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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Essential Tennis Podcast #122

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

And now, here’s Ian!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian: absolutely.

Koz: out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian: Great stuff guys.

Koz: You’re so kind, thank you.

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

Koz: Nothing wrong with that at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Koz: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #121

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #120

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[speaker] Thanks, good to be here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #119

Download: Word Doc | PDF | Kindle | Text

[music]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Tennis Podcast #118

Download: Word Doc | PDF | Kindle | Text

[music]

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

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

Before we get to today’s topic on the podcast, I want to remind you guys about the video section of essentialtennis.com. Some of you guys may not know that I do instructional videos as well. And there are many of them up there for free on the website. Just go to essentialtennis.com and click on video in the menu on the upper left-hand corner. Alright, [music] let us go ahead and get down to business. Sit back, relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction. [music] [music] [music]

Alright, let us get started, and today’s topic is going to be focused towards you doubles players, and specifically covering the lob, which is very often a difficult shot for recreational players to cover. And our question today comes to us from Michelle in Massachusettes who is a 3.5 level player. She wrote to me and said, ‘how do I deal with ladies who lob in a double’s match. I had a match the other day with 2 women who would constantly lob us. We tried different formations only for them to hit nicely down the line or lob back keeping us off the net. We did try to stay 2 back when they served or even a foot or 2 inside the service box to try to react to the lob. Eventually, it got to us, me in particular. I started to play their game instead of mine. I like to play aggressively and attack the net, but that was just not happening. They got almost everything back that we gave them with a lob. At times we would get a point or 2 when we hit at the net person, but it was just not enough . It was not enjoyable to play, and couldn’t believe that we could play for another hour like this. I walked away from that match incredibly mad at myself for allowing those women to make me feel so inadequate in my abilities, and left me with little respect for them in their game of tennis.’

Well Michelle, it sounds like a really frustrating match, and I definitely feel for you, and this is a pattern that I see repeated all the time at the club where I teach and other clubs where I have talked recreational doubles’ players very often…well, there are 2 things here… First of all, recreational doubles’ players very often struggle with covering the lob, and with overheads in general, and secondly, on the flipside of the coin, recreational double’s players are very often frequent lobers, and you know, for good reason. If you are playing a team that is not great at covering it, then it is a good strategy. And I am getting a little bit ahead of myself, so let me go to my outline here, and we are going to be spending all of today’s show on this, because I think it is a very important topic, and I have got a large outline here having to do with how to cover this and play more effectively at the net Michelle, for you and for everyone else listening.

First of all, I want to congratulate you on your good doubles’ tactics in general. It sounds like you are comfortable moving into the net, and that is awesome. Congratulations on that. I work extremely hard with my doubles’ students to improve their transition game and their net game to get them comfortable moving up to the net. Very often, beginning players are not comfortable up there, and so at a 3.5 level, to have that be kind of your main game style in your doubles’ play I think is great. So, nice job working on that. However, there needs to be a balance in your abilities. The more that you move in, the better you need to be able to back up. You cannot just have one or the other. You cannot be one-sided. It is kind of like a car. I am kind of a car person… The faster the car that you have, the better the brakes have to be. [laughter] When you are modifying a car, you cannot spend all of your time and money on the engine and not also upgrade the brakes, because the faster you get going, and the faster you are able to get going fast, the faster you also need to be able to slow down. Otherwise, it is just not safe. And I look at that the same way in doubles. The faster you move in towards the net, the faster you also need to be able to retreat to be able to cover behind you. If you are only good at one or the other, you are going to leave large spaces of court open.

Now, I want to talk about one other thing here, Michelle. Before we actually get started talking on what to change and how to improve this part of your game, I am going to lecture you a little bit. [laughter] I was going to apologize for that, but you know what, I am not going to apologize for it. You said that…now, where is that section… ‘it is not enjoyable to play. I couldn’t believe that we had to play like that for another hour. I walked away from this match incredibly mad at myself for allowing those women to make me feel so inadequate.’ You should have stopped that sentence there. I wished that you had not finished your email to me by saying that you left with little respect for them and their game of tennis. I think that is a mistake. I think that is a big mistake.

Do not disrespect them and their tennis skills. The reality is that they beat you fair and square. They did not cheat you out of the match. You missed more shots than they did, so they deserve to win the match. That is how tennis is played. If you and your partner were not able to keep enough shots in play and if you were not able to use those shots to challenge your opponents very effectively, then quite honestly you did not deserve to win the match. So, to be frustrated with yourself for losing to that style of tennis, I completely understand. I am on the same page with you. I would have been incredibly frustrated as well to lose to that type of player, but to have little respect for their game, I understand where you are coming from. You feel like for them to stay back and lob everything maybe does not feel as legitimate as a strategy. It is not a high level-type strategy, and probably not a strategy that is going to be them very far in doubles in terms of long-term thinking.

You know, they are not going to become 4 or 5 players sitting back there and just hitting lobs all day. However, you do need to give them some respect. You do need to shake their hand and say good match, and you need to in a way thank them. Thank them for pointing out an area of your game that you need to work on. [laughter] You should be happy about that. They have shown you a part of your game that does need to be improved. If it did not need to be improved, then you would not have lost this match. So, do not worry about it, and certainly do not diminish them, and I think that is something that a lot of players do. Pretty common after playing a pusher, as well. Somebody who plays a defensive baseline game. After losing to that style of player, very often recreational players badmouth them, and say well, you know, play the game, you have to hit strong shots, and anyway, in my opinion, it is just not a legitimate complaint.

So, my lecture is over. [laughter] Let us move on to more of the instructional part of my outline here. I am going to be going over 4 main elements of effectively covering the lob and being a well-rounded player up at the net. The first section, the first out of the 4 areas is going to be about court positioning. And you talked about this a little bit in your message, saying that you guys tried to mix it up and play 2 back a little bit and also just come in just a little bit in front of the service line. It is good that you guys tried to make some changes, but I am going to talk about this and make sure that everybody is on the same page, and has a good understanding of how they should be positioning themselves during a doubles match. You do not want to oversell your position when you come forwards to the net.

Coming to the net is an excellent tactic. It pressures your opponents. It forces them to have to try to hit a good shot, and it puts you in an offensive position to be able to try to put the ball away. So, coming in is excellent, but you do not want to overdo it. You want to pressure your opponents without leaving large spaces of court open, and that includes behind you. Now, where exactly on the court you shoujld position yourselves depends on your opponents, and this is the really really important part of this. How often your opponents lob, and how well they lob is going to determine exactly where on the court you put yourself from point to point. And you have to pay close attention to your opponents to be able to figure this out. And I wrote ‘PAY ATTENTION’ in all capitals on my outline. I wrote a couple of things in all capitals during this outline and this is one of them. You have to pay close attention to what your opponents like to do during your doubles’ match, and And Michelle, obviously, I do not think this was a problem for you. You guys obviously figured out early that your opponents like to lob, and you guys did try changing up your positions on the court.

So I do not think this is where your problem was. I just want to make sure that everybody understands that this is very very important. You do not want to position yourself the same way for every opponent. That would just be poor tactics. And some examples of that would be like what Michelle said. She and her partner figured out that their opponents liked to lob, and so they started playing different positions on the court, and the 2 examples she gave were playing 2 back and also being a little bit farther back than she typically would be. It sounds like when she normally plays the net she likes to get close and put the ball away, but during this particular match she and her partner were coming up to the net just inside the service line. So these are 2 good examples of ways that you guys can vary your positions on the court in order to more closely cover that lob against a team that likes to lob.

You also want to try experimenting with a staggered position at the net with your partner, meaning that 1 of you is a little bit closer than the other. When you guys watch professional doubles on TV, you will usually see this. When you are watching a team that serves and volleys and returns and volleys, watch just one-half of the court. Watch 1 team and see how they position themselves. Rarely will you see both players even with each other when they are both at the net. One will be a little bit farther back and 1 will be a little bit closer. Now, again, this depends on your opponents’ lobbing tendencies. As with everything tactically, when you guys are playing doubles, if they never lob at all, then you can stay pretty much together, and go ahead and close into the net and get really close and really pressure your opponents.

If they lob a lot, then you want to leave several feet between you and your partner in terms of your depth. Meaning, 1 of you should be several feet closer to the net, and the other 1 several feet closer to the baseline. This puts 1 of you in a slightly more aggressive position, and the other person, your partner, in a slightly more defensive position. This is good because you guys can kind of have your cake and eat it too a little bit. And exactly how much space to leave between yourselves, and exactly how close both of you are again is going to depend on how much your opponents like to lob and how good they are at it. But, in case you have not tried that before, Michelle, try doing more of a staggered position. That will leave your partner close to the net to try to put the ball away, or you close to the net, and the other player a little bit farther away so that she is ready to go back and cover behind that close person in case a good lob goes over her head. So that wraps up my first section on court positioning. Just a couple of really important things to understand.

Next up I want to talk about anticipation and preparedness when you are up at the net. You need to be read, and I am going to start off this section by saying again you need to notice your opponent’s tendencies closely. Pay close attention to what your opponents like to do, and this is of the utmost importance. You need to know. You need to pay attention to this. And so many doubles’ teams just do not. And they just continue playing the way they always play their doubles. They do not make any adjustments. And it is because they are not paying attention to what is going on. Once you have been inside the service line for several shots during a point, you need to start looking for the lob. You need to anticipate it.

Do not close in inside the service line to try to put the ball away, and assume that everything is going to be just fine, and you have nothing to worry about and you are about to close out the point. Once you have made it in front of the service line, and you have hit 1 or 2 volleys and you have not finished the point yet, start looking for the lob on purpose, especially if the ball is traveling towards somebody who is on the baseline. If your opponents are still on a 1-up, 1-back position, and you and your partner are at the net, and especially if 1 or both of you are well inside the service line, just go ahead and expect that a lob is going to come.

Assuming you are not putting the ball away. Now if both of your opponents are also at the net hitting a good lob volley or a half volley lob or any lob really from at the net over another net player is a really tough shot, but if they are playing 1-up, 1-back and you or your partner hit to the back person and you or your partner or both of you are both inside the service line, pretty much expect that they are going to lob. And Michelle and everybody else who plays at a 3.0 or 3.5-level, this is going to happen a lot and you guys know it. Those of you who are playing at a 5 level or below, you know that your opponents very often like to lob so do not be surprised by it. Look for it. You need to start anticipating it and paying closer attention.

Next up under anticipation and preparedness, read your opponents. Read their position on the court. So, again, going back to being 1-up, 1-back. If the ball is going towards the back player, look for that lob. Swing technique and racket face. Look at how they are preparing their racket and look at the angle of the strings. If they turn themselves to the side, and they take their racket up at shoulder height, and the racket face is closed, look for a drive. They are about to hit a strong drive to try to pass you or your partner or both of you, obviously. If they are facing the net and the racket just gets taken back low and the racket face is open, it is facing up towards the sky, they are about to lob. And you need to watch these little details. The closer you start to watch your opponents, the more of these types of cues you will start to pick up on, and they are very important, because they will help you anticipate what is coming next so that you can be ready mentally and physically to be able to cover whatever shot they try to hit.

Lastly, under anticipation and preparedness I would like to talk about the use of the split step and also your initial reaction to the lob when it does go up into the air. The split step is incredibly important in all aspects of tennis whether you are a single’s player, a double’s player, whether you are at the net or at the baseline, it is of the utmost importance that you guys do use the split step to support yourself, to balance yourself and to be ready to move for anything. I very often see doubles’ players close into the net, and as their opponent hits the next shot, they are still in mid-stride and still moving forward. They are still actively moving forward and taking steps towards the net as the ball goes up into the air. And that is a huge mistake. Your balance is leaning forwards towards the net and your feet are actively moving in the wrong direction. That cannot happen if you want to be able to cover the entire court effectively. So, what you need to do is make your split step right as they are making contact with their shot no matter what it happens to be so that you are ready to move in any direction. If it is a lob, you are balanced, if it is a drive, you are balanced. If it is to your right or to you left, you are prepared. Please do not make the mistake of not split stepping, and just running into the net without being ready to move. So, that is the split step.

Secondly, after you have made your split step, your opponent has made contact with the ball, and it is going up into the air as a lob, move immediately. This is another thing that I have in my ouline that is in all capitals, and, you know, this seems incredibly obvious. [laughter] I mean, yeah, sure, I need to move right away. But recreational players, there is kind of a disconnect [laughter] in reality in my experience between how hard club players think that they are playing and how quickly they are reacting and what is actually happening. I so often see a lob go up into the air when both players are at the net in a doubles’ point and I watch the net players watch the ball go into the air, see the lob get to about, its apex–its highest point in its path, and then kind of go, oh crap! And then turn around and start to run.

And it absolutely too late. The split step should prepare your feet to move, and as soon as you see that racket face open up and as soon as the ball comes off the strings and it goes up into the air, both players need to move immediately. It is extremely important. And once they start to move back towards the ball or wherever it happens to be going, both players need to start to communicate and talk. This is another very important part of covering the lob is communication, and I could definitely do a whole other section just on the communication part of it. But suffice it to say for right now that both players need to move and then start to talk and work out as early as possible who is going to cover which shot. It is extremely, extremely important.

So that brings us halfway through. We have talked about court positioning, and we have talked about anticipation and preparedness. Two more points to go. Before I get to those last 2 points I want to tell you guys about my sponsor of the show today on the Essential Tennis Podcast, and that is Championship Tennis Tours. They can be found at tennistours.com. Since 1987 they have been putting together individual ticket sales to professional tennis events, as well as complete travel packages to go watch professional tennis players play, which is an amazing experience. If you appreciate the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you have learned from it, please go check them out, and show them that you appreciate their support of the podcast.

They help finance my time here. They are a paid sponsor of the podcast, and if we can keep them happy [laughter] and keep them as an advertiser, that will absolutely help me to continue to do more of what I am doing here at Essential Tennis, and to continue moving me towards doing this full time. So go check them out. And what I have been talking about recently that they are offering is their U.S. Open packages, and you can choose between 2 different hotels: a 4 and 5-star hotel, you can choose what ticket you would like, courtside or promenade, and they also throw in a Broadway performance, tickets to a Mets or a Yankees game, which is pretty cool, or a city tour.

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Alright, let us finish up by talking about the last 2 elements of moving back and covering a lob effectively in doubles. We have already talked about court positioning and anticipation. Next up we are going to talk about foot work. And the way that you actually physically move back to cover a lob when you are at the net. And this is going to apply for you single’s players, as well. It is extremely important. You need to move back sideways to the net, meaning that, let us say that you have made a split step, and that means that you are facing forward, and your shoulders are parallel to the net. You are facing forward towards your opponent.

Once they put that lob up and you realize you are going to have to move back, or even (actually, I take that back), no matter where you need to move you need to turn yourself 90 degrees to the side and get yourself sideways to the net. Now, if you are a right-handed player, you are going to do that by taking your right foot and pivoting it around, sliding your right foot around back behind you and getting your stance closed so that your body is sideways. So if you are a right-handed player, your right foot will go back so that your left shoulder is pointing forward towards your opponents. If you are a left-handed player, it is the opposite. Your left foot will slide around and pivot around your right foot and go back behind you to get yourself turned to the side. This is extremely important for a few reasons, and this is a huge recreational player mistake when trying to move back. A lot of recreational players move back towards the baseline to recover a lob with their heals first meaning they will stay facing towards the net and they will back peddle with their heals first back towards the baseline, and try to move back to try to cover a lob that way to try to hit an overhead, assuming that they are not actually turning around and running back towards the baseline. This is a big mistake. First of all, it is slow. It is not an athletic position to move in. There are times when back peddling is an appropriate way to move around a tennis court, but not in this circumstance. It is much slower than the alternative, which I will talk about in a second.

Secondly, it is dangerous. I have seen multiple people move back in this way with their heels first and get tripped up, because it is very difficult to balance when you are back peddling quickly. We are just not designed to move that way guys. I mean, we do not have toes back there to keep our balance. When you are on your heels and moving quickly backwards, it is very easy to trip up and fall back, and I have seen people whack the back of their head behind them after tripping and falling. I have also seen people break their hand that way, tripping and trying to brace themselves with their hand. So, honestly it is dangerous trying to move back that way.

Nevermind that it is slow. And thirdly, when you move back that way, it does not turn your body to the side and that is a problem, because it does not allow you to hit as strong an overhead. Think about your serve. Hopefully, you do not face forwards and hit your serve while facing towards the net. You turn sideways first, so that you can rotate your body forwards toward your target and create power by using the rotation of your core. We want to do that on every overhead possible. So by taking your dominant foot. Well, the foot of your dominant side. A right-handed player, your right hand. Left- handed player, your left foot, and by moving it back and getting sideways, you avoid all of those things, and obviously that is a good thing. Now, the way that you should move back is with either a side shuffle or by crossing over. And actually usually a cross-over step. Either 1 if fine. They are both faster, and they are both safer. They both get you turned to the side. Cross-over step take a little bit more athleticism, but it is faster. I see some players use a combination. Maybe they will cross-over their first 2 or 3 steps and then go to a shuffle to kind of fine-tune their positioning on the court. But no matter what, make sure you get to the side and then use whatever footwork is comfortable for you there. But if you can work out a side shuffle, or a side-step, a cross-over step, you are going to be in much better shape than moving back heels first. Alright, so that is footwork.

And the last element here of being able to cover that lob effectively is your actual overhead, and Michelle, I want you to work on your overhead so that it becomes more of a weapon. If you want to continue advancing as a doubles’ player, and if the rest of you listening want to continue to improve your doubles’ game or just your net game in general, you need to make your overhead a priority during your practice time. Spend time practicing your overhead. And all too often when I am running team practices during the week where I teach, when it comes time to work on the overhead, everybody is like oh, no, not the overhead. I do not want to work on this, because players are not comfortable or confident with their overhead. Well, how do you think you are going to get comfortable and confident with it. You have got to start hitting it a lot. You have got to practice it. Take a few lessons. If you have got time and money go to your local club and get a couple of lessons from a professional about your overhead technique. You can improve your overhand throwing motion to get more power and to get better placement, and have a more effective overhead.

So, take some lessons if you can. Also, I want to point out that the goal of the overhead should be to finish a point. When you get an overhead in the middle of a doubles’ point, you should be looking to close the point out. It should be aggressive shot whenever possible. It is not always the case. When a lob is hit really well and you are having a hard time just to get to it, sometimes it is not practical or even possible to try to hit an aggressive overhead, but you guys should be working towards a goal of having your overhead be a weapon so that you enjoy getting lobbed. [laughter] I tell students this all the time when they complain, when they come back and have a story much like Michelle’s, when I introduce this topic and my students tell me, wow, I had a doubles’ match, it did not go very well. I was coming up to the net just like you always tell me to, Ian, and they lobbed every time. And all of their lobs hit right on the back of the line on the baseline, and it was incredible, and I do not buy it. First of all, average level players are not great lobbers.

It is a tough shot to hit a really good lob deep in the court. Now, it will happen. Do not get me wrong. But most of the time when we are talking about recreational players and a team that lobs a lot, a team that gets beat by a lobbing team, usually it is due more to poor foot work, poor communication skills with partner, poor positioning and just the missing of overheads in general that is the ultimate reason for losing the match, not a slew of perfectly hit lobs. It can happen, but very rarely. And so you guys need to continue working on your overhead. Develop it so that eventually in the future you enjoy getting lobbed, you know, not if it is on the baseline–that will happen sometimes–but you should enjoy getting a lob over you that you can hit an overhead on, because it should become a weapon to be able to put the ball away. So, Michelle, hopefully I have answered your question, and Michelle, by the the way is coming to the Baltimore Essential Tennis Clinic, coming up in just a couple of weeks. And Michelle I look forward to working with you in person on this.

We will be covering these types of topics at the clinic in Baltimore, so I will get to see you in person and work with you on all of these different aspects. Again, we had 4 main aspects of covering the lob well, and those were court positioning, anticipation, and being prepared, correct footwork, and improving your overhead and having a more solid overhead. If you guys can work on all 4 of those areas, you will get beat by the lob much less, I promise you. So, Michelle, that is it. Hopefully, it was helpful to you. Feel free to send me an email with any followup questions, and thanks very much for being a listener. Thank you for your excellent questions that I could talk about today. [music] [music] [music] [music]

Alright. That does it for Episode 118 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today for downloading the file and for giving it a listen. Hopefully, it was helpful to you. If you ever have any questions of your own, you can feel free to send me an email at Ian@essentialtennis.com, or if you go to essentialtennis.com and click on contact there is a form that you can fill out that also goes directly to me, and I have a running list of podcast topics that I am going to be getting to in the future. And I answer those in the order that they were received. So sometimes it takes a little while for me to get to people’s questions, but I do always talk about whatever topics people send me messages about which I enjoy doing. If you enjoyed today’s show do me a favor and go to Itunes and rate and submit a comment about the Essential Tennis Podcast.

That helps my ratings over there at Apple, the Itunes music store, which is the biggest source of downloads for the podcast, so if the show has been helpful to you, do me a favor and spend a couple of minutes an rate the show, and also leave a comment, and I would appreciate that. Alright, that does it for this week. Take care everybody, and good luck with your tennis. [music] [music]