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Play like the pros !

Tennis has been considered for a long time a very difficult sport to learn. One has to mind where to place the arms, the feet, watch the balance, weight transfer, how you take your racquet back, etc.
This is false, cultivated from the late 1920s on, and still very much in vogue in most of the world. The truth is that tennis is a simple game and easy to learn. Just watch the top players to see how loose, natural and fluid they play.

Of course at that high level there can be great effort both to get to a distant ball and to impart velocity to the shot. But, in terms of attention, all the player's concentration is on finding the ball well and playing it back with the racquet as if they were doing it with the hand.

Those players don't worry at all about body position, and use it instinctively solely to help their stroking, either when they are standing or on the run chasing the ball.

This can be easily learned if you simplify things from the beginning, playing while you walk forward, backwards, or to the side, without any attention to your feet, as if you were walking in your kitchen or running at the park. This teaches you immediately a total independence of the arms and hands from the rest of the body.

Unfortunately, standard tennis teaching is opposite. You learn to put a foot here, the other there, and many other complications.

Already in 1968 at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club in California, and then much more widely in 1973, as national coach for Spain, I broke away from tradition and had players focusing mainly on their sight and hands, actively promoting their hand-eye coordination above all else. For increased feel and control, I also pushed hard on ball rotation on groundstrokes and serve.

The results were admirable, and this is the basic reason for the massive Spanish success at the professional and junior levels in the last 28 years.

In 1982 I did the same work in Florianopolis, Brazil, with Carlos Alves, the director of a children's tennis academy. In this program was born and nurtured the game of Gustavo Kuerten, three time French Open Champion and Number One in the World in 2000.

A recent study found similarities in other sports. It was learned that Michael Jordan, perhaps the best athlete in the world last decade, focuses all his attention above his waist.

Summing it up, not only in tennis, but in most sports where hand-eye coordination is a must and you run after a ball, the way to get better is to focus only on this and let the rest of the body find its own way in a natural way. This way there is no mental interference with instinct and with movements and balance you learned when you were perhaps two or three years old.

Going back to the tops pros, you can study them following the player rather than the ball, and see how natural they move and play. As if they were doing it just with the hand!

Serve

One of the most important strokes in tennis is the second serve.

A weakness in this shot puts the player on the defensive right from the start of the point.

Most of the top pros excel in getting the second serve deep, with a high kick, preventing the other player to hit a winner or to advance on the court.

Practice your second serve spinning a good quantity of balls over a high fence, to force you to serve up.

After you accomplish a good percentage of balls clearing the fence, come back to the court and now practice from the normal service position by the baseline, but spinning the ball up, with a lot of rotation.

You'll see the ball first going up and then curving down, kicking up after the bounce. The more kick, the more difficult for your opponent to return.

Sampras' second serve, even on hard courts, has been measured to spin sometimes over 5,000 RPM.

Such a rotation makes the ball feel heavier to the returning player, and also kicks within his racquet, impairing the accuracy of the return.

As a result, even at the top pro level, the other player usually returns well inside the court, rather than going close to the lines, thus keeping the advantage of the server through the beginning stages of the point.

Toss the ball a bit behind you, bend your arm so that most effort goes to the triceps, rather than your rotator cuff, and hit up past the ball.

Keep the wrist bent as if you were watching the inside of your hand, the racket strings should almost feel like a hat when it goes across above your head, moving from left to right for a right hander.

Even though you are serving towards your right, the angle on the racket will make the ball go to the left of the direction of your follow-through.

With practice, you will be able to have more and more clearance over the net and still bring the ball down in the service area, usually with good depth.

Forehand Volley

The best volleys in the world are not a full swing, but a firm block of the ball.

First of all, you need to wait for the ball to get to your side, otherwise you'll be chasing it forward, rather than blocking it firmly.

If you wait for the ball to get near you and then you'll hit it by locking your wrist and your arm, the trunk of the body connects to the impact, generating more power than a loose and swinging arm.

On the forehand side, make sure your elbow is tucked in to the front of your body.

A floating elbow will give you plenty of errors and more difficulty controlling the shot.

It is good to hit across the ball, this meaning that the butt of the racquet moves a couple of inches to your left, as if you were hitting the palm of your other hand with it.

Remember that the main factor for power is not swinging at the ball, but the weight you connect to the volley block.

The placement of your volley is totally dependent on the angle of your racquet, not on the direction of your stroke.

Volleying a hard passing shot, after finding the ball path with your racquet, the hand may go on a very short motion, tightening up when you meet the ball.

On a high and slow volley you would need more of a follow through, but always tightening the grip and arm muscles when you meet the ball.

Four types of players

There are four major types of championship styles.

One is the purely defensive player, who stays back as much as possible, and often just goes to the net to shake hands at the end of the match.

The next type of player is mostly a baseliner, but as soon as he gets a short ball, he hits a very forceful approach shot, almost a winner in itself, and gets to the net for a volley put-away.

The third type is the player who is skillful from the back, but who is always looking to maneuver to the net. He'll take more chances of going forward, and is usually good at placing the first volley where the opponent has difficulty making a good passing shot.

The last category is that of the serve-and-volley player who does it as a way of life, regardless of the surface. He probably isn't very skilled at matching groundstrokes from the backcourt, and usually thinks of it as a waste of time. Rather than work his way into the point, this player risks everything, from groundstrokes to storming the net on any kind of ball.

This can be very effective on given days, when things go right and the opponent collapses under the sheer pressure of the attack. But if this player is matched against a skilled all-court player, he'll have a struggle on his hands. The backcourt player will dampen the other player's attack with low angles and skilled lobs mixed with some forceful passing shots. Although backcourt players do more running, they do so with more time to get to the ball, while the attacking player depends mostly on jumping and lunging ability.

On clay courts, where points are long (average point duration at top professional play is above 8 seconds) and matches between players of comparable skill usually go on for hours, an attacking player will have difficulty sustaining the effort for an entire match.

But on grass courts the average point duration has been measured to be, at the top level, about one and a half seconds.

At championship level, serve-and-volley players get to most of their opponent's service returns near their own service line. The shot from here, should they be able to reach it before the bounce, is called the first volley. In most cases, the ball is by then below the level of the net. This first volley needs placement, pace, and depth. After hitting the first volley the player continues to advance toward the net, and is now prepared to cut off the next return, usually a forceful passing shot or a lob.

The attacking player is now in a more commanding position, but here the options for the opponent vary according to the type of surface of the court. On a slippery surface like grass, good players go for a forceful passing shot most of the time, or for a very defensive lob. The attacking player just needs to angle the next volley to the open court, and most likely it will be out of the other player's reach.

Here is where an accomplished serve-and-volley player has something that the accomplished backcourt player does not: a sense of net coverage, of which angles to open and which ones to close. Serve-and-volley players know how to lure the opponent into hitting a particular shot. They can close the net fast, while still preparing to smash even a decent lob. A little while into the match, they've learned to anticipate the passing shot by reading the racket angle of the opponent at contact time. It is a skill that you develop by committing to a volley game. Your tactical approach changes, adjusting to different conditions that you create for yourself.

One major aspect of the successful attacking game is the pressure put on the opponent to make very good shots, which leads to many errors, especially in important points. The faster the court, the more pressure the player under attack feels.

The Low Volley at Championship Level

For a low volley, you obviously have to lower the racket from the normal height where you were holding it to the point where you'll meet the ball. You can use this downward (and at the same time forward) movement to get momentum to hit the ball. You get it to go over the net by opening the racket face, while you stop at contact with a firm grip. This will give the ball good speed, while it will still be accurate and clear the net. The ball will also have some backspin that will keep it low after it bounces in your opponent's court.

You can use this low volley with spectacular results from anywhere in the court, including being caught behind the service line or somewhere in the backcourt. The ball may be at your feet, without a bounce, and you can still make a good shot.

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