“Cut back on your errors”
Most of the points in a tennis match are over after only three or four hits. At every level, the majority of points are lost and not won. This means that most of the points are won due to errors rather than winners.
The best way to understand errors is to learn the four mistakes in tennis. They are:
- hitting the ball into the net
- hitting the ball over the baseline
- hitting the ball wide to the left
- hitting the ball wide to the right
Once you’ve made contact with the ball, these are the only four errors you can make playing the game. The object is to avoid making one of these four mistakes by learning to keep the ball in play. Even though this is a very basic premise, it is one that is easily forgotten.
The net is where the majority of the errors are made in tennis. The best tactic to use to avoid making this error is simply to aim two nets high when making shots. By swinging low-to-high, the ball will clear the net with a greater safety margin, allowing fewer errors to be made into the net. This “lifting” of the ball on your strokes will help to insure success over the net – often the number one obstacle in tennis.
Comment
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Comment by Dennis P on June 2, 2011 at 9:34pm
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Great advice. Very simple but enlightening. i'm certainly not Federer enough to make winners at will. Not every shot needs to be spectacular. Now, I just need to work on my conditioning so that I can last more than four hits. :)
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Comment by Sara Fuess on March 29, 2011 at 11:23pm
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Yes Grasshopper! So simple but so true. I will put that to good use! THanks for posting. Saralee
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Comment by Todd Scott on February 1, 2011 at 2:10pm
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I think you make a great point to look at tennis as a game of errors. An old teammate of mine uses the strategy: "Let 'em hit it one more time"... at first I thought it was kinda funny, but it works like crazy.
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Comment by Tim Prapong on January 31, 2011 at 12:43pm
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I was watching ranked Armenian players and although, they didn't clear the net two nets high, it was a little more than a net high, around 60+mph with lots of topspin. If U.S. juniors did more of that, we would revitalize U.S. tennis.
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