The most common difficulties in teaching tennis and how to overcome them

[bman]

I thought it would be interesting to take a thread to highlight some of the most common technical problems of low level players and see if anyone has any unique insights into how to fix them. I will offer a couple technical flaws that I see over and over.

1)"Opening too soon," both on the serve and the forehand, and sometimes on the overhead. It is hard to define, but we know it when we see it.

2)Palm up on the serve, leading to the racket not coming up on edge and low contact point. Assume the grip is correct.

3)"Scooping" on the forehand...the strings never face sideways, only forwards, and there is no radial deviation whatsoever.

4)Inability to hit up on the serve.

Thanks for your time.

[julian1]

A hitch

I thought it would be interesting to take a thread to highlight some of the most common technical problems of low level players and see if anyone has any unique insights into how to fix them. I will offer a couple technical flaws that I see over and over.

1)"Opening too soon," both on the serve and the forehand, and sometimes on the overhead. It is hard to define, but we know it when we see it.

2)Palm up on the serve, leading to the racket not coming up on edge and low contact point. Assume the grip is correct.

3)"Scooping" on the forehand...the strings never face sideways, only forwards, and there is no radial deviation whatsoever.

4)Inability to hit up on the serve.

Thanks for your time.

5) A hitch on a serve and maybe forehand

[John Yandell]

Oh man I've seen every problem that could possibly be--anything that can be done right in a stroke I've seen the opposite at some point.

All that experience led me to a general approach. This is to have a model or series of model variations of all the shots. Now you video the player and see how they are deviating.

You can explain all you want, but in my view change comes when players have clear images and feelings of the elements of the model motions and then can feel where they are in relation to the model. Now over time movement and change occur.