11. First Strike Tennis
First Strike Tennis is a catchy way to describe today's style of competitive play. Aggressive, like a one, two punch in boxing. With this style of play, athletes simply look for the first opportunity possible to hit an aggressive and dominating shot to put an opponent on a defensive. Static show that top players hit. Many more winners per match in todays tennis, and in previous decades, and although their unforced errors percentage has also increased, everyone feels it's statistically a good tradeoff and worth the risk. To begin developing this first strike approach, players have to try hitting harder, then they feel they can control. This inevitably leads to multiple errors, and players need to be assured that this is to be accepted.
One way to accelerate what I like to call the progression of aggression, is to have players actually aim with the back fence to get a feel from maximum racquet acceleration. In this stage, encourage them to use their whole body in this way. From there legs all the way up through hip, torso, and shoulder rotation. In the high-tech language of todays tennis this is called maximizing both linear and angular momentum.
Then after they are able to consistently hit the back fence, have them aim for a target area six to ten feet behind the baseline. But make sure they have the same racquet speed as when they were hitting the back fence. And finally, set up a target area inside the baseline, but deep in the court, and have the players maintain the same racquet speed as when they were aiming for the back fence. The result is inevitably a lot more pace, than they are used to, and the ball start landing in with the players adding more and more top spin, were controlled along side their tremendous racquet acceleration.
To tactically practice this first strike approach, we now have four players alternating two hits each with the ballmachine. Set up target areas in the corners, and players score points by hitting two balls in a row in the designated areas. In this pattern they accept to force weak shots with a very aggressive ground stroke, and then hit winners on their very next opportunity. The ballmachine or feeder, it's moderate pace balls allowing players to aggressively take control of the point. And for the most advanced players, to ensure that they don't slow down by hitting too much top spin and arc, we have also set up an airzone. We simply tell our players that they must hit below the horizontal line, as well as deep. This automatically forces them to maintain or even pick up the pace. If a variable shot ballmachine is available, set the machine to feed the first ball early deep and the second ball short and weak to really stimulate the game situation.
Another important aspect of first strike tennis, is to work on the return of serve, thanks to the engineers, they made Alum-A-lift. We are now able to easily work on returning serve with the first strike attitude, just by setting up target areas and competition among a few players. Just set up challenging, but achievable target areas, and an award points for success. Especially with service returns, players often benefit from using primary air target windows, rather than merely secondary targets, all the way on the other side of the net. Anyway you look at it, return of serve is one of the most important shots in the game, and also one of the least practice.
Our final drill situation for first strike tennis is for a ballmachine or feeder, to stimulate the return of serve. The role of the server's partner at the net is to be in motion constantly, to make a first strike. And there are two choices there, to either coach or fake. They then deal with the random feeds of the machine, the coach or an extra player has the remote switch for the machine, and only one point at a time is played out. Players can rotate positions after a certain number of points.
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