How to become a great returner

Ever wonder how Andre Agassi and Novak Djokovic are routinely able to crush those 120 mph serves? Want to be able to add that to your game? Then this is the post for you.

Now, returning is something which I think often gets overlooked. And that’s a shame because returning serves, is a lot of fun. If you’re an aggressive returner, you can position yourself to take charge of the point right away by hitting a low, fast paced shot, deep cross-court. Keeping it over the middle of the net, is always a good idea because this is where the net’s height is lowest. Thus, you will be less likely to have a return clip the top of the tape. Whenever you’re unsure about where to return the ball, always go deep, cross court. It’s simply the smartest, high percentage return you can hit and (winning) tennis is about being able to successfully hit one more shot than your opponent. It doesn’t matter whether you hit a winner or they hit an error. Every point, that you ever win, will always have been because you were able to make one more ball than your opponent.

Short balls, are another way to establish control of a rally. Most times your opponent, won’t be expecting the ball to land short. So if you find yourself in a long rally and feel like it’s time to change up the pace, then give the short ball a try. It’s effective against players, who tend to stay back too far behind the baseline. And If they’re net skills aren’t sound, that’s all the more reason to bring them in.

The most important thing to remember when returning, is to look for your opponent’s weak points. Does your opponent like fast paced rallies? Do they have a one handed backhand or two handed? How do they handle slice? What about high balls to their backhand or forehand? All players, have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Find what works for you and then incorporate that into a strategy for dealing with them.

Tennis strategy

I’ve been thinking about doing a series of posts on game improvement strategy. The posts, will cover conditioning, technique, and ways that you can add consistency to your game, without spending the countless hours on court hitting balls. Basically, I want to condense some of my tennis knowledge into several posts, that will help my readers make improvements to their games. While still avoiding the roadblocks that really slow down your development as a player.

When I started with tennis, I didn’t really know what I was doing and I went through a series of coaches and instructors, before I was able to find what worked for me. I have had help from so many different people and I’ve adapted different things from all of them. Which are now a part of my game. But there was definitely a learning curve to getting good at the sport and a lot of that came from not knowing where to go, to get to the next level. I want to discuss how you can go from point A in your game to point B and not feel confused about what grip you need to use, or where your feet need to be positioned to drive a forehand ball down the line. Also, keep in mind that I’m open to suggestions. So, if there’s anything in particular, that you’d like me to write on, just drop me a comment and let me know what you want to see posted.