The Five Fundamentals:
Ready Position

Michael Friedman

Tennis is a simple game.  You hit the ball, then I hit it back.  The fact that you have to get it over the net and in the court makes it a little more complicated.  Keeping score adds another dimension. For 150 years, these basic parameters have remained unchanged. 

But with every generation, ball striking in tennis has become more dynamic.  The game has become more physically demanding and mentally challenging.  As fans, we are now witnessing the best tennis ever played, by both men and women.  And that is bound to continue with the next generation of players.

As the game has evolved, however, I believe that certain fundamentals have remained unchanged.  I call these the Five Fundamentals. I’ve evolved these concepts in over 40 years of teaching.  During that period, I have had the privilege of teaching thousands of students, and I can truthfully say that I have learned more from them than they have from me.  This series of articles is a synthesis of that incredible experience.   

I believe that every shot in tennis has 5 fundamental parts. The Ready Postion.  The Preparation.  The Position on the Ball.  The Stroke and the Finish.  And the Recovery.

Becoming sound on all 5 components will make you a very solid player, a player who will be able to play the whole court with confidence.  The Five Fundamentals are also the basis to develop strategies and game plans for competition.  This is because mastering them allows you to understand what is happening in your own game and the game of your opponents. 

In these articles, we’ll work through all five fundamentals in great detail, starting in this article with the Ready Position.  We’ll see the characteristics of this position and how it flows naturally into the split step.  Then we’ll look at how the top players use the ready position and the split across all the shots in the game.

The Ready Position

When you study the video in the Stroke Archive you see that the players all look a little different, but there are critical common traits that the players all have.  The first is the Ready Position.  The second is how a great Ready Position flows naturally into the split step and the initiation of the movement to the ball.

What is the Ready Position?  Here is a simple definition.  The ready position is the perfect position from which to react and then move to the next shot.  That may seem obvious.  But very few club players are ever really ready.  Yet the top players are ready on virtually every ball.

Equally important after the ready position comes the split step.  As we will see, the split step has several important variations, as players can move either forward or backwards with the split, and even initiate the preparation as they are coming down onto the court.

To develop a great Ready Position of your own, you have to master 3 components.  These are the physical, the technical and the mental. 

Physical

First is the physical component.  Mastering this component is how you start to become a tennis athlete, exactly the same way as the best players in the world. Your feet are shoulder width apart or more.  You are on the balls of your feet.  Your ankles and knees are flexed. 

Your back is straight, but leaning forward.  Your head is up.  This posture creates balance and a low center of gravity.  It puts you in the position to move quickly and efficiently in any direction. 

Many players find this position unnatural or difficult to maintain, at least initially.  You have to work to get comfortable with it.  It takes practice to develop the feeling of having your weight forward with your knees bent.  It’s the same with keeping your spine straight but still leaning forward.

Split Step

But this position is ideal to activate your feet.  It is critical for moving into the split step.  Your feet now move upward off the court, then kick out to the side as you are coming down. 

The result is that in the landing your feet are wider apart, at least six inches wider and often much more for the top players.  Simultaneously, if you have the right ready position, you are able to jump either forward or backwards as the shot may dictate.  (More on this below.) 

With this Ready Position and split step, you will be able to move a relatively small distance, or cover the whole length and width of the court.  Every point starts with the Ready Position and after every shot you have to work physically to recreate it before the next ball.  Doing this requires a lot of energy and can be a measure of your intensity level as well. 

Technical

The technical components of the Ready Position involve the grips and other issues about how you hold or point the racket.  Do you start with the forehand grip in your dominant hand, or do you start with a grip this is part way between your forehand and backhand?  Are your hands together or apart?  This is an issue that both one-handers and two handers must address.

Are you spinning the racket or are you keeping it still in your hands?  How tightly are you holding the grip?  Are you starting with the strings vertical or are you closing the strings to one side, or even all the way down?  Is the racket shaft pointing straight ahead or is it angled slightly to one side or the other? 

When you change to your backhand grip are you mainly rotating your dominant hand on the hand or are you also using the non-dominant hand to rotate the racket against the hand?

There are many possibilities—and not necessarily any wrong answers.   The point is to be efficient and relaxed at the same time.  You need to be efficient in the way you position your hands and make the change. You need to be relaxed enough so there isn’t any extra tension in your hands and arms to slow down your reflexes.  All the top players do things a little differently and you should find the combination that works best personally for you.

All these issues should resolve at the level of automatic personal ritual.  You need to do the same things the same way on every ball without thinking.  These rituals are particularly important in the return of serve.  So experiment and then create rituals that are all your own!

Mental

The mental component includes the use of all your senses.  We use more than just our eyes--we also use our hearing to react quickly to the ball. 

Your hearing plays a role in determining the quality of your opponent’s contact.  This information is used to discern how fast the ball is traveling and the amount of spin that is on the ball.  This is critical to reacting correctly to each shot.  Players need to hear each other’s contact.  This is why you need to be quiet at a tennis match. 

Anticipation is another very important aspect. Science has taught us that the human eye can see only at the rate of 20 to 25 frames a second.  A ball moving towards your opponent’s racket and then hitting their strings, is moving so fast that the human eye cannot see the impact.  

If you are focusing solely on the contact you will not see the ball again until it is too late to react to where it is going.  I want my students to look at their opponent’s racket just before they hit the ball. The ball will come into focus just as it comes off the strings and they will be able to react to the ball as quickly as they possibly can.

Breathing is another key ingredient.  Inhale and then exhale as you land in your split step.  This will get your breathing in rhythm for the next inhale/exhale on your shot.  You want to inhale when the ball bounces and exhale on the hit.  This should happen when the ball is on both sides of the court.  Inhale when your opponent tosses the ball on their serve, exhale as you land from your split step.

The video of Juan Carlos Ferrero is a perfect example.  JC is on his toes, knees bent, back straight and head up.  He is stepping forward into his split step and distinctly exhaling as he lands.  He starts with his hands apart with a continental grip in his dominant hand. Look at how he sinks into his knees. 

In this video we can also see that as the players land from their split step, they sometimes start to prepare with the feet and upper body.  To do this you must time your split step to land a split second after your opponent has hit the ball. 

It’s “bang” hit, “bang” split.  As they land the players can begin the footwork pattern by turning their outside foot in the direction of the shot, or starting a drop step.  In addition, they shift their weight and starting the body rotation in the direction of the ball.

Ground Game

Let’s look specifically at the Ready Position for the ground game.  One important variation is the movement forward or backward as the players go into the split step.  Depending on the ball, the may jump either backward or forward, so that landing the split actually starts the pattern of movement.

Players may jump back with the split, in order to have the time and the space they need to move forward into the shot. 

Monica Seles had a great attacking ground game.  One big factor was her Ready Position.  Watch as she split steps jumping backward so she can move into the ball.

You can see the same move by Maria Sharapova splitting backward in order to move into the shot.  If she has been pushed back behind the line, she will move up and split forward.

If the ball is shorter or slower, they may jump forward, landing the split further toward the net.  In either case, the players are focusing on the incoming shot, anticipating its speed, spin and depth, and beginning their movement in the most efficient possible way.

Return of Serve

Now let’s look at the Ready Position for the return of serve.  As with the groundstrokes you can see there are options.  Depending on the oncoming serve and what the return player intends to do with the return, he may jump either forward or backward with the return. 

This can actually be true or either a first or a second serve.  The player may split forward in order to cut the ball off and take the return early.  Or he may split backwards in order to buy time, or to position himself to take a fuller swing.  Mastering the Ready Position means the ability to do both, and also the ability to read the oncoming shot in order to select the correct option.
 
In the animation, Marin Cilic starts with his hands together in perfect athletic posture and jumps forward into his split step to hit a gorgeous, compact return.  Rafael Nadal, on the other hand, jumps backwards into his split, positioning himself to take a larger swing similar to his groundstrokes.

The Serve

Now let’s look at the Ready Position after the serve.  The same two basic options apply.  The player may split and stay forward inside the baseline.  Or he may split and push backward. 

Again the decision is made on the basis of the time available and the characteristics of the incoming ball.  On a first serve, the server may stay inside the court because he has produced short ball on the return.  But in the modern game, he may also split immediately to deal with a high velocity return hit directly back to him, an increasingly utilized tactic. 

Anticipating a deep return on a second serve, the player is more likely to push off backwards with one or two steps, positioning himself behind the baseline before the split.

Watch in the animations as Nikolay Davydenko hit his first serve and land inside the court on his front foot, then split steps still inside  the line.  Compare that to Novak Djokovic after a second serve.  Here Djokovic takes 2 steps back behind the baseline, assumes a perfect athletic position, and then split steps.

Serve and Volley

When the player serves and volleys, the pattern is different.  We all should recognize these legs -- it is the great Pete Sampras serving and volleying. 

Pete lands on his left foot well inside the court takes one more long stride and jumps forward and sinks into his split step which allows him to explode to the volley.

Watching this pattern gives you a good idea of how difficult the serve and volley has become.  With the speed of the serve and the speed of the returns, it is rarely possible for the server to reach the service line for a first volley.

The pattern Pete is using is typical of most serve and volley points: a landing, a stride step and a split, placing him about halfway between the baseline and the service line. 

Another great serve and volley player, Greg Rusedski, often managed two stride steps, but landed barely inside the court, so that his position at the time of the split was roughly the same as Pete’s.  In high velocity serve and volley tennis, the point is not how far the player gets in, but whether he can split in time to prepare for the volley.

Approach and Volley

Coming into the net to volley takes confidence.  You can feel it when you watch great volleyers move.  Watch how Tim Henman uses his momentum during the split step to move forward effortlessly to the forehand volley. 

He is rarely caught moving the wrong way when he comes to the net.  Why, you might ask?  Because the timing of his split step allows him to react to wherever the ball is going and then move his feet correctly for the volley. 

Here we can see the dynamic flow between the split and the start of the actual stroke executed at the highest level.  Notice how Henman comes into his ready position with his right foot still slightly off the court. 

As he lands, his outside or right foot turns in the direction of the shot, initiating his body preparation.  Note the position of the ball in the freeze frame.  His preparation is virtually complete with the ball still on his opponent’s side.  This advanced use of the split step is what allows him to make a difficult first volley look easy.

Top volleyers tend to land the split step when the ball has traveled roughly half way between the players.  This means they are initiating it around the time of the hit.  This timing allows them to achieve dynamic balance which in turn allows them time to react to the ball even at the high speeds in pro tennis.

This is a critical point to work on in club tennis.  Club players have more time than the pros, but often are far too late with the split to give themselves the chance to hit a successful volley.

So that’s it for the first fundamental, the Ready Position.  As you can see from all the wonderful video that we have at our fingertips on Tennisplayer, we can break down the game of tennis into its simplest form and learn from the best players the world has ever seen.  Next month we will explore Preparation for all the shots!