Archive for the ‘Tactics’ Category

When I’m at the club I see people pounding the ball on almost every shot. There is a lot to be said for hitting the ball easy. Not only does it save your energy, but an easy shot usually causes your opponent to burn lots of extra energy.

How does this happen?

Let’s take the drop shot. . . . When you hit the ball really easy, your opponent has to put out maximum energy to get to the ball. If he/she doesn’t, then you probably shouldn’t have hit the drop shot.

An easy sharp angle passing shot . . . Let’s say your opponent made a great approach shot that got you scrambling and the opponent is poised at the net to kill whatever you can throw at him. What would happen if you did a little flick dipping easy ball that just cleared the net cross court? (Federer does this all the time) Your opponent that was so comfortably waiting to kill your next shot now has to scramble toward the sidelines and get to a dipping ball…..maximum energy spent while doing it.

Opponent is deep in court and so are you. . . . If you know your opponent is not comfortable at the net, hit an easy short ball designed to get them charging forward. If they do get the ball back without overhitting, you now have them at the net where they aren’t comfortable.

Even an easy serve  . . . . can totally throw of an opponent’s timing. This is called a “changeup” in baseball. You see this on the tennis channel all the time when the server puts in a slow first serve and the returner hits it into the side stands because they were so early on the return.

So, don’t be afraid to hit easy and get a load of easy points.

Hi Folks it’s Tom Antion here with another trick to keep our extra large bodies cool. It was 99 degrees here in Virginia Beach over the weekend with my car reading 105 when I got in to it. Just too hot for me to get in a good practice session.

I called my local club and I guess everyone else was at the beach because they had plenty of courts open mid day. I planned to simply take my ball machine and practice but Carolyn the lady that works there is always putting people together to hit so I left my ball machine in the car and hit with a nice guy named Narain.

This guy weighs less than half my weight and is probably 15 years younger than me. He’s a good hitter too, so I knew I’d be doing some serious running as we practiced groundstroke points for nearly two hours.

Here’s the trick.

Scope out carefully your local indoor courts. What you want to know is the best places where the usually lame A/C. units blow cold air on the indoor courts during the summer.  I picked the side of the court that had the best A/C and found out the exact places on the court where the bulk of the cold air hit.

When picking up a ball or waiting for Narain to do so, (without making it too obvious), I would go to the spot on the back court where the cold air was hitting and breath very deeply. Using this technique I made it easily through a two hour pretty much continuous groundstroke practice session.

Do whatever it takes to give the best performance you can muster.

Here’s a quote from an article in http://www.TennisOne.com

Vera Zvonareva Through To First Wimbledon Quarterfinal

By Adrianna Outlaw

(June 28, 2010)  Vera Zvonareva brought towel vision to Court 12 today.

Sitting on her court-side seat with a towel draped over her head during

changeovers, Zvonareva tried to block out everything except her relationship with the ball.

======

I actually cover this technique in my DVD set. In most recreational matches people want to BS during the changover. This practice, although polite, won’t help you win many matches. You should be focusing on as Brad Gilbert says, “Who is doing what to who?”

Isolating yourself with the towel takes guts in a recreational match with your buddies, but when you start whomping them consistently they’ll be doing the same thing before too long.

Yes, I know we all like crushing someone with a heavy topspin stroke, but slicing can be one of the best weapons in your arsenal both against fat people and young people.

Using slice means the ball bounces/skids low. Fat people can’t bend down low to get it so they drop their racket head and usually muff the shot. If they do get the ball back, they have to hit up on it which makes an easy shot for you.

Young people are used to seeing their friends hit them heavy, high bouncing topspin shots. They can regularly be seen actually jumping up to hit the ball with their full western grips. A full western grip is a lousy grip to use against a low bouncing slice. You will frustrate the heck out of young people when you slice them to death.

So, get out there and slice like crazy!

I was watching the Tennis Channel last night where David Ferrer was putting a whomping on Andy Murray in the Rome Clay court tournament going on now.

David was the proverbial “Wall”. Nothing got by him. He just kept sending balls back to Murray. By the end of the straight set match Murray looked like a rag doll and Murray is no slouch when it comes to conditioning.

I don’t expect the fatties on this blog to be able to last in the long rallies those two went at last night, but the point I want to make is that David just kept hitting the ball back…..nothing spectacular . . . . just one more ball for Murray to chase down and hit back.

Rallies for you that are only 5 balls long done consistently will most likely have many of your opponents “rag dolling” it in just a couple games.

OK. You know you need more time between points than your in shape opponent. You’re playing outdoors.

Choose the middle courts whenever possible. This automatically builds in lots of extra time as you retrieve balls that roll to the side of the court because there is no fence to stop them.

This works even better when no one else is playing on courts next to you because the ball could roll a couple courts down and no rule anywhere says you have to run to retrieve it.

An added benefit that admittedly is a little “gamesmenship” is that your in shape opponent is likely to get a little irritated with these “built in” delays. Irritated tennis players make mistakes. This is good for you.

Also, when they have to chase the ball on their side of the court, they most likely will run to retrieve it so that they make a point to you to hurry up. This just makes them breathe heavier and opponents breathing heavy make mistakes. This is good for you too.

I lost a one set match the other day to a guy who was about 5 years younger than me and weighed about 100 pounds less. He was clearly a better player and I wish I would have had another set against him, but we ran out of time.

My mistake was not knowing that we had a finite time on the court because the guy was physically deteriorating right before my eyes and I don’t think he would have made it through another set. AND if I had gotten him to three sets, I really think he would have just given up.

None of this was the point of this post. During the first set I was getting a really good percentage of first serves in and winning most of those points. When I did have to hit a second serve I gave him a very high bouncing top spin serve and he muffed the first couple of those. By that time we were 3/3.

Then, my first serve percentage went down and he caught on to my second serve and started clocking it for winners. Before I had the chance to hit him some low bouncing second serves, the set was over.

My other mistake here was that I did not test him on low bouncing second serves early in the match. I’m not sure if he would have handled them just as easily, but now I’ll never know because I didn’t test it early in the match.

As I look back, it was pretty easy for him to adapt to my relatively slow, high bouncing second serve. He just backed up, and easily took it in his wheelhouse. Had I been able to keep him guessing whether I was going to hit a low bouncing slice second serve or a high bouncing top spin serve he would not have been able to stay back to hit those easy second serve winners for fear of getting second serve aced with the low bouncing serves.

The point is, even if things seem to be going good (as in his muffed second serve returns), you should still test other shots not only to see how your opponent handles them, but to keep them guessing about what kind of shot you are going to hit.

I got an email today from John at http://www.tenniszoo.com . He wanted to remind me that as a large person you can’t expect to make it through an entire match if you get into long rallys.

You have to be ever vigilant for opportunities to end points quickly.

One of the obvious ways to end points quickly is to improve your serve. This doesn’t mean you have to hit aces all the time. It means that if you can get a high percentage of well placed first serves in play, you will elicit weak responses from your opponent which allows you to take control of the point quickly.

Another aspect of your game to improve is your return of serve. Get better at that and you put tremendous pressure on your opponent which means free points from double faults and loopy easy to attack second serves.

Of course, hitting out and out winners will end the point as long as you don’t try for them at stupid times and make lots of errors.

Drop shots can be devastating point enders which make your opponent run.

Thanks John for reminding me about this important aspect of the game . . . especially for large people.

I’m reading “Open” the autobiography of Andre Agassi. Andre is talking about his dad building a ball machine and aiming it at Andre’s feet forcing him to crowd the ball and hit it on the rise.

Andre Agassi's dad taught him to hit on the rise

If you can improve this skill, you will take tons of time away from your fat opponents causing them to huff and puff even more and mishit all over the place.

Get yourself a ball machine or rent one and force yourself closer and closer to the point where the ball hits the court. Do forehands, backhands and half volleys till you start feeling more comfortable. I can guarantee you that your fat buddies are not doing this kind of practice. When you play them, they will wonder why they never have any time at all to get set up for your shots and you most likely will win handily.

Yesterday I told you how I learned about hitting deep from Vic Braden. Today I want to expand on another reason it is good to hit deep.

Let’s back up a bit. When a tennis ball hits a tennis court it slows way down from the speed it was traveling while in the air. If you regularly hit really hard, to be consistent, you most likely have to hit shorter in the court to make sure you don’t hit the ball long. Even if you hit hard, the ball isn’t going nearly as fast by the time it gets to your opponent because it has hit the court and slowed down.

Let’s say you look at this a little differently. Let’s say you didn’t hit the ball nearly as hard but you aimed higher over the net to make sure you got great depth into the court while the ball was in the air. Guess what. The ball was probably going just as fast when it got to your opponent as it was when you hit hard and short.

What are the advantages of this tactic? A.) By not swinging as hard you will have better control, B.) A ball that lands deep in the court forces your opponent to either take the ball on the rise which is a much more difficult shot, or back up way into the back court to hit the ball in their normal strikezone which opens up the entire court for you.

Try hitting controlled deep shots and see what a difficult time it will create for your opponent.