STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More Tennis

• Thanksgiving: Islanders serve food, tennis balls
• Local tennis: Mardy Fish to face Xavier Malisse at Swingtime event at Lely
• Marco tennis clinics set

Share and Enjoy [?]

In last week’s article I suggested that to succeed in single’s competition the ability to sustain a crosscourt rally was of the utmost importance.

To add to that fundamental concept and have it carry even more strategic weight, lets add the ability to keep the ball deep in the opponents back court.

Playing cross court allows you to play over the lowest part of the net and into the long diagonal of the tennis court, thus reducing your errors and limiting the distance your opponent can run you with their next shot.

Playing the ball as deep as cautious aggression allows affords you:

• More time to recover to a tactically central location to track the next shot.

• More time to run down that shot after they have struck it.

• The deeper the ball the less angle your opponent can create.

• The net is actually higher relative to the court when you force the opponent to play from a deep position, which then in turn increases their chance for error.

The key ingredient to keeping the ball deep during a baseline rally is playing the ball high over the net.

Most casual observers think that top players are always ripping the ball an inch over the net at 100 mph — that however is not the case.

The shot that sticks in the observer’s mind is the blazing passing shot that ends the point, and not the rallying game of maneuver and position that leads up to the eventual eye candy shot that ends the point.

Become a patient rallier ! Crosscourt and deep will be your cornerstones to single’s success.