Imagine having the best Baseline rally of your life where you're hitting amazing shots you're
moving your opponent from one side of the Baseline to the other and finally you get that easy sitter
in the middle of the Court only to make that frustrating mistake this is one of the most
common problems at the recreational level where players have a difficult time putting balls away
and in today's video I'm going to explain why so many Rec players struggle with putting balls
away but it's not only dead I'm also going to tell you what you need to do to finally start putting
balls away and there's one word that's gonna put everything in context and that is trajectory so
what you need to understand is that trajectory is the most important factor when it comes to putting
balls away and I'm going to give you an example of a shot that has the most favorable trajectory
when it comes to putting the ball away and that is the overhead and I want you to think of it
and the following way when I hit an overhead I can hit it at a very steep trajectory meaning that the
angle is going to be severely down so that when the ball bounces it's going to be so high it's
going to bounce right over the opponent's head and that is the easiest way to put the ball away
now when I say it's easy to put away I understand that a lot of you guys at the rec level struggle
with overheads even some professional players struggle with overheads and the simple reason
for that is that most players don't practice the overhead enough so what you need to do is
build the right overhead technique with all the fundamentals that you need for the overhead and
you simply need to incorporate hitting overheads into every practice session now how about balls
that are not over our head that are lower we're here we also have to think of the trajectory
and let's take volleys as an example the hardest volleys to put away are the ones where we hit the
ball with an upward trajectory in other words when we have to bend down hit the ball below our waist
it's going to be very difficult to hit the ball straight they'll hit the net and naturally we'll
have to hit the volley with an upward trajectory the easiest volleys to put away are ones that can
be hit with a downward trajectory if you remember the Bryan Brothers the greatest double steam in
the history of tennis they try to hit every volley with a downward trajectory they would get so close
to the net with almost their nose touching the net and they would hit put volleys away with a
downward trajectory because that is the easiest way to put the ball away now this is not something
that's easy to do because it requires you to close the net very aggressively and have great footwork
and great timing a lot of you guys at the rec level will have a hard time with closing and you
allow a lot of balls to fall below your waist on the volley and now you're forced to hit up so just
like the overhead you have to incorporate more of these type of volleys into your practice sessions
where you're working on closing and hitting the volley with more of a downward trajectory
if you don't practice these shots you're likely not going to use them in a match situation but
now let's move a little bit further back in the court and talk about how we're going to put balls
away that are bouncing around the service line and here the most important factor again is the
trajectory of the ball so if you allow the ball to be very low and sometimes you don't have to
allow it to be low sometimes it's low by design for example if you're returning a slice but in
any case if the ball happens to be low now you have to hit the ball with an upward trajectory
now this is not as big of a problem as it is at the net because here we can apply Top Spin
however here comes a big caveat because we are so close to the net we're also closer to the
other Baseline and when we apply Top Spin the ball doesn't have a lot of room so it can fall
inside of the Baseline so even if we apply a lot of topspin often the ball will still
stay along so what we have to do in this area of the court when the ball is lower we have to
reduce our swing speed and not go for the kill keep your swing speed between 50 to 80 percent
place the ball well and this is how you have to handle low balls around the half court and now
you're probably thinking Nick how do we put the ball away from half court again think of the word
trajectory if you are able to hit the ball higher and hit it more at a downward trajectory now you
can hit the ball as hard as you want because the ball doesn't have to go with an up and down
type of shape now the ball can go straight down very similar to a high Volley or an overhead and
you can hit this type of ball as hard as you want whether it be a forehand or a backhand
but here's the thing guys a lot of you at the recreational level completely ignore hitting
the ball above your waist a lot of you guys are comfortable swinging from the waist and when the
ball gets a little bit higher you either let it drop down or you try to take it early off
the balance of both of those options are bad when we're talking about the half court the
way you want to approach the half court is that whether you take it while it's still on the rise
or on its way down you have to manage to play the ball a little bit higher so that you can hit it
with a downward trajectory keep in mind that the swing has to be different from your regular swing
we talk about the forehand generally you want to have a load a high type of Swing on a high
forehand this is not going to be the case if you want that downward trajectory to take place what
you'll have to do is either swing straight across the body like this or indeed swing high to low
now swinging high to low will depend on a lot of factors your body height will depend on the height
where you actually taking the ball and how close to the net you are so someone of my height six
five I can take a lot of balls with a high to low type of trajectory because I'm hitting the ball at
a higher level a shorter player might not be able to do that unless they're very close to the net
now how about the backhand yes the backhand is going to be very similar to the forehand I will
say that the two-handed backhand we're talking about high balls is going to be a little bit
easier to put away than a one-handed backhand but one thing that I want you to understand is
something that a lot of high-level players do is that when a ball is soft and it's high and
it's in this part of the Court it is going to be very easy to run around that ball so you don't
really have to hit backhands from this area on a higher ball the only time you would have to
do that is if the ball is a little bit lower and what's going to be a good option then is to hit a
slice backhand approach shot and again we're not talking about putting the ball away with
the slice backhand we're looking to place it and then maybe put the volley away on the next shot
but if you happen to have a sitter ball a higher ball you have to work really hard to get around
that ball and hit a forehand from the backhand side oh another factor that makes putting balls
away at the recreational level such a difficult thing is the fact that a lot of you guys suffer
with ball recognition so when you do get a short ball you don't recognize it fast enough and by
the time you recognize it you're scrambling up only to shovel the ball back in play you
know of course you can't put the ball away in that way so experienced players have really
good ball recognition they recognize a floater ball much faster than you do now when it comes
to ball recognition I've made many videos about this topic and you have to be patient to develop
it because the more balls you see coming your way the better your ball recognition will become but
you have to remember that you will only have a good ball recognition if you have Readiness and
intensity also the fact that some of these shorter balls are hit in transition this is another aspect
that a lot of Rec players struggle with the fact that they have to move up to the ball and what
happens often is that they overrun the ball so the way you want to approach half court shots
is that once you recognize the ball you have to be super explosive and make the first
few steps very quick but then when you get close to the ball you have to settle yourself you kind
of have to hit the brakes position yourself well so that you're in the right place at the right
time the worst thing that can happen to you is that you overrun a sitterball and now you end up
making contact behind there's no better feeling in tennis than having the entire court open and
having a super simple shot where you can hit is very soft into your open court and this is still
a winner it doesn't matter if you hit it 20 miles an hour or 100 miles an hour a winner is a winner
now how do you get the court to be completely open well there's a whole another subject you have to
work with the geometry of the court with angles and open the court up and create opportunities
where the entire court is going to be open for you and it's not going to require you to hit a shot of
a high quality you can just stroke the ball into the open court now one player on the ATP Tour that
does this perfectly not necessarily by stroking the ball but rather by coming in is Rafael Nadal
if you take a look at how Rafael Nadal puts away his volleys he never has to hit a hard volley when
he hits a winner on the vast majority of his put away valleys the entire court is open he
gently chips his Volley into the open court this is what I want you to understand when you set the
point up good enough then the winner doesn't have to be that difficult and guys here comes
the most important part of this lesson and that is the fact that a lot of you guys ignore this
part of the Court you like maybe even taking some volleys and you like playing from the Baseline but
you ignore practicing the half court and when I teach players I spend at least 20 minutes of every
lesson practicing the half court because here's the thing this is exactly what I started this
video with I give it a scenario of hitting great Baseline shots moving your opponents side to side
finally getting a short sitter ball only to make that frustrating mistake the reason why you're
making a mistake is because you're ignoring this part of the court and your practices so what you
need to do today is start incorporating overheads High volleys and all types of balls from the half
court area into your practices if you want to have any chance to start putting the ball away
like the pros because here's the thing the pros wait for opportunities like this they wait for an
easy overhead they wait for an easy Volley they're only looking to get that sitter and a half court
to finally start putting the ball away you guys are doing it the opposite way you're trying to
put the ball away from difficult locations in the court especially if you're far behind the
Baseline in order for you to start putting the ball away with ease like the pros you need to
start dedicating a lot of time of your practice to the shots that I talked about in this video