Everybody always talks about how the serve and the return are the two most important shots in tennis. You occasionally see someone at the club practicing serves, but almost never do you see a club player practicing returns.When you play a lot of matches against good players, you begin to realize that a return that lands somewhere in the mid-court area is often just an invitation for a good player to crack a big forehand and take control of the point. A losing strategy for the returner.
Often, the response of the returner is to try and hit harder, but this is often counterproductive as it increases the errors and is much harder.
So, here's a strategy I recently used with great success.
I was playing a young guy with a big serve and a big forehand. Although I was returning all of his serves, he was able, with his quickness, to run around and hit dominating forehands on almost all my returns.
So, I tried something completely different.
I started semi-lobbing his returns deep crosscourt and watched with amazement as to how this changed the patterns. First of all, I had a lot of time to recover into good defensive position. This alone is very valuable.
But, I also noticed how many errors my opponent started to make. It's a much harder shot to hit a big forehand off a ball that is coming almost straight down like a semi-lob. The timing is different and the contact point is higher.
Of course, smart players might try and come in and take the ball out of the air but so many young players are poor volleyers and just don't want to do this.
Many years ago I played a Canadian legend. This man had been number one in Canada for many years in his prime and had played all the greats like Laver.
When I played him, he was in his early sixties, although he was the best-conditioned sixty year old I've ever seen. And, he beat me badly but not with power. He beat me with his head.
He took my big first serve to his backhand and took it early, hitting a floating return that landed inches from the baseline. I had never played anyone who played with this strategy and I found it very difficult to deal with. He took it so early that serve and volleying was difficult. And, if I let the ball land, it landed so deep and with such little pace that I couldn't do much with it.
So, if you're not beeaking serve, try floating semi-lob returns deep and see what happens.
Until next time,
Glenn Sheiner M.D. - author of Insider Tennis Strategies Tennis Return Tips guaranteed to make you a smarter tennis player and take your tennis to the next level. Also, check out the world's top tennis humor screensaver
Tennis Cartoon Screensaver. You can download a trial version for FREE.
Technorati Tags Tennis
