Tennis Players, What's Your Favorite Shot?

ive started playing @ a nearby club, it's cool you can p much play any weeknight vs a random opponent for $25 as a nonmember. id been fairing p well vs 3.0-ish level folks but last night got paired against a 4.0 who i could barely stay on the court w/. really strong forehand that he could place perfectly & he moved so well for a dude in his prob mid-50s. it was still fun, even though he crushed me 6-0, 6-2, 6-4. i needed to get in more first serves.

ayo technology i bought this thing, only used it once so far but its p crazy how much it helped my game

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61QBzrc7S2L._SL1500_.jpg

I haven't played in years :((((( quit to focus on running. I miss it.

that's like giving up on sex to focus on heavy breathing

been playing singles like 2x a week for the last two months, i'm prob like .500 m/l

theres 1 dude whos easily 65 yr old & serve/volleys and who owns me, hes sick

had a good comeback last night from down 1-6, 2-4…….i ended up winning 1-6, 6-4, 10-4

was hobbling today from a foot blister tho ow

this is my personal tennis blog thread now

i think ive won 5 straight matches or so, and beat a dude tonight who ive never before beaten

my 1st serve has gotten really solid somehow. like i prob only get like 1-2 clean aces per set but it otherwise leads to maybe 1 free or easy put away pt per game nonetheless, makes a big difference

that's like giving up on sex to focus on heavy breathing

Lols

ive been working on the one-hand down the line backhand, thats a hard shot for me so the few ive hit recently have been p cool; ive also gotten ok @ inside out forehands off of service returns for winners

i had a rematch vs the old man serve & volley dude and he still beat me 6-7, 1-6, i made a tonne of errors :<

my worst shot is definitely the smash. 99% likely to miss it. total panic whenever i have to hit one.

Volleying is the only thing I'm actually good at. Or was when I played regularly.

indoor season winding down, rn im 21 wins/15 losses

mostly happy to have not suffered any serious injury for playing so regularly

played a couple tough like ex-marine looking 50 yr old types w/ huge serves. fortunately, im p good @ timing returns and at least getting them back in play and both guys regular fh/bh games were not that great & I won both matches in 3d set tiebreaks

i've played like 10 times in the last 3 years :(

you play USTA, jc?

nah just @ a club, like a ladder sitch

Passing shot, duh

nice

i used to play v regularly, played USTA for a few summers, but have been moving a lot lately and haven't had reliable hitting partners

what racquets have you all had good/bad experiences with? it's time to get a new one for me. i really enjoyed using a head titanium recently and am torn between that and the oversize wilson one?

(i am short, not great at generating power but instinctively play aggressively because my strokes are too inconsistent to just get the ball back. it's not a great combination. oh and i can't serve or smash at all lol)

I have the same Prince Michael Change Graphite Longbody racket that I had in High School. It's 20 years old and beat to shit, but I can't imagine playing with anything else. Maybe I'm missing out on some new tech that would make me awesome.

I still use the one I posted upthread - prince O^3 silver -- its oversized and pretty forgiving and produces good power; the owner of my local tennis store when I went to get it restrung derogatorily called it a grandpa racket lol, and im sure that's right but I find it still has enough touch for me and I rarely hit w/ heavy spin so don't care so much abt maybe lacking that control

I also have a head graphite racket and a smaller faced prince (I think the model isner uses) and each feels kindof like a pea shooter in comparison, I don't like the head 1 @ all

i hate serving so much. have no idea what i'm doing when i walk up to the service line, no control over my motion, on the rare occasion it's working it only takes one or two DFs for it to go completely to shit because i don't know what i was doing right or what i'm doing wrong. completely affecting my enjoyment of playing in general. played one and a half sets at the weekend, after four straight service games of four straight DFs i had to stop. i basically have no idea how to get it over the net and into the service box. when i tried to just tap it in it still didn't go in :(

yea that's tough. hard to give advice on it but m/l don't overthink it. so much of it is just timing. for me, I get screwed up if I don't wait like that second or two for my toss to peak/come down a bit. when I just played on sat my serve was really working well and smooth, it felt good. I feel like I took a bit from novaks motion and how relaxed it is

get some lessons, lex

I have some imo great advice: don't serve!

I play with a friend, and a couple of years ago we decided to skip the serves. They take a lot of energy and rhythm out of the game, and unless you're really good at it, what's the point? And if you're really good, then acing the serve just ends the ball - and what's the fun in that? Instead we start the ball with an easy underhand - makes it a lot more fun to play. Have seen others at the club do the same.

Ofc doesn't work if you're playing competitively :P

skipping serves is probably how i got into this mess where i can't play actual matches. just hitting it aimlessly isn't really sufficient.

serve is my worst shot. my cross court forehand is getting better though.

as a total noob my advice is to hit the serve from further forward than a pro, like kind of in front of your face. improves accuracy no end

an idea short of taking a lesson or two, is to just go to an empty court alone sometime and work on your serve. ive done that occasionally, usually it does help

Lex, my simplest serve advice (I teach tennis professionally) is to point your left foot toward the right net post and allow your tossing arm to follow in that line. Keep it straight and let the ball to roll off your fingertips, placing it slightly right of directly overhead. If you imagine a clock face above you with 12 overhead then that would put the ball at 1. A continental grip is ideal but something closer to a forehand grip will work, too. Toss high enough that you're striking it on the way down with full extension at the top. The continental grip will allow you to come around the outside of the ball and to naturally follow through across your left side. This is your basic slice serve.

Most important is to consistently place your toss at 1 o'clock. If you're chasing bad tosses then everything else you do right goes out the window. Good luck.

ha you're not london-based are you?

thankyou anyway. i should really jot down these tips and just spend an hour on the court. one of the problems is that i need to concentrate so much on the toss to get it even vaguely right that my racquet arm ends up completely out of sync - i think one of the reasons i hate the entire action of serving is that i'll have this weird feeling when my racquet arm is behind me that i can't even sense how fast it's moving or what direction, it's just complete malcoordination. i never know when i should be bringing it round to strike the ball, it never seems to be in the right place at the right time and i can't seem to control where the racquet faces at any point. i once tried an exercise where i tried throwing the ball without the racquet and it turned out that i can't throw either!

recently started taking tennis classes for the first time, about 12 lessons in now and it the most fun i've had in years. still spend a lot of time desperately lurching at balls from out of position but when everything comes together for a point (usually seems to be a running crosscourt backhand, which would be probably more useful if i could run faster) it's the most satisfying feeling in the world.
also seems like i'm pretty good at serving compared to people at my level. we were first told to practice throwing the ball as high as we can vertically because it's a similar motion to serving, so i guess there's a correlation between throwing and serving ability

OTM Lex. I'm pretty bad in general but my serve is particularly awful. For a while I just hit as hard as possible and like 1/10 would pass (with an ace often). But lately I have tried to improve my other shots and somehow, as a result, my serve is now totally deconstructed and éventuel worse with no power, acuracy, nothing ! Quite depressing. I'm thinking about booking courts alone just to practice since I can't bother serving when I play with friends anymore.

indoor season starting up again, i think im physically in better shape rn or maybe just have minimized amts of nagging injuries so thats good. also my backhand is improving

played a good opponent last wk, prob 1 of hte best dudes reasonably at my same level -- won the first set 6-3 and proceeded to win one more game the rest of the match lol

then tonight i played the old man s-v player that i described upthead - won 6-7 (6-8), 7-6 (7-4/5?) 13-11 in a 3rd set 10-pt tiebreak

was a real weird match, i m/l neutralized his s/v game but my serve was reaally off and a double faulted a fucking tonne. felt like i shdve won the first set, then was up 5-2 in the 2nd and had to sweat out a breaker there. then he was up on me 8-4 in the 3rd and i came back but also got a touch lucky, i thnk he got a lil tired and was hitting some lobs late hoping id hit errors(?) idk :)

fuck me where i serve, im on like a monthlong rough stretch. might be like 1 win, ten losses idk dont want to check details. literally every match (before my last one where i played terribly lol) has been close, won a set a lot of the time and the only other scoreline that looked bad (6-1, 6-2 iirc) was against one of the best players ive ever played and i was in every game about and had several break pts

im back tennis bløøgin, played the dude from my 10/22/2015 post again, had a break pt to go up 5-1 in the first set, didn't get it, and ended up losing the set in a tbreak, and the next set 2-6; played decent tho, it was def a competitive match

def my strength rn is court coverage, in my last match a really pivotal pt was like me getting back an extra ball or two and allowing my oppenent to hork it

happy to see this thread revived. i teach tennis and play USTA 5.0. i mostly stay on the metal threads but will gladly offer any insights if needed.

nice! i'm a 4.5 but hardly ever get to play these days

hit me up if ever you're in seattle.

im prob like 3.5 maybe 4 on a good day

i also recently played and beat this kid prob ~15 yrs my junior, plays currently in college but coming off a bad shoulder injury; he shd of killed me but it was nice playing counterpuncher to someone w real pace & he also then hurt his knee and was hobbling late in the match.. nevertheless i felt good beating him

rematch vs 11/3 guy, ill call him gerry; his game is so nice, easy smooth groundstrokes w easy power and he moves good for someone prob ten yrs older than me

def competative again, tho lost 6-4, 6-3; i hit some good shots man but he can usu cover them; he hit multiple short angle like chip lob passing shots on me from deep in his b-hand ct, those are so devastating and pretty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFxs8r5BEKE

Always good to see this thread updated!

Must try and play again soon. Only "recent" court-time was late summer 2014 when my playing partner (female colleague from work) broke her foot after 45min. I've been playing a bit of badminton but it's not the same...

wow that's brutal

while playing vs a friend this summer he sortof stepped awkwardly coming in for a short ball & ultimately it was a partial tear of his Achilles tendon :(

I've played some of my best tennis this summer but it's frustratingly one step forward, one step back - some days it feels like I'm hitting the ball super well and then a couple of days later I can't control the most basic rally shots. The shots I like hitting most are FH DTLs, either running around my BH in that corner or redirecting a cross-court on the FH side. My volleys have really improved! And I can even get overheads right on occasion.

I still can't remotely serve but that aside I most struggle with running up to short, slow balls that need to be put away. So frustrating to hit multiple good shots in a row to get the short ball and an open court and 99% I make an error. I also don't really have a BH DTL, can't seem to get the timing right, and in general I struggle with...spatial awareness on that side? In that I can't "see" where the ball is going to land and end up either too near or too far away.

Also in matchplay I am definitely a mentally weak choker (though it would help having a SERVE, I loathe everything about the process of serving, it's really psychologically the worst way to start a point)

Oddity about my serve though: when I'm practising it I miss nine out of 10, and they'll all be long. In a match I'll miss nine out of 10 and almost all in the net. I have no idea why this is. It feels like I'm attempting the exact same motion. I have no awareness of what my body is actually doing when I serve.

been on a good streak, may not have lost a match since the 12/1 post above ~ im in 1st place in my clubs ladder, 13-3 record

there are def like 2-5 ppl no_doubt better than me but they just dont play as often

kinda have had a persistant sore rt groin, is there some common sense treatment for this? it does lessen by just like rest so

sorry to hear that! unfortunately i don't know. great work though--congrats! i've really been working on my strokes to good avail as well.