5 Tips To Improve Your Tennis Game Today

• By Krsto Arsenijevic

Many elements of your tennis game require weeks, months and often years of hard training and preparation to master. There are, however, some tips you can apply to your game today.

These are mostly related to strategy and overall approach. Though not physically demanding, they will challenge the way you perceive your role in every game.

1. Prepare Immediately For The Next Shot

In a game of tennis, every second counts.

Even before the bouncing ball comes over to your side, you should have your hips and shoulders turned, ready to position yourself for the next hit.

Why is this first on our list? Because it affects EVER SINGLE SHOT. The more quickly you prepare yourself, the more options you’ll have for playing the opponent’s return shot.

2. You Are Only As Good As Your Follow Through

As games run long, players have a tendency to let up on their follow throw. Don’t do this. Don’t.

Every stroke should be the exact same as the thousands of identical strokes you’ve spent years practicing. Keep proper form, from stance to follow through, on every single shot, and you’ll notice an immediate improvement in late-game play.

3. Learn To Recover Fast

When you’re playing well, everything feels great and your confidence increases. Unfortunately, tennis is a back and forth game, and your fortune can change in an instant.

You have to be able to recover fast mentally. Competitive tennis is as much about willpower as it is about mechanics.

When things start going downhill, you have to make a mental choice to turn the tide and bounce back.

This applies on a point-by-point basis, but also on a match-by-match basis. You’ll have bad games. You’ll play better opponents. You have to be able to bounce back. You have to have confidence in yourself even when your last play was a joke.

4. No Double Bounce Policy

This is quite possibly the best piece of advice you’ll ever hear. Don’t let the ball bounce twice. EVER. Chase every single ball, especially during practice.

While you will, of course, miss a few, you will definitely miss 100% of the shots you don’t pursue. Go after every ball.

5. Don’t Overcomplicate Your Shots

Nothing feels better than dusting the line and hearing the crowd’s amazement, but there’s no scoreboard value for style points. Unless you are Roger Federer, you’ll probably miss that line-shot 2-3 times for every time you land it, and in case you weren’t counting, that’s a total value of negative two.

Don’t over complicate your shots. Keep it simple. Your job is to get the ball back over the net. That’s it. If you can consistently send over a strong shot that forces your opponent to reposition, you will beat Mr. Line Duster 9 times out of 10.

Conclusion

Use these tennis tips to instantly improve your tennis game. If you improve your preparation and follow-through, master your mental game, hustle after every ball and keep your shots fundamental, you’ll notice a profound increase in your performance.