Essential Tennis Podcast #122

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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 on the Podcast I have a really exciting guest who is back for his second time being a guest on the show. And we are going to be talking about adding offense to your singles’ game in tennis. It’s going to be a really good discussion and let’s go ahead and get right to it.

Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music] [music]

My guest today on the podcast is Dave, the Koz, Kozlowski. Koz, welcome back to the show I’m really happy to have you back on the Podcast.

Koz: Ian, always a pleasure. Great to be here with you this evening and I know you have a great topic so I’m eager to get going with it.

Ian: Awesome. Well, I want to welcome you back to the program. The Koz was a guest on the Essential Tennis Podcast for episode 108. And for those of you that haven’t heard that episode, definitely go to the archives and download it. We talked about power versus control for the recreational player in that episode. And we discussed why control is so important for those of you listening. We discussed things like rhythm and being able to maintain a steady rally back and forth.

Not only was the topic excellent for us to talk about, what really shown through for myself and I’ve heard this over and over from my listeners– your enthusiasm and passion for the game was electric and was really fun to listen to. So I’m really happy to have you back on the program.

Koz: You are so kind, my friend, but let me tell you. I’m only as good as the audience allows me to be and only as good as a host brings out of me. So you brought it out and the audience was very attentive. But indeed we did, we talked about control first and then some power and some offense coming second.

But it’s so important to get that repeatable and dependable shot that you can hit the same swing, the same type of tempo time after time so you get the shot groove. Now you’ve got this audience very excited about adding some offense and what I think is very important is that they realize that offense doesn’t only have to come with power. It can certainly come from change of spin and change of speed– adding a slice to your game. And let’s not forget the impact that dropshots have on the tennis game. Especially at the 3.5 level where it’s difficult to change direction and get to a dropshot. We saw a lot of drop shots coming from Paris the last couple of weeks. We are going to see a lot of drop shots coming from the Wimbeldon championships because they will be dropshotting just as much on grass as they did on clay because the bounce stays low.

But what does the dropshot do for the average player at a club level? Well, it throws off the rhythm of the opponent. First of all, you make the opponent come in. Sometimes that opponent may not like to be in the four-court or may not like to be at the net. And all of a sudden you are testing their volleys.

Plus by bringing someone in on a dropshot, it adds to your confidence. When you have a target at the net, your passing shots are supplemented and all of a sudden you feel that you’ve got confidence and have more trust in your shots. You can then pass the player at the net.

So let’s not overlook the importance of a dropshot. Along with the dropshot, once you get a player in there, let’s throw in a lob. So you hit a dropshot and then you hit a lob and then all of a sudden, you are getting offense to your game. You are getting scoring opportunities without relying on slug power only. And it’s so important to add these shots to your game. You know that there are a lot of opponents that you can beat in singles. Especially on the female gender– and I’m not distinguishing men from women. In match play, it’s even but a lot of women don’t like to run forward and then have to back peddle. So if you have a drop shot and follow it up with a lob, that is offense personafied. You have offense glorified there and you can get a lot of mileage out of two little simple shots– a drop shot followed up by a lob.

Ian: It’s really interesting that you bring up the point that offense and aggression doesn’t necessarily have to equal power. And you hitting the ball hard and I think that’s definitely a misconception among today’s recreational players who watch modern professional tennis on TV and no doubt you have to have weapons at that level and you need to have a certain level of paste to your to your shots and we talked in episode 108 about so often recreational players these days try to copy that to their own detriment. And we’re definitely going to get into a variety and how that can help the question asked for today’s show and let’s go ahead and get into his question. His name is A. J. Glenn A.J. How are you? Let’s hear this question–

So A. J. wrote to me and said I’m about a 3.5 player and play two to three times per week. I’m really trying to up my consistency with my strokes and get away from the all or bust type of game where I really go for too many winners I have been doing a lot of work on the wall and have gotten my consistency up quite a bit over the past few months however in my matches my consistency doesn’t really put me on the offensive side of the ball and i find myself playing a lot more defense then I would like I end up running a lot throughout the match and by the end i have nothing left what can i do to find that blend of consistency that doesn’t always put me on the defense? When should I go for the aggressive play?

Koz: Well excuse me I’m sorry that you finished that statement you had me all excited about this wall i wanted to mention that as soon as your finished and i did not mean to interrupt i was encroaching in on your territory there pardon me.

Ian: I just wanted to say that basically id like to split this conversation up into two main categories number one when is it appropriate for a recreational level player to start working on offense and the number two how does a recreational player start to achieve this? We’ve already thrown out a couple of ideas there lets um, tell you what go ahead and run with that cause because i agree i was excited myself when i read that a recreational player would actually take the time and concentration necessary to hit against a wall.

Why don’t you talk a little bit about how good a practice that is?

Koz: Well i will tell you this this is kinda sounding corny but anything coming from the cause at times can sound corny but where there is a wall ladies and gentlemen tennis fans there is a way because theres instrumental practice and skills that you can gain from hitting against the wall Monica Sellis is seven times slam– nine time slam champion would spend a minimum of two hours a day hitting against the wall. Now this was an addition to playing several sets a day doing a number of conditioning and drills on the court but she would supplemented with hitting against the wall.

Theres no better practice area to work on getting confidence to hit passing shots so this guy is on the right track keep on the wall. Make that part of your weekly supplements to your game now lets talk about this offense. Many players are equipped to give there opponents chances to lose very few players that were actually talking even at the high level, high college even the respectable pro level there is not always equipped to beat there opponent but they are equipped to get give there opponent a chance to lose.

So were only in a point you gotta take the perspective i want to play investment tennis. I’m willing to hit three, four shots. I want to work the point I’m going to give this guy a chance to lose before i try to go for one strike tennis meaning get that ball and try to hit a winner that’s overly aggressive for most players you still have to get the opponent some opportunity to lose now on the other hand i heard this guy Aj saying that hes not able to have the offense because the guy is running him around and you want to take the point you want to take the perception that is that your trying to orchestrate this point your trying to set it up your trying to build the point so your hitting slightly wide shots to the other side making the opponent run and hoping that he coughs up a short ball then the option starts to arrive arise when you have a chance to hit an approach winner perhaps a short ball to set it up that your going in to terminate it with a volley or that drop shot that we talked about so those options are available if you move the opponent early in the point but your not necessarily trying to win the point your not trying to conclude the point or terminate it on the first shot

Ian: Going out to play first strike winners so that you’re willing mentally and physically. You have the patience. You have the prudence to try to set it up. And perhaps it will contribute to your funds. He may cough up some outright unforced winners.

Unforced errors rather. Before you have the chance to try to terminate it yourself. So, my advice always is try and keep the ball in play. Give him a chance to make some errors. Then when the opportunity occurs you try to strike.

And you may not even go after an outright winner. What your trying to do is to put him more in an awkward spot. Maybe run him wider to the side with some short angle crosscuts. Trying to hit the ball deep. So that he coughs up that short ball that you can eventually attack.

So the key is to have a combination of some patience. Along with some prudence. And that prudence, need’nt be in many times, just includes knowing the right shot to hit at that time. Going with the shot selection.

Now there are times where the ball actually puts you on defense. And the trick is to be as smart as Federer is. And as talented as Federer is. When he’s on defense he’s at one he’s one of the best coming up with a shot that is going to next put his opponent in an awkward position. That doesn’t mean hitting a winner.

It means having the ability to perhaps dump the ball at the opponents feet as he’s coming in. Whereas that in the middle of the court. So you find a way to make it awkward for the opponent. Is that getting offense out of your game? You better believe it is.

So it’s a combination of knowing when you’re in that ability to go for something big. And when you’re in the location that you, matter, may be better going for so something at a more moderate type of offensive shots.

Ian: Good stuff guys and lets take that one step further and get really specific. And your talking about being patient on the court. I like how you how you use the work orchestrate.

It kinda to to conduct the points. And be able to work your opponent back and forth. Which does take patience. To be able to do that without going for the out outright winner too quickly. And your talking about waiting from errors from your opponent.

And lastly you, you were discussing waiting for an opportunity to be able to make your opponent uncomfortable or catch them off balance. Not necessarily through power. Now let’s talk a little bit. Or I’d like to hear your thoughts on and keeping in mind that AJ is a 3’5 player.

Koz: Oh that’s, that’s respectable and he can play with 85 percent of the people that are playing tennis

Ian: absolutely.

Koz: out there.

So that’s, that’s applaudable right there.

Ian: Yeah, yeah no doubt. And yeah that puts him above average for recreational tennis players. Which definitely is outstanding. Keep keeping in mind his his ability level.

What should he be looking for in terms of opportunities? When he he goes out to play a match and when the rest of my listeners go out to play a match and they’re around a 3 5 level. What do does opportunity look like at that level? What should they be looking for?

Koz: Well I think a lot of times the all court games separates levels of players.

And often times that they let’s say 3 0 level they’re able to volley very well close to the net. But their volley’s go down. Their confidence goes down. They’re not as comfortable as they start to volley from the midcourt. And it’s imperative that players who want to go to that 4 0 and above level that they learned how to hit volley’s from all over the court.

And that means tempered volley’s from defense at the service line. Or with high volley’s at the base line instead of letting the ball drop in and bounce in over their head. But they are able to come in and pop it deep. Maybe if it’s floating and they’re able to move forward. They take a more offensive stroke volley swing at it.

But you know Ian I think that one of the keys is that often times players don’t really supplement enough underspins of their game. Everybody is so caught up on hitting heavy top spin. And top spin I in fact I try to avoid the word top spin. And just try to refer to it as adding more gravity to the shot. Because basically the club player is going to obtain sufficient top spin by starting low and finishing higher than where he started.

Of course the higher he comes up the more quickly he comes up the more added gravity he puts on the ball. As we refer to it in the industry as top spin. But instead of trying to generate top spin by trying to turn the wrist and flip the racket and trying to make the top spin. Then just get into a confident mode of starting undefined undefined the ball up higher so you get it in an unfavorable strike zone for the opponent, but it’s also time to spend some time on your tennis career, adding a underspin. And what happens often times, those who start hitting only flats or hitting only top spin, or let’s just say hitting top spin initially, that’s about the extent of their game. They can only hit top spin and they can’t [inaudible] on the short ball or on the low short ball, they have trouble because they haven’t learned how to slice. The best advice you can give yourself is to try to explore all these shots.

Look at how this underslice is hit, the value of coming under the ball, getting that rub wipe across the ball and the action that the ball picks up. And it’s important that you add these early, because I know for a fact there is some very accomplished players at even a higher level, at 4.0, 4.5 that can’t hit the underspin. And they used to talk about Ivan Lendl when he played on grass. He looked like someone where a black tie outfit, wearing a tux but wearing brown shoes, and it’s almost the same. [laughter] They can hit excessive top spin at the baseline but when it comes in to hitting something else, some dropshots, some change of pace, some chips going in, they’re not as comfortable. Part of the reason is that they may have hit top spin only for too long of a time.

Can you add the shot later in life? You bet you can. Is it tougher for some? Yes it is, because you become so secure with what feels comfortable, what feels secure, that you have some challenge adding those under spins. So the advice you should give yourself–I’m going to give it to you right now along with you giving it to yourself, is do not be afraid to start to come under the ball. Open the face of the racket. Explore with some grips. Turn the hand halfway between a forehand and a backhand. Maybe even start to hit some backhands. Now this is not radical. This is good, solid training stuff to hit a backhand grip on a forehand side and you’re going to force yourself to open the face and to come under the ball. And all of a sudden you’re starting to supplement your game with some underspin shots.

Ian: So Koz, let’s talk a little bit more about the actual application of that slice as it pertains to being offensive and being able to throw our opponents off balance and relieve some pressure, I guess is what we’re looking for. AJ was talking about being able to run down shots and building his consistency so he’s doing a lot of great work on the courts and improving his game. And now your advice to him is to work on more variety of shot by using that slice or the underspin. So I’ve heard you throw out the idea of dropshotting. I’ve also heard you, during our discussion, talk about just throwing the slice in there as a change of pace. Let’s talk a little bit more about specific application and how he can make his opponents uncomfortable, maybe even while he’s playing a touch opponent that’s maybe pushing him around the court a little bit.

Koz: Well I think anytime that you see a ball that bounces around the service line, that has a bit of topspin on, there are options that occur. You can flatten out, you can topspin it back, or you also can go in and hit the opposite spin that’s been delivered to you. And many, many times the best time to hit a dropshot, or a shot as a chip, or a chop or a change of pace is when someone’s hit a soft topspin into the middle of the court. That ball is most favorable to hit as a drop shot or as a slice coming back, and this drop shot–the key on the dropshot is to be able to think in terms of a miniature lob. When you ask yourself, what is the characteristic of a lob, most people will say, ‘It’s a ball that goes up and it’s a ball that comes down.’ Well believe it or not, that’s what a dropshot is. It’s a miniature form of a lob, and people are going to have better shots with the dropshot, better results with the dropshots if they get the mentality that they’re not trying to hit straight ahead as a line drive, because they may spin that ball. They may underslice it but if it’s going straight ahead with a low line drive trajectory, that ball is going to carry much more deeply than a ball that is arced, that once it hits, it kind of sits down. It doesn’t undefined

Koz: So what you’re trying to achieve, is a ball that has some arc. So it’s going up, going down. Characteristics of good drop shots are soft hands, strong legs. So that you’re actually, in your mind, attempting to hit a ball so softly, that you want to see it drop on your side of the net. Now you really don’t want to do that, because you’re going to lose the points. But when you’re practicing, you want to feel that you’re trying to hit the ball so softly–out of the hands–that the ball goes up. But it comes down, hitting your side of the net. Well how do you get that ball to go over?

Keep the hands just as soft as they are, but widen your stance. As you go to hit that drop shot, take an extra 8, 10 inches wider stance as you hit. So that the wider stance allows you to lean forward more, to push the ball forward with your body. But you have the soft hands, and the strong legs.

The drop shots are very effective. The trick is, as you know as being a quality coach, once you learn one of these underspin shots on your forehand, you have the ball. You have a drop ball or you have a dropshot. You have a lob volley, you have a chip return serve. You have somebody that smashes the ball at you. Instead of trying to drive swing, you just chip it as a lob, or you chip it as an underspin. So I can’t tell you the value that one gains by learning this drop shot.

A key trick on learning underspin; I’ve had players go to the net–and I’ll try to speak this as we’re listening and not seeing it–but actually stand on the opposite side of the net than I am. Place his or her racket flush against the net on the forehand, taking the arm out as far to the right as it it’ll go. And the racket cannot go forward. Once it goes forward, you drive. But the racket can go from right to left.

It can go across the ball, so that you get that rub, wipe effect. So as the player is stretched out far on the side, on his side of the net, I’m standing on the other side. I deliver a ball–an underhand toss–that bounces, perhaps 4 or 5 feet in front of the net. As soon as that ball hits the net, he gets the sensation that he’s rubbing and wiping across the net. All of the sudden, the player starts to get the identity, that it’s not a hit, it’s a rub. It’s a wipe, you’re starting to sweep across the ball.

You get that shot, you’ll learn all types of chips. You’ll learn how to hit inside the ball, and veer the ball out to the side. You’ll learn how to hit behind the ball, and throw it up for a drop shot. You’ll learn how to chip and charge behind a second serve, or a short ball that’s hit as your starting to approach the net. Here’s the beauty–you add these drop shots, these shots are going to get better all your life.

I know I’m on record tonight, but I’ll go on record, and I’ll say this: There is no way in Heaven or Hell, that I can hit the ground strokes, or the serve as hard as Federer, or Roddick, or any of them. No way. You know that, maybe you can’t either. But I will tell you this. Can I hit the drop shots as well as they do? Can I hit the spins as well as they can on the approaches? I would say I can. Because, these shots don’t acquire power, they acquire finesse. These are shots that are going to stay with you for life.

Many times, as you age–and we all do playing tennis–all of the sudden, you’re out of the 35′s. You’re approaching the 50′s, and you want the specialty shots to be able to terminate the point,. And that’s where some offense comes without having the power.

Ian: Great stuff guys.

Koz: You’re so kind, thank you.

Ian: I’ve got to admit to you, I would have come at this from a different direction. I definitely would have– I’m more of a student of the more modern style of play than styles past.

Koz: Nothing wrong with that at all.

Ian: However, I do appreciate these touch shots that you’re talking about. They’re a big part of my game, so I definitely enjoy hearing you talk about– I agree with you. Once you learn one type of this type of soft, finesse type shot, so many options become available. That’s absolutely true.

Koz: Well, let’s touch a bit on the power. The key is to be able to generate power when someone has not given power to you. We’ll go into a bit of stroke production. There must be some reason why 95 plus percent–maybe closer to 99%, take a circular back on their back swing on the forehand and many on the back hand, because they can generate pace off of a slower ball. Most times the most difficult for everybody is to generate pace when the pace isn’t given to you. But I think if a lot of players start to try to try (1) keep the foot work continuous and it may mean three, four steps going nowhere. The foot work is continuous, and the back swing is continuous.

And the mentality that you want to have when trying to generate power is to feel that you have a slow start maybe at 10 miles an hour, it’s increasing to 20 miles an hour, and all of a sudden as your racket goes to hit the ball, your racket is moving at a 30 mile plus speed. So it’s a slow start. Let it build up, and then a fast finish. When one tries to hit power and generates it from the initial part of the swing, one has a tendency–and there’s a strong propensity to get a bit more muscular than you can afford to be and still hit a powerful shot. Most of the power from the top players comes from racket head acceleration.

A much better chance of getting that racket head acceleration by starting slowly in the beginning allowing the racket head to speed up. But I think that all our players at a 3, 5–all our players even at a start off 20–are going to be better with a more conventional–and we call it conventional because it’s been around longer than your age and my age, and that’s close to 100 combined– over 100 years of a circular back swing, but it’s very vogue today, because they know the advantage of keeping the back swing continuous.

So the folks and the tennis fans that want to add power explore with the circular back swing. One of the tricks in the circular back swing, instead of going straight back initially take it slightly up so it’s slightly up, back, and around so there is a flow, a loop. Almost feel that you’re trying to trace a backward letter of a C on a blackboard that it’s up, back and around, and slow start, fast finish.

I think the other to get power, there’s nothing wrong with getting the confidence on a short ball to move into side shuffle, and to skip, and to karaoke step in. But you’re moving in and actually get the legs low and as you hit it, come off the ground. I can’t tell you tell you what kind of confidence that builds. That is a confidence maker right there, is to actually jump up as you hit that ball so that you have the confidence and the trust that you’re not holding back. Are you working hard? Not so hard on the arm. You’re starting to use racket head speed, but you’re also getting tremendous leg lift into the shots.

But I’ve got to comment. You talked about today’s game, and [inaudible] figured out the male dog around the fire hydrant on the back hand. Now, some players lift the back foot and jump, and I know that’s for power. Perhaps you can touch on that, Ian. You see a lot of that where the back foot actually comes up to add some power, and jumping along with it.

Ian: Are you talking about more a forehand, or a backhand stroke or both?

Koz: I’m seeing it more on the backhand. I don’t know if it’s more suited on the two handed side versus the one handed side, but it reminds me of a male dog hanging around a fire hydrant and a bit of a leg lift coming up with it.

Ian: Yeah, I can definitely picture what you’re talking about and I kind of associate that with what you were describing a second ago having to do with kind of a hop, skip, or a jump moving into a shorter shot where players are trying to hit more aggressively. And I think the lifting up of that back leg is something that just kind of happens naturally for a lot of players who are trying to transfer their body weight around and into a shot kind of leaning forward into the court as they make contact. I think that’s probably–the back leg lifting is probably a good transfer forward a lot of times.

Koz: You know what I used to do in the past is to have a 12 inch high platform out there wide enough that you could have both feet stand on it. So you this in your mind. You’re standing on this 12 inch high platform, I give you the ball to your back hand where it’s out in front and tell you to jump higher than where you’re standing off of that platform so you’re a good 24, 26 inches into the air as you’re hitting that, and that really gives you the sensation of not being afraid to come off the ground and really attack the ball. Plus for a lot of players that builds another dimension of coordination in their game. Coordination …was brought out multiple ways the way you can jump in any sport. The more you can jump and leap in tennis you’re supplement that coordination. You’re bringing coordination out of some players that might not have had that athletic coordinated movement.

Ian: I’ve just got more more question for you Koz before we wrap things up.

Koz: Absolutely.

Ian: Of course the time is flown by during our conversation here. In fact we are already over time but I am really curious to hear your comments on one more questions I have. We started off our discussion with AJ’s question and he wanted to figure out how to keep away from being so defensive during match play. You started the conversation discussing the use of slice. Being able to throw his opponent off balance, put in a change of pace and regain control of the points.

You also just talked about the addition of some more power by using more of a circular back swing, also using the legs more to propel the body forward, especially on short balls. What I am curious about, let’s try to bring this all together a little bit, how can AJ and the rest of my listeners tell which one is more important for them right now? In other words, are there symptoms during their match play, when they lose matches that more touch and finesse and variety would be a bigger benefit for them to develop? Or are there also symptoms where adding more power is probably what they need to be able to make it to the next level?

Koz: That is absolutely a superb and a great question and I’m going to spin it this way. You ready. Accomplished teaching professional, when you go to play some three five players, you can actually beat them by ball placement by some chips, by some change of place, some change of spins, some drop shots, some lobs. Are you over powering them with your offense? No. You’re just using an all court game. Along with adding power, I’m not against that at all, but I think that it’s just as important. I holding fast on steadfast [laughter] on the fact that you supplement all the shots. Because you can become one dimensional and only have access of topspin and losing out in a myriad of other areas. Flattening out. Changing speed. Coming under it. Lobing as an under spin ball. Drop shotting. Drop volley.

I think that it’s important that they supplement the power game with some change of pace. The question was not so much how they were getting power but how they could add more offense. What I saw that question without adding more power how can I add more offense, I was very excited to take it first, or take it in an area that we hadn’t talked power. We talked about finesse and using all court tennis. I would still open that same talk the same way, Andy.

Ian: Alright Coz, Thank you very much for your thoughts today. It’s been great to have you back on the podcast and before we send you off can you please tell my listeners where they can find you online. I know you are doing some projects with a website, correct?

Koz: We are. The website is the website is indietennis.com, and indie is spelled indie tennis is tennis.com. We just a did a great resort review in your area [inaudible] down in Bethany Beach.

We did an extensive program 7 days of day after post at the National Spring Championships down in Mobile. We will certainly be in New York doing a number of things at the US Open. It’s indietennis.com. I doing some things with tennis balls.com and that tennis is tennis is 10sballs.com. Those are some interviews that were pickup that are not always being video taped but they are audio mp3s that are on 10sballs .com.

Ian: OK. Alright There you go guys. Go check it out, indietennis.com and 10sballs.com. Go check out the Coz’s other materials. Coz thank you very much for spending time with me and for answering AJ’s question. I really appreciate it. I know my listeners are going to enjoy today’s show so thank you your time.

Koz: The pleasure is mine. Tennis fans remember in tennis scoring, love means nothing, but love of the game means everything. You keep alive your love of the game Love you tennis fans. Love you too Andy.

Koz: Thanks for having me on. [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Alright. That does it for episode #122 of the Essential Tennis podcast. Thank you very much for joining me on today’s show and I hope it was interesting, entertaining and instructional for you. It hopefully gave you a couple new ideas about how you can develop some offense in your tennis game.

If today’s show was helpful, check out the archives. Go to www.EssentialTennis.com, go to Podcasts and then Archives. You can access all 122 episodes of the podcast, which I need to sit down and edit up, but it’s something like 60 or 70 hours of instruction now.

We are actually working on reworking that section of the website in the near future. You, guys, will be able to browse by category and topic, and it’ll be more convenient in the near future.

It’s free to access. All you have to do is sign up for the free Essential Tennis newsletter and that’s it. So go check it out.

Alright. That does it for this week. Thanks very much for tuning in. Take care, and good luck with your tennis! [music] [music] [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #121

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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: 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 is brought to you by tennistours.com where you can receive a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis event tickets by using the promotional code Essential.

Thanks very much for joining me today for today’s episode of the podcast. We are going to be talking all about volleys today and how to practice your volleys, specifically to improve them and make them a better and stronger part of your game.

Before we get to that, I want to remind you about the best way that you can access to Essential Tennis podcast and that is through iTunes which is a free download for the Mac or PC. And through iTunes, you can subscribe to the Essential Tennis podcast and automatically get the episode every week as soon as it gets released as long as you have iTunes open.

So you don’t even have to go to the website to download the file. So check it out and subscribe to the show that way and also, as long as you are there, do me a favour and go to the music store, search for tennis, go to the podcast and rate and leave a review for the podcast. I would really appreciate that, that helps with the ratings for the show and will help more people find it on iTunes.

So give me a hand and leave a review for the show. Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s talk about volleys and the idea for today’s show came to us from Eddie who is a 3.5 player who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He wrote to me a little while ago and said ‘I’m primarily a singles player and I know that I can significantly improve my game if I come to the net more often. I know that I’m missing great opportunities to finish out points. I’m not comfortable at the net and have been playing more doubles to work on my net play. Besides playing more doubles, how do you suggest that a single’s player feel more comfortable coming to the net, thanks.’

That’s an awesome question and I’m really happy that you are asking it. You are absolutely right, coming to the net more in your single’s play is going to improve your tennis game. Especially if you are not comfortable with it now and you just haven’t been using it.

So, I really congratulate you on taking this step in your game and I hope you stick with it and you continue to work at your net game. Because as you pointed out, it will give you so many more opportunities to be able to put the ball away. And this was the case yesterday– Will Hamilton of fuzzyyellowballs and myself did a live webcast and we were doing commentary during the French Open final between [inaudible] and Nadal. And [inaudible] was hitting some big groundstrokes. Nadal of course as he is known for was playing really good defence and getting to just about everything that was been thrown at him. And [inaudible] had so many chances to move forwards after a big groundstroke where Nadal was on the run in a tough spot, barely getting to the ball, hitting with an open racket face and was obviously just going to push the ball back into play. Now push is a relative term of course, push by a professional standards is just putting it back in play essentially. And [inaudible] was just standing on the baseline or even a couple of steps inside of hte baseline and just standing there watching Nadal run back and forth.

And Will and myself were really pretty hard on [inaudible] about not taking those types of opportunities to move forwards and put the ball away with a simple volley instead of giving Nadal the time that it took for the ball to get all the way back to [inaudible] and then for [inaudible] to setup and launch himself into another big groundstroke.

That’s just an example at the professional level of where you guys will have chances but if you are not comfortable at the net and you don’t like to volley, you are not going to look for those opportunities and you are throwing away points. You’ve got chances and you’ve got to taking advantage of them.

Now playing doubles, one more thing before we get into the actual ways that you can improve your volleys, playing doubles is a great way to practice your net game. And a great way to round out your game. If you’ve only played singles up to now, it’s going to be awkward. It’s going to be uncomfortable. You are going to feel like a fish out of water. You are going to think you are a bad player because you won’t be able to understand how it can possibly feel so different from singles. And you are going to say to yourself ‘well this is just another way to play tennis, right? We are still playing tennis out here. There are just four of us instead of two. How hard could it possibly be?’

Well if you’ve only played singles, and you go and play some doubles for the first time, you are going to feel really strange on the court. I remember first starting to play doubles when I was still a junior player. I definitely played almost all singles until college but my coach definitely brought me to doubles early on– or at least go me some experience before I went off to college. And I hated it at first. I was not comfortable with it.

Now when you go to college to play tennis, you have to play both singles and doubles. Very rarely does a player play only one or another. So I really had no choice but to improve to net game.

And once I got into it and I really started getting comfortable with the tactics and the strategy and the tempo of play and communicating with my partner and all those type of things, I really started to love it. There are times now where I definitely enjoy doubles more than singles.

So continue to play doubles and that will round out your singles game. Now let’s get down to different ways that you can continue working on your volleys as a singles player. We are not going to talk much about technique today. I will definitely be throwing in some tips and suggestions on how you guys can do better with your volleys or half-volleys or shots at the net. But I’m going to be focusing mostly on drills that you guys can do and we’re going to be talking about seven different volley drills. I’ve got an outline for each of them, so we are going to get right into it and hopefully get to all seven. There is going to be four cooperative drills, meaning drills that you do with a partner, just one other person and they’re drills that you are trying to work with somebody else as a partner on the other side of the net to be able to keep a ball going back and forth for a certain purpose.

And I’m going to be talking about three competitive drills. Drills where you can actually play out points and make it count and practice your volleys within an actual point situation.

Now we are going to talk about the cooperative drills first. And I’m going to be talking about these in progression from the simplest to the most difficult. We are going to talk about the easiest volley drill to do first and as I go through all four, I’m going to progress in difficulty. It’s important for you guys to understand this and in my lessons, with my students that I work with, on a weekly basis we very typically go through this whole progression of all four of these cooperative drills. Moving from the easiest down through the most difficult in order to really drill their net game and to get them more and more comfortable hitting volleys at the net.

So, let’s go on and start with number one. Cooperative drill number one is a simple volley to volley rally with you and your partner across from each other, half way between the net and the service line. So you guys are probably about 15 feet apart or so which is close. You guys are going to be close to each other. Again, half way between the net and the service line, no closer, no farther away. Both of you guys should be in that same position. And from here your goal is to keep the ball in the air back and forth. And to have each of you continue to hit volleys, both forehands and backhands.

Now in order to do this effectively, a couple of things have to happen. You both have to hit with an open racket face. Meaning your strings are angled upwards towards the sky or towards the ceiling. Why is this important? Because we are not trying to hit these shots at each other, meaning have the ball come off your racket and go directly at your partner. Why? Because that means that the ralleys are only going to last about two shots each and our goal here is to keep the ball going as long as possible. We want long rallies.

Secondly, you want to have relaxed hands. Don’t hit these firmly. Your hands should be [inaudible] and we’re honestly barely holding on to the racket. You should be very relaxed as you hit with that open racket face. And you’re really just trying to bump the ball up into the air, we’re litterally angling the strings up to hit the ball up, and then have the ball come back down again to your partner. So the ball should be falling down to your partner, you’re not trying to hit at your partner.

A couple other things to focus on here: Make sure that you start to split step every time your partner hits the ball. And in general, stay on your toes and continue to move your feet. Please do not stand there and rally back and forth. That will be a detriment to your game. You have to practice good footwork. And those of you listening who were at the latest clinic in Baltimore, know exactly what I’m talking about. We started out that clinic with some short courts, rallies back and forth, nice and swell, and I got on everybody’s case immediately about moving their feet. Even when the ball was not coming to them, when the ball was coming to another player that was next to them, I was yelling at people from across 2 courts, “Your feet are not moving anymore.” And when you guys get into the habit of this, you’ll get in better shape, and you’ll have a better habit of continuing to move your feet. So, even though this might be easy for some of you guys, to rally close and soft and relaxed back and forth, keep your feet moving, get in the habit of split stepping, It’s going to make your volleys better.

Now, this volley to volley rally, softly, I want you guys to do it with your partner until you’ve made 20 volleys in a row without any bounces. The ball lands in front of either of you, or if it hits the net, or if one of you guys can’t reach one of the volleys, that’s it. You go back down to zero again, start again, and keep going until you get 20 in a row back and forth without any bounces. If you can’t do that, then this is all you do that day. Alright? With your partner. And you keep working at it until you get 20. And if you can not get 20, do not progress to the next drill. Because this is where you need to work on. This should be the easiest out of the 4 drills that we’re talking about. And if you can’t do it, don’t move on. Alright? Focus on improving this part of your game.

Alright, cooperative drill number 2. Volley to volley from the service line. This is going to be obviously very similar to the first drill that I talked about, but this time you and your partner are going to back up a little further, and both of you will be in the middle of the service line. And you’re goal again is to keep the ball in the air back and forth. In order to do this, you still want an open racket face as you make contact with each volley. Don’t close your racket and drive to drive the ball, or hit it with top spin to get it to go farther. Keep your racket face open, and hit a simple, traditional volley. [noise] A little bit of back spin should be on each shot.

The difference between these volleys and the short ones, is that we do want to hit the ball a little bit firmer to get it to go farther, because we’re quite a bit deeper. If you guys are just like in your car, or you know, in your back yard listening to me now, it probably doesn’t sound like a big difference between the first drill where you’re half way between the net and the service line, and this one, where you and your partner are both at the service line. But trust me, it’s a big difference. It’s a lot tougher. Keep a simple technique. Keep an open racket face.

We’re just trying to hit through the ball a little more with that open face, a little bit firmer shot, to direct the ball towards your partner, and keep it deep, back and forth. You really should be aiming for about your partner’s chest, anything lower than that, and you want to either lower your racket face a bit more, or hit it a little bit firmer to try to keep it in the air back and forth. Just like the first drill, if the ball bounces, then fine. Practice your [inaudible] I’m going to give you guys a goal in a second, but what I don’t want to see you guys doing is running in for short shots and then trying to back up again.

Just stay on the service line for now. Keep it simple. Do keep your feet moving. And continue to split step. You can take a step forward to take the ball out of the air if you can reach it on one step, but for the most part you should just be staying on the service line, and taking the ball as it comes to you. [music] If your partner continues to hit it at your feet, or bouncing it in front of you, they need to work on their control and their depth of their volleys.

Remind them that they should be aiming for your chest and your goal is to keep the ball in the air back and forth. I want you and your partner to get 10 in a row in the air. So again, if the ball bounces, fine. Just hit a half volley, keep the rally going, but start your count again back at zero, and try to get 10 in a row. If you get 10 in a row no problem, shoot for 15 or 20. If you can get 20 in a row without a bounce, with both of you on the service line, without cheating inside the service line, you’re really doing an excellent job, and you and your partner are pretty advanced volleyers. That’s much easy… I’m sorry, much more difficult to do than what it sounds like just listening to me describe it. So, that’s cooperative volley drill number 2, both of you on the service line.

Let’s move on to the third one. Another progression here, and this is going to be ground strokes to volleys. One of you is now gonna be on the baseline, the other one in the middle of the service line. The ground stroke player is going to be either on the deuce side, or the ad side. They are going to take one half of the court back behind the baseline. The volleyer is going to be aiming past the service line now. Their target is going to be between the service line and the base line. So they’re trying to hit a deep volley and on one half of the singles’ court.

So, either the deuce half or the ad half, so essentially we’re taking that rectangle called no-man’s land, deep in the court between the service line and the baseline and we’re going to cut that in half. We’re not using the alleys, we’re just using half of no-man’s land, and that’s going to be the target for the volleyer. Put something there, by the way. In the middle of that half of no-man’s land put a ball pyramid, or a cone, or a hat, or something. Put it right in the middle of that box that you’re aiming for as the volleyer and literally try to hit it. It’s good for your concentration, and it’s a good reminder of what your objective is. You’re trying to hit your target over and over again.

Now, the ground stroke player should be making a full round stroke swing at a steady pace. This player is not trying to hit all out and hit aggressive shots, but make sure as the ground stroke player, that you’re not just pushing the ball towards the volleyer as well. You want to be making a full swing at whatever rally speed that you normally hit at, that you and your partner normally hit at. You should be trying to hit the volleyer in the air. Trying to give them as many volleys as possible. If it lands in front of them, that’s okey.

They can practice their half volleys as well. And volleyers, you should be remaining on the service line. Don’t cheat in. Don’t cheat in. You’re gonna want to. Especially if you don’t volley a lot. You’re gonna want to get closer where it’s easier to volley. Stay on the service line and practice your volleys from there. Stay on one half on no-man’s land until the volleyer makes 20 volleys total. Not in row, but a total of 20 that go past the service line and are on the correct half of the court, either the deuce side or the ad side, then switch over to the other side. Volleyer will stay in the middle of the service line, ground stroke player will shift over to the other half of the court, and the volleyer will make another set of 20. Alright? So that’s cooperative drill number 3.

Before we get to our fourth and final cooperative drill, I want to remind you guys about the sponsor of the Essential Tennis podcast, who I appreciate very much for their support of myself and for Essential Tennis, for the podcast, and that is Championship Tennis Tours. You can find them at tennistours.com, and since 1987 they’ve been selling individual tickets to professional tennis events, both the WTA and ATP events all over the world. And they not only sell individual tickets, but also complete ticket packages, including hotel and accommodations, even limousine service from your hotel to the tournament site, all kinds of different things, all kinds of different packages.

And if you haven’t been to a grand slam–and the US Open is gonna be coming up pretty quickly, Wimbledon is next, and then finally the US Open–if you haven’t been there before, you should really check out their packages for the US Open this year. You get a choice of all kind of different options, including choice of hotel between the W in Times Square, and Essex Hotel as well. Also in New York City. Both–obviously Times Square is in New York City–but both hotels you get to choose between those two. You get to choose the kind of ticket, how close you are to the action during the matches that you go to watch. You get shuttle service back and forth.

Also, a choice between tickets to a Mets or Yankees game, a city tour, or a broadway performance, all kind of awesome stuff. Plus, you’ll get an invitation to an exclusive Essential Tennis podcast cocktail party at the W Hotel in Times Square. And I’m gonna be making plans to be there myself, so you can meet me, and other listeners of the Essential Tennis podcast who are checking out the action at the US Open. So go check them out. Again, tennistours.com, and when you check out, if you’d like the invitation to that cocktail party, make sure to use the promotional code Essential with a capital E as you check out, for your purchase.

Alright, now let’s get to that final cooperative drill to work on your volleys. And this is gonna put together ground strokes and volleys. And as I told you guys when I kicked things off, this is been a progression from easiest to most difficult. This is gonna be the toughest drill here, cooperative drill that you can do with your partner to work on your net game. Now we’re going to have both players starting from the middle of the baseline. One player is going to be hitting an approach shot and moving forwards, the other player is going to be staying on the baseline and going to be hitting all ground strokes.

The person that’s going to be staying on the baseline is going to feed a short shot– meaning really anything that’s soft and lands in front of the service line on the other side, but the baseline player should feed it short in front of the service line–player across from them is gonna move forwards, hit an approach shot down the middle of the court and then continue on into the net. Now, as with all the other drills, there’s going to be a target area. The target area for the approaching player is between the service line and the baseline and also between two other targets. And normally when I do this with my students, I place two cones or two ball pyramids in no-man’s land about 10 or 15 feet apart. And so my student will have basically a box or a square right in the middle of no-man’s land, and their target is between the service line and the baseline, in between the two cones that I put out. And so they’ve got a square right in the center of no-man’s land, and that’s their target area. Anything that lands outside of those parameters, we start the drill over again and start back from square one.

Now, the approaching player, their objective here is to make that approach shot off of the short feed, and then 2 volleys after that in a row. So we’re trying to make 3 shots: an approach, and 2 volleys. And as you hit those 3 shots, as the approaching player, you should be getting closer and closer to the net. By the time you hit your third shot, that second volley, you should be pretty close to the net as you continue moving forwards. If you’re the baseline player, again, you should be making full ground stroke swings at a steady pace, nothing aggressive, but you should be trying to hit a good solid shot that makes it all the way back to your partner. Continue doing this until that approaching player has 5 times made all 3 shots in a row–the approach and 2 volleys. If either player misses–either the approaching player or the baseline player–start back again, reset with both players in the middle of the baseline, and start over again.

This is really important guys, and now, before we move on to the competitive drills, a couple of things that you guys want to keep in mind as you do these cooperative drills: First of all, stay on task. And I’ve given you guys specific targets, specific objectives, and by following those instructions, you will get the most out of this practice time. Don’t miss, you know, don’t do the first volley drill, go for 20 in a row, miss at 15. You know, it bounces, say, “Oh, that was close enough, keep going”. And then get 20, and say, “Alright, great. We got it. Let’s move on.” Be honest. Don’t cheat youselves, please. Make it as tough as it’s suppposed to be. Don’t make it easier on yourself by cheating or getting closer in the volley to volley rallies, whatever. If you miss a ground stroke, on that fouth and final drill, you put it into the net and your partner just needed one more volley, don’t feed in another ball. That kind of defeats the purpose of the drill which is have the approaching player work on moving forwards and hitting volleys at the same time. So don’t cheat yourselves, number one.

Secondly, as the volleyer especially, be very aware of your quality of contact. Meaning, pay close attention to where the ball is hitting on your racket, because it will make a big difference, a huge difference, in where the ball goes. Most of these shots that you’ll be hitting as the volleyer, you’ll be relaxed, and you’re not going to be gripping the racket very tightly. And when the ball hits off your frame, or not even off your frame, but just not the middle of the racket and out close to the frame, it’s gonna kill your shot. You will not get the same results. I strongly suggest that if you haven’t heard it already, go download the Watch the Ball podcast which was just a couple shows ago, and listen to it. It’s gonna be really important as you do these drills to pay close attention to where the ball is hitting on your racket.

Thirdly, pay close attention to your consistency of shot, and be picky about this. During the drills where you have a specific target, between the service line and the baseline, etc., really be picky. In other words, if you’re only making one in your target area, and then missing 3 or 4, or 5 by a couple feet, and then making 1, then missing 4 again, you’re not doing very well. Alright? And pay close attention to this. Honestly, you should be making 3, 4, 5, in a row, in your target area, before you make a mistake. And then making another 3, or 4, or 5 in a row again. If you’re not doing that, focus on the contact and simplify your technique. We’re not going to talk about technique right now, but just make it simple, and just make sure you’re hitting your target.

Lastly, your target and the ball are the most two important things here. Nothing is more important. Make sure you make good contact, make sure you focus on your target, and do that during all 4 of those cooperative drills, and you’ll get much more out of it.

Alright, now, 3 competitive drills before we wrap up today’s show. First of all–and this is one of my favorite drills, competitive games, of all time, volley to volley game–both players start in no-man’s land, half way between the service line and the baseline. And you’re gonna use half of the double’s court, or the single’s court. You’re gonna use either the ad or the deuce side, and you’re gonna play straight ahead. So if I’m on the deuce side on my half of the court, straight across from me is my opponent. He or she is on the ad side. I’m on the deuce side, they’re on the ad side, and we’re gonna play this game straight ahead. You’re gonna feed a volley to the person across from you, who’s in no-man’s land, give them a volley–a courtesy shot, right to them–so that they can play a volley, and then after that anything goes.

It’s your choice whether or not you want to make the alleys in or not, you can play alleys in or you can play alleys out, for… they kind of work on different stuff. When the alleys are out, it really keeps you in a very close-quartered part of the court. Really works a lot on hands, there’s not really any room for angles, and it’s all about, kind of braking the other person down, making more shots than they do. Also good to emphasize closing in to the net. When alleys are in, you have a little more space to use, and you can start to use angles a little bit more than when alleys are out. So, your choice. Whichever one you want to do. Try it both ways.

But both players start in no-man’s land, straight ahead from each other. Courtesy feed, feed of volley to the person across from you, and then play it out. This really kind of you can say, is more of a double’s drill than a single’s drill since it’s volley to volley, but it’s outstanding practice; to work on your hands your touch, your reaction time, and your footwork, as you move in to the net from no-man’s land after that first shot. Don’t stay in no-man’s land. Close in. And if you miss your volleys on your way in, we’ve found something that you need to work on and get more consistent at. Again, this is one of my favorite games. There’s a lot of fast action. I would also suggest that you guys switch who feeds every point back and forth, or every 5 points, or something like that. Make sure the same person doesn’t feed every time. So, that’s competitive drill number 1, to work on volleys.

Number 2: Ground strokes to volleys. In this game, the volleyer starts on the service line, and we’re gonna use the entire single’s court for this one. Volleyer is going to start right in the middle of the service line, the other player is gonna start in the middle of the baseline. The volleyer is gonna feed a courtesy shot right down the middle to the ground stroke player, and then the ground stroke player must hit a shot in return that the volleyer can touch. Now, notice I didn’t say it’s a courtesy shot. That ground stroke player can hit it hard, he or she can hit it low at the volleyer’s feet, he or she can stretch the volleyer out a little bit to one side or the other, but the ground stroke player just can’t hit a winner. He can’t hit an outright winner, in fairness for the volleyer, since the volleyer is just feeding in a courtesy shot to the baseline player.

So, that’s how it starts. A courtesy shot from the volleyer, a competitive shot from the baseline player, but it has to be touched by the volleyer, and then play it out. Full court singles. Anything goes. And this is putting that volleyer right up there in the middle of the action, and then playing out the points. Now, you can play a game up to 10, then trade sides, have the other person be the volleyer. Or you can play up to 20, and then trade sides when one person gets up to 10. You can format it however you like, but another great competitive game to work on your net play as a single’s player.

Lastly, ground stroke to approacher. And this is very, very similar to the cooperative drill that we talked about a little bit earlier. Both players will start in the middle of the baseline, and one player is gonna feed a short ball. Short ball meaning it has to be in front of the service line. The other player is going to hit an approach shot, and then has to move in to the net. And so, now you’re going to work on your approach and your volleys together as the approaching player, the other person’s gonna work on their passing shots, their ground strokes, and their lobs. Lobs are good as well. Lobs are also good in the first two competitive games I talked about as well. By the way, anything goes in all 3 of these games once the point has begun. So, you can format this a couple different ways as well. You can play a game up to 10 and then trade, the other person hits the short ball and the first player approaches, or you can trade half way through a game, as well. It doesn’t really matter. Just make sure you guys keep track of score, and if you can kind of put something on it, and make it even more competitive, I would recommend that.

Lastly, I’d simply like to point out that it was not a mistake that I spent so much more time today talking about cooperative drills, as opposed to competitive drills. I think that recreational players in general, are poor at using and utilizing cooperative drills. Whether it be because of lack of focus, lack of concentration, or maybe they just think competitive games are a lot more fun and a lot more interesting –and I agree, they are– but if you really want to get the most out of your time on the practice court, find somebody who shares your desire to get better, talk with them beforehand, work out these drills, go over them together so that you both have a good understanding of what’s going to be expected, and then stick with it, and keep your focus, and don’t deviate until you finish these drills. Give yourselves objectives, and complete them. And that’s what good, high level tennis players do, that’s what, you know… When I played college tennis, that’s what we did, in practices for hours and hours, were drills like this. And that’s how you get better.

So, Eddie, hopefully you’ve enjoyed today’s show. And the rest of you listening, hopefully you’ve enjoyed today’s show as well. Continue working at your net game. It’s going to improve your single’s game and your double’s game, whichever you happen to play. And Eddie, keep up the good fight, and I hope that your net game continues to get better so that it can become a stronger part of your single’s game. Thanks very much for your great question, and thank you for being a listener. [music] [music]

Alright. That does it for episode number 121 of the Essential Tennis podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today, and for listening to the show. I appreciate having you as a listener, and other people I appreciate a great deal, are those who donate to Essential Tennis. And I’d like to thank a couple people specifically, who have donated over the last couple weeks here. And they are Bill in Missouri, Charles in California, Charles in Maryland, Steve in North Carolina, Max in New York, Bruce in Massachusetts, David in Alabama, Devin in Pennsylvania, Carlotta in New Jersey, and Gary in Florida.

Thank you to all of you who donated over, about the last 2 or 3 weeks or so, and if this podcast and the rest of Essential Tennis have helped improve your tennis game, I would appreciate your support by a donation, either a small, one-time donation, a big, one-time donation, or you can do a monthly subscription donation as well, in 5, 10, or 20 dollars per month. Just go to essentialtennis.com and in the bottom, right-hand corner, you’ll see a box that says “Donate”. And I would appreciate your support very much. Alright, that does it for this week’s show. Thank you again for downloading the show and for listening to it. I hope it’s been helpful to you. Take care this week, and good luck with your tennis. [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #120

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

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

Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com where you can receive a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis event tickets by using the promotional code Essential.

Thank you very much for joining me on today’s episode. I appreciate you taking the time to download the file and to listen to the show. Before we get started with today’s topics, I’d like to do a quick shout-out to some very special people that spent a weekend with me this past weekend in Baltimore, MD. This was for the third Essential Tennis clinic and we spent a full two days working on different parts of their game. Their stroke technique, their tactics in both singles and doubles, their mental toughness– everything.

So real quickly to Steve, Brian and Dana, Michelle, Sonya and Psalm in Florida. Amadeu, Debbie, Charles — I had a really great time working with all of you. Only one person from MD, everyone else flew or drove in from other states here in the US and that shows great dedication and all of your guys were great.

If you are interested in working with me over a weekend, the next clinic is going to be in Galveston Texas this coming July, I believe it is the 18-20th and there is only one spot open for that. So if you’d like to work with me this July in Texas, shoot me an email at ian@essentialtennis.com and maybe you can grab that last spot for the Texas clinic.

Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

This segment of the podcast, I have a special guest named Steve from NC. He posts as steveo in the forums at essentialtennis.com and he just completed the 3rd essential tennis clinic in Baltimore Maryland with me over the weekend. Steve, welcome to the show and good to have you here. You are the first person to ever record a segment with me live on the podcast, so good to have you here.

[speaker] Thanks, good to be here.

[speaker] The reason why we are doing a segment together is he is the writer of the fitness blog at essentialtennis.com. He knows what he is doing when it comes to working out and keeping your body in peak condition. And we have a good question coming from Romy in the Phillipines. Romy writes and said, “Since last week, I was watching my son playing in an age group tournament. He is playing in 14 and under and 16 and under, playing conditions are harsh this summer in the Phillipines. It gets to be 38-40 degree celcius which is 103 degrees– temperatures above our normal body temperature. Would you be able to discuss the tips in handling this situation? Many thanks.”

So yeah, obviously, above average temperatures. For most of us here in the States and I would guess for most people in general, so that gives us a unique challenge. Especially for kids I think. It seems like you have to be pretty careful. So Steve, what are some tips for you on how to handle this kind of heat and be safe out there while competing on the tennis court?

Steve: You bring up an important point. It is really difficult to play in those conditions. The first and main thing that you want to be aware of is the hydration factor. You can get really dehydrated quickly as I know it’s very humid in the Philippines. So you want to be aware of a couple things. The first is to have proper pre-hydration. This begins, not the day of, but the day before and a couple days leading up to it. You want to make sure that you are drinking as water as you are comfortable. And have the kids drink as much as it is comfortable for them to drink. An 8 ounce glass of water every hour is probably adequate. The body is able to eliminate up to 32 ounces of water per hour and so this may seem like a lot of liquid to be intaking, but it’s really not. You want to make sure that they are getting a good diet in. Some lighter foods as well. You want to have them avoid caffeine, any kind of sodas or coffee because caffeine can act as a dieratic. It causes the kidneys to increase urine production which is going to eliminate a lot of water from the body.

The day of, you want to make sure they get up and drink plenty of water. And make sure that they are drinking water continuously throughout the day. And especially as they begin to work out and exert themselves. At least every 10-15 minutes, give them a break and let them get as much as they want but not too much, but definitely more than 8-10 ounces of water at a shot. But give them frequent breaks and for any play lasting over an hour, you would want to add in an electrolyte beverage because at this point, your body is really going to start getting depleted of sodium.

A proper sodium balance in your body is crucial for ensuring proper hydration. A large amount of sodium is lost through sweat and you want to make sure that you are putting back in some of those elements such as potassium, sodium, and a small amount of carbohydrates in order to keep the body going.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that when it is really humid, that acts against the body’s natural cooling mechanism. Your body cools off by producing water in the form of sweat. And when that water evaporates it cools the body. It’s kind of like a car’s radiator– you get cool air running through the water and it cools off the body.

But when you are playing in humid conditions, the sweat tends to not evaporate and it will negate the body’s natural cooling effects. So there are a couple things you want to be aware of. You want to stay covered up, as this will create a barrier between you and the heat and the sun. And you want to be aware of factors such as cramping and heat exhaustion. This is a really — symptoms that can be exasperated by extreme heat and high temperatures to obviously ensure that they are taking in the proper amount of fluid but cramping and heat exhaustion can become serious issues even if they are maintaining proper hydration.

Some symptoms of heat exhaustion are going to be paleness, nausea, fatigue, dizzyness, light-headedness, vomiting, fainting, clammy skin. If you get those kind of conditions, you definitely want to stop activity immediately. Get them into cool air, drink moderate amounts of fluids and just let them cool down.

Ian: So, extreme climates or situations like this with the temperatures so high, is it possible to still get those kind of symptoms even when properly hydrated or is the dizzyness, fainting, is that possible even with proper hydration?

Steve: It can be just depending on the athlete’s conditioning, body type, background, depending on how much work they have been doing. Depending on what they may or may not have eaten. You know, if they are properly fueled with nutrition and food.

Sometimes, you are more susceptible to those things — if you didn’t get enough sleep, many factors can contribute to it. So yes Ian, even if you are having proper hydration, you can have some of those things happen.

Ian: Alright. So what else, beside the hydration and you mentioned the electrolyte beverages, trying to get some sodium.. by the way, I know that Gatorade and popular sports drinks, I know that sodium, part of those beverages is key. How come sodium is so important to our bodies?

Steve: The sodium is what enables the muscles and it really acts as a stabilizing agent. It stabilizes your blood Ph level and it makes the water in your body and your blood able to transport the nutrients properly. It’s just a good balance to have in your body, once you start losing sodium, your body will start breaking down tissues and it just enables your body to have a proper water balance.

Ian: OK, besides the hydration in general and the sodium intake, what else is important for these kids playing out there in these hot conditions?

Steve: Well it’s important to take breaks and cool off. The best athletes in the world, I know Roger Federer often trains in Dubai in temperatures that are in the mid-40s which is about 110 degrees.

Still it’s important to take breaks. You can go and go for a while, and even if you are taking in a proper amount of fluids and staying cool, trying to stay cool covered up etc. It’s important to take breaks.

30-45 minutes of hard activity, you need to take a break and have time to cool down. And that is really going to cool down the machine. You can’t just run at the red-line for an hour straight and expect the body to keep going, you’ve got have some proper recovery time.

Also, just going out and training in those conditions continually is going to help you create more endurance. The more that you place yourself and your body in those tough hard conditions, the more your body is going to get used to it. You are going to start to adapt to it after a while if you are being challenging in there.

Some of things that could help are some off-court trainings. Some good cardio training that is going to get the heart pumping, whether it’s riding a bike or running or things like that. Just some general cardio training to increase the heart’s capacity to work when it is hot is going to be also very important and often an under rated or under used thing as a tennis player.

Most people think of getting most of their exercise in on the tennis court and that is adequate when really, the top atheletes in the world are doing lots and lots of off-court training. So the combination of hydration, the conditioning and the frequent breaks I think are going to be some things that will help your guys out.

Ian: I’m curious, even at age 14, is that still recommended I guess to do a lot of off-court training? I guess my question is, at what age should kids start to actually workout or do physical training off the court.

Steve: Sure, by the age of 14-16, most boys have probably reached their peak height, their bones have stopped growing. They’ve reached for the most point the size they are going to be as adults. So strength training is OK in moderation.

Of course we aren’t going to put them out there and have them do 800lb squats and try to develop full loads of muscle. Those things aren’t necessary to playing optimal tennis. You want to do some degree of strength training. A medium program of moderate weight and higher reps because that is going to condition the muscles.

And it’s very appropriate that they begin doing a lot of cardio work as well. Tennis is mainly running and if you don’t have the foot speed but the cardio endurance to get out there and stay out there and stay running, then you are going to wear out sooner and you aren’t going to be as effective as you go into a match later.

Ian: Alright Steve, I want to thank you very much for your time. Do you have anything else to add before we wrap up this topic?

Steve: No, that’s it. I think proper hydration is the main key. And that is just for anything that you do outside when it is hot and humid. You want to make sure that you are drinking plenty of water, plenty of fluids in your body and just keep an eye on the heat level.

Ian: Alright, it’s been great having you here this weekend. Thanks very much for your time and hopefully I’ll see you again in the near future at another clinic.

Steve: Thanks, I enjoyed it and we had a great time in Baltimore and I appreciate you hosting it. [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Our next question on this episode, I want to remind you guys briefly about my sponsor of the Essential Tennis podcast, and that is Championship Tennis Tours, and you can find them at championtennistours.com. They’ve been putting together individual tickets to professional tennis events, both WTA and ATP tours and ticket packages including accommodations and hotel to a wide variety of professional events all over the world. And that includes all four of the grand slams and a lot of the Master’s 1000 series tournaments. So if you are going to be traveling or going to a tournament in your hometown in the near future, definitely check them out. And if you use the promotional code Essential, you’ll receive a discount off your purchase of professional tennis event tickets or travel packages for the next event that you go to.

Please show them your support for having them be the official sponsor of the podcast and I really appreciate their support. Definitely make sure that you check out the US Open packages as well and when you purchase a US Open package and use the promotional code Essential, you’ll also get an invitation to a cocktail party in Time Square which I’m going to be a part of live. So check it out, it should be a good time and I’m looking forward to heading up to New York this year and possibly hooking up with a couple of you guys and having a cool event in Times Square during the tournament.

So, tennistours.com and again the promotional code is Essential when you checkout. I thank them very much for their support of the Essential Tennis podcast.

Let’s get going with our next topics and they are coming to us from Mark in the Netherlands. He has a couple questions having to do with changing your grip that I’d like to discuss– His first question is all about the adjustment of grip and he has a few questions related to it. The first one is that somebody gave me a pointer that instead of changing my grip, I could also rotate my wrist a little. You would call it pronating, I think because the rotation is not done by the risk itself but I think you know what I mean. Both adjusting the grip slightly and turning the wrist a little are done to prevent the ball from going long. My question is, what are the advantages of changing your grip as compared to rotating your wrist? By the way, I normally hit a forehand and backhand with an Eastern grip, for these slow short balls I now change towards a semi-Western grip, maybe somewhere in between both grips.

Alright, what he is saying is that for a short shot in the court, he is moving forwards and using a different grip then what he would for a shot a little bit farther back and closer to the baseline. First of all Mark, I want to say that it’s smart to want to change your racket face for a shorter ball– you are on the right track there as far as your technique is concerned.

The closer you get to the net, the less room you have to hit the ball into. The closer to the inside of your court you get, the less amount of room you have to land your shot back in on the other half of the court. And very often, when players miss a short ball deep when they are trying to attack ,they make a technique change and their swing length. Meaning, that typically, they get tentative on the next shot, they shorten their swing because they remember they missed the last one by hitting it too far and the result is an increasingly short and tentative scared ground-stroke swing and I don’t like that. When you guys watch the pros on TV, you will not see them let up on a shorter shot. If anything, they will actually accelerate more at the ball. I’m talking about one that is relatively easy, they are moving inside the baseline, it’s a shorter shot sitting up in their strike zone or maybe a little bit higher around shoulder height, but not even necessarily shoulder height.

Something that you can get to and hit comfortably is what I’m talking about. And when you watch the players on TV, they don’t swing shorter at those shots and yet they are still able to hit them in play. And a big mistake the recreational players make is they miss that short shot, they are trying to pressure their opponent with it which they should be doing because it is easy, you’re close to your opponent, it’s an easy shot, it’s in your strike zone so you should be trying to pressure them with that shot. And very often, rec players miss this shot long and they say to themselves, I hit it too hard, I was too aggressive and that’s not the way that I want you guys to think about it. Because when you think that way, you become more and more scared of hitting the ball and you are not going to advance in your tennis game that way.

Instead, you should make a full follow through at these types of shots and the change you should make to keep the ball in play is to close your racket face more. Meaning, that your strings are now facing a little bit more towards the court then they were from back behind the baseline. But you should make the same follow-through, the same swing that you would from a shot at the base-line as you do on a shorter shot, that you are moving well inside the baseline on.

Make sure to continue swinging upwards also so you create topspin to curve the ball back into play. I’ve talked about this before, as you are making an upward swing to make that spin which is going to curve the ball back into the court and that is not going to happen if you shorten up your swing.

So the result here is a full confident swing on any shot that many recreational players are nervous about. So, before I really answer your question, I just want to congratulate you on having the right idea there. I’m glad that you are thinking about simply closing the racket face a little more to keep the ball from going too far and you are not being scared and nervous about missing it long. It sounds like you are continuing to follow through and I just wanted to put that out there because some listeners might not have heard me talk about this before and it’s a really important concept to understand.

So you are correct, closing the racket face is important. Now, let’s talk specifically about changing the grip versus just turning your hand or your palm downwards to close the face. Closing the racket face does not involve turning your wrist. You were correct in pointing that out, it’s pronation. And pronation is specifically the rotation of your forearm, meaning your arm, your forearm is what actually pronates and that turns your palm down towards the court surface. It’s not your wrist. Go ahead and grip a tennis racket right in front of you, put it out in front of you like you are making contact with a ball and then move your wrist back and forth. And the racket will move back and forth. It won’t twist up and down. That motion is accomplished with your forearm, so yes you are correct. And that is what closes the racket face.

Now, to get to answering your question, no I don’t recommend changing your grip for a short ball and then changing it back again for a deep ball. This is much more complicated then simply closing the racket face with your forearm by pronating. When you change your grip, many more things change then just the angle of your strings and Mark points this out in a question that is going to come up in a second here. But when you change your grip, it is more than just the racket face that changes. You now need to use a different swing because you are going to have a little bit different contact points, it’s going to be a different feeling swing because the mechanics all change when you change your grip. It becomes essentially a different stroke.

The main elements of hitting a good ground-stroke are still the same but changing your grip is a big change. And it causes you to have to change many other things at the same time. It’s not just the racket face.

So what you should do instead is learn how to feel, learn how to have an awareness of where your strings are and you need to learn how to make adjustments accordingly based on the type of the shot that you are trying to hit during a point. In other words, a deep rally shot in a really short put-away ground-stroke. We are looking for a very different result on that deep ground-stroke, we are trying to really get the ball up into the air, keep the ball deep back to your opponents again and so you have a really long distance to make the ball travel.

On that short ground-stroke where you are trying to pressure your opponent, you are trying to do something very different. You are trying to attack and we are not trying to get the ball up into the air and get it to travel nearly as far and you need to learn how to change your racket face between those two different types of shots and everything in between while using the same grip.

You need to learn how to achieve those different range of shots using one grip and you are going to accomplish that by making small adjustments to the racket face. The angle of the strings when you make contact.

And a small change makes a big difference, so in my opinion, changing the grip is not necessary, it’s just going to over-complicate things. I would recommend that you find the grip that is most comfortable for you in general, whether it be Eastern, forehand, semi-Western, forehand grip or an Eastern backhand grip. Whatever feels most comfortable for you in general, stick with that and practice creating different types of results using that same grip.

Now let’s go ahead and move to Mark’s second question. “My second question is about attacking these short, slow balls with your backhand. I found that hitting a backhand with a semi-Western grip is much more difficult. Would that be a reason to stick to an Eastern backhand grip and pronate instead? I discovered the same semi-Western grip also helps me for deep, high, topspin shots. So very different shots from the short slow ones.

You don’t hear a lot about players that change their forehand grips during the game, would you recommend that in general or would it be confusing because swing and contact spot would also change. I’m looking forward to your answer, especially because advice on the swing between different forehand grips seems quite rare.

OK, we’ve got a couple different questions in here. You are talking about a backhand grip with a semi-western grip which I assume you are meaning is another turn past an Eastern grip where your knuckles are up on top of the grip. That’s really far over, we are getting into almost a grip that [inaudible] uses on her one-handed backhand and that is a really extreme grip. I wouldn’t recommend that you go over that far. And you say that it’s an awkward grip to you, I agree.

You shouldn’t have to turn it that far in order to keep your racket face closed. And you say should I stick to an Eastern backhand grip and pronate instead… Yes. Although on a backhand, it’s [inaudible] and not pronating. You are going to want to turn the racket the opposite direction that you do on a forehand. On a forehand you pronate, and on a backhand your dominate hand will supenate to keep that racket face closed.

Now you talk also about the forehand here, talking about it becoming confusing because the swing and contact point would change. Yes and I’m on the same page with you and I completely agree and that was what I was talking about before. I don’t recommend that you try to learn several different forehand and backhand swings for different types of grips. Instead, find a grip that feels most comfortable to you in general on both sides and then learn how to use it to achieve different results as I described before.

Alright, the third question here having to do with changing grips and this has to do with the backhand slice. So we are kind of going through every type of shot here from the baseline. He wrote to me, ‘I have a follow up question about switching between different grips for different kinds of shots. Normally, I use an Eastern grip with both my forehand and backhand which is one-handed. One shot where it is often recommended to change your grip is when you play a slice. You often hear that you should use the continental grip for the backhand and forehand slice. However, personally, I wonder if it’s really a good idea to use the continental grip when you play the slice. I find that when I use that grip, the racket face is facing too much upward with the consequence being that I only brush the bottom of the ball and it goes up very high. This makes it an easier target for my opponent, the ball goes way up too high and spends too long a time in the air. But is it possible that there is something else that I’m doing wrong? Would you say that the Eastern backhand and forehand grips are also fine for slice shots? Maybe slightly better?’

Alright, let’s talk about the forehand and backhand slice and which grip to use. If your slice is popping up too much, it means that your face is too open. And exactly as you said, your strings are facing upwards too much as you are making contact. It could also mean that you are chopping down at the ball too much, but ultimately it means that your face is too open and so the ball is popping up into the air.

Now, this doesn’t mean necessarily that the grip that you are using is wrong, but rather it just means that you aren’t controlling your racket face correctly. Traditionally most players do use a continental grip to hit their slice on both the forehand and backhand side as you pointed out. This includes myself, this is how I was taught when I was younger and for volleys and drop shots, and slice shots, anything with back spin, on both my forehand and backhand side, I use a continental grip for both sides. And it’s definitely very natural for me and as I said a second ago, traditionally, it’s what most top level players including professionals use.

Recently, I’ve started noticing that pros are using other grips to hit their backhand slice. Specifically, I’ve noticed that Nadal and Murray both use a different grip from a continental grip.

Now you talked about on your backhand slice, using an eastern backhand grip to try to close the face a little more. But guess what, both Nadal and Murray use an eastern forehand grip to hit their backhand slice. This means that it opens the racket face up even more then what would naturally occur with a continental grip. And neither of them have any problem keeping the racket face closed enough to keep the ball from popping up on their backhand slice.

And you are talking about going two grips farther over than that to keep it closed and using an eastern backhand grip on your backhand side. So, this tells me that you are obviously doing something undefined undefined eastern backhand grip just to keep the racket face closed enough to keep the ball from popping way up in the air.

So in my opinion, you should really be keeping at least a continental grip for that backhand slice and you need to get some more feel for where your racket strings are and start to close the racket face by hand, no pun intended, by supenating a little bit on that backhand side to close the racket face. More than what you are doing now.

I’m not aware of any players who use an eastern backhand grip for their backhand slice or an eastern forehand grip for their forehand slice. Those are definitely grips that are naturally setup to hit with top spin because they close the racket face so much and I highly recommend that you stick with that continental grip and start learning how to close the racket face a little bit more to keep that ball from popping up so much and floating and making an easy shot for your opponents.

So stick with it Mark and thank you very much for the great questions. In review here, going over your questions, I don’t recommend that for top spin shots, on your forehand and backhand, that you use different grips. I would highly recommend you stick with one grip and learn how to get different results. However, when you do want to hit a slice, I do recommend that you change your grip on both sides and go to a continental grip. It doesn’t have to be continental, use what is comfortable for you. But I don’t think that you should have to go to an Eastern backhand grip for a backhand slice or an Eastern forehand grip for a forehand slice. Continental should be more than closed enough for you to be able to hit a nice deep penetrating slice that stays relatively low to the net and doesn’t pop up too much.

So thank very much for your questions. I really appreciate you being a listener over in the Netherlands. Hopefully my descriptions here were helpful to you. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

That does it for episode 120 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thanks for joining me here today, I appreciate it. Make sure to check out the podcast on iTunes in the music store where you guys can subscribe for free and get the new show every week automatically downloaded to your computer and you can transfer it right to your iPod or iPhone or iTouch or iPad which is pretty cool, to automatically get those downloaded.

I’m going to be signing off here and then going to watch the French Open which I’ve enjoyed watching so far. I’m really looking foward to the second week and by the way, myself and Will Hamilton over at fuzzyyellowballs.com are going to be doing another live webcast during the French Open final which is coming Sunday. Hopefully it’s going to be a Federer and Nadal final which would be awesome. That’s going to be this coming Sunday and I think we are going to start at 8:30am eastern time here on the east coast of the United States which makes it very early for my friends over on the west coast. But hopefully you guys get up to watch it live and you can check out the live video stream of myself and Will doing match commentary and chatroom at the front page of essentialtennis.com or at fuzzyyellowballs.com also.

Alright, that does it for this weeks show, thank you very much for tuning in. Take care and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [inaudible]

Essential Tennis Podcast #119

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

Ian: Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com. Before we get into today’s questions that I’m going to be answering I want to talk to you guys briefly about a feature at essentialtennis.com that truthfully, I don’t think you guys are taking advantage of nearly enough.

Now the forums at essentialtennis.com have grown and I’m really happy about that. I’m really proud of the community that has been growing over there, but I think more of you guys need to go experience for yourselves and start taking advantage of it. Its not just a place to go and burn time and you waste time on the internet. Its really a place where you guys can continue to help improve your tennis game. And one way that happens is through professional feedback. I spend a lot of time there posting, answering questions and giving my two cents. There are other professional, certified USPTA tennis pros as well, that are friends of mine.

Royce is one, he’s been on the podcast a couple of times, he’s spends a lot of time there as well giving feedback. So its another way that you can get value out of Essential Tennis, by getting feedback from myself and other pros. Also as I mentioned a second ago, the community and support aspects of the forum are incredible. People post their experiences during league matches and tournaments. They post their problems that they’re having with their mental game or their technique or their strokes and other members give feedback, or just give support, they say “Hey, you know stick with it don’t worry about it,” or “Hey, I’ve got that same problem, this works for me.” and it’s just a wonderful place to go to stay passionate about tennis and continue getting ideas and just kind of give yourself a kick in the pants when you need it, to continue working hard at your game.

To give you guys some extra incentive to go check it out, if you are one of the first seven people this week to sign up for a free account and introduce yourself in the top forum there, at the forums, which is the introduction forum. All you have to do is sign up for free, introduce yourself to the community there and I will send you a free copy of Mental Tennis by Vick Braden. Which is an amazing book about mental tennis, totally free of charge I’ll send that to you. All you have to do is go to the forums, sign up, introduce yourself and I will send you a free book. So please do go check it out, again its completely free, I’m not trying to trick you guys here, or anything. As with all of the different parts of the website, I want it to continue to grow, I want more people there and that will continue to make it a better and better place for everybody to continue working at their tennis games so go check it out. Alright lets gets down to business! Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [silence] [music] [silence] [music]

Ian: Alright, so lets get started with today’s show. And the first question that I’m going to discuss comes to us from Tony in Georgia. Now, this is not Georgia in the United States of America, but rather Georgia, the country in far eastern Europe. Which is pretty cool, Tony I’m pretty sure you’re the first Georgian listener that I’ve heard from. It’s really nice to hear from you. He wrote to me and says he plays three times a week and he groups himself within the top five Georgian tennis players under the age of 18. Tony, keep up the good work and I hope that you continue to work at your tennis and hopefully in the near future you can maybe do some international competition etcetera.

His question was “How exactly should I hit a strong attacking shot on the rise? I don’t get a lot of these types of shots because I usually just let the ball come back down again and I want to make a slight change in my playing style this way.” Well Tony, that’s a good question, and Andre Agassi kind of made this type of shot popular. Back in the early and mid ’90s he really stayed close to the base line and took the ball earlier than most professional players had up until that time. There’s no doubt in my mind that players before Andre Agassi did take the ball early and did hit the ball on the rise. There’s no doubt about that. But he kind of used it more exclusively as a playing style and really stayed close to the baseline. Unlike a lot of players back in the ’90s that were starting to get farther and farther away from the baseline and hit with more top spin and more power.

So, anyway I am going to be talking today Tony about, not only how to hit this shot more aggressively but I want to take this opportunity to tell you and the rest of my listeners about how this shot works in general as well. I want to make sure everybody on the same page about this shot, about taking the ball on the rise and how to do it correctly, before I start talking about hitting it aggressively. So my first couple of topics here are going to have to do with the shot in general. So lets just give a little bit of background information about the shot. First of all, it’s an excellent tactic to learn. It takes time away from your opponent when you hit the ball right after its bounced, you take away time, you’re closer to the ball, to where its bouncing than you normally would be when you would’ve let the ball come up to the top, to the top of its bounce and then come down again before you hit it like you described Tony.

By taking it earlier you give your opponent less time to react to your shot. It also keeps you in a better position on the courts, as I mentioned a second ago, to take the- to hit the ball with a ground stroke on its way back down from the bounce, you need to be farther away from where it landed on the court in the first place. So by taking the ball on the rise, you have the advantage of staying closer to your opponent and you get to keep yourself in a more offensive position, a little bit closer to your opponents. And closer to the net. Now, on the rise basics as I mentioned a second ago, it is hitting while the ball is coming back up from making contact with the court so its exactly what its title says, its hitting on the rise as its rising up off the court after its bounced.

The easiest way to hit a ground stroke is on its way back down again, it gives you the most time to react to the bounce after its hit the courts and its just the easiest way to do it period. However, hitting on the rise is useful in several situations and I’ve outlined three of them here. First of all, its useful when your opponent has hit a very deep and high bouncing shot. An example of this would be a shot thats crossed the net by a wide margin, maybe four or five feet over the top of the net, with a lot of top spin and the ball is about to land within a couple of feet from the baseline.

Now this type of shot from your opponent if you were to let it get all the way to the peak of its bounce then let it come back down again to your strike zone, which is somewhere about waist height, that’s where you typically want to make contact with a ground stroke. In order to allow that to happen, and hit it in kind of this more traditional way, letting it come back down again, you’re going to back way up behind the baseline. Sometimes, there’s not even enough room behind the baseline to let it come down to your strike zone again and which means that you’re going to end up backing up way behind the baseline and hitting it in an awkward position, at shoulder height, or even above shoulder height to try to get it back.

This is not a situation that you want to be in especially if you want to hit an aggressive shot. Which is what Tony is asking about. Second situation where hitting on the rise is very useful, is when your opponent has hit a high, floating and weak shot that you want to attack on. This is a ball that has also maybe crossed the net by five or six feet, but is not traveling very far into the court and its landing somewhere around the service line. Maybe even a little shorter than that, or deeper, but definitely not close to the baseline.

This is a shot that you’re going to move forward into the baseline to be able to hit early on purpose. And very often you’ll follow up that shot with a volley, by coming up to the net. The third situation where you’re going to want to consider hitting the ball on the rise is when you’ve been caught off guard and in the middle of the courts by your opponent. Maybe you had a hard time recovering back to the baseline after a tough shot from your opponent that landed short, or something, maybe you’re serving in volley and the balls been hit right at your feet. But some way or another you’ve been caught in the center of the courts, not necessarily literally the center but inside the baseline, and the ball is coming right towards your feet.

That’s another situation where you might want to consider hitting the ball on the rise. Instead of backing way up to allow the ball to come up to the peak of its bounce and then come back down again. So, those are kind of the three main situations that you’re going to want to try hitting the ball on the rise. When your opponent’s hit a really good deep shot, when your opponent has hit a high and weak shot, or when you’ve been caught off guard inside the baseline and the ball is coming towards your feet.

Now lets talk about the technique of actually hitting a ball on the rise. And we’re going to get into some technical details about how this actually works. And there’s three main elements here that need to be done correctly if you guys want to be successful in hitting the ball on the rise. The first one is foot work, positioning when you’re trying to hit the ball on the rise is incredibly, incredibly important. The reason for that is the ball is coming up right off the court.

And you have a very small window that the ball is actually in your strike zone. Its not going to be at waist height for very long, also you must read the bounce perfectly. You have zero time to change your position after the ball has landed. When you hit a ball in a kind of more of a traditional way, a ground stroke, and you allow it to bounce, come back up to the peak of its bounce and then come back down again. You have time to make adjustments with your position after the ball has landed. Often time recreational players and sometimes even professional players misread a bounce maybe there’s some more spin or some different kind of spin than they thought was going to be on the shot in the first place. Maybe it even hits something on the courts, this happens all the time in clay court tennis. When the ball bounces a little bit differently than you expect.

And when you’re allowing the ball to come up off the bounce then come back down again, you have extra time to be able to reposition yourself and make an adjustment. When you’re hitting the ball on the rise you can’t do that, you don’t have the time to make an adjustment. And so putting yourself in just the right position is incredibly important to be able to actually hit an effective shot. Most recreational players are still trying to get in the right place after the ball has bounces and so trying to hit the ball immediately after it’s bounced usually presents, you know, some problems for recreational players.

A lot of you guys listening are not going to want to use this tactic a lot, however, it’s something that I do recommend you work on. And see if it comes quickly to you, see if you’re able to develop it pretty fast. And you can add it into your repertoire. So, thats foot work. You’ve got to position yourself in the right spot. Secondly, out of three here, for technique elements, is timing. As I mentioned a second ago, the ball moves through your strike zone very quickly and you have very little time to make adjustments.

That means that, not only does your positioning have to be great, but the timing of your swing also has to be perfect, in order to make contact where it’s comfortable. If you start your swing a little bit too late, the ball’s going to be really high. If you begin your swing too early, its going to be really low, and just barely coming off of the court. And there’s not a whole lot of time, like actual, physical amounts of time, in between those two timings being early or being late, or being just bout right, where you’re making contact around waist height. There’s not a lot of margin for error there because the ball is coming up off the court so quickly immediately after it bounces. Now, this means since the ball comes up off the bounce so quickly and goes through your strike zone so quickly, usually your swing should actually begin before your ball even hits the court.

And so, you want to have your racket prepared obviously before the ball gets to the bounce and you want to kind of drop your racket and begin your forward swing before the ball even hits the court a lot of times. Not always, it depends on the speed that the ball is traveling at and where you are on the court; how aggressively you’re trying to hit it, how big your back swing is, all kinds of things, but usually you’re going to want to begin your ground stoke swing before it actually hits the courts. And when recreational players mis-time an on-the-rise shot, like 99 percent of the time, they’re too late and they’ve begun their swing past the window where it would’ve been appropriate so that they’re making contact in a comfortable spot. They begin a little bit later than they should which means that the ball comes up out of their strike zone and it ends up being too high. If you guys are going to go out and try this for the first time more than likely, at first, you’re going to position yourself too far away from the ball.

And more than likely, you’re going to be late and the ball is going to be up too high. And this is just from experience. Teaching this to people, teaching this to kids, this is a really valuable thing to teach to kids because a lot of times childrens strokes are kind of beyond their physical attributes. So you might have an 11 or 12 year-old kid with great top-spin ground strokes but their only four feet tall, or maybe even less. And so they’ve got to really position themselves in the right spot. And a shot thats been hit high and close to their baseline, sometimes is just un-returnable when they try to let it come back down again from the bounce because they’re just not tall enough to get a racket on it.

So I very often taught kids how to hit on-the-rise to be able to combat a high deep shot from their opponents. And in my experience when they’re first starting off trying to learn it they don’t get themselves close enough, they don’t position themselves close enough to the bounce. Or they position themselves in the right spot but they wait too long to start their swing and the ball gets up way too high outside of their strike zone. So, for those of you going out and you’re going to try this for the first time, swing early. Probably earlier than you think you’re going to have to.

Now lets talk about actual technique and changes and adjustments you’re going to have to make to your technique in order to make this shot. Hitting on the rise is different than a more traditional or standard ground stroke because the ball is actually coming upwards, its accelerating upwards off the court, as opposed to accelerating downwards back towards the courts again and falling back down after its bounced. This means that closing your racket face a little bit more is usually necessary. I’m talking about a top-spin ground stroke here or a drive ground stroke, a low to high type swing. When you combine your low to high swing with a ball that’s coming up off the court and accelerating upwards towards your racket it means that the ball is going to combine with the upwards traveling ball, with your upward traveling racket very often causes the ball to travel farther than what you were expecting and rather than shorten your swing up and get tentative and start just pushing the ball in play, and Tony this is for you, since you want to hit this shot aggressively.

You’re going to want to close your racket face more, so we want the strings facing down towards the courts a little bit more than normal. And when I say a little bit I’m talking like a couple of degrees. When you guys hit a standard, top-spinner drive, type ground stroke you want your racket face to be just about perpendicular right about flat, 90 degrees to the court surface. When you’re hitting on the rise your going to want to close it just a little bit more than that as you continue to make a full swing, to be able to keep that in the courts. And I want you guys to, and Tony you especially, since you want to hit this aggressively, continue to excelerate upwards as you normally would. You want to create top spin, this is going to help keep the shot in play more consistently. Don’t decelerate and push it in play, unless it’s a really tough shot and you just want to block it back into the court. I want you guys to try making a full follow through at the ball. And again, if you miss long, close that racket face a little bit more.

If you’re having trouble this guys, if you’re going on trying it for the first time, you can try just shortening up the swing. And you guys will see pros do this from time to time, especially in in the third example of a situation where you guys are going to want to use this. When you guys are caught off guard and you’re in the middle of the courts you can just simply block the ball back in play and use this as more as a defensive type shot. That’s not what Tony asked about, but you can use this as a way to stay in better position just keep the ball back in play, nothing fancy and hope to get back into the points and regain control of whats going on in the points. Now lets talk about actually hitting it aggressively which is what Tony asked about. Let me tell you what you better practice it. And Tony, this goes for you and everybody else listening. Again, your timing, your positioning and your swing technique, all have to be just right. And there’s very little margin for error here.

I talked earlier about how the positioning and the timing are so delicate and you’ve got to be just right. If you’re a little bit off on any of these things it becomes a very awkward shot, very quickly. And so if you guys want to be able to use this in match play, start practicing and practice it a lot. Have a friend or practice partner hit you high, deep shots and practice taking it right off the bounce, making contact at waist height and making a full follow thru. Tony it sounds like you want to use this as an attacking shot. So I would recommend that you practice moving forwards and hitting the more aggressive type shot where you’re moving into the court and taking a shot thats landing a little bit shorter on the rise. That would be a great shot for you to practice.

Start off at a moderate pace. Tony, you and everybody else as well. And once you start getting consistent and you get comfortable with the positioning and the timing, go ahead and start to speed up the swing a little bit, but I would really caution you guys from doing that right away. Make sure that you’re getting comfortable with the important technical elements [inaudible] of the shot first, before you start to really speed up the swing and try to hit it aggressively. Well Tony thank you very much for your question, I appreciate it. Great question and it was really nice to hear from you in Georgia. It’s always great to kind of put a pin in a new country on the map. So thanks for being a listener. And hopefully my description here was helpful to you. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Before we get to our next question, I want to quickly tell you guys about this sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast. And that is Championship Tennis Tours and they’re located at tennistours.com. These guys put together ticket travel packages and hotel and accommodation packages for professional tennis events. Both the ATP and WTA. They provide tickets and accommodations to all of the four grand slams along with many, many other professional tennis events all over the world. So if you’re planning on going to a professional tennis event in the near future, please definitely check them out. And you can get a discount just for being a listener of the Essential Tennis Podcast. They have coming up a couple of great packages for the US Open where you guys can choose between hotels, types of tickets. Also tickets to a Broadway performance, to a baseball game, to a city tour, limousine shuttle, all kinds of excellent choices. Ways to really make your trip memorable and an exciting experience. So definitely go check them out at tennistours.com.

If you use the promotional code, Essential, with a capital ‘E’ when you check out, you’ll receive a discount off your travel package. And if you do that in conjunction with purchasing a package to the US Open you’ll also receive an invitation to a Championship Tennis Tours and Essential Tennis Podcast cocktail party at the W Hotel in Times Square. Which is pretty awesome, and I’m trying to make plans to be there myself and meet some of you guys, the listeners, who help support the advertisers of the Essentials Tennis podcast. So please show them your support by making a purchase. Doesn’t have to be a package, you can purchase individual tickets as well. So go check them out at tennistours.com.

I thank them very much for their support of the Essential Tennis podcast. Alright next up we got a great question from Noam in California. He came out to the Essential Tennis clinic in Palm Springs earlier this year. Good to hear from you again. He wrote us, and said, “You always here and read about placement of the serve, but can that really be done? I’m sure some players are able to do that, like professional tennis players but if this is something that can be developed by them then why do the key elements to change when you’re goal is to change the placement of the serve from one serve to another. Would it be positioning of yourself on a different spot of the baseline? And keeping the same service motion, or is it more of controlling the shot by changing the grip, arm, back, wrist movement, etcetera?

Hopefully this question makes sense, and if it does I am sure you can supply a practical answer. Thanks again, Noam.” Yes, it is possible, and no, you don’t have to be a professional player to be able to place your serve. Absolutely not, I teach players how to do this every single week while I’m at work. I’ve actually been working with one student, just on her serve a couple of times a week. And we’ve been working really hard on , we’ve totally broken down her technique and rebuilt it to be better. And more solid, technically, and we’ve worked a lot on exactly on what you’re describing, Noam, being able to place the serve and vary its placement on purpose in different places in the box. Now, to answer your question directly. In order to place a serve in different places, no, don’t change the grip, don’t change your technique, the type of serve, your positioning on the courts, on the baseline, or anything else if you want your serve to be aimed in different places.

You don’t have to change any of that stuff in order to control where the ball is going. So what is it? It’s all about your racket face at contact, where the strings are actually facing when you make contact is what is going to determine where the ball goes, period. Now that probably seems, that sounds incredibly obvious, incredibly simple and it is. But that’s exactly what it comes down to. Where the racket is facing is determined by the timing of your pronation during the swing. There’s going to be a big disclaimer here, this is assuming that your service swing is a traditional type swing and technically sound.

Meaning that you follow all the main elements and fundamentals of a good, solid service swing. When you guys break down the service technique of high level players, whether they be professional or college players. Basically a four or five player and above you’ll see several key similarities between these types of players and how they swing a tennis racket. And one of those similarities is pronation. You will see all top level tennis players pronate. Pronating I’ve talked about on the podcast before, I’m not going to get really into it. But basically its the rotation of your forearm and your shoulder from inside to outside. If you face your palms together, if you put both your hands in front of you, face them together so that they’re parallel and your palms are facing each other and then you rotate your hands so that they face down toward the ground you’ve just pronated both of your arms.

And again that rotation occurs, really pronation refers to rotation of your forearm. Rotation of your shoulder also aids in getting that rotation, that acceleration of the racket towards the outside of your body. So what does that have to do with actually aiming your serve? Well if you look at slow motion video, lets talk about a right handed player here. When they were, after the racket has dropped back, behind the player, after they’ve taken the racket up and prepared their body after their arm has bent and the racket has dropped, this is called the racket drop position. Usually when you guys watch instructional videos online the players palm and the racket strings that are going to be used to hit the ball are facing to the left, your palm is facing to the left. And so are the strings, the side of the racket that’s about to get used to hit the ball.

As the racket starts moving upwards on edge towards the contact point, up towards the ball, they will begin to pronate and their hands, their palm and the racket will rotate towards the right and meet the ball facing towards the target. And this is kind of the magical point in time that’s going to determine where the ball goes. Depending on where the strings are facing in this point in time will determine what target area is about to get hit by the serve. Or maybe what target area is about to get missed if they’re aiming some where different than where the strings are actually facing. As contact is made the racket continues to rotate and will finish with the palm of a righty-players hand facing to the right.

So there’s a 180 degree rotation of the forearm from left to right. Facing to the players left if they are facing forward towards the net and then finishing facing towards the right shortly after contact. And this is the pronation element of the serve. And so depending on the timing of this pronation and exactly when during this 180 degree rotation contact is made, is whats going to determine the direction where the ball goes. For a righty-player the longer that they hold the racket on edge as it moves up toward the ball, the more to the left the ball will go. Because their hand will, if they wait a long time, if they wait longer to unwind their hand to the right the strings will be angled more to the left. If they begin that pronation process a little bit earlier contact is made with their palms and with their strings facing more to the right.

And late and early here are relative terms. We’re talking about a couple of degrees in rotation between hitting the left corner of a service box and the right corner of a service box. I don’t know what the measurement is exactly but I would wager it, its probably ten degrees or less between those two targets, the extremes, the left side and the right side of the box. We’re talking about very small changes in the racket face that make a big difference in where the ball goes. And so, Noam, where exactly your racket faces, facing at contact, as you pronate, the split second that the ball meets the strings and where the strings are facing determines where the ball is aimed and you should be able to stand anywhere on the baseline.

Literally anywhere, and use the same grip, use the same technique and be able to hit any corner of either box. Just by varying the timing of your pronation and where exactly the strings are facing when you make contact. Now for those of you who are still listening to me, because I know that listening to audio instruction of details that are really detailed like this is not everybodies cup of tea. So thank you guys for baring with me through that. For those of you who are more visual learners when it comes to this I just did a video explaining this fully. I mean I went through the entire process on how exactly this works. And with visual examples, I used myself as the example and I hit two serves from the ad sights since I’m left handed. I used the same grip, I stood in exactly the same place. I used the same service motion, I used the same type of serve, it was a spin serve. And I compared two swings.

One where I hit right down the T and I hit the centeral line, as left as i could’ve possibly gone in that service box and another serve, all the same mechanics. And I hit the other corner, I hit the right corner of the box. And I compared my techniques between those two service placements and I show you guys how in that video, how all of my technique was exactly the same except for right at contact where my strings, you can see on the video, slow motion video, where I captured right at contact and you can see the difference in angles between my serve down the middle and my serve out wide. Go check that video out. Its really good, if I can say so myself. Its really good comparison and should explain to you guys fully about what I’m talking about in a more visual way. It’s a ten minute long video. And it really explains it. So Noam and everybody else listening who has an interest in this go check that out, just go to essentialtennis.com click on video and as I’m recording this, it’s the one all the way at the top. And its called “Pronation and Aiming your Serve.” So go check that out. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, that does it for episode 119 of the Essential Tennis podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today and I hope that todays show has been helpful to you. If you would ever like me to answer your question on the podcast, feel free to send me an email to ian@essentialtennis.com Ian is spelled, I A N. I’d love to hear from you. And before I wrap up today’s show I want to let you guys know that somebody recently dropped their spot for the upcoming essential tennis clinic in Galveston , Texas, in July.

So if you’re interested in working with me over a whole weekend and mental tennis expert David Grumpin for an incredible instructional experience please shoot me an email to ian@essentialtennis.com. This event was sold out and unfortunately one of my listeners had to pull out, something came up and she’s no longer able to make the event. So if you would like to join me and seven other Essential Tennis listeners and working on your game over a weekend, please shoot me an email. Also at ian@essentialtennis.com. Alright, that does it for this week. Thanks again everybody for listening. Take care and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [silence]