Hooked on Tennis

Hello. My name is Eric. I love tennis and hopefully you do too. I have been playing for about 15 years. I am an "A" level player on a good day. I like teaching beginning level tennis.

I think that tennis should be taught differently. I think that the serve should be taught first. The other strokes are no good if you can't get the ball in play effectively. A person with a great serve and average groundstrokes will win more matches than the person with an average serve and great ground strokes.

I am not a tennis expert. I am a self taught tennis player. In fact, tennis pros may look at this page and have a good laugh. I don't mind. One good thing about the WEB, is that you can voice your opinion to almost everyone in the world and the powers that be can't stop you. So let's look at tennis my way.One other thing, If you go out and use my advice and you manage to injure yourself, it not my fault! It's good advice, but you are using it at your own risk. I don't have any money anyway. Let us proceed......

The serve is the most important stroke in tennis. The only way to be a true winner, in tennis, is to have an effective serve that is consistent. You have to be able to hold your service in order to win tennis matches.

The keys to good serving are a good toss,a good toe elevation, and a good wrist pronation at the moment of impact with the ball. Let's start with the toss. A good toss should be high enough so that you can throw the ball to the sweet spot of your racket(which is above your head at the end of a fully extended hitting arm). Most balls tossed below this level are either going into the net or out of the service box.

The next item is good toe elevation. When you toss the ball and are preparing to hit it, you must get up on your toes. It helps you strike the ball higher up than normal(flat-footed) and it insures that you are transferring your body weight forward into the shot. The more weight transferred into the shot, the heavier the shot. An arm driven shot and a body driven can probably travel over the net with similar velocities, but the weight of the shot will be different. The body driven shot will be harder for your opponent to manage. You want to limit your opponent's shot management whenever possible.

The final item is wrist pronation at impact. Wrist pronation seems to do two things for my game. It seems to add velocity to my service shots and it seems to draw the ball down into the service box better. The former makes me feel good and the latter helps me win tennis matches. The funky spin that is imparted on the ball due to pronation is what probably pulls the ball back into the court. I am not a scientist, but I know it works. For those of you unfamiliar with wrist pronation, it is the act of turning your hand in such a way that your thumb travels from its normal inward position to a relatively unfamiliar outward position. A point of reference, after you have properly pronated, your palm should be facing away from you. If your palm is facing you, the you supinated your wrist. Supination is great for slice serves, but not good at all for "flat" serves. The reason I put quotations around flat is because every ball is hit with a little spin on it. The closer you come to a truly flat hit, the more uncontrollable the hit would be. I believe that spins help you control the ball, because you can predict what that shot will do. I could be wrong about this, but I don't mind, because it is my opinion. It is what I believe right now.

Once you have learned the stroke mechanics you need to learn how to move the ball around the tennis service box. Velocity is good, but placement is everything. Most good players are not going to be intimidated by velocity. In fact, they love it. They use your velocity to pick you apart. Blocking it back into your court with almost the same velocity as you sent it. Set up a couple of empty tennis cans in the middle and both sides of the service boxes and keep serving until you are able to either knock them down or come consistently close to knocking them down. Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-speed. Its just better to hit that speed into an area where your opponent is not standing!

The volley should be the second stroke learned. Most people are afraid to volley, because there is a chance that the ball might hit them. There is a chance that you might get hit by the ball. However, there is even a greater chance that you will hit a winning shot and win the point easily up at the net. One thing you learn, by playing up at the net a lot, is that if your opponent has the time to wind up his racket(cock it back), you better bail right away. Some people just stand there and hope that their opponent's sense of fair play or compassion kicks in. I think its a good way to get a cheap "Wilson" or "Penn" tattoo on your forehead.

Most people have problems with the volley because they think of it as slapping the ball as you would do in racqetball. I look at volleys as really rapid pushes. A good volleyer has learned how to push a ball really fast. It looks like a slap when you watch the pros do it, because they can push faster than most of us can slap. Plus the pros can add all sorts of spin(preferably underspin) to the balls as they fast-push.

The pushing motion is akin to shutting a dresser drawer. First, you start out slow with your push. You would be surprised at how much power you can generate with just a slow push. The strings in your racket will do most of the work. As you become more and more proficient with your push, you can increase your racket head speed. An instructor once indicated this point about the volley too. Look at the handle of your racquet as the number one race horse and look at the head of your racquet as the number two race horse. In a volley horse race, the number one horse should always win. Number two should never win and their should never be a tie. Unless your doing a specialty volley then all bets are off. But a normal volley requires that the race horse rules not be broken.

Special volleys are those such as the drop volley,the high volley(backhand& forehand), the low volley, the touch volley,and the stab volley. The half-volley is not included by me because it is more of a stroke, than a true volley. It is akin to short hopping the ball as in baseball. I will cover speciality volley later on in this manuscript.

In singles, you should always try to keep your opponent in front of you. So, until you can get close enough to the net you hit the ball back to your opponent. Only volley crosscourt, if you are absolutely sure your opponent can't run the shot down. If you get really close to the net you have 120 degrees of angle to choose from as opposed to 19 degrees of angle at the baseline. So if you serve and volley, your first shot should be hit in front of you and the second shot, as you are closer to the net, can be hit away from your opponent. But it has to be hit well and with great authority or touch.

In doubles, if you are the server and you are approaching the net, you should either hit your first volley down the middle of the court or at the right hip pocket of the opposing net man. If you are the net man,hit the return of service at the right hip pocket of the opposing net man. In a volley exchange, volleys hit down the middle or sharp angle volleys inside the service boxes(aimed toward the sidelines) seem to win.

The backhand is a very important stroke. It is the stroke that all good players try to attack. If your backhand holds up under pressure, your opponents will be forced to make better shots on both sides of the court instead of hitting 90% of their shots to your ad court.

The first characteristic of a good backhand is good balance. Your feet should be shoulder width apart. When you strike the ball, your backfoot should only have the toe touching the ground. This gets your body weight going foward.

The next characteristic of a good backhand is body turn. Your chest should be perpendicular to the baseline. When you make the hit, keep your chest perpendicular to the baseline. If you hit one hand backhands with your chest parallel to the baseline, then you will not succeed. Only two-fisted players can get away with that.

The last characteristic of a good backhand is to watch the ball leave the racket head before you look up. If you see the ball go over the net after you hit it, then you looked up to soon. Remember this: On the forehand side tennis can sometimes be a spectator sport for you, but on the backhand side it is a spectator sport for everyone but you!

Oh yeah! I almost forgot on other thing about the backhand. Keep your elbow as close to your body as possible right before the hit. As soon as you start the hit, the your arm and elbow will move naturally toward the ball. Keeping your elbow tight to your body helps you know exactly where your arm is. It also helps prevent that stupid looking chicken wing backhand from ocurring.(Note: all through this manuscript I will probably mispell some words. I'll edit them later. I am having too much fun to slow down!)

The forehand is easiest stroke to learn. You get to use your bicep muscle while performing the hit. Since you use the bicep muscle to perform other sports such as baseball, racquetball,basketball,etc, then the forehand stroke should feel more natural than the backhand. When performing the forehand, a person should strive to keep her racket straight up and down(like a wall). If the racket is held in this position you have a better chance of keeping the ball in play. Downward or Upward tilts usually result in either hitting the ball out or into the net.

While executing the forehand, you can hit the ball early( way out in front of you), on time(just slightly out front,but not quite to the side of you), or late(to the side of you or even behind you--warning:this takes muscle). Hopefully you will learn to hit the ball on time, so it does not require great strength to hit the ball. One of the downfalls of using great strength is that the rigidity needed in your muscles to provide this strength can lead to injury. You hit harder and more effectively when you learn how to relax all muscles except the hand gripping ones while playing.

Back to the forehand, it is a simple stroke. It requires that the racket head remain perpendicular to the playing surface at all time. I will go into some more details about the forehand later, but as for now, the basic stroke is pretty simple. Later on, I will discuss how to have a very effective, penetrating , and vicious forehand. So stick around. Or if I haven't gotten to that point yet, just bookmark me!

The overhead is just like a serve except you do it on the move. You pronate the rackethead just as you would with a serve. You hit out and up at the ball insted of down, unless of course it is a high bouncing ball at the net. If this occurs, then hit down, and hit down very hard. That way you almost certainly will win that particular point. But normally your will take overheads at mid-court or near the base line(far-court). Therefore it is necessary to hit more out and up so that you can clear the net. When you see the lob shot going up in the air ask yourself the following questions: 1)Is it going to go over my head? 2) Is it a very high lob that will bounce comfortably close to me? 3) Is it a lob that is hit just about two to three racquet lengths above my head? If the answer to #1 is yes, then turn sideways(to your power side of course) and run or skip diagonally away from your power side so that the ball clearly bounces on your power side as you catch up to it. Then decide,based on the bounce or your opponents positioning(near-court,mid-court, far-court?) whether to lob back or smash. If the ball doesn't bounce very high then a smash would be risky. If it bouces high and you get there on time, the proceed to smash the ball and carve "Penn" on the forehead of anyone silly enough to challenge you at the net. If the answer is yes to #2 then wait until the ball bounces. Watch your opponent out the corner of your eye and try to hit to where she is not. If she is at the net, then heaven help her. If the answer to #3 is yes, then take the ball in the air by taking a step backwards to get slightly behind the ball. If you can, try to hit it away from your opponent.

The worse thing you can do is to let a lob come down in a path directly above your head. You should always strive to get slightly behind and to the side of the ball for maximum control of the shot.