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My daughter just turned 13 and she is having some problem hitting balls long. I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that her body is growing and she is getting stronger and the kind of shots that used to stay in are going long because it has more momentum. What is the best way to...

I am at my wits end and have no idea what to do. I need some help. My swings during practices are great. I hit heavy, deep, consistent. My pro even told me that I am THIS close to 4.5 level. My swings during matches are horrific. I either overspin and hit wounded ducks that barely clear...

This is a new one for me. Last month, we had a match scheduled on the Saturday of the President's Day weekend (on Valentines Day!). Since this match was on the holiday weekend, I wanted to make sure that I had enough players on my team and my opponents to field a full match. I checked the...

My 12 year old daughter played her second tournament (she plays about 1 tourney per year) ever (12U Challenger) and ended up losing a tight match in the finals. I am very happy with the way she played. She played tough (won a point that lasted two full minutes!) and dictated most points (she...

I have been playing with Wilson Spin 105s for over a year now and I am ready to move on and would like some recommendations. I have a love/hate relationship with my current racquet. I LOVE the monster spin that it generates, but in the end it is hurting my game. At first, when my consistency...

My wife has Pure Drive Lite, but lately she has been playing with my old Pure Drive and she say she likes it better. How much (and where) weight would I have to add to Pure Drive Lite to make it equivalent to Pure Drive?

I was just looking up the opponents for our next match and found out that the entire team is comprised of self-rate players. I've seen teams with 6 or 8 self rates before, but never the entire team. Have you guys ever faced a team like this?

Got a survey request from USTA just now. Very interesting... Here is the description: Points Per Position (PPP) is a USTA League team match format whereby individual matches of a team match played would be awarded points based on position played. (No team point would be awarded in this...

The other thread got me started, I might as well get deeper into this... My singles game is in the toilet, and I have no idea how to get it better. I do play mostly doubles these days and I am playing pretty good doubles. I have no problem hanging with 4.0 players and confidence is sky...

I was at a junior tourney for my daughter's very first USTA sanctioned tourney, and I must say I was horrified with what I saw. There were these two girls who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 years old playing an under 12 challenger match. Their attitudes were bad enough with constant...

We love talking about sandbaggers around here. Check that, we obsess about sandbaggers. But how big of a problem is it really? Since tennisleaguestats.com has a nice set of data that I can use, I decided to see if I can deduce sandbaggers from this dataset. I chose data from 4 different...

I was just getting ready for my Doubles One league that is about to get started and trying to figure out who my competitors are and just came upon this and I thought this board would be interested. Here is the record of the self-rate player for the indoor season that just completed: 6-0...

I am having some major problems holding my serves in doubles lately and I can't figure out why. Last year, I was able to win about 2/3 of my serves, but this year, I am holding maybe 1/3. I haven't changed my strategy much (hit medium pace serves in and avoid double faults, hit mostly to...

I am really excited about this new racquet as my game is all about spin. I can't hit flat even when I want to. I am seriously thinking about getting this racquet (perhaps even before the club tourney on Thu!). However, I can't decide which model to get. I currently play 2012 PD, but until PD, I...

I have a 10 year old daughter that I have been teaching how to play since she was 6. During summer, she spends 90 min each week day at a clinic held at my club. It is a pretty popular clinic with about 50 kids aged from 10 to 16. I like the fact that she gets to play everyday and have fun with...

Played my USTA match last night. I was all relaxed and ready to go until... I found out one of my doubles opponent was in a wheelchair. I have never played a guy in a wheelchair before, never in 30 years. I never even knew USTA leagues accommodated wheelchair players. The only difference with...

There were some earlier threads about confusion among folks with numerous Head offerings. To alleviate some of the confusion, I created this chart to clarify some things. These are all of the Head 2012 line listed on TW. I have charted them based on their weight vs stiffness. The size of the...

Our season is about to begin and my 3.5 team is facing the same problem we had last year - the lack of output from our doubles teams. We had a pretty good year with our singles, but our doubles teams had hard time winning. The problem is our team is made of mostly singles players who like to...

This year's indoor season is off to pretty terrible start as I am 0-2 in doubles play. The one thing I can point to as the cause of my problems is my serve. I am getting broken about 50% of the time when I used to win most of my serves last season. Not sure what I am doing differently...

So, the indoor season has started and my team is quickly down 0-2. The problems with my team are several; our best guys have been bumped up, we have a couple of guys who are injured, and we have a lot of new guys that we are trying to fit in. One of the biggest problem I see is that we have too...

I have a decent top spin serve that loops over the net (about 2 to 3 feet over, I am 5'7") and bounces up to about a shoulder height. Nothing epic, but good enough for matches in my level. But when I am practicing my serve, every now and then, I hit this sick serve where it looks like it is...

A great article on tennis.com on why you get more spin from polyester strings. http://tennis.com/articles/templates/gear.aspx?articleid=10312&zoneid=24 Here is the most important part: Last spring, the pair collaborated on a study testing 16 different strings (primarily polyester and...

I give up! My service returns are just horrible. I don't know what it is, I just cannot get good contact on either side. I even frame shots on second serves with not much pace. I have no idea what the heck is going on. It probably does not help that my contacts are a bit blurry, but it is...

I used to play POG a long long time ago. When I came back to tennis about 3 years ago, I picked up NXG OS since they were on sale and reminded me of POG. Now, I completely love this racquet. Since then, I bought a couple of Prince EXO graphite 100, but it is not the same. I find myself keep...

Are there people around here who have received Lasiks surgery for their eyes? I have been debating whether or not to get it for a while now and I still can't decide. But one of the clear benefits may be for my tennis game. I currently use soft contacts, but I have astigmatism and unless...

"In a study conducted by Scott Sinnett, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii, 33 undergraduate students watched tennis players hitting balls – with some of the tennis players grunting as they hit. Researchers then had the students indicate the direction of the shot immediately...

Not sure why but I am having some problem returning flat serves lately and I hope someone can help. There is this guy at my club who serves a decent flat serve very consistently. It is not a blister, but enough pace to make it heavy. I have no problem getting to the ball and getting good...

While doing some research on string tension, I came across many papers published by Professor Cross of University of Sydney. He has done a ton of research on tennis physics and many deals with strings. If you care about strings (and why would you be here if you are not?), I think these papers...

What do you do when you are partnered with a weaker player in doubles and your opponents are doing a pretty good job of isolating that weak player? I try to be more aggressive and go after few more balls that I normally would, but that also results in more errors and I am not sure if it pays...

It seems that stretching is pretty popular as part of a warm up process, but I don't think many people realize that stretching can actually be quite harmful for your game. Here is a great article on how to properly warm up...