Today I spent a lot of time with a player working on their perception and ability to read the incoming ball. In other words, we spent a lot of time on the receive aspect of the game.
Tennis is a send and receive sport
At its most basic, a game of tennis is all about sending and receiving the ball. We hit the ball (send it) to our opponent, who hits it back to us (we receive it). This is unlike golf or lawn bowls were we just send the ball. All sports have either a send or receive component, many have both. Tennis has both and in equal measure – theoretically, we spend half our time sending and half our time receiving the ball. So, it makes sense players should spend equal time developing both these aspects.
Spend more time on the receive
Most coaches, and I have been guilty of this in the past, spend much more time on the send aspect of the game. If you think about the numbers, the ball spends about 0.4 of a second on a player’s racquet. The rest of the time the ball is either travelling through the air or on the opponent’s racquet. But so much coaching time is spent focusing on that impact and possibly the split second before and after. So again, if every rally back and forth is around 2 seconds and only 1 second of that time is about impacting the ball (let’s call it the sending second), it’s just as important to teach our players what to do in the other second – the receiving second.
What we receive impacts what we can send
The incoming ball determines what we can or can’t do with our outgoing ball. If we receive a hard deep ball, we have fewer options than a slow, high, short ball. And the faster we can recognise what type of ball is coming towards us, the better we can make decisions around what we can and can’t do next.
So, including exercises to develop skills around perceptual based rules, tracking based rules and decision making are critical components of any best practice session plan. Things like watching the opponent to see if they are on the back foot, front foot or in a neutral position, or where to move when you see they are on the stretch. These things help a player gauge what type of ball they may get back.
The best players in the world work on this aspect – they don’t all have natural anticipation. They (and the best coaches) understand the need to quickly grasp the characteristics of the receiving ball so they can move into a better position. This in turn gives them more options and more time to make a good decision.
It’s not enough to only learn how to send a good ball.
Regards,
Marc Sophoulis