Volley Drills

[jsnewman]

John,

I really related to Rick Macci's new article on volleys. I felt like he was talking about me when he referred to people who could crush volleys when they did simple drills at the net, but couldn't put it together in the course of a point. I really liked how he talks about teaching calmness and practicing the movement to the net together with the volleys themselves.

What I am really looking for is any specific drills that are along the lines of what he was talking about - drills to practice coming to net from the baseline and then volleying. Is there any that you could share or point me towards?

Thanks so much,
Scott Newman

[johnyandell]

Scott,

To be honest this is an area of Tennisplayer that we hope eventually to develop. To me drills always seem simple extensions of stroke ideas but we need to share them and hopefully will in the future.

I'd start with simple transition drills, get a pro or a feedling partner and do a 4 ball feed. Approach, split and a volley, close, split and a volley, then back for an overhead. If you can get a ball machine to feed on this pattern--some do it--it's tremendous.

Then add a wide groundstroke, a drop shot, a lob over your head--then the approach. Basically combining any and all the shots from everywhere on the court in random order, always coming back to transition.

There is one shot of a kid doing this in Rick's article. If you had hundreds and hundreds of reps of this type of oscillating work it wouldn't be too much.

John Yandell