Can someone give me some advice? So I haven’t played tennis since basically elementary school, even then only for maybe a monthlong camp. Recently I decided to get back into it and on Monday I started playing again just hitting around with a friend and going to start lessons with a professional.
The JV team at my school has tryouts in December. If I work very hard doing lessons, clinics, and practicing as much as possible until this time would it be possible for me to make the team? I know it’s a very short time and honestly I don’t know how long it takes to become decent at tennis. Basically my only “advantage” is that I have pretty good endurance bc I am a distance runner.
Also I go to a small school, there’s only 8 people on the team right now. Three are moving up to varsity and two are switching to other schools so there will be around 5 spaces on the team, but a fair amount of ppl are going to try out from what I’ve heard. It’s not crazy competitive or anything and my friend on the team has said she thinks I would have a chance but I’m not sure.
Is this a realistic goal?
yep, doable.... as an example, this is what i'm doing this with my daughter (soph)
out of the blue she became interested in tennis last sept2021.
hit with here 2h daily through jan2022 (currently she can moonball rally with me for 3-4 shots (6-8 total if you count my shots)... i want to get this shot tolerance up to 6 on avg, but ideally 10+)
break til june (for school and other interests she has).
then start back up in end of June, 2h daily
she can baseline rally atm at a 3.0-low3.5 level (with proper topspin gs), and serve (and volley&oh) at the high 3.0 level (with proper full motion slice serve mechanics)
by sept2022, the goal is to get her to a solid 3.5 level (which should be enough to make the team - their top 2 players are ~4.0, with everyone else being a 3.0)
imo the main priorities are:
* proper stroke production (i'm a 4.5, and i've been her coach, for better or worse
), use a topspin pro at home in the living room (5-10m/d), and send her relevant vids to hear other coaches explain things from a different perspective
* ball recognition... this is where she's behind alot (from her peers, she's reacting the wrong way to different ball types)... eg. gets too close to the bounce on moon balls, is too far away from the bounce on underspin balls, etc...
* movement... is where she needs to focus, to compensate for poor ball recognition... splitting on every opponent hit, explosive move to the approximate area she thinks she needs to be, aggressive adjustment when there... fast recovery to be ready for next one (this is where your endurance will help... to get more quality volume)
since she's likely to be playing 3.5 level dubs... basic strat i'm teaching her:
* is to get a consistent slice serve (mostly her toss is not consistent), middle of the box
* topspin moonball until she gets a short ball comfortably in her strikezone
* shorten loop & flatten out the stroke (still keeping it somewhat loopy, not adding pace) to come to net
* expect to hit at least one volley
* expect to need to finish with an overhead
gl
side note, i've taught a couple of other kids (fr and soph) over the years, that had similar goals (beginner, but want to get on their tennis team that is avg), but imo they don't realize the amount of effort they need to put in to get to a basic functional level, or get bored to do the work. for example, i'll instruct them to go to the wall daily (they lived nearby), and hit on the wall for an hour (typically i'll say to do it for 10h and practice the thing i taught them) ... draw a square on the wall... and work up to hitting that square 6x in a rally with proper technique from a hand feed (restarting anytime the ball gets too far away from them)... but they'd give up after a few tries... because it was boring, or too hard/frustrating, lonely, or not as easy as they originally thought. meanwhile, that's the thing many of us did as a kid (and if you're like me, probably lost alot of tennis balls over the roof, over a fence, etc... along the way). for me, i used to read a book on how to hit a certain way, and go to the wall and try what i interpretted the book was saying... nowadays, with a coach, combined with yt, all the information is there, and easy to find/consume if you try.
