TennisOne Lessons

Sensational Tennis: Maintaining Pace Sensations,

Low "Counter" Volley

Wayne Elderton

We have started a new series to emphasize that it is the "feelings" of a stroke more than the movements themselves that players need in order to learn technique.

Shot Sensation Elements

As previously mentioned, a Shot’s ‘Sensation’ is defined by three key elements. All these add up to the overall feeling of the shot (for full definitions, see the previous articles in the TennisOne Lesson Library):

Swing Scale: How much the racquet travels before, and after the impact. We use a scale of 1 (small) to 10 (big) to describe the preparation and a second 1-10 number to describe racquet work after the impact. Shots could be a 2/5, 10/10, 3/1, etc.

Racquet Rhythm: This is how fast the racquet is moving before impact verses after. Many shots in tennis require a slow-fast rhythm.

Linkage: Sensations also include which, and how many body segments are used in a shot, and in what order. More links typically add pace. Fewer links are used to take pace off.

Sensational Effects

Also mentioned in the last article, we outlined three main categories of sensations:

• Sensations that add pace to the ball
• Sensations that take pace off the ball
• Sensations that maintain the pace of the ball

Intentions drive our movements. Every movement is only relevant if there is an accompanying tactic you are trying to accomplish. To this end, we will always include a common tactic the sensation is used for.

Sensations That Maintain Pace

In many situations the ball a player receives is challenging. The most basic way of handling a challenge is to defend (send a lower risk response). As players improve, it is “countering” that occurs more often than defending. A professional match will sometimes have more countering than attacking or defending combined.

Low Volley “Counter”

• Tactics: In this feeling, the player has received a low volley (usually around the service line). The trick is to not ‘pop-up’ the ball or, over risk. The goal is to try to turn the tables on the opponent by sending a deep level shot to force a tough passing attempt and set-up the next volley.

• Sensation: This shot requires a feeling of stroking after impact. It is primarily a ‘shoulder’ feeling. The idea is to have a shorter preparation to simplify timing, however, unlike the defensive shot which would also have a shorter finish, the ‘counter’ has an attacking finish to keep up the pace of the ball received. It is important to not have the impact point too far out front as that will add to the ball rising too much. The racquet path should be fast and level.

Let’s look at this action on our Sensations Chart:

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

Wayne Elderton

Wayne is head of Tennis Canada Coaching Development & Certification in British Columbia. He is a certified Canadian national level 4 coach as well as being certified 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. Wayne has also been selected as Tennis BC High Performance Coach-of-the-year and was the 2007 Canadian Tennis Professionals Association Coaching Educator 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 Coaches Australia,Tennis Corporation of America and the ITF. He is an international expert on the Game-based Approach.

For more resources, you can visit Wayne Elderton's website at www.acecoach.com

New Progressive Tennis DVD

Wayne Elderton and coach/videographer Neil parker have just completed a new DVD for Tennis Canada on ½ Court Tennis for 5-7 year olds. It contains some of the most up to date methodology found world-wide. The clips in this article are taken from that DVD. It is available on Wayne Elderton’s website: www.acecoach.com.