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Back to the Basics, Part 3

Taking Your Game to the Court

Jim McLennan

This article completes the spring training series and hopefully enables you to play the upcoming tournaments or USTA league matches you have scheduled with renewed confidence. In January your task (emulating Roger Federer) was to steady your eyes at the point of contact and to be continually aware of your point of contact. With practice I hope you found this simplified your hitting. In February the project was to become more aware of the edges of your racquet, and how to more easily create either topspin or backspin by varying the angle of the racquet face. Well, as a full time tennis teacher, and former player, I see so many players who complicate the game with unusual strokes and really high risk strategies. But the best players I met years ago, as well as the ones I appreciate today, generally play with a simplicity that defies common appreciation. That is, their games are so simple and without flourish, that many do not really appreciate their skills until they arrive at the losing end of a 6-2 6-2 drubbing.

So to extend the simplicity of the concepts of eye control, point of contact, and the angles of your racquet face, what follows are tried and true strategies to use when playing that singles or doubles match in your next competitive outing.

The Art of Winning

Many club players I observe try to end a point with one swing regardless of the situation. This approach can lead to errors and we all know, errors disrupt rhythm and diminish confidence. So next time you are on the court, first and foremost, work your way into the point. By this I mean, get the ball in play, whether serving or returning. Since most points end with errors not winners, the art of winning, to my mind, is to make the opponent hit the ball.

Consider a rally at one all, 30 all, the match is still beginning and neither player has opened up an advantage. You play the ball short, the opponent approaches the net, and three possible scenarios ensue. One, you thread the needle with a perfect pass – result, one point won. Two, you over hit your passing shot and lose the point outright – result, one point lost. Three, you keep the ball in play and the opponent misses a makeable backhand volley – result, one point and perhaps two if not three points lost by your opponent.

Let me explain. Over the course of a match one should always try to evaluate an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. But until I have measured the opponents volleying skill, there is really no reason to over hit or to even pass. For if the opponent does not trust his backhand volley, and I force that error perhaps I have learned something about how to play him. And in the not unlikely instance that after three consecutive backhand volley errors, my opponent screams something desultory about himself or his skills, that advertisement, no matter how inadvertent, has clearly told me what to do on the big points.

As the match progresses, this art of winning clearly comes into play. If you have lost the first set, do you know why? Has it been your errors or your opponents winners? In most instances, players are hard pressed to pinpoint the causes that underlie the score. So in a practical way, when sitting on the changeover, replay in your mind the previous game. If you held serve, why? If your serve was broken, why? And on the other (and more pleasant side of the street) if you are winning can you identify why, and if so, can you then press that advantage into repeated situations where your opponent struggles to hit his least favored shot. The changeover is a moment to collect your thoughts, not about the mechanics of your swings, but rather the ebb and flow of the points.

Hit and Move as well as Move and Hit

Generally we understand the importance of footwork when moving to the ball. But Rafa shows us the other side of the coin, with his uncommon quickness after he hits. Hit and move, simply means your intention to get back into position as quickly as possible. Further, hit and move means that if the court is open and your opponent has a logical shot to this opening, in many instances it makes perfect sense to hit and quickly move to that area. Call it defensive anticipation, moving to the spot where your opponent should hit it.

Super Bowls are won on defense, and the same is said for basketball (just ask the high scoring but defensively challenged Lakers). Hit and move is not about winners, and not about placement, but simply about court positioning after you have hit the ball. The most common scenario occurs where one player is in the corner about to construct a passing shot and the other is positioned at the net. Too often the passer goes for broke, but when driving the ball with power that player has less time to get back into position. Hit and move, in this instance, means slowing the ball down, taking quick recovery steps, and possibly leaning if not committing to the open court. Sometimes this hit and move tactic will actually force an error because the volleyer attempts to play the ball closer to the line than needed.

Stay Out of Your Pocket When Serving

Rod Laver (among others) said you are only as good as your second serve. But stated another way, the more second serves you hit the more the risk, and the more second serves you hit the more opportunities for a confidence shattering double fault. If you store the second ball (when serving) in your pocket, note at the conclusion of each service game, how many times you went into your pocket for that ball to hit a second serve. I believe you will find a clear correlation between your ability and tendency to hold serve and the number of times you went into your pocket. So it's really quite simple, get your first serve in play.

When to Lob

In this era of power tennis, with so much baseline play, so few volleyers, and so little apparent finesse, we rarely see the beauty if not the value of the lob. We are not talking heavy topspin lobs (unless you are playing Pete Sampras) but rather simple, open faced lobs guided either high and into the sun, or slightly lower and to the backhand side of the opponent. Jimmy Connors was the last player to routinely use the lob in defensive situations (remember the US Open highlight reel against Paul Haarhuis where Connors threw up four defensive lobs, none of which were put away, to finish with a perfectly placed backhand pass on the dead run).

You can learn a lot about your opponent from a lob. First off, it may show you how little confidence your opponent has in his or her seldom practiced overhead (for typically this shot is rarely practiced). Second, by tracking the line of your shadow when the sun is at your back, there is a way to guide the ball along that line so the opponent becomes unsighted as he looks into the sun. And as regards the art of winning, there may be more value when inducing the error than when hitting the winner.

When to Drop

And further, on the finesse side of the street, the drop shot, if not the simple “short shot,” is also underutilized. A simple turn of phrase dictates the following – drive the drive, lob the lob, angle the angle, short the short, and drop the drop. Meaning, just as it is easier and safer to return a crosscourt drive with a crosscourt drive (it is more difficult to change direction), in most instances, it is easiest to return a drive with a drive, a lob with a lob, a drop with a drop, and so forth. Errors more commonly occur when players change the pattern, rather than allowing the incoming shot to guide their reply. If the opponent creates a sharp and short angle, the simplest reply is to return the favor along the same sharp and short line. So, if an opponent moon balls, then reply in kind.

The secret to the drop concerns court positioning and time. The decision to drop occurs when the opponent is driving the ball from behind the baseline and you are able to finesse that shot from inside your own baseline. When you are positioned inside the baseline their driving shot is more likely to be rising onto your racquet, and when combined with your own delicate backspin stroke (remembering your edges), drop shots seem to appear from out of no where. And truly, a rising ball will rebound from a backboard with backspin (and a dropping ball will rebound from a backboard with forward spin) so that the combination of this natural rebounding backspin coupled with your own deft down hit produces far more backspin that meets the eye. Bring them to the net. Who knows, you might follow this up with a lob into the sun. What fun!

Momentum

At a tennis conference in New York in 1993 Stan Smith spoke simply but eloquently about “three points in a row.” Smith felt that the winner of nearly any match was the one who had won the most “three in a row” series of points. Momentum, plain and simple. He said that whenever he had won two points in a row, he would bear down to capture the third, and thereby press his advantage. And equally, whenever he lost two points in a row, he fought like the dickens to capture that next point to deny the opponent momentum and leverage. When Federer or anyone for that matter runs away with a set, it generally appears that points are being won (or lost) in long unbroken strings. Play the ball, play the points, but always be keenly aware of momentum.

And finally, a word about internal dialogues, cognitive tennis and over analysis. Too often, after an error or string of errors, I will hear a concise and accurate description of the problem by the offending player. But somehow what I believe I hear is a phrase that indicates the player knew cognitively what to do, but could not really feel it, for if felt, the problem would not have occurred.

When starting tennis, if the learning channel was cognitive, where the teacher (or video or book) explained the technique, the performance channel truly becomes kinesthetic. Avoid the tendency to over analyze, to dwell on the why or the how, and simply go for the feel. We all may have heard (but hopefully not spoken) the phrase, “Dumb Jock.” There is real meaning there; a description of a gifted athlete less prone to thinking than to doing. If the game is played “between the ears,” to me that describes an intention to do and feel, and an intention to overcome the thinking.

Nike has it right on this one, “Just Do It.”

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