If you are serious about taking your game to the next level, which I hope you are, then you need to be serious about moving up in the court. Moving forward is not limited to getting volleys and overheads. It is about winning a court-positioning battle within the match. If you can win the court-positioning battle, everything else in the match gets a little easier and your likelihood of success increases. When you are able to move up in the court, you put pressure on your opponent in a few key ways... You take time away without even hitting the ball harder You can make your opponent move more through access to more angles You appear bigger and the court appears smaller by cutting off angles All of these combined make it very difficult for your opponent to win points. They need to move more, they have less time to react, and they have smaller windows to make their shots. If you can do this time and time again over the course of a match, your odds of winning more points increase sign...
If you're serious about taking your game to the next level and want to win more matches, this is for you. "Playing to win" can look different for various styles of play, and there are common themes that you can implement. In my experience coaching high-level juniors and college players, the strong majority of points result in unforced errors. Very few points end in winners. I think that winners happen, but should never be intended. What I mean by that is a winner should be a normal, controlled shot that is hit after creating an opening on the shot before. Knowing these stats help define a strategy for junior players. I tell players that I work with to try to force errors out of their opponents instead of hitting winners by them. When we do this, it changes the mindset and mentality from "I don't want my opponent to touch this shot" to "I want to make my opponent miss." This is a massive advantage in junior tennis where unforced errors abound. Wh...