Some simple ways to bring practice tennis a little bit closer to matchplay

[eb_tennis_247]

These are some easy to apply tips from my own experience and the match frustrations

1. Use fresh, bouncy balls in practice as you would in a match. There is a big difference how fresh-out-of-the-can ball bounces off the racquet or off the court. If you are playing with somewhat deflated and/or shaven tennis balls in practices, lesson feeds or from a tennis ball machine, there will be a very unpleasant awakening in the matchplay where the fresh tennis balls will be jumping in your “face” off the court or off the racquet when you are attempt your favorite stroke during the match exchange.

2. Unless you are just learning and grooving a new ground stroke, don’t practice hitting unrealistically “perfect” shots. Again, unless you are “grooving” some new move, it can be totally counterproductive to hit against “perfect” shots sent at you with predictable pace, placement, height, depth. Matchplay ball will always come faster, slower, flatter, spinier, lower, higher, trickier, weirder … than the “perfect” practice ball.

3. Practice shots in the (low consequences) matchplay. Find the group of the people to play for fun but still fully competitively and then practice some desired shots (e.g., aggressive return of the second serve, kick first serve, flat topspin, etc.) in a matchplay. Miss them until you do not.

Again, I don’t claim these to be any ground breaking tips but I found them very beneficial in leveling up my matchplay and bridging the practice-matchplay gap.

 

[Spin Diesel]

You can play tie breaks to ten, where one player starts with a lead of a few points. So one has a bit of “pressure“ to stay in front and the other one trying to catch up.

 

[enishi1357]

Just play a match. Practice is just a way to make sure everything is in order or practice something new. But the best way to figure out what you need is to play an actual match. You wouldn't go to war after only playing video games. A loss is very humbling experience.

 

[BBender716]

Just play a match. Practice is just a way to make sure everything is in order or practice something new. But the best way to figure out what you need is to play an actual match. You wouldn't go to war after only playing video games. A loss is very humbling experience.

I think some of the struggle here is battling back the desire to "win" the match in front of you vs trying to "win" the long game of improvement even if it means lots of losing in the near term.

 

[Injured Again]

Most of the competition players I know struggle with being able to play as freely and as well in match situations as when just practicing, so our progressions are to help narrow this performance gap.

After getting our bodies fully warmed up, we start practice using a groundstroke feed and play at 100% intensity.

We next move to starting off each rally with a serve, and who serves totally depends on who has a ball. We do this for a few minutes, and then we alternate by having each person serve eight points in a row. This is the first time we informally start tracking how many of the eight points we win.

After a few rotations of that, we will play some scored tiebreaks, and then move onto a full set. After finishing the set, we go back to square one and finish up the session with 100% intensity play starting with a groundstroke feed.

It’s usually pretty apparent how much the quality of play goes up from the set to the groundstroke feed practice, but the gap does narrow the more we practice this progression.

 

[BBender716]

Most of the competition players I know struggle with being able to play as freely and as well in match situations as when just practicing, so our progressions are to help narrow this performance gap.

After getting our bodies fully warmed up, we start practice using a groundstroke feed and play at 100% intensity.

We next move to starting off each rally with a serve, and who serves totally depends on who has a ball. We do this for a few minutes, and then we alternate by having each person serve eight points in a row. This is the first time we informally start tracking how many of the eight points we win.

After a few rotations of that, we will play some scored tiebreaks, and then move onto a full set. After finishing the set, we go back to square one and finish up the session with 100% intensity play starting with a groundstroke feed.

It’s usually pretty apparent how much the quality of play goes up from the set to the groundstroke feed practice, but the gap does narrow the more we practice this progression.

Love this suggestion. I'm going to recommend it to some of my hitting partners... that I need to find more of