Podcast #157: 3 Simple Singles Necessities (Part 1)
Welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game this podcast is for you. Whether it's technique, strategy, equipment or the mental game tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now here's Ian. Ian: Hi and welcome tot he Essential Tennis Podcast Your place for free experts tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Today's episode of the Essential Tennis Podcast is brought you by www.tennisexpress.com. Please check them out this week by going to www.essentialtennis.com/express.
Well thank you very much for joining me on today's episode of the podcast. I really appreciate having you as a listener. And before we get to today's topics, which is going to be all about Singles Strategy, I'd like to spend just a minute or two telling you all about the Free Doubles Tactics Course that is going to be available just for this week and that's an important part of it. You can only view this free course through Sunday, what is it the 20th I believe? Yep Sunday the 20th at midnight Eastern Time this course will be taken down and you need to go check it out. It's really full of value. I've worked really hard on it and it's going to be split into three different sections. Section #1 which is currently up and people are viewing and commenting on it right now as I speak is all about the transition game. Learning how to attack the net with more consistency and effectiveness. The second video is going to be about how to cover the lob more quickly and easily, which is big for recreational doubles players. And the last section is about how to play doubles more like the pros even if you're currently just a singles player. So those of you who play singles mostly or maybe even exclusively and want to get into doubles, or more into doubles, need to watch that third part of free instructional course. – And the kind of overall focus the title of the course is Three Causes of Weak Passive Doubles Dominated Forever. And so the whole focus here is getting you away from poor tactics, from weak passive doubles tactics, which is just not how high level players play.
So this course is going to teach you how to get away from that. And some of the skills that I teach in these free videos are how to use the split step correctly, how to practice deep follies and half follies, how to judge how close to the net you should get, how to read your opponents and anticipate their lobs. I'm also going to talk about the doubles directionals lob coverage footwork and a lot more. So there's just a ton of free information here. And this is all leading up to the release of Doubles Domination 2.0, which is my big comprehensive doubles tactics and strategy course. And signing up for this free course means you're going to get some information about Doubles Domination 2.0 but you absolutely don't have to buy it, you're under no obligation to buy anything. Really if you're not interested in Doubles Domination 2.0 at all that's perfectly fine but go watch the free course, seriously. I don't want you coming to me next week and saying “Ian, I ran out of time. I wasn't in front of my computer, etc, etc., you've got to go check it out this week before Sunday the 20th. And you can do that by simply going to www.doublesdomination.com. Go there right now sign up for the free course and I promise that you won't be disappointed with it.- All right with that let's go ahead and get to today's topics. Sit back relax and get ready for some great tennis instruction.
All right. Let's go ahead and get started with our first question having to do with singles tactics. And both of our questions today are going to come to us from Megan in New Zealand. Thank you for your writing and for being a listener Megan. First of all she writes in and says “Hi Ian. I'm just getting into the summer season and I'm starting to play a lot more matches. I really struggle in the tactics area. I feel like you never know where to hit the ball. I do figure out my opponents weaknesses but especially when I'm returning serve I feel like my only targets are deep cross [inaudible] or deep down the line. When I'm in a rally I either think I have too many places to hit the ball or not enough. Do I need to research different three or four shot sequences and develop them and make them target my opponents weaknesses or just make those target hitting decisions while I'm rallying. Alright, Meagan good question. It seems like you have a lot of questions rolling around in your head and you've got undefined and several possible solutions to what your question question is, at least in your own mind. And what I want to start off talking about is simply that when it comes to tennis tactics both singles and doubles simple really is best. You don't want to overload your head by thinking about too much at once and having, you know, for each individual shot and each situation you don't want to have four or five possible shot selections. You know granted on one hand it's great to be able to hit the ball in different places but in general in singles if you can take any given forehand and reliably hit it either cross court or down the line, any given backhand hit it either cross court or down the line, then really that's all you really need to be a pretty good tennis player. And in your question you made it sound like that was not enough. You made it sound like that was just too simple and “Well I can't possibly be a good player”, you said here in your question, “I feel like my only targets are deep cross court or deep down the line”, like that's a bad thing. That's great, that's good, you don't want to get much more complicated than that. And when it comes down to it you don't need anything more complicated than that against the vast majority of your opponents. Honestly, and I just played for the first time in quite awhile, played a set of singles this past weekend and trust me I was not thinking anymore complicated than that. In fact my opponent was really pressuring me from the baseline and so I was playing a net attack kind of tactic or strategy. I wasn't even thinking cross court or down the line on my return of serve. I was chipping and charging which I know some of you probably just fell out of your seat hearing that somebody in this day and age would actually play a chip and charge tactic off the return of serve, but that's exactly what I was doing. And I wasn't even thinking in terms of cross court or down the line. I was just simply trying to get my return deep. This particular opponent I had he was very strong on both forehand and backhand side and so it didn't really matter from that perspective which side I hit to. And his serve was good enough, you know, it wasn't a weak serve. So I was just happy to get the ball back deep and then come right in behind to pressure him. I wasn't even thinking anything more complicated than that. And most of the time that should be the case for all of you listening as well.
Now I want point out a great video that [inaudible] at Fuzzy Balls put out just a couple of days ago. The title of that video is Variety Is Overrated. And this is a free video that they put on their site. I'll link directly to it and the show notes for this show. This is Episode 157. If you go to www.essentialtennis.com/podcast go to show 157 I'll put a link there that'll link directly to that video. I'd really suggest you go check it out. And Will really lays it out well in talking about how recreational players very often over-complicate things and it really should be very simple. Now in answering your question specifically Megan really you should only be thinking about three singles necessities. We're going to break it down into three single simple necessities. When it comes to tactics and playing your singles play. And to some of you out there some of you listening our going to be slapping your hands and saying “Wow, this is so obvious Ian. I can't believe I'm wasting my time listening to this. I know so much more than this and I'm more advanced of a player than this. For some of you that may actually be true, and if you're a four, five player this is going to be very, very basic. And so to be honest you might want to skip to the next topic today. If you're below a four or five player, even if you're attempted to think this is way below my level and this is way too simple, please listen anyway and you're going to benefit from hearing me lay this out, even though you probably heard this before. So three necessities. Number 1 when in doubt go deep cross courts. It's high percentage but still effective. And it's high percentage because we're hitting the ball over the longest part of the court from corner to corner diagonally and the net is lowest in the center of the court and we're hitting over that part of the net so it's very high percentage. Most of your ground strokes should go in that direction during a singles point. There are situations where going down the line is warranted and it's good and it's maybe even the way you should go and I'm talking about in a baseline to baseline rally. But the majority of the time just keeping it safely cross court will be more than good enough against most of your opponents Megan. Keep it simple.
Don't change direction a lot meaning If the ball is coming at an angle to you and your opponent's struck it cross court, don't change the direction by going down the line off of that shot. When they hit to cross courts to you most of the time you should hit cross court back.
When they hit down the line to you most of the time you should hit cross court back. And again I'm referring to a baseline to baseline rally. Make your opponent be the person on the court who has to try the more difficult down the line shot and make them do that throughout the course of the match and they'll make more errors than you if you do your job by keeping the ball in play. So that's Number 1.
