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Showing posts with the label Tennis Coaching

2 SIMPLE SERVE BOOSTERS

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If you can’t hold serve you can’t win the match. That’s how important the serve is in tennis. Players with average groundstrokes but great serves have done well in tennis, particularly on the faster surfaces. The serve is not a complicated stroke, but it can be prone to break down under pressure in matches. It’s important therefore to understand the key elements of the serve so that under pressure you can focus on 1 or 2 things that will make it work for you. Here are the 2 key elements I recommend you focus on when under pressure in matches. Each of the two elements, if done correctly, will cover any problems you may be having with your serve. THE FRONT FOOT The front foot is the 'Bridge' for your serve. It’s the transfer point for your forward movement during the serve. Soon after this stage, the players left foot will begin to dominate  the service action and supply timing and power to the wrist  If this 'Bridge' is weak, or not operating well

LEARN FROM ROD LAVER

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My favorite player growing up was Rod Laver.  What I admired most about the "Rockhampton Rocket" was that he was just a very normal guy, humble, down-to-earth, and hard-working. He gave normal people like me the idea that it was possible to achieve great things if you could apply yourself to something 100%, like Laver did. During his career, Laver was known for his ability to play his best tennis when it mattered most. He hardly ever lost a five-set match. There was a saying amongst the other players during that era "Laver never loses in the 5th set". He was that good at closing out tough matches! Here are 3 ways you can learn from Rod "Rocket" Laver: #1 Stay focused in the present   Allowing your mind to get too far ahead in a match, or beating yourself before you get on the court can be disastrous . Avoid the internal mind games that are flowing around in your head by sticking to your match tactics and not allowing yoursel

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY!

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A coach can only do so much with a player who is experiencing destructive mental issues related to tennis competition. Players who find competition mentally too much to handle and suffer from choking, low levels of self-confidence or an inability to close out important matches are generally the victims of their environment. They reflect the environment they live in daily when they compete in matches. Prolonged and repeated negative mental issues in matches when competing as a junior player also continue to be a problem for the player much later in life, even though the environment that caused the mental issues in the first place might have changed for the better. Considering a majority of competitive junior players suffer from an almost crippling mental war inside their heads, it would be fair to say that this is why  a majority of players never fully reach their true potential. It, therefore, becomes clear that the environment we grow up in when we start our tennis is

THE CRAZY GUY FROM KOREA

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The Korean guy in the front row was losing control.  It was 1991 and Beijing was the venue for the Asian Games.  We were playing for at least a Mixed Doubles bronze medal and Thailand hadn’t won an Asian Games medal in tennis for almost 40 years! Personally, this was the biggest match of my tenure as Thai National Tennis Coach.   The Thai team of Wittaya Samret and Orawan Thampensri were in a match with a typically tough Korean team.  You can always count on Koreans to make it a battle.  They are always in great shape physically, mentally very strong, and always 100% committed.   I had encountered the Korean attitude in many events prior to this. Players from Korea could sometimes overstep the boundary of what was considered good sportsmanship.  This didn’t make them any friends on the tennis circuit and I had even witnessed Korean coaches physically abusing players several times. I’m not sure whether or not the guy in the front row was a coach attached

IF YOUR SERVE SUCKS, LET’S FIX IT NOW

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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

UNDERSTANDING & MASTERING CONTACT: "Control of Heights"

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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

UNDERSTANDING & MASTERING CONTACT; The Three Parts of a Swing

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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