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Set Your Priorities Which Shots are Most Often Hit? Joe Dinoffer In business and in life, we are constantly prioritizing. We prioritize to decide what things are most important. This chart comes from Stephen Covey’s legendary “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” Note that ideally we want to spend as much time as possible in Quadrant II, performing activities that are both IMPORTANT and NOT URGENT.
Not All Shots are Created Equal What are the basic shots in tennis? Serve, return of serve, forehand groundstroke, backhand groundstroke, forehand volley, backhand volley, overhead, lob, and dropshot. Of course, there are more options within each of these main categories that clarify spin, placement, balance, etc. But, if you list all the potential options, it will get overwhelming. So, let’s stick with the basics I just listed. You will see them on the chart that follows. Now the big question that begs to be asked is, “Which shots do you hit most frequently in a match?” Since we all have limited time to practice and improve, it only makes sense that prioritizing our practices based on what shots we hit most often will help us improve our competitive results most quickly. Perform this Exercise Use the chart below as a guide to have someone chart to determine what shots you hit most. They will really have to focus since it can happen very fast, so you may have to reciprocate with the right person by offering to do the same charting for them! Add up your totals from each game to get your total number of swings at the ball for the entire set. Then total those numbers to get your total number of swings in that set. Just remember that you are charting swings at the ball and not shots in the court. Examples: A missed first serve will count as one first serve swing. Count service returns or any other shots, if you get your racquet to contact the ball. If you cannot contact the ball, the assumption is that your opponent hit a clean winner.
What to Expect
The times I have used this charting concept, players are always surprised what a large percentage of their swings at the ball are the serve and return of serve. Of course it depends on their style of play and their opponents, the surface (slower surfaces = longer points), whether they are playing singles or doubles, etc. But, consistently, the serve and service return will be right at the top of most frequently hit shots. And, what are the shots that most people practice least? You guessed it, the serve and service return. Think about the drill sessions you’ve participated in at clubs for a minute. In most cases, teaching pros avoid too many serving drills since it can become boring because of serve and return errors. What to Do with this Information The Serve – Practicing your service may seem relatively easy, right? Get a bucket of balls, and go at it! Right? Not quite. If one of your tennis goals is to improve, then you especially need to improve the shots that you hit most! The serve is ALWAYS one of those shots. Think about your first serve and your second serve. With a little simple arithmetic, this chart will give you a first serve percentage, a statistic that can be very humbling to many of us. We usually view ourselves as more successful than we are in reality, and while the truth may be shocking, it needs to be addressed. For example, in the first game of the sample chart in this article, the player only served 20% of his first serves in the box. Of course, it takes many more games to get a good feel for a general serving patterns, but you get the idea.
Return of Serve – Returning serve is altogether different from the serve. It is most probably the least practiced shot in tennis for two reasons. First, few facilities have expensive serving machines available. Second, since few people want to practice their serves, hooking up with those players to practice your service returns can be a scheduling nightmare. But, however difficult it may be to find partners who want to practice their serve and return (you can rotate back and forth), it is well worth the effort! A few things to consider if you want to benefit from the time you take to practice your service returns:
Summary My goal for this article is to excite readers about the concept of setting priorities to determine what shots to spend the most time practicing to the point where it would give them a reference point for how they are actually spending their tennis time. Hopefully, you are looking at the last 15-20 minutes spent reading this article and concluded, “That was time well spent. I was just in quadrant #2.”
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At first, Covey’s concepts were embraced for business, but they were quickly accepted to implicate everything in our lives. That includes tennis! Think about how you spend the time you devote to tennis, and in which of the four quadrants you practice and play. Let’s review some key tennis implications we can take home from this simple yet profound chart. Again, keep in mind that Covey advises us to live, work, and play in Quadrant II as much as possible. You want to do important things that are not urgent. Shouldn’t this be the mantra that defines what we practice? The practice session is certainly not “urgent” in that you want to practice regularly, but it IS important. An example of Quadrant I (Important AND Urgent) would be to start to work on a new forehand the day before a big match. How to decide what shots are most important to practice is what we will discuss next.