Toaday, we had five boys.
Tommy, Nicholas, Brian, Jordan and Chris.
I arrived at about 2:45pm. There was a sudden rain at about 2pm, little bit rain water on the court. Nicholas and I dried the courts.
Tommy, Nicholas, Brian and I warmed up first.
(Wong's brothers arrived at about four..)
Today's theme: VOLLEY!!!
So, I gave many volley drills for them.
Some volley-volley exercies as the warm-up. The volley-volley is not easy for some boys, especially when we were at the service line. More importantly, their volleys were lack of angle, which we should have a widen angle of volleys.
Next, Wong's brothers joined us.
I gave a test for them, an ability test of volleys.
The test consisted of many parts, I gave them only volley shots, which they have to put the balls to different zone/area.
Zone 1 is about the drop volleys.
Zone 2 is about the widen angle.
Zone 3 is about deep volleys.
Expected, most did not well in the test, especially the drop volleys. Chris explained that drop volley is useless in the match, because the opponent can chase and hit a better shot. But, I said that your opponent can get the ball only if your drop volley is awful! In fact, boys' volley needed to be improved.
So, I decieded to give more practices of drop volley and deep volley.
At the end, Tommy did many excellent drop volleys. Brian and Nicholas did some good deep volleys. But, Chris couldn't find the feel of the drop volley...
Service--- our must practice!
I would like to comment on boys' return of serve:
Jordan is weak when returning, especially his backhand. His brother Chris know this problem and he told me that at the ad side, serving opponent's backhand is a good tactic. I would agree with him if the opponent is weak in backhand. You know, a good tennis player cannot only has one kind of serve, which we should serve both sides of the opponent.
Brian also had a bad returning. Nicholas improved his returning.
But, boys' service are not consistent, too many errors.
Ernest, I think we should also focus on their servie and returing... it would take a very long time..
I'm sorry I have a volunteer work at TKO about counselling the F5 students, so I left at 6:15 today. Boys at the end have team single again.
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3 comments:
The volley drills sound exciting. They will be quite effective to improve the volleys. I caught the glimpse of your practice yesteday when driving past Wylie Rd.
Chris improved his anticipation of the volleys in doubles on Sunday. Keep that up in your future matches. There are 2 types of volleyers, natural and made volleyers. The made volleyers like Ivan Lendl and Bjorn Borg improved by practice and hard work. John McEnroe and Pat Cash are natural volleyers with flair and style.
Once you master the serve and volley techniques, the rest of the doubles game will become straight forward and there will be more variation in your play.
You could play Australian or I formation, cross and interception. It is all important to confuse your opponents.
Simon and I won quite a few matches against better players by getting their heads mixed up.
Haha I type this finally but maybe a wrong place....Hmm...Well I would like to talk about the match that I played during the last tournament. I thought I couldn't get a game inevitably. At last we did it! We got a game though the opponents made 2 double faults. I couldn't imagine that we could break their service game. I believe our team could do much better. Great oaks from little acorns grow. If our teammates can co-operate with each other, there are no obstacles which could challenges us!
Dear Brian
Well done for posting your post-match experience. You have improved a lot for the past few months. I fully agreed with you that the team will grow together.
This is a very good example of team unity. Every player in the squad plays a huge part to lift the standard of the tennis team. We all aim to play in the starting line-up, and there are 6 places in every match. The objective is to achieve the common goal of promotion back to Division One where you guys belong.
I was fortunate to start my first-team appearance in a winning team. I sat on the bench for the first year and winning dead rubbers against heart-broken players. The more matches you played against each other, the more match tight you will become.
Furthermore, apart from the competitive side of the game, I am still a good club player enjoying my social tennis after 30 years in the game. I could not describe a better game than tennis where you could make friends and enjoy the physical and mental challenge at your own playing standard.
good luck and enjoy the game
Raymond
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