NTRP 5.0 match: what to adjust on clay?

[MyFearHand]

Hey all, I just recently played a match on clay. I'm originally from New England so I rarely get out on even hartru courts. How do you all adjust your games when you play on clay?

I tried to stand back further on the return than I usually do because I find it harder to redirect returns like I usually do on hardcourts. I'm in the red hat and if you saw my previous thread last week you'll see I've made some further tweaks to my serve to make it more fluid.

 

[user92626]

You want a bunch of 3.5s to give you tips and make you one of them?

 

[MyFearHand]

You want a bunch of 3.5s to give you tips and make you one of them?

I've always felt that you can learn from players of any level. Being able to do something on court is very different from understanding what to do on court or spotting issues.

 

[Curious]

Alex Popyrin already had a big serve but I watched his match the other day and noticed he made a significant change. He now takes the racket back and up to trophy position only by pulling his elbow back which shortens the whole thing by like 50%.

 

[FuzzyYellowBalls]

You won't need too many adjustments on that clay, notice how white is getting after being run on near the baseline? Also notice on some serves the clay is clouding up around the ball bounce like smoke, it's not as wet as most clay courts/har tru. It's not wet enough really and/or thin. I like it that way actually, but , usually it will be a little more consistently greener and slower.

Maybe the redirection issue is the unpredictable bounce on the serves? Anyway, I think you are good enough to adjust mid match to any surface.

I crank up the lefty spin on clay, especially on serve.

 

[ptuanminh]

Stay low. Be ready for stupid bounces. Depth + spin better than power. IMO.

 

[Dragy]

Hey all, I just recently played a match on clay. I'm originally from New England so I rarely get out on even hartru courts. How do you all adjust your games when you play on clay?

I tried to stand back further on the return than I usually do because I find it harder to redirect returns like I usually do on hardcourts. I'm in the red hat and if you saw my previous thread last week you'll see I've made some further tweaks to my serve to make it more fluid.

I agree your serve motion got smoother, and you mostly get rid of the hitch - does it feel good to you? Some good serving in the match

There’s still some early “leakage” of the racquet, and I have an idea for you to check. It looks to me your wrist gets tight around here, cocked and locked:

If you loosen it up - try “dangling” wrist all the way through as a training mode - you may perfect your motion.

You guys play great tennis, fun to watch. What I noticed tactics-wise (or mindset-wise) in some points - you sometimes play passive off neutral/weak balls. When you are serving and locked on +1 you go for it with confidence. When you see counter-punch opportunity, you do as well. But when you are starting neutral/defending/returning, but then get that unexpected weakish ball or middle ball, you may look lost and just sending it back with no juice.

If you look at some clay-court big hitting (like Sabalenka or Alcaraz or Rublev), they use the fact that surface is slower to load more and hit stronger on any ball that is not pushing or stretching them. I don’t suggest that you may just switch to total attack style, but maybe learn something from them. Like be mentally ready to see a weaker ball, know that now you are given time to dance around, load and put it to a spot with juice? Because it’s not hard court, it sits a bit every time he dropped the quality just a bit.

But again, it’s just some balls that caught my eye, and they may be due to clay unexpected bounces catching you off-guard. I overall love your FH shape and pace, strong

 

[MyFearHand]

Alex Popyrin already had a big serve but I watched his match the other day and noticed he made a significant change. He now takes the racket back and up to trophy position only by pulling his elbow back which shortens the whole thing by like 50%.

I’ll take a look.

 

[Slicehand]

Movement basically, getting used to the rythm and bounce from the ball and not taking it too high

 

[MyFearHand]

I agree your serve motion got smoother, and you mostly get rid of the hitch - does it feel good to you? Some good serving in the match

There’s still some early “leakage” of the racquet, and I have an idea for you to check. It looks to me your wrist gets tight around here, cocked and locked:

If you loosen it up - try “dangling” wrist all the way through as a training mode - you may perfect your motion.

You guys play great tennis, fun to watch. What I noticed tactics-wise (or mindset-wise) in some points - you sometimes play passive off neutral/weak balls. When you are serving and locked on +1 you go for it with confidence. When you see counter-punch opportunity, you do as well. But when you are starting neutral/defending/returning, but then get that unexpected weakish ball or middle ball, you may look lost and just sending it back with no juice.

If you look at some clay-court big hitting (like Sabalenka or Alcaraz or Rublev), they use the fact that surface is slower to load more and hit stronger on any ball that is not pushing or stretching them. I don’t suggest that you may just switch to total attack style, but maybe learn something from them. Like be mentally ready to see a weaker ball, know that now you are given time to dance around, load and put it to a spot with juice? Because it’s not hard court, it sits a bit every time he dropped the quality just a bit.

But again, it’s just some balls that caught my eye, and they may be due to clay unexpected bounces catching you off-guard. I overall love your FH shape and pace, strong

Overall this motion feels good, although it’s going to take a bit of time to get more control over my toss because I have to consciously think about lagging my right arm. I’ll see if I can loosen my hand a bit more there but another adjustment will probably take me awhile.

I totally agree that I wasn’t aggressive enough on neutral calls, I noticed that as well. Even after years of working on it it’s still very unnatural for me to attack. As you noticed I’ve managed to automatize it on the +1s and now I need to find a way to do that for the rest of the game. I think I’m a bit better on hardcourts though because I can push off hard to the ball to makeup for my slow recognition time that it’s short but I find that a bit harder on clay.

Thanks about the forehand, I think the outcome of the forehand is solid but I don’t actually like my forehand technically. I’ve made some adjustments on it over the past year and it’s a lot better but still not exactly what I want it to be. Unfortunately I can’t change 1000 things at once… So that will have to wait till I’m happier with the serve.

 

[onehandbh]

I'm far from an expert on clay, as I grew up playing on hardcourts. For that past 8 years or so I periodically play on red clay. I've played against some ~4.0 - 5.5 friends and this is what I've found.

It's harder for me to put the ball away on clay. Moving further back in general when returning serves and for groundstrokes helps because if gives me more time to:
- adjust to the occasional weird bounce
- to take a bigger swing to hit a ball with more topspin.
- it's easier to move forward than backwards.

When playing on clay, I try to hit a bit more topspin that I normally do and I also try to use this additional topspin to hit crosscourt angles more (balls that land around the service line), to move the opponent around. On clay, a deep flatter ball is easier to return (at least for me), than a heavy topspin ball.

Sometimes when I am able to push my opponent further back behind the baseline and to one corner and he hits a shorter shot, then I'll hit a dropshot. But I have to prepare for the next shot because it is easier to run down shots on clay.

I think you could probably hit more angled crosscourt shots when you get the opportunity. You do a great job keeping your groundstrokes deep, but on clay, sometimes you should go for angled topspin shots instead of depth. Your opponent did a good job of this with his backhand.

Do you prefer hitting backhands or forehands? I noticed you did not run around your backhand as much as your opponent, but he also hit angled crosscourt backhands more than you.

 

[MyFearHand]

I'm far from an expert on clay, as I grew up playing on hardcourts. For that past 8 years or so I periodically play on red clay. I've played against some ~4.0 - 5.5 friends and this is what I've found.

It's harder for me to put the ball away on clay. Moving further back in general when returning serves and for groundstrokes helps because if gives me more time to:
- adjust to the occasional weird bounce
- to take a bigger swing to hit a ball with more topspin.
- it's easier to move forward than backwards.

When playing on clay, I try to hit a bit more topspin that I normally do and I also try to use this additional topspin to hit crosscourt angles more (balls that land around the service line), to move the opponent around. On clay, a deep flatter ball is easier to return (at least for me), than a heavy topspin ball.

Sometimes when I am able to push my opponent further back behind the baseline and to one corner and he hits a shorter shot, then I'll hit a dropshot. But I have to prepare for the next shot because it is easier to run down shots on clay.

I think you could probably hit more angled crosscourt shots when you get the opportunity. You do a great job keeping your groundstrokes deep, but on clay, sometimes you should go for angled topspin shots instead of depth. Your opponent did a good job of this with his backhand.

Do you prefer hitting backhands or forehands? I noticed you did not run around your backhand as much as your opponent, but he also hit angled crosscourt backhands more than you.

Good points! For some reason I struggle to consistently hit a forehand angle. Most of the time when I try to it sits up and it’s short in the court so I get punished. But I think you’re right I need to commit to hitting it in matches especially on clay so I have that shot in my bag. He was playing deep in a lot of points and I didn’t take advantage of this by pulling him wide.

I prefer my forehand but his backhand is definitely his better shot. I tried not to run around too much because he can burn me with his backhand down the line. I feel like if I’m in a backhand to backhand rally with him I might be falling behind a little bit but at least I haven’t given up a huge space for him to attack in my forehand corner.

 

[eah123]

Some adjustments:
1) go for every ball. Shots that would have been winners are now gettable
2) watch out for bad bounces changing direction, and low bounces
3) play more drop shots
4) expect longer rallies. Work to tire out your opponents. If they get out of breath and you have serve, shorten the time between points
5) more spin and depth on rally balls
6) more spin serves on first serve

 

[nyta2]

Hey all, I just recently played a match on clay. I'm originally from New England so I rarely get out on even hartru courts. How do you all adjust your games when you play on clay?

I tried to stand back further on the return than I usually do because I find it harder to redirect returns like I usually do on hardcourts. I'm in the red hat and if you saw my previous thread last week you'll see I've made some further tweaks to my serve to make it more fluid.

for me, main difference is playing with the expectation of a bad bounce.
which eliminates alot of "on the rise" shots, that i can do on hard courts
usually translates to playing deeper behind baseline, but i also had to get used to hitting with depth from 5-6ft behind the baseline (feeling for me is way different than hitting on or inside the baseline)
guessing your returns position is closer to the baseline (eg. short backswing, short followthru)?...

 

[MyFearHand]

for me, main difference is playing with the expectation of a bad bounce.
which eliminates alot of "on the rise" shots, that i can do on hard courts
usually translates to playing deeper behind baseline, but i also had to get used to hitting with depth from 5-6ft behind the baseline (feeling for me is way different than hitting on or inside the baseline)
guessing your returns position is closer to the baseline (eg. short backswing, short followthru)?...

This echoes pretty much exactly how I feel the few times I do play on clay. Especially on the backhand side I like to take high heavy balls on the rise on hardcourt. But on clay I end up mishitting a lot when I try to do this because of the mix of bounces. And yeah I usually return closer to the baseline than I did here and have a pretty compact return on hardcourts. I tried to back up a bit here to give myself time to adjust to the bad serve bounces.

 

[nyta2]

This echoes pretty much exactly how I feel the few times I do play on clay. Especially on the backhand side I like to take high heavy balls on the rise on hardcourt. But on clay I end up mishitting a lot when I try to do this because of the mix of bounces. And yeah I usually return closer to the baseline than I did here and have a pretty compact return on hardcourts. I tried to back up a bit here to give myself time to adjust to the bad serve bounces.

same.
i'm short , so high&heavy to my 2hbh forces me to move way back behind baseline
that said, in order to break out of that pattern, i'm learning to find the right ball to still take on the rise (shoulder height), flat - but because of my starting position deeper behind the baseline, i need to (a) recognize the correct ball earlier (b) move further distance to find right contact height (which i presume is what fed had to figure out to break out of the high&heavy pattern that nadal loves so much, especially to a 1hbh) (c) defend to solicit the "correct" ball i can attack.
on returns, i've had to learn how to return from 5-10ft behind the baseline, feels like i'm in a different country, taking an unfamilar feeling swing - to get the height and depth need to return from back there, but once i got better at it, servers had to work harder/more precise to take me tee/wide (as they can't just rely on hard body for me to commit an error)
i do still try to take 2nd serves on the rise, as you typically have more time to adjust to a bad bounce (though they still happen, i find that the added pressure on the server is still worth it)
(keep in mind i'm only at the ntr4.5 ~utr8 level - behind i imagine the principles are the same)

 

[CAREDDINGTON]

Hey all, I just recently played a match on clay. I'm originally from New England so I rarely get out on even hartru courts. How do you all adjust your games when you play on clay?

I tried to stand back further on the return than I usually do because I find it harder to redirect returns like I usually do on hardcourts. I'm in the red hat and if you saw my previous thread last week you'll see I've made some further tweaks to my serve to make it more fluid.

Lol @user92626
I can help you @MyFearHand. When I play on real red clay I usually position myself closer to the baseline(slower surface bigger bounce) but shorten my strokes for return. However this appears to be a dark synthetic version of red clay, which means the ball will still travel slowly(after ground contact) and will not bounce as high(compared to red clay). I would stand a half a foot to a foot behind the baseline for a flat or topspin serve, then I(personally) would stand on the baseline for a 5.0 kicker. At 5.0 some guys can hit a nice, wide kicker and I like to cover all the angles. If it is a body kicker then switch my grip and take it high. I don't know your ability to switch grips and read the OP service cues but that is my advice. You need to be able to execute a consistent ability to take the ball high and potentially hit wide fhs cross-court. That is the only effective way to counter that....can't take that shot dtl.

 

[Jonesy]

Don't know, never played on walmart clay. On real clay it would be another thing.

 

[18x20 ftw]

You’re not sliding into your shots (especially defending out wide), and then you are behind in the pt. For example, your first two forehands I would have slid into both. Some fun pts, thx for uploading.

 

[tennis3]

You won't need too many adjustments on that clay,

Exactly. You don't even really need to slide. You can play it like a hard court basically.

I didn't even see any bad bounces.

 

[onehandbh]

Forgot to mention that your serve looks better than before. Smoother motion without the hitch. Overall, it looked like you had a better serve than your opponent and was able to get more free points and weak returns.

I'm also impressed with how often you are able to keep the ball deep (past the service line) on groundstrokes.

 

[onehandbh]

same.
i'm short , so high&heavy to my 2hbh forces me to move way back behind baseline
that said, in order to break out of that pattern, i'm learning to find the right ball to still take on the rise (shoulder height), flat - but because of my starting position deeper behind the baseline, i need to (a) recognize the correct ball earlier (b) move further distance to find right contact height (which i presume is what fed had to figure out to break out of the high&heavy pattern that nadal loves so much, especially to a 1hbh) (c) defend to solicit the "correct" ball i can attack.
on returns, i've had to learn how to return from 5-10ft behind the baseline, feels like i'm in a different country, taking an unfamilar feeling swing - to get the height and depth need to return from back there, but once i got better at it, servers had to work harder/more precise to take me tee/wide (as they can't just rely on hard body for me to commit an error)
i do still try to take 2nd serves on the rise, as you typically have more time to adjust to a bad bounce (though they still happen, i find that the added pressure on the server is still worth it)
(keep in mind i'm only at the ntr4.5 ~utr8 level - behind i imagine the principles are the same)

I've had to learn to play from further back as well. At first I tried taking balls on-the-rise all the time and it was a disaster. Just couldn't be consistent enough.

Now my goal on clay is to move much more and try to always get in position so that the ball height is between my waist and shoulder and I have time to hit a heavy topspin shot -- almost like a topspin lob at times.

I try to use spin to push my opponent further behind the baseline and/or ellicit a weaker/shorter reply so that I can more in and do more with the next shot. (e.g. dropshot, hit to corner or angled away).

My movement and sliding on clay still sucks since I didn't grow up on it, but I'm slowly getting better.

 

[Curious]

Now my goal on clay is to move much more and try to always get in position so that the ball height is between my waist and shoulder and I have time to hit a heavy topspin shot -- almost like a topspin lob at times.

I want to do this on all surfaces as I’m mostly hitting on the rise or too high, which is not a very high percentage option. I know it’s footwork but any tips/drills to practice this?

 

[onehandbh]

I want to do this on all surfaces as I’m mostly hitting on the rise or too high, which is not a very high percentage option. I know it’s footwork but any tips/drills to practice this?

On hardcourts, my goal is to have footwork good enough so that I take every ball at my prefered contact height, but to take it on-the-rise if possible if the ball is going to eventually go higher.

On clay, the occasional bad or unpredictable bounce makes this too difficult for me.

I'll post an updated video of me playing on clay if I get the chance. Warning### it is going to look ugly! Me one clay is like a chicken with its head cut off and running around before collapsing onto the ground.

 

[Funbun]

Are you wearing clay court shoes? If not, considering buying a version of your current shoe to have around just in case. It makes a massive difference for me in terms of my confidence in my movement on har-tru.

 

[Curious]

@MyFearHand
Popyrin’s previous serve

His serve today in Rome.
The take back to trophy is almost purely by pulling the elbow back.

 

[Fintft]

Overall this motion feels good, although it’s going to take a bit of time to get more control over my toss because I have to consciously think about lagging my right arm. I’ll see if I can loosen my hand a bit more there but another adjustment will probably take me awhile.

I totally agree that I wasn’t aggressive enough on neutral calls, I noticed that as well. Even after years of working on it it’s still very unnatural for me to attack. As you noticed I’ve managed to automatize it on the +1s and now I need to find a way to do that for the rest of the game. I think I’m a bit better on hardcourts though because I can push off hard to the ball to makeup for my slow recognition time that it’s short but I find that a bit harder on clay.

Thanks about the forehand, I think the outcome of the forehand is solid but I don’t actually like my forehand technically. I’ve made some adjustments on it over the past year and it’s a lot better but still not exactly what I want it to be. Unfortunately I can’t change 1000 things at once… So that will have to wait till I’m happier with the serve.

Are you sure that "you’ve managed to automatize it on the +1"? It doesn't quite seem so to me at the first one you hit at 1 min 21s, so I second @Dragy .

Nice play btw!
.