Tips From the Tennis Pro: Moving Towards the Ball During a Baseline Rally

September 14, 2016 | By Damir Barisic
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Photo credit: iconarts

Tennis is a global sport with a long history and tradition. At its highest level, the professional level, the game is played at an extremely fast pace. When watching a professional match, it is easy to notice powerful serves, returns, forehands and backhands. Although the speed at which tennis is played is increasing from one generation to the next, the essence of the game remains the same—hit the tennis ball to your opponents’ side of the court in a way that they cannot return the ball.

At the professional level, dictating play wins you more points on average than defending. A good start of the point, with a powerful and well-placed serve or a deep return, will help in dictating the point. After the serve and return, the winner of the point is usually decided through the baseline exchange of shots. When developing junior tennis players, it is smart to have them develop a powerful and accurate serve and solid return. It is also important to develop a good baseline game. Mastering many skills and abilities is important in order to develop a solid baseline game. One of those skills and abilities is taking the ball early, and with that, gaining better court position relative to the opponent. By doing so, players learn to take time away from their opponent. Furthermore, together with developing this skill, players usually develop compact, simple and efficient groundstrokes. In order to become better at this skill and develop good timing on groundstrokes, it is important to start practicing this skill early on in one’s tennis development. Here is an idea on how to help a junior tennis player develop the above mentioned skill:

“Make the player develop active footwork by asking them to move towards the ball whenever possible instead of waiting for it. If the speed of the drill is appropriate for the level of the player, this could be possible to do in many tennis drills. By practicing in this manner, the player is naturally learning how to use momentum of the body against the direction of the tennis ball to create efficient power. The player is also learning how to take time away from the opponent and how to feel comfortable when hitting groundstrokes from inside the baseline.”

The opposite of this skill would be planting the feet too early in preparation of the groundstroke and then waiting for the ball.

As the player advances in learning this skill, on-court situations within the rally should become more complex.

On a professional level, where the game is played fast and the ball is landing heavy and deep in the court, even a half-step move towards the ball and against its path will make a big difference in any baseline rally. To get to that level, it’s good to start developing such skills and habits at an early stage of tennis development.


Damir Barisic

Damir Barisic is a High Performance Coach at CourtSense-Bogota Racquet Club, and holds the highest level coaching license in Croatia. Prior to joining CourtSense, Damir competed on a professional level and achieved ATP ranking in singles and doubles, and after that he spend time coaching at the IMG Nick Bolletieri Academy in Bradenton, Fla., in the Niki Pilic Tennis Academy in Munich, Germany, as well as privately coaching players such as Anja Konjuh and Donna Vekic. At CourtSense, Damir is working with juniors and adults from all different levels, including many nationally-ranked players.

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