The next drill in this sequence is a competitive exercise, that is designed to focus players on minimizing their unforced errors. No doubt, this is a critical part of improving one's tennis game. Take a look at this footage for yourself.
The situation is in competitive tennis is we don't want to have more errors than winners. Once players, you know that, when they get to world class levels, right, the best players have a ratio that is greater winners than unforced errors. So what we do with these top level activities is we say for example, okay, Halley(ph), you are allowed 5 errors in this set, and Mark(ph) is a little less experienced, so he is allowed 7 and you play a set.
If you make a unforced error, what you will do is squeeze your ball back into the fence to keep track. So you just reach back, squeeze it in, and you get track of your allowable errors. Alright, here we go.
Now, what you do is you let the players themselves decide when is unforced or not. It has to be a self call. Now, was that a forced or an unforced error? Calls in an unforced error, and the ball gets squeezed into the fence. Here we go.
Now, in another variation of this, we would say that every winner allows these players to take a ball out of the fence, and that's called erasing allowable errors. So let's say if Halley(ph) had 7 balls in the fence, and she hits a winner, she would pull one out.
Now comes an exercise that addresses a critical issue in competitive tennis once again, handling the pressure of maintaining early momentum or fighting back when you find yourself trailing behind your opponent.
Alright, let's move to our next drill now, it's called early momentum, simple. And it's another example of where guides consist of rules instead of like earlier for example, in other parts of this series when we talked about having movement guides, during the workshop, this one, the rules are guiding behavior. So what we will do is we will say the server is down Love-30 in every game. And this accomplishes two things, number one, puts pressure on the server to hang top despite being down and losing early momentum in their serving game, and number two, it encourages the receiver to stay focused and hold on to a commanding lead. Here we go, Halley(ph) is serving a Love-30.
Wow, and the receiver keep the pressure on. What's the score now? Love-40, here we go. Hang in there Halley(ph), and the pressure got to her. So you can see a lot of players despite knowing the rules and knowing what we're doing, I mean that's a short example, but, despite all that, they really have trouble when they are down early. They could be down Love-2 or Love-3 in a set or Love-30 in a game, and these things psychologically a lot of players need help dealing with.
Next comes a drill that encourages players to focus early and win the first two points of each and every game they play whenever possible. The first person to win two points at the beginning of a game wins that game automatically. So you would have your players play sets, and Halley(ph) if you win the first two points, you win that game. If you win it Mark(ph), you win that game, and it's very simple. I have a feeling that Halley(ph) is going to win the first two in this particular game. Here we go. 15-Love, Halley(ph) one more, you'll win the game.
Now, the pressure is really on Mark(ph) because if he loses this point, he loses the entire game. In that example, because Halley(ph) won the first two points, she won the game.
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