Podcast #157: 3 Simple Singles Necessities (Part 2)
Number 2 on a comfortable neutral rally ball, meaning an an easy ground stroke in a baseline to baseline exchange, especially if it's in the middle of the court. In that situation I would encourage towards your opponents weaker side, whether it forehand or backhand. And that should be something you start picking up in the warm up is which side their forehand or backhand is the stronger side and which one is the weaker side.
That's based on the results coming off the racket and it's based on their technique of their stroke. You should be paying attention to those things so that you can pick out which side that they prefer. And then when you have the opportunity to equally hit to either side you should be hitting to their weaker side over and over and over again. I don't care if they know what the tactic is keep doing it until they can come up with something that still challenges you back even though it's their weaker side. And this means that you can go down the line to their weakness but be careful I wouldn't go down the line a ton unless over and over you get a comfortable shop, you're good at hitting in that direction and it does go towards their weaker side. If those three things line up then by all means continue to hit there over and over.
Again. So that's Number 2 when you get a comfortable shot, especially in the middle of the court hit to their weaker side. And then thirdly, when you're coming to the net keep the ball in front of you. And that means down the line on most approach shots. So if it's on the right side of the courts and short and you're hitting a four hand approach down the line should be where you go most of the time, and I mean really most of the time. And I did a video awhile back about why this is the case. I'm not going to go over all the details of this right now but I will link to that video again in the show notes so go to www.essentialtennis.com/podcast Episode 157 and I'll leave a link, not only only to Will's video but to my own video in which I describe and show in a diagram, a video diagram why going down the line is the percentage place to go when you're approaching the net. So in general keep those approach shots in front of you. So that's it. I mean that should be the extent of your singles tactics the majority of the time. Keep most shots cross courts and a baseline to baseline exchange. When you get a comfortable new rally ball go to their weaker side, especially if it's a shot that they hit to you down the middle and you can go in either direction. And when you approach keep the ball in front of you, which means usually down the line. So practice those three situations until you're blue in the face. Practice them in feeding drills cooperative hitting drills back and forth, competitive drills where you're playing off points putting yourself in these situations so that when it comes time to play a match these shot selections and these choices and these targets are more or less automatic and you don't even really have to think about it and there's no thought required. And ultimately that should be your goal in your tennis is recognizing your situation, understanding where you are, where your opponent is, understanding where the safest play is and the smartest play is, and then being able to do that over and over again.
Now in closing up this segment I want to say that to those of you who wanted to skip this section and are hating on me right now because the information that I just gave is so fundamental and so simple, yes there are more layers to this. If my goal in this segment of the show was to lay out a comprehensive overview of singles tactics then I could talk for hours and hours and hours about unlimited different combinations of different situations and scenarios and different types of opponents and shot selections, etc. It's never my goal here on the podcast to lay out comprehensive answers. What I'm always trying to do is highlight the most important fundamental things to understand. And in reading Megan's question I can tell that those are the things that she really needs to hear is keep it simple, keep it to those three basic fundamental truths when it comes to being successful as a singles player. And the vast majority of the time that's all you're going to need to know to win is those three things. Myself as a 5.0 player I did not use anything more complicated than what I just laid out. I mean there's some little things here and there details that I didn't talk about that I used in my singles set this past weekend, but for the most part it's those rules that I'm following, and so that's what I suggest. So Megan thank you very much for your question I really appreciate it and we'll be right back with your second topic. Thanks so much for writing this one in.
All right. Moving on before we get to our second question I'd like to remind you all about the official sponsor of the Essential Tennis Podcast and that is Tennis Express. And www.tennisexpress.com is an online tennis retailer that can service your every possible equipment need. They've got great shipping, great service and I highly recommend them. Please check them out this week by going to www.essentialtennis.com/express. When you go to that link you'll automatically be pushed over to www.tennisexpress.com and it will track any purchases that you might possibly make. And from there a small percentage will come back to the Essential Tennis Podcast to help support the show, which I really appreciate.
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All right let's go ahead and get to our second question again from Megan in New Zealand. Another singles strategy topic. She wrote and said “I am coming back from a two year shoulder injury”, sorry about that Megan, “And I'm obviously quite an inexperienced player because of that. I've trained all through the winter here in New Zealand and now the summer season has arrived which means competition time. Most of the players I am up against have played solidly for quite a few years which I have not. My question is how do you beat players that have a lot more experience than you? What I mean is, how do you beat players that don't make many mistakes when you do and seem to cope well under any amount of pressure that you put them under?” All right, well that's tough Megan, that's really difficult. And for those of you listening, everybody listening who has done any amount of competition at all knows exactly what Megan is talking about, myself included. It doesn't even matter what your level is when you go out and compete eventually it's just a matter of time you will play somebody who's more experienced than you, who's got bigger shots, more weapons moves better, whatever. We can make a huge list of things that they could possibly do better.
And that's just how it is sometimes that's part of competition is you play people who are better than you. And rather than get frustrated it's really important to appreciate those opportunities to play somebody who's a level or two levels above where you are so that you can see what you have to do to get to that next level. I've got three options that you can use the next time you're in that situation Megan. Number 1, and this goes back to our first topic in today's show, play the percentages and just try to beat them straight up. Meaning nothing fancy, nothing special just solid fundamental strategy choices.
Don't go crazy and aim for the line on every single shot and try to hit the ball harder than you ever have before. Just see if you can hang with them long enough that by the end of the match you're right there with them and maybe you can come out ahead. More than likely you'll have to pick up the pace of your shots, at least a little bit, so that you can off off the attacks of your opponent who's more experienced and probably have bigger shots than you are. But strategically you're still trying to beat them with a smart game plan, with a solid fundamental game plan, with nothing fancy and nothing crazy that you're trying. So this is Option Number 1 and admittedly you're going to have to have a really good day to win with this tactic basically just trying to beat them straight up. Just beat them with good solid tactics and not go for anything outlandish and anything low percentage.
Again as I mentioned a second ago you'll probably have to up the pace of your shots a little bit but we're not trying to crush every ball which would probably result in a lot of unforced errors. So that's Option Number 1 basically following the formula that I laid out in my first answer to your first question. Now if you start off a match that way against a better opponent than you are if Option 1 isn't working and they're just kind of hitting you off the court and pushing you around on the courts then you may have to playing more low percentage. And that means taking every opportunity you get to drive the ball aggressively at the open you probably overall going to make unforced errors as you typically do but it's something you kind of have to accept once you get to a certain point. When you try tactic Number 1 and you're just getting beat and you're playing the high percentage shots but your opponent is just putting you away then at a certain point you have to transition into something more aggressive to try to keep them at bay, to try to hold them off tactically.
