Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

You often hear the phrase "take the ball on the rise" in coaching. It's used to encourage the player to step in and take the ball with some weight transfer, and "taking it on the rise' seems  to help the player time the ball better. But what happens when the player can't achieve "stepping in"?  I coach advanced players and relative beginners. If I told an advanced player to "step in" and take every ball "on the rise", they would see me as crazy. At an advanced level, stepping in and taking the ball on the rise every time is impossible. The speed and depth of the ball mean that often, the ball dictates what you do, not you, so stepping in and taking the ball on the rise is simply impossible.  Likewise, telling a beginner to take every ball on the rise will only lead to frustration. They can only do it on some balls. The problem with trying to teach the "ideal" technique is that  there is no  such thing as the "ideal

As tennis teachers, we've become obsessed with teaching how the strokes should look, the outward appearance of the stroke, rather than the Fundamentals. It's as if we're more concerned with creating picture-perfect strokes than a fundamentally sound stroke. We're trying to craft a visual masterpiece, but often at the expense of the core skills; the Fundamentals. Fundamentals are our game's building blocks,  while  the way a stroke looks is the Form. Whenever any new player reaches the top of the tennis rankings, Coaches look closely at that player's style and try to copy what the player is doing technically to have made them so successful. They're unable to diagnose the new player's strokes more deeply, so they are left with looking at the "cosmetics" of the player. Anyone learning tennis through the  form  method never learns to adapt to different types of balls or correctly analyse what they must do on each stroke, nor what is causing their e

If you're like most players , you've probably been tweaking your ground strokes by focusing on the top half of your body. The grip, the back-swing, the follow-through, and even the angle of your shoulders are probably just a few of the things you've tried to adjust in an effort to improve your groundstroke game. However, greater gains can be made on your ground-strokes by focusing on the lower half of your body. There's a technique you can use whenever you hit your ground strokes that, if done correctly, will give you perfect timing, balance, increased power and improve your consistency.  Here's what to implement during your next practice session. THE LINE Next time you're on the court, imagine a Line running from the top of your head and continuing down through your body to the ground. If you're standing straight upright, that imaginary Line will be positioned equally between both feet, but as you sway your torso to the left or the right, forward or backwar