Pro Patterns:
Basic Diagonals

Craig Cignarelli

Page 3

Hitting Behind

Within these patterns, there are other ways of attacking. By driving deep to the corner over and over and moving your opponent within the confines of the crosscourt rally, you may elicit a shorter, weaker ball that is hit a bit closer to the sideline. From this position professional players often attempt the crosscourt winner, hitting behind the opponent. Players also attack by hitting behind when an opposing player attempts to switch the rally.

Monica Seles and Andre Agassi, two of the best on the rise players in history, hit these shots better than anyone. More importantly, they create these shots for themselves with their crosscourt baseline efficiency and control.

They take this ball very early, on the rise, with a good weight transfer and hammer it just beyond the service line with angle. It is a professional shot and takes tons of repetition to master, but one that is required in pro tennis. Even if it doesn't create a winner, the response will be a very short ball and the court will be wide open.

Movement

A player's ability to exploit the slower movement of an opponent, combined with is ability to counter the weaknesses in his own movement are two of the factors that define physical greatness on the court.

Against a slower player, this means moving your opponent around in a favorable crosscourt rally. It can also mean moving him from side to side. If the discrepancy in movement is significant, you can go down the line sooner or more frequently without worrying about being hurt by his crosscourt replies.

In moving him, you are looking to do two things. First to use your consistency and depth to create a floating return that you can attack.

Second you are looking to create an error from him. You want to break down his weaker side so he misses a rally ball, or hit angles that take him far out of position. You want to tempt him to try low percentage down the shots or to overhit from deep in the court. Or you might cause him to make errors off a soft slice.

Agassi is a master of exploiting slower players. Watch in the animation how he creates the crosscourt rally and waits for the opponent to change direction. Now, rather than drive the ball crosscourt to hurt his opponent, Andre waits for the opponent to move and hits back down the line. Although hitting down the line, Agassi is not changing direction from a crosscourt ball, but rather a ball coming straight at him, lessening the level of difficulty.

His goal here is to catch his opponent anticipating the crosscourt shot, slightly unbalanced on the split step, and to force the opponent to play offense crosscourt from his weaker side. This pattern is most effective when your opponent has a weakness in movement or court coverage.

Note: The above paragraph is a rule not a law. As all great players can tell you, there are many times when you will not recover completely and dare your opponent to hit to the open court.

The reasons for this are multifold. You may know that your opponent cannot hit a backhand down the line with consistency and you will play the inside out forehand position with more risk because of your opponent's weakness. You may have a great running forehand so you will expose your vulnerability and challenge your opponent to beat you there.

The basic, efficient recovery position is intelligent to understand, because it provides you with a means of controlling your effort of movement. But, use your strengths of speed and shot-making to modify your recovery position on the court as you progress to the higher levels of the game.

When You Are Out of Position

But the flip side of understanding how court movement affects your patterns is learning how to deal when you yourself are on the run and out of position. I like to ask students the following question:

Assume you hit a crosscourt forehand or backhand drive with your weight moving forward. It clears the net by about 2 feet and lands with good depth in your opponent's court. Now hit the same shot with your weight moving sideways or backwards.

Will this ball land shorter or deeper than the first ball? The obvious answer is shorter (although, surprisingly, the answer doesn't always seem obvious to my students.) Less weight transfer into the ball means less power, and this means less depth.

So how do you counter when you are in this weaker, off balance position? There are two choices: Either adjust the pace of the ball (hit it harder) or adjust the height (hit it higher).

Which will you choose? The right percentage play is to adjust the height of the ball. A player moving backwards or sideways will be less balanced. Less balance makes striking the ball with more power more difficult.

By hitting higher you are also creating a better margin for error, which is wise for an off-balance player. Understanding this simple fact allows to adjust based on position.

Learning From Pro Tennis

The above patterns and situations are the very basics from which one can build a baseline game. As you begin to see the patterns in professional tennis, notice how the depth and width of shots influence directional changes. Here are the things to watch in pro matches to learn more about crosscourt diagonals:

Which player is playing his stronger shot more often during the points? Which player is changing direction from the baseline without trying to hit a winner?

Which player is driving his opponent outside the singles sideline, using angles, more often? Can you see one pattern happening more often when one player is serving and a different pattern when the other player is serving?

These are the same questions you should ask about your opponent's game in your own matches. In the next article we'll look at how pro players battle to get control of the diagonals, impose their favorite patterns, and switch the patterns that favor their opponents.