Serve and Volley: Implementation Drills: Part 2

[johnyandell]

Let's get your thoughts on Kyle LaCroix's latest, "Serve and Volley: Implementation Drills: Part 2"

[gzhpcu]

I like the table drill for the volley! Good idea. If I can find a way to set one up in our club, I'll try it out...

[hockeyscout]

I like the table drill for the volley! Good idea. If I can find a way to set one up in our club, I'll try it out...

Flipping brilliant.

[klacr]

Story about the table drill...

I created that at a park when I was bored of only practicing serves and having to walk to other side to pick up balls and do it again. Great thing is...tables come in different shapes, sizes, styles and sturdiness. Just like our opponents. Different tables, different experiences. All worthwhile. I say I invented it but really, I only invented it in my own world. I attended a tennis conference over 10 years ago and saw a teaching pro do this same drill. I often wonder where he got it from and so on and so forth.

Another drill I like to do that was not featured in this article is what I call "2 to 1 Volleys".
Players start on opposite service lines, each player feeds a ball simultaneously, 2 balls going at once, attempting to maintain a cooperative rally while concentrating and remaining calm, once a ball is missed, both players now play out the "live ball". Going from calm and cooperative to focused and aggressive. Play out games to 7 points or however long you wish to go for. Good warm up I use for many of my students.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[klacr]

I like the table drill for the volley! Good idea. If I can find a way to set one up in our club, I'll try it out...

Phil, Please give it a shot. You'll have lots of fun with it. When I can make it to Lugano, the "Monte Carlo of Switzerland" one day (looking at next summer?) We'll set up a table and do this drill to your hearts content. Be patient and I'll be there before you know it. Thanks.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[gzhpcu]

That would be great Kyle....

[klacr]

Phil,

Until my possible visit, start serving against the table in a comfortable manner. You may wanna start slightly inside the baseline just to gauge the power and ricochet ability of the table. Start close and as you feel more comfortable you can start to move back. Also, be sure to know your serve well enough as to how deep in the box you can truly hit it consistently. You want that serve to ideally bounce just before the table as to get a half volley effect from it. But again, a different contact point on the table can give you a completely different return. It really makes a student (if aware) think about the reply from the returner and the repercussions of a specifically placed serve and corresponding location they should be on the first volley.

Play a few games against the table. Set goals for yourself of hitting the serve and then the volley in a specific target area. Good news is if you beat the table it won't be mad at you and always willing to play you again. If you lose against the table it will never brag or say a word to your fellow club members. No judgments. Great competitor.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

P.S. That table won't stand a chance against your serve when you master that racquet drop

[gzhpcu]

My problem is finding a table at our club. A lesser problem (but one I can cope with) is that they are terribly provincial down here and will probably think I am nuts (which is probably true in regards to tennis... ). In another club, I have a friend, an Argentine ex-ATP Challenger player, who would certainly be more understanding, and will have to talk to him when he gets back from vacation...

[hockeyscout]

My problem is finding a table at our club. A lesser problem (but one I can cope with) is that they are terribly provincial down here and will probably think I am nuts (which is probably true in regards to tennis... ). In another club, I have a friend, an Argentine ex-ATP Challenger player, who would certainly be more understanding, and will have to talk to him when he gets back from vacation...

Come to Ukraine! We've got full artistic freedom!

Well, maybe come when world war III is over here.

Anyways, we're in a village, and no one really cares about anything to much here. We got a 700 million dollar community just a bit outside the town here, beautiful, a big tennis stadium, indoor facility (four courts), grass court, in total this place has 11 courts. Just awesome. Pro challenger tournaments come here each year. The best part of it is these kids come to this one cash machine at the facility, and it charges like 20% commision our something stupid when you take your money out. It's so funny when a foreigner uses it. They go ballistic! The girls at the front have it managed just right, "Oh yes, very bad, but it's the bank you will need to call." One day as an Italian tennis player was going nuts I smiled and pointed out to the girl I knew at the front desk, "Hey, Tamara, doesn't the bank own this whole facility." This poor kid was poor as hell, so I said to the kid, here, let me give you some money, take my young one to dinner, let her hang around with you all week, rally a bit, tell her about grips, show her that great one handed backhand of yours is and we'll be even, the other players - coaches here are getting sick of her always bothering them. It kind of worked out good for us. I always tell my daughter, this is where real tennis is played, the Challenger Tour, and these guys are really paying a BIG TIME price to try and make it. Every kid should get a chance to go and hang at a challenger tour, challenge the pro's to rally, bother the hell out of the coaches who are trying to feed a family on a slave wage travelling to villages in Ukraine and take these poor kids who can barely afford a meal to dinner to ask them everything about being a pro tennis player!

Take a look at this place, http://hotelselena.info/1906

$700,000,000 - serious, sprawling land, pools, building, courts, lake, you name it, it's just insane.

And, terrible for development. Its funny, this place is so beautiful, and NO ONE comes to it. I mean NO ONE. It sits empty.

I have kind of taken over the three tennis courts here in the city center, give the so called owner $250 a month (he just walked in one day, said he was taking over, and no one cared the courts or knows who owns them (lots of Russian training facilities here just abandoned, so parents, mafia, drunks, whatever just took them over and no one said much about it). We want, do as we please and tells everyone else if they don't like it go to a civilized court over at Selena.

I got two tables now on the court, chairs, 400 ball cans (the young one lines them up on the mid-court line and hits them over the net), blaring music speakers, two ball machines, a big platforms (to shoot down balls from the sky), golf return nets, tennis court cover (we put it on one side of the court, play on the other, and balls fall onto it, and then in one motion we pick up the tarp and put 2000 balls back in the bins), three shopping carts of balls, targets, a collection of 50 rackets to throw, bands, chains, ropes, big - small - medium pylons, a majorly huge fridge from the cold war era for my beer, a coffee machine for the coaches (the owner has taken to selling coffee now using my machine LOL and my coffee).

The most unusual thing about our court is people are always trying to steal our balls. One time we had a football on the court, and this drunk guy jumped over the ten foot fence, grabbed the ball and started to make a run for it back over the fence. The wife went insane and started chasing the guy down who was starting to climb back over the fence, and I was still standing kind of stunned by all that was going down.

The best thing about this place is the high pressure water hoses. Their is only one way out of the facility, and the hose is at the front of the place and extends all the way to the back, so it's kind of cool, I chase the owner around the courts and spray him down because he's stealing my coffee!

We had a nice young dog named, of course Wimbledon, he was a small pincher and he used to play all day on the hitting wall with the young one, she's hit a ball, the dog would try (quite unsuccessfully to intercept. At the end of the day the poor dog would be so tired I'd have to carry him home because he could not walk. Tired dad, sunburned mom, hitting partners dropping dead and a young one crying because we told her enough is enough, and no more tennis for the day.

It'll be kind of sad when we have to leave here whenever I think the time is good to expand my young ones horizons. You know, you sure make some close friends in a place like this, and get a chance to learn the game in a no pressure playground type of environment. We've been really lucky to have what we have in a lot of ways. The young one thinks the grass will be greener at a big tennis academy, however, I am not so sure if they'd be able to replicate what she has here.

[klacr]

My problem is finding a table at our club. A lesser problem (but one I can cope with) is that they are terribly provincial down here and will probably think I am nuts (which is probably true in regards to tennis... ). In another club, I have a friend, an Argentine ex-ATP Challenger player, who would certainly be more understanding, and will have to talk to him when he gets back from vacation...

I understand Phil. Your club may be a bit set in their ways...

But here's the thing about smart people...its that they seem like crazy people to dumb people. You are clearly smart

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[gzhpcu]

Thanks Kyle. They also look at me askance, because I work with a video camera, the Zepp sensor (and other iPhone apps they don't know about... )
And would you believe it, none of the tennis teachers work with video! I was even formally asked not to go on court with a basket full of tennis balls when practicing with friends, because the tennis teachers complained that I am competing with them!

Oh well, so I just continue with the video camera, Zepp sensor, with no basket of balls, because the courts are great and so close by...

I can just imagine their expressions when my Spanish friend, Dubai Atlantis resident pro, Javier Molina Peiro, comes by for visit end of this month for a couple of days and we will be training there...

http://www.atpworldtour.com/Tennis/P...er-Molina.aspx

[gzhpcu]

An interesting quote from "Match Winning Tennis: Tactics, Temperament and Training" by C.M. Jones, 1971

Analyse and Wimbledon, American or Australian championship late-stage men's singles of recent years and you will discover that nine points out of ten end with one man either making for the net, or at the net, though there is nothing new about net play....

There are six vital elements in successful net play: daring, surprise, depth, speed and decision on the volley and singleness of purpose.

[klacr]

Very nice Phil. Good find. I like it.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton