Wednesday, March 14, 2012

At gunpoint

If Omar from 'The Wire' was holding a gun to my head and demanding I tell him the best drill for improving your tennis, before I peed myself and asked him if he wanted any Honey Nut Cheerios, I'd have to go with the following:
Go out on the court and rhythm hit with one tennis ball.
That's it.
Play from the baseline from the net; have one volleying and one hitting groundies but you can only use one ball. If you shank it over the fence into the parking lot, go get the ball. You lose the ball in the bushes, go over the fence and find it.
You'll pretty soon figure out what speed you can comfortably keep the ball in play at as well as move your opponent around the court at. You'll learn the importance of what I call, 'your low game'. Tennis is a game of mistakes. The less you make, the more successful you are. The faster you can play and not miss while making your opponent move, the better player you are. If you have a great low game like Rafa, even when you're not playing your best, you can still go into survival mode and have confidence your opponent will have to work like crazy to beat you.
If you have 19 balls to practise with and miss one, it's not such a big deal. But in a match, if you miss you lose the point. If you do this drill I guarantee it'll drive you nuts for the first 10 or so minutes. You'll play too fast and too low over the net and will be going and fetching the ball time and time again. But the more you do it, the better your concentration becomes and the better you'll understand the value of Bjorn Borg's timeless advice, "just hit the ball over the net one more time than the other guy".
As a tennis player, if you only did one drill for the rest of your life, I'd dedicate 30 minutes each week to this one.

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