really important video because i'm going to tell you how to practice in today's video i want to
explain to you what the most important strokes are and what you should focus on when practicing but
it's not like that i'm also going to tell you what the most important strokes are on the atp tour and
the wta tour so let's get started with the atp tour and no secrets a strong serve and a
strong forehand are the most important shots by far when it comes to professional men's
tennis and i already know what you're thinking nick what about benoit paire benoit paire is one
of the only guys who prefers to hit a backhand he does not have a strong forehand so he is for sure
an outlier and there has been some other guys that prefer the backhand but the vast majority
of professional male players will build their game based on a strong serve and a strong forehand now
let me explain to you why it is possible to reach the elite level without having a good backhand
let's say that you have a backhand that is not even top 500 level if you had a strong forehand
and a strong serve you can theoretically still have an elite level career for example
jack sock and steve johnson in my opinion those backhands are nowhere near the top 500 but both of
those guys have an incredible serve and incredible forehand and they can hide that weakness so it
is possible on the atp tour to have a weakness on the backhand side and yet have a successful elite
career see in the case of benoit paire i actually think that his forehand is not as bad as it looks
it is an awkward looking technique it is sort of an ugly technique i know what i'm talking about
because i have ugly technique as well but despite the ugliness of it is actually quite a good
forehand and it is a topspin forehand he has a lot of spin as he hits the ball so as ugly as it looks
it's actually quite an effective shot and i'll never forget how well the forehand was working
for benoit paire when he took out novak djokovic in miami see another reason why i think that some
atp players can get away with having a weaker backhand is these guys are unbelievable athletes
and many of them will cover the backhand side with their forehand so they have the ability
to hide their backhand by running around almost every single backhand steve johnson and jack sock
are fantastic at doing so but even some of the players that have really good backhands
will still run around a lot of their backhands to hit forehands especially guys like rafael nadal
so this just goes to show you how important the forehand is in addition to the serve on the atp
tour and of course tennis was different on the atp tour back in the day because the volleys
were extremely important but the serve and volley game has gone by the wayside yes players of course
still come in and the volley is an important element when we're talking about the very top
of the atp tour but it's absolutely true that serve and volley has died out yes there's a couple of
guys like maxime cressy and nick kyrgios still from time to time will serve in volley a lot but
generally speaking serve and volley has disappeared and so has the importance of the volley
on the atp tour and it is absolutely true that you don't need to be a great volleyer like the guys in
the 70s 80s and even the 90s you can get away with having weaknesses at the net if you have a
strong baseline game and a strong serve and we're talking about the wta tour it's all about the
baseline game it's not so much about the volleys and this might surprise you but on the wta tour
the serve is not that important you can get to the elite level of the wta tour with a relatively
slow serve but it's not only that there are some players with shoulder issues and limitations
with range of motions and there's cases of pancake serves on the wta tour waiter serves
players with insufficient racket drops not because they don't know how to serve but these are usually
cases where there's some kind of limitations from an injury players such as madison brengle
do not have a high level serve at all but because it's a wta tour where the game is based on strong
baseline play you can get away with having weaknesses on your serve and interestingly
on the wta tour what i've been able to observe through my research is that a lot of players
actually prefer the backhand over the forehand so we talked about benoit paire there's a lot of
players like that on the wta here that actually have a better backhand than a forehand and we're
talking about both tours specialty shots are not so important because you don't really see
that much variety in the game anymore what are specialty shots where a lot of slices drop shots
lobs playing the ball with sidespin maybe like fabrice santoro this is something that
you don't see that much but i will say that the drop shot has had somewhat of a resurgence with
some of the newer players such as carlos alcaraz are using it more and more in the drop shot is
coming back so i would say that on the atp tour the drop shot is an important specialty shot
when we're talking about the wta tour where the variety in the game has completely disappeared
specialty shots are not important at all which means that once a player turns up that
has some good specialty shots such as barty or monica nicolescu a lot of players struggle
with that type of opponent because they're just not used to seeing that style of tennis all right
but enough about the pros you didn't click on the video for me to tell you about what the pros like
and don't like you clicked on this video to find out how you should practice and what the most
important shots are at the recreational level and here we will have to distinguish between
singles and doubles and let's get started with singles so if you came to train with me i would
train you exactly like i trained my juniors i would put you in the grind chamber we would
grind the same way when i'm training high level players and what is grinding well it's all about
building your fundamentals from the baseline these are going to be your building blocks the forehand
and the backhand hit from a million different situations in the court is what we would be spending
the vast amount of time with we would spend at least 75 percent of our time on building
baseline fundamentals the other 20 of our practices we would focus on the serve and the
return of serve and you're probably thinking nick the serve and the return of serve are
the most important parts of tennis why don't you practice that more i want to tell you why first
of all serving is extremely monotonous and if you just serve ninety percent of your lesson you're
gonna get bored and this is gonna be a problem if you wanna play tennis on a daily basis you wanna
be excited when you come to practice and you wanna have the will to go out there and work hard and if
you do something boring every day it's going to get old really fast having said that when i do
serve practice with my players i try to get the serve practice to be as exciting as possible by
setting up targets and maybe taking out a radar gun here and there or just simply playing out
points also the reason why you don't want to serve too much is that what i find is when you
serve more than 150 to 200 serves in one session because you're hitting one serve after the other
and the shoulder doesn't get a lot of rest it becomes quite dangerous if you serve too much so
i think the limit should be not more than 150 to 200 serves depending on your level and actually
just hitting 50 to 75 serves is an adequate serve practice and that usually encompasses only 20
of your practice time so let's see 75% plus 20 percent and it's 95% that only leaves 5 % specialty
shots such as volleys slices squash shots drop shots lobs you probably thinking nick are you
crazy aren't shots important like i said these shots can be important even at the pro level but
these are not going to be your bread and butter shots so let's just say for example we spent 80
percent of our practice working on the squash shot or the short angle cross court or the topspin lob
this time is wasted because we could have been building fundamentals to the building
blocks of your game which are the forehand the backhand and the serve so for that reason guys
i'm not saying by any means that specialty shots are not important i'm not saying that volleys are
not important these are important elements to your game but what is the most important thing
that you need to develop i'm going to repeat it again the building blocks of tennis at the
recreational level and at the professional level are going to be the same and that is the serve
the forehand and the backhand and that is what you should be spending 95% of your time with if you're
a singles player now what about doubles well here it's going to be completely different i'm going to
explain to you why in a second but first i want to say that the vast majority of recreational players
in the united states actually plays doubles and not singles it is a little bit different in europe
i find that because the way the matches are set up where there's going to be six singles and then
three doubles in most countries players are guaranteed to play some singles where here
there's doubles only leagues and therefore there's more doubles players than singles players in the
united states what could be the reason well it's going to be the money guys there's going to be
a lot more money to be made from doubles players than from singles players i never forget my first
job in the united states i came from germany where we had a limit of four players per court
and i started working at this club in rockford illinois and the first clinic that i was
teaching there was two other pros with me and 25 people showed up to the clinic so here in the
united states it's all about the numbers the more players that you can get on a court the more money
you can make and that's unfortunately what the recreational tennis is all about in the united
states now you notice that at intuitive tennis i do 100 singles content and i will feature some
doubles drills i will feature some doubles tactics on my channel down the road yes this will come
but i'm more of a singles coach yes i can coach doubles quite well i have done it especially when
i worked in the club system in the united states i've coached a lot of doubles a lot of ladies
doubles especially but i'm more of a singles coach why because i prefer singles i do think here's the
better version of tennis when we compare singles to doubles because i love the individuality of
singles the fact that you're out there by yourself and you have to figure out a way to win hey guys
my camera overheated so i'm going to continue from the car and because you don't realize the
conditions that i record in here in florida it is really brutal but let's get back to the topic
of today's video we already discussed singles i already told you why in the united states
more people play doubles than singles so let's get to the topic which is how you should practice if
you're more of a doubles specialist and i'm going to surprise you you can practice the same way you
do when you're practicing for singles and here's the reason why i say that there's a lot of people
that believe that you can only play doubles at the net they believe that you have to come in off your
first serve of your second serve you have to chip and charge in order to be a good doubles player
and that is simply not true take a look at the elite doubles level on the wta tour there's a lot
of doubles teams that play more from the baseline and it's not only on the wta there's a lot of
atp elite double steams that also plays more from the baseline this is not something that's uncommon
even on the atp tour so what i'm telling you is that you don't necessarily have to come to the net
if you're a doubles specialist you can easily play from the baseline and be very successful so if you
train for singles this can translate into your doubles game as well and look i'm not saying
by any means that volleying is not important in doubles of course volleying is important in doubles
it's a lot easier to put the ball away at the net than it is from the baseline but what i'm saying
is that if you are someone who struggles at the net you don't have to be forced to come to the net
or spend countless hours trying to improve your volley you can easily be a good doubles player and
stay more at the baseline and look if you're someone that's a doubles specialist that only
plays doubles of course you're going to benefit from practicing differently because there's going
to be scenarios that happen more frequently in doubles than they do in singles so you
definitely have to expose yourself to situations where you're going to be at the net you're going
to probably have to practice overheads a lot more than you would in singles you definitely
have to practice volleys now what i said before i still stand by that if you are someone who doesn't
like volleying and you don't want to spend all that time improving your volley and maybe neglecting
other parts of your game you could easily play at the baseline but having said that it is important
obviously to volley well to learn how to poach to learn how to serve in volley all these things are
very beneficial when it comes to doubles i'm not saying that playing from the baseline is the best
way to play doubles i'm not saying that at all the best way to play doubles is like what the
bryan brothers do in my opinion there are the best doubles team in the history of tennis and
there were serve and volleyers chip and chargers there were closers there were poachers that is by far
the best way to play doubles and if you're someone who has a good volley you should definitely spend
more time practicing at the net than you would in singles i had the pleasure of watching the bryan
brothers practice when i worked in hawaii they would often stop there at the hotel i was working
at prior to going to the australian open and i was able to watch their practices and they were doing
double specific drills where at least one person was always at the net or they were both the net
so the net is incredibly important doubles it is the best way to play doubles however remember this
if you practice for singles this can translate well into your doubles game at the same time