Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

If you feel like your tennis is not going anywhere, but you practice super hard every day, here are my suggestions to get you out of your tennis slump.  PUT THESE THINGS IN YOUR PRACTICE IMMEDIATELY! Mental pressure... Whatever you do during practice put pressure on yourself to do it as best you can.  Take the warm-up as an example. It's easy to arrive at practice and begin your warm-up slightly unfocused. You've warmed up a thousand times before and you probably think you don't need to focus much anyway, you think the warm-up can be performed in automatic mode.  But you're wrong. By focusing more during the warm-up you are awakening your brain and preparing it to work at a higher level when you do start hitting balls. It's also important to focus any time you're in the gym, because you'll get more benefits from a focused gym session than an unfocused one. Another time to increase the mental pressure on yourself is when you're drilling or playing points....

What would you do next? You've rallied strongly and managed to put your opponent under pressure. They've dropped the ball short in the court; it's time to finish the point with an aggressive winner. Can you finish points like this confidently? Do you finish with a winner, or do you get the jitters and embarrass yourself in front of everyone? If it's the latter, you're in the majority.  The inability to finish points is a problem for tennis players worldwide. How well do you react when finishing the point? I've coached players of all levels, every level of player suffers from nerves; it's just that the best players somehow have ways to overcome them.  THE MIND SCALE: 0 - 100 I need you to use your imagination for me.  Try to remember what goes on inside your head when you want to attack that half-court ball and hit a winner. Imagine that your thoughts are like a straight line.  Picture a mental scale in your mind from 0-100. 0 is when you decide to attack th...

  As I broke the news to the best player in the country that I was not selecting him to play in the Davis Cup tie the following week I expected a huge backlash. One of the toughest tasks you perform as a tennis coach is selecting players for teams. Sometimes you have the luxury of seeing the player compete under pressure in matches before you decide, as I did when selecting national teams, but often you don't.  In the case of College coaches in the US, many times you have very little to go on and must make recruitment decisions that at Division 1 schools have repercussions lasting for the next 4 years.  Once money has been committed to a new player, that money can't be used again on a better player later. Picking players for teams is one of the most difficult tasks you will do as a coach  (Thai Davis Cup Team) Selection mistakes made by college coaches have long-term repercussions. Making informed selection choices comes down to three important factors, the cand...