3 Lessons from Wimbledon: Return Mistakes, Fast Courts, & Maximizing Practice

There's a lot of good strategy insights in those as well , but I know some of you like these solo episodes a little bit more . But if you are looking for some of that strategy , the episode with Greg Moran was great . Angela Kulikov had a lot of good strategy insights .

Paul McNamee , the coach of Shaysu Wei , also had a lot of good doubles tips for club players , as well as Storm Hunter , who's a lefty in a former world number one . So check those episodes out , if you didn't already . Today I'm going to share three lessons with you . Number one is going to be on return strategy .

So if you've been struggling to break your opponent's serve , then you might be making one of these two mistakes . And then the second lesson is going to be on serve strategy and how you should change your tactics when you're playing on a faster court .

So we've been watching Wimbledon recently , but even if you play on a fast hard court like you're playing indoors or the hard court just happens to be really slick . You want to change your serve tactics a bit , and I've done this recently with a lot of success .

And then the last one is all about practice and improvement , and this is something that I've already known , but it's something I've recently kind of reminded myself of , and I actually had an interview this morning for a podcast that's coming out next week with the coach of the new world number one on the WTA tour for doubles , and he reminded me of that this

morning . So you'll get a little bit of a preview of that episode that's coming out next week as well . Before I get to those three lessons for you , a couple of quick announcements . So , number one I'm going to be hosting a doubles camp in New York during the US Open this year .

So , if you're interested , I'm going to be hosting a doubles camp in New York during the US Open this year . So if you're interested , I'm going to link to it in the show notes . It's for 3 , 5 , and 4-0 level players .

We're going to have 12 players and last time I checked we only had three spots available , so , depending on when you're listening to this , it may be full . We haven't checked with all nine people who already have signed up to confirm that they're 3-5 or 4-0 , so maybe a spot or two will still open up if they didn't read the entire sign-up page .

But you can check that out in the show notes or go to thetennistribecom slash camp if you want to learn more about that three-day doubles camp in New York during the US Open . Next , the return strategy cheat sheet . So if you didn't get a copy of that , I'll link to it in the show notes . You can go to thetennistribecom slash return dash cheat sheet .

A lot of you signed up for it already . I got some great feedback on it . So I just wanted to mention it because a lot of people found it really , really helpful and I don't want you to miss it . So again , I'll link to that in the show notes . And then kind of a little bit of a brag slash , something I'm really proud of .

So I've been talking with the USTA for a little while now about trying to help out with some of the pro doubles players . If you've listened to the podcast in the past , you know I'm a huge fan of pro doubles .

I'm trying to make pro doubles more popular and I've also done strategy work with some pro doubles players , including some top 10 players , some former Grand Slam champions , and one of the problems that I always run into is they don't get paid a lot of money right . The pro doubles players make generally around 10 , maybe 12% what a singles player does .

So they can't afford to pay me for my time in a way that makes a lot of sense . A lot of times I'll charge a certain amount and I'll ultimately look back at my hours and I'll break even .

So I reached out to the USTA to see if they would help kind of fund this and hopefully I could work with some of the top American players and it wouldn't be a huge cost to them and USTA has the money .

There's other organizations around the world , including the LTA over in England , who do this for a lot of their doubles players , and I've come to an agreement with the USTA and I'm going to be helping out with the Olympic team and hopefully with some of the top American doubles players going forward . So that's going to be a ton of fun .

I'm really excited about it . That obviously does not help you at all , but I wanted to just share and kind of brag a little bit about that , because it is something that I'm excited about and I'm proud of . So let's get into these three doubles lessons . So on Saturday I watched the men's doubles final at Wimbledon .

It was Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson against Harry Heliovara and Henry Patton , and I actually called the match for Talking Tennis on YouTube Live . One of our writers , hanlon Walsh , and I called the match and it was a very tight match . It was 6-7 , 7-6 , 7-6 . There were zero breaks of serve .

The team that won Helio Vara and Patton actually had zero break chances , so they never even got a break point . They had to win both of their sets , obviously in tiebreakers , and the All-Z team got a few break points , but they never converted any . So what was their problem ? Why couldn't they break serve ?

And what I noticed is they actually both had the exact opposite problem , and I wanted to share this because this might be a problem that you're running into as the serve team on the doubles court . So we'll start with the Aussie duo . So they played a lot of two back . So Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson are both top 100 singles players .

I think Jordan Thompson is inside the top 50 at this point . So they're very good from the baseline and Purcell has won a few doubles majors as well , or maybe just one , but he's made some finals .

He's a great doubles player as well , but they're both really good from the baseline and they were playing a lot of two back , even on second serve some they would stay with the two back formation and what I noticed is this allowed them to defend really well , right .

So especially against a first serve , when it's hard to get that return by the server's partner at the net , you're buying yourself more time as the returner's partner to stay back and you're not giving them a target . So it allowed them to defend really well .

But a lot of times , once they got into the point , let's say they hit a lob return down the line , they got past the opposing net player and the server is in the add court or the deuce court , whatever it is hitting a ground stroke .

Neither player followed it into the net quite enough and they ultimately let too many balls fly high over the net through the middle of the court . That should have been picked off by somebody who should have approached the net and gotten forward and they would lose a certain percentage of those points .

So by not being aggressive enough after that return especially , or on second serves , moving forward and not playing too back on second serves .

They allowed too many balls to go through the middle and they allowed the opponents to get away with not hitting a super quality ball and they weren't taking advantage of their good returns because they were allowing their opponents to defend really easily , so they were prioritizing defense a little bit too much .

Now let's flip over to the other side Harry Heliovara , henry Patton . They took a very aggressive position as the returners partner on both first and second serves , and I've done some recent Instagram lessons on this . So if you go to our Instagram channel , there's a few lessons on the returners partner .

There was one recently with Anna Danilina , who does a great job of standing right behind that service line . She defends , then she moves forward and finishes the point off , and that was on the WTA

side . Now in this Wimbledon final , hilly Avara and Patton were inside the service line even against first serves , and I know the argument for that is that if your partner hits a quality return back to the server , they get past the server's partner at the net .

Then , as the returner's partner , you're in a more offensive position and you can move forward , apply pressure to the server and pick that ball off . Now I was watching this match and I was looking for points where that actually happened and it was maybe two points . What happened a lot more often is the return AB2 points .

What happened a lot more often is the return would not get past the server's partner and the server's partner would have a volley and they'd easily be able to volley it right at the returner's partner who is too aggressive inside the baseline and the returner's partner has zero time to react .

So you don't want to take too aggressive of a position , especially against first serves inside that service line . Now , if your opponent has a really weak second serve , then maybe you move forward , in this case on grass at the ATP level . Even then it might be kind of difficult .

But they were doing this on first and second serves , ultimately didn't get any break point chances , didn't win a ton of return points . They figured it out , obviously , and won the match 7-6 , 7-6 in the second and third set .

So it worked out for them okay , but I feel like it's something they got away with because their opponents were defending too much as the return team were defending too much as the return team , they were too offensive as the return team and I think the right answer is somewhere in between .

So I wanted to share those two lessons with you and think about that in terms of your court position when your partner's returning , as well as your partner's position when you're returning , especially against really good servers or really weak second serves . You want to balance that offense and defense .

So lesson number two is a serve strategy lesson when you're serving on a fast court . So I know a lot of you probably don't play on grass very much . I have done that maybe twice in my life and definitely don't do it regularly . But I do play indoor some and I play on some really fast hard courts .

And recently I was playing a 5-0 match and it was on a very slick , very fast hard court and what I noticed is it was very difficult to return on this court because the ball just kind of skidded through the court , especially a low slice serve . You kind of had to block it back .

I was able to hit a few lob returns that were kind of effective , but it's really hard to return and the easiest way to do it is just to block it back in the direction that the serve came from , which means cross court . So it's very difficult to redirect , especially a first serve down the line on a hard court .

So the serve strategy I was using was to take away the middle , even more so than normal . So taking away the middle is always a good idea , especially on first serves as the serve team . But I was even doing this on second serves a lot and it was really effective . The opponents were missing a lot of first server turns .

They missed a lot of second server turns as well , and I noticed it in the Wimbledon doubles final as well . So the Aussies , max Purcell and Jordan Thompson , used I formation , I felt like well over 80% of the time . It might've even been 90% of the time , uh , especially on first serve , and they even used it on second a lot as well .

And taking away this middle forced so many return errors . Yes , they gave up one or two down the line shots that resulted in an error , or maybe even a winner or too much defense where they had trouble winning the point , but obviously they faced zero break points .

So they were doing something right with their serve strategy , and taking away the middle is the thing that I noticed them doing on a fast court like Wimbledon center court .

So that's what I want you to think about next time you're playing indoors on a fast court , if you can serve the ball and keep it low , hit a slice serve or just hit a low , flat serve at the opponent and force them to try to redirect that ball down the line .

Take away the middle , either by poaching or using eye formation or Australian and pinching the middle it's going to force a ton of return errors and low percentage shots from the returner . And then lesson number three . So this is one that I was discussing this morning with Coach Bruce Lipka .

He is Aaron Routliff's coach , who I've had on the podcast before , and Aaron is the new world number one in doubles . And , bruce , one of the things he talked about , with Aaron's improvement , she's gone from around this time last year she was probably 40 or 45 in the world , maybe even outside the top 50 , and now she's number one in the world .

And one of the things he continued to stress in our conversation and you'll hear it next week is there's no shortcuts , there's no secrets , and it sounds like Erin has just hit a lot of balls and worked a ton on her net game and the very specific skills that they determined as a team that she needed to work on .

And they do it over and over and over , and it's something that I have to remind myself of every now and then . You know when I'm out there , whether I'm doing a clinic or if I'm teaching a private lesson , or even if I'm out there hitting with one of my friends and trying to improve my game .

Maximizing the amount of touches on the ball is crucial to your improvement . You can read books about how to hit a forehand , but if you don't go out there and hit a bunch of forehands , you're not going to figure it out . I was actually playing yesterday and there was a coach .

I'm not going to say where this was because I don't want to bash anybody , but there was a coach a few courts down . I don't know who it was . It was somebody I didn't recognize .

I think it was a new coach and he was giving a private lesson to this girl who looked like she was maybe in high school , and they didn't even get through an entire basket of balls during the full one hour lesson .

He spent so much time talking to her that she didn't have a chance to hit more than maybe 50 or 60 balls , and it was so frustrating for me to watch , because what I imagine is happening in this case and maybe I'm off here , but I feel like this does happen some across the country is that people like that , or players like that who have a coach that is

just talking at them the whole time about how to hit a forehand , rather than allowing them to actually hit the forehand and make those small adjustments to try to hit a forehand , rather than allowing them to actually hit the forehand and make those small adjustments to try to hit that target , they ultimately decide that tennis just isn't for them .

And it kind of makes me sad , honestly , because I feel like so many more people in our sport could , or who are new to our sport could enjoy it if given the right coaching and the right opportunities

. And I feel like way too many of us , as coaches , are just talking too much and not and I say this as you're listening to my podcast but not feeding enough balls on the court . I promise you , if I could feed you forehands or volleys through this podcast , I would be doing it .

But keep that in mind when you're out there practicing and when you're out there in your private lesson or in your clinic , maximize the amount of touches you get on the ball .

If you're working on your backhand volley , hit 100 per day , or 100 each time you're out there , if it's two , three times a week for the next few months , and I guarantee your backhand volley will improve . So I just wanted to highlight that , something to remind yourself of and something that I need to remind myself of as well . So hopefully , all that helps .

If you have any questions about the doubles camp or any of these lessons in this episode , you can always reach out to me and thank you all for the support and for listening and I will talk to you all next week .