In the first video Gregg explained that winning tennis matches is
all about playing percentage tennis and
he also showed you with data that that's
exactly what the best players in the
world do and the second video Gregg
introduced the simple red, yellow, green
traffic light system that guides you in
making the right decisions
depending on where you are on the court.
We also took a closer look at the red
zone and the kinds of mistakes that
players typically make from the red zone.
If you haven't watched those two videos
yet please watch those first because
these videos do build upon each other.
It's one thing being able to understand these tactics
in the classroom and another thing going
out executing it. Now just like you may
have technical flaws or habits in
your game...it's hard to break those habits!
So in tactics you also have to break
old habits if you are making some tactical errors.
So it's so important
that you go and work on these drills,
work on the situation so when you find
yourself in certain positions in a match
you've trained it and it's almost an
automatic switch, when the ball lands here
I'm positioned in this position and
based on that position this is my target.
You don't second guess you just go for
the target!
Now the footwork for playing a defensive
ball from the defensive area of the red zone.
So if the ball lands in this area over here.
(like this quarter circle)
Then you're gonna have to go back and how you
go back is you want to take 'cross-over steps'.
You want to cross over
going back! Now if the balls up high, you
want to load up on your back leg and
you're going to play off that back leg.
The key here is you want your body weight
going upwards! A lot of people make the
mistake of falling backwards and
end up missing the shot.
So you want to cross over, you want to drive up!...
See how this leg comes up and then you gonna fall and then
you can recover back to your recovery position.
Let's take a look at it again.
So the balls in that quarter
circle in the corner. You cross over, you
cross over, you load up! If the balls up
high you drive up on this leg...
this left leg goes up and then you land
and you recover back to this position.
Now you do the same thing but if
the ball is dropping and its lower, try to get
your weight forward where you can play the ball
from this position. So you have the 2 options!
A low ball you'll play like this.
If the balls up higher you'll play with your
back leg and you want to make sure you
transition your weight upwards and not
back!
So what you want to do is you want to do
a couple of shadows swings.
So I'm going to show you how to do it. We'll shadow
swing it and you cross over, cross over,
load! Drive up! Land on that leg and
split step! Again cross over, cross over,
cross over, load! Drive up! Land on this
leg, come back...split! Then you want to
practice it when the ball is low and you
can get onto the front foot.
So you're gonna split, you're going to crossover,
crossover, get the weight forward...hit!
And then come back...split! Again cross over,
cross over, load!
Get the weight transfer forward, hit! then come back and split!
You want practice those shadows things over
and over before we go onto the hand feed.
Now let's take a look at a drill
using the defensive footwork. You want to
defend high and deep.
The idea is when the ball is in flight,
you're going high and deep to buy time.
You are recovering so when the ball is bouncing
on the other side, ideally you want to
be split stepping in the recovery position.
So Nadim is going to start
with shadows swings. He's going to take
crossover steps going back and load on
that back leg! He's driving upwards not backwards.
Crossing over. If he does have
time he can get back and then transfer
the weight forward!
Now let's take a look at this in action.
We will start with a hand toss first!
I'm gonna try to toss the ball to that
outer corner right there where he's
forced to move diagonally back, but now we
have a target area!
So he's in a defensive area. He's going high
and deep cross-court to zone 3.
I'm tossing the ball over here and he's
working on recovering, making sure he is
here when the balls bouncing.
So i'll toss it a little bit tougher here.
He wants to get back quickly!
We want to take crossover steps going back.
One point to highlight when you do this drill, if I'm
hand feeding the ball, very often
i may feed the ball long and it's actually
going to be out so that way
i'm actually pushing the student where
they can feel the have to go back!
So I'm going to feed it so the
ball is actually going to land close
to the line or even land out!
Don't pay attention to that part. The whole idea is
you want to get the feeling of being pushed
back!
Crossing over, loading up on the back legs.
Let's take a look.
Now the feed is actually pushing Nadim back and
forcing him to do this!
This is more difficult to show the hand toss...
hence why the ball may go out but
ideally we want to get him to work on that footwork.
Now we're going to put this
together in a feeding drill.
The first progression all i'm going to do is
feed deep balls to Nadim where he is either going to
play a defensive shot or neutral shot
high and deep cross court.
Now i am positioned right here to give him more
of a true angle so when he's playing the
point this is going to represent an angle.
If i stood over here this wouldn't
really represent how he would play.
I'm going to feed
I'm pushing him back. High and deep!
He's just working it over and over with the feed.
So you can play neutral or you
can be in a defensive position.
So you want to practice that over and over!