- Show of hands, how many people think
I can get one at 120 miles per hour?
All right, let's go!
- 120, let's see it.
[ball hit racket]
- Get over!
I'm Clay Skipper, and I have just one day to see
if I can return to serve from a pro tennis player.
This is Above Average Joe.
[upbeat music]
Returning a serve is one of the hardest things
you can do in tennis, maybe all of sports.
That's because when you reach the pro level,
this ball is traveling really fast.
The average male pro has a serve of 125 miles per hour.
That means to reach from one side of the court to the other
it takes 700 milliseconds or about that long.
Not a lot of time to react.
But, an effective return of serve,
can change the whole rhythm of the game
and can even put your opponent on the defensive.
So even though returning a serve is not quite as sexy
as a drop shot or a back hand down the line,
or even an ACE, it's crucially important
and seemingly really difficult.
I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna see,
can I hit a high speed serve hit by a pro?
[upbeat digital music]
We're here in Boca Raton, at the Rick Macci Tennis Academy.
And even though it's probably a little late
to get me to number one in the world,
they call it Macci magic for a reason.
So, if anyone can teach me to return and serve,
it's gonna be Rick.
Coach!
- Clay, Rick Macci. - How you doing?
- Good to see you.
- How you doing?
- I'm doing great.
You're ready for the best day of your life?
- Oh, I think.
- Or you're worse, sometimes they go hand in hand,
but I always figure it out.
- Really I should be asking you if you're ready
to work with someone of this talent,
in this prestigious academy.
- Yeah, I work with some of the best players in the world,
Venus and Serena, and a lot of people saw the movie.
Capriati, Roddy, Sharapova, but people ask me all the time,
like, who's your favorite student of all time?
And believe it or not, today you are.
- All right, what I like to hear.
- No, it's who's ever on the other side of the net,
that hour, that minute, that second.
Now, I saw a little bit, you know,
I know you played soccer, you got that goalie.
You're very athletic.
- Thank you.
- What I'm gonna do, is see your strengths and weaknesses
and get the job done so you can maximize your ability.
- Wow.
- There's not a wrong way or a right way.
There's a better way for Clay.
- Wow.
- No.
- That was right off the, that's pretty good.
- I'll figure it out for you.
I love the challenge of putting Humpty Dumpty together.
- I can't wait.
- Ready for this?
- Oh yeah.
- Let me just get into the meat and potatoes
of the return of serve.
Okay, rule number one,
you always want to try to get it back.
That's our first objective.
People wait till the ball's hit.
- Yeah.
- And then they react late.
Right before they make contact,
there's gonna be a footstep.
- All right.
- So, the key to being ready, is you gotta be ready
before you have to get ready,
then you don't have to get ready.
- Okay.
- So you have to do what we call a split step.
You see it in baseball right before they hit the ball.
The short stop, they take this little bounce,
because the ball's gonna come 60, 80, 100, 120.
- Okay.
- So, the ball's gonna come at you like missiles.
Now, the next thing, the stroke is gonna be much shorter.
You don't wanna take your racket back to Miami.
- Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
- All right?
Okay. You're gonna take it back to Boca.
And the reason why the stroke should be shorter,
the first serves gonna come a lot faster
and you're gonna use their power to get it back.
- Ah, okay.
- You know, so those are the three key things
that we're gonna work on.
- Point of clarification.
- Okay.
- When are you timing this footstep?
When they hit the ball, before they hit the ball?
- I like you already.
First off, now that's a great question.
It's right before they make contact.
'Cause if you do it too soon, that's not gonna be good.
And if you do it too late, the ball's gonna be by you.
Timing the split step is the key.
- Interesting.
So I think a lot of people probably play flat footed,
but I believe I saw a sign back there that said,
happy feet, less defeat.
Is that right?
- I wish a lot of the kids would read the signs.
[Clay laughs]
You know, you're reading the signs,
you've already gotten better.
So, what I'd like to do now, get the show on the road
and let me start putting this thing together.
- Great.
Try to remember the three.
[ball hits racket]
- Great quickness.
I like this split step.
[ball hits racket]
That's all right. Everything's difficult before it's easy.
Okay. Let me tell you the good, the bad, the ugly.
- Okay, please do.
- Okay, number one.
The split step is timed really well.
I know this is gonna sound crazy, but be more aggressive.
See what I see because you haven't played.
I want more mustard.
'Cause if you hit more mustard, you won't have to catch up.
Let's go, let's go.
- You are full of these catch phrases.
- More aggressive. Watch how much better this is gonna be.
Better, better.
[ball hits racket]
First off, here's the problem.
Your contact point is always behind you.
Mentally, you're excited and you're running in there
like your hair's on fire.
The name of the game on everything,
you gotta hit it in front.
- Okay.
- I feel a good one coming right here.
[ball hits racket]
Hello! Hello!
That was better.
Balance.
[ball hits racket]
You're on fire. You're on fire!
Okay, now, we're going to the next level.
80, 90, nothing changes.
[ball hits racket]
Okay, now, first correction.
Very few balls are in the net.
- Yeah.
- A lot of 'em are over.
- Yeah.
- But they're very high.
I want to swing path a little bit more linear.
What you're doing, the racket's going up too soon.
- Okay.
- But I want you to go more through it.
- Through it, okay.
- Straight through it. Crush it.
[ball hits racket]
Hello! Clay in the house!
Clay in the house, Let's go.
That was your best one of your life.
Let's go.
There we go.
Yeah!
When you go for the wide ball.
- Yeah.
- Bisect the angle.
What I mean is, you run that way.
Don't run that way.
You're gonna end up in Delray beach in a minute.
Okay. Go after it.
[ball hits racket]
That right there, I know you don't believe me.
That was your best one because it was clean.
It was decisive, it was authoritative.
That's what we call a positive air.
- All right.
- See a lot of people think, I get it in, I'm good.
I miss it, I'm bad.
No.
- Huh.
- This is a journey. This is a long term process.
No one missed more return of serves than Venus Williams.
She had courage. She had belief.
She kept missing, missing, missing.
And the more you fail, the more you're gonna succeed.
- Yeah.
- So after your split, drill it.
[ball hits racket]
There we go.
New sheriff in town.
You know what's interesting?
You do better when they come faster.
- I'm not thinking about it.
- You're not thinking about, you stole my line.
You know, listen.
People are dangerous when they don't think.
The mind that controls the body can beat anybody.
- You're reading the sign.
- I am reading the signs.
- That's a good sign.
You're reading my sign, you're reading my sign.
[ball hits racket]
- He's on fire!
Notice when I change the objective psychologically.
Look at the quality of your shots.
- Yeah, you keep saying
you wanna change the psychological goal.
Why is the psychological mindset matter so much?
- Okay, so what I tell a lot of people,
don't worry about the result.
- Yeah. - You know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- And when you didn't worry about the result,
you let it go.
- Yeah.
- A perfect example.
So many times a guy serves the ball
and the guy returns a serve, he goes bang.
And he puts it in.
He goes, why can't I do that when they're in?
- That's interesting, yeah.
- Because there's no pressure.
Now, if we have trouble, then I'll reverse engineer it
and I'll kind of go backwards.
But you keep doing exactly what you're doing.
- Okay.
- Go after it.
[ball hits racket]
Hello, the best for last!
[Clay laughs]
That is amazing. I like how you ended that.
The first thing I really love, your split step was great.
And the fact that you told me,
you never did that before, that's amazing.
The short back swing, you did a great job.
But I think the most important thing, it's how you get over.
- Yeah.
- It's the quality of the production.
The quality of a lot of your shots were like, amazing.
I'm very pleased.
- Great.
- I think you're ready for some guns.
- Great.
And then, you know, after having seen me hit a few,
who do I remind you more of, Venus or Serena?
- Richard.
[men laughing]
The chances of Clay returning to 60 mile an hour serve,
money in the bank.
I have no doubt.
90, that's gonna be a little trickier.
Technically he's come a long way. It's the anxiety.
I gotta get him to slow it down in his mind.
So I gotta work with him on the mental part,
but he's a great student.
I think he can do this.
- Rick is quite a good coach.
So he knows how to get your confidence up.
I think that was one of my biggest things,
is just not feeling confident.
And so that manifested sort of in me sitting back
and not attacking the ball.
It's sort of counterintuitive
'cause you think you want more time.
So you sit back, but actually going at the ball
and being aggressive is probably the number one thing
I'm gonna think about.
How confident am I I'm gonna hit 60 miles per hour?
These are gonna be famous last words,
but I'm gonna say 100%.
90 miles an hour, I think about 50%
and then 120 miles per hour,
before the session with Rick, I would've said 0%.
After that session, thanks to his great coaching,
I'm gonna say five to 10%.
Couple questions before we get into it.
Why is the return to serve such an important shot?
- If you got a great return,
you're gonna negate the whole point.
'Cause it's a little easier to hold serve
than it is to break serve.
But people don't really practice this.
But if people spent more time on it,
you would build confidence.
And that changes the whole landscape.
Make it a weapon like Agassi, he flipped the script.
He never had a great serve, but it almost didn't matter.
'Cause he broke serve more than anybody on the tour.
That was trained at an early age.
In my opinion, the best returner of the game has ever seen.
So it actually makes people miss their serve
just because they know you're gonna return better.
- It gets in their head. - Yeah, in their head.
- Which is interesting, 'cause it also brings me to
the second question, which is, the thing that stuck out
to me most about our training sessions
you kept talking about my anxiety
and the sort of the psychological aspect of it,
as opposed to telling me necessarily
to do different things physically.
Why was that?
- So it wasn't really a technical thing.
'Cause someone might have said, "You're late", you know,
or "You're too close to the ball".
But the reason why you were too close to the ball
was what was going on the inside.
You know, so I had to get you to calm down.
You want to be aggressive but you don't wanna be
so aggressive that you're rushing.
But one other thing you did so great,
if you notice, you got a different shirt.
And what's different- - Upgrade, I've upgraded.
- Instead of Rick Macci in Compton,
we got Clay Skipper at Rick Macci.
We're gonna see how this goes now.
- All right.
- Because now this is showtime.
- Yes.
- As you can see, there's fans in the stands.
- I know.
- I'm trying to create the environment.
- Pressure is a privilege, right?
- Yeah. Yeah, it has to be your best friend.
- Love it.
So we're gonna do three tries to hit 60 miles per hour.
Five tries to hit 90 miles per hour.
And I'm gonna get seven tries to hit 120 miles per hour.
- The guy at 120, he was a hundred in the world.
He worked with Hingis and Henin,
and he has a gun, but I got some younger kids
who are the best in the country.
We're gonna slowly go down the yellow brick road.
We're gonna build your confidence
and then we'll get to the big deal.
- Great. All right, let's find some that Macci magic.
- Let's do it.
[upbeat music]
- Show of hands, who thinks I'm gonna get one
at 60 miles an hour?
Wow. All right, okay, I thought I was gonna get zero.
How many people think I can get one at 120 miles per hour?
All right, let's go!
[hands slap]
- There's an old saying, don't judge a book by the cover.
- Okay.
- Okay, you got two of the better eight year olds,
United States of America.
- Okay.
- So just split, do your thing.
But remember what I said; attack the ball.
- All right.
- Let's go, show time!
Let's go, show time!
- All right. Oh, ACE!
- ACE.
[audience clapping]
Fans in the stands, camera's on, you get both on men.
That meant a lot to me.
You gotta move up to the ball.
Go Mason, bring the heat!
[shoe squeaks]
[ball slams]
Nice, hello!
Hello. See you later, Mason, see you later.
- All right, Liam.
I remember you were on my side before.
- Guy has a gun.
[shoes squeak]
[ball slams]
Good job, look at this.
[bell dings]
- Great stuff.
Thank you for doing this. Kicked butt out there.
Thank you.
Mason, great stuff. Thanks for doing this.
[door slams]
[bubble pops]
We're leveling up.
- Know, this is the next chapter.
- Yeah, it's next chapter, okay.
- Next chapter, little older,
little bigger, little stronger.
So you gotta be careful moving in too much.
- All right,
- Let's go, Luke. Let's bring it.
Let's go, Luke.
[shoes squeak]
[ball slams]
- Oh!
- No, I love that.
[buzzer sounds]
That you were early.
- Good at good, positive-
- Think about it, someone serves it fast.
And you're early, you're ready.
[ball slams]
Great footwork.
[buzzer sounds]
Tough to run around- - Yeah.
- But I want you to hit your port.
- Yeah.
- Change the objective psychologically.
Think about it, you haven't hit one long.
- Yeah.
- Hit it. There we go.
Hello. See, hey, did that feel good?
[buzzer sounds]
- Yeah.
- You see what I'm saying?
- Feel better if it went in, but, I know, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. [laughs]
- No, no, no, no.
Listen, you gotta miss and fail
and fail and miss to succeed.
- Fair.
- You could have hit it in, but it could have been terrible.
- Good point.
- You know, you hit it solid.
Didn't that feel good?
- Yes. - That's all the matters.
- Pop.
- She has a gun. She has a gun.
LeBronna.
[shoes squeak]
[ball slams]
Hello! See, you did less.
- Yeah.
- And you got more. - Yeah.
- And the crowd loves it.
- Thank you.
[ball slams]
- You're on fire. You're on fire!
[bell tings]
What do you guys think?
[audience clapping]
That's what they think, that says it all.
- Thanks.
Great work guys. That was awesome.
Thank you. Good, good job.
Good job.
- Hey. Hey. Good job.
[bubble pop]
[upbeat music]
- We got the big dogs now.
- I got Chase, here.
He's probably gonna come in 115 to 120.
- Wow.
- And I got Devonte, who's top hundred in the world.
He's gonna come at 120.
- Wow.
- The one thing about Devonte, he don't miss.
Right now, he thinks this is a competition.
[Clay laughs]
Okay, maybe back up a little bit and just work on balance.
- Okay, balance, balance, balance.
- But still shorten the stroke, go forward.
- All right.
- Let's bring it 120, let's see it.
120 with mustard.
Hey, that was healthy.
[buzzer sounds]
No, that was healthy.
- All right.
- Yeah. That was a positive air.
That's big time.
He's intimidating you, you saw what he was doing earlier.
- Ah, oh right in the coach.
- That's all right.
- All right.
[buzzer sounds]
- Hey, I like the hustle.
[Clay laughs]
Let's go, Devone.
[ball slams]
First off, first off.
No, no, listen. You're very quick.
- Yeah.
- If you shorten your back swing.
- Yeah.
- You make it.
Short, hey, less is more.
- Okay.
- Especially at 120. - Yeah.
- Short stroke. They're gonna give you the power.
Use their power, Clay. Use their power.
No, no, first off, 'cause they're serving this way.
They're gonna have a spin on it.
- Yeah.
- So you gotta move.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- And that's a major leap slice.
- That was nice.
- Good try, but see the anxiety?
- Yeah.
- Because it came at you quick.
- Yeah.
- You, you went up in the air.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Remember what I said, when people are calm-
- Yeah.
- They usually keep their feet on the ground.
- Yes.
- When they get a little excited,
that's when they get jumpy.
- Yeah.
- The technique was great. You had a short stroke.
I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you.
[upbeat music]
Short stroke.
[shoes squeak]
[ball slams]
Hello. Let's go!
What do you take?
Look, told you 120.
[Clay laughs]
I told you you could do it.
Where we started that got, you went from the outhouse
to the White House.
[Clay laughs]
I mean, this is amazing. You got it.
- Good stuff. Thanks for doing that.
Thanks for doing that.
Appreciate you guys, thank you, man, thank you.
[bubble pops]
What'd you think?
- You can be a player 'cause you're a great athlete.
I was very impressed overall.
- It's a testament to your coaching.
What'd you see out there as a player yourself,
what were you looking at?
- At the beginning, when I started serving 40,
50, 60 miles an hour, and he was struggling at the beginning
and then progressing to Devonte and I cranking it at 115,
120, I've never seen the progression that fast.
It was amazing. It was incredible.
He did such a great job.
- I'll piggyback on what he said.
The progression of the little kids,
and then up to us, I thought was amazing.
- Was I average or above average today?
Don't don't lie to me.
- Listen, you guys, I lie. I'm just brutally honest.
This is well above average.
I have potential and I've corrected the craziest stuff,
but it blew me away.
- So you want me to come down, move down here
and start coming to the academy?
- We'll talk after this.
[men laughing]
- First 32 year old student in history.
- No. Hey listen.
We'll train for the 40 and over.
- I love it. Let's do it.
All right, you heard it here, first.
So today was the rare occasion
where I was actually above average.
I think the biggest takeaway,
is that is very, very difficult to return a serve
because even though I was able to do that,
everything was hitting my forehand.
I wasn't judging the top spin,
there wasn't first serve, second serve.
So, I was an average guy but Rick is like a superior,
way, way above average coach.
So much of what he told me was just psychological.
Right, and he did give me some technical stuff
like the split step, but a lot of it was just,
don't be anxious, be athletic
and sort of got me outta my head.
That's it for day. Get ready for the next one.
Thanks for tuning in.
[upbeat music]