Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

I've always taught strategy to players early in their development. For me, strategy is an integral part of a competitive player's toolkit along with stroke technique, fitness, and movement.   When teaching strategy to beginners, you'll need to tailor your instructions to suit the age and level of the player(s), but the teaching of strategy should be done early and not left to later.  I have recently been involved with college tennis in the US and have seen firsthand the lack of any prior introduction players receive on the topic of strategy.   Most of the players I have watched competing at college level have had difficulty implementing even elementary strategy in their matches.  The problem starts when, early in a players career, coaches believe that if a player has perfected their stroke technique, that will naturally transfer into savvy match-play. That certainly is not the case.  The fact is that college coaches are left to deal with this neglected part of a players de

It's not uncommon for players to play extremely well throughout a match but for various reasons fail to win the important points.  The important points in a match are the break points, game points, and set points. If, for whatever reason you are not converting these opportunities it's very tough to win matches. Players often change their mindset for the important points and suddenly do things out of character. While they might have been playing calm, intelligent tennis for most of a set, when they get to the "business end" of the set they suddenly decide to play risky shots that they weren't attempting before.  To see a player suddenly change to risky low percentage shots at the most important times in the match is a coach's worst nightmare Establish Patterns Early: Start analyzing your opponent during the warm-up, and continue observing her throughout the match, just in case adjustments to your strategy are needed. Look for obvious strengths and weaknesses ba