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No, this person has it backwards. Permanent fixtures are out. If the ball hits the ceiling, a light, fan, benches, seating, backstop, side nets, fence, curtain, lines person, ball person - it's out and whoever hit the ball loses the point. There's a special rule for the net post - it's...

Wow. The kid is great. He makes very very few unforced errors, and he's a very smart player in terms of moving his opponent around. That backhand slice drop shot is a weapon. I'm impressed that such a young kid has developed the ability to come to the net so well. Someone's done a great...

For me the easiest way to do this is to watch the ball until I can clearly see it spinning. Most people suggest this as a way to increase focus on the ball, but more importantly (and to the point of this post) is that in order to see the ball spinning you watch the ball longer than normal and...

Thanks for the suggestions!

I play with my 14 year old daughters all the time, and I need some ideas for fun drills or games. They are getting tired of what we usually do (so am I), and since they are not both at the same level it's not much fun for either of them to play points against each other all the time. It would...

Also, no shoulder tilt at all - no shoulder over shoulder action. I'm not sure that's was responsible for her inconsistency during the match but I'd think any decent coach would fix that right away. I thought Chris Evert made the best point - she only has one serve - flat. She has no safe...

There are some days that are better off just forgotten - there's nothing to learn from them, and maybe this is one of those situation. I was reading recently what one of the WTA players was saying. She talked about learning to fail better, that tennis was a game of managing your failures...

I think this is sounds advice!

I should be clear I meant regroup during the match. I don't mind losing to someone that is better than me, as long as I'm playing at an acceptable level. It's when I'm making completely unreasonable mistakes, and not being able to stop it that bothers me.

I'll spare you the gory details, but what do you do when nothing you normally do works and you turn into an unforced error machine? How do you regroup?

You need to stop serving with your arm and start serving with your body. Watch the video with Rafa below, especially at 1:40 when he's throwing the ball (which he does ridiculously well for someone that probably never played a ball throwing sport) , and how much of the power comes from the...

As for the "waiting" issue, another way around this is to not toss the ball so high and then you don't have to wait - I don't think you are leaving the ground to early in your swing as much as the ball is too high in the air when you leave the ground. One of the reasons your body is in front of...

I have the same issue, and can share a few thoughts from my experience. First, I think you have to have a stable serve from a technique perspective. If you are still tinkering with the swing mechanics it will be hard to develop the feel for how much the ball is going to curve. Once you've...

Begin to slowly exhale as you start the stroke and continue through the stroke. Exhaling requires you to relax the muscles in your chest and use that as a cue to relax your shoulders, arms, ect. Exhaling relives tension, inhaling creates tension. This is good to do on all shots, but it's...

I started playing tennis 6 or 7 years ago in my mid 50s, and I've reached about the 4.5 level. So, yeah, I wish I had started as a kid. But, I'm just glad I started at all and love the game. No regrets.

Pushers are successful because they force players to play out of their comfort zone. Most players are use to playing behind the baseline. They know how to hit from there, and where to hit, but pushers typically don't let you play from behind the baseline. They force you to play inside the...

I don't know a lot about UTR, but the club I play at has recently converted from NTRP to UTR, and it seems way off to me. I play 4.0 and 4.5 leagues, and now that I've played enough matches I have a UTR - it's 2.14. All the guys I normally play have similar ratings, but when I signed up for...

It does introduce more variability into the draw, and maybe reflects the fact that tournament organizers don't have much confidence in the rating system. I'd prefer they did like most other sports do it.

For the life of me I have never understood the reason they seed ATP/WTA events the way they do. In particular, the seeds are randomized so the 1 may be matched against the 3 or 4 in the semifinals, against 5, 6, 7, or 8 in the quarters - and so on. Also, why do they only seed 32 players? That...

Everyone is talking about the volley, which is important, but the serve is way more important. If you can't make your opponent uncomfortable with your serve you won't be successful at serve and volley. You have to force your opponent to hit the return you want them to hit, and not what they...

You can play a little game where as soon as possible after the ball is hit you say to yourself 1, 2, or 3. 1 means the ball will land well short of service line on your side of the court. 2 means around the service line. 3 means a deep ball. See how close to impact you can make the...

I don't know? Good question. He's had some injury issues, and hasn't been the same player since. But, I do like his backhand a lot.

He doesn't anymore. He changed his swing a few years ago. He doesn't lag as much or take the racket behind his back like he used to. As for the most textbook backhand I'd vote for Djokovic. It's all around very solid and a good example to use for teaching.

I'm a big fan of Ian's, and frankly I'm more impressed with Ben's game than before all this started. BUT, I'm getting slightly irritated with Ian milking this like it's some sort of day time soap opera, reality TV, Texas chainsaw death match. As I understand it that matches have all been...

I agree, it's not that these correlated activities aren't helpful - but only to the extent they teach intermediate skills essential to serving (like pronating), but at some point if you want to learn to serve you have to serve. There's no substitute way to get there. For me the most helpful...

That's true. I was one of them. I could throw a ball just fine, but learning to serve as an adult was the hardest sporting technique I've ever had to learn.

Why would you hire a baseball coach to teach you tennis? Hire a tennis coach. Would you hire a tennis coach to teach you baseball? Throwing and serving are similar, but not the same. Throwing is much easier. Hire a tennis professional.

Learning to throw a baseball or football as a means to learning a tennis serve is a helpful but it's not going to give you a good tennis serve by itself. First, if you don't have good tennis serve mechanics you won't have good throwing mechanics either - you'll have to learn them. So, you're...

Opelka has a great slice from the add side (around 0:40)