to do it. .

Dr. Cohen : Yeah, not even the pressure of having to do it , but the judgment that goes with it. Confidence doesn’t include judgment. So, for example, like you said, confidence is strictly a belief in your ability to execute that routine shot. It doesn’t say anything about the , if you miss it, you need to judge yourself and beat yourself up, right? But the expectation does. So the first part of that is knowing the difference between the two and making sure you are clear with those.

Confidence is the belief that precedes your performance. It’s the strength of your belief that you can execute that shot, where it’s expectation is putting the demand and the pressure on yourself that you have to and you should and you must execute that shot 100% of the time. So, confidence, you know I tell my players all the time, you can see the serve.. I don’t want to call it a perfect serve, but you can see the ideal serve in your mind before you hit it to build confidence, right? But that’s doesn’t mean that you have to execute that. So sometimes, there is a disconnect for players there .

They see in their mind what they are capable of on the serve, or any shot for that matter. I’m just using the serve as an example where you might visualize the ideal serve that you’re capable of hitting in that situation but then they don’t execute that, or they don’t perform that serve and they make a double fault– there is a disconnect because they think that they should execute what they see in their mind . Players have to understand that you want to set yourself up for optimal performance by believing in it and seeing it. But yet, you have to understand that it’s not always going to come out that way.. It’s just the way the human body is setup and human nature is , it’s not going to be exactly as you envision.

I’ll quote someone from the world of golf, who some of your listeners may know a guy named Ben Hogan which was one of the best ball strikers in the history of golf. He said that during a round of golf where you hit maybe 70 shots or so, he envisioned only three or four of those shots were executed just as he envisioned out of 70. And he was one of the best ball strikers, most consistent ball strikers in golf. So, you certainly want to set yourself up with a belief that I can execute but you have to let go of the judgement about how did that execution go and be more self accepting.

Ian : Dr. Cohen, I really enjoyed that explanation from you a great deal. And as somebody who has struggled with these very issues a lot in the past , I can really appreciate that information a great deal and I know that my listeners are going to appreciate it and enjoy it very much as well. So, I’d like to thank you very much for spending time with my self and talking to my listeners — it’s been great to have you on the show and I look forward to having you back again soon..

Dr. Cohen : Great, wonderful to talk to you again Ian and I will talk to you again soon. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, that brings the Essential Tennis podcast #89 to a close. Thank you very much for joining me today and I hope that my conversation with Dr. Cohen was informative to you and interesting . I always enjoy talking about mental tennis a great deal . Now in wrapping up today’s show, I’d like to do three quick shout-outs.

The first one is to Joe in Louisiana who this past week was kind and generous enough to send a donation to essentialtennis.com. So Joe thank you very much for your support, I appreciate that a great deal and those funds will go directly towards the cost of keeping up essentialtennis. Com– so I appreciate that. Also, two people on the forums recently have crossed over the 1000 post mark. And fightfan in California, and BrianMark in Nebraska have both passed over 1000 posts on the forums. So those are both two very important people to the essential tennis community.

I really appreciate you guys enthusiasm and the time that you’ve put in on the forums talking to other members and also exchanging ideas and thoughts with myself about the website and the forums just wouldn’t be the same without you two guys– so great job to both of you. Alright, that does it for this week. Take care everybody, and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #88

Download: Word Doc | PDF | Kindle | Text

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
SomerestSportsPerformance.com.

Thank you very much for joining me today. I just have two quick things to get to before we start off with today’s instructional part of the show.

First of all, many of you have signed up for the promotional packs from Essential Tennis, and I appreciate all of you who have filled out the form on the website to receive the flyers, card, and stickers. I just wanted to tell you all to please be patient. I’m waiting for a new order of stickers to come in so that I can get all those materials to everybody who has requested them. So it may still be a couple of weeks most likely, so please be patient. But they are coming.

Secondly, I would like to announce an Essential Tennis clinic that is going to be starting in January. It’s going to be January 2 and 3 in Palm Springs, California. I’d like to thank Angie, who has been helping me set this up. We currently have 5 people who have signed up for this clinic. I’d like to get 10-12, so if you are interested in spending a couple days in Palm Springs with myself learning about tennis, improving your tennis game, working with me and other listeners of the Essential Tennis podcast, definitely send me an e-mail A.S.A.P. I’m expecting this to fill up.

So send me an e-mail at Ian@EssentialTennis. Com and I will give you full details on the trip. The price is very reasonable and includes 2 days of instruction and hotel. Let me know if you’re interested. And again, we’re only looking for 5–maybe 7– more people. So send me an e-mail: Ian@EssentialTennis. Com. Again, that’s January 2-3 in Palm Springs, CA.

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

[music] [music] [music]

Ian : Our guest today on the Essential Tennis podcast is Andy Zodan. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy : Great to be here, Ian. Thanks for having me.

Ian : You bet. It’s great to have you here. Andy is the host of In the Tennis Zone, which is a local tennis radio show in Colorado. Andy also takes the audio from that show and puts it on iTunes as a podcast. I definitely recommend that all of you listening go check out the podcast on iTunes, even if you’re not in the Colorado area. Andy has lots of excellent guests that he gets on his show. Some of the names that he’s had recently are: Rod Laver, Brad Gilbert, Billy Jean Keen, Justin Gimmelstob–just to name a few. He’s got a lot of podcast archives with interviews with tennis greats such as those.

A really enjoyable show you put on, Andy. Why don’t you tell us a little about what you’re doing in tennis while that show is running. Tell us about your teaching background. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing in tennis.

Andy : I am basically the director of tennis at a country club here in Denver. I do coach high school tennis as well. Work with a lot of high performance juniors. I grew up–my tennis career started in Texas in the early ’70s taking lessons in Dallas.

My first doubles partner was a guy named Craig Carden, who actually became a serious tour coach himself in the likes of Martina Navapalova, and Lindsay Davenport. Was coaching players that went to the semi-finals or better at Wilmbledon a number of times. I was just lucky to be in a group of kids that all grew up to take tennis seriously.

I played at the University of Texas, and began my coaching career in the early ’80s in TX. Then moved to CO in 2001. So I’ve been coaching here ever since. I started doing the radio show here a couple of years ago, and had kind of spun that off of– having been a journalist, I did a lot of tennis writing. I’ve been a coach, I’ve obviously continued playing as well.

Now I’ve enjoyed doing radio, and as you say, I’ve been fortunate to be able to –through some great contacts in the sort–get somereally high profile guests on the Tennis Zone. It’s been a terrific experience.

Ian : That’s really cool. You’re the perfect guest for the Essential Tennis podcast, because the listeners of this show are–I typically describe them as ‘crazy. ‘ [laughter]

Andy : That’s perfect!

Ian : Yeah. [laughter] They just have a passion for the game, and it’s easy to hear by listening to you talking, and talking about your experiences in tennis, that you’re obviously a ‘lifer. ‘ This is something you’ve been doing for your entire life. You love it. As you keep going, you kind of take on more and more and get more into the sport. And into teaching and coaching. It’s great to have you on the show. You’re a perfect fit
for us.

Andy : Well, I appreciate it. And I think like yourself, Ian–I think we all realize that as local tennis pros, and guys that aren’t out on the tour and big names on TV, that it’s important on a local level for us to continue to generate excitement and enthusiasm for the sport.

We went through a period of time where the sport kind of flattened out and was a little bit stagnant with respect to growth. I think if people like yourself, and some of the things that I’m doing –and obviously we’re not the only two. There are a lot of guys around the country that are helping with this effort. But if we don’t get in the trenches and try to make sure we keep tennis in the forefront of people’s minds, then we are certainly competing with a lot of other sports, a lot of other interests, and we’re going to maintain a good growth level, these are the things we’re going to have to do.

So thanks to you for what you’re doing as well. Obviously taking the time that you’re taking to put on this show is a fantastic effort on your part.

Ian : Thank you. Yeah, I’m doing my best, and I agree. With many of us working at grassroots type efforts like this to build enthusiasm for the sport, I think it can continue to grow.

You’re right. There’s so much competition out there with other sports. Especially for young kids these days. It’s tough to get them to stick with tennis, but I think stuff like this can help.

Andy : Absolutely.

Ian : Speaking of the modern game and how it’s grown recently and really advanced at the professional level–and I guess at the amateur level as well– as far as how people are perceiving the style of play. The style of play certainly has changed over the last 20 yrs. or so.

What Andy and I are going to be talking about today –and I’m curious to pick Andy’s brain about 4 specific topics having to do with the modern game. He and I are going to talk about a couple of specific elements that are usually associated with the modern game, and how it’s played over the last 10-15 years. And we’re going to talk about whether or not these things are necessarily good for the average recreational type player to copy.

When we watch the pros on TV, the game is so fast these days. So powerful. So strong. We’re going to talk about a couple of those elements and whether or not we feel it’s good for you guys to be copying this. Both of us have a lot of teaching experience, and I’m curious to see how we line up as far as our opinions on these topics, Andy.

But let’s kick things off with the extreme grips. Specifically on the forehand side, the full Western grip, and maybe even semi-Western. I’m curious what your thoughts are on–

And let’s keep things around maybe 3, 4, 5 level. You’re avg. level club player. Do you feel like copying the pros, and what grips they’re using in the modern game, is a good thing for this level player?

Andy : Well, I think it can be, but I don’t think it needs to be forced.

I’m definitely considered by people that know me, to be a very conservative old school guy. With that said, I certainly won’t prevent a young player from being able to ascend to the higher levels of the game. I’ve coached a lot of kids that are playing Division 1 college tennis, and some that have gone into professional ranks and done pretty well. I’m not averse to that, but I think what you have to be careful with is forcing extreme grips and extreme swings on any player.

Here’s my philosophy. When I started playing tennis, back in the early ’70s, you could teach the average to slightly above average athlete to emulate the games being played by the top players in the world. You could teach an 11-year old like me how to slice the ball on a back-hand side like Ken Roswall. You could teach kids how to go through the ball with a long finish, and a long time spent in the hitting zone with the racket head lining up to the target like Jimmy Connors on his backhand. Because there was a lot of margin for error in those swings. If your timing wasn’t impeccable, you could still come up with a decent shot.

I think nowadays , if you try to teach a young kid to take a swing at the forehand like a Raphael Nadal, or you try to teach a little girl how to do what Serena or Venus Williams are doing, I think you’re asking people to bite off a little more than they might be able to chew. I think there’s nothing wrong, especially when you consider the technology that we have now. To teach players to swing at the ball similarly to the way Chris Howard did. Similarly to the way Rod Laver did and some of the guys in the old days. You couple of that type of the fundamental some of these with today’s technology and you’re still able to play a very strong, very reliable game that probably had the tendency to keep you little more injury free than what I’m seeing kids try to do this days.

I see a lot of pros that are taking kids from the age of 6, 7, 8 years old and teaching them that real severe over the shoulder finish with that extreme forehand grip and I think it’s kind of an all or nothing proposition.

I think you got kids and adults that have problems dealing with low balls. I think you have a problem converting over to the ability to play the net with those extreme forehand grips. I think you obviously have you move the grip over very short lead to learn how hit a proper serve and I just think that there’s a lot to be done exactly right to be able to master using that grip.

And so if the kid comes out and he holds that racket in semi- Western or Western grip and he’s hitting the ball clean and his hitting the hit consistently able to hit targets. Nothing hurts at the end of the session. Now might say maybe this kid is a natural for using this grip, but to go out into absolutely taking a grip of take a group of tennis club kids in a campus and, “Okay, we’re going to hit extreme Western forehand grips. ” I think that’s were some mistakes are being and I think it’s being taken too for granted which is just, because the top players of the world are doing this right now, but that means it’s design for everybody to play that way. Think there needs to be a little bit more of of the separation they still act like a good girl to has to whether or no to teach that person to play game it’s eventually design to be played on a tour versus a goddess designed to be a good 455 of player for the rest of his life.

Ian : Lot’s of good stuff in there Andy and I agree. I definitely see pros who take both extremes. I’ve seen pros who you use the term ‘old school. ‘ I’ve seen pros who are very old school and kind of are still grasping on to their thoughts of how the game used to be played in very classic, and that can be good for some students.

But I agree with you that I think where pros really gets themselves in trouble and get their students in the trouble is when they take one style of play or one way to swing the racket and they make everyone of their students do at the same way. Whether it happens to be really old school or really modern or something in between there or whatever. I think you’re right. Different people have different bodies. They have different athletic abilities and so–just like we see on tour. Different types of games. Different types of swings. There’s certainly similarities, but even among the recreation of players it’s not cut and dry. Everybody’s got different amounts of talents, and their body works in different ways from other players.

So I’m curious. Have you ever actually instructed a student to go to a full Western. Something that’s extremes as an actual full Western?

Andy: I would say probably not. What I would say I have probably done is I have allowed them to keep it. If it was something that was already working for them, then i would say–

For instance, it was a kid that I’m working with now who’s just about to turn 15. He’s 14 years old and top hundred player in the country in the 14s. A very good high school player now. When he was 8 or 9 years old and he had that full Western grip, I didn’t bother missing with it, because so many of the balls that he was hitting were like my height or higher.

So he really almost had the grip to the racket that way and people said to me, ‘Well eventually he’s going to have to do this that the other,’ and I said, ‘Well eventually we will. ‘ When he grows.

But what I was more concerned with at the time was that he was learning how to win. And to me that’s a skill that–when it can be grasped, you let the kid grasp it. Once they’ve learned how to win. One they have programed their mind on what to do in a certain situation. To me that’s like internal problem solving. That’s a skill beyond the tennis court.

So that’s a lot of kids doing well in the 10 and unders, and the 12 and unders land earning how to win, game changes can then readily be made based on the fact that it is 8, 9, 10 year old kid. This kid has established a lot of confidence in himself to be able to get the job done however need be.

Now he turns 11, 12, 13 years old. We starts sending him off to [unknown] Academy for the weekend and doing some high performance training at certain USTA national campus where they can really spend the amount of time necessary . For me to see the kid an hour or two or or three a week doesn’t allow for me to make a grip change like it does for him to go to voluntaries and spend 6 -8 hours a day on the tennis court for a week straight.

And then he comes home a week later with a slightly different forehand, one that I’ve would have converting him over to anyway. And now his forehand is going to be able to take him to whatever level his game is able to take him. I mean I certainly expect for this kid barring any unforeseen health situations or what have you injuries, could be able to be a scholarship Division 1 level player. And we change that to the game incrementally. I allowed that what that extreme Western grip, but I also knew that the kid had phenomenal hands and was going to be a terrific volleyer, and I didn’t want anything to happen to prevent that.

So I was hoping that we would move that grip over a little bit to be able to do a little bit more with it. A little bit variety. And that was exactly how was involved.

It takes a lot a different sources to be able to build a player’s game these days. I don’t put it all upon myself and I don’t think any pro should. I think if you got all the resources that to have all sort of contribute to the development of a player. I think that’s all part of the modern game as well. Is ,realizing that one pro doesn’t necessarily have all the answers and I would certainly be the first to admit that I don’t.

Ian : Alright, good stuff Andy. Let’s go ahead and move on to our second topic, which has to do with different forehand follow throughs. Tthe 2 most popular recently have been the windshield wiper follow through and the reverse follow through. Reverse follow through being the one that Nadal has kind of really made popular finishing on the same side of his body, and windshield wiper finishing on the opposite side of the body, but low down by the hip. Just to give our listeners some guidance there in case you are not exactly sure what I am talking about.

But what is your opinion on those 2 techniques and how they relate to the recreational player?

Andy: I think it’s something hat you have to be real careful with, because one of the things that those 2 swings do not promote is an extended follow through towards the target. And again, as we discussed a little bit earlier, I think that margin for error in your game is something that you need to have if you’re not an exceptionally supremely gifted player.

And when I say exceptionally extremely gifted, player. I mean, if you’re not maybe the better sectional ranked player, but normally they are nationally might as well. You want to give your self good margin for error. If you’re not out on the tennis 4 or 5 hours a day every day, y ou want to make sure that you are coming through that hitting zone and giving yourself an extended finish towards your target.

So to me–let’s start with the windshield wiper finish coming across the body. I think if that happens too prematurely, and if a player that comes off that ball a little bit too early. You’re going to have a lot of shank and frame balls as opposed to allowing your racket head to go through the hitting zone and letting that swing evolve into something that eventually finishes back around to the other side through racket head speed that’s generated to through the confidence of getting better and better and more and more experience.

I think a lot of times crossing nowadays seem do want to put the cart before the horse a little bit and they immediately want people to cover your finish over the shoulder. A little bit that the opposite hit like you were describing, and I don’t think that it promotes the racket spending enough time in the hitting zone to give yourself that margin for error to follow through towards your target.

If you’re giving yourself the extra length going forward through the swing, I feel like if you just a little slightly off with your timing you can still have a good result, because the racket is traveling in the proper direction that it needs to go to create another proper direction with that shot.

If you’re not absolutely perfect with the timing of the strike point when you’re coming up over the shoulder or over the head or with a reverse follow through like Nadal, then you’re going to just have a lot of missed hits. And it’s really tough to develop any sense of confidence, because you just don’t have a lot of consistency and reliability.

To me, the essence of this sport the way in the way it was originally designed to be played was it learn how to maintain a rally. You don’t have to keep the ball until you don’t know how to hit all back and forth with somebody consistently, and then once you master that skill, then you go to adding the bells and whistles. Adding the weapons.

I think nowadays with the modern game we go right to the weapons and skip to the whole step of the ability to just hit a nice clean ball back and forth. Maintain a rally 10, 12, 14, 16, 20 times. And I think that’s where we’re missing a lot in the development about players. That’s why I think in this country to a large extent, people scratching our heads as to why are the Americans falling behind with respect to the development of our players. I think we’re going for too much too early with such an immediate gratification type of society, and I think that shows up in our game styles with our tennis players.

Ian : Yes, it’s a very interesting to actually make a social connection there between how people are so infatuated with the power of game being able to hit the ball fast and hard and with the lot of top spin, and actually making that connection with kind of with our society i s like here in America. You’re talking about immediate gratification etc. And all of us grow up playing on fast hard courts, whereas, over in Europe there’s a lot of clay court play and people have to learn how to develop points and actually get into a rally and be patient.

And such a lack of patience here and I feel like–especially the players who are out there out there… I deal, because of my website, I deal with a lot of players who don’t have the money for instruction, and they’re looking for guidance in how to hit the ball and how to improve their game. And so much with the instruction out there on the internet is: Learn how Roger Federer hits his forehand or How Andy Roddick hits the serve and it’s all of this extremely advanced theory and technique. And we’re talking about 3. 0 beginner level of players who are reading and buying this and trying to implement it.

And buying the cart before the horse. I think it ‘s the good way of describing it.

You used that phrase earlier, Andy. I think so many recreational players and beginner players, they are seeing what’s happening on TV, and so many people without a lot of experience figure. ‘W ell look at that. They’re not making to look that difficult. it can’t be that tough. ‘ And they go out and try to actually copy what they are seeing–and at that it can be really frustrating for the player and really frustrating for the pros as well when they come in and try to change those misperceptions that that is how there are supposed to be swinging.

Andy: Well, that’s it. There’s an old saying Ian: ‘ Sex sells. ‘ And Roger Federer’s forehanded sexy. So is Andy Roddick serve, right?

So when you look at it from that stand point, if you want to sell something, whether what they need or what they want or what’s realistic for them, a lot of times people don’t care. I mean they just say, ‘Hey, listen, P eople are going to see a picture of Andy Roddick serving. ‘ That’s going to gravitate toward it. They are going to see one of best backhands in the world. Or they’re going to see Serena Williams take this ball out of the air from three quarters to even a court with this swing and volley thing. This is what people it need to try to emulate.

The fact of the matter is probably I would say 75% of all the people that are playing tennis in this country will never in their wildest dreams hit a tennis ball like that.

Ian : Right.

Andy: Now with that said, I think there are certain things that I think can be taken from some of the best players of all time that I think are universally applicable to the average club player or even sharply better.

Watch Andre Agassi line at the hit of forehand and the way he uses his left are and he extends that almost at any–let’s say 45 degree angle across his body. That’s something that you can teach any player to do no matter how they grip the racket on their forehand side and it’s going to have give them a better forehand. And that’s something that you can look at and study in the pro game.

You can say, ‘What is it that makes it such a different for Agassi to do that?’ Well, you’re creating a distance between your body and the ball that is going to give you a consistent contact p oint #1. You are going to give yourself better balance just like getting that left arm. If you watch somebody on a surfboard that kind of looks the way Agassi did when he lined up to hit his forehand, and you’re going to have just great alignment.

One of the subjects that I know we’re going to talk about was the open stance. If you’re going to have an open stance, that doesn’t mean that your stance was open to the waist up. It’s open from the waist down. But you have still got to turn you upper body align yourself properly.

So if you wanted to look at Raphael Nadal’s finish on his forehand, that may not be necessarily something that you want to copy unless you’re supremely talented. But I don’t care if you’re a 25 player or 5. 0 player. You’re going to do what Agassi did in lining up a forehand, because I think that’s one of those fundamentals that is truly a fundamental, and not just a press release and trying to emulate one of the top players of all time.

Ian : So I’ve got a question for you then. I like for you describing the difference between something that every pro does and every good solid upper level player has done for for decades and decades–such as good rotation with the upper body as you’re describing with Agassi– as opposed to some of the more modern things that only extremely, extremely talented athletes are doing.

How do we tell and how do our listeners know the difference between something that is–and this is why I called my website Essential Tennis, because this is kind of my teaching style, is I find what’s fundamental and what has to be done in order to be a solid player, and I start with that. As opposed to the more flashy upper level type stuff that see on TV.

But how can listeners know what to work on that’s solid? What fundamental? What’s essential? And what is beyond their grasp? If not for the future, at least definitely starting off. How can our listeners tell the difference between those two things?

Andy: Well, I think it’s definitely a very fine line. And a guy that lives here Denver by the name of John Vincent, who was a phenomenal tennis coach and tennis player in his own right, used to say, ‘There’s a very fine line between fundamentals and preferences. ‘ And a lot of tennis pros try to take their preferences and impose those as fundamentals. Whem they’re not necessarily the case.

I think when it comes down to it, you want to consult a pro locally. And you want to sort of throw a couple of different options on the table and see what they have to say.

I think as far as some of the basic fundamentals that you would be able to get your listeners to really be able to gravitate toward and be able to really trust and believe in, obviously working on your balance. On your feet. A lot of times you got people who you’ll see them swing in the air and somehow or other, all their weight is on their back foot. They’ve lifted their left leg to hit that forehand.

One of best tips to that I ever got in my golf game and that I’ve been able to teach my tennis players it that: Even and equal weight distribution between my two feet. When of course I had time to get that. And I think when you’re talking about 3.0 and 3. 5 players, a lot of times the pace to the ball that they hit allows people to take the time and use the proper footwork to get their feet and to get their balance proper. I think that has a lot to do with hitting the ball well.

A lot of times a guy will come to me and say, ‘I can’t hit the backhand. ‘ And I look at his footwork and I can see nothing happening a lot of times. Well, I’ll see improper steps. Stepping with the wrong foot. Finishing with the wrong foot. And if they just get their footwork cleaned up and then sink with their swing releases–all of the sudden it’s not that they had a bad swing. It’s just that the footwork that went into lining up that ball was improper.

Let’s say they are a right-handed player and they are moving to their left to hit the backhand and the final step which they take to that backhand is a left footed step to the ball, and they end up opening up their stance drastically. Obviously that’s not going to necessarily be something that’s going to give them proper balance and allot them with the court. If we can just say, ‘Okay we’ll need to just make sure that with that last step taken to the ball is a right footstep. Bring it to the ball and hold still. ‘ You’ll clean up your alignment and probably a lot more accurate and still be able to generate plenty of power–certainly with the technology of the rackets these days. That’s what they are designed to do.

I think obviously making sure that you are quick on your feet and that you’re making lots of short little steps. I don’t like little dance steps as opposed to these big Frankenstein long steps to the ball. That’s going to be something that’s going to help any player out there.

As far as the serve is concerned, m ake sure that you’re standing up real nice and straight, and after you release your toss you continue it to let your toss are extend. I call it a toss and stretch. Your know, you see the sort of people who toss the ball up and then their arm just immediately drops. Their body sort of jack knifes forward. They bend at the waist for a little bit. Wonder why every serve was going into the net. There’s a reason for that. There’s no proper posture, so

There are certain things that when I think about all the different lessons that I gave to all the different levels of players, that no matter who I’m with, they’re just certain things that I think that I said before are sort of universally applicable: footwork, balance, posture.

Those kinds of things. Making sure that you’re stepping into the ball with the proper foot. I’m still an old school guy that–I’m anti- open stance, but I think if you’ve got time to close your stance and step to the ball with the foot furthest from the ball, you are always going to be able to bring a little bit more body power and strength to the shot ,and you also going to have better alignment in hitting the shot.

If you don’t have time you’ve going to go open stance and you do it properly. Obviously with the pace of the ball make hit these days there’s no way around that. But I don’t think you want to necessarily always have an open stance shot even when you have time to close that stance.

Ian : Well, Andy, in typical Essential Tennis Podcast fashion , we’ve only got to half of the topics that we were hoping to,

Andy: Sorry to be a long-winded. I apologize.

Ian : No. This happens virtually every show. When I outline a show for myself, or when I have a guest, almost to always we don’t get to as much as we hoped to.

But what we did get to, I think will be extremely helpful, and in closing just for the two topics that we did go over. The full Western or the semi Western grips. The different forehand follow throughs. I’m going to ask you at one at a time if you feel they are preference or fundamental,. Just to wrap up. So full Western grip. Is that preference or is that fundamental?

Andy: Absolutely a preference.

Ian : And windshield wiper follow through or reverse. F ollow through on the forehand side. Is that a preference or fundamental?

Andy: That’s definitely a preference as well. The others are old school. I think when you start talking about, ‘I intend to play professional tennis,’ then yo ur fundamentals are going to become a little bit more extreme as weapons become more important. But as far as the development of the game that’s reliable; that will have a tendency to keep you injury free; I think that the fundamentals are a nice long hitting zone coming through the clean contact point–which doesn’t necessarily include the reverse follow through or the windshield wiper follow through, or the open stance. Again, I’m not anti to these things, but if you’re able to do it and they feel good, then go with it. B ut as far as if being something that you absolutely have to do to become a good tennis player, I definitely don’t believe that.

Ian : Well, Andy I want to thank you very much of your time. It’s been great talking to you. I’ve enjoyed it very much.

Before we wrap things up, I’ve already told people to go the iTunes to check out your podcast there. Where can people find you on the web? What’s your website address?

Andy: Website is TennisZone1510. All one word; no spaces. TennisZone1510. Com, and that’s the website which is basically the best of the TennisZone.

As you mentioned, we have a Rod Laver on there. In the last month of the show we had a Rod Laver. We had Brett Staley, Toni Trabert, Brad Gilbert a couple of times. We had Darren Cahill, Justin Gimelstob. We were very fortunate, Owen Davidson is a dear friend of mine, and he was on several times. And they are just really phenomenal.

And it’s funny, because I talk to them about a lot of these various subjects . Having been around as long as they have, and seeing the evolution. I’m 48 years old. These guys make me look like I’ve been playing tennis 2 weeks which was especially [inaudible] they’ve got. And so we’ve talked about some of the various subjects and to hear some of the stories on some on the matches that were played back in their days is really fascinating.

So I appreciate you letting your listeners know about that website and about my show, and I look forward to having you come on the Tenniszone when we start season #3 in February.

Ian : I would enjoy that very much and I look forward to that.

Yes, definitely check it out everybody. I’ve listened to several of your most recent episodes, and you do a great job of doing the interviews. And you can’t help– as being a tennis fan like myself and everybody listening–you really can’t help to be interested in and really keyed in on guys like the people that you have on the show. So it’s an excellent show.

Andy: A lot of fun.

Ian : Yes. Well, Andy thanks very much. It’s been great having you on.

Andy: Thank you Ian.

Ian : And I look forward to talking to you again. Maybe we can have you back and talk about the other two topics that we had on the table.

Andy: Anytime you need me. I would enjoy doing it and I appreciate you in all that you doing as well, I enjoyed it very much.

[music] [music] [music]

Ian : Alright, that brings the Essential Tennis Podcast Episode #88 to a close.

Thank you very much for joining me today, and I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Andy Zodan as much as I did.

Real quick we wrap up today,I just have 2 quick shout outs and they are going to go to 2 new people that I’ve been in contact with recently this past week. The first one is Roger in California. And the second is Kevin in Korea. I’ve send a couple of e-mails back and forth with both of them having to do with their tennis game, and we probably have a couple of topics in there that we’re going to use in the Podcast coming from each of them. So great to hear from both of you guys. And it’s great to have you both as listeners.

And real quickly before I sign off, I just want to again remind you guys about the cleaning in Palm Springs. Definitely let me know if you’re interested in that, that’s January 2nd and 3rd. And send me an e-mail if you’d like more information. ian@essentialtennis. Com.

Alright, thanks very much everybody. Take care and good luck with your tennis.