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

I attended a tennis event during the weekend with a team of college players. On the first day of matches, we had some disastrous starts. In several matches, we went down by 5 games before we began playing at our normal level, but often it was too late to save the game. Here are 4 ways you can avoid slow starts in your matches: THE WARM-UP IS 90% MENTAL The most significant difference I see between the top professionals and college players is players at the top only have one mental "gear". They're always focused. Whereas college-level players think it's ok to warm up in a different mental "gear" than the one they use in the match. Your body and your mind like doing things habitually, meaning anything you repeat enough times will become the norm. If you ask more from yourself in practice and matches, your body and mind will adapt to that new normal.  This matters most during the morning warm-up before matches. If you're not focused or you’re clowning aroun

Is there a resurgence in the use of underspin in tennis today? Having witnessed years of topspin domination (and underspin neglect), are we finally seeing underspin getting the recognition it deserves? I think we are. For too many years, players have relied almost totally on topspin to attack and defend in points.    This new trend from the top male and female players in tennis may be signalling a new and exciting era for the once-maligned underspin. During this year's French Open, players were mixing in underspin groundstrokes during the rally to keep the ball low and using underpin to help defend the point whenever needed. Underspin is also a key element when playing the drop shot, which we see much more now in rallies, particularly by Novak Djokovic.   "...players today must understand how to technically incorporate under-spin into their game, and just as important when to execute under-spin during the point."    As tennis gets increasingly diverse in its skill com

If you're looking for added inspiration on your tennis journey you need to look no further than the Indian players that have gone before you and that have been successful. Each of the successful Indian players here have created tennis careers based on a few simple yet effective traits. Here are their keys to success: LEANDER PAES Although news of Leander's retirement near the end of the global COVID-19 epidemic was no surprise to anyone, it was perhaps disappointing to all of us that he was not able to go out on his own terms. His "One Last Roar", as he began to call his farewell year on the ATP Tour, promised to give us a final glimpse as to why he was such a special player. Ever since his early day's training in Madras at the Britannia  Amritraj Tennis Scheme, Leander stood out as different. He was brash, and he was confident. But more importantly he was already showing us what he intended to be in the future. He wanted to be a professional tennis player, and a