Often times, developing players step on the court before a tennis match and have no idea what they want to accomplish in terms od strategy. The reality is that you can be the best ball striker in your division but if you have no idea how to use your weapons you will lose. A tennis player without strategy is no different than a warrior without strategy. Having the best equipment and training is not always sufficient. A player must know how to use his weapons to the most effect in order to be successful. Now, without going into great detail and creating a road map for every single point, the best strategy in tennis can be summarized as follows:
1) hit it away from your opponent; and
2), if you must hit it to your opponent, do so in such a way that s/he cannot hurt you: high, low (slice), hard or with a lot of spin. The objective being to draw a response that exposes the opponent's open court.
Tennis is often times compared to chess in terms of formulating a gameplan. Unfortunately, tennis players must make decisions on the spot and react to what the opponent is throwing their way. As a result, it is often important to view the opponent's side of the court as a chess-board; squares of 4ftx4ft on the other side of the net.
In trying to implement the first prong of the strategy, vizualize one of those squares "light up" whenever you manage to hit it. After that, try to hit a square that's as far away from your first target and yet still a relativey safe shot. As you get better, you will be able to hit targets that are further and further apart. If you're really good, you will be successful in making the opponent move laterally, forwards and backwards, as well as diagonally. A moving opponent is more prone to break down - even with his/her weapon. Lack of oxygen, elevated heart rate, fatigued legs, core and arms (consequences of having to keep covering the open court) will force the opponent to go for riskier shots thereby generating more unforced errors.
One of the best drills to implement would be the "figure 8" (or "envelope") drill where one person hits down the line and the other hits cross court. Try practicing 1-2 warm-up points and then play baseline games while doing this drill. This drill will teach you not only how to move, but also how to adjust to your opponent's shot. Furthermore, because everyone knows where everyone else is going, you are forced to hit a variety of shots in order to prevent your opponent from hurting you (prong #2 of our basic strategy). In addition, you will become much more adept at reading body language (i.e., seeing how your opponent sets up in order to hit down the line versus how s/he sets up while hitting cross-court). To spice things up, throw in a serve: if the returner returns the first shot cross-court, the server is the down-the-line player; conversely, if the returner returns down the line, the server is on the cross-court for that point. Also, you can set up certain "zones" (with tape or plastic lines or cones) where the player cannot hit (e.g. middle of the court) or risk losing the point and/or also zones where the player can hit and win the point automatically (e.g. deep corners).
We will be revisiting the figure 8 drill in future articles.