Six players, one pro, one court, four to six hours. What to do?

[Taxvictim]

A friend of mine has a private tennis court out in the country (paved with Rebound Ace), and I want to hire a pro to come out for day of lessons and training for our families. It's four adults (2.0-3.5) a 3.0 teen and a 2.5 child. My idea is three hours in the morning, a break for lunch (and maybe a swim), then three more hours in the afternoon.

So, if you only have one court, one pro, and six players, can you fill that time with useful training without getting completely exhausted by the second hour? Can anyone suggest fun drills or exercises or contests that won't exhaust us, but will give us a full day of fun and some real improvement? This will be like a vacation for us, so having some fun on the court is a high priority.

Obviously, I expect a lot of rotation so everyone gets a chance to rest (including the pro). How would the teaching professionals on this board handle a day like that? I want to get some good ideas of my own before I call the pro. I've never been to a tennis camp or all-day tennis clinic, so I don't know what usually happens.

[Mahboob Khan]

There are several ideas:

-- you can spread the players to six hours and assign them timing accordingly. May be two players to 2 hours; this way you can train all the six players that you mentioned.

-- If you want to train all the six players at the same time then there are several basket and playing drills. I will mention a couple of playing drills:

Drill 1: Liveball Ground Strokes: Divide the doubles court in 2 halfs and place AB on the baseline of one half court, CD on the baseline of the 2nd half court, E waiting behind AB, and F waiting behind CD. AB, and CD, start a point in their respective half courts; any player committing error goes back and the waiting player comes in. You will have lots of fun rotating in and out and playing points in a liveball situation.

Drill 2: Serve and playout points: Same as above. But this time you place the players cross court AB deuce court, CD ad court, you serve cross court, return cross court, and playout the point cross-court including the alley. The waiting player replaces the player committing an error. This is a great cross court drill, great in learning those deep and sharp cross-court angles.

[Taxvictim]

Great ideas, thanks. That idea about rotating in players can be used for lots of things, so we'll definitely use it.

[Tennismastery]

There are a number of drills that you can do as a group and then, after an hour, break into different ability groups where each group works on specific needs.

There are what I call, "Toss and Block" drills, these are partner drills that don't require a net and where one player tosses, the other player blocks or hits.

You can work on volleys, half volleys, and short stroke groundstroke topspin and slice shots. (I've done these drills with over 75 players on one court with great success and enjoyment and learning by all!)

The tosser stands about 10 feet away (this can vary based on the shot being worked), tosses underhand to the player with the racquet, who is working on hitting specific shots. The tosser, after tossing the ball, holds his hand up for the player to aim the specific shot at. I've done this drill with top nationally ranked players as well as raw beginning kids. It has value to each. At high levels, the tosser can move the aiming hand around so the hitter has to quickly identify the aiming point while keeping an eye on the ball and hitting the right stroke pattern.

You can work segmented swing patterns, half volleys, quickness drills, mixing up shots, etc. and have each player hit over 500 balls in less than 30 minutes.

These and other drills and coaching tips will be included in depth in my new book, COACHING MASTERY, due out at the end of this year.

Best wishes and good luck!

[Taxvictim]

Thanks for those ideas. I already have your book TENNIS MASTERY, and will be taking that with us for the weekend, too. Guess I should finish reading it before then, because I do remember seeing some drills in the back half.

BTW, did you know your last book has a lot of typos? I'm a pretty decent proofreader, so let me know if you want me to review the new book before it goes to final print.

EDITED TO ADD: BTW, Dave, as a member of the Wilson Premier Advisory Staff, you guys must be LOVING the way so many recent finalists are swinging the big W in the championship matches, singles and doubles. Fed v. Joke? Big W either way.

[Tennismastery]

Thanks for those ideas. I already have your book TENNIS MASTERY, and will be taking that with us for the weekend, too. Guess I should finish reading it before then, because I do remember seeing some drills in the back half.

BTW, did you know your last book has a lot of typos? I'm a pretty decent proofreader, so let me know if you want me to review the new book before it goes to final print.

EDITED TO ADD: BTW, Dave, as a member of the Wilson Premier Advisory Staff, you guys must be LOVING the way so many recent finalists are swinging the big W in the championship matches, singles and doubles. Fed v. Joke? Big W either way.

Yes, I'm actually embarrased by the typos that emerged after editing. It is entirely my fault as the book was first written in MS Word and first edited...then it had to be transferred to PDF files for the printer...and I should have had someone else proof it the third time as I simply missed a bunch of them that were made during the file transfer. (It is really hard to proof your own work a third time, as I discovered!)

I am pleased with the response the book has generated these past two years and I'm actually getting ready for the second printing of the book...which will have, hopefully, all the typos corrected...which have been a thorn in my side since the book has been so well received.

Thanks for your comments and I certainly just might take you up on your offer! Thank you for such a nice gesture!

Hope the book will be of help to you with your tennis...and, look for my second book to be of even more help in the areas you were looking for help in. (Namely, drills, progressions, and other areas that I've developed and learned in my 30+ years teaching!

And, yes, Wilson is enjoying some great exposure in a lot of top pros finishing strong in these big tournaments using Wilson racquets!

Even as I am a strong Wilson promoter, I believe there are a lot of good racquets out there. I do think Wilson has the most solid line of racquets that provide more diversity for the different players out there and certainly we are seeing a lot of the top players out there using them.

Best wishes!

[Taxvictim]

Don't feel too bad about the typos. Modern editors are relying on spell-checkers too much, so there are a lot of typos making it into bestselling books from the biggest publishing houses. Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six" had more than half-a-dozen typos. How does that happen in a book where the publisher knows they will sell a million copies? (Each typo would have fooled a spell checker, though.)

Even John McEnroe's book ("You Cannot Be Serious", which I'm reading now) has a huge grammatical error in the first chapter that John or his editors should have caught.

It's hard to proof your own work because your brain already knows what the sentence is supposed to say, so your brain reads it the way you intended to write it, thus missing the mistake. Fresh eyes are always better.

As for the content of TENNIS MASTERY helping my game, yes, it is. After watching video of myself back in March, I realized I was in much deeper trouble than I thought. With the help of an instructor and your book, she got me doing the easy version of the advanced serving foundation, and now I'm trying to improve it just as you say, by adding knee bend and trying to lean sideways into the court, etc. It's working. I've also decided to switch from my over-sized racket to a smaller head, mostly because the OS head lets me get away with a lot of bad habits (like holding the racquet like a ping pong paddle when chasing down short shots). With the smaller head, I have to focus on a proper swing (backswing and follow through) for all shots. Before, there were many times I could just pop (or push) the ball back over the net with my giant sweet spot. In fact, the biggest surprise from watching the video was that I had almost NO backswing.