This is one of my pet hates and came up again today. Agreed to hit a few practice rallies with someone who couldn't serve due to injury. So I feed the ball down the middle, what I get in return is balls nailed into the corner, drop shots, winners hit flat onto the baseline, lobs when I come in to get dropshots and awkward balls with funky spins on them.
In some ways this is good practice, running around madly retrieving all this stuff. Eventually I lose patience and wack one of his balls passed him into the corner. At which point he complains that it was just practice and there is no way he could reach this. Really, with all the mad shots I have had to dig out?
He isn't the only person who does this. Our club is full of people who try to win warmups and practice hits. Which is a complete waste of time. So here is the tip. Warmups and practice hits are not about winning points, there are no points.
They are about warming up and practicing shots. If nobody wants to practice/warmup with you, you might well be the guy I described above.
Good chance they have no idea that what they are doing is in bad taste. The etiquette of the warm-up/order of procedure, should be communicated more often and more clearly. I had no clue when I was a beginner, I remember my friend raging and smashing the ball out of the courts into the street because I was hitting like a spastic to him in the warm up, I got it out of him many months later what he was sooking about like a baby, the numnuts should have just said something to me.
Also, beginners basically do not have the ability to hit casual rollers back to a spot over and over, so any semblance of a warm up/practice rally longer than 4 shots goes out the window with them anyway.
If they really are doing it on purpose, then say something. I had to say something to a hitting partner in practice the other week who would try to cane winners past me everytime I wanted to come in to get reps in on my volleys. Bloke was just caught up in his own world and lost sight of what it was we were doing, and was apologetic.
Another hitting partner I remember who used to do this, and at the time it was impossible to find anyone to hit with so I didn't want to just give him the middle finger, I took charge of the hitting sessions, and would set up cones or markers, and have drills to do (cc bh's, doubles alley rally, overheads, serve-1st strike, etc) rather than just wasting 2 or 3 hours of futile and pointless rallying with him.
