Tennis - For the budding amateur, lets us know about your matches and games.

As requested, I have been thinking about doing this. This is for people to post any match results or improvements they are looking to make and to ask our posters for advice on equipment and strokes.

Shall we start off by finding out who plays and at what level?
For my club, I'm in the Birmingham Area League (Doubles) Division 5 - soon to be Division 6, given our results so far this summer!
I've played rudey poo against the poorer clubs, and so lost, then pretty good, but against the really good clubs and so lost again!
We really need a good win, a week on Monday. Got to get my serve together - good in practice matches, good in warm-up, but often just falls to pieces during a match - so any advice on how to overcome that particular mental failing?

Hey JM,

I am currently looking for a club after playing again for the last year with a friend of mine as we have been hitting week in and week out. I have had to give up a few years back after a knee injury which has cleared up.

I would advise on the serve as to not question technique. I think it is best to find a pace or an area to serve to on your opponent who may be weak in other areas. So if your opponent has a weak BH it may pay dividends to serve wide with less pace. I tend to find when my serve becomes fragile, I take the pace off just to get rythym going again. It is a risky strategy, but it may take a game or 2 to get the rythym and confidence back.

Played for the first time in a couple of weeks and lost 6-2. Was annoyed really. My Forehand let me down big time today. Going for too much on the BH side and squeezed some out and other times finding the net. Was happy with my serving. Found a few aces. Without question need to improve the Forehand.

Come on!!! Got a 3-1 win yesterday evening, with my partner and I winning both our rubbers - 7-5 6-4, then 6-4, 4-6, 10-3 in the champions tie-break.
Still a chance we might not get relagated if we do as well in our last 2 matches. Some pretty good tennis yesterday. We played a poor 4-6 set in the 2nd rubber but recovered to nail the tie-break. Once we got to 9-2 up I felt confident we wouldn't let 7 match points slip!

How is the serve holding up JM?

Well, it didn't fall to pieces yesterday, which is good, but I still hold back from really going for it, for fear of missing, when in fact I could almost certainly put more pace on it without the first serve % dropping much. Just a psychological barrier I've always had.
Served out the 7-5 set, which was pleasing.

I was peeved on Sunday when in a service game I was 40-0 up and still lost me serve in a game we timed taking 17 minutes!!

I need to somehow stop going wide on the Forehand to the Backhand side. Any ideas?

last game I played was on my hols in the canary islands at the end of June... anyone that was there should know there was a heatwave which meant it got to 40 degrees +. so at 6pm when I decided to play with a mate it was still 35 degrees.

My "game plan" was to hit everything as flat and hard as possible to end the game as the heat was unbearable. Ended up winning 6-2 6-3 6-7 6-1 in 2 and a half hours. Luckily it was an incredibly quick court

Do you mean a forehand down the line from the deuce court, or an inside-out forehand, cross-court from the ad court?

I'm not a coach, but for down the line, make sure your stance is not too square-on. If you think about a normal right-handed cross-court forehand to forehand from the deuce court, a fairly square stance will probably be OK, your right shoulder will be to the back of the court and your shoulders will rotate anti-clockwise as you hit the shot. The natural cross-court direction of the ball will be directed by the shoulder rotation and the natural follow-through that comes with it.

But for down the line, any sort of square-on stance means the only way to do it is to 'leave' your racket arm 'behind' your shoulders, possibly with your wrist bent back a little bit, and get the direction from the arm rather than the shoulders. This is a much more difficult technique with less room for error. You see the pros do it, but it's sort of 'don't try this at home'. Instead, change to a more side-on stance, left-foot forward, right hip to the back of the court and the shoulder rotation will then naturally guide the ball down the line.

That's what I reckon, although it might be total cr*p.

For inside-out cross-court forehand, I find getting the footwork right and into position quickly is vital. Same for drive volleys. Hitting either of those off-balance is asking for trouble.

Gonzini - 2 1/2 in that heat? You're fitter than me! (Probably younger too!)
I played in Qatar once - 45 minutes of doubles was enough for all of us.

The inside out FH I don't have so much a problem with, but say my position is the centre of court and I am looking to play a FH to the FH side of my opponent my stance as I come into the stroke is my left foot and arm a furthest forward and I have a wristy action and the follow through tends to be the racquet head is 'whipped' through and my finishing position is that the right side of my body tends not to be level with the left side which I think is why I am going slightly wide of the mark.

I hope that makes sense??

BTW are you competing in the quiz still?

JuliusHMarx wrote:Gonzini - 2 1/2 in that heat? You're fitter than me! (Probably younger too!)
I played in Qatar once - 45 minutes of doubles was enough for all of us.

25 years young now!

It probably cooled down to about 30 by 7pm and to about 26 by 8pm, but it was still a test

I think I drank about 6 litres of water during the game. Worse part of the match was that just before a changeover (and a much loved drink break) we had a game that went to 8 deuces!

I'd never do it again, it was weird having to do a completely different tactic of trying to hit a winner off everything to shorten the rallies, but I was surprised with how many shots I hit came off. Luckily the fast court made service winners a bit more common as well, which definitely helped!

LK, personally I think that's a tough shot to make, and a bit risky, which is probably why coaches teach cross-court FH to FH as the basic shot.
Probably only do the FH to FH from the center of the court if your opponent has left a wide enough gap, because your instinct will be to try and hit away from him, and if there is only a small gap, hitting away from the player will end up going wide. If the gap isn't there, there's hardly any room for error.
Roughly, if you think of cross-court as 65 +/- 10 degrees, down the line as 90 +/- 10 degrees and inside out as 115 +/10 degrees, you're tring to hit 105 +/- 5 degrees.

And the technique might be half side-on, half inside-out, which make it even more difficult. So you're success rate will probably improve if you pick the right time to play the shot.

Re: Quiz - I keep trying to find the time, but the answers seem to be up before I've had a proper think about them.

I am absolutely disgusted with myself today. Played indoors yesterday where the court was lightening fast. I lost 6-4 6-2. My first serve was on the mark yesterday for the first time in ages and I had one service game where my serve eluded me. My opponent got more net chords than Nadal

The FH was much improved this week. I think if anything the BH let me down this week. Kudos to the opponent though he managed to construct some brilliant points and defended really well. Next week I shall have my revenge!

We managed a 2-2 draw yesterday against fellow relegation strugglers. Damn those championship tie-breaks - we lost 2 and won 1 in last night's match. Could have been a 4-0 win with a bit of luck (or a 3-1 defeat without any luck). At least my partner and I won one in straight sets.
Anyway, 1 match left this season and nothing but a 4-0 victory is required.

3-1 defeat. Relegated.
Oh well. In 8 matches, injury and lack of availability meant we had to play 9 different players, in 7 different pairings. We never really got any consistency or momentum going.

I lost every match I played last week. This week I did a fitness program, lifted a house, ignored tennis entirely and then I went back to the courts. Won every point. Am now in Davis Cup team.

I demolished my little 12 yers old niece 6-0 6-0, so I bet from now on she'll think twice before showing off her newly acquired Serena Williams kind of racket.......

Can this be un-stickied?

Yes