Joel Myers: The Important Difference Between Strategy And Tactics

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and you might even walk away with a beautiful backpack. On today's episode, we welcome back Joel Myers to talk about the important difference between your overall strategy and the tactics that you use to execute that strategy. We also talk about leveling up your neutral rally ball and some fundamental rules for approaching the net more effectively. So sit back, relax, and prepare to become a smarter tennis player. All right, Joel, welcome back to the pod. Good to see you, man. How have you been?

I've been great. I was telling you just now I was sitting around last week. And I was like, you know what? I got to learn something about the game of tennis. And I messaged you on Instagram within five minutes to see if you'd come on this week. So no pressure, but I'm looking to learn something for the next 45 minutes. The first topic that you mentioned that you were interested in lately or that's been on fresh on your mind is the difference between strategy and tactics.

I'm just going to open that up to you. I just want to know what you've been dealing with in San Diego with those two things. I've been talking to some of my students recently about not necessarily maybe abandoning a strategy too early because they've been using the wrong tactics on it.

So for those who don't know, the difference in strategy and tactics, strategy is the overarching game plan. So it could be I'm going to play to Jonathan's back end, but the tactics of that can be I'm going to slice to his back end or I'm going to hit it up high to his back end.

So Jonathan might like a high backhand. Not many people do, but he might like a high backhand. So I might be trying to get to his backhand high and that's not working. So I might have abandoned something that might be a winning strategy if I had had the right tactic.

And this probably happens the most with approaching, if it comes to mind. Players who approach, they might be like, I'm going to come into the net, then they approach the forehand. Or, you know, for whatever reason, they might be leaving the ball.

too high on somebody's backhand or they're hitting back to the corner where the guy is already waiting so the difference in strategy and tactics can you can cycle through different tactics before you abandon a strategy and i always found that's pretty interesting especially with high level players because like

You know, when do they make that call? And I think that's like an interesting one from a coaching perspective. You know, when would you say someone needs to abandon maybe something that should be successful and they're using the wrong tactic or maybe they've got to mix it up completely?

So I want to take a step back then. So if you have a player, let's pretend they don't really know the opponent they're going to go against, right? So do you come up with your overall, like what your strengths and weaknesses are? And you say, this is my generic strategy that I'm going to go out. and I have option A, B, and C with the tactics that I want to use for that strategy overall. Is that something you do before the match?

Yeah, and I mean, if you don't know your opponent, you're going to focus mostly on your game plan and what your strengths are and what you want to execute. You'd be like, you know, I want to serve and volley. I want to use the tactic of kick serve high to serve in volley, get it out of the strike zone. And maybe you find that that player might be crowding the baseline, taking away that high.

And so then you might go to the body instead. So certain volley is a great strategy, but you might have abandoned that strategy if you didn't change the tactic, if that makes sense. But I think sometimes we... We interchange strategy and tactics when we're talking. And I think if you get a little bit more specific, you can cycle through different tactics and make a strategy work or find a way to make a strategy work before you change that completely.

Right. So you mentioned when is when is that sweet spot? Right. Like it's part science, part feel. Right. Like I came out. And my strategy against you is I'm going to kick it up high to your backhand. I'm going to, or sorry, my overall strategy is I'm going to get to the net on your backhand. And I say, one of the things I'm going to do as a tactic is I'm going to hit a kick serve and come in. And the first two, you close your eyes and black out and rip it.

Yeah. Like, is that too early to abandon in the first game? Like, how do you help a player get that feel for is that tactic going to be successful over two sets and it just wasn't succeeding for a minute? Or is that something you should look at and go, hey, we might want to run away quickly? How confident are you in executing that? Can you go away from it and come back to it? Sometimes you've got to go away from a strategy.

um maybe you're using the same strategy too often and making your opponent get really comfortable with that but yeah i mean there are times where a successful strategy is going to get beaten by a lucky shot or you know something that's out of your control you've got to be

able to put that aside and i think generally with things like serving bowling and approaching you know we as coaches know the numbers game it's in your favor when you're approaching somebody's backhand you're going to win a lot more points than you lose you know approaching is the second highest win

percentage strategy behind serving and bowling. You know, serving volley is number one. It's used the least, but it's the highest win percentage. Yeah, I was watching a girl play today and her opponent had a weaker forehand.

So one of the things I said is, hey, if you get a backhand, maybe we'll play it a little bit more through the middle to that forehand side, get a weaker ball, and then do whatever you want. And she lost a couple points early, but she was in control, and her opponent looked very uncomfortable.

So from my standpoint watching, I was like, well, your opponent looks like she's hating this. Yes, you've only won two out of five points, but you've kind of messed it up. Like you've gotten what you want, but you didn't seal the deal. I actually still like the tactic. So do you look at that, the opponents, how comfortable they look, how in between points they look flustered, or are you looking just purely at maybe what the on-court swing looks like or the actual result?

I mean, as a coach, yeah, it's completely different. The feeling of losing that point is like a completely different feel for those players. You know, you can take a step back and go, yeah, you're doing the right thing, you're doing the right thing. But the feeling of losing that player coming up with an amazing shot on that.

slice forehand from the middle or a you know winner off a serve or something it's tough to deal with so i think the best players are the ones that are able to separate the feelings um away from the strategies and the x's and those And one thing that I've noticed that players who get a lot smarter with their tennis IQ is they come away from a match and they're able to like really in detail give you a rundown. And I try and cultivate that.

the players that I work with, where I never ask them what the score is. I only ask them, like, how do they play and what happened? And initially, when you work with a new player that hasn't, you know, they're not used to that, they'll just say, I played bad and I lost.

but as you get more as they get more developed and recognizing matches in their iq they'll they'll find that they'll start talking through the whole match and they'll remember details of the match that they never used to even pay attention to and that they're the things that matter

to be able to make an in-match adjustment. When you make those, when you notice those things throughout a match, you can then make the adjustment in match. But if you're only reacting to the emotions of winning or losing, it's really hard to make the adjustments necessary to win. And I think that's probably the hardest thing from a player is disassociate the feeling of winning or losing the point from what is happening on the court. Right.

Yeah, I understand the whole thing of being in a match and having feelings, of course. You're winning and losing. It's this emotional roller coaster. We're on the coach. We're on the sidelines. We have a little bit more of a normal, rational perspective, right? We're watching it. I'd love to hear how you tackle this issue because it's something I fight a lot, which is if my veterinarian tells me what to do with my dog.

I just go, okay, I'm not a vet. Like I know nothing about animal health. So like, even if I go like, that sounds a little weird, like maybe I'll get a second opinion. But if both vets are like, oh, no, no, you need to do this with your dog. I'm like, okay, I just do it. Like, I don't even have to stress.

And people pay you money. They come to you. You're the coach. You have great experience. And you go, oh, no, no, no. Keep coming to the net to her backhand. It's going to work. Trust me. And they still don't quite have that total conviction that you have. How have you gotten over that hurdle to kind of help people have confidence in something that you've given them? Yeah, repetition and hammering home why, hammering home why, giving them proof.

you're backing it up with the science if you have to show video you show video you show them the data anything that you can find to support what you're trying to what you're trying to show and especially with developing juniors it's like it's not about what's happening now. It's about what's going to happen in the future. You know, they're essentially trying to get to, you know, from A, where they are now to point B, whatever that is, college, pro, what...

What skills and tools do you need at point B? What's happening at point B where you're going to have to have these assets in your game or you won't survive? And then there's things that separate players. Like being able to come to the net and volley separates players.

like we know that even if you're looking at college um being able to volley and play doubles is a massive asset a point is a point for a college team if you are only playing from the baseline you can be an amazing singles player maybe you're not going to be great on the doubles court so you know there's there's things everywhere where you can always improve but i do think that players often

maybe don't want the short-term failure on the way to developing something and they pull away from that skill development too early, especially in matches because they don't want to lose and the feelings are so... They're so emotional. Winning and losing is so emotional. But, yeah, it's what is the end game. The best athletes are the ones that are process-minded. You hear it in the interviews. They talk about it all the time.

You brought up, you opened the door. So the third thing you wanted to talk about was the lost art of transition, right? And coming to the net and approaching. And obviously there's a ton of math and data at all levels that if you come to the net, you are going to have more success.

And obviously most people just show up and they bang ground strokes back and forth and end up playing a match and they don't practice it. But even with everyone not practicing it, it still holds up that it's that good of a tactic, right? Like people still win a higher percentage of points.

And I don't think there's a lot of insanely good volleyers out there. So what are some of your principles that you teach? Hopefully you're teaching your people to come forward as often as possible. And sometimes it's like pulling teeth, but.

What are some of the first steps that you give people when you kind of say, hey, coming to the net is a great play, and here's skill one, two, and three that we're going to learn to be effective at that? Yeah, I mean, to me, I think good aggressive players have forward intent all the time.

So if I'm serving, I'm hitting a serve to get a short ball and go. Let's skip the rallying phase. If I'm dominating on serve, I'm going to the net off the serve on the second ball or even serving and volleying. If I'm 10 feet behind the baseline having to play a defensive ball, I have forward intent. I'm going to hit it deep through the middle, improve my core position. It's all about forward intent. I mean, the only time that you don't want to go forward is when your opponent is stopping you.

You know, they're hitting deep, they're hitting quality, they're moving you laterally. And even then, sometimes you can find your way in on second serves and on serving and bowling. But I think forward intent makes you actively look for short balls. It makes you... you know put pressure on consistently it makes you look at a second serve like an opportunity i think thought intent is really important and

Keeping the ball in and just playing from the back. We know that the data behind that is like you're going to lose. It's a losing proposition if you're just staying behind the baseline. But coming in and putting pressure on you, like you said, you win so many points when you don't even have to play the volley. And that's one thing where juniors especially, they earn a short ball from great ground strokes and they come in and they look to finish with a winner.

because they're seeing that on television. It's a big finishing shot. If they would have more success thinking of that as an approach shot, you are going to get your fair share of winners, you're going to get your fair share of forced errors, and you're going to get your fair share of easy volleys.

So, you know, you're going to get past every now and then, you're going to miss some bullies, but there's more ways you can win the point than lose it when you start to come forward on some high quality offense. I think that's just, you just build that into...

into practice i know there's so many ways that i get volleys involved in practice like ways you can you can practice using your hands using your continental grip switching between groundies and volleys even recently i found that there was a warm-up drill that Carlos Alperaz had been doing since he was a young kid, where he would hit a mini tennis ground stroke, then move forward and hit a mini tennis volley, and then back up and do it again.

You know, getting him actively moving forward, even from mini temps. That one's a great one that I've added recently. I've loved it. Kids have been all about it. And it's the same thing they try and do when we play points. I saw that Instagram video, by the way, and I really liked it. I was like, oh, that's interesting. That's different, but it looked good. Yeah, it was good. It was super active. Kids are sweating. You get to put them in some difficult situations and it gets them engaged.

It's so funny because there's a couple of kids that they do mini tennis to warm up here. And they start doing their mini tennis. I might be wheeling the basket to the back and they'll miss the second ball in the net.

And I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to call this mini tennis anymore. I'm just going to call it tank. Because that's all you do. You start off and you guys just tank it. And then you back up. I'm like, what is this doing for your game? Like you're just getting used to not moving your feet. Like you have to have some intention there.

Or just back it up to the baseline. So we call it tank now. Yeah. I had for a few weeks running when I had all of my players here before the summer, all of the competitive juniors knew each other. And so every week I came up with a challenge.

And I would tell them, look, you're all going to do the same challenge. Whoever does worse in this challenge is going to run suicide or run, you know, whatever the punishment was for the week. And the first one that I came up with was I'm going to feed you balls until you miss.

And these are kids that usually regularly miss in the warm-ups. They hit too hard. You know, their footwork gets lazy. I mean, and they were regularly going through a basket and a half of fed balls lateral without a miss. And it was incredible. So I thought that was something that was like, they slowed it down, they controlled the ball. I think a lot of people hit far too hard in the warm-up. But yeah, the mini tennis action and getting some intent behind it makes a big difference.

So you talked about that forward intent and being ready for the short ball. One thing I see a lot early is like you said. Yeah. So you talked about forward intent and looking for the short ball. And obviously the first step of coming to the net is hitting the approach shot. And so I'll see people, like you said, either overhitting or maybe playing the wrong shot. Obviously, sometimes they're just getting there late with their feet.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people making when they do have that forward intent and they're hitting an approach shot? Indecision on where they're going to hit it. Number one would be a big one. Letting the ball drop below the level of the net. Number two, because then you've got to lift it.

That ball that is lifted can't be struck as hard. And, yeah, three playing too close to the sidelines. I mean, if you were to think of it as the goal being to force a miss, I think you would hit to a bigger target. You've still got to hit a good quality ball.

but most of the time you're going to freak the opponent out and they're going to look for that pass or the log right away. I think those are the two biggest ones. I also think of footwork mistakes sometimes where a player will sort of load in semi-open. when they've hit a lot of ground strokes and they allow the ball to come to them, then they hit the ball real big and they don't have enough closing speed to close the gap between them and the net to get a high enough volley.

So using a front foot hop or a hop step approach when you're moving forward through the middle of the court is really helpful because they can continue moving forward. And then also players not being able to adjust their backswing size when they move forward. That's another big one. You have big inefficient swings, swings that go too high, too far back. You need time to get those swings off.

Players are more comfortable in that situation letting the ball come to them than they are taking the ball on and moving forward. Same thing with returns. If you can't adjust your backswing size on the return, you're going to have a hard time stepping in and taking it early. Right. You mentioned that...

A lot of people don't have forward intent. So of those first three problems you said, the one that happens the most that I see is the ball dropping below the level of the net because they're late getting up there. But it also might be short. So it's like, hey, you probably still need to come in.

One thing I've been surprised, and I don't know if you see this, is people are very reluctant to slice. So I'm like, hey, once it gets that low, if you're going to hit topspin, it's going to be a slow, high, nothing ball that's sitting on a tee for the guy hitting passing shot.

Why don't you hit a slice where you can keep it low? You can also use a drop shot if you want. But people almost view that as like a less than shot. Like, oh, it's not a real shot. But once the ball does get low and I'm in no man's land and I have to come in, I'm slicing that all day. Have you seen that same reluctance to use that?

Yeah, absolutely. Players that don't uncomfortable continental grip across the board. Yeah, and a forehand slice as well. Sometimes the ball is so short and low, you're going to have to use a forehand slice. The benefit of hitting slice or backspin is you can hit all four corners of the court. Topspin, you cannot hit the front two parts of the box. So you are, like you said, going to hit a slow high roller, give them a great chance at a pass or a...

or a lob so slice is not about hitting the ball hard it's about keeping it low and putting the opponent in a position of weakness and then blanketing the net so they run out of options so it's it's a great play and people have to be able to use both slices

You can see, if you're watching Alcaraz or Sinner, you're going to see these guys hitting a forehand squash shot on the run a lot. And sometimes that's not in continental grip. Sometimes that's in an eastern backhand grip where the ball gets behind them. so grip versatility is important that's where all those like little mini tennis games come in learning to volley like all that stuff is super important but once the ball does get to a certain level especially on the backhand side

then I think you've got to play the slice when you can't have that racket head speed to do enough damage. Last year, I went through a phase, and I'm probably going to put up a poll now that we're talking about this. I want to ask you, is a forehand slice a ground stroke? Is a forehand slice a ground stroke? Yes, I'm going to say it is a ground stroke, yeah. If it bounces, it's a ground stroke. We can be friends.

So I asked all my WTA players I know, and I'm like, hey, is a forehand slice of ground show? Because they're like, no. And I'm like, well, what do you call it then? Yeah, what do you call it? It bounced, you hit it from the baseline. Only topspin is a groundstroke. I was like, that's so absurd. But that's how the slice is viewed, especially the forehand slice. Like it's not even in the general realm of groundstroke. It's shocking. Anyway, do you have any...

uh tips for the first volley so the two biggest things for me coming in like you said forward intent anticipating the short ball then you've got to hit a half decent approach it doesn't have to be anything special But you're probably not going to hit the standard volley that everyone just practices when they're getting ball feeds, right? Standing up there stationary.

You're moving through it. You've got high volleys. You've got volleys that you're moving to your side. You're changing direction. Sometimes it might be a swing volley. Sometimes it's a hybrid, like a half overhead, half volley. What are your tips for that first ball out of the year?

Well, it depends on the court position. I think if you are pretty deep in the court, then you're not looking for angle. There's no angle there to really take. So a lot of times you play what's called a trap volley where you play the volley in behind where the approach came from because often the... player hitting that approach shot is looking at a pass or they're looking at a ball at the feet and they're worried about the open court. So they immediately start to recover hard.

By playing the trap volley behind that same direction, you make them have to reorganize the hands and feet, step back behind them. And then what happens mostly is a lob on that next ball. So that's a ball that you have to get used to playing. If you're going to serve volley, if you've got a...

an aggressive big approach shot because the ball is going to be hit fast it's going to come back fast which gives you less time to get to net but also you want to make sure you know this as well you can't have the racket face too open especially with singles

players starting with the racket face too open especially on high volleys makes you swing down to make the strings point to the target and so you can be late or early and really miss some easy volleys so trying to get the strings more you know on

On playing with the ball makes it a lot easier pointing the strings to the target. The closer you get, the more angle you can create. So hopefully you are looking to push forward and get close enough where you can find an angle. But when you find yourself further back, play more through the baseline.

got to keep it low you know that's one of the things that all volleys have in common whether you're putting it away or not the volley clearance on the net is very low you know when you go back the opposite direction you go way way behind the baseline the clearance is very high

And so as you get closer to the net, it gets lower and you look for more angle when you get closer towards the net as well. That's one thing you just mentioned, how close to the net you can get. And that's also why I enjoyed slicing approach shots because I get an extra...

three tenths to a half a second because my ball's floating a little bit and I can set up shop where I want. And that's just another reason why I like a slice. Kelly Jones came on the podcast. This was like two years ago now. And he said he tells people to hit every volley cross court.

Which I've kind of liked because you talk about that trap volley. But let's say I approach to your backhand and you catch it late. So you go down the line to my forehand volley. So now I can hit a cross-court volley to the open court. No sweat.

If you do what I think is the correct play on the pass, which is go middle to my back end, then I go cross court. And now I'm playing that trap volley that you said. So in both cases, I'm getting something good. I'm either going to angle it off open court. Or if I get the backhand, it's back to you. Have you seen that work as well? Yeah, absolutely. You've got the lowest part of the net as well. It's just most of the time it depends on the level of the player.

the level of the forehand the forehand is such a dangerous passing weapon because of how much spin you can get on it you have more reach more power you can whip the ball down low everybody almost everybody is going to prefer a forehand pass than a backhand pass just because they can create so much angle and spin. And the hitting shoulder is behind you, so you can always hit it later and lob if you want to do that. So I think that's the danger of the forehand pass is to me at a really high level.

tough yeah so you can create short balls with the serve like you said you you a lot of times hit a serve looking for that first ball maybe off a second serve you're attacking a return looking for a short ball Let's just say for the sake of argument that your serving return and their serving return are completely neutral. So now we're getting into rally ball situations. And this is where the neutral ball really matters, right? Like, how am I going to create anything?

So what are your thoughts on the neutral ball and how you can make that more efficient? I think neutral ball quality separates. So many players from the back of the court. You know you're playing against a player that's really good when they're beating you, taking the least amount of risk possible. You know, when you play someone and they're like, you're having to hit everything towards the lines. They're just playing through the middle. I think Novak, Sinner.

The neutral ball quality is so high, they don't ever change out of third gear, it seems. They can just stay right there with depth. um they can find angle when the ball gets wide but they're not out of their range and i think the thing that's also improved with the quality of tennis um nowadays that we're seeing at the pro level and then obviously juniors are going to try and get there is

the end ranges that these guys play neutral in is insane so you know an end range just refers to where's the point in the court if you look at the tennis court laterally when where's the point that you're forced to have to either play defense

or risk a high-risk offensive shot and a bailout shot. And if you don't have to do that, your end ranges can get quite wide like a Sinner and a Djokovic. For me, anything outside the singles line, I'm either throwing up something defensive or I'm... going to hail mary but the better players don't need to do that they can just lock in on deep cross or you know deep middle and get back in the point no problem but depth uh depth is

Very important. Also, pace can be very important. Just playing pace through the middle. If you're the type of player that hits a bit of a flatter ball and finds it hard to find great depth. then you can sort of negate a lot of the opponent's advantages by driving that ball really hard through the center. It's a great strategy on a second serve as well, as we know. But, yeah, neutral ball quality just...

refers to a ball that you don't have to take a lot of risk on and you're able to just keep your opponent under pressure without missing. And if they... can't match that with you, then they have to play defensive and then you then can go to offense. Or they feel like they can't match you and they're bailing out with offensive balls that are probably not in their favor to win the point.

I'm sure you get these messages on Instagram just like I do, but a very common one is like, well, how do I go to a 3-5 to a 4-0? Or like, what are the tactics they use? And I'm like, honestly, I coach my college players very similarly to how I coach a 4-0.

They just do everything better. They're not doing there's no tricks. There's not like a secret formula, but their neutral ball is just better than yours. And so what people do is then they overhit to hit the same speed as someone above them, which they're not going to be consistent at. Yeah. And then it's not working. So how would one actually go about, let's say you're a 4-0. Let's say you watch both of our Instagram pages all the time and you're a brilliant player. Your tactics are perfect.

but you're not able to beat a 4-5 or a 5-0 because your neutral rally ball just isn't good enough. How do you go about building the strength, the depth, the speed of that neutral ball? And I think it depends on which side of the ball you're starting at. You know, when you're serving, when you and I think about rallies, because I think of tennis in sort of four ways, like the serve plus one, the return plus one, rally exchanges, and then transition and net play.

And so you can also isolate the return and the serve, like how am I doing on the first serve plus one? How am I doing on the second serve plus one? Because you'll get different results. But if we're all the time into neutral rallies, I'm doing a great job in return, I'm probably not doing a great job on my serve. So I look at that first, you can always improve the start of the point first, but then you're looking at

Certainly depth, using your strengths as much as possible. Finding ways to negate opponent's patterns. You've got to be able to recognize patterns that are used against you and find some counters. But yeah, a lot of times I find that players look probably too much maybe to the middle of the rally and they overlook the start of it.

i sort of focus more on the start of the point first and then we have some some counters and some general rally set plays that we can go to if you get into that i'll give you three of them so one of them would be uh well first one is

hit everything to the backhand, you know, hit everything to the backhand, get a short ball, and then attack the net from there. That's number one. And everyone across the world is probably starting with that tactic. Number two, general rally exchange is hit everything cross court until you get a short ball.

So everything goes cross court. When you get a short ball, you have an easier time, an easier ball with more time to make a decision on whether you want to go down the line or not. So you're not making directional changes under pressure.

And then three, it can be drill everything down the middle until you get a short ball and approach the net. All of these are approaching the net based. You know, the end game is forward in 10. So a lot of times, you know, we're not going to get there. Guy will miss.

uh short ball from every winner you know whatever but the goal is to push forward it's just finding different ways to do it okay so when i hear that i love it because i love simple if i'm on youtube and i'm trying to learn how to do anything

I want someone to just lay out three things like that. And I'm like, oh, I can hit down the middle. Oh, I know how to hit cross court. Wow, this is a great coach telling me three simple things that I can already do. But sometimes I find that players almost want something more complicated. Like that can't be it because if I do that, and the funny thing is, is if I have two players on the court, both executing that simple plan, well, guess what? One of them's going to lose.

So one of them's like, see, Joel, I told you that doesn't work if I go cross court. And the other guy's like, Joel, you're a genius. I'm just hitting a cross court. And this loser can't keep it in play or I'm getting short balls. Right.

So have you found that? Like sometimes I just think people are talking about the height of their elbow and my court position here. And we're going like deep into calculus. And I'm like, you know what? Sometimes just hitting cross court on every ball is kind of like a really good tactic.

Yeah, I think it was Bjorn Borg who said, yeah, tennis is easy. I hit everything cross court and sometimes I go down the line. But then also with those, it comes back to the tactics behind them too. So if I'm drilling everything down the middle... and drilling it's not working because Jonathan likes pace through the middle into his strike zone, I can go, I'm going to loop everything down the middle. That's another tactical version of that strategy.

you know there's there's different different ways around it but yeah you have to when you're playing matches you have to keep it simple and we're talking about tournament knockout matches here if you're playing a practice match you know mix it up go out and try things practice no one cares who wins a practice match no trophies practice match winners and everybody who i start you know working with i'm like do you play practice matches i'm like yes i'm like what do you do when you play them

You just play the match. What do you mean? I'm like, well, you know, are you serving and bowling? Are you working on your slice back end? Are you playing a whole set where you hit your back end down the line? That's the time to try all the stuff. to sharpen the tools in a competitive setting. That's the time practice matches. But when it gets to real matches, you've got to have a simple strategy so you can stay focused and execute them. A lot of players I coach and...

including myself, have massive egos. That's part of the reason why maybe in a practice match, you don't want to lose to your friend or you don't want to lose to someone you've beaten before. I'm almost trying to get my players to use their ego for good. I'm like, why don't you have an ego that you have the best process?

So if part of having a good process is that you're going to use practice matches to work on things while still being competitive, you don't go out there and say, hey, I'm going to work on coming forward. So it doesn't matter if I lose. Hey, like I'm absolving myself. No, still try to win.

Also work on things, which is what a champion would do, someone who's trying to get better. I like that idea of people using their ego that way, but sometimes people protect it with the result. You know how when you go and play somebody who's injured?

And it's sort of the worst case because if you beat them, they were injured. But if you lose, you lost to an injured person. It's a little bit like that. So like when you go and play a practice match and let's say you're a baseline player, you're trying to work on... approaching the net if you come in you know 30 times in the match and it's treated like an injury you know like you're like i'm gonna come in if i can win coming in 30 times a match that's you know that's amazing

If you lose, you came in 30 times. That was the whole point. It's the process of learning. When you do these things, you have to learn what works, what doesn't work. So I think the practice match process is so important to players. and using it for what it is and i think some matches you have to be able to beat people down you have to play a player that's if you get the option to have a full spectrum of players somebody that you can beat really easy so you can play some really

New tactics, you have to play some players that you play really tight, and then you've got to play some players that are going to beat you pretty bad and see if you can bring your best stuff. But practice matches, I think, are underused for what they can be, and it's just a great tool sharpener. Feel free to rip this to shreds. I almost hope you do because if you prove me wrong, then I'll be smarter right away, okay? But one of the things I've toyed with over the last year is...

of course you're going to miss. No matter what happens, you're going to make errors probably on about a third of the points that you play. That's just the sad reality. Sometimes it might be 25% of the points. If you're having a horrible day, it might be 35%, 40%. You're always going to miss.

As a coach, I would prefer my players to have all their misses be on offense, if possible. Because for me, I'm thinking, well, if you're up there a lot and you're going for a volley, sure, you might miss a volley in the net.

But if you made that volley, you probably hit a winner or a forcing shot. When people are on defense, my mentality is almost nothing good can happen from here. Like you're not going to hit a winner. You're not going to get them in trouble. They put you in a corner. You can only lose the point from here.

So how about you just kind of throw it back in with a lob or a slice? So generally speaking, I kind of keep tracking matches and I'm like, hey, you had 20 errors, but only three to five were on neutral or defense and 15 were when you were attacking.

And I'm good with that because there was a reward for that risk you took. What are your thoughts on that general idea? Yeah, the first thing I think about is poaching in doubles. You know, adults poaching in doubles. They go for the first backhand poach and they miss it and they're like, oh, that's an error.

Well, it's a good error. It's one that you should be there. And if you're playing, like you said, if you're making errors on offense, you're in the right spot. You're very close. This is right where you want to be. But if you're making errors on defense, yeah, you... pulling the trigger the wrong wrong ball excuse me or you're just you're not playing a smart shot so yeah i fully agree with that i think that's a great way to think about it and trying to put yourself in a position

to be offensive as often as possible is the goal, isn't it? And tennis is still a violent game. We still want to get up there and play offense. We don't want to be pure defense. So, yeah.

I forgot to put a story up with Instagram questions. So I have one random question that's a total left turn from where we've been. You mentioned something earlier, and I don't know if you're going to use that or something else, but you are always looking at inspiration from other sports, different ideas, something that can help your...

your coaching and your tennis game. What is something outside of the world of tennis that you've learned in the last couple of months that you feel like has impacted your coaching or impacted your players? I mean, I think... I think it's the process. I mean, I go to the gym every day and I've found like from day to day, you see no improvement, but over the course of a long period of time of putting work in, you do see a lot of change.

And one thing that I think that I try and do outside of tennis with my fitness is get a little bit better each day at something, whether that is, you know, whatever fitness I'm doing at the time, I want to get a little bit better at that. And I only have a certain amount of time in the day to work out. And usually it's very early and that's my time. But I use every minute of that time. That's mine. And I think about the players that I work with that come out on the court. And sometimes...

I think that they're wasting some of their hour or their 90 minutes. And I'm like, as that compounds over time, you're losing the potential to improve, you know, let's say it's five minutes a lesson. 20 minutes a month if you have one lesson a week. You know, I think that really compounds over time and I think the lesson is like we all have the same amount of time essentially but

Do the absolute most with the time you can. If you're on the court and you're working with a coach or in a group setting, work your ass off in that one hour. Get the most out of it. Sometimes the things that you have to do to be really great are really hard. And that's why people want to do them. Something that is worth achieving is going to be very difficult. And if you can't enjoy the process.

then you've got to enjoy the feeling of knowing that what you are doing is going to make you better, even if you hate what you're doing. I had this talk with a player last week. We did a drill that was a brutal drill. But what I do is I put down a cone, a serving target, and at the start of every rally, they have to serve. So the girl hits the serve at the cone, and then I feed in initially a plus one.

And then there's a target for the plus one. As soon as that plus one's over, she starts again. But now it goes serve plus two. And we just keep going until she hits the serve target. And I think we got to plus 34. so you can do the math on how difficult that is and how many balls that is that's almost an hour hours work and she was very frustrated and I was like look Tough luck, you're gonna have to push through it. This is just like another day when you're having a tough time in a tennis match.

If you can get through this and if you can complete this, the satisfaction you'll have knowing that you got through and completed this will make it all worth it, even though you hate this process. So I think that sort of off the court. mentality for me is what I try and bring to the tennis and what I try and help the kids and even the adults think about as well a little bit. I love that drill, first of all. It sounds brutal.

And the funny thing is I see your Instagram stories where it'll be like 520 a.m. and you're in the gym and it says like day 526 in a row. And I might start giving you my own where it's like. day 45 in a row where I had gummy bears for breakfast because like out of all the things I'm terrible at like working out especially that early like I'm always inspired when I see you but I'm like man I'm such a lazy ass like Joel's up there he's on the squat rack at 5 20 in the morning and like I'm so

cuddling with my dog or something. This was perfect, man. I wanted to learn. You gave us a ton of nuggets. Absolutely incredible. Is there anything going on with you? I know you've got your doubles camp in Coronado. Is there other online stuff? Where can people find you? You can find me on Instagram.

Joel Myers Tennis. Joel underscore Myers underscore tennis. I'm usually on there. Pretty active. And then, yeah, running the Coronado Tennis Center here in San Diego. If you're around, come say hi. There's a couple... of people that follow me on Instagram showed up today actually randomly and they're like, oh, we couldn't believe you were here. And I was like, yeah, this is what I do. I'm just a tennis coach here. So, yeah, so I'm here and available for anyone for any time.

Will you ever be venturing into the YouTube world? It's great over here. Maybe. I mean, at the time, you do very quality stuff. And I have to do quality things as well. So I don't want to put anything out there that I don't feel like I'm really... You know, 100% in on. And right now, I've got too many things going on with tennis here. So, yeah, right now, can't do it. Maybe in the future. But I'll take the inspiration from you, man. What you're doing is awesome.

All right, man. Well, we're all holding our breath that you get some free time, but thanks for joining the show. We learned a ton. Thanks, Sheldon. As always, I want to thank Joel for coming back on the show. He is such a smart coach, a thoughtful communicator, and I highly recommend following his Instagram page. Learning to differentiate strategy from tactics is huge.

One thing I definitely recommend is writing down what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and then writing down the possible strategies you could use in a match based on that information. Once you have a primary strategy or two, you could go deeper and figure out what specific tactics you are capable of using to execute that strategy. And then, and this might be the most important part, go practice those shots and situations so you can excel in your next match.

Reminder to sign up for my newsletter below. Each month, the newsletter will grow, so this could be your best odds to take home that beautiful backpack. Thanks again for listening. I hope you just improved to tennis without even hitting a ball.