Essential Tennis Podcast #132

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So make your purchase at tennistours.com. Again, use the promotional code ESSENTIAL and you’ll get your discount and invitation to that cocktail party in Times Square. I thank them very much for their support of the Essential Tennis Podcast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #131

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #130

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

Ashley: Your welcome, Ian. Good evening.

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

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

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

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

Ian: Awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian: (laughs) That always helps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian: Thataboy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ashley: Thanks, Ian.

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #129

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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 experts’ tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a couple of notes on this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #128

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #127

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

Ian: Hi and welcome to the essential tennis podcast, your place for free experts tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the essential tennis podcast, is brought to you by tennistours.com. Where you can receive a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis tournament tickets by using the promotional code essential. Well welcome to today’s show, thank you very much for joining me.

Before we get to today’s topic that I am going to be answering for a listener I’d like to send out a special thank you to eight really awesome people, really passionate listeners of the tennis podcast. And they are the eight players who joined me on Galveston Island in Texas this past weekend and I’d just like to do a quick shoutout. Those eight people were John D, Mike, Eddie, Alex, Chris, Jean-Paul, Dennis and last but not least John M. Who is the member at Galveston Country Club. He arranged and set up everything for us.d And got the courts and just basically helped me with all the administration type stuff that needed to be done. So thank you very much John. And to the eight of you, as a group you guys did awesome. It was a lot of fun working with you guys. I am really proud of the hard work you guys put in, these guys drilled and played outside for over nine hours this past weekend, in the Texas heat. In the middle of July, and you know that’s impressive right there. And on top of that, we did a mental tennis clinic with David Grubin, mental expert and we did a video analysis session as well and went over one stroke of the eight participants and I gave them my feedback, frame by frame video in a group setting as well which is always a great learning experience.

So, I just want to thank you guys again. Very much for your participation. That was the forth essential tennis clinic that I’ve put on. The fifth one is coming up in November. And it’s already sold out. I didn’t even announce it here on the podcast. It’s sold out, just with the members of the forums at essentialtennis.com, so unfortunately the rest of you sort of missed out on that one. Everybody on the forum has jumped on that, but I think I am going to be scheduling another one for either January or February again in Palm Springs California. It’s a great venue to hold our events, so if you think you might want to attend that one, the 6th and upcoming essential tennis clinic and work with me for a weekend on your tennis game.

Shoot me an email to ian@essentialtennis.com and I can give you guys early notification when I start to put the details together for that next clinic after the one in November. Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back and relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s get started on today’s topic and it comes to us from Rich. Rich wrote to me and said, Tonight I played in my first USCA match for the summer season. I would say my partner and I are both strong 3.5 players and have played together for a couple of years. We try to communicate together during the match and inter-match we got to a strong start in one pretty easily 6-0 and we are feeling pretty confident. The second set was somewhat shaky and we started out losing the first three games and then came back to tie it up with 3 all. We went down to 3-4 and came back to 4-4 and then lost the next two games to lose the second set 6-4. We did a third set tie breaker rather than a complete third set because of time constraints and we lost that 10-7. My question is, how can we maintain our mental focus after winning the first set so easily and avoid a wipedown? This seems to happen quite often, it would have been better if the first set was closer, [laughter] . Thanks Rich.

Ian: Yeah, funny how that happens isn’t it Rich? It actually turns out you probably would have preferred mentally anyway, that that first set was competitive so you guys wouldn’t have let your guard down so much. Now I got a long outline here to talk about this and by the way this is going to be the only topic I talk about today To be honest with you guys I’m just really short on time today recording this on Monday the 19th. And it’s late afternoon here in the east coast. Usually I am done with my podcast by early morning and I just had, had to much going on and so this is going to be the only topic we talk about today so I really wrote a detailed outline. And I look forward to talking about this Rich. And I am going to give you and everybody else listening some really concrete things for you guys to concentrate next time you guys you get put into this position so that you don’t give away another set. And even the match, after winning so easily in the first set.

So, first of all you are right. This is extremely, extremely common. That a team or a player will go out and win a first very easily and then turn around to lose the second set and even the match. When it was obvious that they were in control of the match to begin with and it’s important to understand that this is not just for recreational players. I mean, so I want you to know that you shouldn’t feel badly about this and for the rest of you listening. If this has ever happened to you, don’t be embarrassed by it, it definitely happens to everybody to some extent or another. You know some of us are more mentally tough than others and it’s really good that you identified Rich that this is a mental let down.

You said, your specific question was how to maintain your mental focus. And that’s exactly the right question because obviously you and your partner had the upper hand here to begin the match. But it’s important to understand that this happens even at the professional level. You guys will see this, I am not going to say commonly. But it’s definitely not unheard of to have one professional player win the first set easily and then turn around and lose the second set even by quite a bit. Usually, it’s not as big as a swing as what your example is, to win the first set 6-0 and then end up losing the entire the match. But trust me there’s definitely large momentum swings going on back and forth even between professional matches.

Now, there’s two main reasons for your momentum swing, and this particular circumstance, in this example you gave us. There’s two main reasons why this occurs, and not just in your specific example but pretty much anytime that there is a large momentum swing, it’s happening for two main reasons. Number one, emotional relaxation on the part of you and your partner. And this is probably the obvious one. And yet I think that a lot of recreational players don’t guard against it. Basically, you and your partner won that first set in you’re probably sitting on the change over and saying, Sweet, we going to totally crush these guys.

This is no problem were having an easy match. And you know what, to be honest with you, I don’t blame you for saying that and thinking that. I mean 6-0, you know the dreaded bagel, that’s just a crushing, I mean you guys just thrashed them in that first set. They really didn’t make it close at all. Even 6-1 or 6-2 a pretty sound beating of another team, but 6-0. Is like you guys embarrassed them.

So, I don’t blame you for letting your guard down here. You and your partner, were probably already celebrating after that first set during the change over. You guys were probably sitting there during the change over and laughing and joking around with each other before that second set started. In fact, I think you said here… Here we go. Rich says we got off to a strong start and won easily 6-0 and we were feeling pretty confident. [laughter] And again I don’t blame you for feeling confident. Confidence is good, that’s great. However, I can just read between the lines there. When you say that you guys were feeling pretty confident. And I just know that you guys probably crossed the line between confident and a little bit over confident and that’s when your guard get, I’m sorry that’s when your guard got let down by both of you. Now, you most likely headed out for that second set. Again, feeling over confident and probably a little bit nonchalant to saying, ah well even if we screw around in this set, we should still be able to win.

Because that first set was so easy. And your basically thinking that the match was in the bag. So that’s the number one main reason why this happened. You let your guard down emotionally, mentally and in terms of focus. You guys just definitely let your guard down. Now, the number two reason why this momentum swing occurred, and this is I don’t think a lot of recreational players think about. Is that, you have to realize that your opponents are going to come out fighting twice as hard as they did at the end of the [inaudible]… I’m sorry, they are going to come out fighting twice early in the second set as they were late in the first set. So you guys probably sat down on your bench or in your chairs at the end of that first set kind of with a picture in your mind of how that first set went. And you were thinking about how those opponents were playing at the end of the first set.

More than likely, they were pretty dejected. I mean they just gotten completely beat down in that first set. And they probably at that point after going down 4-0, after going down 5-0, they probably weren’t giving you their full effort at that point. And I wouldn’t blame them for not giving a hundred percent when they are down four or five games to none in a set. We’ll see this happen all the time at a professional level as well. It’s not just amateur players. However, after that first set is done they get a fresh start in the second set. Now, obviously they are down a set so, now were going to talk about that individually. They lost the first set and so maybe they are maybe they are down on themselves for that reason. However, they come out after that first set change over and the score is 0-0, they get to start all over again. The first set is completely done. And they get a totally new shot at you and your partner. In terms of the set. So, after getting crushed in that first set. Basically they have two choices. Emotionally or tactically. They can change nothing and just basically accept that they’re going to lose because they just got killed in that first set. It was even close.

So, I mean I could see it would be possible that they could walk back out for the second set and be saying to themselves, well it looks like this match is going to be over quickly, you want grab a beer after this. Where do you want to go for dinner? You know, whatever. It’s possible that could happen and you and your partner and still let your guard down and still win without a whole lot of trouble. However, the second way that they could react after losing that first set is to change their tactics and fight twice as hard to even the match in that second set. And in my opinion, that second reaction is much more likely. I mean, these guys came out to play a USTA match.

So, really what do you think they are going to do, given those two choices. Seeing as these guys have taken the time to work on their game. To feel pretty confident and competent about their tennis in the first place to go sign up for a USTA league team. They must be at least a little bit competitive and you and your partner should assume that they are probably going to fight twice as hard in the second set as they did in the first. Both in terms of tactics, and also in terms of just kind of basic energy level and effort. So, when you look at these two elements Rich, you’ll see that we kind of have a perfect storm for momentum change.

First of all, you and your partner are relaxed. You’re enjoying yourself, you’re kind of blasting in the glory of that easy first set. And then secondly, your opponents are both about to fight harder than at any other point in the match. They want to kind of vindicate themselves here in the second set. And if they are going to have any chance of winning this match. They know they have to pick up their games. And both tactically and physically and emotionally really come out strong and fighting hard for this second set. So when you combine those two things together, it’s a reallt dangerous environment for you and your partner. Next we are going to be talking about how to avoid these kind of momentum swings but before we do that, I just want to remind you guys about the official sponsor of the tennis podcast.

And that is tennistours.com championship tennis tours. They’ve been putting together individually tickets and ticket packages to professional tennis tournaments since 1987 and they do tickets for events all over the world and all over the United States. So, you guys should definitely check them out if you’re planning on going to a tennis tournament or if you know if one is coming to your area. Now, the big one coming up here in the U.S. Is the U.S. Open and obviously everybody here in the U.S. is excited about that and especially if you live close to New York City. And I’m planning on hopefully being there. I think the second weekend we’re going to be doing a cocktail party, myself and Will Hamilton from Fuzzy Yellow Balls and championship tennis tours are kind of going to team together for this and if you purchase tickets it’s for the U.S.Open and use my promotional code which is, “essential” as you check out, not only will you get a discount, but you’ll also receive an exclusive invitation to that cocktail party which is going to be in Times Square. Which is pretty cool. So go check them out at tennistours.com.

The discounts, I think it applies to purchases of $175 or more but you guys can mix and match tickets when you check out for the U.S. Open they have tickets available for every session of everyday and different seating choices for each of those days and sessions as well. So go check them out. Again, that’s at tennistours.com and don’t forget to use the promotional code, “essential” that shows them that you appreciate their support of the essential tennis podcast.

Alright, let’s go ahead and move on to our final topic for today’s show and that is how to actually avoid these kind of momentum swings. And, I am going to give you guys three step process to trying to not do what happened Rich and his partner here after winning their first set 6-0 and then losing the match. First of all, you have to have an awareness of this situation. Both setting up and occurring kind of being in the middle of this kind of situation and this is just one of those many things in tennis that sound easy but actually putting it into practice and remembering it on the court in the middle of the match, can be something that is pretty tricky. You know, it’s easier said than done kind of thing.

But after you and your partner or you when you are playing the singles match, win the first set, especially by a lot, you have to keep in mind this dynamic and this kind of set up for a possible fall or possible change in momentum. So that this is step number one, now that you guys have heard me talk about it and describe why it happens. Next time you go out onto a tennis court t play a competitive match. Step number one, is being aware of this situation.

Step number two, you need to redouble your efforts and awarness tactically. So, as far as what you are doing strategically on the court you need to kind of redouble what you’re doing. Definitely, redouble your awareness of what’s going on. It’s very likely your opponents will try something new after losing that first set. At least if they are smart. [laughter] If they lose the first set, 6-0 and come out for the second set and do exactly the same thing that they did in the first set. Then they’re just dumb [laughter].

I mean, I’m just going to go ahead and say it like it is. These guys are not very intelligent. Expect that they are going to do something different. And if you are playing doubles like Rich was. Some examples of that might be, maybe they’ll start playing double back or in an “I” formation, maybe a change of their formation and how they approach their points to give you and your partner a different look and try something tactically. Maybe they’ll switch sides and instead of returning on the deuce side, the stronger player will return from the add side. That’s something that they have the option of doing after the first set. Maybe, instead of staying in a one up, one back position kind of the a traditionally formation for recreational players.

Maybe they’ll start to serve and volley and return in volley. And they’ll get really aggressive and both of them will come up to the net to try to finish up points quickly instead of staying back. These are examples of changes that you have to be ready for and not only do you have to be ready for them to mix things up and try something different. But then you have to make adjustments accordingly right away and Rich didn’t talk about this, he didn’t mention exactly what changed in this set. He didn’t say if his opponents mixed up anything tactically. But I would be willing to bet that at least something changed.

I’d be very very surprised if Rich and his partner won the first set 6-0 and then their opponents continued to play the exactly same way and then ended up winning the match. To be honest with you, the chances of that happening even if Rich and his partner got too relaxed and let they guard down. The chances of that happening is not very good. I would bet that they did something different tactically.

So, don’t wait, change your tactics and counter whatever they do immediately. Don’t wait until you are suddenly behind three games in the second set to say, Aw crap we won the first set easily and they in second set they change things up on us. We weren’t really paying attention and now we’re way behind in the second set. Don’t let that happen to you. And you are going to avoid that by being aware of what’s going on. And this goes back to step number one– be aware of the situation in general and then step number two was be aware of what’s happening tactically on the court.

So those are the first two steps. Step number three is you have to re-redouble your efforts mentally and emotionally. And this is one that kind of goes without saying as well– but listen guys, this might be the most important part of my whole outline on this topic.

Do not let your guard down after winning the first set easily– especially if it is easily. Even if you win the first set 7-6 or 6-4– just one break of serve or in a tie-breaker. Don’t let your guard down. But especially if you win by a lot… And you guys might think it’s opposite and it might be. Listen, I’m going to admit– it might be the case that after you win 6-1 in the set , your opponent might just have a little temper tantrum and feel sorry for themselves and might just go home emotionally speaking and not even try for the second set. That’s possible however, if you are going to play a match and somebody is really going to hustle and try, it’s probably going to be after they get crushed in the first set. And they want to have some kind of chance of making it respectable in the second set.

That’s when you really want to guard against a big come-back from your opponent. Not only is it probably most likely that they are going to pick up their game and change things up, but these are the most disappointing losses as tennis players. When we are up by a lot and give away that lead and lose the match– it’s terrible.

Now, I’m going to leave you guys with a really good quote that I remember. Mental toughness expert David Grumping saying on a previous episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast… This isn’t a direct quote but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the jist of it– he said that, ‘you should never have the thoughts in your head that you are just maintaining a lead. You are either building on it or you are losing it.

Let me say that again. Never think that you are going to maintain your lead in a tennis match, you are either building your lead– you should be either trying to build your lead and if you aren’t doing that, you’re probably losing your lead. And this is kind of a mental thing.

If you go out there with the attitude, ‘Alright, we won the first set easily and we’re just going to keep doin what we’re doing and no big deal. This match is going to be over soon.’ That’s exactly when your lead starts slipping away.

When you walk out there on the second set, after winning the first set easily, you need to have the mental tenacity and the mental focus to say, ‘Alright, not only are we going to play just as well in the second set, we are going to play better. We are going to focus even harder because more than likely, our opponents are really going to try and fight back here and we need to keep them pushed down and we need to keep them behind in this match. So we are going to play even better tennis in this second set than we did in the first.

And this is something that very few recreational players have the mental toughness and the focus to be able to do.

But now that you guys have this outline, hopefully you guys will start to implement this and use it in your matches and go out and win the first set easily and then win the second set 6-0 as well.

Have the focus to be able to do that.

So just as a review here of the 3 steps to avoid the situation– number one, be aware of it. Number two, re-double your efforts and your awareness tactically and number three, re-double your efforts mentally and emotionally.

So stay strong. So Rich, hopefully that answers your question. I really enjoyed talking about this topic. I probably spent a little bit longer than I normally would on it just because I knew I was going to answer just one question today. But it’s a fun topic to talk about and this is something that really commonly happens and I hope it’s going to be a great help to all of you guys listening about it. Go out there and implement this and I’d be curious to hear feedback from you Rich and everybody else listening as well.

Let me know if this makes sense and I’d love to hear some stories of you guys actually using this successfully.

So Rich, thanks a lot for your great question and good luck with your tennis as you continue to work hard. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, that does it for episode 127 of the Essential Tennis Podcast.

Thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you for downloading the show and for listening to it. I appreciate your support of the show. Just by doing that, it honestly means a lot to me just to know that there are people out there that appreciate the time and effort that I put into this show– doing it free every week and I look forward to continuing to do it.

If you ever have any questions for me that you’d like me to answer, on the show, you can always send me an email to Ian@essentialtennis.com or you can go to essentialtennis.com and click contact and there is a little form there and you can select podcasts– you can fill out the form there to submit a question for the podcast– just select podcast.

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #126

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

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 tournament tickets by using the promotional code essential with a capital “E”. But thank you very much for downloading today’s show and for listening to us, I appreciate it very much, I am going to be playing the second half of the conversation that I had with master racquet technician Jeremy Plumley. And the first half of our conversation was released as podcast number 124. So Jeremy and I today are continue our talk about gear and how to select racquets and strings and how to use lead tape and all kinds of stuff. So, it’s gonna be a good conversation. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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Ian: Back on the podcast with me is Jeremy Plumley. Who’s a master racquet techician and we just wrapped up episode number 124. When you hear this conversation it will probably be a couple of weeks later, cause I have some other guests lined up for next week’s show. Which will be 125. So, I don’t know [laughter] what episode this will be Jeremy, probably 126 or 127, but I am looking forward to continuing our conversation that we’ve recorded for episode 124.

So, um it hasn’t been as long this time. Welcome back to the show.

Jeremy: Thanks, let’s hope the technology hasn’t changed a lot from the time we recorded this until people actually get to hear it.

Ian: Yeah, good point. Yeah, I know, I hopefully, yeah, I just quit and saved everything to make sure we didn’t lose episode 124 conversation file either, so yeah hopefully everything works out here.

But we just got done talking about racquet fad, different types of strings and also using lead tape to change the balance of the racquet. So, if you haven’t listened to podcast 124, definitely go back and check that out.

But we’ve got a couple of more questions to get to in today’s show. Jeremy I appreciate you sticking around and continuing to answer questions from my listeners. We all appreciate it very much.

Jeremy: Happy to do it, love it!

Ian: Alright, so let’s move on here and this question comes to us from John, he wrote to me and said, “I have been experimenting with lead tape, I tried putting a lot on the throat of the racquet to make it more head light and I put some on the end of the head to put more spin on my shots. Those are the two places on the racquet that I know will make a specific difference in my game. Could you explain where one should place weight on his or her racquet to make a certain change to his or her game?”

So, John here’s referencing, putting more weight in the tip of the racquet, at the top of the head of the racquet to create more spin. I n episode 124, Jeremy also talked about putting weight up there towards the tip to create more power. Essentially, more racquet head speed.

Um, why don’t you tell us the other different places we can put lead and what kind of differences our listeners can expect as far as results?

Jeremy: Oh, well like I’ve said, you know, putting the racquet up at the tip of the racquet, up at the tip of the head. You’re going to get your most bang for your buck! You’re going to feel it’s the most there because adding the lead tape up at the tip increases your swing weight the most. So, even if you put a little bit up there, you’re going to feel a difference.

Um, and then as you take it further down, you get less change in swing weight, but there are other benefits. A lot of times, what you see people do is they’ll add lead tape around 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock in the racquet head cause that will stabilize the racquet head a little bit on off center hits.

You know you get that racquet twisting in your hand. By adding weight at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, you’re putting just a little bit of extra mass on the further, the furthest points from the sweet spot and it will sure that up a little bit. Maybe give you a little bit more stability on what might be a little off that are shot. As you bring the racquet as you bring the lead tape further down the racquet you’re adding weight to the frame overall but you’re not adding as much swing weight, so you are probably going to get a little bit more stability, a little bit more plough through but you are not really raising the weight that it feels while you’re swinging through the shot. You’re not going to get as much extra pop on your ground shot that way but you are going to you know, bring that balance point just a little bit more towards the bottom of the frame.

Ian: OK, I remember on my racquets personally Jeremy you added, where did add the weight? I remember when I got my first my k pro tour, I liked the racquet overall but I just wanted a little bit more kind of pop behind my volley, I want to be able to hit just a little deeper without trying so hard to be able to have to hit through it to create depth in my volley. Now, I remember you put some at 9 and 3 o’clock, did you add weight in any other places on my frame to give me that specific result that I was looking for?

Jeremy: Ah yeah, I don’t remember specifically how much we put on there. But we basically put lead tape from 12 o’clock all the way down on both sides down to 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock. We put some down underneath the bumper guard, um and then the kind of, so it didn’t completely get out of whack. I also put a little bit um, I think we put some towards the top of the [inaudible], I don’t think we put any on the throat. Um, but most of the lead was up in the hoop of the frame. OK. Just to give you a little bit more solid surface to hit off for those vollies. Because the racquet was pretty significantly head light not as much as like the KS1. Ah, but it was head light racquet, so just putting a little bit more mass up in the hoop there, just to give you a little bit of extra thump on that volley.

Ian: Yeah, I thought I remembered you putting some in the handle as well, so I mean essentially if you take a racquet and add a little bit of weight in all of those places. A little bit in the handle, a little bit in 9 and 3 and a little bit at the tip. I mean does that essentially kind of accentuate all of the qualities that the frame had originally or is it going to turn it into a completely different feeling racquet by increasing the weight everywhere?

Jeremy: Ah, if you spread that out evenly it’s should keep its general playing characteristic but add, but increase in the total weight of the racquet, if you crazy in one direction, it’s going to throw things out of whack. We added more weight to the tip of your racquet then we did to the grip. So, we actually brought the balance weight closer to head heavy. Ah, it was still a head light racquet, um but we didn’t completely polarize it. Which is when you add the same amount to the top and the bottom, so you are keeping that balance the same. OK.

Ian: Now cool stuff, it’s interesting how it’s possible to change the playing characteristics of a frame or kind of keep them the same, but kind of get more so of what you are feeling before by balancing it out in different areas. I think that’s pretty cool. Is that something you recommend recreational players experiment with or should that be left to trained professionals like yourself?

Jeremy: Um, I think that is something that you can play around with. I think that tennis players are a little bit behind the curve on this one. Golfers for years have been customizing their clubs to fit their specific playing styles. Tennis players however, tend to just take a racquet off the wall and they might do the research to find out how it fits with their game or not and they just go out and play with it. Um, and you know they find a lot success in that, but there are things that you can do, you know to make that racquet play a little bit better for you. I think if you are looking a little bit more for stability and you want to add some weight at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock that you’re probably OK to do that. I think if you are looking to really change the characteristics of the racquet, you should at least kind of consult with your teaching professional or You know you can email into a specific podcast that you and I know of, um But if it’s just a little thing here and there um yeah you should go ahead and try it out. But you know, if you are going to do a crazy and try to match a couple or try to make your new racquet feel more like your old one. You are probably want to talk to somebody who has a pretty good idea of what they are doing.

Ian: OK. Let’s head to our next question here and we are going to answer a couple of more from Gavin here. Next question from Gavin. How do you think racquet weight affects play? For example, “I love the weights and heft of a dunlop 4D200 racquet on ground strokes.” And he says that’s about 330 grams of static weight. I feel it allows me to hit a heavier ball and my opponents notice this as well. However, I feel I struggle to get enough racquet head speed on my serve. On the flip side, if I play with say a 300 gram racquet, I can get the head speed on the serve, but I feel that my ground strokes lack penetration and all I seem to get is [inaudible]. Is all of this simply down to ability or is equipment a factor as well? What do you think Jeremy?

Jeremy: Ah, well equipment doesn’t change everything, as much as the manufacturers like to tell you that buying [inaudible] is to change your game, but what it comes down to is your technique and how are swinging the racquet. To what’s going to happen with the ball. Now that being said You know, you want to use the right equipment. If you have the heavier racquet and you can get through the ball. You are going, you should be able to hit the heavier ball with more top spin because you got more mass imparting its force on the ball. You know, that’s the plus size to a heavier racquet, the down size like you said, he’s having trouble getting top on his serve because he can’t swing the racquet as fast as he could with the lighter one. The down size to the lighter racquet, you know you don’t have as much mass parting force on the ball so… Kind of a catch 22 huh? Yeah, I mean it really is. The trick is you know finding somewhere in the middle there where you know you can find a racquet that is thousand [inaudible] pluses and minuses inside and out. I like to tell people that they should probably be using you know, the heaviest racquet that they could comfortably swing for a good amount of time because they are going to get more out of that than they will a super light weight racquet.

You know you might get a lot of power from that 9 ounce racquet that is as wide as a baseball bat but you are giving up control there. I also like to have people use a heavier because it keeps their strokes from getting short and punchy.

Ian: Yeah, that’s the main reason why I push people towards a heavier frame and I basically tell people the same, I like to put racquets into the hands of my students that are basically, that heaviest and smallest racquet that they are still comfortable with and exactly for reason that you pointed out. When recreational players, especially beginners get a really light racquet put in their hands that creates a lot of power on it’s own without good technique. Usually, beginners will kind of fully take advantage of that and use crappy technique and just let the racquet do all the work. And that’s great at first, and it feels you know good at first. But that can really limit you guys technique in the long run as you tried to continue to advance, so that can be a little dangerous can it Jeremy to go for the kind of lighter more powerful racquets.

Jeremy: Yeah, absolutely I really don’t like to have beginners use those light weight racquets for the same reasons you were saying. When you’re learning the game, particularly if you are working with a professional. You want to really develop your mechanics. Develop the strokes and then you know find that right racquet that goes in there. You don’t want to start off, you know with those short punchy strokes because its just going to be harder in the long run to start putting top spin on the balls to start getting depth with it as you start using out your racquets.

Ian: OK. Just one more question, just having to do with this with the weights. What do you suggest Gavin does I mean the two racquets he’s talking about they’re not a huge, well not a huge difference in weight. A 300 gram racquet and a 330 gram weight racquet. What do you suggest he does to try to bridge the gap Between these two racquets, maybe put some lead tape on the 300 gram racquet or should he try to find a racquet that is manufactured inbetween these two weights to try ro get the best of both worlds. What do you think?

Jeremy: Um, I would tend to probably start off with the wider one and then maybe try experimenting with some lead tape. It wouldn’t hurt because he obviously knows of about what weight he’s looking for, he’s got, you know pretty much an ounce difference in those two racquets but it’s all in where the weights distributed. OK, So um, if he goes with the lighter one, he has a little bit more freedom to you know kind of change the playing characteristic of the racquet to something that might suit him better. Um, but he could also [inaudible] some racquets you know that kind of fall in between there and there’s no shortage of racquets in that zone. I know he was talking about the dunlop 4D200. Um, you know he could try the 4D 300 Tour. Which is a little bit you know lighter than that 4D200.

Um, but there’s no shortage of racquets in that general, with those general characteristics. I’m sure he could find something that he likes there.

Ian: Alright, before we get to our next question, I want remind my listeners about the official sponsor of the essential tennis podcast and that is Championship Tennis Tours. You can find them at tennistours.com and I’ve been talking a lot about the US Open ticket packages where you guys can customize your trip as far as how close to the action you get and what hotel you stay at. They have a couple of different hotel choices that you can make. Between five stars hotels, you get shuttle back and forth and get to choose between the tour of New York City, tickets to a Yankees game, to a Broadway show.

What I don’t think I’ve been talking a lot about though is that you guys could also purchase individual tickets. You don’t have to go for a huge US Open Ticket package. So no matter what your budget is, or no matter how long your planning on going to the US Open this year, go to tennistours.com, check them out and even if you just make your purchase for the cheapest ticket and one day, one session and use the promotional code, “essential” with a capital ‘E’, you will still get the discounts and you still get the invitation to a cocktail party in Times Square, where myself and Will of fuzzy yellow balls will be as well.

So go check them out and I thank them very much for their support of the essential tennis podcast. Next up, Gavin wants to know, “What are your views about racquet head sizes? I’ve played with racquets with head sizes of 95 square inches, 98′s and 100′s square inches. I find that the sweet spot is bigger on the 100 square inch racquet, but I don’t seem to have as much directional accuracy as I do with the 95 square inch racquet. What do you suggest? I’m sorry, would you suggest going with the smaller head size so that I’m challenged to improve?” — What do you think?

Jeremy: Um, as far as the head size goes there, it’s a not a big difference from a 95 to a 100. If you put a 95 square inch racquet up with a 100 square inch racquet, you are not going to see a big difference in hitting area. That being said, the larger the head, more powerful the racquet. Which basically breaks down to a larger sweet spot but with the smaller headed racquets, with the smaller sweet spot. That sweet spot is actually more poten. So, something to think of there.

Now, is that just because the smaller headed racquet typically have more weight to them? Or is it actually directly because the hitting surface is smaller, that it’s more of a potence result?

It’s just kind of, you just got that smaller area but you’ve got more energy in that little area because it’s not spread out as much. Um, it’s kind of like, you know if you take in Taekwondo, or some sort of martial arts class or you know even boxing, you know they tell you that you want to get as much energy into your punch as you can, so its a very small, you know, hitting zone. But it’s very strong and powerful, and it’s kind of that same idea with the smaller sweetspot. It’s tougher to find a sweetspot, but you’re going to get more payoff when you do hit it. The difference between a 95 square on track and 100 square on track it isn’t that big, but there will be a difference in the potency of that sweetspot.

Ian: So how come the lighter rackets are always considered to be the power rackets if it’s actually the case that you get more out of a well hit shot with a smaller racket face.

Jeremy: Um, normally when the talk about the power level [inaudible] those rackets they’re looking at the overall hitting area and you know, they might give a B+ power rating to something that hits an inch outside of the sweetspot in those big banger rackets, and it might be like a C on the smaller ones. The big difference between those large headed powerful rackets and the smaller headed rackets is stability. If you hit an off-center shot on 115 square inch racket out near, you know, the shoulders around 3 o’clock or 9 o’clock, you’re gonna get a lot of twisting just because there’s so much space in between the frames from point A to point B. On the smaller ones, say a 90 square inch racket or a 95 square inch racket, there’s not as much space. So you’ve got a better chance of actually getting that ball back over and in the court if it’s off center with the smaller headed racket.

Ian: So hold on a second. So you’re telling me that when the manufacturers say that you’ll get more power with that huge, you know, 9 ounce racket, you’re telling me that by power they don’t actually mean more miles per hour that the ball is travelling as it leaves the racket?

Jeremy: Well, you are… Okay. Um… well, let’s talk about this in terms of, you know, all things being equal.

Ian: Okay.

Jeremy: Okay? Because normally what happens is with those wider rackets you have a much wider beam which is going to give you more power. So it’s not really necessarily a result of the sweetspot that you’re gaining more power, it’s the fact that the racket is lighter, you can swing it faster, and you’ve got a wider, stiffer frame that’s going to give you that power. But if you take two rackets that, you know, are the same width and same beam width and different head sizes, you’re going to get you know, more power from the larger one just because you get more trampoline effect off the string.

Ian: And by power, you’re meaning like, literally like speed of the shot?

Jeremy: Right.

Ian: Okay.

Jeremy: Right. Because you’re going to get more of a catapult effect.

Ian: Got ya.

Jeremy: If you’re swinging at the same speed, everything else is equal, a smaller head is going to be less powerful than a larger head.

Ian: Okay.

Jeremy: But it’s going to be more stable.

Ian: Hm. Okay. Interesting.

Jeremy: Yeah. They might have to post something on the boards to get a better clarification on that one. That one was a pretty complex sort of answer.

Ian: Okay. No, I think it’s good to talk through that stuff. And I think there’s a lot of misconceptions when it comes to the, you know, the terminology that racket manufacturers use, and I think there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say misleading, on the… Well, maybe I should use that word… on the side of the manufacturers. I mean, there’s a lot of marketing that goes on that leads people to believe that you’ll actually hit a better shot because of X or Y technology or because of the size of the racket or whatever. I mean, how much of that is actually the case, and how much of it is just trying to get you to buy the newest, you know, latest, greatest frame?

Jeremy: Well, you know, a lot of it is marketing. But you know what? I don’t think that the manufacturers are just going to bold face lie to you. I’m sure that there’s a way that they can measure that 20% increase in power from technology A to technology B. Whether you can replicate those findings in a non-laboratory situation, that’s up for debate.

Ian: [laughter] Alright, let’s move on to our final question here. And this has to do with the gauge of different strengths. And last question here comes to us from Gavin as well. And Gavin, by the way, thanks for all of your well thought-out questions. He wrote me several weeks ago and said that, Ian, you should talk more about gear on the Podcast.

And I said, well, go ahead and submit some questions and next time I have Jeremy on, I’ll be happy to answer them. And he really did his homework. He sent in quite a few. So, here’s the last one from Gavin. He said, “On the same subject of strings, what difference do you think the gauge makes to the playability of the strings?” And this is something I’ve always been a little confused about. I know that certain gauges are supposed to create more or less spin, assuming you’re hitting a spin shot correctly. I’ve heard in some places that you’re supposed to get more or less power based on the gauge. What are the actual facts on that?

Jeremy: Um, basically, going back to the all things being equal, a thinner gauge string is going to give you more bite on the ball, which is going to lead to more spin, which should lead to more control. You’re also going to have better feel with that. A thicker string, on the other side, it should give you more power. Again, all things being equal. The obvious distinction between a thin gauge and a thick gauge is durability. The thinner gauge is obviously going to break quicker than a thicker gauge.

Ian: Okay. Now, it’s interesting, because it seems, it would seem like, I think, to a lot of people at first blush, that a thicker gauge would actually create more spin, because there’s more you know, string actually touching the ball as contact is made. Why is it that a thinner gauge is actually creating more spin?

Jeremy: Just because it’s, you know, it’s kind of the same theory as a knife. You can cut through something better with a sharp instrument, like a knife, than you could with, you know, a thicker one like a 2×4.

Ian: Ah. They must have taught you that at master racket technician training camp, huh?

Jeremy: That’s right. Yes. It was boot camp. And what they do is they had us [inaudible] hit with piano wire and 2x4s.

Ian: Nice.

Jeremy: [laughter] But it’s, I mean, that’s kind of you know, too extreme. You know, the difference between an 18 gauge string and you know, a 15 gauge string isn’t that dynamic. But just think about, you know, that thinner string is actually biting into the ball and grabbing it and kind of imparting its force on the ball, while that thicker one is just kind of [inaudible] it [inaudible] through it.

Ian: Okay. Alright. Well, that makes sense to me, and hopefully to everybody else listening as well. Anything else to add, Jeremy? We talked about… In this show, we talked about different gauges just now, different head sizes, different weights of racket, and first question had to do with lead tape, putting lead tape in different positions on the racket. Anything else to add on any of those topics before we wrap things up?

Jeremy: Um, yeah, just a couple things.

Ian: Yeah.

Jeremy: Because there is some confusion, I think, with some people about the gauge, what is thicker and what is thicker. Um, actually, you know, an 18 gauge string is thinner than a 17 gauge string. And…

Ian: That’s important to get straightened out, huh?

Jeremy: Yeah. Because, you know, people think well, it’s a lower number, it might be a thinner diameter. An average gauge string is normally 16 gauge. And you can normally find up to 18 gauge is the thinnest, 15 gauge normally tends to be about the thickest you can find. So that’s just something to think about when you start looking online for strings. The other thing is, in terms of the lead tape. And we always kind of joke about this. You know, you are working with lead. So if you are putting lead tape on your racket, after you do that, make sure to wash your hands. Because, while it is safe to use, you still want to take general precautions.

Ian: Don’t let your children chew on the lead tape.

Jeremy: No. No. Keep it away from the kids.

Ian: Yes.

Jeremy: In particular if you have a son like mine who likes to put everything in his mouth.

Ian: [laughter] Leave the lead tape up on the top shelf.

Jeremy: That’s right.

Ian: Alright. Well, Jeremy, thank you very much for your time, and for your expertise. It’s been good to have you back on the show again. And I know that the listeners of my show all appreciate your inputs and your time, and answering their questions as well. So, thank you very much. [music]

Jeremy: Ah, well, thank you very much for having me. It’s always [inaudible] [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Alright. That does it for episode number 126 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for listening to today’s show. I appreciate it very much. And if you’re not already downloading the show using iTunes, I really suggest that you do that. You can subscribe to the show and make it download automatically every Monday when I release the podcast. And if you already do use iTunes, please do me a favor, go to the iTunes music store and rate and leave a review for the Essential Tennis Podcast. It helps with the ratings for the show on the iTunes music store. And I would appreciate your time very much, if you wouldn’t mind heading over there and doing that, it would be great. Okay. That does it for this week. Thanks again everybody. Take care. And good luck with your tennis. [music] [music] [silence]

Essential Tennis Podcast #125

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Welcome to 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!

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

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

Thanks very much for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking the time to download this podcast file and to listen to the show. I’ve got a special guest with me on the podcast today. We’re going to be talking all about different mental tennis topics, which is always a favorite topic of mine.

So, let’s go ahead and get right to it. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

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My guest today on the Essential Tennis Podcast is Dr. Patrick Cohn. He is the host of the Tennis Psychology Podcast. You guys can find that on iTunes. It’s one of the top tennis podcasts in iTunes, and he’s a mental toughness expert in all kind of different fields of sports, which is interesting. Dr. Cohn, welcome back to the podcast. It’s great to have you here.

Cohn: Thanks for having me again, Ian.

Ian: Yeah. You bet. Actually, let’s talk about that briefly. In googling your name to get a little bit of background information about you to do an introduction, I couldn’t help but notice but you specialize in a lot of different sports. I noticed race-car driving, and tennis, and there were a couple other ones in there as well. How many different areas of sport do you specialize in?

Cohn: Well, the whole gamut. I mean, tennis is one of my specialties. Golf and tennis are a couple specialty areas that I have. Also racing is another specialty. But I work with equestrians, skaters, dancers, basketball players, baseball players, I work with the entire gamut, you know.

So, I’ve opened up my business for working with all performers and athletes. And tennis and golf are the ones where I’ve focused in terms of the products that I’ve developed, and also some of the online material like the podcast, etc.

Ian: OK. That’s interesting that you bring so much different experience to the table. And I’m actually curious, one question for myself before we get to listener questions.

What unique challenges or circumstances do tennis players–in your opinion– get faced with, compared to all those other sports that you’ve worked with?

Ian: Well, both tennis and golf. I mean, we can chunk those together. But, it’s the start and stop nature of tennis, I think, that has one of the unique mental demands.

Because you know, between points, obviously there has to be a ritual and you have to be able to let go of the last point, but then you have to kick up the focus again and restart it. You have change-overs, obviously, and it’s like coming out at half-time again, you know. Even though a change-over, you know, it’s shorter than a half-time. But I think the continual starting and stopping it would be one.

I think another one that I find in particular, at least working with young juniors right now, is they pay too much attention at ranking, I guess. And I don’t know, they get psyched out, or they get over confident. And really the ranking, the rankings and the seedings really don’t mean a lot, I don’t think, at the junior level.

So I think they get too worried about where their seeding is, or who they’re playing, and don’t focus enough of their own game and their own strengths.

Ian: OK. Interesting. Well, let’s go ahead and get to some questions from listeners of the Podcast. And these were actually taken from the forums at essentialtennis.com. People were really excited to hear that you were coming back on the show, by the way. You’re definitely one of the favorite guests that I’ve had on the show. So I’m happy to have you back.

Cohn: Great. Great.

Ian: So let’s go ahead and get started with the questions.

The first one is from David in Dallas. And he wrote nice short and sweet one, and said: Are there stress-relieving routines one can do in a match to promote fluid strokes during tense moments? What do you think?

Cohn: Um, this is in a match. This is during a match, or before a match? This looks like in a match, during a match.

Ian: Yeah.

Cohn: OK. Well, David, I think you have to understand that there’s no really quick fixes in my work. In other words, there’s no Band-Aid out there.

Ian: [laughter] [inaudible]

Cohn: Breathing obviously, tightening and releasing, stretching, you know, those are all the physical things that you can do, obviously, to relieve stress. The whole area of relaxation training and being able to use relaxation training. But there’s one premises, and that is, it’s body to mind.

So what that means is you’re trying to reduce the tension in the body, and hopefully that will reduce some of the tension in the mind, you know.

But my philosophy is often that’s a Band-Aid. The whole breathing, certainly that can help settle yourself between points, tightening and releasing, relaxing, but what you really have to understand is where that mental stress is coming from. Because the mental stress, the mental anxiety, ultimately leads to the physical tension, and then the strokes don’t feel as smooth.

So typically what I see, if I was to give a kind of the chain of command here, it would be, there’s an underlying fear of failure–let’s just say that there’s a fear of embarrassment, for example–that creates some anxiety, which creates some of the physical tension, but it also creates a lack of trust.

And now, it’s hard to hit out on the ball, it’s hard to hit your normal fluid strokes, because you’ve got both of those going, the tension and the lack of trust, and they may be related to each other. Lack of trust is usually when you’re trying to guide it and steer the ball around, rather than just hit your normal strokes, because you’re afraid of missing shots, or you’re trying to be too perfect with it. But so, that’s what I mean, David and Ian, is about there’s no quick fixes and Band-Aids like simple relaxation techniques.

Now you can do that to reduce your physiological activation. In other words, the breathing–what we call the abdominal breathing– between points, can help get oxygenate your system and reduce your heart-rate quickly, but it really doesn’t address where the mental stress is coming from. And that to me, is the key. My philosophy is: What is the fear? What is the stress?

And a lot of times what I find is the fear and the stress, is it relates to some type of fear of failure, which is often related to other people. I don’t want to disappoint a parent. I don’t want to disappoint a team-mate. I don’t want to disappoint a coach. Um, I’ve worked too hard on my game to, you know, to perform this way. I don’t want to lose. You know, so, it’s… Those are often what I call the mental triggers that are going to lead to some of this perceived stress and anxiety that the player has, which is more of a core issue. And you have to address these core issues in order to completely relieve…

So, I guess what I’m saying is there are no quick routines that you can do, other than like I said, there’s certainly, you know, you could do some relaxation training and stuff like that. But, from a mind game perspective, I would say how to keep your mind focused in the present. Don’t get ahead of yourself, because when you get ahead of yourself and focus on results, that’s when you can easily start getting tense and anxious. Try to just play the next point to the best of your ability. Obviously easier said than done.

But, for some players that’s helpful too. Is to remind yourself, let’s just play the next point. Let’s just play the next game, you know, one point at a time, one shot at a time, and not get too far ahead on myself. Cause the fear, the anxiety, is often future thinking about results and consequences, and what if I lose?

Ian: Sure. Sure, yeah. Well, I think that a lot of my listeners will really be able to identify with one thing that you said. You said that a lot of times this physical tension is due to mental anxiety over fear of failure, or embarrassment, or letting a person down.

So let’s say that my listeners out there are having this realization that wow, yeah, I’m feeling so much pressure because I don’t want to let my parents down, or my coach down, or my team-mates down. Even though it’s easier said than done, but we all should realize that it’s not that important that we win each match.

But I guess my follow-up question for you Dr. Cohn, is once we identify where that anxiety is coming from, how do we deal with it? In other words, if my pressure is coming from thinking that I don’t want to let my coach down, how can I work past that mentally?

Cohn: OK. So, that’s good that you gave me a specific example. So ultimately, then you have to find out the roots of, you know, why does the player worry about letting the coach down? What is it that they… Are they playing for the coach?

So #1: the player probably cares too much about what other people think. And we call that social approval, um, in my work. They’re looking for some type of approval, some type of respect. They’re very much oriented and geared towards, you know, what the coach has to say to them, too much. You know, they hang on every word maybe, the coach says, for example. And it’s not, in general it’s not healthy, for example.

Ian: OK.

Cohn: So, step one is the athlete has to realize that they’re playing for themselves and not their coach. Or they’re playing for themselves, and they’re not playing for a parent. Because a lot of young kids I know, that I work with, they worry about disappointing a parent, or they want to make their parents happy, or you know, whatever. So they have to start playing for themselves, and not playing to get respect or get admiration from the coach.

Ian: OK.

Cohn: The second part of that is they have to learn to be able to catch themselves when they start worrying about what a coach is gonna saying, or worrying if they’re going to disappoint a coach. They have to be able to recognize that mental turmoil that’s going on, and be able to refocus themselves in a way that they’re not burdened or hindered by that. So, it’s you know, I’m making it sound easy, and simplistic. It’s not that easy, and it’s not that simplistic certainly.

Ian: Sure.

Cohn: But that’s the direction that I take it with my students. And it usually goes to [inaudible] some type of ego involvement, to put it simply. Ego involvement means players that don’t have self-respect often look for respect from other people. That’s a premises of social approval. They haven’t given themselves unconditional self-respect, and they feel like they need to get it from other people. And that can be really dangerous for athletes.

Ian: Well, before we get to our next question, I want to remind my listeners about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast, and that is Championship Tennis Tours. You guys can find them at tennistours.com. Since 1987 they’ve been providing tickets and travel packages to professional tennis events. You guys should definitely go check them out.

And especially check out their US Open travel packages. If you guys purchase one of those using my promotional code, which is Essential, with a capital E, you’ll not only get a discount, but you’ll get an invitation to a cocktail party in Times Square, where myself and Will Hamilton from Fuzzy Yellow Balls are going to be doing a little cocktail reception during the tournament. And it’s gonna be a lot of fun. So please go check them out. Look at their prices, and make a purchase through them if you’re going to be going to a professional tennis event anytime soon.

And please use the promotional code to show that you’re supporting the Essential Tennis Podcast, and thank my sponsor for their support of me as well.

Alright, let’s go ahead and move on to our next question, which comes to us from Gary. And his question was: Should I consciously think that I’m a better player than the opponent or opponents? Or should I just be confident in my game and my strokes? At what point is confidence just simple arrogance? Also, can arrogance actually help you sometimes in a game or match? What is the precise relationship between confidence and being able to stay relaxed in tennis? [inaudible]

There is a bunch of questions that aren’t in there, but let’s go ahead and start with the, I guess…

Cohn: There’s several issues there.

Ian: Yeah.

Cohn: There’s several issues, yeah.

Ian: Go ahead and take the lead on that.

Cohn: OK . So, let’s start off with the first segment about should I consciously think that I’m a better player than the opponent.

Well, I don’t know about the “consciously” part about that. I mean, either you do or you don’t. You can’t fake that, right? You can’t fake that. So, it sounds like he’s asking should I fake it and just automatically think that I’m better than my opponent, or should I just be confident in my game and my strokes? There may be some expectation imbeded in there, that I think that I’m better than the other player, which I’m not a fan of, of having expectations like I should win, for example.

Ian: OK.

Cohn: So, I guess my answer is I like the sound of the second part of that. I want him to be confident in his game and strokes, go out there and play one shot at a time, and continue to believe in his game and his strokes no matter if he’s up big, he’s down big, or if it’s a really tight match. That to me, it just has a better ring to it than having to consciously think that you’re a better player.

Ian: Yeah, it’s kind of an unreasonable thought, isn’t it? I mean, there’s always gonna be players that are better than us, and it’s not just tennis, but every sport. And from day to day you’re going to play people that are much better, much worse, and right in between. And it’s probably not healthy psychologically to walk out onto a court and just automatically assume that you are better. Is it?

Cohn: No. Because I think, once again, tied in with the expectations, if you just think you’re better and you expect to win, and then it doesn’t go your way early in the match, then there could be some real frustration time with that.

Ian: Yeah. Absolutely. So, what about this comparison between confidence and arrogance? I guess, would arrogance be that first thought? That kind of the assumption that of course I’m better than my opponent?

Cohn: I look at that a little bit differently. I mean, I have this discussion with my students a lot.

So confidence as we define it, is a believe in your ability, is a believe in your skill, it’s how strongly you believe you can execute your shots, if you want to get more specific with it. So it’s a strength if you believe.

Arrogance, I don’t use that term in sports psychology, but it’s defined by people, I think, outside of sports that look at vary confident athletes and say that’s arrogant. In other words, they look at supreme levels of confidence as being more too cocky or too arrogant.

Ian: Right.

Cohn: I think it’s usually people that are outside of sports. But some athletes do worry about how their confidence comes off. They don’t want it to come off as an arrogant type, you know, confidence. Like I guess some people would say, you know, Nadal obviously is a very confident guy.

Some people that might not like some of his action would say that’s arrogant, he’s being arrogant or cocky. So, what we really want, is we want cockiness and confidence on the inside. You’ve got to be internally confident and humble on the outside.

Arrogance I think can be construed as you’re just doing it for the showboat-y. You know, I think of Deon Sanders.

Ian: [laughter] Right.

Cohn: If people… if your listeners are old enough to remember, you know, Deion Sanders’ heyday was very much a showboater. However, he had the skills to back it up, you know. Even though he was a showboater he was very respected by his teammates and he was a very, very talented athlete.

So, often I look at arrogance as just trying to put it in other people’s face, rub it in their face, on purpose. Right?

But I really want my students to have that internal confidence and cockiness yet be humble on the outside, but not go out of your way to be humble on the outside. Okay?

Ian: What do you mean by that?

Cohn: Well, sometimes if you try so hard to be humble with your actions and your statements, that can often stifle your internal level of confidence and cockiness.

Ian: Hmm.

Cohn: OK? Because you’re so concerned about how it looks to other people. Boy, I’d better not say that. Or, I’d better not think that way. You know, that might be construed as being too arrogant and cocky on my part. So, ultimately then that’ll feed internally to them where there’s trying to put a cap on some of those thoughts.

Ian: That’s interesting. Do you watch professional tennis very often, Dr. Cohn?

Cohn: Yes. I do. I mean, obviously the bigger ones, Wimbledon now, and the Open, and Australian… So I’m glued to the TV when the big ones are around. I don’t watch every week in and week out. No.

Ian: So I’m curious what your opinion is, because I’ve had conversations with actually many people, tennis fans, tennis players, who do think that Nadal is arrogance and cocky. And I’m curious what personally you feel about that statement, coming from a psychologist’s standpoint.

Cohn: Well, I would say that it’s a reflection of what he feels like on the inside.

Ian: OK.

Cohn: That it is a true confidence. It’s a true confidence that he lets out. In other words, he’s not protecting or he’s not filtering what he does or what he says. It’s you know, and he’s not afraid of the repercussions of it. So often it can be a reflection of somebody that has a superior level of confidence.

Because I think even a confident athlete, or a confident tennis player, can look at Nadal and say that’s arrogance, because maybe they can’t relate to that level on confidence that you have to have. So… Oh yeah…

Ian: And maybe it makes them a little uneasy to see another player that confident on the court?

Cohn: Yeah. Yeah. It could make them uneasy, or they just can’t relate to that level of confidence, and then they call it arrogance, or they call… he’s too cocky. But you know what, the best athletes in the world and the best tennis players in the world, they have that internal level of cockiness. You have to have that in order to perform your best.

Ian: Interesting stuff. And let’s talk about the final question that Gary wrote here, which was: What is the precise relationship between confidence and being able to stay relaxed in tennis?

Cohn: Um, I don’t know.

Ian: Or is there one?

Cohn: Well, it’s an interesting question, because he’s asking for a precise relationship between confidence and relaxation. How I would answer that, is I would say if you have a lot of confidence, I call it a cure-all.

Meaning: you don’t get anxious, you don’t get fearful, you don’t get scared, because you have this level of confidence that everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna turn out alright. And if it doesn’t, then the next day will.

So I guess, I really don’t know where he’s going with that. But to me, the relationship is when you have a high level of confidence you’re going to be relaxed. When you don’t have confidence it’s much more likely that you’re gonna have tension in your game.

Ian: Sure.

Cohn: Does that make sense to you?

Ian: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. OK.

Cohn: He says relaxed confidence, in the next statement he asks about what is relaxed confidence in tennis as opposed to other types of confidence.

I’ve never heard of relaxed confidence. I would make the assumption once again, he’s looking at it from a perspective like, someone like Federer. Federer kind of looks laid back and relaxed, but he has a nice confident demeanor about him; as opposed to Nadal who looks very, you know, jumpy, cocky, you know, type of confidence when you look at him.

Ian: Sure. Yeah, is that just kind of different personality styles? Or why do they come off so differently?

Cohn: Yeah. I think that’s different personality styles and how they display their confidence. Certainly. Yeah.

Ian: OK. OK. Alright. Let’s move on to our third question. This comes to us from [inaudible] in New York. He wrote and said: What should you be thinking about on change-overs? Is this the time to pump yourself up, take a mental breather, or put yourself in a relaxed state? Should you be mulling over tactics? And if so, should it be general things like stay aggressive, or more detailed thoughts like serve wide to their backhand, or hit down the middle to take away angles, etc.?

Cohn: Very interesting question. I think very astute question. I like my students to start off with a game plan, that they have a game plan that’s going to work for a particular opponent or their style of play. In addition to that, I like my students to focus on what are called processed goals.
Processed goals are little things that you’re going to do to execute, you know, each and every point that you can.

So it’s a good example of kind of a strategy and a process goal tied into one. Stay aggressive could be a more general process goal, whereas serve wide to the backhand, hit down the middle to take away the angles, that’s more of a strategy once again, but it can also be a process goal.

Process goals can be really small like make sure you pick a target before you get up to the service line. In your service routine, make sure you pick a target and commit to the target and commit to the type of server you’re going to hit. Right?

Ian: OK.

Cohn: Those are more specific examples of process goals.

But in terms of change-overs, he says, pump yourself up, take a breather, relax yourself. I do believe, it’s kind of where you are in the match and what your mental state is. If, you know, you just missed an easy volley to lose the game, and you’re just beside yourself, you know, I don’t think pumping yourself up is going to work. [laughter]

Ian: [laughter]

Cohn: Right?

Ian: Yeah.

Cohn: That’s the time where you want to take some deep breaths, say it’s okay, let’s let it go, let’s get to the next game, for example. If things are going really well, for example, in the match, and you’re up 4-1, for example, that’s where you want to remind yourself to stay aggressive. Okay, let’s finish this off. Let’s stay aggressive. Let’s not go into protect mode, you know, and give my opponent any momentum. Let’s keep the momentum going and stay aggressive with my shots. So that’s a couple examples of it .

Depends on really what’s going on for you in that match, and what type of adjustments that you have to make on the change-overs. Because sports psychology, Ian, is all about the real value in sports psychology isn’t when you’re in the zone and you’re playing great. The real value of sports psychology is when you need to make adjustments.

Ian: Sure.

Cohn: You just lost your confidence because you, you know, whacked two balls long, for example. Or the example I said before, you missed an easy volley and you’re really upset with yourself, and you’re frustrated and you need to make an adjustment. Or you find that your mind is wandering and you just don’t have the focus you need, and you need to, you know, get your mind re-focused on the match. You know, on and on and on.

Obviously I could keep going on some of the adjustments that you need to make. Maybe you’re too anxious and tense, and you need to calm down, take some breaths and try and let go of the last game, for example, or the last couple of games. So it’s really about what’s going on with your mental state at that time.

Generally, I can say, what you’re trying to do each and every point, and each and every change-over, is you’re trying to be in a confident, a focused state, and in a state of what I call trust, meaning you have trust in your skills and what you practiced, and you trust your strokes. Those are the biggies that I teach my students. So if any of those are askew, during change-overs you obviously want to talk to yourself and set up a plan.

For example, if you feel like you’re tightening up and you’re pushing the ball, or you’re steering, you’re guiding it with your racket rather than swinging out with your racket, then that might be a situation where you decide, you know what, that’s not working. So, let’s just throw that away, and let’s just start hitting out on the ball and accept the results.

Ian: I like how you’re tying the decision making process there to the momentum in the match, and how well things are going.

I actually learned that lesson when I was playing in college, and it’s not anything that I had thought about before. But I was playing up with somebody much higher in the line-up than me, that normally I wouldn’t have been playing doubles with, and we were beating a team that was better than us. And we were both playing a real well . And we going over to a change-over, and my partner, who’s a much stronger player than me, much more experienced, you know, we went over to our bags and we’re grabbing our water, I started to sit down, and he’s like no [inaudible] stand up. Stand up.

And we put our water down, walked right over to the other side of the net and got into our positions to play the next point, and just stood there and watched the other guys. And like, you know, kind of to pressure them, to keep them going. And he kept us rolling. You know, he didn’t let us take a breather, he let us stay on our role.

And the flip side of the coin, we were having trouble in a different match, and I think we were down a break, and he took a ball and kicked it [laughter] over like two courts down, and he was like, come here. And we like walked and talked while we went and grabbed the ball to give ourselves a little bit of time.

Do those sound like good, you know, maybe kicking a ball on purpose to waste time isn’t ethical, but do those sound like good examples of being able to play with the momentum of the match?

Cohn: Yes. Absolutely. You know, another good example that I see is a player that’s down and that’s frustrated, I see with the younger kids a lot, what they’ll do is they won’t stop for a drink. They’ll just go right to the service line. You know, to return a serve.

Ian: Yeah.

Cohn: And that’s exactly the wrong thing that you need to do in that situation. That’s the wrong adjustment. They want to get up there, they either want the match over with quickly, or they want to get to the next game so that they can win a game quickly and settle themselves down.

And it’s exactly the wrong thing you need to do, where you need to actually take more time on the change-over to sit down, do some breathing, try to let go of some of the frustration that you have. And then when you’re ready, then get up and walk slowly and calmly to the serve or return of serve.

So yeah, those are good examples of trying to make adjustments on change-overs based upon what’s going on in the match. Certainly. Yup. I remember one time, I mean, just quickly, my daughter was up, was playing a pretty good opponent. This was a while ago. But she was up 3-love in the second set, and she needed to win the second set to pull even. And she took a bathroom break.

Ian: [laughter]

Cohn: What do you think happened after she came back from the bathroom break?

Ian: I’m guessing she had a let down.

Cohn: She lost all the momentum.

Ian: Oh man.

Cohn: She lost all the momentum. She had her opponent’s back against the fence. You know, she was reeling, she was upset, she had lost 3 games in a row, and it’s just exactly the wrong time to go for a bathroom break.

But I mean, you got, you know, nature calls. You’ve gotta go, but you’ve gotta go. But I said, “Why did you take the bathroom break? You’re up 3-0 and you got all the momentum?” “I had to go, dad.” [laughter]

Ian: Good answer.

Cohn: [laughter] So, that’s another example of when you’ve got the momentum and you got your player against the, you know, you know, get out there and get after it.

Ian: Sure.

Cohn: You know, don’t call an official, or you know, don’t break the flow. Don’t break the momentum.

Ian: But Dr. Cohn, with that we’re gonna wrap things up. We’re out of time. But, I want to thank you very much for spending time with me, and especially for answering questions from my listeners. I know that they’re going to appreciate it very much, not only that you took the time to be here, but for all the great information you’ve given as well. So, thank you very much for doing the show with me. It was great to have you.

Cohn: Hey, thanks for having me on again, Ian. I appreciate it.

Ian: Sure. And before we sign off, I want to remind my listeners as well, definitely check out the tennis psychology podcast on iTunes. And you can go to Dr. Cohn’s tennis site as well, which is sportspsychologytennis.com Thanks again, Dr. Cohn. It was great to have you. [music]

Cohn: Thank you. [music] [music] [music]

Ian: Alright. That brings episode number 125 of the Essential Tennis Podcast to a close.

And before I wrap things up, I want to thank a couple really special people who have donated to Essential Tennis in the last couple weeks. Just 3 people this time: Shelley in New Mexico, Kimberly in Texas, and I want to send a special thank you to John in Oregon, who sends an unusually high donation, unusually large donation to Essential Tennis. And John, I want to send a special thank you out to you on the podcast. Really appreciate your donation.

So if the podcast has helped you improve, and if you really appreciate the show and you’d like to give back, feel free to do that through a donation. It does not have to be a large amount. And you can also sign up for a subscription donation and make a small monthly donation of 5, 10, or 20 dollars. And you can do that by going to essentialtennis.com and on the front page, on the lower right, there’s a box that says donate. So go check that out. And I would appreciate your support very, very much.

Alright, that does it for this week. Thanks again everybody, for listening. I appreciate it. Take care. And good luck with your tennis.

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Essential Tennis Podcast #124

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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 Westermann] Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast, your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today’s episode of the Essential Tennis podcast is brought to you by tennistours.com, where you can receive a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis event tickets by using the promotional code “ESSENTIAL”.

Well thank you very much for joining me on today’s show and I’ve got a special treat. On today’s episode we have master racquet technician Jeremy Plumley back in the house. It’s been a while since he’s been on the show and so I’ve had some gear questions kind of stacking up.  So we’re going to be talking all about different gear-related questions today, having to do with lead tape and racquet balance and creating more spin and more power by altering your frame and all kinds of stuff like that. So if you’re interested in improving your tennis by knowing more about the gear and equipment that you play with, today’s show is definitely going to be for you.

So sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] My guest today on the podcast is master racquet technician Jeremy Plumley. Jeremy, it’s really good to have you back on the show again. Welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast.

[Jeremy Plumley] Thanks, Ian, it’s good to be back.

[Ian Westerman] Well, it’s been too long since I had you on the show last, and I’ve had some gear questions kind of get piled up over the last couple of weeks, and probably months, since I had you on the show last. I’m sorry it’s been so long, to both you and my listeners who’ve been waiting for gear topics and I definitely wait to have you on the show because, while I might know some of the answers to these questions, I’m not able to explain it in the same depth as you are, so I’m really happy to have you back on the show.

[Jeremy Plumley] That’s me, Mr. Depth.

[Ian Westerman] Mr. Depth, yes. Well, as I said, Jeremy is a master racquet technician, he is also a certified tennis professional, so he really knows his stuff and so let’s go ahead and get started. And Jeremy and I are going to talk about, actually, 7 different questions today, and this is going to get broken up into two podcast episodes, I’m not sure exactly where we’re going to draw the line, but we’ll be talking about half of them, or so, on today’s show, and at some point I’m going to cut the show off and continue it at a later podcast, so we’ll get to about half of them today. So Jeremy, are you set to go?

[Jeremy Plumley] I’m ready to go.

[Ian Westerman] So #1, this comes to us from Gavin, and he wants to know–several of these questions are going to come to us from Gavin, by the way– but one of them had to do with racquet fads. He wrote and said, ‘What about racquet lengths? A few years ago, 28-inch XL racquets seemed to be all the rage, as an example the Michael Chang racquets and others.  Nowadays XL racquets seem to be much more rare, why the change? Will you recommend an XL racquet to somebody that isn’t for example the height of John Isner?’ And he also says, ‘Again, a few years ago, heavy racquets seemed to be popular, for example, the Wilson Hammer range. I found an old 95 square inch 260-gram racquet in my garage recently, and as an experiment added 30 grams to the hoop. It turned into a beast on ground strokes, much more powerful than my normal racquet.

Nowadays, all racquets seem to be head-light, why do you think there has been a change in the market? What are your preferences regarding head-light or head-heavy balance? Or are you not even that bothered?’ So let’s talk about what kind of trends as far as frames are concerned, Jeremy, and he points out the extra length racquets that were popular a few years ago and also shifts in different weights. I’m curious to hear if you think that there’s even been trends in weights or if that’s just kind of marketing certain ranges of weights within racquet lines from major companies. So what do you think, Jeremy?

[Jeremy Plumley] Well, I think we’ve gotten away from any real fads when it comes to weights recently. There have been times when, you know, they were looking for ultra-light racquets. I remember back in the early ’90s, Yamaha came out with a racquet, and it was the first racquet that was ever 9 ounces, or maybe it was 10 ounces. But whatever it was, it was really light at the time and everybody was like, ‘Wow! This is amazing, it’s a very light racquet.’ Now almost every major manufacturer has something, at least one frame lower than that, and some of them have several, so I don’t know if we’ve ever really been in a trend where heavy racquets were popular.

There was a time when racquets were only heavy, before they got really good with using high-modulus graphite, and then they moved into titanium, and carbon, and all that. I think when Gavin was talking about finding that Hammer in the garage and digging it out of the moth balls and lead taping it up to all get out. That was, you know, the Hammer craze was a head-heavy craze. It wasn’t an all-around weight, as far as the racquet went, it wasn’t exceptionally  heavy, it’s just where the weight was put. And that was popular for a while because that really helps people create more power and, if they swung the right way, more spin on their ground strokes.

[Ian Westerman] OK. That was kind of what I had in my own head as well, was it seemed to me that all the major manufacturers really come out with at least one racquet at each major weight class, as it were; 9 ounces, 10 ounces, 11, and maybe at least one at 12 ounces. Is that something that’s just come about recently, where the manufacturers have that wide a range of weights, or has that been around for a while?

[Jeremy Plumley] I think more so now than it used to be. The big manufacturers, you know, Wilson, Babolat, Head, Prince, the ones that really have a lot of racquets in their line, just because they have so many options, they’re going to have stuff that falls into each category. Some of the smaller racquet companies, say for example, Yonex, they don’t really have anything ultra-lightweight. They kind of have more ‘tweeners, and then they have a couple racquets that are like their tour models, that Hewitt uses or Ivanovic. But they don’t really cover the whole spectrum the way that Wilson does. You know, Wilson has their Cirrus One racquet which is, you know, really light, extra length added, which was one of the fads he was talking about that we’ve kind of gotten away from. And then they have that at one end, and then all the way at the other end, they have the KPro Staff, 88 square inches, 14 ounces.

[Ian Westerman] Yeah let’s talk about the length. I remember back in the ’90s when, I remember, I had a Prince Thunderstick that was longer than a standard length, and it was really popular back then. I remember the ads in Tennis magazine for it. How come they seem to have just about gone away altogether? You just mentioned one specific frame that’s longer than a standard length, but how come we don’t see much of that any more when it was so popular before?

[Jeremy Plumley] I think it’s a couple of reasons. Right now, on the market, about the longest extended length that you can find is about 28 inches, which is 1 inch extended from a standard frame. Much more than that, I can’t think of any racquets currently on the market that go longer than 28 inches. I think a big part of that was, when a racquet gets lengthened, it actually increases the swing weight, which takes it a little bit longer to get through, and it can be a little bit more difficult to get that racquet through on your ground strokes. That’s one thing, I think the other part of it is a lot of people were seeing those racquets as an ultimate game improvement. Give me a 2 inch longer racquet, I just went from 5’8″ to 5’10″. But they didn’t take into consideration that added weight, also, you know, it doesn’t seem like a lot, but that extra 2 inches also changes your footwork a little bit. You can really talk to that as a tennis professional, but 2 inches can be the difference between a good shot and getting jammed.

[Ian Westerman] Sure.

[Jeremy Plumley] And I think a lot of lower, intermediate and even beginner players picked up these racquets and they found it a little harder to play with than their standard length racquets. And maybe the benefit of that extra length, more reach at the net, more leverage on the serve, maybe didn’t outweigh the negatives.

[Ian Westerman] OK. All right, let’s move on to question #2 in our line of 7 questions here, and this one also comes from Gavin. In this question he said ‘There are lots of different types of strings out there, polys, synthetic guts, multifilament strings. Ivan Lendl recently commented that he thought the biggest change in the game since he was a pro were the strings. What do you personally play with during coaching and matches and what do you think are pros and cons of each type of string? What type of strings would you recommend for an intermediate, say, 3.5 level player?’ So lots of stuff we could talk about in there.

First of all, I’m curious what your opinion is on this statement that he quoted Lendl on, in saying that he thought that the biggest difference between when Lendl was a pro and the modern game–and I don’t know when that quote was taken from exactly– but apparently Lendl thought that the strings were the biggest difference between when he was a pro and whenever this quote was taken. What are your thoughts on that, Jeremy?

[Jeremy Plumley] I tend to agree with Lendl–

[Ian Westerman] Really.

[Jeremy Plumley] If you had known me growing up, I despised Ivan Lendl. But he’s not the only person that thinks that, there’s a lot of former players out there that have really said that the string technology has been the biggest jump. And not just string technology in general, they’re talking about the polyester. They’re talking about the Luxelon, the new hot string that everybody’s talking about that Nadal is using, RPM Blast. That is, you know, the biggest thing in string technology for as long as I can remember. And those who aren’t familiar with polyester, you’ve probably heard it if you’ve been watching Wimbledon or the French Open before that.

Polyester is a very stiff dead string that allows the players to swing through it pretty much as hard as they can and, because they’re not getting a lot of launch off of the racquet string bed, they’re able to control the ball and keep it in the court. And what it’s basically led to is people like Nadal running 6, 7 feet outside of the court behind the baseline. They’re able to produce these massive shots with tons of spin that allow them to stay in the point, or even win the point with just one massive swing.

[Ian Westerman] So if we took Nadal and the athleticism and the stroke technique that he brings to the table currently and we gave him, let’s say, T-2000 with whatever string Jimmy Connors would have put in that racquet, back when he was playing with it in the ’70s and ’80s, are you saying that you don’t think Nadal would be able to produce the same amount of topspin and the same basic resulting shots with his ground strokes?

[Ian Westerman] I don’t think he would right off the bat. The T-2000, you know, that’s kind of a different animal all in itself. If you want to go back–

[Jeremy Plumley] Let’s say a stick that–not wooden racquets, let’s not go back quite that far, but let’s say an early aluminum or metal frame, an early metal frame.

[Ian Westerman] Possibly.

[Jeremy Plumley] …which is Lendl’s era, correct? Am I right on that?

[Ian Westerman] Yeah, Lendl, I mean, he had a long career. He started off with a woody, went into the metal stage, and then when he finished, he was pretty much in that kind of high-modulus graphite with some fiberglass.  He used a Mizuno racquet that I think had a good amount of fiberglass in it, which allowed them to keep the weight down, but it was still pretty stiff; but nothing like the Aeropro Drive that Nadal is using now. I think, you know, the racquet that Nadal’s using isn’t extraordinarily heavy. It’s a pretty powerful racquet.  It’s probably much stiffer than any of the rackets that Wendell used even late in his career. That would definitely help Nadal with his power.

I think Nadal gets so much then from his racket head acceleration and you know he just swings at such a vertical angle that he imparts so much spin on the ball. He could do that with any racket. I don’t think the materials, the frame would make that big of a difference. I think it would be more of the weight that he would be able to generate that type of racket head acceleration like you said with the T2000. Probably not right off the bat but you know the guy is pretty strong [laughter] . He can put it through there at a decent speed.

[Ian Westerman] Well before we continue our conversation on strings, I just want to remind my listeners about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast and that is Championship Tennis Tours.  You guys can find them at tennistours.com and there specialty is selling professional tennis event tickets. Whether it be WTA or ATP tour events and also they put together great travel packages including accommodations and transportation to and from hotels and your event, put together some awesome packages and some upcoming ones are having to do with the US Open and I really encourage you guys to check that out. In fact, if you purchase a travel package with them to go to the US Open and you can’t check out with the promotional code, Essential with a capital E, you will not only receive a discount off your purchase but you will also be invited to attend a cocktail party in Times Square that will have both myself and Will Hamilton of Fuzzy Old Balls there. So definitely really cool stuff that they’re doing and I really appreciate their support. of the Essential Tennis Podcast by being a sponsor. So go check them out– tennistours.com

[Ian Westerman] Well, let’s talk about a bit more about strings. Gavin asked us to–or asked you–to kind of go over the pros and cons of each general type string and you just talked about the polys and you talked about the pros essentially of it being dead and stiff for big hitters to help them control the ball a little better. What would be the cons of a polyester string and then let’s go into synthetic gut. What would be the general pros and cons?

[Jeremy Plumley] Okay, well first off, the cons of polyester are what is possibly a pro for a high level player would be a con for your everyday recreational or club level player. A very stiff string bed is pretty uncomfortable. You’re not getting a lot of help from the string so you are going to be using more of your arm. So arm fatigue is going to be a little bit higher with a stiff string like that that you aren’t getting a lot of bounce off of.  The other part of it is the polyesters, because they are basically just one thick string, they loose tension very quickly.  They ” “go dead” and I said it was a dead string before but they become just terribly loose a a lot quicker than a standard synthetic string. So basically it just comforts and actual life of playability for those strings that are on the low side. Another pro of them is if you’re a pretty high level player and you can handle it, they are very durable. They don’t break quickly, they just lose their resilience.

[Ian Westerman] Okay now how about your basic, generic synthetic gut, what would be the basic pros and cons of synthetic guts string?

[Jeremy Plumley] Just the basic synthetic gut would be like a Prince [ph] or a Wilson synthetic string.  They are good because they don’t really shine in any particular area. They are not the most durable string on the market. But they don’t break real easily. T [empty]
hey kind of fall some where in the middle. They tend to be a little bit crisper feel b ecause they tend to use little bit different material for it. They are also pretty cheap. Normally they are like, 4, 5, or 6 bucks for an entire set so you are not breaking the bank. They don’t really have a lot pluses or minuses. You know it can go in either direction there. They place decent but not great. They just kind of fall in the middle.

[Ian Westerman] Okay, and lastly, how about multi-filament strings.

[Jeremy Plumley] Multi-filament strings basically are at the opposite end of the polyester. A multi-filament string is several different fillaments [laughter] wrapped together to make a softer string. Normally they also have more grab on the ball. So you might get a little bit more dwell time in the string bed with your swing.

[Ian Westerman] Okay.

[Jeremy Plumley] Like I said they tend to be softer which means they are easier on the arm. They do not tend to be as durable because they are you know several strands rather than, you know, one thick strand. So with each shot they break down a little bit each time. But they hold tension very well because it is not just one giant string. They are woven together and they slowly unravel throughout time. They hold tension better than some thing that would be solid.

[Ian Westerman] Okay and then lastly he asked for a recommendation for an intermediate level player. What I am curious about is, as you answer this Jeremy, is in your opinion from your perspective how much, when you recommed a string to someone how much of it has to do with their ability level and how much is personal preference? I mean can a lower level player prefer polyester? And is that okay? And can an upper level player prefer a softer multi-filament string as an example?

[Jeremy Plumley] Absolutely, I don’t like to think of recommending strings in terms of somebody’s playing level. I like to think of it as more of their style of play.

[Ian Westerman] Okay.

[Jeremy Plumley] If you go out to a park and you see ten different 3.5 players, you might see ten different styles of play. And, you know, each string while it has the you know has it good points and its bad points, it takes the right type of player to bring those out. Some top level players do prefer that softer feel.  Probably not the guys on the pro tour. But you’ll find a lot of players that prefer that softer feel of a Wilson NXT or a Gama Professional string because maybe that’s just what they have been used to. Maybe they have an arm injury. So they can’t use something stiff. On the other end of the spectrum, if you are a lower level player but you use a lot of top spin, then maybe a polyester at least in a hybrid, you know, it might suit you. And it is a personal preference for some people. Some people prefer a very stiff string bed, I think you are one of them.

[Ian Westerman] Yep!

[Jeremy Plumley] So it doesn’t necessarily break down to, ah well, you are a 5.0 player this is the string you should be using. It really is the style of play and your personal preference.

[Ian Westerman] Okay. He also asks what we play with and I play with whatever Jeremy puts in my racket.  I think over my last five string jobs I have had five different types of string in my racket. And I teach and play with the same string by the way. Currently, I have got full polyester [laughter]  in my rackets that I teach with, you know, 30-40 hours per week and that is what I play with as well. I don’t, which string did you put in there Jeremy, one is all white and one is all black?

[Jeremy Plumley] That was a head sonic pro..

[Ian Westerman] Okay, yea!

[Jeremy Plumley] It is a polyester, it’s a softer polyester because had wanted to make a string that could give you the benefits of  a luxilon [ph]  But make it a little bit more user friendly, It is still not recommended for every body. But it is I would almost call it an entry level polyester. Not because it doesn’t perform well but because it is a little bit more comfortable. You have been my guinea pig for trying new strings all the time and letting me do funky tensions and stuff like that [laughter] So I have appreciated that.

[Ian Westerman] I am not picky.  W ell I’ll take that back I don’t like soft strings and you have always known that and you never put you know, I remember you putting natural gut in my racket at times but you strung it at a pretty high tension. You have always stayed within basic parameters that I enjoy. But beyond that I am not picky at all. How about you what do you have in your rackets right now?

[Jeremy Plumley] Well right now I actually have that very popular RPM black string.

[Ian Westerman] The black stuff, right?

[Jeremy Plumley] I had gotten a sample string from our [inaudible] rep a few months ago and I put it in and honestly I was out hitting yesterday with my wife and I was noticing it’s pretty dead. It’s been awhile [laughter] .  It is time to get some new strings in there. But like you I don’t, when I teach, I don’t use anything different than I normally play with.

[Ian Westerman] Okay, let’s move on. Looks like we have got enough time for one more question in this show segment and then the next question that you and I answer will be put over on another episode. Let’s answer from a question from Chris in Wisconsin. Chris good to hear from you from the mother land. I am from Wisconsin. [laughter] Jeremy appreciates it as well since he is from Ohio, right.

[Ian Westerman] So Chris put himself down as a 4, 5 player and he said what does the balance of the racket influence? I am currently using the aero pro light and it is a very light racket so it is slightly head-heavy. I am searching for more top spin but also more power butt I cannot buy a different racket. Where should I put lead tape in order to produce more top spin and a little more pace. Jeremy what do you think?

[Jeremy Plumley] Um, 4, 5 player aero pro light There’s been a lot of discussion about the aero pro light and also the pure drive light online.  Some people find them to  just kind of be a blank canvas. [laughter] Where you don’t have a lot of weight on the racket as it is. So you can, you know, really customize it without going past a comfortable weight. I f you are looking for more pace on your ground strokes you want to add weight in the head of the racket. The higher up on the racket you put the lead tape, the more it’s going to increase your swing weights.

[Ian Westerman] Okay.

[Jeremy Plumley] The important thing to remember is you don’t want to go t crazy. I know Gavin added 30grams of lead tape to [laughter] his head-heavy hammer racket [laughter] . And  I don’t think he is still playing with that. It’s fun to experiment with that kind of stuff but what you will find is you know want to go to much in one direction because it is really going to throw off the balance of the frame. Now you can add more at the top but then bring a little bit down.  Also put some down maybe underneath the grip or in the throat of the racket to maybe balance it out. But you don’t want to go crazy in one direction. 4.5 player, if he is staying back on the baseline, you know the whole time. If he only comes up to the net to shake hands then you know bump up in the head, add a little bit down in the grip but you’ll see you’ll get more racket head acceleration at it’s going to swing a little bit heavier. It’s gonna sacrifice some maneuverability up at the neck. And also might take a little bit of adjustment when you are swinging up to the ball on your serve.

[Ian Westerman] Now what about the subject of top spin? I am curious to get your thoughts on this, and I know how I would answer this question but I am wondering what you are going to say as far as adding lead tape to one part of the racket or another to increase top spin? Is that something that’s possible?

[Jeremy Plumley] Well ultimately it comes down to how you are swinging at the ball. If you add weight at the top at the top and you swing through it, you’re going to get more mass going through the ball so the chances of getting more top speed by adding weight there are better. But you are not going to get more top spin just by adding weight.

[Ian Westerman] Okay.

[Jeremy Plumley] You are still going to have to swing through it. All things being equal if you have got more mass going through the ball at the same angle as you do with the racket with less mass, you are going to be able to impart more spin. Is it going to be a lot? Maybe not. I don’t have the type of equipment to measure that but you are going to give yourself the possibility of adding more spin to it by adding weight to the head of the racket.

[Ian Westerman] Since Chris is a 4.5 player I am assuming that he is already hitting with top spin on the baseline.  But just for clarification for the rest of you listening, and Jeremy correct me if I am wrong in how I am stating this, but what it sounds like you are saying is if you are not already swinging at your ground strokes in such a racket path that is creating top spin already adding lead tape to one place or another is not going to create top spin or make it more top spin where there wasn’t some already. Is that correct?

[Jeremy Plumley] Absolutely, yeah and the same thing will go with those textured and hexagon shaped strings. If you aren’t already putting spin on the ball, that alone is not going to add spin to it.

[Ian Westerman] Okay, anything else to add on those three topics that we just talked about? We talked about the fads, the racket fads, the different types of string, just talked about lead tape to create more power, more spin anything else to add on these three, Jeremy?

[Jeremy Plumley] Maybe just a little something on balance. We spent a lot of time talking about head heavy.  But head light rackets, while you are not getting as much of an addition, a possible addition of top spin and power on your ground strokes. You are going to have a more traditional feel where the weight is going to be in your hand. It is going to be a more maneuverable frame. So if you’re a volley player or your playing a lot of doubles you might want to look at something that’s you know more head light rather than head heavy. If your net game is important part of your game then you should probably be looking at head light rackets so that is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum we are talking about. But I thought we should probably throw that in.

[Ian Westerman] Okay, alright. Well Jeremy and I are going to wrap up this segment and this is going to be Podcast Number 124 but we will continue our conversation right now. You will just be able to hear us on a future episode.

So definitely stay tuned if you want to hear the rest of our conversation and if you’re listening to Podcast 124 and you want to hear the rest of our talk other topics are going to have to do lead tape. We have another question different application having to do with lead tape not having so much to do with balance. We are going to talk about let’s see, racket weights in general; lighter rackets vs heavy rackets. Also racket head sizes and talking about strings and what gauges make different changes in results coming off the rackets. So those are going to be the next topics we are going to talk about. But for now we are going to wrap it up episode number 124. Jeremy thanks a lot for your time. And my listeners and myself always appreciate you dropping by. [music]   [music] [music] [music] [music]

[Ian Westerman] Alright that does it for episode number 124 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today and for listening to my conversation with Jeremy and our conversation will continue in a near future episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Not sure which show exactly but we did continue our conversation and it’s going to be coming up soon. Not sure which show exactly but we will continue it and finish with a couple of questions that we had. That does it for this week and, before I wrap things up, I want to tell you guys that I have got something new coming your way soon or at least an offer. I am going to be starting to do some more audio content each week. it looks like I will probably be adding an extra hour of audio, tennis instruction. It’s going to be really focused on a couple of special listeners who decided to join me and if that is something that it sounds like you would be interested in, send me an e-mail and I’ll give you some advanced notice on that. Shoot me an e-mail to ian@essentialtennis.com [music] and I’ll let you know when I have more details.

Alright that does it for this week. Thanks again everybody. Take care. Good luck with the tennis. [music] [music] [music]

Essential Tennis Podcast #123

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Announcer : Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you. Whether it’s technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game,  tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here’s Ian! [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 to by tennistours.com where you can receive a discount off your next purchase of professional tennis tournament tickets by using the promotional code “ESSENTIAL” [silence]

Well thank you very much for downloading today’s show and for giving it a listen. I am going to be answering some listener questions today, but before I do, I just want to tell you guys I am really excited for Wimbledon, the kick-off tomorrow. I am recording today’s show on Sunday, tomorrow Wimbledon kicks off and I am looking forward to that tournament a lot.

And for those of you who are going to be following along during the tournament, feel free to interact with me as I use both Twitter and Facebook. I am starting to use Twitter more. It’s a lot of fun and if you guys would like to follow me and chat with me about the matches and about the tournament, you can follow me at t witter.com/essentialtennis and also at facebook.com/ essentialtennis. I look forward to chatting and interacting with you guys there.
Alright, let’s get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.

[music] [music] [music]

Alright, let’s get started. And today I am going to be answering some questions for Toby who is a 4.0 player in Atlanta, Georgia. Toby wrote to me and said ‘I practiced for a couple of hours today with a friend and came up with a few questions for you.’ He’s got two questions here, I am going to talk about

His first one is:  ’I love to hit the ball on the rise, especially with my two-handed backhand where I don’t swing as fast as my forehand, but can generate more power with less swing. And hitting on the rise can give me a little extra power. But it is also somewhat of a riskier shot because the ball is coming at you faster at the contact point so it is easier to miss hits. What is your stance on this? Is this something you recommend for your students to work on? What are some ways to improve [empty]
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Well, Toby, in case you didn’t hear Podcast 119, I talked about hitting on the rise the entire show. It was more talking about technique, and how to hit that shot well. Wasn’t so much about tactics, etc., which is what kind of more of what Toby is asking for here  It’s my opinion on how often the shot should be used.

Well, as you said Toby, taking the ball on the rise is a lower percentage shot. It’s definitely trickier than hitting the ball after it has bounced, come up to the top of its bounce, and then is coming back down again toward the court.

As I talked about in Podcast 119, the positioning– the way that you position yourself on the court and also the timing of your swing have to be darn near perfect. If you are not in just the right place you have almost no time to react to the ball after it has landed on the courts because you are hitting it immediately after comes up off the courts. So positioning is very important and, again, so is the timing of your swing.

So if you are a little early or a little late, it’s a very unforgiving shot. And also the swing dynamics change as well, due to  As I mentioned a second ago, the more traditional and the easiest way to hit a ground stroke, either forehand or backhand is to allow the ball to come up and then let it come down again and make contact with it at a comfortable spot on its way down again from the bounce; after it has started to fall back towards the court again.

So this is the basically the opposite, the ball is not accelerating downwards, as in falling towards the court. It’s instead accelerating upwards, so that changes some things. You have to adjust your swing a little bit because of that. So take into account the positioning the swing timing, and the change in technique.

And by the way, I talk about all those in detail. This is definitely not an easy shot. It takes a lot of skill to hit this shot and even more skill to be able to hit And to be able to try to attack with it, so I think, to answer your question Toby, I think this is a shot that players really shouldn’t  start to work on til around a 3.5 level or so.

And for those of you outside the US who are not familiar with the NTRP rating system, basically a 3.0 player is around average. The scale goes from 1 to 7; 6.0, 7.0 are basically professional players. 3.0 is around average, 3.5 is a little bit above average.

I want you guys to have a solid foundation of technique hitting the ball at its easiest point before you really start to get fancier than that, and try to hit the ball on the rise very often. So not until you are 3.5 do I really recommend people working on this on purpose.

Now Toby is a 4.0 player, which is a good bit above average. And at that point, Toby, I think you are probably in the clear to go ahead and start working on this shot as even more of a weapon to be able to hit short shots on the rise and be able to attack, and even shots that your opponents hit close to the base line that are really nice and deep in your court. I think this is a shot that you can probably go ahead and start experimenting with making a nice full swing at a shot on the rise and be able to hit it back towards your opponent with some pace on it, and kind of send it right back at them and try to hurt them right back, right off of a good shot that they have hit to you.

Now as far as how to improve on this shot, just practice it a lot. It’s very similar to a regular ground stroke, there is some small changes, I’m not going to go into those here because,  again, I just talked about them in a lot of detail in Podcast 119, so go check that out and just practice it a ton, it takes a lot of practice to get good at positioning yourself and timing your swing correctly to be able to hit an effective shot back.

So Toby, keep working at it. Good job with your game so far. It’s great that you have made it up to 4.0 level. To make it up to a 4.5, it would definitely help you a lot to be comfortable hitting this shot back in general, and also hitting it back with some decent pace and some topspin as well, and sending it right back to your opponents.

Alright, let’s go ahead and move on Toby’s second question, which I think is really interesting one and I hope you guys find as interesting as I do. He wrote and said in his second question, ‘Sometimes I feel that I get distracted by my vision of how I would like to hit the shot, and can as a result miss it.

For example, I just hit a great backhand the previous shot and I want to hit with the same pace again, but I am not as ready for it this time. Or I just hit a ball out wide and want to finish the point off into the opposite direction, but didn’t quite get into position. I feel like that if I didn’t have this perceived notion of how to hit the shot and just focused on hitting it back, I wouldn’t have missed the shot. Should I resist this urge and decide on how to hit a shot later in this stage when I actually reach the ball, or just plan better?’

So basically what Toby is saying here is he is wondering if the whole reason why he is missing the point-finishing shot. He has got the point set up in his favor and he is trying to finish the point now and end it by aiming for a spot that makes sense. He is wondering if the very act of thinking about it and trying to set up the point in his head is causing him to And this is definitely a topic I definitely haven’t talked about on the podcast before, and I look forward to it. Basically, Toby, I have got a question for you.

So let’s say that you have gone through that whole sequence of shots. You have set up the point well, you have got that opening after hitting your opponent out wide. If you adjust and you ask the question should I have just focused on getting back in play rather than the trying to aim. Should I just hit it back?

Well, I want to ask you do you think that if you just focused on hitting it back would it magically end up in the right spots? In other words, how successful do you think you would be in the long run if every time you had a point set up in your favor you just focused on just hitting the ball back in play. I mean, that just seems really short sided to me. I’m surprised that you are thinking that that would be a good way to go. by just trying to get it back in play.

On one side of the coin, I see what you are saying I would rather you would just hit it right down the middle of the court and make it and miss the shot and lose the point. From that perspective, I see where you are coming from but certainly you must realize that to be able to advance your game and improve as a player eventually you are going to have to be able to Pick out targets on the court and hit them at will, over and over again.

Regardless of the point situation or whether your opponent is in trouble or not in trouble. If you ever want to become a 4.5 player, certainly a 5.0 player, you have to be able to pick out a target on the court in any circumstance and be able to hit it with a pretty high success rate. And you have to be pretty reliable in hitting your targets.

So having a target is never a reason for distraction or it shouldn’t be anyway. I understand what you are saying Toby but I think it’s a poor excuse for missing these shots. And I would encourage you, Toby and everybody else listening, to have a specific target as often as possible for every shot that you hit. Never play competitive tennis and just hit the ball just to get it in and just kind of hope for the best.

And say I am going to run to this forehand and I am just gonna hit it. I am gonna run to this back hand, I am just gonna hit it. [laughter] I am gonna get that ball and I am gonna hit it and well see what happens. That is not good enough. Just plain not good enough. I want better tennis for you guys than just running to the ball and just hitting in play anywhere.

I want all of you listening to know the successful feeling and the pride in running down a ball, a tough shot having a specific target in mind, you know if you hit it it’s gonna turn out well for you and then actually making the shot and winning the point. Because you are smart enough to aim for a good target and you made it and you executed it and you ended being successful. I want all of you listening to know that feeling of success when you watch that shot go past your opponent for a winner. So you should have a specific target.

Please don’t just hit the ball to just hit it anywhere. And you must have a plan to be successful. That’s what this really comes down to. You should be planning your points and you should have a reason for where you are trying to hit the ball. Your plan should include aiming some place specific and again for a purpose.

Now we are going to talk a little about that. And to answer your question specifically waiting until you reach the ball is too late. Toby, you said maybe I should just wait longer, wait til I get to the ball and just decide then. You should really have a good sense where your next target will be immediately after the ball comes off your opponent’s racket.

That’s really important too. You don’t want to wait until the last second to choose your target because you’ll become rushed and you’ll make kind of rash decision  You are gonna make decisions that always don’t make a lot of sense. Because you aren’t thinking them through very well. Not that have you have a lot of time to sit there and think about it literally. And kind of conversation in your head, well if I go here what will happen? If I go there, what will happen?

Basically you want to get better at making snap decisions early as quickly as possible. Knowing what makes the most amount of sense and being able to stick with it. Now to make these decisions.

There is several considerations you need to think about or be aware of. I have got four here. Four things you need to be aware of to make good decisions as far as your target is concerned on the court. Number 1, your opponent’s position and balance on the court. Meaning, are they in the middle of the court and already in a ready position? As you are getting ready to hit your shot. Or are they way off in the corner somewhere, still stumbling around and trying to recover from the shot they just finished hitting? So that is one consideration, you have got to realize and take into account their position and their balance.

Number 2, the quality and difficulty of the shot they just hit to you. How good of a shot did they just finish hitting to you? Is it really tough or over in the corner away from you? Or is it right towards and bouncing at the service line and it is going to be easy to hit back? You need to take that in to consideration as well.

Number 3, you have to know and realize your strengths and weaknesses on the court. What are the shots that you hit best? What are the shots that you aren’t that great at?

Number 4, you have to be aware of your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and this will vary for every person you play against. Some people are going like their backhand and not have a great forehand. Some players are going to hate overheads. Other players are going to love overheads and they are going to put the ball away consistently. These are things that you have to pay attention to A lot of you guys are probably saying to yourselves well, Ian that is a lot to keep track of I am not sure that I can have all that in mind and be able to make a decision based on that information all on the fly.

Well, that’s what you have to kind of start being aware of are those four things. And you have to start making decisions based on them. If you think that four things is too many to pay attention to at once, then just pick one or two. And if you are going to just pick one or two, I would say that strengths and weaknesses are probably the most important one. Yes, balance and core positioning are very important as well and hopefully that is kind of thing you notice without thinking about it. And eventually it is our goal to notice all four of these things and keep them in mind without literally thinking about it. We want to make this something that happens automatically. But it takes awareness of it first.

But you have to first know what is going before it ever starts becoming automatic. Now let’s give two examples, specific examples of this and we are going to talk about all four of those criteria and how this might look during an actual point.

Example number 1, of a specific decision, let’s say that your opponent just hit a forehand from off the court. You hit a good shot previously and there are literally off the singles court trying to recover the shot they make it and they managed to get it cross court but not very deep and not very hard. So they have hit it cross court from their forehand side let’s say that you and your opponents are both right handed and it’s not very deep or hard.

Let’s say it’s landing a foot or two that is short of the service line and without a lot of pace. Now you’re waiting for the ball to come to you and you’re in good balance and in good position. So you are not in trouble here at all. They have hit a relatively easy shot and you’re going to be in good balance for this shot and you are going to be in good position. Now let’s say that your strength is your forehand and their weakness is their backhand.

So everybody kind of kind of picture this in their mind as I say this it is probably real obvious but these are the types of decisions you have to be able to make. In this situation even though it goes against the directionals this is a good time to change to direction and go down the line with your forehand. It’s your best shot you forehand, and your hitting to your opponent’s weakness. You are in good balance and they are off balance. So all four of the criteria that I was talking about before points towards going down the line.

Let me say that again, they’re off balance and they’re off the court in the deuce corner so hitting down the line means that you are going to hit the furthest away form them possible right now.

Also it’s their back hand, so even if you don’t hit a great shot, they’re having to run clear across the court to get to it. It’s your strength so if you are ever going to change direction this is the probably the time to do it. And it is an easy shot. They haven’t hit it very deep. So everything here point toward going down the line. So I would suggest going down the line here, hit it confidently don’t push it, make a full swing, doesn’t mean hit it aggressively and crush it but definitely hit a good solid confident swing.

And you should be aiming five feet inside each of those two lines. That might sound like a lot to some of you but trust me, that’s plenty close to the lines to be able to win the point with that shot. There is no need to risk missing it. And we are going to talk a little bit more about that a little bit later. But in this circumstance, aiming five feet inside either line is more than good enough if you’re hitting a confident swing to be able to win the point right there. And if not you can probably close into the net and put away a volley on the next shot. So that’s example number one.

Example number 2, deciding where to aim. Example number two is they have just hit an aggressive back hand cross court from the middle of the baseline so your opponent is in balance in the middle of the baseline and they just hit a good back hand cross court it’s going to land deep into your back hand corner. Your strength is your forehand so your back hand is not your strength and their strength is their forehand as well. So what do you do in this situation? They’re in balance, you are about to be out of balance and you are not going to hit your strength here it’s going to be your backhand.

And we know that if you were going to hit them anything on their forehand side they would probably appreciate that in this situation. So the best target should be a cross court rally ball, 8 feet inside either line should be your target and you should also be aiming four to six feet over the top of the net. And the reason why I give those specific measurements is that we want to make this a safe shot.

The smartest play here is to follow the directionals, go cross court where you have the lowest net the longest court, you have the most amount of court to work with and you should be trying to aim well inside both lines. If we can hit this target it’s safe because are clearing the net by a lot. We are staying inside the lines by quite as bit as well. A nice comfortable margin of eight feet.

But keeping it eight feet inside the base line still means that it is ten feet past the service line. So we are not hitting a weak shot here. When you guys here, I know this, when you guys heard me say to aim about 8 feet inside the base line I know a lot of you are saying wow that is a crappy shot! That’s weak! It’s not! There’s 18 feet of space between the service line and the base line. If you can hit 8 feet inside the base line just picture a shot that is landing ten feet past the service line on your half of the court.

That is not an easy ball, it’s not a sitter that is landing in front of the service line that your opponent is gonna be able to try to put away. If you can put it 8 feet inside either line.

A nice high margin over the top of then net and keep it cross court you are in great shape here. You are hitting to your opponent’s weakness. You’ll probably be able to back into that point here. Maybe they’ll attack again but at least you put back into play and it was a smart target for you hit. So being able to hit these targets for the reasons and hopefully these two examples can get you guys thinking.

This is the time of critical thinking that you guys should be going through on the court. And at first this might take mental energy. You might actually have to be conscious of this decision making process at first. To be able to make good decisions and pick targets that make sense. It is our goal to be able to do this on the fly eventually without thinking about it. And being able to make these decisions and be smart about it. It’s a learned skill. It’s not something that you are just born with or not. It’s something you can teach yourself or train yourself today.

To be a smart tennis player, so pay close attention to your points and always hit and aim for a specific target with a purpose. Please don’t just hit the ball and hope for the best. I want you guys to be better players than that. Alright, in a second we are going to talk about reasons why I think Toby is missing these shots, but first I want to tell you guys about the sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast and that is TennisTours.com.

Since 1987, they have been selling ticket packages and individual tickets to tennis tournaments all over the world, both ATP and WTA events. Both men’s and women’s professional events and they specialize in the grand slams. So if you guys would like to go to the U.S. Open this year they’re offering some awesome ticket packages along with a lot of other options to be able to customize your experience in New York City and I’m making plans to be there this U.S. Open in August-September so I’m looking forward to it a lot.

And if you make an order with TennisTours.com and use the promotional code Essential when you check out you’ll not only get a discount off your purchase but you’ll be given an invitation to a cocktail party where I will be I believe Will Hampton of Fuzzy Old Balls is going to be there as well. It’ll be a great time kind of mingling together in New York City. It’s going to be at Times Square, so you’ll get a chance to hang out with me and Will as well and talk about tennis. [laughter] And the U.S. Open. So go check them out I thank them very much for the support of the Essential Tennis Podcast.

Alright, so let’s wrap up this question from Toby and I just spent several minutes talking about why picking a target is not the reason why Toby is missing these shots. Or, at least in my opinion, it is not an excuse. It should not be the reason why him taking maybe his concentration and thinking about the wrong thing. A target is exactly what you should be thinking about Toby.

So, why is he missing? And why do you guys miss when you have the point all set up and it’s going just the way you want it and you get that put away shot or that opportunity to be able to finish the point and you screw it up. Why? I’ve got four reasons here why I believe players miss these types of shots and I’m sure that you guys will be able to relate to exactly what I’m talking about. At least in one or two of these areas, if not all four. So, why would you be missing?

Well, number one general lack of focus and concentration. That’s the first thing that came to mind Toby when I was reading your, your question as I was preparing for today’s show, is you talked about hitting a good wide shot and then wanting to be able to put the ball way on the other side and you just missed it.

Or, you said how you’re just not getting into position even though it’s not a very difficult shot. But it seems to me that you’re probably watching something else and thinking about other things such as maybe how great of a shot you just hit to get your opponent off balance and off the court. You’re admiring your shot, watching your opponent scramble and barely get to it. They made it but just barely and you’re just enjoying every second [laughter] every split second of this process as you see them stumbling around the court trying to recover that great shot that you just hit.

And I find that recreational players very often lose sight of the whole purpose here is to win the points, and they just enjoy thoroughly hitting that good ball that set them up so well and before they know it they are not in position for the next sheet even though it is a relatively easy one and they make a mistake. They make an unforced error. Don’t let that happen to you.

Number Two reason why you might be missing these shots is poor target choice. This happens so much so often when I watch recreational tennis players play. They get an easy ball their opponent is out of position and they aim a foot from the line. And miss it by couple of inches and they think ah I just missed it, that’s too bad but you know what it was your mistake for aiming so close to the line.

I don’t remember which show it was but I had a conversation with my good friend Jason Coal on a previous show and we were talking about picking targets. Guys professional players don’t aim for the lines. They don’t even aim a foot from the lines. They’re aiming three four, five feet inside the lines. You know on average shot but don’t get me wrong there is a time when they don’t have a choice and they have to aim and hit incredible shot. But on average they are giving themselves many feet of margin for error and you should be too. Don’t get suckered into aiming close to the lines after you have just gone through all the work of setting up a point well. Have your opportunity and your opening and then you hit a perfect shot. Please don’t do that. Pick a smart target.

Reason number three while you might be missing these shots is lack of confidence in your ability to finish the point. I see this a lot too where players will hurt one good shot. And just not think they have the ability to or maybe they get nervous or a little bit tight. They don’t have the confidence for a good full swing at the next shot if it is a ground stroke. or hit the next volley firmly to be able to put it away.

Whatever it might be, you need to practice combinations kind of 1, 2 punch combination on the practice court when you are practicing your game. Practice a good wide back hand cross court and then hitting a put away forehand down the line. Practice combinations like that, maybe a down the line approach shot. With your forehand and then a cross court volley to be able to finish the point. Practice those types of combinations as often and build your confidence in those kinds of you can set up points and you can put the ball away.

Don’t just practice one shot at a time. I mean that is good to do too. But you should practice on purpose putting balls away and doing it over and over again. So that when you get into a match and you have a put away opportunity you take it. And you are able to do it with confidence.

Reason number 4, last one, why you might be missing these types of shots just general poor techniques and stroke production. All of us who play tennis are able to hit great shots at least once. We have all hit that amazing forehand or backhand or serve or whatever. Where it just came off the racket just right and landed just inside the lines for a winner and everybody kind of stopped what they were doing and said wow that’s amazing. Well I don’t want to somebody who is able to do that and just be able to dot it once I want to play with a partner who is able too hit three of four feet inside the lines several times in a row. That’s who I want my partner to be.

And so that’s not possible without good technique. And if you struggle with being consistent and you are only able to hit across court forehand two or three times in a row. Nice and deep in the court, before you make an error somewhere you need to work on your steadiness with your technique.

And you need to work on your steadiness with your targets and you need a lot of repetition to be able to put the ball in play over and over again. Toby, you are 4.0 player so this is probably not the area you need to work on the most. Wherever you are making a mistake it’s probably in one of those three categories. It’s probably not this one.

But I am going to throw this one out there for anybody else listening who might be as not as experienced as Toby and not playing at his level of his play. You need to be able to be reliable with your ground strokes and every other shot you hit as well. Alright Toby that wraps it up Hopefully that makes sense to you. and hopefully that is useful information get out their practice picking targets for a reason for a purpose. Targets that make sense Make sure that you pick them wisely and that they are smart. You aren’t going for too much and you practice it. You’ll get better at this but please don’t think that picking a target is causing you to screw up It’s definitely not that I would subscribe to.

But Toby, thanks very much for being a listener. I was happy to answer your questions today on the show. Please let me know if you need any further help.

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Alright, that does it for episode 123 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for spending your time with me today or tonight or whenever you happen to listen to this show. I really appreciate it and in wrapping up today’s show I want to send a special thank you out to those of you who have donated to Essential Tennis and to the podcast in the last two weeks or so. And those people are Kim in Texas, Robert in Canada, Jannen in California, Bruce in Florida, Joe in North Carolina. Thank you to you guys for your support.

I really appreciate it and if the Essential Tennis Podcast has been a help to you in your tennis game and you would like to reciprocate, please think about donating to the show. And really help support what I am doing here and can make me get closer and closer to my goal of doing this full time. Which I do plan on doing in the future. Hopefully, sooner than later. So to donate just go to Essential Tennis.com and in the bottom right hand corner of the front page you will see a box that says donate. [music]

Alright. That does it for this week. Have fun watching Wimbledon everybody. I hope to talk to you guys on Twitter and Facebook and take care and good luck with your tennis.

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