The serving patterns should have a lot more practice time. I think Craig O’Shannessy said that you will not find one or two hours more a day. No matter if you’re in a club, at an academy, at a national center or on the pro tour, you have a certain amount of time that you can use.
It’s all about finding or giving the most important things more time.
So, the typical tennis lesson, which I would now refer to as a bad tennis lesson or an old-fashioned tennis lesson, would be hitting a lot of baseline strokes, hitting a lot of cross courts, down the lines and in general a lot of consistency. And then, “Oh, we got five minutes left. What do we do? We should serve some”. While we’re serving, we’re talking a little bit to each other and the focus is not there. Maybe if there is a match coming up in the weekend, we will return a couple of serves. But the serving patterns, the connection between serve and the next shot is rarely practiced technically and tactically.
It’s still an eye opener to a lot of coaches or not an eye opener, but maybe a thing that they don’t agree with. I think they don’t agree because maybe they think, “OK, I did that the last 20 years and now you tell me it’s wrong.” That’s one thing that I’m continuously eager about. I’m eager to learn from experienced coaches, from experienced researchers, but also from new things, new developments and or new data that we now have a lot of and a lot easier access to than we had some years ago.
What are common misconceptions that you see us tennis coaches doing on the practice, quote, just because we’ve always done it and certainly?
That’s a tricky question because I think as well, Wim Fissette said everything is depending on the player. If we just want to talk about women and men, my experience with women is they need a good feeling. So, if I now say the misconception is that hitting 50 minutes from the baseline and only doing 10 minutes points or serves should not be the modern way of practicing competitive tennis. I do understand that it can be very effective if the players I’m working with needs it to feel better. But at the same time, this is one thing still for me that serving, returning and the whole game situation of serving, returning and hitting the second shot is very special. I think most of the players, most of the coaches understand the serve technically and tactically. But the connection between serve and the next shot as well as return and the next shot is still not understood enough.
Equally so returning is one thing that might be the most underrated stroke and situation. I am certain it would make a huge difference if we would start with juniors as soon as they want to play competitive. This should be a situation to work on technically, footwork wise, as well as the strength and conditioning part. We have to be stable to land on one foot and come back to a good ready position. We have to be quick on our feet if we want to be in good position for a precise fast second shot to fire back to the opponent. Tactically, we should be able to see where the return goes to in order to have two or three different options to go to and choose the right one. The situation in itself should be a lot more practiced on the practice court. Time wise and as well as focus wise. It’s important that it’s not just like we just do it at the end when you play points.
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