Defining the One Basic Tenet of Skilled Tennis

David W. Smith, Senior Editor TennisOne

We’ve heard it a million times… “There is more than one way to hit a tennis ball.” So very true. One needs only to visit any tennis venue: from clubs to public courts, from schools to resorts, the variety of tennis players, the differences in their hitting “techniques,” and the variety of competency and levels of success are as vast as the differences among individuals.

However, when watching pros play as compared to the weekend hackers hackers, we see not only the differences in the way they move their racquets through the air we see the results of such swings…or the lack of results, as it may pertain to that latter group.

Yet, even among the pros, we see variety; we see one and two-handed strokes, we see loop swings and straight take backs, we see high service tosses and tosses that barely clear the tip of the racquet. We also see variety in strategies; from baseline retrievers to aggressive attacking players who are not afraid to come to the net.

So, What’s The Difference, Really?

If the pros swing differently among themselves, and the hackers swing differently among their competitive group, why do the pros end up hitting effective, consistent, and potent shots while the weekend hacker dumps balls into the net, slap them wide and long, and seldom sustain a rally longer than three hits?

The answer is the ability of the pros to produce a reliable, repeatable swing path on command.

While we all recognize the pros are able to execute forehand after forehand, backhand after backhand, serve after serve, with this idea of a reliable, repeatable swing pattern, I’ve seen a handful of weekend players actually use very unorthodox strokes, yet are able to do what I just described; hit consistently and reliably, and even sometimes effectively…depending on, among other things, their opponents! I say opponents, because at higher levels of play, these unorthodox strokes will inevitably break down.

Let's face it, there is nothing natural or intuitive about hitting a tennis ball. In fact, the natural tendency among players wanting to play tennis is about as far away from this idea of creating a reliable, repeatable swing path as one could imagine.

The reason for this inability is complex. The most obvious is that when players lack instruction to override the natural tendency to swing differently, they simply produce uneven, unreliable swings. It is extremely rare to see raw beginners come close to hitting skilled tennis strokes, even those who might be labeled athletically gifted. But, even those players working to emulate skilled strokes can find it difficult for additional reasons.

Movement Faults

Watch the way most club players move on the court. The goal seems to encompass little beyond the dimension of simply “getting to the ball.” The typical pro takes upwards of 12 to 14 steps between shots including four or five small adjustment steps to get themselves into optimal hitting position. The typical recreational player takes less than six steps, hence, they often find themselves reaching for a ball and creating an imbalance.

For those of you old enough to have an old style transistor tuner-type radio with a dial that you physically had to turn to move the indicator arrow to a particular station, here is an effective analogy. Imagine only having two or three turns of that knob to find a station. You might get close, even enough to get a little bit of the station’s frequency. Yet, more times than not, you barely caught the station in just a couple turns of the knob. However, when a person wanted to really get the station in clearly, it would take several smaller, back-and-forth moves of the dial until you fine-tuned the station.

This is exactly what professional players do on the court: they take enough steps to “fine tune” their position relative to the desired shot. Recreational players tend to move only enough to get their racquet on the ball, only to find themselves miss-hitting it, hitting the ball out of their “strike zone,” or simply not being in position to time the shot ideally. All of these things result in inconsistent shots, poor aim, and the need to “dink” the ball just to keep it play.

Over-Hitting

Another distinctive problem I see among players working on skilled strokes is they tend to over hit in their attempts. They make one brilliant shot and suddenly feel they can make every shot, so they swing harder. The problem is, swinging harder obviously makes the contact window smaller and more dependent on perfect timing (and the aforementioned footwork!), as well as simply lowering the odds of making the shot even if the timing and footwork happened to be perfect.

Another problem with swinging bigger is that old habits or stroke elements tend to sneak in. If you are working on developing and mastering a particular stroke, then work on shortening the swing and controlling the speed of your stroke.

But, even if a player has moved well and gotten into position for the shot and doesn’t over hit, if the stroke is not refined, repeatable, or reliable, the best positioned player who isn’t swinging too hard will fail to hit the ball consistently.

Defining your Stroke

As with any skilled activity, the need to define, refine, and replicate every shot in tennis should be the first thing a player works on developing. While footwork patterns can be integrated into this practice, Working on footwork before developing the stroke, is like putting the cart before the horse. The player may get to balls well, but the swing won’t result in the ability to do much with the ball once he gets there.

Skilled sports and skilled musicians have much in common. The one thing we see both groups do (those who succeed in their activity), is the practice of repetition. With piano or guitar or other musical instruments, we see students working on scales or other repetitive movements designed to train the fingers to execute the movements needed to play those instruments correctly. Imagine a piano player being taught to use just the index fingers to play the piano! This would most certainly lead to a very unsophisticated player…no matter how long and tirelessly they practiced. Despite the cliche, in essence, practice does not necessarily make perfect – perfect practice produces perfect results.

No one who wants to learn the piano well would consider practicing this two-fingered style of playing! Yet in tennis we see this all the time!

Skilled tennis is refined. It is defined. It requires a methodology. And yes, skilled tennis can be learned if practiced correctly!

Deliberate Practice

Tennis players looking to learn the game to the degree they can indeed play the sport at higher levels, or players looking to break old habits, need to practice using the method we call “Deliberate Practice.” Within our program called Groundstrokes Unlimited, this is stressed both in the instructional criteria as well as in the drills we recommend in mastering these strokes. Every successful tennis teaching program recognizes this. Having coached tennis for 28 seasons in three states, I had a front-row seat to seeing programs that don’t prescribe to this general philosophy. Programs which favored “self-discovery” through very limited instruction, or didn’t stress skilled stroke patterns from the start, produced everything but skilled players. Their are of course rare exceptions of a seemingly gifted player who more or less seemed to stumble into skilled tennis (usually through the crossover skills of having learned a previous skilled sport). More often than not, these players probably took lessons outside of the given tennis program.

For coaches of tennis teams, this was the dead give-away: Coaches who stressed strong fundamentals, sound stroke techniques, and deliberate practice, not only were the most competitive in any general year, but year after year these coaches produced championship teams. Some schools might be lucky and get one or two “stars” (usually produced from some instructional program outside the team they were on), and have a good year or two. However, after those stars moved on, the team seldom thrived.

Diversity Within a Core Foundation

What is amazing to me is that even if you have 100 students practicing the same stroke patterns (what we call the Advanced Foundation in the TennisOne-X program), no two players will end up looking exactly alike! Yet, if all of them establish this concept of a repeatable, reliable swing path, all will have skilled strokes they can command and deliver with expected stroke outcomes. This is why the pros can look different from each other yet still possess the foundation of skilled strokes within this diversity.

This answers my original question of why so many hackers look different, and so many skilled players look different. The problem is that weekend hackers can’t do much beyond hacking the ball over the net with unsophisticated form and usually ineffective results.

Although few of us will ever hit the ball like Roger, Rafa, or Noles, skilled play is not reserved for the pros only. We can see skilled play at the club and the public courts; we see it among some juniors and even among some seniors who learned the game correctly. The skilled players are the ones that most of the hackers stop and admire from a distance, understandably, and they are certainly not a dime a dozen! Because so few recognize what I’ve pointed out here in this article, they go on hacking away, thinking that perhaps, over time, they might somehow acquire skilled strokes through simple perseverance.

This won’t happen, no more than the piano player plucking notes with his or her index fingers will ever be able to play Flight of the Bumble Bee or any other song beyond Chop Sticks!

What Can You Do?

So, how can the average recreational, club, or developing junior or adult create this repeatable, reliable swing path within any given stroke?

First, remember less is usually more.

Typically, when I watch recreational players play, they possess extraneous movements that not only fail to contribute to the goal of a repeatable stroke, these movements usually hinder the player from making successful shots in competitive play.

For example, players often swing with their whole body, sweeping the back leg around on groundstrokes and volleys, bend and extend elbows and wrists during the contact phase of the stroke, and often decelerate the stroke in order to control length and direction.

Hit and Hold

This simple phrase has helped hundreds of players learn to swing within themselves. The idea is to swing and be able to hold your finish for a moment before moving to recover. This practice allows the player to swing under a balanced body position, usually diminishing the prospect of over rotation and over-hitting.

Hit and Hold is sort of like a “governor” on a car, it helps the player to hit within their current abilities, maintain a better acceleration pattern through contact, and define their ability to aim. (Holding establishes not only a clear “end” to the stroke, but it allows the player to learn from the shot and aim better for subsequent shots. When a player does not define this “end” of the stroke, the rhythm and timing is never established because each shot bleeds into the next.)

Simplify your stroke motion, improve your footwork to each shot, and finally, maintain a balanced position especially at the end of the shot. Pretend you are holding a stack of books on your head as you swing… with the idea of keeping your head quiet and your body position upright. Most players end up reaching for shots when they fail to move well or simply want to save a couple steps by using the arm to catch up to the ball. If you maintain the feeling of keeping that stack of imaginary books on the top of your head, you will move better, swing balanced, and finish each shot in control. Try it! It may just help.

Drills

The easiest way to incorporate a repeatable, reliable swing pattern is to work on duplicating the same swing over and over. The “Hit and Hold” concept employed in each practice swing—whether it be shadow swinging, hitting a drop-fed ball, hitting a dead ball feed, or in a live ball rally—will greatly improve your ability to create this type of swing pattern. Because you are beginning from a ready position, when you hold your finish, you have an identifiable finished point before returning to your ready position. Having this finish point, you now have a clear beginning, middle and end of each stroke, making it much easier for your body to recognize these repeatable positions.

Another drill is to use a “Segmented Swing Tool,” a pattern of shortening your backswing and follow-through in specific intervals. Break the back swing into 5 short segments; a “1” backswing would be barely back from the contact point, a “5” would be a full backswing. Likewise, the follow-through would be broken down into a “1 being held just past contact and a “5” being a full follow-through. Practice working specific segment patterns such as a 3-3, (a “3” backswing and a “3” follow-through), or a 2-4 swing pattern. By identifying these numeric values for backswings and follow-throughs, you can better control these portions of the stroke and work on repeating them then moving on to different size segments.

A great drill is to work on a sharp angle topspin stroke, starting from near one net post and hitting topspin strokes on a sharp angle crosscourt towards the opposite ally. This pattern of hitting emphasizes topspin and repeatable control rather than hitting from the baseline. This shorter, sharp angle drill diminishes the perception of power and emphasizes the topspin and repeatable pattern you are working towards.

Conclusion

Certainly, there are many parts to a skilled tennis player’s game. However, if there was one defining tenant that can identify better players—regardless of stroke technique—it would be this idea of creating a truly repeatable and reliable swing path. When players understand this concept, they have a more definitive goal in which to work on, while working on developing all the other components of tennis strokes and shots.

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Coaching Mastery

David W. Smith's COACHING MASTERY has been labeled as the most complete tennis instructional book for coaches, tennis parents, and teaching pros that has ever been produced.

At nearly 400 pages, (and nearly 350 photographs), the book shows anyone who has wanted to play skilled tennis or coach and teach skilled tennis proven formulas, providing a dynamic "blueprint" on how to create successful individuals and championship teams.

This award-winning book culminates David Smith's (and his father the late Bruce Smith's) incredible career as a coach, teaching pro, director, and club owner. With over 75 drills (including 50 from the award-winning Master Pro Ken DeHart!) the book is a must for any tennis enthusiast!

Your comments are welcome. Let us know what you think about this article by emailing us here at TennisONE.

David W. Smith is the Director of Tennis for the St. George Tennis Academy in St. George Utah. He has been a featured writer in USPTA's magazine ADDvantage in addition to having over 50 published articles in various publications.

David has taught over 3000 players including many top national and world ranked players. He can be reached at acrpres1@email.msn.com.