Tag Archives: tennis strategies

Tough Love Insights to Successful Competitive Tennis- Part 6

Posted on March 30, 2020 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

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Advance competitive tennis demands more than simply hitting another basket of balls. Parents and players need to recognize and understand that:

  • To compete at the highest levels, mental, and emotional tennis training must be part of the athlete’s developmental plan.
  • The real issues of competitive failures.
  • Inefficient training routines need to be redirected.

The following posts list some common training missteps that competitive tennis players and parents need to acknowledge and refine to maximize performance.

 

Tough Love Insights to Successful Competitive Tennis

Insight Six: High-performance tennis is a game of keep away and not catch. Rallying back to someone in practice day-in and day-out isn’t the best use of your time.

Possible Solution: Trade in the hours of hitting with rehearsing patterns. Include offense, neutral, and defensive training scenarios.

The Mental Component: Strategies and Tactics- Part 1

Posted on December 27, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, The Second Edition of The Tennis Parent's Bible

The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible NOW available through most online retailers!  Click Here to Order

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THE MENTAL COMPONENTS: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

 

High-performance athletics demands strong mental skills.  Top competitors regularly train their customized mental game components which are their personal best patterns, strategies, and tactics. Well-rehearsed patterns make for a mentally fit competitor.

STRATEGY MADE EASY

Strategy can be so easy yet so complicated. Strategy is changing, adapting and yet ritualistic.  It is science and art. It is psychological yet physiological. It can be beautiful and oh so ugly. Strategy applied correctly allows your child to meet the opponent under advantageous conditions. Applying strategy keeps your child focused and in the correct optimal performance state of mind.

Let’s look at strategy in a simple but effective format. Below are three categories of on-court strategy that elite players must understand and master: generic, stylistic and customized.

Generic Strategy

Generic strategy is simply applying the player’s core strengths with pre-planned patterns and strategies. The goal is to expose a player’s natural strengths and force their opponent to respond to those strengths. Generic strategy consist of your child’s optimal serving patterns, return patterns, rally patterns, short ball options, and net rushing patterns. These tactics are identified and practiced prior to match play and will be used January through December, from the first round through the finals, in Miami or Moscow, on clay or on hard courts. The Generic strategy is your child’s every day “nuts and bolts” game plan. Learning to apply one’s genetic tactical assault, will lead to your athlete hitting the same old “boring” winners match after match.

If your athlete’s generic (day-in-day-out) strategy is working, there is no need for change. In fact, juniors who change a winning strategy usually suffer the consequences. If it is not working, then it’s simply time to shift into the second phase of strategy called stylistic strategy.

 

 

Does Tennis Charting and Analytics Matter? -Part 1

Posted on September 13, 2019 by in Maximizing Tennis Potential, Preparing for Pressure

The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s NEW Amazon #1 New Tennis Book Release, Preparing for Pressure.
Click Here to Order

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 Does Tennis charting and analytics matter?

“Solid analytics spot winning trends and reoccurring nightmares.”

 

Statistics in tennis is currently in vogue, but it isn’t necessarily new. While teaching at The Vic Braden Tennis College/Coto Research Center back in the 1980s, I was involved in multiple statistical chart studies. Computennis was a tennis-based analytics group that also did wonderful work in this field 40 years ago. These research projects looked deeply into “quantifying data” in various levels of play. We uncovered basic stats that still hold true today. One is the average length of points in singles (3.8 hits) and doubles (2.9 hits). Another vintage stat identifies the most missed shot in the game: Return of serve (which is also still the least practiced shot in the game). A third old school stat that still holds true 40 years later is that approximately 70% of errors are located in the net.

Although analytics don’t tell the whole picture, they have greatly affected my students’ lesson plans since the 1980s.  I’ve designed specific match charts to assist in preparing serious athletes for competition. These simple to use analytics provide more in-depth data than the typical phone apps and guarantee to improve your athlete’s win-loss record. Samples Include:

FIRST STRIKE WINNING PERCENTAGE:

The First Strike is the very first shot your athlete hits- serve or return of serve. Identifying the winning percentage of the location of your player’s serve and return of serve (First Strike) is shot selection awareness which benefits strategical play.

BETWEEN POINT RITUALS CHART:

This chart identifies the player’s ability to stay focused and execute their critical between point rituals. Players who do not keep their brain focused on the task at hand have to defeat two opponents-the opposition and their own wandering mind.

 

CAUSE OF ERROR CHART:

Tennis is a game of errors. The first most critical step in error reduction is to spot the actual cause of the error. This chart will require you to identify the cause of the error. This information leads to the customization of future lessons. Note: the four leading causes of errors are poor technique, poor movement, reckless shot selection, and negative emotions/focus.