TennisOne Lessons

Deliberate Practice — Neutral Rally

Wayne Elderton

In the last article we covered a way to set-up and measure the improvement of a 1st serve. In a "Deliberate Practice" (DP) approach, the purposeful way you practice and the work ethic you bring to your practice will take you further than any innate "talent" you may have.

In previous articles in the series, we identified the key characteristics of DP:

• Highly structured
• Specific and relevant
• Weaknesses are targeted and performance monitored
• Mentally and physically focused
• Reward-less

DP is about mastering the situations one encounters when they play (not just ‘general’ strokes).

In this installment we will be looking at the Neutral Groundstroke Exchange from the baseline. It is one of the most common situations in tennis after a serve and return to engage in a baseline to baseline exchange. The goal is to have what I call, ‘competitive consistency’. It is not just a matter of plopping the ball back, but making a ‘quality’ rally ball.

Click here to view QuickTime version

The rally must have enough of a challenge for the opponent to keep them neutral. The ball cannot be weak enough that they can gain advantage and take charge of the point. To improve, a player must practice to increase the ‘tempo’ of their rally.

A good neutral rally is a balance. To risky (attempting to challenge the opponent) and the consistency drops which will give more points away than will get. Not enough of a challenge and the opponent can take charge. This becomes more of a factor as the level of players increase.

The player with the highest consistent tempo will win 80-90% of the points in a baseline exchange.

This video lays-out the keys needed for the practice which include:

• Clear tactical intention (technique is only for executing tactics. The idea is to practice in order produce an effect on the opponent and hopefully, gain more points (not just look nicer)
• Key technical points to practice (what is really important to make the tactic happen)
• How to set-up measurement (this is required to know if you are improving or not)
• Scoring norms (to gauge improvement based on typical results)

At my academy, we call this concept, “Performance On Demand” (POD). If you truly ‘own’ a skill you can do it whenever it is demanded of you.

Your comments are welcome. Let us know what you think about Wayne Elderton's article by emailing us here at TennisOne.

Wayne Elderton

WayneElderton isHead Courseof Tennis Canada Coaching Development &Certification in British Columbia. He is a certified Canadian national level 4 coach andcertified by both the PTR and USPTA.For two consecutive years he was runner-up for Canadian national development coach-of-the-year out of nominated coaches from every sport.He has also been named the Tennis Professionals AssociationCoaching Educator of the year and Tennis Professional of the year.

Wayne is currently Tennis Director at the Grant Connell Tennis Center in North Vancouver. He has written coaching articles and materials for Tennis Canada, the PTR, Tennis Australia , and the ITF. He is a national expert on the Game-based Approach.

For more informationvisit Wayne Elderton's website at www.acecoach.com