One thing that carries a lot of weight in learning tennis is practice. Once your tennis lesson is over it’s always a good idea to work on the concepts your coach covered and repeat them on the court till you’re completely comfortable with them.
Some shots, like the serve, you can practice on your own. For others – like your ground strokes and your volleys – you’d probably need a tennis buddy to hit with. So when you meet to play tennis, don’t rush into the match. Spend half an hour practicing different drills – cross court forehands, down the line backhands, drop shots, overheads – so you can calibrate your shots and range. Try to reach a certain count, say 10 or 20 forehands each, before you move on to the next drill.
These drills can be incredibly rewarding for both technique and endurance. Because you don’t stop to prepare for your next serve and because you don’t get a chance to double fault, you actually spend more time hitting the ball and controlling your shots. You’ll find that these practice sessions also help with concentration and focus, as there’s fewer distractions in switching court sides and chasing tennis balls for your next serve.
Every tennis partner naturally has a different style and tennis aptitude. So, try to get different people to practice with. That will keep you more alert and build out your game for different situations on the court.
So, how do you get a list of different players to practice with on a regular basis? Try this site – www.tennisround.com – which is now available nationwide in the USA in all 50 states. Tennis Round has membership of about 30,000 recreational tennis players from 2,500 cities across the country. Each member is listed with their skill level and home courts, so you can pick the right folks to contact.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to look for players, they can do this for you based on your own level and location. Every time the Tennis Round system finds you someone who wants to play with you, they’ll send you a notification by email and by SMS.Tennis Round offers a Free Trial Plan, which lets you get a sense of how it all works. If you decide to use the service on an ongoing basis and keep getting matched up with different players around you, they have a Premium Plan for $29.00 per year or $4.99 per month.
You can also use the site when you travel, because they have mapped the tennis courts in nearly 5,500 cities. You can search for the nearest tennis courts by ZIP code or by address. And you can see who plays at each court. For example, check out Golden Gate Park in San Francisco or Central Park in New York.
