New tennis players will get the most out of tennis instruction when they have developed hand – eye – foot coordination required to read and react and receive and send a tennis ball. We recommend a progressive approach for new players that starts with learning the proper mechanics of an overhead and side arm throw. Throwing mechanics are foundational skills for tennis. Players without good throwing mechanics will struggle with tennis. Once throwing mechanics are solid, we move on to racquet skills including a self rally and peer-peer block volley. Finally we progress to peer to peer rally. In order to get to a peer-to-peer rally, we recommend practicing on the garage door with a foam tennis ball. [Target/Amazon].
We start our progressive approach with throwing skills. In the video below you will learn how to thrown and use a fun drill to practice the throwing skills.
For younger kids, self rally and red ball garage door rally drill is a good progression. Please video this skill and send to us via WhatsAPP if you want feedback.
A wall rally will help new players coordinate their body and racquet in order to receive the ball and send it. It will take a fair amount of coordination and practice to do this skill. If you are struggling with this skill, go back to an earlier skill and work on refining those skills then come back to the wall rally.
Minimal instruction is needed to have a basic wall rally. Shake hands with the racquet, drop the ball to your side but in front of your feet, pull the handle of the racquet forward and upward while keeping the strings facing the garage door and strike while partially sideways.
Above is an example of a non-technical rally. Here you will notice the player is not using proper technique but is able to tap the ball over the tape. The main skills are are hitting to your side and keeping the racquet strings facing forwards and slightly upwards during the hit and pulling the racquet handle towards the air target.
A minimum level of receive and send skills is needed before group classes. If the player can rally on the wall like the above, a group class is appropriate. If they struggle to receive and send a ball to a wall and sustain a rally, it may be best to work at home until this skill is developed.
Once a basic, not technical wall rally is achieved, we would move on to the next progression and learn the pivot stroke. In our clinics, we typically teach everyone to play with two hands on the racquet. The following video clips will demonstrate the progression for a two-hand pivot stroke. This would be performed in the first formal tennis class. Learning this now will get you ahead of the game!
We start our ball striking skills with a hand rally. You can do this with a friend or with a home tennis trainer like we have above. The player should turn and extend the arm from behind them to the “air target”.
In progression #2, we put the hand behind the strings, pivot and push the strings forward to the air target.
In this progression we move the hitting side hand to the top of the handle and continue the unit turn pivot motion and pull the racquet to contact. We want to be sure that the contact point is in front of our left hip and our shoulders are rotating to contact. Also notice the pivot footwork. The racquet should finish above the shoulder. The hitting side palm should be pointing towards the top of the net at contact, aligned with the string bed. The racquet head should be moving in an upward motion through contact. The contact should be right in front of where the ball would bounce the second time. This will insure the ball is descending at contact.
The tennis ground stroke is a coordinated motion of the body, arm, hand and racquet. Learning with two hands will develop this coordination quicker and more efficiently. If the player is comfortable with one hand and can demonstrate a basic push stroke, while coordinating the whole body as part of the stroke, you may start with one hand if that is preferred. Note the motion below where I turn sideways, then rotate my body back towards the net as part of the swing. This is the pivot stroke, where the body is moving the racquet instead of just the arm.
The above gif file is an advanced stroke. Note the body rotation (right hip and right shoulder) and the racquet rotation.
Tennis is not like swimming where you can learn how to swim over a week or two, then you can just go swimming…Actual playing the sport of tennis will take time, maybe years of training before a match is played, this is why we highly recommend doing as much practice and training at home as possible. Formal instruction and lessons supplement the practice and training that you do on your own. Formal training will help refine technique and work on tactical play. Playing other sports like ping pong, pickleball, or volleyball can help develop the skills needed for tennis. In the end, many kids need to develop basic throwing, catching, hitting skills that are absent from today’s culture of computer gaming.
Find Your Game 