Coach serves from the deuce side. The player then hits a cross-court forehand return.
If we are working on serving skills, we can't forget about the returning skills too. Each points starts from serve or return, so both abilities have to be taught at the young age.
In this drill, player works on returning skills. Control and placement are priorities to teach players how to be consistent from the first shot. To make it more competitive, coach can give one point for each good cross-court return and see who the best returner is.
A tiebreak is a short sprint where every point is worth the same as a break of serve. The players who win them are rarely the ones who hit hardest. Here is how to coach the patterns, habits and scoreboard thinking that win the big points.
Most club players practise the serve on its own and then have no idea what to do with the ball that comes back. Serve plus one is the pattern that turns a good serve into a won point.
Wimbledon has just crowned another champion, and if you watched closely you saw the same thing every year: the best returners quietly won the tournament. Here is how to coach a return that pressures the server rather than just surviving it.
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