I’m a firm believer that junior development is about skill development. These skills aren’t to just put balls into play, but to develop the skills to hit the best and most appropriate shot in every situation to a specific target. Many teaching pro’s instruct on just making balls. Great examples are volley’s, overheads, serves and ground strokes. The missing factor is the context and purpose. If you learn how to bunt a volley in the middle of the court, how does that actually help you win a match? There are many examples of why standard coaching is not effective with static skill approaches without context or scenarios. I’ve listed the 40 necessary skills to be an advance player. These skills aren’t learned top to bottom, however a good coach needs to assess the deficiencies in all 40 areas and develop a plan to close skill gaps. Juniors competing in higher level yellow ball tournaments need to have a good inventory of these 40 skills. Each skill can be performed in an assessment with 1 point for each target(objective) hit. Percentile scoring can be tracked year over year to determine the progression of each player.
Skills will be segmented into groups, with 2 or 3 target zones. An example would be backhand volley (middle) would have 3 target zones: inside out, deep middle, angle cross. Each scenario would be attempted two times with one point for each made target. A coach would feed a ball up the middle and the player would move to the proper position for the backhand volley and scoring would be based on the ball traveling through the target zone, in play. A miss would be through the target zone and out of play, or missing the target zone, but in play.
Example of about 20 skills:
Example of 3 skills- Ad side deep target
Inside out Forehand, High Backhand Slice, Inside in Backhand Volley
Volley Group–
(2×2) Drop volley (BH and FH)
(2×2) Angle-FH + BH
(2×2) Deep volley (backhand and forehand)
(X)Lob volley (BH and FH)
(2×2)Inside out(forehand, backhand) volley
(x)Half volley deep (FH and BH)
Backhand slice Group
(1×2) (Inside spin) inside out + angle
(1×2)Backhand slice (Outside spin) Angle + Inside in
Transition Group:
(2×2) Forehand approach- line and CC
(2×2)Backhand approach– CC and line
Overhead group–
(1×2)Backhand line, (1×2) backhand angle
(1×2) FH Angle, (1×2) FH inside out, (1×2) FH inside in
(1×2)Slice overhead + baseline hit ball slice
Backhand transition approach -cross
(x) Drive volley (FH) swinging volley
(2×2)Lob (FH and BH, service line target)
(x) Topspin lob (FH and BH)
Return group
(1×2)Inside out BH return
(1×2)Inside in BH return
(1×2)BH slice return (high, medium, low)
(1×2)Forehand slice return (chip n charge)
(1×2)Drive return (FH and BH)
Serve-
Wide deuce, wide Ad, T-deuce, T-Ad, Body
Kick serve (body, wide)
Backhand Group
(1×2)Backhand deep cross
(1×2)Backhand line
(1×2)Running defensive backhand- deep middle target
(2×2)Defending the low short slice-CC target and line
Forehand group:
(1×2)High loop forehand
(1×2)Inside in forehand
(1×2)Inside out forehand
(2×2)Running forehand- CC and line
(1×2)Short angle
(1×2)Deep CC
(2×2)Defending the low short – CC and line
Specialty Group
(2×2) Dropper (forehand, bh, return of serve-out wide angle return)
(x)Defensive slice FH
(x)Underhand serve
Find Your Game 