Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

WHEN YOUR PARTNER GOES INTO HIDING... If your friends go into hiding each time you look for a doubles partner, it's probably because your serve sucks. There's nothing more frustrating in doubles than having a partner who constantly double-faults.  Or that feeling of wanting to run for cover to protect yourself every time your partner serves one of their weak serves. Nobody wants to play with a partner who has a weak serve. But it doesn't have to be like that because improving your serve can happen quickly just by improving your wrist. Your wrist plays two very important roles when you Serve. It not only helps make the ball go faster, it also works like a "target finder", helping direct the ball to your target.  If you can keep the wrist loose while serving, it will take all the pressure off your shoulder joint, and prevent injuries in the long-term.  So these are the advantages of using your wrist to serve, but how do we make the wrist supple and relaxed when we

Eighty percent of all the mistakes you will make in tennis will be either in the net, or out over the baseline (the other 20% of the mistakes will come from hitting too far right and too far left). We can address these two most common mistakes directly, because contact is responsible for both of them. If you hit the ball too short, your racquet face was too closed on contact with the ball.  If you hit the ball too high and out over the baseline your racquet face was too open at the moment of contact. WHY PEOPLE GET CONFUSED W hen trying to master feel for net clearance don't ask topspin to give you feel for height accuracy, that's the job of contact, not spin! For height accuracy you need to send your awareness to your racquet face, and particularly the degree that your racquet face is open or closed. An open racquet face increases the height of the ball and a closed racket face decreases the height of the ball. This should be your sole method of achieving net

Often, all a player needs to do to improve their groundstrokes is to better understand the various components of the stroke and understand the particular function of each part. THERE ARE 3 PARTS TO A SWING   There are 3 parts to a swing. The 3 parts are (1) The Back-swing (2) The Contact, and (3) The Follow Through. Here is a breakdown of each of these 3 parts of the swing. THE BACKSWING:  The purpose of your backswing is to supply power to your Contact. The bigger the backswing the more power you can generate. A return of serve, for example, doesn't require much back-swing because the power you need mostly comes from your opponent. Strokes where you commonly want to generate most of the power yourself are general groundstrokes, and it's common to see players taking big backswings on high balls and mid-court "put-away" shots because they want to generate extra power. The amount of backswing you take determines how much available energy (power) you can ta

When you hit a ball with late or early contact, that can be a positive thing or a negative thing. You either did it on purpose or by mistake,  Let's look at late and early contact in the positive sense first. To master the tennis rally you need to be able to direct the ball both down the line and cross court at will. This is where the ability to hit late and early on purpose is crucial. INTENTIONAL LATE AND EARLY CONTACT: If you contact the ball early with in the contact zone the ball will go cross court.   If you contact the ball late within the contact zone the ball will travel down the line or inside out ( depending on how late you hit the ball) This is the positive aspect of late and early contact. UNINTENTIONAL LATE AND EARLY CONTACT: However, most players think of late and early contact in the negative sense. This is when they can get fixated with only one contact point and start to struggle with timing the ball in the one spot within their c

F FUN WITH THE LANGUAGE The huge billboard on the expressway to Bangkok’s old Don Muang airport always made me chuckle.  I could picture the Thai workers diligently putting it up in the hot sun, but not really knowing too much about its message.  The billboard graphic was of a muscular guy standing proudly in his underwear, six pack tensed and with the caption below reading “ MEN   SUNDERWEAR”.   For several years I entered my apartment block where a sign on the front door asked those who entered to be “QUITE PLEASE”.  This was a sign brought from a business supply store and I can only imagine that several thousand of these erroneous signs were sold around Thailand.   I often wonder why many of these businesses didn’t have the English checked before putting signs up in public, like the restaurant near my home with the street sign out front saying “BOND STEET STAEK HOUSE” and the donation box for stray street dogs announcing “MEN’S BEST FRIENDS NEED HELPS”.  Another do

In 2005 Martina Hingis decided to make a come-back to professional tennis.  Martina had walked away from tennis in 2002 after a career that saw her rise to number 1 in the rankings and stayed there for a total of 206 weeks. She captured 15 Grand Slam titles which included 5 singles, 9 women’s doubles, and 1 mixed doubles title. Martina Hingis burst on the tennis scene in 1993  she became the youngest  player to win a  Grand Slam  ( The French Junior Singles) at only 13 years old Martina’s first match back was going to be the Pattaya Women’s Open, held annually in the seaside resort town of Pattaya, Thailand.  The tournament is owned and run by an old friend of mine Geoffrey Rowe.  Geoffrey has been running women’s events in Thailand for many years and Thai tennis owes him a huge debt of thanks.  It was his wild card into the Pattaya Women’s Open that gave Tamarine Tanasugarn her big opportunity to break into the WTA Tour.  Ironically “Tami” under-performed in Pattaya for ma

It's a thrill for me to coach veteran players. Veteran players are all so open  and receptive to the lesson. Perfect students! Because tennis singles is such a physical game, doubles is the most popular form of tennis for veteran players.  Here are 7 doubles tips for veteran players that will help boost your game immediately. 1.    Serve Wide When you start the point serving wide you are positioning your opponent off-court from the first ball.  The Returner now has 3 options, a more difficult cross-court return, a risky attempt at a down-the-line passing shot or a lob.  All 3 of these options put you the server at an advantage! 2.    Keep the Ball Low This will help in two important ways… it limits your opponents' ability to attack the ball and will also provide you with many more opportunities to attack the resulting high balls (high volleys & overheads) 3.    Get Fitter One of the biggest factors in Veterans Tennis is the physical limitations