Tennis | Tips

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Tips

Serves

There are three kinds of serves: Flat serve, Slice serve and Topspin serve.

Basics of Serve

The fundamentals of serve starts with “ The four Bs” base, balance, back-scratch position and ball toss. To achieve a correct base, your feet should be shoulder’s width apart with your left foot at an angle towards the target box and your right foot parallel to the baseline.

Flat Serve:

Once you establish a good base, focus on the location of the ball toss. The ball toss should be at the one o’clock position slightly in front of you. Practice getting the ball into this position before trying the entire service motion. Your hip should rotate while trying the service motion, look at the pictures below.

“Tips”
Bend your knees to generate more power to the serve.

Slice Serve:

Slice serve is an arm serve, so you will not have the hip and shoulder rotation that you have in the flat serve. You will also turn your grip over a little more counter clockwise. The ball is tossed at noon, and you swing up to the ball visualizing a nail in the sky. In doing this you are trying to hit the ball on its side which generates the slice to make it kick. While the follow through of the flat serve is across your body the slice serve is going to be on the other side of your body. The feet should be stationary with a weight shift from the back foot to the front foot when striking the ball.

Topspin Serve:

The topspin serve is similar to the slice serve in many aspects. Throw the ball toss at noon, and a little closer to your body. If it lands it should hit you on the forehead. This is going to be an all arm serve. You also finish on the same side of your body as well. Swing up at the ball and push the racquet through the ball. The key thing is to generate as much spin as possible and that is achieved by attacking the ball aggressively when tossing it in the air.

“Tips”
The key to service power is the racquet head speed and not swinging hard at the ball. In otherwords, swinging quickly at the ball rather than trying to muscle the ball.

Forehand

Steps for a forehand

1- Get into the ready position.
2- Racket back and down, move to the ball.
3- Swing out to the point of contact, shift your weight forward.
4- Follow through.

Backhand

Two handed Backhand

1- Get into the ready position.
2- Racket back and down, hands together, shoulder turn, right foot forward.
3- Shift weight onto your front foot and swing out to the point of contact.
4- Follow through keeping your elbows up. Your toes should be pointing forward.
5- Drop your elbows and return to the ready position.

Think of your racket as the sword you need to slay the little green dragon

Slice

The slice shot differs from the normal forehand. The ball is hit as the player is moving to the net. This is called “dynamic balance”. The body is in semi-open stance off the right foot as you can see in the picture below. Most players use continental grip because it opens the face of the racquet, making the slice easier.

DropShot

The dropshot is a very precise shot in tennis, it requires a lot of good timing and a good decision making. The rule of thumb is when hitting a dropshot you should be inside the baseline. This helps lowering the margin of error.

“Tip”
A lot of the PROS hit their dropshot to mix up their game and keep their opponents honest and guessing at all times.

Volley

The volley is considered the easiest to learn of all the strokes in tennis because of its simplicity. The player takes a relaxed stance facing the net with feet about shoulder width apart and knees slightly flexed. The volley is executed by having the player simply set his/her racquet in order to “block the ball”. There is little or no backswing. As players become more advanced, they will incorporate a quick shoulder turn, an abbreviated backswing and a short follow through.

“Tip”
The wrist should be slightly laid back to ensure the ball will land deep in the opponent court.

The Mental Game

Tennis isn’t all about hitting your groundstrokes and returning the shots. The tennis game requires two critical elements, one is the physical aspect in which you have to be in good shape and be able to hit the strokes and the other is about the mental aspect.

I personally have played tournaments and many competitive matches and I’ve come to learn the hard way how the mental game is very important. Here’s a scenario; I was playing in a tournament at Midland Community Tennis Center. I was up 5-4 in sets and I was serving for the match. All of a sudden I started playing tentatively while hitting my shots. The reason is I was thinking way too much about the score rather than just hitting my shots. I ended up losing the game 5-7. No one likes to lose, but from losing we can learn a lot about the game in general and our mental game as well.

There’s a book that I would really recommend for you if you want to improve your mental game. It’s called ” The Inner Game Of Tennis” and it has taught me alot.

In tennis there’s something called letting it happen and not making it happen. If you try too hard to make it happen you will end up missing a lot of the shots. Your body knows the routine of hitting the ball and moving along with it. It’s a matter of just letting it happen and playing your game rather than forcing the issue.

Equipment

This is a list of the basic equipment that you will need inorder to play tennis. These are just examples of what you might consider.

Tennis racquet

There are many tennis racquets out in the stores. The best way to know what racquet fits you best is to demo the racquet first. Most stores will let you demo the racquet for a week or two. The key thing is to find the one that fits your game and makes you comfortable.

Tennis balls

There are many good brands of tennis balls such as, Wilson, Dunlop and Penn. The key thing is to change the balls on regular basis. Forinstance the Pros change the balls every 6 games. It’s up to you when to change them as long as they still got some life in them.

Tennis Shoes

Shoes are one of the most underrated equipments in tennis. You need to have the right tennis shoes. Quality shoes are needed most importantly because much of the action occurs in lateral movements. Which means running shoes won’t work since they are made specifically for forward motion.