Spend your time on court creating good habits. Repetition and practice create permanent habits, however your habits may not always be perfect. The drills suggested below are a guide for sound and systematic practice of your ground strokes using a hitting partner or ball machine to feed you balls.
Any of your ground stokes can be practised systematically by following the suggested directions in the order of consistency, control, spin and speed.
The fewer errors you make, the more likely you are to win. Practising within these levels systematically will help reduce your errors, and improve your tennis, as long as you treat your errors as feed back rather than as an annoyance
From the baseline corner of the court have your machine, or practice partner feed as though a cross court rally is in progress. Try to keep the speed of the feeding at your normal level of play.
1.Consistency – 20 strokes in a row, over the net, relatively deep and in court.
2.Control – set 2m by 2m target with some cones deep in the opposite corner from your ball machine/ball feeder, then attempt to hit the target with 20 consecutive shots.
3.Spin – Pick a particular stroke and hit it every ball as you count to 20 for both consistency and control by hitting to or near a target at the opposite corner to the feed.
4.Power – Ramp it up a little, put some sting in your shots, but look to temper your power by hitting your target for 20 shots in a row.
Your strengths and weaknesses will be exposed by this method giving you the feed back you need to start working on perfecting your strokes. Monitor errors, initially with reference to consistency, then control, then spin and finally power.
Spin,control and consistency are the keys to better tennis and must be mastered before attempting to play a power game. Follow the order and you will develop a consistent, controlled power game.
You can view the results of this kind of practice being showcased on tennis video’s of any top 10 ATP or WTA player.
Want to find out more about Tennis Drills, then visit Jeremy’s site on how to choose the best Tennis Lessons for your needs.