One Minute To Better Tennis

Original Post on Tennis Fixation blog:

What can you do in one minute to improve your tennis game? Depending on what's happening on your court, here are a few things that might turn things around for you during a match that take less than a minute to do.

1. Are you losing? Take a minute to get more aggressive. It never pays off to get less aggressive. If you're losing, you've probably already tightened up and have been playing tentatively for awhile. So decide to play aggressively on everything and, if you're going down, go down fighting.
2. Is your serve giving you fits? Calm down. When its your serve just remember that everyone is playing to your pace. Take your time, think about proper form, go for placement and hit some nice serves.
3. Are you mishitting lots of shots? Keep your eye on the ball. Don't look to see where the ball is going until well after you've made contact. Once you hit the ball, its going there whether you watch it or not, right?
4. Are you having communication problems with your partner? Have a quick conference with your partner, take the blame for whatever is happening (no matter whose fault you think it is), and say something positive.
5. Are you tired? Eat something or drink something or tie your shoes. Just give yourself some kind of mini-break to catch your breath. And do that as often as you need.
6. Are you having a really bad day? That will happen. Sometimes you play doubles and you are on the court with three players who are far and away better than you and nothing is going your way. So take a minute to remind yourself - it's tennis and it's fun and you'll probably laugh about this match later.


© Kim Selzman 2009
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