Balance + Preparation = Better Tennis

A common error made by inexperienced players occurs when the opponent hits it hard at them. Often the instinct is to try and match the pace with like pace. It is very tempting and the occasional (very occasional) time you do hit it back cleanly and hit a (lucky) screaming winner is enough to burn into your memory. Meanwhile, the other 9 out of 10 times this happens you lose the point due to some wild error!

Always remember: tennis is a game of errors. This fact will likely not change any time soon and as long as tennis is a game of errors, one of the most important game-improvement tricks is to find as many ways to limit your errors as possible. On that list, not swinging wildly is way up there.

Watch Roger here at the 2004 Masters Cup against Marat Safin. Safin absolutely crushes a backhand and comes in behind it.

Federer, instead of panicking and taking an unwarranted swipe at the ball, doubly makes sure to set his feet as quickly as possible, get balanced, and hit a nice, controlled shot in reply. His focus is clearly on maintaining balance and form, making clean contact, and merely redirecting the pace Safin provides. Note also the special emphasis Federer places on a clean follow-through and extension.

This is an example of what Federer himself calls “contra-tennis,” meaning, a useful and fundamental style of play based on using what the opponent gives you and redirecting it against him. You don’t fight your opponent; you make him fight himself. It is tennis as judo.

David Nalbandian is the game’s chief practitioner of “contra-tennis,” and watching Nalbandian, you can clearly see that his game is heavily reliant on superior balance and preparation.

Hitting winners begins before you swing the racquet!

Here’s a short clip to learn from. The winner is impressive but if you really want to know why it seems like Federer has so much time to hit it, what you can really learn from starts from the very beginning.

What do I mean?

It’s important to note Federer’s starting position the return. On both sides he will typically start with his outside foot just on the outside of the singles alley sideline. In other words, he shades slightly away from the center on the return. The simple explanation for this is that doing so reduces the angle of attack on wide serves.

Picture the following: on the wide serve, you receive by cutting off the angle or giving with the angle, but either way you are moving away from the center of the court — a positional disadvantage that any good offensive player will attempt to exploit. On a serve down the center, however, the natural tendency of the return is to flow into the center of the court, thus establishing court balance simply by virtue of the execution of the shot. This is the case in this particular clip, where Federer flows directly into the center by following the ball. With simply a well-placed return he is able to switch immediately from defense to offense.

Note how much time he has to hit the second shot. He has time to line it up because of where he is on the court, whereas he would virtually be assured less time if the same situation had occurred off a wide serve to his forehand side.

So just make note of that. This little court positioning fact is in actuality just a small fragment of the overall concept of controlling the center and maintaining strong court balance, two crucial components to any tennis player’s success and one of the primary reasons Roger Federer looks so unhurried while playing.

A Man for All Seasons: Summer (Preview)

In honor of the start of tennis’s clay court season, a preview of the second installment of “Roger Federer: A Man for All Seasons.”

This is “Summer,” accompanied appropriately enough by “Summer” of Vivaldi’s masterpiece “The Four Seasons.”

The first installment of “Roger Federer: A Man for All Seasons,” entitled “Spring,” and focusing on the first Grand Slam, the Australian Open, can be seen here.

Please enjoy!

Roger Federer Magic — Flawless Tiebreak

When The Mighty Federer hits fifth gear, the opponent is basically rendered a stage prop.

Note a few basic similarities in point construction here. Federer will play Hewitt’s backhand when put in neutral-defensive situations, but Hewitt’s forehand on offensive situations. One reason for doing this is that when you strike a ball cleanly, it is easier for an opponent to change directions on the backhand side.

In general, on a cleanly struck ball with pace into your opponent’s forehand moving away from the court, your opponent will usually roll the forehand cross-court. It is by and large the safest shot one can hit, the rolling forehand cross-court over the high part of the net, with the fat chunk of the court as a target. It really depends on the level of competition involved; at some levels, this shot is good enough to reset the point back to neutral, or sometimes force an outright error from the previously aggressive player. But the higher the level, the more this predictable cross-court roll gets hammered and put away. Federer in particular gets this to happen with great frequency due to the strength of his forehand, and it’s no great secret that attacking the forehand is a pet play of Federer’s; if you cannot pull your opponent off the court with your forehand, however, this is less an option. Even so, it is instructive to consider how Federer opens up the court with such stunning regularity against even top professionals; and it’s something to consider integrating or experimenting with your own game.

RFF Classic Combination: DL BH + IO FH + FH approach

In a way sport is like music and art — music theory will tell you that while there are only so many notes to be played, it is the combinations of notes that produce harmony and melody and pleasing sound. And artists will tell you that there are infinite possibilities arising from a finite palette. Theory, then, comes from the idea that while there is an infinite number of possibilities, some are more pleasing than others.

In sports there is a similar analog to this: the combination play. In boxing and other martial forms, one learns basic combinations of maneuvers. In tennis, even the most fluent artists on court have favorite combinations.

Here in this clip, Roger Federer voices his irritation when missing an integral component of one of his favorite transition combinations.

The clip is annotated below:

Blake to serve, deuce court
1. SS :: DL FH ret
2. CC BH :: DL BH!
3. DL def FH :: IO FH (miss)

The annotation reads as follows: Blake slice serve wide, Federer returns down the line forehand. Blake topspin cross-court backhand, Federer with a break-rhythm down the line backhand (almost inside-out). Blake, now on the defensive, puts more topspin with an up-the-line forehand to buy time on the recovery; Federer, now on the offensive and reading the play, runs around the backhand to hit his inside-out forehand and open up the court.

The idea here is that Federer, having Blake on the run, will penetrate Blake’s defense, most likely drawing a sliced backhand somewhere in the midcourt area, and either hit an outright winner or approach aggressively with his forehand into an open court with Blake pinned behind the baseline. From there, he will pick off whatever remains of Blake’s attempt to survive the point. (Of course, this was the theory behind this point construction. Theory and execution are what separate tennis from, say, chess; execution sometimes fails theory (as seen in this case)).

The observant viewer will take note that it is the down-the-line backhand off a borderline neutral ball that can be considered Federer’s phase shift from defense to offense, completely skipping the neutral rally. This requires a very high level of skill due to the abrupt change in direction of the ball and typically cannot recommended for beginning players. However, intermediate to advanced players looking to round out their attacking skills should try their best to add this shot to their arsenal because it can lead to opportunities to open up the court like this: