Lack of Loyalty and Cherry Picking Coaches

Tennis is an endless search for the Fountain of Youth.  Ponce de Leon learned the hard way, venturing to Florida to only fail in finding the ever so famous Fountain of Youth.  As like Ponce de Leon, venturing to Florida to the world reknowned tennis coaches such as Nick Bollitieri or Rick Macci will not boost your tennis game overnight.  If it were that easy, I would recommend locking in a time slot with Nick himself at $800 a pop.  

The reality is tennis is a very tough game.  There are no magic pills, secret elixirs, or specific technical tips that will instantly make something click in your head.  One has never heard of a story who from a one hour lesson went on from nobody to somebody in a matter of weeks.  Tennis takes time, patience, and an endless amount of trial and error.  The best players are able to grapple with this fact sooner than later, accept their flaws and work within the boundaries placed before them.  Sure, you will always attempt to improve different aspects of your game, but when it comes time for the match of your life with money and pride on the line- you must do only things that will increase your chances of winning.  

Many parents and players have been guilty of cherry picking.  If you ever have gone cherry picking on a farm, your #1 goal is to find the plumpest, juiciest, reddest, most vibrant cherries on the stem.  By golly, when you see it, snag it.  Well in terms of searching for coaches, parents and players do the exact same thing.  They see someone is having a little success with one coach or they think they are in a rut, the easy solution is to jump ship and cherry pick a juicier coach.  I'm not suggesting one coach isn't better than another, but when one starts to seek a multitude of coaches on a frequent basis to solve their issues, one is not going to have the success he or she wants.  

The first problem is very few parents and players are willing to accept blame and responsibility.  With very little sense of loyalty in the world today, most are looking for the easy way out.  There will always be someone around the corner or at a tournament chirping the "grass in greener on the otherside" tidbit.  Those people are usually frauds, beware of them.  The good players who have some class, character, and substance don't look for the easy way out.  They refuse to cherry pick and try to work out the issue themselves.  

If you talk to good to great players who grew up before the 1990s, most played tennis because they had the "bug" for it.  They played because their parents played.  They played because their friends played.  In today's society, parents are driving the kids to lessons.  If the kid has poor results, lets find a new coach who can motivate the kid better.  The parents are always ready to catch the kids when they fall.  The coping skills needed to become a good player are not being developed as the parents are doing them a great disservice in finding them solutions to their problems.  

The ideal way to start and develop as a player is to limit your private lessons to one per week.  One per week is plenty.  Why?  The player needs time to digest the information.  The player needs time to work out the kinks whether be a new technique, strategy, or shot.  The player needs to spend hours on his own honing his skills through a series of trial and errors experiments, learning how to make adjustments on the fly without being told how to adjust.  The player might make a discovery on his own and stumble upon something amazing for his/her game.  Lastly, the player needs to test his lesson under matchplay pressure.  Play a couple sets before the next lesson and see what needs work.  A week later, the player now has some good information to relay back to the coach.  Do not overcoach the kid.  Let the player learn to adjust and adapt with no one else looking over their shoulder.  The best players have ultimately learned to become their own coach.  

Steal this Drill: Closing Volleys

In hitting volleys, simplicity is often the best strategy. Players who spend a lot of time at the baseline believe that volleys are just as complex as hitting ground strokes and, as a result, over-think the shot to their detriment.

Let's simplify things a little bit. The purpose of the volley is to take time away from the opponent. However, instead of doing so through-pace generation, the player should attempt to move forward as as quickly as possible and close out the angle.

I will let your private coach focus on the particular technique (be it grip, footwork, balance, etc.). My tips are simply to keep three components in front of you at all time: 1) the ball; 2) the racket and 3) the opponent. Often times, player move forward and "forget" to take their racket with them (thereby inadvertently creating a back-swing which then results in an over-hit). On the other hand, some player don't mover forward at all and feel that they have to swing at the ball in order to generate any kind of pop. It's important to keep in mind that, on the volleys, the moving forward (aggressive lunge forward) IS the swing. By stepping forward, the player uses his body-weight to make solid contact with a fast-moving object (ball) Also, a contact out in front means that the opposing player has a less time to cover the shot. Again, take time away from your opponent through forward movement.

To practice this, start out by hitting volley-volley against the coach. However, in this drill the coach is at the service line and the player is about 3 feet inside the baseline. The player should advance forward taking aggressive but MEASURED steps. Once the player reaches his service line, the coach should "pop up" one of her volleys and the player should practice moving forward quickly and pouncing on the ball (but with a controlled "stick") before it drops below the level of the net. This is a reaction drill in that the player's eyes have to pick up the "pop up" very quickly in order for the brain to trigger a signal to the legs to move forward.

To add some fun into the practice, the coach can sometimes feed a lob right after the closing volley and the player has to run back and either hit a "regular" shot back in play or practice a between the legs or some other fun shot. Sometimes, the player can start the drill with a swinging volley (or half-volley) and the proceed to moving forward with regular volleys. The key is for the player to become comfortable everywhere INSIDE the court and also to "stick" the volleys by using his legs and not so much the racket. 

Steal this Drill: Inside Out Volley

As a follow up to the inside-out drills from the baseline, the player should also consider hitting inside-out volleys". This is mainly a feeding drill where the player hits a forehand volley from the backhand side and a backhand volley from the forehand side. Although this is something that the player would seldom do in an actual match, the benefits are in that the player learns to (i) move quickly side to side (relatively less time to move and adjust than from the baseline), (ii) get low and in balance and (iii) more importantly, to keep the leading shoulder in front on the volleys (i.e., left shoulder for the forehand and right shoulder for the backhand).

Often times, the players do not learn to work correctly with their shoulders (maybe it's a "relic" from open-stanced groundies) on the volleys relying too much on swings and swats as opposed to "punching" the ball. For purposes of this drill, the player should stand about 10-12 feet from the net and have a cone placed at their feet. The player should have to recover around the cone after each shot. Furthermore, the feeds should force the player to (a) circle slightly backwards and (b) move slightly forward/diagonally back through the ball. After a couple of sets of this drill, the coach and player should engage in a quick-hands volley drill (i.e., volley-volley) in order to see how the player reacts when the ball is hit right at her (i.e., hopefully with the correct shoulder in front). For example, is the player moving quickly out of the way and punching through the volley or does the player wait for the ball on her heels (with shoulders parallel to the net)? If necessary, have the player alternate between these inside-out drills and live-ball quick-hand hitting. Even if the ball is struck at her, the player should manage to (1) get out of the way with small, measured steps, (2) turn her shoulders and (3) step forward and punch through the ball. 

Steal this Drill: The "Cross" Drill

The "cross" drill is a variation of the inside-out, side-to-side and advance retreat. In it's purest form, it combines the drills together in that the player is made to move side-to-side, inside-out, and advance retreat. The concept is that that player is being pushed into uncomfortable positions - similar to something that the opponent may throw her way - and have to generate pace and precision accordingly.

In other words, this drill borrows from the muscle-confusion theory of physical workouts (such as P-90X or Insanity) by making the player execute shots when she is not in the optimum location. For example, the player is made to hit a "regular" forehand, followed by an inside-out forehand, followed by a short forehand which is, in turn, followed by a retreating forehand. From then, the player is jerked around from these four points of an imaginary cross while always moving either after the ball or away from the ball. In this drill, the player should imagine that s/he has a Death Star "force-field" around her and that the ball never enters the force-field (thereby jamming the player). The key is for the player to "tell the ball what to do"; not the other way around. For maximum benefit, alternate a the cross drill with a live ball rallying drill where the coach pushes the player gently (at first) around the court making him move backwards, sideways and forwards, and seeing how the player adjusts to the ball and recovers after hitting. The emphasis should be on proper footwork, balance, contact point, intensity as well as hips-shoulder-arm preparation and positioning. 

Advance and Retreat

Closely related to the inside-out concept, is the advance retreat movement. This is where the player must back up for a deep (maybe high ball) and then move in for a short ball (preferably slightly insideout-ish thereby forcing the player to "circle" slightly around the ball and in). The basic premise is that the player must learn to "move in position". That is, for a forehand, the player should learn to move backwards (and forwards) by keeping the left foot and shoulder in front. This is not a shuffle-back drill, stop, turn, rotate and swing. The coach should emphasize movement while the player is in the position to strike. Similarly, when moving forward, the player should not sprint in, stop, turn, take the racket back and swing. All these components take too much time to execute (time that the player does not have). Instead, the player should master moving in position so that, no matter where in the court she finds herself, she is ready to strike. Lastly, this is a great drill for teaching player not to get stuck playing "from the vineyard" (i.e. 12 ft behind the baseline). Sometimes, it's OK for the player to back up when being pushed by the opponent. However, the player should not remain behind the court. Instead, the player should always look to recover. 

This drill also works for developing the player's approach shots by teaching proper movement and timing. To take the drill to the next level, the player can - instead of an approach shot - hit a swinging volley. This can be practiced either through feeding or with a live-ball rally. To spice things up, add a regular volley after the swinging volley or approach shot. This 3-shot drill starts by having the player RETREAT for a high, heavy topspin, ADVANCE for the shorter ball, and step in for the volley (repeat 3-4 time and seek to cycle through the movement faster and faster). It's important for a player to be fast, but it's more important to be quick. This, after all, is not a 100yard sprint; it's tennis. Therefore, the player should visualize a fencer advancing in for the kill and then retreating when the opponent advances (the epee, shoulder and leading foot is always in front).