Guys is it possible to learn feel? It absolutely is and i'm the perfect example for that when i was in
juniors i had no feel whatsoever you would rarely see me attempt to do a drop shot or even backhand
slice was a rarity however when i started teaching i was forced to hit the balls very
gently to my students and over the past 25 years or so i've actually developed great feel so if i
can do it you can do it as well but you have to practice it if you don't practice feel
you will never have it so in today's video i'm going to show you some great ways how you can
improve your feel i do place a big importance in learning feel as a tennis player this is something
that i do with my students on a daily basis and in my experience learning how to feel the ball better
can actually help you with your powerful shots as well so what is feel what are we talking about
here? so basically what feel refers to is feeling the ball so when you feel the ball with your hand
you can feel the fibers rubbing against the hand so how does this translate to tennis we obviously
cannot use our hand when we touch the ball so we're talking about our strings when players are
referring to feel is that when we feel the ball on the string bed so in order to feel the ball
on the string bed there has to be a reduction in speed see if we hit the ball very fast or very
hard we're going to feel it a lot less because obviously the ball is going to come off the
strings much faster so shots that are associated with feel are specialty shots such as slices
drop shots short little angle shots that you're gonna hit or maybe even topspin lobs and while
it's not absolutely necessary to have all these little specialty shots there's even some
elite tennis players who do not possess a lot of feel in my opinion it is always good to have
a full repertoire of strokes is gonna make tennis a lot more fun to play okay so let's get started
with the exercises and the first few i'm going to show you are good for any level tennis players
even beginners so if you're a beginner what you have to learn is bouncing the ball on your strings
now while this might look easy it's not so easy because you have to control your hand so beginner
players will often make jerky movements with the ball and it will lose control quite fast so you
learn to bounce the ball on your strings like this and then once you get comfortable with this
you can start flipping the racket upside down and also it's important to learn to bounce the ball
on the ground again this does require a still hand and a control over the string bed now there's a
few progressions you can start making it a little bit more tricky and difficult and maybe try to
bounce the ball underneath your legs or you can even do one behind the back like this and so you
can make these exercises more difficult and they might even be useful for intermediate players
another great exercise for the beginner level is try to roll the ball along the edge of your frame
you can see here how the ball is rolling along on the edge and the more comfortable you get you
can start speeding this up and often the ball will roll right off your edge if you're not careful and
then you can also change directions and you can do this before your tennis practice and this will
improve your feel okay now we go on to the intermediate to advanced level and this is an
exercise that i learned from my dad so basically we're going to flip the racket around without the
ball falling off so basically it's going to look like this you see and i'll go back the other way
this is actually pretty difficult to do you can try it out okay you can also bounce the ball
on the ground with your edge this will also work on keeping your hands still and this one is easy
and next one i'm going to show you is the hard one it's basically bouncing the ball with the edge
into the air and what i recommend is holding the racket a little bit higher and there are some guys
online who are absolutely amazing at this i'm not very good at it let me see how many i can get all right
the best exercise for feel and the one you absolutely must learn is
the following one you're going to throw the ball up into the air and now you're going to catch the
ball without the ball bouncing off your strings so a lot of recreational players will throw the ball
up and then when they try to catch it the ball bounces off the string so they can't figure out
how to do this one i'm going to show you the mechanics behind it so basically what
you need to do is when the ball is going down the racket needs to go in the direction
of the ball so the ball is falling and the racket simply has to follow the direction of the ball
and this will slow the ball down and make it stop on the strings let me show you
one more time racket goes in the same direction as the ball and the ball stops on the strings
guys you can also learn how to stop a ball that's coming towards you so basically you're
going to do the same mechanics the ball is going to be traveling in this direction and the racket
is going to go backwards with the ball and it's going to make it stop on the strings now when
the balls come with a lot of pace you don't need to go back that far you do a quick little move
like this and the ball stops and this looks really cool and a lot of people are impressed
by this so let me show you again see that actually bounced a little bit let me try again
bounced again let me do a little quicker move that was better
that was the best one so far let me try one more there it is one more time
that was the best one so far that one did not bounce at all that was a good one
another great way to develop feel is by playing mini tennis see this is often neglected
in practice players will go straight to the baseline and start rallying from there
in my personal practice sessions i start every single one with mini tennis i made another video
titled mini tennis drills and games and i highly recommend that you watch this video
and copy some of these drills and games and then incorporate them into your tennis
practice sessions and guys you can also improve your feel by doing shots that are in the feel
category things such as the drop shot the slice the topspin lob or short little angle shots
but the shot that's mostly identified with feel is a drop shot and that's the one
i'm going to show you today now if you want to find out in great detail what the technique for
the drop shot is i have a separate video you can check out titled how to hit a drop shot but let's
just talk about generally how do we approach the topic of feel when it comes to drop shots
see you have to hold the racket looser number one has to be a looser hold on the grip because just
like that exercise we did when we are catching the ball we want to absorb the ball in the string bed
i want you to have that same mental image on the drop shot now while you might not be absorbing
the ball so much when you're hitting drop shots from further back in the court you do need to
hit more of a down and a cross movement when you're at the net however and you're getting
a lot of pace coming your way you can actually employ this similar technique to that exercise
where you're actually absorbing the ball and making the racket go backwards so guys
let me show you how to do this so you have to absorb the ball into your string bed if
you do it really well the ball is going to have a lot of backspin it's going to bounce
on the other side and then come back to your side let me see if i can do it on this one yes i did it
so it's a great way to develop feel because if you want the ball to bounce on that side and come back
to yours you cannot make any forward movement of the racquet you have to absorb the ball into your
string bed and go backwards a little bit while at the same time going down and across like that
so guys you can develop feel but you have to practice it so incorporate
some of this stuff into your tennis practice and once you have feel this will round
out your game it will complete your tennis shot repertoire and not only is this a more
fun way to play but it can also make life more difficult for your opponent
and this can only happen with a reduction in speed so when we hit the ball very hard we're feeling the ball
that's not ironic at all talking about feel and then framing one over the fence