J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
So far zero people have come up with the answer.
J
J
What to do against junk balls
- Thread starter FiReFTW
- Start date
There is no magic solution. The problem is too much coaching is about hitting nice predictable balls. I watch a bit of coaching at our club and even when they move forward they are given nice rhythmic stuff to practice approach shots and volleys against.
Then the same player comes across junkballers and pushers. Ball with no pace that stop dead, die in the court, have wicked side spin. They don't know what to do, however they still believe they are the better player because they play like the guys on the telly. So they try to bash their way through their opponent and lose.
The answer is simple enough, respect junkballers and pushers. You learn to play against them by playing them. Eventually you get use to how their shots behave and you can control them. Once you can control them you can put more pace on them and then you start to win.
There is no magic solution, it is just good old practice.
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
People might start to figure it out in few years when the next dominant World #1 player is a softballing junk baller who feasts on the sorry next gen guys who can’t volley. After that all the young kids will grow up wanting to become pro junk ballers, so eventually everyone will be more used to playing against this style, and it’s possible that a successful counter approach will emerge.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
Better than giving false hope.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
FiReFTW
Legend
Started working alot lately on short balls and aproaches and also volleys and return of serve, its just that currently im not practicing much for about a month still, but after that we will continue where we left off with this.
How can i tell u how my volleys are, they were probably 1 out of 10 like 6 months ago, now probably 5 out of 10, getting there but lot of repetition still left.
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
My volleys were 9 out of 10 last week, but only 4 out 10 yesterday because my stringbed got too soft. Most people don’t realize that volley is the most equipment-sensitive shot in tennis. The serve is the least.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Worked for me
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
tlm
G.O.A.T.
This is true all the better guys I play don’t work near as hard as I do just trying to hang with them. Come on J quit teasing us and tell us the secret.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
So what do I do if I don’t qualify to fit any of those categories?
FiReFTW
Legend
Brief explanation of each?
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Run your butt off and hack it out against them then complain about it on the internet.
J
tlm
G.O.A.T.
You are too funny J. I would think old school way would be SnV. Not sure about country club pro way I would think you mean to blast the ball hard enough to eat the junk baller up. I don’t know what the tournament player way would be.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Well old school players would never have an issue against them because not everyone hit the same way back then and if an opponent couldn't generate pace or hit accurate passing shots they would just S&V/C&C and mop up all of the opponent's bogus shots before they could hit the ground.
The country club pro spends his entire day playing these guys so he can't be wasting energy, or making the hits or matches not fun for his members so he just plays the same style as the opponent and does it a little bit better.
The tournament player give zero hecks if his opponent has fun and wants to win as easily and quickly as possible to save energy for his next match, so he will play a style that neuters his opponent. Usually the junker will effectively quit, abandoning his game and piling up errors going for low % shots.
J
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
D
Deleted member 23235
Guest
lol, kinda true...
if i played @FiReFTW today, know what i know from this thread, i'd definitely dink and lob, and generally junk ball him.
option d please,... the wanna-be-a-playa-rec-hacker-way
tlm
G.O.A.T.
Okay I see what your talking about they don’t want to totally discourage their client.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
lol, kinda true...
if i played @FiReFTW today, know what i know from this thread, i'd definitely dink and lob, and generally junk ball him.
option d please,... the wanna-be-a-playa-rec-hacker-way
You have the perfect game to mop up the hackers, you just have to resist the temptation to make yourself struggle.
Re: Playing @FiReFTW if you can beat him in such a way that he thinks he had the right strategy but just didn't execute it well enough then he will go practice that wrong strategy and you get to beat him again for free the next time.
It's kind of like how you can judge the intelligence of someone by how many times they get back together with their ex.
J
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
D
Deleted member 23235
Guest
hehe first time i played a tourney... got to 2nd round, and got to play an ex-davis cup guy.
in the warmups, i was "crushing" the ball... i'm pretty sure i won the warmups
0,1 later, i was sitting there, scratching my head, mumbling to myself, "but i won the warmups..."
in retrospect, the guy didn't do ANYTHING fancy... 3/4 pace, to back 3rd of the court,... kept me off balance the entire time... waited til i hit a short ball, walked to net, finish with volley/oh... easy peasy 0 and 1
the "1" i got was serving lights out for one game... i think i surprised him by getting it in.
FiReFTW
Legend
Haha, ur normal game would do, why resort to such boring and unfun methods
what a tedius and mentaly exhausting "tennis" that would be.
CharlottesHead
Rookie
I found this (old) thread because I had this exact experience last night! During the match I was trying to make sense of why my shots kept going long or into the net and I think it comes down to the unpredictability of a junk baller. Sometimes it's like the ball doesn't even know what's going to happen after the bounce. He/she is like a broken ball machine, shooting random shots of all varieties.
The one most frustrating to me was the ground stroke the LOOKED like it was going to bounce forward into my strike zone, but then inexplicably dies at the height of the bounce and drops vertically down. WTF!!!
Dragy
Legend
One possible solution for such instances would be setting up in neutral stance to then step into the shot. Depending on actual bounce you may minimize or maximize forward transfer.
Another idea is whenever you suspect some junk, intend to hit later and lower than the ball peaks after bounce - say, hip to knee height - and continue adjustment steps before unloading. Yes you won’t be able to pummel the ball flat and hard, but you also won’t be jammed or stretched by sudden bounce.
FiReFTW
Legend
Haha, I still struggle against all this a year later, I just rarely hit against such balls, im used to pace and I hit good against it, but when I get such balls its easy to commit an error, im better than 1 year ago but still way too many mistakes from such relatively not so dangerous balls to you.
movdqa
Talk Tennis Guru
You can just hit a neutral ball back with a minimum of effort and relax.
FiReFTW
Legend
Yeah but thats like so bad... like idk... someone dinks a 2nd serve in and you feel like you should be able to tee off that and hit a winner or at least a very aggressive shot, hitting some neutral ball back and reseting a point from such a serve is just bad, almost makes me feel like im crap lol.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
I used to struggle against players who sliced short and low to my backhand which is my weaker wing. Once a good player realized this, they would invariably start bringing me into the net on their terms - I would end up hitting weak approaches and would get passed or would make errors trying to hit forcing shots off the short, low balls. I like going to the net to finish points, but could do this well only if I went on my terms after a good approach shot. I knew that the main issue was improper/slow footwork and I particularly struggled against lefties would slice short in BH-BH crosscourt rallies - I’m a lefty also. For a long time, all I would do is serve to their FHs and try to start a baseline rally and prevent a short, chip return.
Finally, I took lessons specifically to deal with this issue and I think I do much better now. My coach helped me with the following:
- Quicker footwork to get to the ball earlier so that I had time to stop and hit if I was going to hit a topspin drive. I used to be late and try to hit topspin drives off low balls on the run which never worked well.
- Early take back so that racquet was prepped when I got to the ball.
- Bending my knees more and getting low to get my racquet under the ball to start the swing.
- Quicker racquet-head speed (RHS) with a slightly more vertical swing to get it over the net and have enough topspin to keep it in.
- We also worked on a driving BH slice where I could run through the ball without stopping if I had less time - still needed to have early take back, fast RHS and get low.
At the end of the day, I had multiple lessons over a month where he kept giving me low, slice feeds on both wings and the repetition has really helped me. As others have pointed out, we usually don’t practice enough against junkballers who keep the ball low and make us hit low balls on the run and the problem gets solved by practice.
Finally, I took lessons specifically to deal with this issue and I think I do much better now. My coach helped me with the following:
- Quicker footwork to get to the ball earlier so that I had time to stop and hit if I was going to hit a topspin drive. I used to be late and try to hit topspin drives off low balls on the run which never worked well.
- Early take back so that racquet was prepped when I got to the ball.
- Bending my knees more and getting low to get my racquet under the ball to start the swing.
- Quicker racquet-head speed (RHS) with a slightly more vertical swing to get it over the net and have enough topspin to keep it in.
- We also worked on a driving BH slice where I could run through the ball without stopping if I had less time - still needed to have early take back, fast RHS and get low.
At the end of the day, I had multiple lessons over a month where he kept giving me low, slice feeds on both wings and the repetition has really helped me. As others have pointed out, we usually don’t practice enough against junkballers who keep the ball low and make us hit low balls on the run and the problem gets solved by practice.
movdqa
Talk Tennis Guru
I think that playing with a variety of players, even a few levels below you, change your perspective. You don't really want to blow them off the court so you hit an easy, neutral ball back to them and just try to keep the really going.
FiReFTW
Legend
Yeah I guess but I just don't get the logic that when someone serves me a good strong serve I can hit it very aggressively and hit a powerful return back (well unless they hit like 100+mph) and when someone hits me a puff ball I can't, it defies all logic
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
If you are unable to return dink serves aggressively, you are not getting to the ball early enough before it drops too low (do you hit into the net a lot?) and/or you likely don’t have enough topspin when you hit it hard (to keep it in the court). Stand closer to fix the first issue and add more topspin to your returns instead of trying to crush flat returns. You have to generate your own pace to return dink serves hard without making errors and it requires good footwork and topspin whereas you can just block back a hard serve deep using the pace of the serve.
CharlottesHead
Rookie
Stepping into them definitely would have helped had I anticipated them. I found myself having sleepy feet syndrome due to slow pace of the match though.
He was quite apologetic, lol. I just told him "do what you gotta do to win", and he did steal a set from me. He doesn't want to be a junk baller and occasionally he'd rip winners past me, adding to my confusion about where to stand.
I blame myself, but luckily this isn't how most of my opponents play otherwise I never would have taken up the sport.
Dragy
Legend
Yeah quite familiar to those cases, and associated confusion.
The point with stepping in is it shifts the margins for anticipation. You just persuade yourself that 80% of incoming balls require you to step in. Sometimes you’ll need to step back to be able to step in, and that’s also great practice. Some balls might come too fast and/or too deep, and you cannot do nothing but hit an open stance. But that’s another story.
Yeah I guess but I just don't get the logic that when someone serves me a good strong serve I can hit it very aggressively and hit a powerful return back (well unless they hit like 100+mph) and when someone hits me a puff ball I can't, it defies all logic
Even at the pro level, there are players who like pace and do better against it than they do with slices and short balls... (these are pros, so it's not like they flub every short ball into the net or long like many of us rec players, but the point is that some of these players will absolutely wreck pace, but might not be quite as good at generating it on their own from a completely neutral or softer shot).
What you're describing is an issue with us rec level players because usually our fundamentals aren't as solid as we think or wish they were. Hitting a neutral ball well requires everything in your swing to be on point. That starts from the ground up with footwork, and the whole bit.
Have your coach hit you some moderate to heavy paced balls for you to hit ground strokes against, you probably hit these well and everything like that... then have your coach set up about 6 feet in front of you and to the side, with you at the baseline, and have your coach just dead drop some balls there that you have to step up to and hit. You will have to adjust your footwork and your swing, everything will have to get much more "deliberate" and you will have to focus on the details of your swing since 100% of that shot is going to be generated by you, as opposed to the higher paced groundie coming in that you can just borrow some pace from when you return it.
This is a real thing and lots of rec players struggle with it. That's why so many moonballers and dinkers and pushers live so long at the 3.5 and 4.0 level. A GOOD junker is a different story.
movdqa
Talk Tennis Guru
Yeah I guess but I just don't get the logic that when someone serves me a good strong serve I can hit it very aggressively and hit a powerful return back (well unless they hit like 100+mph) and when someone hits me a puff ball I can't, it defies all logic
I used to practice for two hours a day on table tennis. We got a chopper one day and he was fantastic to practice against. He would hit heavy slice and it wouldn't take him much effort and I'd work on my loop which took good footwork and considerable effort. So I was expending two to three times the effort to hit against him. Some would consider that torture but I called it a good workout. And it would mean that I wouldn't have trouble with choppers in the future.
You get good at what you do a lot. If you face 100+ MPH serves all the time, then you get good at returning them. Same thing goes for slow, short, spinny, etc. balls.
user92626
G.O.A.T.
It's beneath me to give answers.
That's like asking what do you do with a tennis ball and a racket.
Of course you give the ball to your dog and sell the racket on eeBey....DUH!!!!
FiReFTW
Legend
Thats true but I almost never play against that.
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
I have a reputation for being a bit of a junkballer, especially in the last several months when ive been playing more and I’ve developed a new style while competing in a singles league. It’s become clear that I have a big advantage if my opponent hasn’t faced me before, because I give different types of balls than they are used to facing. The players I’ve played more than once do better against me the second or third time, after they get a chance to adjust to what I am doing to them.
For me, the most comfortable match-up is a right-handed player who likes to hit big and occasionally run around the backhand. Lefties and counterpunchers who are great at passing shots are trickier for me.
For me, the most comfortable match-up is a right-handed player who likes to hit big and occasionally run around the backhand. Lefties and counterpunchers who are great at passing shots are trickier for me.
FiReFTW
Legend
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
That just means that you fall into the most commonly encountered playing style bin. It’s not coincidence that my game has evolved to be proficient at playing against this style. It’s what I see most often in competition, and I use most of my court time playing points against it.So basically.... me
movdqa
Talk Tennis Guru
So you're like Tomic?
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
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