Butts and Elbows

Notice his "Uh-oh!" face
Photo from www.coreperformance.com

Butts and Elbows is a great activity for older junior players, advanced beginner and up. I even like it for adult clinics, especially Cardio Tennis. Yeah, get ready to run!

Two players start at net. I like to have them actually touching the net with their racquets to make it a little more challenging. Two other players are across the net at the baseline. Coach feeds a lob over the heads of the net players. They run it down and play out the point. Here's the trick of it: when the baseline players see the 'butts and elbows' of the net players as they are running down the lob, that is their cue to run in as they play out the point. Repeat by alternating which side is running down the lob.

So in addition to emphasizing the timing and communication needed to effectively run down the lob, Butts and Elbows helps the baseline players recognize a prime opportunity to close in on the net. And of course the name will get plenty of giggles from your junior students.

Capture the Net

I can think of at least two American
players who have a good net game . . .

There's a lot of chatter these days about the state of American professional tennis. People who follow tennis think there should be more Americans in the top 10, heck in the top 20. Why this is not so is endlessly debated online, in the media, and I am guessing at your local club. One reason that bobs up frequently is the evolution of the American style of play.  Simply put, players don't learn an all-around game anymore. They are trained to stay back at the baseline, hit with power and topspin, and outlast or out-hit their opponents. Their net game, in a word, stinks. Whaddaya say we try to fix that? Here's a fun drill to encourage your players to come to the net. It also emphasizes consistency.

Place five balls at the net on each side of the court. Two players play out a singles point from the baseline (first ball fed is in addition to the ten balls sitting on court). Winning player comes to net, feeds one ball from the five on his/her side, and plays out the next point from the advantageous position at the net. Losing player stays at baseline. Repeat until one player has fed all five balls on their side and is declared winner.

Attention JTT coaches: this game is easily converted to a team competition.

Keep It Deep

Yellow x's = cone locations
Red numbers = the four service locations

I first learned this game from Brian Clark at one of his USC-Lancaster Lancers summer camps. Originally it was a serve activity. I have used it often and have added some variations because its principles apply to other strokes as well.

Let's discuss the original first. It is a serve activity primarily designed to encourage deep serves. The way the scoring system is set up, it also helps players learn how to keep score.

You will need some cones. Place them inside the two service boxes, along a line about 18" from the service line.

Players get two balls per serve, just as in a real tennis game. They take turns serving from one of the four service locations at the baseline (out wide ad, center ad, center deuce, and out wide deuce). After each player has served two balls from each of the four locations, that is a complete round.

Points are awarded based on where the serve lands: 2 points for behind cones; 1 for in front of cones. Zero points for anything not in the correct service box. Whoever earns the most points per round wins that round and gets one point. In case of a tie, have a one serve playoff until someone wins that round. Added bonus fun: anyone hitting one of the target cones automatically wins that round.

Here's where it can get tricky: as you accumulate points, you are keeping score the same as if you were playing tennis. So one point would be 15. Two would be 30, three would be 40, and four would be a complete game. Players compete to see how many 'games' they can win. Activity can either be timed or completed when one player wins 6 'games', which would be a complete set in real tennis.


Variations
A deep ball is a good ball regardless of if it is a serve, a forehand, a backhand, a volley, an overhead, etc. You can make this activity work for any of these strokes by adjusting your cones/markers. So if you are working on deep forehands, place the cones 18-24" inside the baseline. Cross court returns? No problem - restrict play to the deuce or ad half of the court.

Adjust this flexible game to fit your needs. Just remember to give extra points for the deeper targets.

The Leaky Bucket

A few years ago when I was working for a large national sports organization, one phrase/topic came up frequently and was cause for great concern at staff meetings and conferences: the Leaky Bucket. Attracting new players to our sport was paramount, and I think we were pretty good at that. We could design endless attractive and exciting activities with the best marketing money could buy and subsidize them to make them affordable to all. They were well-attended, successful events and we were mostly very pleased with the outcomes. But keeping those attendees coming back was always a challenge. Hence the Leaky Bucket analogy - there is always plenty of water flowing in, but there is always a certain amount flowing out, sometimes never to return. This was always considered a failure on our part, that we were unable to retain 100% of those we so successfully introduced to our sport.

I used to be very concerned about those Leaks. I took it very personally when my retention rates were not 100%. Heck, I took it personally if they were not above 50%! As time has passed my philosophy on the Leaky Bucket has changed. I would love to achieve and maintain 100% retention. That is my goal. I do everything I can to provide a quality product and enjoyable experience to my tennis students. But I also have become a realist. As a parent, as an instructor, as a citizen of the world, I know there are many other factors at play here (literally!). Busy schedules, tight finances, loads of competition from other activities (not just sports) are the main factors. Especially with my younger students, it is a miracle any child chooses any activity and sticks with it from pre-school to grad school.

I regret that my bucket is not perfect. But let's not forget about the water supply. Gotta have that flow coming in, even if a little more of it is escaping the bucket than we would like. It is critically important that we don't give up on promoting our sport and providing multiple opportunities for new players to give it a try. Even if a majority of tennis event participants are one-and-done, you never know when they might get the urge to pick up that racquet again and get back in the game. I believe as people age, the odds are much greater that they will return to a sport they once played rather than pick up something completely new. I also believe every kid should have the opportunity to have a racquet in their hand, on a real tennis court, at least once in their childhood.

I guess what I am trying to say is maintain some balance as you are trying to grow your tennis activities. Retaining players is a worthy goal. Just don't forget to keep that water flowing.

Court Defender

Greatest Court Defender
 of All Time?

This game is from Web Tennis Drills. It requires two courts and at least six players.

• Divide players into two teams. 
• Each team selects one player as their Court Defender. 
• Each Court Defender is then sent to play against the opposing team. They face each member of the opposition in singles, who are rotating through one point at a time. 
• Points are only awarded to the Court Defender. The opposing team's job is to prevent the Court Defender from winning any points. 
• First Court Defender to win 7 points wins one game for their team. A new Court Defender is then selected from both teams and play continues until one team has one 10 games.

I have not used this activity yet. I like the concept. My concern is that with very large groups there may be too much down time for the waiting players. Ideally you would have enough courts available to keep the waiting players' groups small, say 4 or fewer.

Update: I think I misunderstood how this works - there should be no 'waiting' players. Teams alternate playing against the Defenders, so everyone is playing. So for example Team A's Defender takes on Team B player (anyone but Defender B). Point ends. Then Team B's Defender plays someone from Team A (anyone but Defender A). So players are waiting briefly as each point is played out, but are not waiting the entire 7 point series.

Around The World

Talk about a nice shot!

Got a large group? Want them to run off a little energy? Around the World is just what the tennis doctor ordered. It's a variation of  Tag Team (or Relay) Tennis. Like Tag Team Tennis, players divide into two groups and take turns playing singles one ball at a time. Hit a ball, run to end of line, next player hits next ball, repeat. In Around the World, fitness is an added component. Player hits a ball, then runs to end of line ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COURT. Genius!

This game is easily adapted to any skill level. Young players can toss ball instead of using their racquets - they will love the extra running. It's perfect for older players also. I have seen it used many times in adult clinics as well as Cardio Tennis.

UPDATE: I used this activity recently with a Red Ball class of mixed abilities. It was a forehand day and we used this as a wrap-up activity. We had 5 players on a 36-foot court. I threw down five spots: one at each baseline, one at each net post, and the final spot waiting behind one of the baselines. Players rotate to a new spot after every point. I fed the first ball in to the forehand since we had been working on forehands in that lesson. I also added a point component: one point given for each ball hit into playable area, basically a Rallyball format. Player with most points when ball cart is empty, wins. The kids enjoyed it. They were picking up balls and filling the cart so it wouldn't get empty! Will definitely be using this again.

100

Lots of tennis activities related to numbers and here's a great one I just saw on Web Tennis Drills. When I first saw the name I thought it would be an attempt to rally 100 times. It is, but it isn't. Two players rally, counting the number of rallies as they play. When someone misses, the other player gets the number of points they had played to. So for example if they hit 12 balls and player A misses ball 13, Player B gets 12 points and they resume. First player to get 100 points wins.

This activity easily qualifies for my Frequently Used list. It is simple, it has consistency at its core, and it is easily adapted to any level player. Players can't rally yet? Let them toss underhanded. Too easy? Have them hit only forehands, or only volleys, or only cross-court. This activity would easily work for doubles or as a mini-tennis doubles warm-up. Perfect also for a team warm-up rather than that silly useless league warm-up everyone does these days. 100 takes too long? Surprise your players by having them select a number somewhat at random ("pick a number between 25 and 75"), and that will be the number of rallies needed to win.

Update: I used this activity yesterday with an odd number of students. At first I had them playing 2 vs 1, rotating frequently so no one was stuck as the Lone Ranger for too long. This does not work. The side with 2 players invariably skewed toward one player playing most of the balls and if there is an error made, that player gets the points. In fact one player figured this out and started hogging balls just so that if he forced an error, he got the points. So I switched it up so that no matter the number of players per side, only one was playing out the point, and rotate players after every point. Problem solved. We went with the number 38 rather than 100 due to a random choice by one of the players. These were 10U beginners and it took them more than 20 minutes to finish. Whew!