First Strike Tennis At All Levels

[don_budge]

Objective Number One...Neutralize the Serve

Oddly enough a few of us counted data at a tournament over the weekend, a boys U16 event. It was an average of just over three strokes. What brought everything down were the missed returns and the occasional double faults. There were long rallies in there but it's the unforced errors that seemed to bring the stats down.

We came to the conclusion U16 boys needs to return better. It might be better they take a leaf out of Novak's book and return deep down the middle, as the percentages for success would seem higher than gunning for the lines.

Stotty

Super observation regarding the return of serve. Sheer lunacy to try and reverse the advantage of the serve on the return. Better to try and neutralize and take it from there. The neutralizing in itself is perhaps at least a two shot process...maybe more. It depends upon the situation.

[stotty]

Do some counting. Intuitively it seems impossible but there seems to be a mountain of data.

Oddly enough a few of us counted data at a tournament over the weekend, a boys U16 event. It was an average of just over three strokes. What brought everything down were the missed returns and the occasional double faults. There were long rallies in there but it's the unforced errors that seemed to bring the stats down.

We came to the conclusion U16 boys needs to return better. It might be better they take a leaf out of Novak's book and return deep down the middle, as the percentages for success would seem higher than gunning for the lines.

Stotty

[johnyandell]

Do some counting. Intuitively it seems impossible but there seems to be a mountain of data.

[stotty]

A decent article.

Over here in the UK there has been a shift towards practicing serving and returning more than what was done in the past. Fifty percent of lesson time (with performance players), it's felt, should be allocated to these two disciplines.

I also went on a course recently where we were taught to basket feed set pieces based on scenarios after a good return of serve or a good serve. Sadly none of the set pieces involved moving to the net after a good return or a good serve. Instead the set pieces were based on seizing the opportunity to work inside the baseline after a good serve or return....with perhaps the opportunity to move up to the net to mop up a gimme.

The 2.5 average rally seems almost hard to believe. It seems ridiculously short compared to the junior tennis that I have witnessed, where the rallies often seem interminable. I'd better start counting from now on.

Stotty

[johnyandell]

DH,
I am glad someone remembers those articles! The thing I like about Craig's approach is that he accounts for all points--the same as the aggressive margin. I think he has a point that it would be very difficult over many matches to distinguish between forced and unforced errors unless you charted the matches yourself--like I did. But his data base goes exponentially beyond that. It sitll works because you are able to see percentages that are meaningful.

[dipperhitter]

I have been away for a while and was plowing through Craig's articles. I love the fact that Tennisplayer keeps pushing the paradigm with new ways to look at tennis. But I was always impressed with the system in John's statistical articles twhich added winners to errors players forced and then subtracted unforced errors to create the aggressive margin. That was usually a positive number and certainly in pro tennis. Trying to see how that relates to Craig's view which has way more total errors.

[klacr]

Good stuff. How it is applicable to the amateur player is critical. I can attest to this, The one ball practice does work. I use it with many of my kids and I used it in college. Good stuff.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[johnyandell]

Let's get your thoughts on Craig O'Shannessy's latest article, "First Strike Tennis At All Levels"