TennisOne Lessons

½ Court Racquet Skills

Wayne Elderton

In the last installment (1/2 Court Tracking, catching and throwing skills), we looked at a way to introduce tennis skills to children 5-7 years old.  The concept of ‘skill blocks’ was introduced with the following diagram:

In this article, we will look at Skill Block #2: Racquet Skills.  This block includes an additional group of foundational skills.  The goal of the activities in this group of skills is to establish a stable racquet.  If players rally and their racquet is unstable through the impact, the result will be inconsistency and lack of control.

Advanced players (even if they are 7 years old) have some fundamentals that starter players lack.  These become the foundation for more advanced skills.

Grip: The grip is the main way players can stabilize their racquet.  Extreme grips (like the full western grip) make it difficult for younger players to organize their racquet face.  To start players out, I would recommend using the eastern FH and BH grips for one handed shots.  For the two handed BH, I would recommend a continental grip on the bottom hand and an eastern FH on the top.  These grips produce a ‘natural’ vertical racquet face at impact.

Hitting Zone: To control direction, the racquet face needs to be pointed towards the intended target at the impact.  The trouble is, if the racquet face changes angle while it is coming around for a stroke, timing the correct angle becomes difficult.  To gain a margin of safety, the racquet face must progress through the impact for a long distance at the correct angle.  This is called creating a ‘Hitting Zone’. A ‘laid-back’wrist helps to make this zone.    

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Wayne Elderton

Wayne is the Head Course Conductor for Tennis Canada Coaching Certification in British Columbia. He is a certified Canadian national level 4 coach and a PTR Professional. 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.

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 information on the Game-based approach, you can visit Wayne Elderton's website at www.acecoach.com