inconsistency

[btca_national]

Can anyone give me some advice.
i have an 8 year old male player who hits very hard with decent technique with a strong serve and an attacking game. He is using green balls even though he should be using orange. He is a big strong boy.
he played a match at the weekend at green level and by the end i was so frustrated for him.
He played a boy and beat him playing great acurate tennis and quite consistent even though the rallys were not to long due to him attacking and taking time away. The boy was quite good getting lots of balls back.
The next match he struggled through against a boy who could hardly play and the boy hit no pace and all the boys shots landed half way up the court. My player just missed so many balls spraying the ball all over the place. He still won but just didnt look a player.
In the final he played the boy he had beaten in the first match and lost. This time he hardly hit the court with his shots and the boy won most of the points from errors from my player.
The question i want to ask is what is the best way to approach this.
I think my player should change his attitude to rallying with his opponent more and only go for his shots when it is very much in his favour. I know lots of people say let the boy carry on attacking but he is just so inconsistent with his results doing this.
Hi is trying to take the point opposed to waiting for an error
What do u think

[julian]

Baseliner

Can anyone give me some advice.
i have an 8 year old male player who hits very hard with decent technique with a strong serve and an attacking game. He is using green balls even though he should be using orange. He is a big strong boy.
he played a match at the weekend at green level and by the end i was so frustrated for him.
He played a boy and beat him playing great acurate tennis and quite consistent even though the rallys were not to long due to him attacking and taking time away. The boy was quite good getting lots of balls back.
The next match he struggled through against a boy who could hardly play and the boy hit no pace and all the boys shots landed half way up the court. My player just missed so many balls spraying the ball all over the place. He still won but just didnt look a player.
In the final he played the boy he had beaten in the first match and lost. This time he hardly hit the court with his shots and the boy won most of the points from errors from my player.
The question i want to ask is what is the best way to approach this.
I think my player should change his attitude to rallying with his opponent more and only go for his shots when it is very much in his favour. I know lots of people say let the boy carry on attacking but he is just so inconsistent with his results doing this.
Hi is trying to take the point opposed to waiting for an error
What do u think

A baseliner option is a better one.
I will elaborate tomorrow

[johnyandell]

First of all this kid is 8! So I think a patient and observing attitude is important--obviously he has a lot of time to develop. Getting distressed over a couple of matches with green balls sends him the wrong message.

The issue you describe is a personality thing in most cases. Becker was like that. Just always went for it--which was why he was not held in high regard in German junior tennis. Sampras was smaller when he was young and was known as a consistent backcourt player. Then look what happened.

Every player has to confront the problem of the slow soft ball and find a way to build his confidence to overcome that style by some combination of patience and attack. Some will push and find a way to win and gain confidence that way. Others will just try to blast their way thru it.

I saw Sharapova do something similar against Kuznetsova on an outer court at Wimbledon maybe two years before she won the event. She was missing every ball trying to hit winners and the further behind she got the worse the errors. Her judgment looked really bad. She was roundly criticized. But psychologically Maria obvious was doing what she needed to do.

[btca_national]

Thanks for your thoughts.
I think the problem is not that he is trying to hit winners all the time but he is trying to open up the court and take time away by taking the ball early and hitting agressive topspin drives and angles. He will come to the net and volley to try and finish the point when he can.
I think the problem is in his timing. Sometimes he hits a bit to far in front or to late or too close etc. I feel i need to work on this more.
The question is do i tell him to slow his shots down a little to make up for the inconsistent contact point and as his contact point improves in drills and matches he can start putting more pace in to his shots or do i let him play with his natuaral pace while working on his contact point. I feel for the short term and to build his confidence the first option is better. What do you think.

[airforce1]

I suggest that you find ways to reward the play where he rallys well first. 8 yrs olds are easy to reward. He can earn tickets for a prize or one of our coaches give out free slushy drink cards for Sonic. Maybe no running if he does this on a certain % of match play points.

The whole point here is to create pleasant associations with playing this kind of tennis. If playing this way leads to feeling good about things, he will gravitate this way. I would avoid punishments, as you don't want to crush the aggressive side, just control it. Just let the good rewards attract him to this type play.

I would build his training around constructing a point, before he get so aggressive, by picking 2-3 drill each practice that encourage this, with a couple chances for rewards related to this each practice.