Red, Yellow, Green. Now these 3
distinct areas are defined as where
you're actually standing when you're
striking the ball.
So either you're striking and you're standing in the red zone or
you're hitting in the
yellow zone or you're hitting it and
you're standing in the green zone.
Now I've got these concepts and other
concepts from different coaches that
I have worked with and pieced together to make it
very simple formula for you to understand strategy.
Now the red, yellow and green,
this represents the traffic lights.
Red is wait!
Yellow is proceed with caution and green is go!
So in the Red zone you're waiting.
What are you waiting for you? You're waiting for your
opponent either miss, hit short, or change
direction of the ball. In the yellow zone
this is where you hit transition shots.
Approach shots, you move through this area!
So you don't want to be caught standing
and waiting here. You hit from this area
and you move forward and transition to
the net! To the green zone so when you're
at the net you are in the Green Zone and
that's where you look to finish.
Now in the red zone there are 3 areas.
We divide the Red zone into 3 distinct areas.
From behind the baseline, we call this
the defensive area. On the baseline we
call it the neutral area and then inside
the baseline we call it the offensive area!
So from here you defend from back in the
defensive area. The neutral position
you rally and the offensive position
you attack and you hit forcing shots.
Just to be clear the red zone runs from the
backfence to about 8 feet inside the baseline!
The red zone! So like in a traffic light....
when the traffic light is red
you want to wait. You want to wait for
opponent to either miss, hit short or
change direction of the ball.
So from the defensive area, from behind the baseline...
all you're going to do is hit the ball
cross-court deep or you want to center
the ball. So you're going to hit to zone 3 or
zone 4. Now the reason I
say cross-court because sometimes players
will hit the ball short, centered but that ends
up being down the line which now makes it
easy for their opponent to attack to the
open court cross-court. So you want to
center the ball from behind the baseline.
You want to use zone 3 or 4 but it's
basically cross-court deep.
Now you don't want to miss wide from this
area of the court. If you aim through
the court with the ball crosses the
baseline. Now you eliminate
3 out of the 4
possibilities of missing. With high
percentage tennis you want to go higher over the net,
and if we try to miss long we take the
missing left and missing right out of the
equation so you're only missing in one spot,
and if we miss long we have to add more spin.
But from that position you want to play
deep through the court, keep it centered.
You eliminate the angle you give to your
opponent and you push him back.
Same is true from the neutral area, you
want to go cross-court deep. You want to
play to zone 3 and 4 keeping it
cross-court, keeping it centered.
Now the offensive area that's when you're
opponent hits the ball short. Now you have tactical options!
You can now change direction of the ball.
So if they hit the ball cross-court, you can now
take that ball and attack it down the
line to zone 3! Now we use this dotted
line over here...it's called the
percentage line. It is your margin of
safety and it's 3 feet parallel to the
single sidelines on both sides.
So you want to attack down line using the
percentage line to give yourself margin
of safety. So you can change the direction
to go down the line. You can actually go
back behind into zone 3 and you also
have the option to now open the court to zone 2.
So when you hit to zone 2, you actually take your opponent
of the court, but remember when you hit to zone 2
the court is about 17 feet shorter.
So you have to hit that ball with more precision
and spin to help bring that ball down.
When you go to zone 3 whether you're going
cross-court or down the line you can be a
little more aggressive! So that's a little bit
on the red zone. You want
to wait for either your opponent to
miss, hit short or change
direction of the ball and when you're
inside the baseline that's when you want
to look to change direction and you
can be aggressive or you can hit the
short angles open the court.
There are a few common mistakes, tactical
mistakes we see happening all the time.
Not only at the club level but also at the
pro level you'll see this.
However one common thing you'll see especially at the club
level is very often you'll get players
who are in a defensive position. Remember
your positioning where you're hitting and
standing in determines what kind of
shot you should hit.
So from the defensive position you should hit a
defensive ball but very often people in
a defensive position try to hit
offensive shot and they're trying to go
down the line! That's a very difficult
shot to hit and also we talk about
recovery, you put yourself out of
position for the next shot.
You're too far away to recover and cover the cross-court
and the opposite side of the court.
So very often people are here and the
defensive position and they want to go
offensively down the line. This is a very
difficult shot to hit and a very low
percentage shot! Again you're going to go
with the numbers. How many times out of 10...
are you going to make the shot and
still be able to successfully finish the point!
If you do make the shot, how many
times do you end up losing the point because you
cannot get to the next ball.
Another position i see is more of a neutral position.
You'll see players stretched out wide
and their feet aren't set. So they're actually in the
alley right here and they want to tag
the ball down the line. Now this is
probably one of the most difficult shots you can hit!
The ball is being hit
cross-court, your feet aren't set so it's
almost like your on skates sliding through.
Your not balanced and now you got to
redirect the ball, overcome the angle
deflection, go over the high part of the
net where the court is shorter! This is a very, very
difficult shot to hit but time and time
again players get pushed in this position...
they panic and they go for what they
think is the open court but they play an
offensive shot from a neutral but also a
defensive position and they're trying to hit
an offsenive ball and end up missing!
Go with the knowledge, go with the
information when you are not set with
your feet...
increase the upward angle and go high and deep
cross-court to zone 3. Keep it simple!
Again go with knowledge!
Think about it this way,
When you're hitting from here and now what I would like
to use is imagine the alley...if we
use golf the alley is a water hazard!
And zone 3 down the line is
your green. So basically you're hitting over
the water hazard and you're trying to land the
ball on the green. If you hit short the
ball is in the water hazard, you've lost the ball....
you've lost the point!
So when you do go down the line ideally
you want to be hitting it from this
position so that what's ahead of you is
basically all fairway! So if you hit short the
ball is still in. You've just got to worry about
missing wide and that's why we use that
percentage line that runs three feet
parallel to the single sideline.
So that's a common mistake I see from players,
they get stretched out in this
position and not safe with their feet.
They see their opponent there, they panic and instead of
going high and deep buying themselves time to recover...
they tag the ball down the line and more
often than not end up missing!
The other position is from an offensive position.
When you are in here, if you go down the line
you have to hit an extremely good shot from this
position because again you're going over
the alley, you're going over the water hazard!
If you are short
guess what...you're in the water, you've
lost your ball, you've lost the point!
It's better off in this position to actually
go back cross court because you have
more court to work with, plus your
recovery is back here!
If you go down the line, you have to
recover all the way to the other side of
the center line! So now you've given your
opponent the opening.
When you are in this position you have to basically hit
a winnner agaisnt a good opponent because
there's no way you'll get back in time.
So if you find yourself outside of the alley
and in an offensive position, most of
the time it's not the best option to go
down the line. Instead you're better off going
cross-court.
Now we're going to take a look at some examples of these common
mistakes in action! I'm going to feed the
ball and
we're going to look at in super slow
motion and we're going to look at how
small the target is from those positions.
Hitting the bad target represented by
the red cones and also how that affects
your court coverage, your position, and how
far away the player is from the recovery position.
In this first example Nadim is
going to go high and deep cross-court.
And we will take note of his recovery position at
the time where his opponent would be striking the ball.
So here he's pulled off
the court, he's in a defensive position...
He's going to high and deep cross-court.
The ball is centered and about at this time his
opponent will be striking the ball.
See how he is very close to that 3-foot area to the left of
the center mark. Now the next example we're
going to take a look at Nadim being
pulled out wide and then trying to tag the
ball down the line. We will note his recovery position.
Now Nadim is gonna be
moving to his right.
Notice how he is going to be moving through the contact
point which makes it very difficult to
now hit the ball down the line.
He comes up with a good shot here but now note
where he is when his opponent would be striking the ball.
He's in the doubles alley, you can
see he's left the entire court wide open!
Now Nadim is a highly skilled
player but if he does not hit a winner
from this position, the point against a
good opponent is pretty much over!
Here's a second example of Nadim being
stretched and moving through contact,
tagging the ball down the line.
Now his momentum is taking him off the court which is going to push
the ball wide and usually this is the
normal result we see the players try to
tag the ball down the line when they're moving
through the contact point!