Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

During my school years in New Zealand, the school board in my city decided to create a scheme to raise money for a charity. I forget now what that charity was, but I'm certain they did very well from the scheme in the end. The idea was to have every school pupil in the city, boy, and girl, go door to door selling sacks of potatoes. Before you start wondering how the children managed to carry such a heavy load around the various neighborhoods in my city, the children didn't actually have to carry the sacks from door to door, each child had a sheet of paper to record the name of the customer, their phone number, and the number of sacks they wanted. It was a brilliant idea because New Zealanders love their potatoes and include potatoes in almost every meal! Being able to order a large amount and have the potatoes delivered to their house was very convenient. Looking back to that time, at ten years old, there were several key elements to the 'Potatoe Project' that hooked m

Before being escorted onto Wimbledon's famous Centre Court, Baron Gottfried von Cramm was told that he needed to take an urgent phone call. After the call, von Cramm again joined his opponent, Donald Budge of the US, and quietly informed him, "It was Hitler; he wanted to wish me well." Only moments after his phone call with Adolf Hitler,  Gottfried von Cramm (left)  and Donald Budge enter  the Centre Court at Wimbledon for  what was  to be "...the most beautiful match." Cramm started well in the match, leading Budge by 2 sets to love. But Budge managed to work his way back into the game by returning serve well to take the 3rd set and won a tight 4th set that could have gone to either man.  Now it was all tied up at 2 sets all, and they were into a deciding 5th set. The German shrugged off the loss of the previous 2 sets and again started to dominate in the 5th set, breaking Budge's serve and taking a 4-1 lead. Many watching thought the match was virtually ov

Strategy is the most neglected part of a player’s development, and yet with the correct strategy any opponent can be beaten   In my opinion, Strategy is the “next Frontier” of tennis. Most of the competitive players I see today are technically very good and are physically in great shape but few are playing their matches with any real understanding of Strategy.  Here are three super-effective ways for you to add some basic strategy to help boost your game almost immediately. 1. HIT CROSSCOURT There is a saying in boxing that “The Jab is everything, everything comes from the Jab”. Every fighter is trained to establish the Jab during the fight because once a fighter can dominate with their Jab, they dominate the fight.  Why? Because the boxing Jab establishes the distance between the two fighters allowing one fighter to dictate whether the fight is conducted at close quarters or further apart. The Jab is also the “stepping stone” for other punches. Fighters throw the Jab

We all desire Control, Understanding, and Predictability in our lives and feel uncomfortable with anything that is out of our control, not understood, or unpredictable. Unknowingly, this need for predictable outcomes may have led us to train for tennis incorrectly. Many training venues use repetition as their 'go-to' method of teaching players the game. Coaches prefer it, and players enjoy it. It makes them feel good!  The repetition method of training involves someone feeding hundreds of balls from a basket.  The balls being fed from the basket will have the same flight, bounce in the same position on the court, arrive at the same speed, will bounce up to the same height, and will each have the same identical spin.  Hitting hundreds of balls like this gives us the predictability that we enjoy. Also, because we eventually begin to hit the ball fairly well ( after hundreds of balls who wouldn't begin to start feeling better with their stroke?), we becom

Having a lot of tennis talent can sometimes be a problem for some players because at the beginning of your tennis career talent goes a long way. At lower levels, talent alone can win matches. It’s only when you get higher up the rankings and play the bigger events that your reliance on talent alone will really hurt you. I was at a group 1 ITF Junior event last week and the standard of tennis was very high. Certainly, much higher than the level just a few years ago. Techniques and physical conditioning were exceptional. However, there was one area that was almost invisible, strategic intelligence! Many of the young players on display last week were the best in the world. Many will be participating in the Grand Slam events this year. I can imagine that in their early years many of these top juniors dominated the junior events in their countries. And there lies the problem. Most of the players last week are so gifted, tactics were never needed. They won on talent alone!

I encounter many players who have all the strokes and can play really well in practice but during matches can’t re-produce the same standard of play. In matches their game is riddled with unforced errors. It’s always difficult to find the solution to help these players because the cause of the problem can be many things. Humans are complicated and no more so than the mental issues that plague a tennis player who has a chronic problem with unforced errors! I recently had success in helping with a young player who was prone to unexplained errors during her matches. I found the remedy to her unforced errors by first deciding that her problem was mental and not technical. Although most of her mistakes were caused by poor technique, I had seen enough of her using good technique that I decided that working more on her technique would not help her that much in the long term. This is an important decision for you to make because you will have to constantly hold yourself bac