Court movement

Last night Dan, my tennis instructor, showed me how to move to hit a heavier ball. From the middle of the baseline, he took relatively large steps, hill to toe, not shuffle, to get to the ball. The back is straight, and with every step you remain balanced. If you're on your toes tipping forward on the backhand, you're doing it wrong. As you rip the ball, keep the back straight and remain balanced. It felt a little awkward at first, especially on the backhand side, since I always heard suggestions to take small shuffle steps. When I settled into it, I was able to hit a much heavier forehand with what seemed like little effort. On the forehand, I concentrated on getting to the ball quickly with big steps while remaining balanced, waiting for the ball, and then hitting with my wrist laid back, my head pointing down and to the side toward the contact point, and my back straight and even slightly arched, so I felt my shoulders were above my feet. On the backhand, it worked when I turned the shoulders to point to the incoming ball, looked down at the contact point. It helped me when I had my wrist laid back all the way on the backhand, even turning the racquet a little with the left hand to lay the wrist back even more. At the hit, it helped when I kept my left arm straight and pointing down.

Serve

Sharapova
Originally uploaded by s..

On the serve, I need to think of having my center of gravity move into the court, and I need to place the ball well into the court. Notice how far in the ball is on the photo--if it were allowed to drop, it would probably hit the ground at two to three feet in.

Volley pointers

I hit some volleys with Terry, the dad of my daughter's schoolmate, on Saturday. Terry gave me a couple of excellent pointers. First, he noticed that I tend to keep the racquet on the backhand site. Because of that, I'm frequently late on the forehand volley. I also frequently forget to fully recover to the middle right after hitting a volley. He asked me make sure I recover fully to the ready position with the racquet squarely in the middle.

Terry also told me to immediately turn the racquet when I'm reacting to the volley, and then let the body follow. I found this immensely helpful. Psychologically, I feel like I can move the racquet very quickly; once I move it to the forehand or the backhand side, my focus is on that side, and the body follows naturally. I need to remind myself that my racquet is 12 points head-light, so there is no reason I should be sluggish with it.

He also recommended that I aggressively use the left hand to help me turn the racquet towards the path of the ball.

The morning after, as I drilled with the ball machine, I tried to remember these hints. Before, I sent at least 25 balls out of 150 into the net; that day, the number was down to 15. I'm encouraged by this metric, even thought I know that many of the balls that made it over the net were pathetic floaters, or sailed long. So, I should remember:

- Recover the racquet immediately to the neutral position;
- Think of moving the racquet first--the body will follow;
- Actively help turn the racquet with the left hand.

I got split step

I forget to do a split step when I play tennis, but at least I got the splitstep.blogspot.com URL. Now I have no excuse for not moving my feet on the court.

In this journal, I'll keep track of my struggles to improve my tennis game. I'm stuck in the la-la land of 3.5-4.0. Last week, after the humiliation of the 6-0, 6-0 doubles match, I resolved to get up at 6 am every morning for a one-hour drill session with a ball machine at the West Portal Playground court. I stuck to the routine and probably hit 150 x 2 x 5 = 1,500 volleys, and probably around 1,200 over the weekend. The best part was that I felt great throughout the day. I'm looking forward to my early mornings as I never have before. Today I skipped the routine because I pulled a muscle yesterday and felt sorry for myself in the morning, but no more excuses.