Essential Tennis Podcast #114

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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 is Ian!

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

Thank you very much for joining me on today’s episode. I appreciate your support of the show by downloading the file and listening to it. I hope today’s show is going to be helpful to you and your tennis game– that is always my goal.

Before we get started, I want to remind you guys about two upcoming clinics– first of all Baltimore, Maryland on May 28, 29, 30. I’m going to be working with several listeners of the Podcast and there are still 5 spots left. I’m opening that clinic up to twelve people and there are still five spots available. If you are interested, go to essentialtennis.com and click on clinics in the menu on the left.

Also, Galveston, Texas this July 16, 17 and 18th. I announced that last week– there are only 8 spots open for that clinic total and after announcing it last week, seven spots are already filled. So there is only 1 spot left. So if you think you’d like to work with me in Galveston this coming July for a weekend, please go check that out right away as there is only one spot left.

Alright, let’s go ahead and get today’s show. I’m looking forward to it a lot. Got a great guest lined up for today, so sit back relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

My guest today on the Essential Tennis Podcast is Andy Zodin who is the host of In the Tennis Zone and season three which is a radio show in Colorado and also a Podcast. Andy, I had you on the show back a couple months ago and had a lot of good feedback from that show. A lot of listeners really enjoyed it, so I am really happy to have you back on.

Andy: It’s always good to be with you Ian. I appreciate the opportunity and you do a great job with it.

Ian: Thanks. Before we get started, tell us a little bit about the radio show that you do and tell people where they can find it online.

Andy: Well, they can catch it live streaming on MileHighSports.com where on Sunday’s we’ve been going from 10-12 mountain time which is 12-2 eastern. But we are getting ready to switch back over to an evening show. The station that I happen to be on is the flagship station of the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche. So going in the morning up until the time those seasons ended make sense so I didn’t have to move my start times around too much.

I also archived all of the podcasts at tenniszone1510.com. That’s www.tenniszone1510.com and they can go back and catch all the different interviews that we’ve had. It’s been a really good season– we’ve had John Isner and his coach Craig [inaudible] and we’ve had everyone from Rod [inaudible] to Billy Jean King. It’s been a great season– I had Cliff and Nancy Richey on a couple of weeks ago. Vincent Van Patton was on with me recently. Lee [inaudible] was on in the last few weeks.

I could go on and on but it has been a thrilling season and it seems like the show just continues to gain momentum and we’ve just such great contributors that it’s been really a joy for me to do.

Ian: Yeah, the guests that you get are awesome. I mean it is tough to get a whole lot better than the lineup that you’ve had for the past couple seasons. So I’m sure you are really excited about it and I really encourage my listeners to go check it out because I’m not aware of anywhere else that players of that caliber both present and past, get their brains picked by tennis enthusiasts like yourself– so it’s a great show.

Andy: Thank you very much. Now I think that is part of the reason we’ve been successful, because there are so few people out there doing sort of what you and I are doing that I don’t think that they are being inundated with the request very often which is definitely in our favor. So they’ve been gracious enough, and I think people that are tennis enthusiasts and former tennis greats like to see people doing what we are doing to continue to help grow the game and to grow the knowledge that people are exposed to to be able to hear from them. So they seem ready and willing whenever we ask if their schedule’s allow for it.

Ian: That’s awesome. Well, let’s go ahead and get started with today’s topic. And as you know the Podcast is primarily a Q&A show but once in a while I get a question that I just think is really interesting and when that happens, I like to have a little conversation and discussion with somebody else who really knows that they are talking about, having to do with the game of tennis. And today’s topic is going to have to do with anticipation in singles and I’m going to go ahead and read the question here– a couple of small paragraphs. And this comes from Charles in Santa Cruz, California. He wrote on the forums on essentialtennis.com and he said, ‘I think I have decent situational awareness for my level, at least in doubles.

The way I gauge that is when I play a player with a lower rating, like my girlfriend as an example who is a 3. 5, I feel like I often see where the ball is going to go before the opponent hits it, whereas she will often be surprised. It’s hard to summarize how I know that, but I feel it’s more like what player’s tendencies are, where the ball is, where people are positioned on the court etc, rather than a cue in the way the opponent is setting up to hit the ball and or maybe I know where they should hit the ball given a certain scenario whereas she is still trying to figure it out. In single’s, I’m not sure I am seeing that stuff very well. Yes I start to notice tendencies, and based on that guess where they are going to hit and after a while sometimes I’m successful. I don’t know that I’m reading what their body, racket and swing is doing that well and I’m probably getting a late jump on a lot of shots which doesn’t help my single’s game given my slow foot speed. ‘

So Charles kind of wants a conversation here having to do with anticipation and specifically in singles. And I think it’s very good that he pointed out the difference between the two and I very often get this from students and I’m sure you do as well Andy with your teaching that a lot of times player’s play just one of the other exclusively for a long period of time– either singles or doubles. And then they go to the other one kind of expecting that ‘Oh well, we are still playing tennis, right? We are on a court and we have some tennis rackets and a tennis ball. How different can it be?’

But the rythm of the points and the knowledge and anticipation is very different between the two games isn’t it?

Andy: There is no question about it Ian. And I think part of the developmental curve of a tennis player is that you go from being primarily reactive in nature to sort of ascending towards a level of being a little more anticipatory in nature which comes largely with the experience of being out there and doing it.

I recently watched a nice interview that Pat Cash did with the [inaudible] brothers and one of the comments that they made was that doubles and singles at this point are really two different sports. Not just two different forms of tennis, but they literally use the term different sports.

I think a lot of the kids we work with nowadays do play primarily singles. So I think when they get out on the doubles court, they have just the opposite problem in that they don’t understand some of the innuendos of the sport of doubles in respect to movement and anticipation and what is coming next as opposed to the rhythm and sort of the point structure in a single’s match.

I think it’s interesting to hear someone saying ‘I get it in doubles, but not so much in singles because nowadays, that is kind of the opposite of the problem that I think people have. With that said, I think you in trying to go out there and play your own game first, then have to sort of subliminally supplant what you would be thinking into the mind of your opponent in saying, ‘Based on what I would’ve done here, I’ve got to assume that this guy maybe seeing something similar.’ And that is sort of how you ascend to that level of anticipation.

It becomes very largely like a picture and a batter in terms of the pitcher saying ‘Well, I’ve got a feeling this guy is going to be looking for the curve ball here, so therefore I’m going to go high and tight with the fastball. ‘ And you’ve got to wonder if the batter is going, ‘This guy thinks I’m looking for the curve ball, I bet he comes in high and tight. ‘ And he ends up hitting a home run.

Ian: Right.

Andy: If he guesses right. So it does become a guessing game and I think you become better at that guessing game the more you are out there playing those points and then maybe a lot of times you’ll work with a pro on the court that’s coaching two players that are playing singles and saying ‘Aha. ‘ And this is where you’ve got to recognize that your opponent is off-balance. They are on the run towards the fence, and yet you chose to stay on the base-line when that is absolutely the time to move forward and expect a ball that you should be able to attack. So some of the things like that that they may not recognize a pro can help with, but nothing helps more than just going out there and doing it and learning with trial and error.

Ian: Absolutely. In getting going with this topic, I’d like to kind of give Charles a pat on the back that he’s actually starting to become aware of these things. Because there is a lot of rec and club players out there who are very preoccupied with what’s going on on their own half of the courts and really miss a lot of information that that is extremely vital to being able to build a good game plan. So I think it’s great, first of all that Charles is getting out there and starting to play some singles.

And secondly, he’s starting to think about these types of things and this kind of awareness — and I like that you use the word awareness to describe this is going to really bring Charles up to the next level. And it’s going to take some conscious effort at first Charles to start picking these things out and Andy and I are going to go through and talk about several specific things that you should be looking for. And at first it’s going to be mental work– you are really going to have to pay attention consciously and really for these things on purpose, but eventually, you are going to start reacting to these things– it will be second nature. And you are just going to start to move without even having to think about it.

That’s just going to take time and experience, isn’t it Andy?

Andy: Correct. There is no doubt about it. I think back when I was a kid and I was starting to play match after match after match, and not only was I learning from the matches I was playing, but I was learning a lot– probably even more so in the [inaudible] in the matches I was watching. And I learned how for instance, something as simple as long-footing a person. Where maybe you see a guy hit a kick serve to the back hand in the ad court and then the return of service through the middle of the court and the person comes in and then volleys back into the corner that the ball came from because they expected that their opponent will be running to cover the open court. So as soon as you see then moving in that direction, and then you volley perhaps back behind them and long-foot them as they say.

That’s a very valuable tactic that most serve and volleyers employ pretty regularly and pretty successfully.

If you look back at what John McEnroe used to do to people– everything was done kind of two shots at a time. Very much the way I’m describing now. He would wide serve you and then just knock off a little volley to the other side. And compared to the shots that people are hitting today, none of the shots John McEnroe were hitting if you took them as an individual shot, were that incredible. They were great the way he put one together with the other to where it was a very effective game, but yet McEnroe’s game didn’t always incur a lot of risk, it just incurred some great patterns and some great point structure that made a lot of sense that made his game so high percentage and extremely effective and really tough to do anything about what he was doing to you.

Ian: I think it’s interesting how you are talking about– it’s funny– kind of anticipating your opponent’s anticipations and trying to be one step ahead of them and a lot of times chess is kind of….. A lot of times tennis is kind of off-handedly referred to as a physical chess game and having to have those tactics. Anybody who hasn’t played chess, doesn’t really understand the analogy because they don’t understand how you have to think 2, 3, 4 moves ahead of your opponent and try to guess, ‘What is my opponent going to be thinking? When I do this, what are they going to anticipate and do in return?’

And I think that is a big part of tactics and strategy in tennis that recreation players kind of miss and I like the example you gave about going behind a player who is going to probably run towards the open court where it seems obvious, ‘ My opponent is obviously going to hit the court there because there is a ton of open court. ‘ And just start to run for that open court.

And one of my favorite things to do is to fake in that situation and start just booking it towards that open court and then as soon as my opponent is about to make contact, stop, and go back to where I just came from to try to anticipate the fact that they are going to anticipate where I’m anticipating and it can kind of confusing. I think that is incredibly fun and something that obviously you’re aware of out there on the court. But I think a lot of listeners might not be.

Andy: Well, and you used the chess analogy which is really spot on Ian. And I’ll tell you a story, a buddy of my named Phillip Farmer who was coaching the Bryan Brothers for a few years before David McPherson came along who they are with now. And he was down in Australia with the boys and it was the year that Phil Jackson had taken off from coaching the Lakers and he had gone down to Australia and he became a big fan of the Bryan’s and he was watching a lot of tennis and Phillip Farmer got the opportunity to get to know Phil Jackson pretty well. And this was at a time when Roger Federer was really starting to move head and shoulders above Andy Roddick in the rankings. And you could just see the things that Federer was doing on the court were just brilliant in nature and his all-court game was just really starting to flourish and to ascend to the level that we are now used to.

So after the tournament was over, Phillip got a phonecall and it was Phil Jackson. He said, ‘I think that I can help Andy Rodick .’ And he said, ‘OK. ‘ And Phillip Farmer said, ‘OK. I’m listening. ‘ And he goes, ‘Here is the thing that I worked on with Michael Jordan and Kobe and with Shaq. ‘ And of course at that point, Philip Farmer was really listening. And he said, ‘Let me ask you a question about Andy Rodick. Does Andy play much chess?’ And he said, ‘No. I don’t think he plays any. ‘ ‘What about video games?’ ‘Yeah, probably about 3 or 4 hours a day. ‘ And he says, ‘What about Federer?’ And he goes, ‘Actually, Roger does play a lot of chess.’

And he said, ‘If Andy Roddick took the time that he was using on video games and became a chess player, his tennis game would improve 10 fold in my opinion because you just see the way Roger Federer approaches the sport very methodically. Very calculating. You don’t see his eyes

you kind of think of Andy Roddick, his eyes are pretty shifty. He is always kind of doing little things– grabbing his shirt and little things like that. And Federer is just always in cruise control, whether he is walking from one side of the court to another or getting ready to return serve or even in the midst of play. He just seems like he is kind of floating out there. And most guys don’t look like they are that in ease on the tennis court.

And Phil Jackson attributes an athletes success to an ability to think ahead like you are saying and be a chess player and be calculating in nature and that the mindset that goes from the chess board to the field of play is one that an athlete can really use as another club in the bag, as another strength. And this is the kind of mindset that helps you sort of naturally create your own skill-set to be able to be anticipatory in nature as opposed to just reactive.

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So if you are going to a professional tournament and going to watch the pros, which is always an awesome experience, please check them out and support them– tell them thank you for being a sponsor of the essential tennis podcast.

Well, let’s go ahead and with that start talking about some specifics Andy. I’ve got a couple of things listed here that in my opinion are definitely important to be aware of and hopefully start to make automatic and start to notice without even spending a whole lot of mental energy to really watch your opponent. Although don’t get me wrong, you should be paying close attention to your opponent but you just don’t want to make it an active mental process. Hopefully, eventually it becomes second nature.

And let’s talk first about something that you mentioned earlier and that is the balance of the body and I guess body position on the court. But balance specifically– let’s talk a little bit about anticipating a response from our opponents when their body is off-balance and they are obviously not in a comfortable position physically. What should listeners be looking for in that particular situation?

Andy: Depending on the style of play that the player employs, you either are going to see a ball that they sort of flail at when they are on the run because a lot of players don’t have the ability to separate their foot speed from their racket head speed.

An example being, when you see a guy on the run and then the faster they are running, the faster they are swinging. Whereas, some of the higher level players are able to operate two separate transmissions– one for their upper body, one for their lower body. The smarter players who have that ability to control their body a little better maybe on the run if they are really in full gear to a tennis ball are able to maybe slow down their racket head because they know that a control component has to come somewhere in this equation and they are able to do that.

I’m going to say that you’re going to see one of two things– either a ball that comes floating back because they realize that I’m on defense now. I just want to make sure I get this ball back in play and maybe that’s the time to seize the opportunity and move forward and realize that you are going to get a shoulder high ball or higher to either hit a high volley or an over head off of when they are on the [inaudible] like that. Or move forward anyway and let them take that flailing swing at the ball because the percentage chance of they actually hurting you and hitting some laser passing shot if they are not a 5. 0 player or better, is probably pretty minimal and you give them an opportunity to just kind of hang themselves with a wild swing on the run.

So I’d say moving forward on a shot where your opponent is off-balance– whether they are playing defensively or offensively probably behooves you because as I say, you are either going to give yourself an opportunity to put away the next ball or they are probably going to go for something outside of their comfort zone. And that is going to be low percent by nature and you are going to get some free points that way.

Ian: Really good observation and that’s something that I definitely noticed in teaching rec players myself, is that players– especially if they are not kind of gifted naturally as an athlete to begin with have a really hard time separating their lower body and upper body. And they get really really quick and frantic with their lower body and their swing just kind of follows suit. That’s really interesting that you put that [inaudible] anticipating and I’d like to point out the flip side as well– let’s say that you’ve just hit a great shot Charles and you put your opponent off balance whether it be maybe retreating back away from the baseline because you hit a good deep shop or maybe running off the court to the right or to the left because you hit a nice wide shot.

If you consistently do not follow that forwards as Andy is suggesting and you just stand back there at the baseline and watch them and do nothing about it, they are going to pick up on that and know that they basically have got a free shot back into the court and they are going to be able to hit up pretty much anything they want. And if they aren’t very smart and they aren’t very controlled, they might go ahead and try to crush a winner anyway like what Andy was describing. But if they are smart and they see that you aren’t doing anything about the fact that they are off balance, it is really going to put them at ease much more.

They aren’t going to be under any pressure to hit anything good– they’ll just be able to play an easy defensive shot back to the middle of the court.

Andy: Well I think that example holds true even more often on a more regular basis with respect to your ability to grain your own comfort zone in returning serves. If a person serves big and I’m playing a big server but they aren’t coming in behind that serve, I feel a huge sigh of relief in just being able to lock a return back down the middle of the court and get it up high in the air and just let it carry deep in the court.

Not have to flirt with disaster of having to get every return down low at their feet because they are just attacking like a madman and they are effective in doing so. It takes a lot of the pressure off to know, that if I can just block the return and put it back in play and kind of regain the center of the court and neutralize that big serve by just making a higher percentage of returns, I’ve got a better game than this guy. Outside of this big service that this guy is bringing, I can hit more balls back and to know that all I have to do– using Federer as an example, you see him against a lot of these guys that don’t come in behind their big service, and I hate to use the example but Andy Roddick is the guy who comes to mind who doesn’t always take full advantage at least against Roger with that big serve which I think is largely why the record between the two is what it is.

Obviously Andy almost got over on him at Wimbelton last year, but aside from that some of those matches have been pretty one sided. And I think Roger realizes that Andy has got possibly the most dangerous serve in the game but the fact is, that I have a pretty crisp return game, I don’t have to be overly agressive with it because I know once we get into these points, I have the upper hand.

You just don’t see Roger sweating too much out there the way most guys are when they are playing Andy Rodick because he understands that dynamic so clearly and then realizes, I take away this guys serve and I kind of own him.

And I think that is something that a lot of other players need to realize. If you have your serve as a weapon, it is only largely going to be an effective weapon if you back it up with a next shot. Which again, was what John McEnroe did so brilliantly.

Ian: Sure. Let’s switch gears a little bit and move to a different topic and talk a little bit about swing technique and mechanics having to do with watching your opponent and seeing what they are doing with the racket. And I’ll give one quick example of that and then I’ll toss it over to you Andy to see what you think.

Let’s go ahead and keep with that example– let’s say that you have a big serve Charles and you are looking at what your opponents reactions are. If they are going to start playing it safe, like what Andy is describing, and essentially just block it back in play, that’s an opportunity for you. And what you should be looking for as you make your serve and you get prepared for their response, you should be looking where they are taking the racket back to and what the angle of the racket face is.

If they take their racket back shoulder height and their face is open, they are getting ready to just block it back or play a slice. Or something that is not going to be terribly offensive. If on the other hand they take the racket back well behind them and the face is closed, they are going to be preparing to make a drive or some type of top spin shot.

Myself personally, I’m always looking for these opportunities. I love the net and I love closing in. And when I see my opponent taking the racket back with an open racket face, I definitely love sneaking in there real quick and trying to catch them off guard. What do you think Andy?

Andy: I agree. I think that you have to over a period of the first few games of the match, get a feel for what those tendencies are. And sometimes, as you say the preparation of the racket will really give you a very clear indication, sometimes that will belay what is coming. And I [inaudible] back to when I first started teaching tennis, and I was working for Cliff Drysdale and another South African tennis pro named Billy Frier who was a great player. But Cliff used to love to give Billy a hard time because he would say to him something like– Cliff would come to the net and Billy would take a wild swing and hit a passing shot. And Cliff would say in that South African accent of his, ‘Billy how can I possibly know what you are doing when you are no idea yourself. ‘

So I think sometimes, you have to be careful that you over analyze what it looks like somebody is trying to do because then all of a sudden something else can come and it wasn’t even necessarily anything that they meant. So what I tell my players is, ‘somehow or another, get to 2 all. And then at 2-2, then start to formulate a game plan that maybe has some definitive intentions to it. In the meantime, worry about your game. Worry about high percentages of first serves. And at 2-2, then start to say to yourself OK, where is the rubber going to meet the road here with respect to where I’m going to choose to either attack this guy because I think he might be a little steadier than I am, or just wait him out and give him enough rope to hang himself. The shots that he is hitting look way to low for [inaudible] . I can’t believe that at 4-4, this guy is going to be able to do what he’s done at 1-1. And understand that there is much different mind-points to different points in the set.

When I was 14 years old, I had a coach that was getting me ready to play a match against a kid, and he said ‘This kid is all forehand. He can’t do anything close to what he does with his forehand on his back hand side. So play it to his backhand side and play it until you are blue in the face. ‘

Well on the first point of the match, I served and volleys. I hit a volley over to his backhand, he went running over and jumped out of his shoes, came off the ground with both feet and hit this monster backhand passing shot like it was somebody on the tour. And I didn’t go back to the backhand anymore and I came off the court– I think I got beat 3-2 or something. And my coach kind of slapped me upside the head and said ‘What were you thinking? What happened to playing the backhand?’ I said, ‘Didn’t you see that backhand that he hit on the first point?’ And he just kind of hit himself in the forehand saying ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Make him hit it 10 times. I bet you he would’ve made that shot 2 or 3 times. ‘

And I just didn’t get that at 14. The guy hit such a brilliant shot that I was convinced that I shouldn’t do that anymore and I completely abandoned my game plan.

So know that at 2-2, you are going to say ‘OK, this is where I’m going to be able to exploit a weakness. This person doesn’t run very well. I’m going to move him from corner to corner a little bit. This person passes well out of the corner, so I’m going to approach up the middle and take away the angles.

Give yourself at least half a set to make determinations based on what you think this person’s tendencies are. And that still doesn’t guarantee you that that is really the reality of what they are doing. I think it gives you at least a little bit of information to work with, probably something that you can make a half way educated guess. But you still need to leave yourself open to other possibilities because like I said, sometimes a person will hit a shot and they were going across court but somehow or another, nature took its course another way and it went down the line and the guy didn’t even mean to do that.

Ian: It seems like there is a really delicate balance here– almost like there is an art to this. I’m hearing you say that on one hand we don’t want to over analyze and get too caught up with their technique and what they are doing with the racket, but on the other hand, we definitely want to have some kind of game plan eventually and not just hit random shots either.

It can be kind of tough to balance those two things out, can’t it?

Andy: It really can. And I think a lot of that comes from your own level of confidence in yourself. That’s your number one priority– making sure that you have your mindset in a place that allows you to play the kind of tennis that you are capable of playing and that you are confident in playing. Because one of the mistakes that I think players make at the 3.0-4. 0 levels is that they put expoitation of their opponents weaknesses above playing their own game. And what you’ll find if you talk to the pros and you say, ‘Describe your game to me Andy Rodick. ‘ He’d say ‘Big serve, followed with a big forehand. ‘ ‘Describe your game to me Rafa?’ ‘I’m just going to hit big hooking forehands and I’m just going to wear you down and I”m going to run every single ball down until you are just laying on the side of the court ready to be taken off on a stretcher. ‘

‘Describe your game to me Serena Williams. ‘ ‘I’m just going to be a better athlete and I’m just going to come up with the goods on the big points and I’m going to hit the ball harder than you and when the points are the biggest, that’s when I’m going to play my best.’

Then you say ‘Describe your game to me Mr. 3.5 player. ‘ And he takes out a phone book and he starts to turn the pages… ‘Well if this happens, then I’m going to do that. But if that happens, I’m going to do that. [inaudible] big and overweight, I’m going to hit a drop shot– even though I don’t have a drop-shot.’

Then all of a sudden it becomes this sort of convoluted– I’m going to do this if this happens, and I’m going to do that if that happens. But they don’t even take into consideration the fact that they are asking them to do things that they don’t do.

First things first as a tennis player is identify your game. Know what under pressure you are going to do. At 4-4 in the 5th set Pete Sampras is going to serve big and he is going to serve you off the court. Angre Agassi is going to grind you down off of the ground. He is going to stand on the baseline and he is going to hit too many balls in the court to too many corners for you to be able to do anything about it.

Brilliant athletes, and the more brilliant the athlete is, the more a simplification of the game plan is then allowed. Because they know what they do under pressure. They know what their out-pitch is and that is part of that developmental curve in going from being a reactive player to an anticipatory player is that ability to first identify here is who I am, here is what I do. I’m going to do it to the best of my ability and then after that, I’m going to say, ‘OK, within the framework of the game that I really own, this is where I’m going to now apply those things based on where I think this person is stronger or not as strong. ‘

Ian: Good stuff Andy. Tell you what, I always know I have a great guest on the Podcast when I only get to about half of the things in my outline. And that’s the case today.

Andy: We’ve determined that it’s based on how long-winded I am is more of the problem then anything.

Ian: Well, that’s usually directly correlated to how much knowledge and passion one has for the game. So don’t worry, that’s not a negative buddy.

Andy: I appreciate it. You always have a good lineup of questions ready and it’s great to be able to reach out to your listeners and hopefully impart something that makes a little bit of sense to them. And we need to get you back on in the Tennis Zone again as I got some good feed-back when you came on my show as well.

Ian: Oh yeah? That’s good to hear. I’d love to.

It was a lot of fun. It was the first time that I’ve done a live radio segment and I enjoyed it a lot. So I’d love to do that.

Andy: Well we’ll definitely keep going back and forth– I think we’ve got a good thing going here. You’ve got a great deal and I think we are going pretty good too. So it’s great to work with you.

Ian: You to. One more time before we wrap things up– please tell my listeners where to go to download the Podcast segments?

Andy: You want to go to www.tenniszone1510.com and you will definitely, as Ian said, get to hear interviews with some of the top players, coaches, commentators and personalities in the sport.

As a matter of fact, we’ve got a guy coming on this Sunday who is out in your part of the country who is Steve Flink– the famed tennis journalist. He is coming on and I believe that he is actually being inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame on Friday night and will be coming on with my wife and myself this Sunday. She is coming back on the show me as it is our 2nd anniversary, so we like to get together for those kinds of occasions and do the show together. Steve Flink will be joining us and another New Jersey boy, Tommy Fontana, who played with me at the University of Texas will be coming on and he’ll be addressing the issue of tennis and sports parenting.

He’s got 4 kids now, and he was #1 at the University of Texas and he played a little bit on the tour and has some great sort of east coast insights into the sport of tennis. And now that he’s got four kids, all of which are pretty athletic, a lot of what he has learned about being a sports parent and some of the things that he’s seeing out there and what he thinks are effective parenting techniques and what he thinks are some of the ones that are maybe leading some kids and their parents and those relationships to stray a little bit.

Ian: Well Andy, thank you very much for your time. It’s been great to have you on the show again, and I look forward to being on your show and having you back again on the Essential Tennis Podcast as well.

Andy: Always a pleasure Ian, I appreciate it. [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Alright, that does it for episode 114 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me and my guest today on the show. I appreciate you being a listener and downloading the podcast– that means a lot to me.

In closing up today’s show, first of all I want to recognize a couple people who donated to the Podcast last week which I always appreciate very much.

First of all, Gavin in London, England donated $10 to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Robert in British Columbia Canada started a [inaudible] $10 per month subscription donation and Alex in Houston, Texas donated $25 to Essential Tennis. So thank you for you three for your support last week, I appreciate it very much. And if the Podcast has been helpful for your game, please consider making a one time donation or a monthly– just go to essentialtennis.com and on the front page on the lower right you will see a box that says donate– go check that out.

And one other way that you guys can help support me. I’ve just started getting some new advertisers on the website which is really exciting for me because it really helps finance my time here and what I’m doing on the website. It really helps me move forwards and hopefully move towards a future of doing this full time. And you guys can help support those advertisers just by clicking on the ads that are on my websites. And the two newest ones are found on the forums. If you guys go to essentialtennis.com then click on forums, you’ll see two ad boxes on the top. One is for Babalot and one is for Tennis Metro. Just please go check those out– you don’t have to buy anything, in fact, neither of them require any kind of purchase to support. Tennis Metro, you can get a free account and Babalot has a contest that you can sign up for by just filling in your information.

So if you appreciate what I’m doing here on the podcast and on the rest of the website, please go support my advertisers so that they continue to advertise with me. And by doing that, I can continue to move forwards and move hopefully towards doing this more and more during the week and producing more content and giving you guys more free instruction.

Alright, that does it for this week. Again, thank you very much for joining me. Hopefully you enjoyed today’s show and I will catch you guys again next week.

Until then, take care and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [music] [inaudible]

Essential Tennis Podcast #113

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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: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Your place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com and protranscript.com. Thank you very much for enjoining me today’s show, I appreciate it very much.

Before we get started, I just want to tell you guys about a new tennis podcast that has just kind of come out in the last, I think in the last couple of months, they started their show, and it is the tennis.com podcast and it’s hosted by several top editors and writers of Tennis Magazine, so you definitely know that these guys know what they’re talking about. They’ve been around the tennis industry for a long time and, it’s there job to report on tennis and, the show format is all ATP and WTA Tour commentary, tour news, analysis and, opinions, etc.

So, these guys just get together and talk about both the men’s and women’s tours. It’s a great show if you’re a fan of professional tennis and, they do at least one show a week, during bigger tournaments they do more than one show a week. So, check it out. –I’d like to keep on top of podcasts. I love podcasts, myself, and I like to keep up with what’s going on in the tennis world, as well. So, these guys are on itunes, or if you go to tennis.com, you can find the podcast there, as well. –All right, let’s get down to business, and start todays show. Sit, back, relax and, get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

Ian: All right, let’s get going. I’m looking forward to doing today’s show. It’s going to be a Q&A show. I’ve got some questions to catch up on from listeners, and I’m looking forward to answering a couple of them.

The first one comes to me from Ben, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Ben was with me in Palm Springs for my most recent Essential Tennis Clinic. I enjoyed working with Ben very much, so Ben, I’m looking forward to this question. He wrote to me and said, ‘This has happened to me in the last couple of tournaments I’ve played. I’ll hit a good approach shot, make my opponent run, and hit back a relatively weak passing shot. It’s not hit with a lot of pace, but, it’s not really a lob either on my forehand side, high enough that I’ll hit it like an overhead, and I hit them long.

This tends to happen near the end of a match, and usually on big points. Any idea as what might cause this?’ Well, Ben, I feel your pain, and this is something that can be very frustrating, both to do, and to watch. I can tell you that from a coach’s perspective, it’s always great to see a student set up a point really well, hit a nice, firm, aggressive approach shot, make their way into the net, get their opponent off-balance. Their opponent hits back a weak shot, and then, my student misses the volley or the overhead! That’s definitely a frustrating thing to do, and as a player, obviously something that you don’t want to have happen. And, I’ve got a couple of thoughts here.

First of all, you say that this isn’t really a lob, and I’m going to basically approach this from 2 different perspectives. I’m going to talk about hitting this as a high volley, rather than taking it as an overhead. But, if you do want to swing at it like an overhead, I’m going to tell you how to fix this, as well. So, you’re going to have 2 options on how to hit this shot and, we’re going to talk about the high volley, first.

And, a high volley, or really volleys in general, are just so overdone by recreational players. They make it much more complicated than it has to be. Move their racket around a ton, try and make it fancy, and usually try and make it more aggressive than it should be and, it’s very painful for me to see, because technique wise, volley’s the simplest shot in tennis, and it’s a big mistake to move the racket around a lot, more than necessary and, I think often times recreational players try to use the volley as a power shot, relatively speaking. Way more than they should be.

Now, let’s talk about high volley techniques, specifically you’re talking about a high forehand shot, it’s not really allowed. But, it’s definitely, it sounds like, definitely, above shoulder height. Most players make the mistake of moving the racket back and forth, way too much. Meaning, they take their racket way back and then close the face, kind of like a mini overhead, but not really.

And, often times looking from the side, see if I can explain this to you, the big mistake I usually see from recreational players is looking directly to the side, say a right handed player, and I’m standing on the right side of the court watching them play, and they come up to the net, and I’m directly to the right side of their body. I will see their racketactually get taken back, behind the plane of their body, behind the back edge of their body, with an open face. And so, they’ll take their hand, and their racketface way back behind them to where their strings are facing up, toward the sky and, then the ball gets to them and, they’ll swing the racket forwards, and close the racketface as they swing to try to get the racketsquare to the ball, so it that doesn’t go to far, because you don’t want to his these high aggressive shots hard, because they are definitely going to end up going to far. So, this player will start with an open face behind them, and then try to turn the racketover, using their forearm, and their hand to close the racketface. And so, the racketis swinging back and forth, back and forth.

Now, this type of swing is way too unpredictable, and that’s the problem with trying to hit a high volley this way, is when they take the racketback, the strings are facing up, when they finish the swing, the strings are facing down and, so all throughout this stroke, this volley stroke, the strings are facing in completely different directions the entire time. And, if your timing is just a little bit off, you’re going to end up putting the ball all over the court. Which I very often see.

Players very often know how to hit these types of shots hard but, they’re very, very inaccurate and, so there is a lot of times, errors associated with this shot, even though it should be very easy. Your close to the net, the ball is high, and it’s not moving very fast, as you said Ben, in your particular case. And so, it just sucks to miss this shot! And, it’s usually due to people trying to do too much.

Now, if you’re missing long, on a regular basis, which Ben said that he is, then your racketbase is too open, it contact. Now, traditionally struck volleys in general, should be hit with an open racketface. But, on this particular shot, when you’re close to the net, and the ball is high, and from where you’re making contact, you can literally look down st your opponents side of the courts, we no longer need to have the racketface open. At least, not very much.

If you’re trying to place the ball deep, you still might want to have it open a little bit. But, if you’re trying to put it away, especially with some force, and some firmness, we need to close the racketface up, and this is a good thing. You’ve kind of earned the right to do this. You’ve gotten yourself close, you’ve set the point up well, and the ball is high. And so, you can go ahead and start to close the racketface more. This is not going to happen a whole lot during a match.

Those of you listening be aware of this. Don’t think that you can get away with this very often. It’s not very often that you’re going to be close enough, and have the ball high enough that you can actually close the face. And, face it downwards towards your opponents side of the courts. But, you want to close the racketface enough, that it’s bascially facing directly at your target.

And, this is basically the set up, and this is the way I’m going to describe this is a very simplistic way to hit this shot, and it’s very straightforwards, and this is the way that all of you listening should learn how to hit this shot first. Before you try to hit the shot with any power at all. So, what you want to do, is get yourself turned to the side, as you put your racketup behind the oncoming ball, and then angle your racketstrings, so that they’re facing directly at your target. Let’s say that you’ve approached down the line on your forehands side, straight ahead, and your opponents is over to the right side of the court, from your perspective, they have floated up a high forehand volley to you. And, you want to put it away cross-court, away from your opponent.

So, you want to turn your body, at least 45 degrees or so, to your right, the ball is coming to your forehand side, you’re on the deuce side, you want to put your racketup behind the ball, and angle it down, probably around service line, around the service line on your opponents side, as far as depth. And, I would suggest a target that’s probably 4, maybe 5 feet from the singles sideline, cross-court from you, on your opponents deuce side. So that we can hit it firmly and right at that target, to put it away from them, cross-court, after you hit you’re down the line approach shot.

Now, once you’ve got your body to the side, and the racketis set up behind the ball, you’re going to want to use the big parts of your body, your shoulder, and your core, to rotate and push the ball toward your target. Do not use your hand, or your forearm to swing the racketat the ball, and hit it down towards your target.

Now, when I first start teaching people this kind of technique, it feels very under-powered to them, it feels weak, it feel like they’re never, ever going to be able to put the ball away. But, to be honest, I don’t care! Until they’re able to show me that they can make 5,6,7 of these in a row. They’re easy shots. Until they can show me that they can consistently place this shot pretty close to a target, someplace on the court, you know, a certain number of times, consistently, I don’t let me students hit this ball with any pace. Being consistent, and being able to place this shot are the two most important things.

Again, this is an easy shot, and missing it is terrible! You have to learn how to control this shot first. As your skill increases, you can use your hand, and your forearm, a little bit at a time to increase speed. I’m not against power on volleys, but, you have to learn how to control the shot first. Period.

And, I will not waiver on that. And, I’ve spent lots of time, lots of repetition with players, learning this kind of technique and doing it again, and again, and again, until they’re consistent, just blocking it.

All right, well that pretty much wraps up the volley part of it, and that’s my description of how to hit this as a volley, and Ben, I would say that most of the time, I would suggest, that you take this kind of in between shot as a volley.

It’s going to be by far the most consistent way to do it. If you continue to miss lawn, you’ve got to line your strings up correctly, towards your target, and not open them quite so much.

Now, let’s talk about hitting this as a low overhead, because that is an option, assuming you guys are close enough, and the ball is high enough, and I would say it’s got to be at least a foot to 2 feet above shoulder height, probably closer to 2 feet above shoulder height to take an overhead, or a serve type swing at this shot. If it’s any lower than that, just take it as a volley, and place it well, and hit it cleanly, and that’s going to be your best bet.

But, if it is high enough, and it’s not really allowed, but it is high enough to take an overhead swing again, you’re missing because your racketface at contact is too open. And, Ben said he’s always missing these deep, and, this is really obvious, and you know, seems like a simple answer. But, when you’re taking a swing at the ball and, it’s going to far, we need to close the racketface.

Now, in this situation, it’s probably due to you tightening up and decelerating, due to nerves. It sounds like you’re getting nervous, here. Ben said that this usually happens at the end of a match, and on big points. And, a lot of times when players get tight, they start to slow down a little bit. An overhand motion, whether it be the serve, or the overhead, and you’re still trying to hit it with some force, but you kind of get, you get a little bit tentative, often times that causes the racketface to stay open. Because, you’re not releasing, you’re not allowing the racketto swing freely, because you’re body is getting tight. And, that keeps the racket from closing properly, and facing towards your target. It kind of stays open. And that’s what causing the ball to go to far, Ben.

So, in order to fix that, we’ve got to loosen up, and we need to pronate and also rotate your shoulder, internally. The combination of those two things is going to get that racketface closed. –And, just briefly, I’m going to go over what that means. Pronating means that your palm is going to turn to face downwards, using your forearm. Pronation is referring specifically to the rotation of your forearm, to turn your palm down, and that in turn is going to turn the racketface down. We’re also going to want to internally rotate your shoulder, which is going to bring your elbow up, and again bring that racketdown. If we do those two things, we’ll be able to easily hit the ball down into the court, and not float it too long.

A drill that I do in order to get my students to feel this, and be able to get the feel for this. And, by the way, one of the most fun shots in tennis, in doubles or singles, is the overhead that you bounce over the back fence. If you’re listening, and haven’t had the joy of doing this yet, I highly recommend that you work on this shot, because it’s extremely fun! It’s great to hit the shot, and just watch your opponent stand there, and watch the ball bounce over their head and over the back fence. Nothing that they can do there, at all! Very gratifying! [laughter] And, in order to do that, you have to really get good at pronating, and being relaxed, and allowing your racketto really close, and face down towards the court.

You guys will see pros do this all the time, on TV, when they get a sitter overhead, is they’ll just crush it straight down into their opponents side of the court and bounce it up into the stands. And, I oftentimes have students practice this, by coming up to the net, and I’ll take the basket of balls up there, and I’ll have them toss the ball to themselves, kind of like getting set up for a serve, and have them bounce the ball down across over to the other side of the net, with the goal of bouncing it over the back fence, or over the back curtain, if we’re inside.

Now, if they’re a little bit older client, or if maybe they’re not as very athletic, and have a hard time with the service motion, and pronating in general, maybe I’ll alter the target a little bit and say we’re trying to bounce the ball and hit the top half of the back fence, or the top half of the back curtain, whatever. But, kind of the ultimate, the ultimate goal here, should be to be able to bounce it over the back fence. And, I’ll tell you guys right now it’s not easy, and you really have to have the correct technique. You have to be good at pronating in order to achieve this. It sounds easy, especially tossing a ball up to yourself, but, it’s not that simple.

But, in order to get the idea of the feel, of how to really pronate, relax, and kind of, people use the term ‘snap your wrist’, that’s not what’s going on. But, that’s very commonly what’s referred here. In order to get the feel of that I really suggest you take a basket of balls, walk up to the net, and try to bounce it over the back fence, Ben, and that’s going to really help you get the feel for closing your racketface, a lot.

All right! So, those are my suggestions to you, Ben. Again, I would suggest that you take most of these as a high volley, but if you do want to take this as an overhead, you just to get that racketface closed, so that you can hit directly at your target, and not worry about hitting these shots lawn.

Thanks very much for the question, Ben. If you have any follow-up, definitely let me know. And, good luck with your game out there in Utah.

Before we get to our next question, I just want to briefly tell you guys about the sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast, and that is tennistours.com. I hope you guys have at least gone and checked them out, since they started advertising on the podcast. I really appreciate their support of the show, very much. And if you enjoy the Essential Tennis Podcast, I really urge you to go check them out, and if you’re going to be going to a professional tennis event, whether it’s men’s or women’s, definitely go to tennistours.com.

They’ve been doing this since 1987. You can get individual tickets, ticket packages, also hotel and accommodations, along with your tickets, they do everything. And, whether you’re looking for ground passes, all the way up to luxury suites, they can really hook you up with a wide variety of different tickets, and if you use the promotional code, ‘essential’, while you check out, you can also receive a $25 discount off your purchase. So, go there, check them out if you’re going to a tournament anytime soon. They have all the grand slams. They’ve got tickets for all the grand slams, as well as most of the upper level ATP Masters Events. So, if there’s one of those in your area, and you’re going to check it out, go to tennistours,com. I thank them very much for their support of the Essential Tennis Podcast.

All right, let’s get to our next question. And, it comes to us from Samir, in Chicago, Illinois. And, Samir, I definitely can’t read your name without thinking about the movie, ‘Office Space’, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. If you’re into comedies, anyway. Funny movie, with a character named Samir. Anyway, let’s go ahead and get to his question which is, ‘My question has to do with a slice serve, and specifically the wrist action at contact and follow through. I have seen it taught a couple of ways.

Both stress the fact that the racketchops at the ball at the 3 o’clock position, but I have seen one approach indicating at contact the racketcurves around the ball, and your wrist moves in a way where your palm moves toward the side you’re serving to. The second suggests that at contact, you pronate, so that your wrist and palm move away from the side you’re serving to. I have heard the former method produces more spin or skid, but in general, I thought pronation generates more rackethead speed? I’d love to get your take. Thanks again, Samir. ‘ Well, Samir, that’s a good question and this is a technique topic that has a lot of misunderstanding around it, in tennis, in general.

And, if you, well, I’ll get to that later. Let’s start off briefly with pronation, and supination. Supination is the opposite of pronation, and pronation would rotate, if you’re a right-handed player, and you’re on the deuce side of the court, and you want to hit a big slice serve, that curves from your right to your left xxx and, so it would curve out, away from your opponent, off the courts, off the deuce side, again, if you’re right-handed.

Pronation would turn your racketface, and palm, the palm of your hand, out, outwards, towards the right side of the courts, if you’re on the deuce side. Well, on both sides, really. If you’re a right-handed player, your palm would rotate out towards the right, along with your racketface. That’s pronation.

Supination would rotate the racketinwards towards the left side of the court. And, those are the two different ways that you can rotate your forearm. And, by the way, pronation and supination have nothing to do with your wrist. It’s important that you guys understand that. Biomechanically, your wrist does not pronate, it does not supinate. Your wrist and your hand, does move, I’m not remembering the technical terms for the movement, right off the top of my head, but pronation and supination refer specifically to the rotation of your forearm. It’s what’s actually causing that rotation to the inside, or the outside.

Now, it seems like, if you want the ball to spin to your left, as a right-handed player, then you would want your palm to turn to the left. It kind of seems logical that you would want to come and kind of scoop the racketaround the outside of the ball and kind of spin it to the left, by supinating your hand, and rotating it quickly again at 3 o’clock, kind of around the right side of the ball, and it kind of seems that would be the best way to get spin but, it’s not true.

To get the most amount of spin possible, you need the most amount of acceleration possible. The faster that your rackethead is moving, as you make contact with the right side of the ball, again at 3 o’clock or, whichever direction your racketis moving. The more spin you’re going to get is going to be dependent on how fast you accelerate the racquet. And, to get the most acceleration possible out of your racquet, every high level athlete with an overhand motion, pronates to achieve the best possible results. It’s very important to understand that. And, whether we’re talking about American football, or baseball, or tennis; any sport with an overhand motion, a throwing motion, or obviously, with tennis, you’ve got a racquet, but it’s still a throwing motion.

Any professional athlete playing any of those sports, that throws, or does an overhand motion, they are pronating. And, just to really confirm this in my own mind, last night when I was taking notes for todays show, I went to UTube, and I looked at some slow motion, really slow motion footage of some football quarterbacks, again, American football, and also baseball pitchers, and you’ll see that their palm, as they release the ball, pronates, and their hand turns out to the right, if they’re a right-handed player. Left-handed player, your palm will turn out to the left.

So, it’s important to understand that to acclerate as much as possible, you need to pronate. And, I’ve seen, I’ve seen articles, recently, saying that pronation is actually not a very large part in the however much you’re able to accelerate the rackuet. I don’t agree with that, personally. I think that without pronation you’re not going to be able to accelerate the racketnearly as much. I think there’s definitely a reason why every top level athlete does pronate with an overhand motion. And so, quite simply, Samir, that’s what you need to do. You need to learn how to pronate. It’s a very important part of your serve.

To be honest with you guys, I have seen recreational players be pretty successful without pronating. It’s not a motion that comes naturally to everybody. But, whether you’re hitting a flat serve, a slice serve, a kick serve, a twist serve, any kind of serve, when you’re watching a professional player do it, they will pronate on all of those serves.

And, this is a video I plan on doing soon. A video lesson. I want to do a comparison, side by side comparison of the actual technique differences between a flat serve, and a spin serve, and various spin serves. So, look for that in the video section of Essential Tennis, coming up pretty soon. But, for now, Samir, just definitely know that professional players in every sport with an overhand motion, do pronate, and you should be doing that on your serve. Regardless of what type of serve you’re trying to hit, and the reason for that is that it will help you get the most amount of rackethead speed, as possible.

So, Samir, thanks very much for your great question, and good luck developing your serve. Let me know if you have any further questions. [music] [music] [music]

All right, we’ve got time for one more question here. And, we haven’t done a gear question in a little while, so I’m going to answer one. This comes from Francisco, whose a 4. 0 player, he said, ‘Hi Ian, I was wondering if you could talk about racketcustomization, specifically changing the main grip. I have been wanting to change my synthetic grip to a leather grip. I know that it will change the balance point, but will it change the swing weight?’ Also wondering if I should add lead tape to the head to get it back to the same balance point. I tried that on one of my old rackets but it felt to heavy.

Well Francisco, when it comes to weight and balance issues, we are really talking about a personal preference thing. And, when you’re changing your grip from a synthetic one to a leather one, there is going to be a small weight difference, but it’s not going to be very much.

To be perfectly honest with you, if you felt a big difference, in terms of weight, in terms of swing weight, and balance between the two, between using a synthetic grip and a leather one, I’d be very surprised. Now, if you do feel a big difference, and that difference bothers you, then yes, you could use lead tape, but as you pointed out, it’s going to change quite a bit the overall weight of your racket, and it’s probably going to make it feel quite a bit heavier.

Lead tape is something that I use on my current racquet. I’m using a Wilson K Pro Tour, and I wanted some more weight in the head to get a little bit more plow through, a little bit more weight into my shots, and so that felt good to me. I don’t like the K Pro Tour without the extra weight in the head. But, it’s just personal preference. And, I’ve got 2 of those rackets right now, and they’re about, I think they’re about 10 grams difference, which is quite a bit. But, I can play equally as well with each one.

Really, if you get it close, it shouldn’t be a big deal. And, once you’re a professional player, really a small difference between rackets is not a huge deal. And, you should be able to play equally as well with either one.

The really important thing is that you get them close. And so, you want both rackets to have that leather grip. And, whatever changes to make to one racquet, you’re going to want to make to both of your rackets, or all of your rackets. However many rackets you have of the same frame. You do want to match them as closely as possible, and so using a little bit of lead weight between the two, and finding the same balance point, and the same total weight is definitely worth while.

But, to be perfectly honest with you, changing from one type of grip to another and then worrying about the balance due to a couple grams of weight difference in the handle, honestly is not something I would worry about. If you do notice that difference, I would be very surprised.

But, then again, it’s all personal preference. So, it’s up to you. So, there’s not really a rule of thumb here, Francisco. Go out and do what feels best to you, and match those rackets as closely as you can. And, that’s my advice. Thanks very much for the question. [music] [music] [empty]
[music]

All right, that does it for episode number 113 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today. And, just 2 quick things before we wrap up today’s show. First of all, I’d like to announce the next Essential Tennis Clinic. It’s going to be July 16th, 17th, and 18th in Galveston, Texas. Now, I know I’ve got quite a few listeners in Texas, and I really urge you guys to sign up for this clinic quickly. We’re going to limit it to, somewhere between 6 or 8 participants. I think probably 8 participants.

So, this is not going to open to very many people. It’s going to be a smaller group. Myself, and mental tennis expert, David Grumping are going to be running this clinic. And, features are going to include, 8 to 10 hours of on-court instruction with myself and David.

Also, a video analysis workshop, featuring instruction, and analysis from each of the participants in this clinic. A mental toughness workshop presented by David Grumping. And, a group dinner at the club house, at the club where we’re going to be holding the clinic.

So, lots of cool features in this clinic. I don’t have exact price worked out yet, and I’m working on getting this clinic up on my website, so this is kind of a preliminary announcement and I want to let you guys in the podcast know first, so if you’re interested in attending this clinic, in July, in Galveston, Texas, please shoot me an email, and let me know right away if you’d definitely like to participate, and my address is; ian@essentialtennis.com.

Lastly, I just want to get to those of you who have sent donations. Just 2 people this past week. Both of them a monthly subscription donation. William, in Missouri, sent his monthly $10 subscription via paypal, and also, Bruce in Florida, his monthly $5 subscription donation.

So, William and Bruce, thank you very much for your monthly support of the podcast. I appreciate you guys very much, and if you guys have found the podcast helpful, please consider making a donation. Either a one time donation or signing up for a monthly donation is also very helpful, as well. Just go to essentialtennis.com and on the lower right corner of the front page, there’s a button that says, ‘Donate’.

All right, well that does it for this week. Thank you guys very much for spending your time with me. Take care and good luck with your tennis.

Essential Tennis Podcast #112

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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 is technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game, tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here is Ian.

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Ian: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. Your place for free, expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by ProTranscript.com and tennistours.com, where you can receive a discount off of professional tennis events’ tickets by using the promotional code “Essential” with a capital ‘E.’

Well, before we get started with today’s show, I want to let you guys know that there are still a couple spots open for the Essential Tennis Clinic in Baltimore, Maryland, this coming May 28, 29, and 30. If you are interested in attending, please let me know. Just shoot me a quick email to ian@essentialtennis.com.

Let us get to today’s show. We are not going to waste any more time. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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My guest today on the Essential Tennis podcast is Raj Guverla, who is a professional speaker, author and coach, and he is going to be talking to us about a special topic today having to do with mental tennis, but a little bit different angle than what we have covered before on the Essential Tennis Podcast.

But, Raj, I first want to introduce you and say hi. Welcome to the show.

Raj : Thanks for having me, Ian.

Ian : Yeah, you bet. I am happy to have you on. And you and I first talked several months ago, I remember we had a phone conversation, and we talked for quite a while I think about different tennis topics. Why do you please take a minute or two and tell my audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you are involved with tennis.

Raj : Well, I played tennis all through high school, and I was not very good. However, I started getting better, and today I am a very good player. Of course, I am not on a pro level by any means. And I got into professional speaking, and mostly what I do is I help organizations increase their productivity and profitability by improving their mindset, and using motivation. And I work most exclusively with sports teams.

Ian: OK

Raj: So this podcast will focus more on the tennis team itself and going from what I call a fixed mindset to a grow mindset, and using mindset mood motivation tools.

Ian : OK, great. Well, David Grauping, who has been the other kind of main mental tennis guest that I have had comes at it from a similar angle that you do. He also works with business people, and likes to work with athletes, as well. But, the difference is . . .

Raj : Who?

Ian : Go ahead. Sorry, Raj.

Raj : Yes. Go ahead.

Ian : Oh, I am sorry. I thought you were trying say something. It sounds like the difference between you and him is that you specialize with teams, and I find that really interesting because most tennis players at some point are going to participate in some kind of tennis team competition or activity, which is great.

And I really recommend that my listeners go out and do that, whether it be a high school team or, if you are lucky enough, a college team, or a club team, USTA, league team, all are really great experiences, but it kind of brings a unique mental challenge to the table for a lot of us, and I know that you have a little outline here that we are going to follow, and four main points. Why do you not go ahead and give us a little introduction and get started on our main point, Raj.

Raj : Sure. Yes, you really, really honed in on it. Being on a team really brings a lot of different dynamics. And tennis itself, although a lot of times it seems that it is an individual sport, in doubles, of course, there is a team there, or again, as you mentioned, USTA, even Vegas Cup, the team aspect.

So, even if you are a singles player, you have a team in the sense that you are working with a coach, and the higher you get, you probably have a mental motivation expert, you will have other people there part of your team. In fact, Roger Federer a lot of times when he wins, he credits his team, because it is not just him doing it, although he is the star attraction.

Ian : Right.

Raj : But today what we are going to talk about is going from having a fixed mindset to a grow mindset, and the way that we are going to do it is through mindset, mood and motivation tools.

Dr. Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset. She is a Stanford University researcher, professor and psychologist. And she talks about in her book going from a fixed mindset to a grow mindset.

So I want to talk about how to go from a fixed mindset. I’ll give some examples. To a grow mindset using what I call an ‘adaptability link. And the first adaptability link that we will use will be to use logically emotion.

Ian : OK.

Raj : Shall we start from there?

Ian : Yeah, sure. Sounds good.

Raj : To use logical emotion, notice that I put logic before emotion, and I do that for a reason, because we know through research that emotion comes before logic. However, we know that one without the other is very short sighted. If we have just emotion, then we do not have any thinking. There is only a certain emotion, a certain ingredient, it has no purpose.

But if we have logic and not emotion, well, we have a plan, but we do not have any action; we do not have the emotion part to get any type of will actionable purpose.

But put both of them together, because you can probably well relate if you have ever talked with your spouse or your tennis partner, and there has been some kind of conflict, well, if you used just emotion, that conflict can really get you in trouble. Or if you use just logic, it is shortsighted. If we know that a thought has emotion into it. And that emotion creates that action, because logical emotion is very important.

Ian : Is it not funny how similar those 2 relationships are? [laughter] The husband and wife and doubles team. I have definitely compared those 2 before, but I think it is funny that you come at it from that direction–from kind of a communication standpoint– and having to put the 2–the logical and emotional– side together. That is very interesting.

Raj : Yeah, it really is, and to give you the first example, on a tennis team the bottom line is to win a championship. And so, since the bottom line– now that might build too much pressure for some people– but what is the top line. Well, the top line is to make a positive difference or to grow. And if you are doing that, then obviously the championships will come.

But a lot of people use either logic or they use emotion and not logical emotion, because I go on talks with teams, and let us say that they are winning, well, I go in there and tell them here is what, you are going to win the championship. And they look almost dumbfounded, like who is this guy? We are winless. And there is a reason I do that. It is because you deserve just as much as anybody else to win a championship.

Now, it is not just going to happen magically, because obviously, they are going to come up with excuses saying that, oh, we are not that talented, or we do not have the skills, or last year this team had just these awesome players, and they are going to be there again in the playoffs, and I do not know what we are going to do. And I understand that those are all challenges, but the way you remove obstacles is through logical emotion and by using the tools to get there.

So, I am going to define first what mindset is. Mindset is simply what we think and the way we think. So, obviously, right there we know that we need to work on their mindset a little bit. Our mood is the bottom line. The bottom line in any kind of team sport is to win the championship. And then our top line is motivation and inspiration. Now, there is only 2 things I left out and that is attitude and subconscious.

So, l et us start with David Grumping had talked about earlier in that self talk. And there is a lot to be said about self talk. It is just that with self talk, I think there is confusion between self talk and what I call self think. And self talk is what to me is verbalized, whether it is to yourself or to someone else, but it is verbalized. And usually it is verbalized to yourself. Sometimes people do talk to things, just trying to get them psyched up.

Ian : [laughter] Yeah. Right.

Raj: However, self think is actually what are we thinking during the match, because that is really ultimately what is the critical component to make us win. It is what we are thinking. And if we think our match through and our games through, you know what I find find is that people enjoy their sport so much more.

Ian : Do you find a correlation between how positive or negative a player or a team self think is and how successful they are on the courts?

Raj : Definitely. I think that what happens is that their self think is really their foundation. And if they are not continually adding to that foundation and growing through an adaptability link, and the adaptability link here is logical emotion, which is going to get us from a fixed mindset to saying that, OK, I am only so talented, I am only so skilled. Well, now we want to go to a growth mindset through this adaptability link called logical emotion.

Ian : So can you give us I guess a tangible or a method that our listeners can go through to make that connection from saying I have got this much talent, I have got this much skill, I can only win this many matches this season. How do we actually work on making that connection from that fixed mindset to a more grow mindset?

Raj : Well, one is through using the adaptability link. And in this case,one mindset tool is logical emotion. Let me give you some examples.

Ian : Yes, please.

Raj : For example, Bjorn Borg. He was a great self thinker. And, granted, self thinking is much more important and critical to the self talk. However, you never really saw him use much self talk. However, he is arguably one of the best players ever. However, now time has progressed, and during the Bjorg era there was Jimmy Connors.

And obviously Jimmy Connors had great self think, but he was a better self talker, because you knew when he had Yvonne Lindahl in the US Open Finals year after year, that eventually he was going to get pumped up, fired up, starting pumping his fists, start talking to himself to the crowd, and once he did that, he got into a zone that hardly many players ever really get to. And Lindahl lost year after year.

And then, of course, we have John McEnroe. John McEnroe again is a great self think and he is a great self talker, but he used more self talk than he did self think. However, you can see that he did have greatness in self thinking, because as a commentator he is excellent, and he really shows the subtleties of the game, and how he really did think the game through. However, he used self talk, put emotion aside and linked both of those together.

Now, sometimes he got in trouble, because he abused the umpires and things of that nature. In fact, Dr. Carol Dwork uses an example of him as being someone who is extremely successful in that fixed mind set. And he could still be extremely successful but even John McEnroe today says that if he did not do some of the things that he did, he would have been even more successful, and that would have been really quite amazing to see.

Ian : Yeah.

Raj : And then I give you another example. Of course, we have Pete Sampras. Pete Sampras, again, great self thinker, but not one to do much self talk. But, did you notice that towards the latter part of his career he started to. And even the commentators they would start to see that maybe something is being done here. You see that consistently adding skills and talents and growing your skills and talents will let you to continue to go to another new best level, because they want to grow. They want to raise their game.

And Pete Sampras definitely did that, because Arthur [inaudible] one of the greatest ever, he had the most grand slams until Roger Federer came along, and that did not happen until years later. And, of course, you know, Pete sometimes would throw up and win a match, and you knew he was going to win if he threw up, but I do not highly recommend that.

Ian : [laughter]

Raj : And then, lastly, of course, [empty]
RX launched today Roger Federer. You can see that he is a great, great self thinker. However, you are starting to see slowly and slowly that he is using self talk to get himself to use this adaptability link logical emotion.

And then on the women’s side, there is Serena Williams. That was the biggest tip from Tony Robbins, who is one of the top motivation and spiritual speakers that she hired. He told her, use emotion. You have a great self-thinking concept, but your logic is there, your emotion is missing. And some players use one more than the other, but when you can find that nice congruent balance is when you get the best results.

Ian : Alright, I have two questions for you, Raj. First of all, how exactly do you go about developing this with an individual or an entire team, just in general? And then, my second question is, for for those of us who may already have plenty of self think and self talk going on, but maybe it is not constructive. Maybe we have have negative mindsets and what we are doing in our heads is not helping out very much. How do you train somebody to be more constructive with their self think and talk?

Raj : Well, one way is again through an adaptability link to let us say a another profession. For example, I am also a professional speaker. And if you notice that the words I use, especially when I am professionally speaking, versus doing a radio interview or a podcast interview, are a little bit different. And in professional speaking you want to have the most dynamic, most powerful meaningful, purposeful sentence, but you want to do it in the fewest amount of words.

And the fewer words you can use, and the better the word choice, the better the speech. And the same thing applies to tennis. You want to unclutter all of that chatter that is going on in your mind. You want to quiet it down, [inaudible] or not, and then at the right moment, you want to be able to activate it, whether it is through self think, which is going to create the synopsis in your mind, that is going to cause an action, thought becomes an action, which becomes a result.

And then self-talk is the same thing except for it is verbalized, and it is very important that with both of these areas, it is critical, to have self think and self talk put together, because again, one without the other can be very dangerous and can really hinder your progress.

Ian : Can you give an example of why that is dangerous exactly, of why we do not want to use just one or the other? What if, like myself personally, I am a very–people find this surprising–introverted person. I am kind of quiet, by nature, so what is wrong with me going out and playing and using mostly or all self think? What is the danger in that?

Raj : Well, what is the danger in that is you are not giving your body the ability to express itself.

Ian : Huh?

Raj : And as an engineer, because that is what I was before I became a professional speaker and sports team mindset motivation coach, and I was somewhat introverted. However, I was not as introverted as most engineers. And I wanted to grow, and I think that was one of the reasons I reached out to this profession is because I was not allowed to grow. And that is what I am saying is that it stymies your growth if you use one more than the other.

Ian : Hm. Interesting. Well, before I ask my next question, I want to remind my listeners about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast and that is tennistours.com, Championship Tennis Tours.

Since 1987, they have been offering tickets and travel packages to tennis fans all over the world to professional tennis events, whether it be WTA or ATP. They offer tickets and travel packages to the Grand Slams, and a lot of the Masters Series and Level 1,000 tournaments around the world.

Definitely check them out if you are going to go watch professional events, and help support them, and kind of thank them for their support of me and the Essential Tennis Podcast, both myself and tennistours.com would both appreciate that very much. And when you go check out with them, use the promotional code use ‘Essential,’ with a capital ‘E’ for a $25 discount off your purchase. And they offer a wide variety of different types of tickets ranging from grounds passes and cheaper tickets all the way up through luxury suites and accommodations that they really for a wide range of options.

So, go check them out and show them that you appreciate their supports of of the Essential Tennis Podcast as much as I do. So, I thank them very much for their support.

Well, I have another question here that kind of goes back to when we first started. You were talking about walking in and first addressing a team that you were working with. It sounds like you are making it very clear that you want them, or you are kind of putting the expectation on them that the point of them playing is to win a championship. And then you are talking about how that is typically very surprising, especially to a team that is used to losing.

Now, I am sure that you have probably heard from other coaches, maybe other speakers or maybe parents or players that well, you know, have you not heard, it is the 21st century, and sports and competition are all about having fun. And everybody is supposed to go out there and do their best, and as long as they try and they have fun, then great. And everybody should be happy. What is your response to that kind of mindset?

Raj : Well, I do believe that sports is there and we are supposed to have fun, and I do know this that every time that I have won or I have won a championship, I have had a whole lot more fun than if I did not. That is #1.

Ian : That is a good point. [laughter]

Raj : And #2 is that I am not just putting someone on the island with these extremely high expectations. I am giving them the mindset, mood, mental motivation tools to make this happen, to help them to grow. And that is the thing that they are missing. You see, they focus totally on the emotion side of, oh gosh, this guy wants us to win championships, and we are not that good. Whereas, they do not have the logic side.

Or you can be reversed. The team that has won, let us say, 2 years in a row, well, they can have a lot of the logic. Well, we have already won 2 years in a row. We should win again next year. And that is logic stuff, but then they are missing the emotion side, because they still have to go out there and perform. And so it is really important.

So I give them a tool, and I have put together another adaptability link called the Winning Mental Pyramid. And I have worked on this leading edge research for 5 years now, and it shows the relationship between motivation and inspiration: attitude, mindset, mood and subconscious. And to quickly summarize it, motivation has a relationship with inspiration, and motivation controls your attitude. Your attitude controls your mindset. Your mindset controls your mood, and mood has a relationship with subconscious.

And so in order to put yourself or use this self talk, self think appropriately, well, in a team dynamic, the way that I have come into teams and I explain what the Winning Mental Pyramid research is, and I apply it to their team, well at the beginning of the year it is applied differently, because we want to get the team to gel, to mesh together, to come together, to bond, and really, really focus in on a lot of the team aspects as far as communication, as far as how we are going to handle things, as far as what is going to happen if there is some obvious challenges or some conflicts, and really sets the tone so it is almost like as if this is the degree in your hand.

When I was in college, all 4 years I just focused on having that degree. And my bind, because I had that in my mind, all I would think about whenever sometime something would come up [inaudible] is I want that degree in my hand. I want to hold that degree in my hand, and automatically that would create that logical emotion connection for me.

And so where we figure out what that is for a team, because for every team it is going to be different. Let us say you have 10 people on the tennis team, you are going to have a lot of different personalities, a lot of different characteristics, and people. You are are going to have different talents, different skills, and so we want to be able to learn from that and to grow with that. What I found is that the best tennis players, the best teams in the world, when you really know you have a good player is when you really have a player that makes other players, other teammates better.

Ian : Yeah.

Raj : And so I use this Winning Mental Pyramid. Now, let us say I come in in the middle of the season. Well, it may be a little bit different, especially if the team is losing and I come in. Then I use it differently. But let us say the team is winning and I come in. Well I am not going to make a whole lot of adjustments. I mean, the day before, or halfway through the season, if you are winning and you are undefeated, I am not really making a lot of adjustments.

What I am doing there is giving you more incentive and keeping you pumped up to stay on that leading edge so that you do not lose that momentum as you start going into the playoffs and into the championship realm. Now let us say you are in the playoffs. You are winning and you are about to go into a championship game. You are undefeated or if you are not undefeated, you are favored to win it all, well, again, I am not going to come in there and try to introduce something that is totally new.

In fact, If this team has never heard of the Winning Mental Pyramid research, I probably will not even mention it to them, but I will apply it in doing pre-game motivation for them before their big match, and usually and hopefully they will win, and we will have a post-game victory celebration. So, it is a combination of the 2. And so I am using the Winning Mental Pyramid. However, in that case I am not really telling them what I am doing, but I am giving them the pre-game mindset, mental motivation, then the post-game victory celebration.

Ian : When you come in and you first start talking to a team, whether it is a sports team or a business, I guess especially with a losing team, do you ever find that the players or participants have a hard time believe you or buying into what you are talking about? I mean you come in talking about winning and getting championships and all this stuff, and I guess especially on a losing team it seems to me that there might be a tendency for them to not really buy into it, and maybe even actively resist it. Do you ever come across that, and if so, how do you deal with that with a player who is kind of fighting against having a positive mental attitude?

Raj : That is a great question. And the way that I combat that is through my analysis. I do a lot of upfront work with the coach, and then I learn about each of the players. So when I am walking in and I am on the platform in front of them, I am already telling them things (and they have never even met me) that I know about them.

And see, that automatically gets them to a comfort level, because then they say, well, golly, this guy has really done his research, and he has really done his homework. He is really invested in us. Let me perk up here and listen to really what he really has to say.

And then once they see that I am not here to basically try to bully them to do better, I am really there to give them the tools to help them grow, and it is like anything else in the sense that if you are a child, let us say, or even a boy or an adult and you have never had a computer, then all of a sudden somebody has given you this magnificent tool and they show you how to use it, well you become more productive, right?

Ian : Sure.

Raj : And you grow. So, that is what I am doing. I am giving them that computer. I am giving them those tools in order to make that happen. And then also, the biggest thing that I want them to benefit from, because they are going to be together a lot longer than my how much ever time I am going to be in front of them, so I want to give them the opportunity to work with one another, to know one another, the tools to do that, and by using this leading edge research, the Winning Mental Pyramid, I do that and I bring them up front and I will ask each one of them to tell me about a time that they were in the zone.

And probably other players on the team have not even heard this story, because again, most teams, they do a great job of taking advantage of having their coach or coaches, but they do not do a very good job of taking advantage of having teammates, and that to me is what I see is the difference between a bad team that goes to a good team, a good team that goes to a very good team, and a very good team that goes to a championship team.

Ian : Last question for you, Raj, and this is all really interesting stuff, and I am sitting here on the other side of the microphone just kind of trying to absorb as much of this as I can, and hopefully I am asking good questions or my listeners?

Raj : Yes, you are.

Ian : I know that I have many listeners who are actually coaches: high school coaches and team coaches. Obviously, I have a lot of listeners who are just players, and they might be on a team who needs this information, and obviously I am sure my coaches listening are very interested in actually being able to take this information and use it, and try to spread these methods throughout their own teams.

So, in our last couple of minutes here, I would like you to please talk to the coaches and talk to the players out there, and how can they implement what you are talking about? Is this something that they can do for their own teams, and start to build up the success of their own teams as players and coaches, or do we need an expert like you to come in and try to help us out?

Raj : They can definitely start to implement it, but they do need someone like me, or they do need me to come in and really show them how to apply the research. Now, once I have applied the research, the Winning Mental Pyramid research, I also have another new tool called Winning Leadership Teamwork Chairs that help really resolve conflict, and to gather strategy, and it is a really, really neat tool where 2 people, 2 players sit back to back, sometimes it can be 3, sometimes it can be 5, and sometimes it can even be all 10 players. We can even do it that way.

But notice what I am doing is I am taking away the visual, because I want them to feel. And I think it is really important to think and feel. And when you do that then obviously you are in a very good zone, and that is the kind of leadership teamwork that I want, and everybody has a thought and opportunity to participate. However, once I leave, the coaches are very well versed in actually applying it.

And what they will do a lot of times is apply it own their own, because now they have seen how it works, and then they will consult with me, give me a call, and I am going to talk with them about the match coming up and give them advice in that way. So, it really depends on the 2 dynamics.

Then, of course, the third dynamic for a championship type of game or match is bringing me in and let us have a victory party so we can have like a nice celebration act where we really celebrate and have a good time and prepare again for next year.

Ian : Alright. Good stuff.

Raj : And also .. .

Ian : Go ahead.

Raj : Well, I appreciate that Ian. And also you can go to my website.

Ian : Yes, please.

Raj : It is www.rajgavurla.com (which is my first name and last name, R-A-J-G-A-V-U-R-L-A ), and there you can see the Winning Mental Pyramid, there are a couple of articles even that I have where I have written about some of content I have used in working with teens and working with developmentally [inaudible], and working with youth, and even in businesses, and even in facilitation, where people that have mental health challenges.

And I would also like to finish off with logical emotion and give you a couple of examples. As a boy, there were 3 things that my tennis instructor told me. And at the time, I really did not think much about it, and they did not work for me. And they did not work, not because they were the wrong message, but it was because I did not understand it. I only used the logic or I only used the emotion. One was my tennis instructor would tell me to punch the volume, like I was punching.

Ian : [laughter]

Raj : OK? So I would grab my racket and I would punch, punch, and it would never really have that zip on it that I would see like a McEnroe get or somebody on TV on his volleys, and I just never knew why. And until later, when I was an adult, I know now why, because it is common sense, it is because I was not gripping the racket tight enough.

So, when I would punch my volume, I had a naturally soft grip, so therefore I was never able to give that real good [silence] . And I was thinking that, OK, well my fist is clenched and I am punching in the sense that I am making that forward motion. However, I never gripped it tight enough.

And now, today, that clearly explains why I have such great drop volley, just like McEnroe, although he could hit both volleys. I had a great drop volley, because I had such soft hands. And I could literally take almost all of the pace off the ball when it came, but later in my tennis development I realized that was the reason I was using that same grip, as far as the tightness of it in when I was trying to hit a regular, hard put- away volley.

The other one was to put top spin on the ball the instructor would say, OK, go low to high. So I would go low to high. And then sometimes he would say brush on it, brush on it, brush on it.

And again, being a boy, I would just a different mindset than an adult, I just did not really pick up on what ‘brush’ meant. I could pick up on low to high, but today, now that I know what brush means, I I literally when I see the ball coming I have my eye on the ball. And I literally brush as in the sense that I go from low to high and I literally with my wrist, lift up, brush upwards on the ball like I am painting upward, and I have tremendous, much, much more control now. And of course, because I am bigger and more balanced I have more power.

And then the last thing is losing. And I think we have all been there where we have been in a match and we have been losing. We say, OK, what is going on? What is going on? Well, the first thing we need to do is recognize that losing in the Winning Mental Pyramid is under attitude, because you are supposed to be winning, right, in a tennis match? Well, losing is under attitude. So, we have got to recognize that attitude.

OK, so now, once we recognize that, sense this attitude, then we know that, OK, motivation controls attitude, so, now we have got to create these synapses in our mind that says, OK, we are supposed to be winning. What is going on?

Now, we start using logical emotion, self talk, self think. Then attitude does what? Attitude controls the mindset. Now we have got to understand, OK, what is the actual thinking process that we need here? What is the tool we need?

And lastly, the way that teams really improve and players really improve and coaches really improve is really keep and mark down in a notebook what worked, what did not work, what surprised you that maybe was an excellent shot that you may not have hit ever or you may hit only every once in a while, but how could you add that as a permanent part of your weaponry.

And if you add that to your foundation, then that is another option and tool that when the timing is right, you can really bring that up, and make it happen, and include that in your arsenal. And as you do, then tennis becomes a whole lot more fun. It is no fun to just go out there and keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

We want to keep adding and growing, and go to that grow mindset, and that is what really keeps us ahead of the competition. Because you know that if you are not adding skills and talents that someone else is, and that is the reason that they are growing, and that is the reason that they may win the championship and not you. And I would much rather be in the other position.

Ian : Well, Raj , you have gone a couple of minutes overtime, but I know that my listeners are really going to appreciate listening to your insights and your thoughts. So I want to thank you very much for your time today, and spending the time talking to myself and to the listeners of my podcast as well. Thank you very much.

Raj : Thank you, Ian. Thanks for having me, and I really appreciate what you are doing for tennis and for your listeners. They are very fortunate to have you.

Ian : Well thank you, and I look forward to having you back again in the future hopefully. I get the feeling that on a lot of these topics we have just kind of scratched the surface and introduced them. And to my listeners, definitely go and check out Raj’s website at rajgavurla.com. See the materials that he has there, and Raj, hopefully I will be talking to you again soon in the future.

Raj: Thanks Ian.

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Ian : Alright. That does it for Episode #112 o f the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today and my guest. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the show, and before I wrap things up, I want to send a special thank you out to those of you who have donated to the Essential Tennis Podcast in the last week.

Starting off with Jason in California, who sent a $20 donation. Thank you very much, Jason. David in Alabama did a $5 a month subscription donation. Thank you David. Steve in North Carolina, $5 subscription. And Charles in Maryland, also $5 subscription donation.

So thank you very much, I appreciate it. And Jason in California, I am going to send you an Essential Tennis shirt since you donated the most this past week. Thank you very much. And if Essential Tennis Podcast has helped you improve your tennis game, I would really appreciate your support through a small donation, either monthly or one time. It is totally up to you. And you can do that by going to essentialtennis.com, and in the lower right there is a box that says ‘donate.’ Just click on that. I thank you guys very much for your support.

Alright, that does it for this week. Thank you everybody very much for joining me. And I look forward to the next episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast next Monday. Take care everybody, and good luck with your tennis.

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Essential Tennis Podcast #111

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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 : 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 the interactive transcript provider, ProTranscript.com and TennisTours.com.

Today before we get started I want to tell you guys about something I’m doing with Will of fuzzyyellowballs.com. Which by the way, is an excellent source for tennis instruction all in video format. And, I just started putting out some amazing videos from Indian Wells. So, go check out his website if you haven’t already.

But he and I during the men’s final of the Sony Ericson Open, which is in Miami, being played right now, he and I are going to be doing a live webcast. And, we’re going to be doing commentary during the men’s final of the Sony Ericson Open. We did this during the Australian Open Final. It was a lot of fun. And, we’re looking forward to doing it again.

So you can watch us do that live. It’s going to be a video commentary. Watch us do that live during the , again the men’s final. Just by going to fuzzyyellowballs. Com and the stream is going to be up on his website. I think it’s going to be up on essentialtennis. Com as well. But, I’m not positive on that yet.

So, definitely check those both out. Alright. Let’s go ahead and get to today’s show. Sit back. Relax and get ready for some tennis instruction.

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Ian : My Guest today on the Essential Tennis Podcast is past team mate and Jason and I went to college together as well. But, Jason Cole is our guest today who’s been on the show before but it’s been a little while. Jason welcome back to the show.

Jason : Thanks buddy, good to be here.

Ian : Yes it’s nice to have you back. It’s a shame that we kind of seem to go long periods of time before having you back on, but I know that you have a busy schedule with your golf game and all.

Jason : Mondays are for golf. I tried to avoid that. I can’t get away from it.

Ian : No problem. I understand. It’s always good to get away from Tennis. At least a little bit during the week. And, kind of think about other stuff.

Jason : Yes no doubt. —

Ian : Well, we’ve got 3 listener questions that we’re going to be talking about today. None of them really having to do a lot about technique, but it’s just kind of topics that I thought Jason and I could have good conversations about. And, hopefully help you guys out and give you some ideas on how you can improve in these various parts of tennis. — And, our first question today comes from Thomas in Germany and he puts himself down as a 4.0 player. Thomas wrote and said, ‘… I have a question. How far up should you actually hold your racket? Where is the budcap supposed to be on the hillpad between the hillpad and the index knuckle? Or even somewhere else? Thanks a lot. Thomas. ‘ Well, Jason I’ll kind of throw that out to you first and then we’ll see what kind of thoughts you have on that and I’ll put in my two cents to. What do you think?

Jason : I have 2 thoughts. The 1st one is whatever feels comfortable. But, the 2nd one is and probably more importantly your using the long adult racket for a reason. To give yourself extra lenght. Most players have a bit of their hand hitting the opposite direction when hitting with it.

I’m not sure that I’ve seen too many people at all play with their entire hand up above the budcap of the racket. So, I would say that if things are going awry, you might decide to choke up just a bit. I would do that as a last resort. Try and use the advantage of the longer racket as much as you can.

Ian : Yes. A lot of time choking up a little bit can kind of give players a feel that they’re in better control of what the racket is doing. And, that’s true because it’s a shorter tool at that point. So it kind of allows you to move it around more easily. However, what Jason is saying is absolutely correct. When you use a shorter racket you’ve got less leverage essentially. You have less force over the ball when you accelerate the racket and swing towards it. And so, I agree. I think probably the lower the better. As long as it’s comfortable as Jason also said.

I think the exception to this may be a twohanded backhand. I think in general twohanded backhand players tend to be a little bit higher up with their as compared to a forehand. Where as you said Jason, essentially every good upper level player that I have seen hit a forehand, the heal of the hand is mostly off of the racket completely. What are your thoughts on that? I know that you have a twohanded backhand. Is your bottom hand, your right hand a little higher on your backhand than it is on your forehand?

Jason : Maybe just a little but, not really. Because twohanded’s are already giving up the extra reach because they’re primarily hitting the righthanded forehand. So, the more you give up, I mean you don’t want to handicap yourself. In my opinion twohanded backhands are far superior than one handed. But, as you start using a ping pong paddle you’re really giving up a little bit too much. So I don’t think that would be necessary. If anything, if you can have that left hand down well on this two handed backhand so that you’re still getting the reach.

Ian : I think that more or less wraps up that topic. Anything else to talk about as it pertains to that?

Jason : Not really. I mean the leverage and the distance is there for a reason. That’s why there was such a big deal made when long bodied rackets came out. Because it did give you an advantage. So, it would be kind of silly to steal that from you myself.

Ian : Alright. Well, Thomas hopefully that’s helpful to you. Basically what Jason and I are saying is, allow your hand to go down on the racket. Maybe even off a little bit at the bottom. As long as it’s comfortable to you. I like what Jason said. Maybe if you’re having a period of time where a certain stroke is really off. Maybe choke up a little bit to give yourself some more control and kind of get back into it again. But, the longer the racket that you have, the more leverage that you’re going to get. So, I like how Jason is kind of saying don’t cheat yourself and choke up too much.

Alright. Let’s move on to Jason in Illinois who’s a 3.5 player. And this is going to be an interesting tactical discussion having to do with doubles. And mixed doubles specifically.

It’s got a little bit longer of a question. So, bare with me here for a second. He wrote in and said, ‘… My wife and I recently played in a mixed doubles tournament. I am a 3. 5 level and my wife is probably around a 3. 0. We did well, advancing to the semis before losing in 2 close sets.

However I found mixed doubles to be both frustrating and maddening. As our opponents continually found ways to hit only to my wife. She did well and held her own hitting back 5 or 6 vows in a row on a few points. But, eventually got worn down.

I found myself standing there as a spectator during most points looking for an opportunity to jump in and pouch. But, couldn’t as my wife doesn’t hit very hard. Leaving my side of the court exposed when I try to pouch.

In one match we tried the I formation and forced them to hit returns down the wine against my wife’s serve. Giving me a better chance to pouch. Out of frustration I also started blasting returns at the net player which made it harder for them to hit a good reply towards my wife. These 2 tactics helped us win a match.

So I’m wondering if there are any other strategies we could employ. During the entire tournament I think my wife hit 4 times as many shots as I did and probably 5 times as many in the semi final that we lost. I believe we could have won if I could have found a way to contribute more during the match. ‘

I think that’s a really good question, well thought out. And, it sounds like Jason and his wife did try a couple of different variations on their strategy and tactics to try to make things a little bit more even. But, this is a great question. Not only for mixed doubles, but for doubles in general when you are playing with somebody who’s significantly weaker than you are. Or, when you’re the person who’s kind of the weakest on the courts and your opponents are trying to pick on you.

So, Jason what are your initial thoughts here? What could they have done to maybe have a little more advantage out there on the court?

Jason : Okay. Well I have a few first things. When you’re playing regular doubles as apposed to mixed it’s a lot harder to see one man and say he’s probably weaker than the other. But, when you step on the court for mixed doubles everybody just assumes that the woman is weaker, whether that’s true or not. So, it’s definitely, I would say, good strategy by your opponents. They should be hitting to your wife who is weaker. Good job by your wife making 4 or 5 volleys.

You definitely need to be pouching more. And, this is something that I really stress in all doubles. But, in mixed doubles you really just can’t avoid it. And that they’re hitting to your wife, assuming they know where she is standing. You can’t have her standing there. She’s got to be moving or you’ve got to be moving in front to make it a lot smaller of a target. If you camp out on your side and she’s camping out on her side then any 3. 0 level player should be able to hit it to her repeatedly. That just shouldn’t be the case. If you watch professional level mixed doubles the woman is always moving. The man’s always standing in front of the woman. There’s a reality where it’s 4 or 5 shots by the woman in a row. That’s something that’s better for work and better strategy effort that you can really get away from.

I’ve heard not only you said you did the I formation which is good but you don’t always force them to hit it down the line. She can go down the line. She can go across court. They should have a 50-50 gap of where it’s returning. Whether it’s going to her or you. And, the same should be happening when she’s serving , when you’re serving. It really doesn’t matter.

Ian : Yes, and Jason said that he tried to pouch or at least thought about it however, he was really worried about leaving the court open behind him and Jason say advance as a doubles player. This is a fear that eventually you’re going to have to get rid of, is being worried about being caught down the line.

And, especially when you’re trying to kind of make up for a partner who’s weaker. Whether it’s your wife who happens to be at a lower level than you or anybody else for that matter. When you’re the net player and your partner is back, or starting back. You need to play a really strong supportive role out there as a net player. And, you really should be dictating play as the net player.

And, Jason mentions making the returning essentially you have to guess and kind of figure out. Alright, where am I going to have to hit this return in order to avoid Jason up there at the net? Because, he’s, I don’t know where the heck he’s going at this point. And, you want to disrupt that returner or that server as much as possible and just make things miserable for them. And, that means that you probably will get caught a hand full of times with them hitting down the line. But, that’s a tougher shot to hit anyway. So you should really be disrupting and making their life miserable as much as you can. And, it kind of takes some trust in yourself and it takes confidence in yourself to kind of just go and leave your comfort zone and cut over to your wife’s side of the courts or whomever else you’re playing with.

But, that’s absolutely something you should get comfortable with.

Jason : You should also be giving signals. So, if I stand at the net and I tell you I’m going to pouch if they hit the ball down the line you’d better be there. You knew I was pouching and I’m going to be a cross defender. So, if you’re not getting to cover that line you’re failing there. It shouldn’t just be that they hit me down the line. I lose now. You can feel free to be a maverick and give it that shot every once in a while but, that there’s no way you should just be getting beat repeatedly down the line just because your wife or whoever else should be there. They know it’s coming.

Ian : That’s a great point. You guys should be talking between every single point and working these things out. Sometimes maybe you’ll plan to stay and the return is going to be within your reach. In which case you should just go and kind of be , if I can use the word maverick there. Jason that’s all.

Sometimes you have the opportunity to just cross and it wasn’t planned. But, you guys should also be planning those types of switches and movements all the time so that you really keep your opponents guessing. Something else I had thought of Jason, is maybe playing double back. What do you think about that?

Jason : I mean, I inherently hate that idea. If you’re playing somebody who’s decent at the net, then you’re really putting yourself at a disadvantage. Because if you play double back you cannot step in front of your wife. That’s ridiculous. So it’s really easy just to give the ball to her. That’s assuming on a serve. On a return if you’re playing double back versus somebody who’s really crush and serves at your wife and she can’t handle it, that’s certainly more acceptable to try and get in the points. But again, I wouldn’t just go to that. Most woman , as I said, obviously I don’t know Jason’s wife. Most woman are pretty capable returners. That’s usually not where their weakness lies. So, it’s not something I love.

Ian : Fair enough. I mean don’t get me wrong. It’s not something that would be my first choice either. You know how much I love to come to the net. But, I guess if all else fails Jason you could try that and essentially just play defense and maybe play for, hopefully a good lab hit by one of you 2. Or, a well hit ground stroke that gets down low to your opponents and give you guys a chance to move back in together. But I think that should be the last ditch effort more of less to just give up the net and go back.

Jason : Well you do have another excellent point in that it does depend on the level. Not a lot of 3.0, 3. 5 women can put overheads away. So if you start back and just start lobbing the women, it’s really tough for a 3.0, 3. 5 women to put overheads away consistently. So that’s not a terrible strategy. Usually though, you get a little better and the women get a little better– can’t rely on that quite as much.

Ian : Sure.

Jason : But you still can use it.

Ian : Just one other thing I had for an idea of what they could do better– what about picking out the weaker player on the other side of the court and having a plan between the both of them– both Jason and his wife… Anytime that we have a choice with a shot, to hit to one player or another, assuming that they are kind of in an dual positions on the court in terms of being offensive or in a defensive position. Do you think they should direct as many shots as possible towards the weaker player on the other side to kind of give them a taste of their own medicine?

Jason : Without question. In mixed doubles, there is women to women rallies until the man can step over and do something. Not meaning to sound condescending, but that is how it should go. There is no way that any woman should try to take on the man unless it’s well determined that that man is weaker then his partner. So that’s really not often the case. It should go man hits it to the woman, woman pops it to the woman and they rally it out until somebody can do something a little bit better. – But yeah absolutely. His wife should just pick out the female on their team and assuming she’s not trying a really difficult shot, put it over to her every time.

Ian : In all fairness to the ladies out there, I would like to point out that what you are describing definitely takes place more often in upper level high competitive tournaments — 5. 0 and above type level. Where it is kind of a given that the two women are the weaker of the two players. I mean Jason’s describing himself as a 3. 5, his wife is a 3. 0 and at the club level, having a man and a woman on the court– I guess in general you could say that the man should be stronger but it doesn’t always necessarily mean that when you are playing a club match.

Jason : Yeah that’s true. I guess I’m just making that inference if your situation is reversed, then [inaudible] I guess.

Ian : Alright. Any other thoughts of ideas on that situation Jason?

Jason : No. The only tough thing is if you are the guy picking on their women over and over it’s really a morally tricky thing to do for sure. But your wife should have no problem doing that and she needs to if you want to be successful.

Ian : That’s an interesting topic. Let’s talk about that briefly. Is there an unwritten rule or you said moral obligation for the man to not hit to the women a lot. What have you noticed across different levels? I guess ranging from club all the way up through professional mixed doubles? Are there unwritten rules or is it completely fair game to just go towards the weaker player if it happens to be the woman.

Jason : I want to say there are unwritten rules, but they sure get broken a lot. I’ve played several [inaudible] tournaments and I had a really strong partner– she was a national champion a couple years in a row. But she still just got picked off right and left by certain teams and it depends how bad the guy on the other team wants to win in a lot of cases. So I guess there is not really unwritten rules. Obviously if you have an absolute put away and she turns her back, you shouldn’t try to hit her but unfortunately other than that, most people don’t seem to care which is not how I feel but it is the case.

Ian : Well my thoughts are personally is that at the club level if you are out playing at your local club or your local park or public courts, I don’t think that’s the time or the place to really make one person feel really singled out and abused on the court. I just don’t think it’s worth getting people angry over. And some people– there are some women out there who don’t care. And they are going to say you know what? If my partner is stronger than me, then absolutely, you should be hitting at me. But other times they are not going to appreciate that. I think unless you have a prior knowledge of your opponent and you know that the woman is OK with it, I think that in a recreational match, it’s not something that is a good idea. Nothing good is going to come of it essentially. Maybe once in a while they aren’t going to mind, but the times when they do mind, you are definitely not going to make any friends out there.

However, in a prize money tournament, I’m a little surprised to hear you think that there still should be an unwritten rule there Jason and like you were talking about actually playing for money. Isn’t that just kind of good tactics to go towards somebody who is a little weaker on the other team?

I guess it is. And there was a couple times when there was several thousand dollars on the line, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And I would say that probably 70% of the guys out there are in the same boat where they just– you know you hit for the women and you go for the right shot, but you won’t just abuse her like we are speaking of. And there is probably 25-30% of the guys who just don’t care. And I can tell you that my partner , although she was a phenomenal tennis player, absolutely hated those guys who just went to her with ever single ball no matter what. That did not go over well.

Ian : I think that’s probably a really important distinction to make. There are times in most doubles points where a certain player who is a position of offense and has the opportunity to do something offensive with the ball, there is always going to be situations where tactically it just makes the most sense to go in X place on the court regardless of who is standing there. If you have an overhead or an easy volley and you have the choice between a player behind the baseline and a player who is on the service line, whether it’s the man or the woman, it just makes sense to go to the direction of who is closest to you not to hit at them, to hit towards the person who has the least amount of time to react. So I think it’s important to point out that there is a difference between going towards to woman in that situation and just going towards the woman on any single ball possible. And just overtly, I guess kind of being a dick about it. There is a big difference between those two things isn’t there?

Jason : A huge difference. I’ve definitely hit around with my fair share of women, but it’s with balls that make sense. It’s not every single return. It’s not every single volley. It’s not every single overhead. It’s more towards points that make sense and obviously there is some strategy in trying to win so it’s not like I’m picking on the guy, but yeah, there is a big difference between hitting 97% of your shots to one person no matter what and just being smart.

Ian : Good discussion. This is the first time actually that a mixed doubles question has come up on the Podcast. I wanted to kind of get that out in the air a little bit and I’d be curious to see what listeners think about that. Send me an email this week guys and tell me what your opinions are on I guess what the protocol should be in those situations.

Now before we get to our last question I want to tell you guys briefly about our sponsor at the Essential Tennis Podcast and that is TennisTours.com. Since 1987, they’ve been putting together ticket packages to professional tennis events including all of the grand slams and most of the ATP 1000 events. If you are going to watch professional players play, whether it’s WTA or ATP which is an amazing experience, please check out TennisTours. Com to see what they offer and very often for most of these events, they offer lots of different options in terms of the quality of seats, you can get luxury suites, you can get individual tickets, grounds passes. All kinds of different options as far as exactly how close you want to get to the action. And they also offer packages along with hotels and accommodations.

So you can get everything in one place. Now if you use the promotional code ‘Essential’ as you check out, you’ll receive a $25 discount off your purchase. So please show them your appreciation for their sponsorship of the essential tennis podcast by purchasing your tickets through them the next time you go to a professional event. And they have tickets for the Sony Ericcson Open if you guys happen to be heading out there to see them play. Also the French Open and all kinds of other different events.

So again, TennisTours. Com, use the promotional code ‘Essential’ when you checkout and I thank them very much for their support of the Essential Tennis Podcast.

Now we’ve got one more question to get to. So let’s shift gears a little bit and this comes from Adrian in the Philippines. He’s a 3. 5 player. He wrote to me and said ‘basically, I don’t know what kind of serve I should be practicing. I already have reliable, moderately paced ground strokes and can place them but I’m struggling with my serve. I’m 5’7 tall and I can’t do flat serves. I’m now trying to put more pace on my slice serve which is my best first serve now in terms of reliability although it doesn’t go in as much as I’d like it to. All in all, I would very much appreciate your advice on how I should progress with my serve practice. For now, I am just looking for a decent first and second serve to get me through my matches. So what do you think about that Jason?

Jason : Well a couple things pop into my head. For one, saying that you can’t do flat serves, I have to wonder why.

Ian : I agree.

Jason : I just can’t think of a good reason. If your arm hurts, that means that you are doing it wrong. I can’t think of a good reason that you say you can’t do flat serves other than you don’t know how and you should probably check out the website a bit and learn to [inaudible] and do a flat serve because those are really quite important. Wouldn’t you say?

Ian : Yeah. Absolutely. Although on the other side of the coin, I would say that at his level, in my opinion, typically I’m trying to get students to learn how to have a good, reliable, I guess aggressive spin serve first that they can be really confident with and accelerate at.

But eventually, having a flat serve is definitely something that you guys listening are going to want to develop at some point. And Adrian throws in their his height, and I think he’s using that as his reason. He says he’s 5’7 and can’t do flat serves and that is an excuse for having a flat serve. I’ve known plenty of people shorter than you who have a good flat serve. So that’s not a reason why. It has more to do with mechanics and technique like Jason was talking about.

That being said, I think he should probably develop his spin serve first. What do you think about that Jason?

Jason : I kind of tend to go a different way from most people when I try to teach people serves, I like them to try and figure out how they are manipulating the ball more so than [inaudible] making the ball. So if he already knows how to hit a slice serve, so he’s hitting around the right side of the ball just fine. He should be able to [inaudible] wrists over and hit through the middle of the ball. And he should be able to drop the racket head down and hit up with the side of his racket over the ball for a kick. I traditionally will teach people all three serves at the same time so that when they hit something, they can feel what they did– whether it’s on purpose or an accident. And then progress from there and it’s, in my opinion, it’s way easier to learn that way than just trying to hit once serve and figuring it out from there. – My advice would be figure out how you are manipulating the ball, watch the way it bounces, listen to the sound that it makes. Check out how hard it is. All of those are clues to what just happened and then figure out ways to manipulate your racket differently to create all three serves. And for sure, your height means nothing as far as not being able to hit a flat serve.

Ian : There was a player when Jason and I were at Ferris State, there was a player who played on the women’s team and her nickname was 5’1 which was her height. And she had a pretty big serve as far as the women’s team was concerned. She had one of the better serves on the team. So her height did not hold her back at all. And I’m able to hit a pretty decent flat serve on my knees as well. So the height definitely doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it.

Jason : If I was teaching somebody and he had a slice serve and wanted to learn others, the big thing that I would try to make points of is to just move your racket around the ball and hit it differently and figure out which spin you’ve just created and move on that way. There is no good reason why you can’t teach himself how to do kick serves by watching videos and reading and just paying attention to what he has done for the ball.

Ian : Alright, good stuff. And with that we’re going to wrap it things up. And I want to thank the people who have submitted questions for today’s show. Adrian in the Philippines, Jason in Illinois USA and Thomas in Germany– a nice diverse group of people. It’s always cool to hear questions from all different parts of the world. If you’re listening and would like to have one of your questions featured on the show, you can always send me an email at ian@essentialtennis.com or on the Podcast page at essentialtennis.com there is a form that you guys can fill out to submit a question also.

But Jason, I want to thank you very much for your time. Thank you for talking with me about these topics and me and my listeners both appreciate it very much.

Jason : Thanks for having me Ian.

Ian : You bet. I hope to see more of you around the forums.

Jason : I hope to see you on the golf course.

Ian : Touche. Sometime soon we definitely have to meet up and play.

Jason : Alright. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Ian : That’s it for today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining Jason and myself. Hopefully you enjoyed today’s show and in wrapping up, I’d like to do a couple of shout out’s here to people who have donated over last week. First of all Tychi in Maryland donated $20 to Essential Tennis. Patrick in Nebraska donated $10. Shelly in New Mexico made her $10 monthly subscription donation and John in New Mexico made his $5 monthly subscription donation. So thank you to all four of you very much. I appreciate your support and Tyche in Maryland I’m going to be sending you an Essential Tennis shirt free of charge for being the top donator of last week. Thank you very much.

Now if you are listening and the Essential Tennis Podcast has helped improve your game, please consider making a donation. Any amount is always helpful and each week, the top donator gets a free Essential Tennis t-shirt. Just go to EssentialTennis.com and on the front page on the lower right, there is a button that says donate. So check that out.

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