Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 413 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about and unpacking 13 ways to destroy your tennis competition. Legally, no gamesmanship here, no tricks, no cheating. Just 13 of the most practical, easy to deploy, strategy, elements like mindset, hacks, different things to focus
on, different patterns to try. And it's kind of best practices. These are kind of my short list of like top 13 suggestions that will make you a more effective tennis player immediately. This topic is really made for the podcast and I'm going to do my best to keep things moving. I could probably spend a half an hour on each of these 13 things, which would obviously be ridiculous. So I'm going to try my best to keep each topic moving quickly and make
it through this in a reasonable amount of time. Alright, let's kick things off. And by the way, this is definitely deliberate order here, not necessarily in terms of importance or efficacy, but things are going to be kind of layered in a logical way. So number one, and I'm kind of starting from the beginning of the match here. And by the way, all of these things apply to both singles players and doubles players. This is universal tennis success
ideas. So number one, be Sherlock Holmes, meaning use deductive reasoning. This starts right from the very first ball that you feed down the middle. And idea here is to focus on what they're doing and look and sniff out jerky unathletic movements, things that they're avoiding, any kind of missing tools that maybe you would expect them to have in their toolbox. Maybe they only slice their backhand. Maybe they're constantly running
around and hitting their forehand. Maybe they don't come up to the net or they don't take overheads if you're if you're a doubles player. Anything that they avoid, anything that they make look clunky, anything that make look awkward and kind of harder than it has to be. And also any kind of head scratcher errors where you set them up with like a pretty easy, you know, neutral ball. Again, I'll just talk about the warm up here. And they just keep
putting backhand values in the bottom of the net, you know, as a specific example. Any kind of patterns of movement, patterns of swing, patterns of avoidance, you want to sniff these things out as early as possible and make a little checklist in the back of your head or maybe even a literal checklist on your phone or on a note pad or something like that. Maybe keep a binder. Maybe keep a journal of sorts on different opponents on different
days. Giving you tons of practical ideas here. The more deliberate you are about calling things, these things out in your head, the easier it's going to be for you to deploy tactical shifts and changes throughout the course of the match. And also kick things off in as effective of a place as possible as far as deploying the best plan A out of the gate to give yourself some quick momentum right right off the bat as the match is starting.
It all starts by paying close attention to these things right from the first feed down the middle. Alright, that connects very perfectly, very directly into item number two, which is follow the 80 20 rule, 80% of your attention. And this goes through this goes for throughout the match, but I would say especially in the warm up, 80% of your attention should be on
your opponent or opponents and 20% should be on yourself. So when you're focusing on your opponent, you should be making this checklist of weaknesses, of deficiencies, of avoidance. In other words, this is a list of opportunities, potential opportunities. We don't know for sure until we kind of do a little poking and prodding and and a little bit of reconnaissance
work as the match gets underway. But as the match does get underway and as you navigate through the first couple games, maybe the first set, 80% of your attention should remain on your opponent. Tennis players make a huge mistake in over focusing on themselves and what feels good, what feels bad, what's working well today, what's working not. And a lot of tennis players get caught in a vortex of self analysis and self deconstruction and self
guidance and like reminders and trying to fix things like that's a waste of time. Not only because you can't really fix or change anything during this 60 to 90 minute period on the court, you're not going to fix your backhand right now. It's not going to happen. Now there is room for quick reminders and quick prompts. Like if you're the one hitting your backhand volley in the bottom of the net, it would be worthwhile to tell yourself,
hey, open the angle of the racket face up. Like we got to get the ball out of the net. Those kind of quick surface level prompts are super important. But if you allow that kind of self focus to get out of control, which most tennis players do, then it's really easy to look up an hour later and hour and a half later, not having fixed anything and having lost the match when all the keys to victory were right in plain sight across
the net from you. But you were so focused on yourself that you missed all of the opportunities. And so you weren't able to put together an effective game plan. So keep a narrow focus on making them uncomfortable and not trying to make yourself play great and you'll win a lot more matches. All right, that ties perfectly into number three, almost almost like I plan this out. Go to the well until it's dry, meaning never change a winning strategy.
If you do what you're supposed to and step one and step two, then you're going to have a pretty significant list of things to try right out of the gate to start off your match. And the goal is to just find 5% or 10% efficacy in some kind of specific target or pattern or execution, maybe high, you don't see their backhand, just as a random example, in order to make them uncomfortable, just 5 or 10%. We're not looking for anything that's going
to blow them up. So we win every single point. That's probably not realistic. We're just looking for a slight edge. And once you find something specific that does knock them off balance, that does create some kind of discomfort that does elicit errors like one out of every three shots or four shots. Do not deviate. Do not never ever, ever change a winning game plan. Never change a winning pattern. Never change a winning target. Because, oh
geez, I'm glad to get ahead of myself. I'm not going to get into the because because that's number five. Your goal is to find something very simple that gives you a slight edge and then hammer away at it over and over and over. It's your duty as a competitor to find something that makes them a little uncomfortable and gives you a slight edge and then repeat,
repeat, repeat until you've won the match. And if they make some kind of adjustment that neutralizes your first edge gaining pattern or strategy or target, then you just make your way down the list. Remember, in step one and step two, we made a whole list of things
that are opportunities. So that's when you shift to plan B when they make some kind of adjustment or they write the ship on their end of the court and they figure out how to start putting that ball in play that they were struggling with initially. All right, number four, be predictably deadly over sneaky and deceptive. Over the years, this has been just an undercurrent attitude that I've heard from players so many, just countless
thousands of times. Players think that they need to constantly be mixing things up. Constantly need to be changing their strategies and tactics so that they don't become predictable. The thing is, the more tricky and sneaky you try to be, the more volatile your own game is going to be. Number one, and number two, it doesn't matter if your opponent knows exactly what you're going to be doing in the next point if it works. It's way better
to find something that works reliably and then stick with it. Then to go from point to point to point, trying to find unique and different ways to keep them off guard and keep them off balance. You're going to make way more mistakes that way, way more errors and
most points end with errors in the first place. If you're trying to be super fancy, super sneaky, super tricky, sure, you're going to catch them off guard more frequently, but you're also going to create more errors on your side of the net throughout that process. Think about Federer when he played an adult. Everybody knew exactly what an adult's game
plan was going to be. It was not a secret to anybody and certainly not Federer and not Federer's coaches, but an adult still won significantly more matches than Federer won, even though Roger knew exactly what was coming every single time they played. That's the kind of tactical or pattern edge that you want to be looking for in your matches. Then when you find it, you just double, triple, quadruple down on that pattern until you're
walking back to the parking lot with the victory in hand. Again, if your opponent makes the adjustment and they neutralize that opening plan, fair game and good on them for making the adjustment. Now it's your job to find plan B and then if necessary, plan C and plan D and maybe circle back around to plan A again. That's how you win lots and lots of tennis matches. Okay. Close. We connected to that. Number five. This is so important. This is going
to sound so simple. Well, some of you, maybe this is going to be surprising. But for many of you that have been listening to the show for a while, it's not going to be a huge shock to hear me say this. However, the more you can embrace what I'm about to say and the more deeply you embrace it, the more successful you're going to be at tennis. And number five is you only need 51% of your points. Stop beating yourself up over losing points
and making mistakes. It is part of the game of tennis. In fact, assuming that you're playing against a fair, a fairly matched opponent, you're supposed to lose about half the points, even when you win, just a mind blowing statistic, any given point in time, the number one player in the world at tennis is winning about 53 or 54% of their total points. That's the number one player in the world. Rafael Nadal at the French open throughout his career.
Probably the most dominant, single, like event, you know, performance from an individual athlete at an individual event, maybe in the history of sports, like all sports all time. Sorry, I don't have the stats in front. What do you win? Ten of them, eleven of them, something like that. Incredible, you know, streak just winning year after year after year after year. Guess what percentage of points he won at the French open throughout his career?
That's 56%. So, A, don't beat yourself up over losing individual points. That's really totally pointless. You're supposed to lose half of them. You really are. And then number two, use this principle to keep in mind when searching for a strategy. We're not looking for some kind of target or pattern where we win eight out of ten points or seven out of ten points or even six out of ten points, you're going to win that match so comfortably
where we really only need 51%. So, this means that when you're evaluating whether or not a strategy is working, you can't really make a decision based off a two or three or like four attempts. And this is why the first couple of points here are so critical about being really observant and paying close attention to your opponent's strengths and weaknesses. And then picking out what you think is their top weakness and then deploy a pattern ten
times. And unfortunately, most tennis players, if they won five out of ten, are going to throw it out because they lost the other five. They lost the other five and are thinking themselves, wow, I'm just losing. This 50, 50 is not a winning proposition. If you can get, if you can just bump that up by one out of ten, if you can get up to six out of ten and maintain that over the course of an hour or an hour and a half, you will win that
match. So, stop looking for some kind of like golden target where you just went, you just rake in like point after point. If that happens, you're not playing the right opponent. It's not a fair fight if that happens. If you're playing an appropriate opponent, they should win half and you should win half. And now you're just looking to gain a couple percentage point edge over them by finding the right target, the right pattern. So that's
number five. You only need 51%. Okay, number six, no subjective decisions. What this means is there is no room for you in the moment to second guess, to micro analyze, to watch and wait and wonder. There's no time in the middle of a point to be a spectator. Time is the most precious commodity for all tennis players, no matter what your level is, no matter
how long you've been playing. And if you burn a quarter of a second or a half of a second watching your shot or watching your opponent's shot and asking yourself the question, I wonder is that can be in? That's going to be close. You put yourself in such a bad position. And so the more you can train yourself to just act, the more you can train yourself to just respond, no questions asked, no subject, no subjectivity involved. So the opposite of
that would be just an objective, I will run. When I read as soon as I read the ball, whatever my instinct says is the right play here. I, I, I, that I'm not asking myself any questions. I'm not doing any evaluation. I'm not weighing the pros. I'm just going to act no matter what. So that means no asking myself the question, I wonder if that shot's going to land in.
No, just, just run, just act or asking yourself the question. I wonder if my shot is going to, you know, when I'm saying like you hit the lob, you stand there and you do like the body English thing, like lean, like, oh man, I hope it's going to be in while they're chasing down the ball. That time is so precious. You could be improving your position. You could
be putting yourself in a better spot for the next ball. But because you're asking yourself the question and subjectively, you know, wondering, I wonder if this point's going to be over or not, you're putting yourself in a worse position to try to win the point if it is in. Or maybe you're wondering, I wonder if they're going to call that out. It's going to be real close. Or maybe you're wondering, I wonder if I can get that ball or not. It looks like
it's probably going to bounce twice. I'm not, I'm not going to try. I'm probably not going to get there. These are all different ways of making a subjective call in the middle of a point in the middle of an environment that's super intense and full of chaos. There is no time to sit and scratch your head and observe or spectate or wonder. The more you can train yourself to just go and listen, you might not go in the right direction every
time. But over the long run, over 100 points played. If a certain, you know, a small percentage of the time, you, sure, you act, but it's maybe the wrong decision. All the other times that you just act that maybe you could have sat and wondered and scratched your head are going to more than make up for it. So no subjective decisions, just act. All right. Number seven, commit to at least a six out of 10 tempo. What I mean, what I mean by that is 10
out of 10 means full 100% effort and intensity when you swing at the ball. So it could be a ground stroke. It could be a serve. Plain good quality tennis requires racket head speed requires swing speed to hit a quality, confident shot to hit the spin that you need to keep the ball in play to hit the spin you need to curve the ball and maintain some margin for air. All of those things go away when you take your foot off the gas and you're careful or your
tentative. Now, you can win a lot of matches at a beginner level or even kind of lower intermediate level by hitting any shot back in play. Doesn't really matter the pace or the depth or the spin or the mark like when you're just starting out just anywhere inside the lines. If you can do it over and over again, you're going to win a lot. But as you level
up, there's going to become a minimum quality of shot needed to compete. And as you level up more and more and more, the quality of shot required becomes higher and higher and higher. At high levels of play, every shot has to be a higher and higher minimum level of speed and spin and placement or else the other person on the other side of the court has the
tools they need to just steamer or you just put the ball away. So if you have aspirations of leveling up, your minimum quality of shot in terms of pace and depth and spin and placement and confidence has to continually level up as well or else you're not going to have any chance. And in my experience, tennis players are very unaware of the swing intensity that
they use from shot to shot, from point to point. And the more where you can be and the more deliberately you can choose about a six or a seven out of 10, the better results you're going to have. Now, it's all relative, right? So a six out of 10 swing speed on a forehand for a three five player is totally different than a six out of 10 speed of swing
for a four five player. So, so that's why I can't give you like a miles. I can't say I've got to make sure like you hit 40 miles an hour on your rally, you know, ground strokes. It's very, very, it's completely level dependent. So, so I can't give you like a actual measurement or speed, but it should be a percentage of your maximum effort. If you get down to half speed intensity or below, then you're going to have a very hard time being consistently competitive
match after match. The sooner you can learn how to stick to a solid, confident tempo without over swinging or under swinging, the faster you're going to level up your game, especially if you can keep leveling up what your six or seven out of 10 tempo is. All right, number eight. This idea is really, really big because most points end with an error. And by the way, that's all levels of tennis beginner, intermediate, advanced, professional level players. Most
points end with a mistake of some kind. It might be a four star, it might be an unforested player. Different levels, the ratios are a little different, but majority of points end with somebody making a mistake. So, this is kind of combining the tempo idea with error management. The mindset you want to have is make big swings, confident swings, to safe targets. There's a big misconception that to hit a good shot in tennis, the ball
has to travel low over the net and close to the lines. That's a good shot in error quotes. But high level tennis players win a lot of points without having to take those kind of risks without having to aim low over the net or close to the lines. And this is critical to understand at all levels because regardless of your level, most points will end with
somebody making a mistake. Everyday players, from beginner to intermediate to advanced, let's say everything below 50, we make about four errors for every winner that we hit. Professional level players make about two errors for every winner that they hit. But there's still doubling the amount of winners that they hit with errors. So when you get an opportunity to hit the ball, above a six out of 10, maybe you get something that's kind of sitting
in the middle of the court, it's slower, it's weaker, it's a little bit shorter. Now is a good time to go up to a seven out of 10 or an eight out of 10 tempo instead of a six. But resist the urge to also try hitting it just over the top of the net and just a couple inches inside the lines on the other side. Because a huge part of being successful in tennis is all about error management. It's hitting more winners, a good thing. Sure. But only if
you can do so without dramatically increasing your errors at the same time. So I'm not saying be careful. I'm not saying be overly safe. It's critical that you continue to develop your confidence in your acceleration and hitting with a more confident tempo. However, as you do so, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to pair that with aiming with lower margin over the top of the net and inside the lines. All right. That brings us to number nine.
Use a set up shot focus rather than having let's go right back to that example of a slower, shorter, kind of weaker shot that you have the opportunity to attack on. Rather than have a put away mentality where you're thinking, where can I just crush this ball so that there's no chance of the ball coming back into play. Where's my target that if I hit it, there's zero chance the ball comes back and play. Rather than think about it that way, think about
having a set up mentality like in volleyball. You know how in volleyball, the team is working together to set and then spike. It's not the first ball when the ball travels over the net to the other team. It's not it's not like a spike duel, right? Where it's like spike, spike, spike, spike. Teams are very deliberately, you know, with a lot with very high, you know, IQ trying to place a set up shot so that somebody else can put the ball away with the easiest
possible look. Now in tennis doubles, that is like a perfect parallel where rather than trying to spike everything and hit everything for a winner. If you can be mindful of your partners' strengths and their position and their weaknesses too, then we can start to set up patterns and plays to give them opportunities to be a hero and put the ball away as opposed to trying to hit everything for a winner in which case the statistics in the long run
are very, very poor working. They're working against us actively. So winners should happen because you played one or two shots before the winner really intelligently and it opened up, you know, a really clear, obvious opportunity to hit a winner. Not because you just suddenly decide, oh, I'm going to rev it. I'm going to rev up the forehand and it's time to just slap something like to the corner and like suddenly stomping your foot on the gas pedal
and aiming close to the lines. If that's how you hit the majority of your winners, you're going to get some highlight shots. There's no question about it. But because of the 51% nature of tennis where all we need is a 1% edge over our opponent to be the winner, you're putting yourself in an incredibly difficult position, trying to win that match with a winner first mindset. If you ignore, if you ignore this principle, this idea, errors will
stack up and winning becomes very, very difficult. It's not impossible. But at that point, you basically need your opponent to out-error you. You need your opponent to slap the ball even harder, more frequently, closer to the lines than you or else you're going to end up just digging your own grave. So use a set up shot focus, not a winner shot focus. That brings us perfectly to number 10. Never play for the highlight reel. What I mean by the highlight
reel is noteworthy shots. Like the ones that you walk back to the car, you're sitting, having a beer or glass of wine afterwards and kind of reflecting on the match with your buddies. And it's the outlier shot that everybody's like, oh man, you remember the crazy diving like back in, you know, Steve hit like down the line, you know, for a winner. Most tennis points at all levels, even the players we watch on TV, nobody pays attention to this,
just because of human nature. Most tennis points are very, very routine. They're very boring. They're very mundane. And guess what? Those are the points that you want to focus on winning and stacking up in your favor because it's the largest piece of the pie are the most boring repetitive, like nothing burger points. If you can win 55% of the nothing burger points, then you've got a tremendously high probability of winning a match. And on the flip side,
and this is what makes it so hard. I mean, it's why there's, you know, ESPN, you know, top 10, everybody wants to see from the last 24 hours, what are the most crazy, ridiculous, unbelievable plays and shots and, you know, highlights over the last 24 hours. Like that's
what people talk about around the water cooler, right? Like nobody talks about, oh, did you see Sally one 65% of points that only lasted two shots, you know, just like the server return and like somebody messed up either double faulted, missed the return or like missed the first ball like, no, nobody talks, nobody talks about those points, but they have an
incredibly high importance in terms of who actually wins or loses the match. So when you walk back to your car and you've got those replays swirling in your head about like the two or three points that were just ridiculous. And they ended with super exciting, unlikely, high risk shots. Those are a lot of fun. I'm not saying don't enjoy those points, but treat those as just the icing on the cake. They should never, ever be the foundation of
your strategy or the foundation of how you're trying to win matches. It should just be a nice bonus on top of your fundamental focus on winning the really boring mundane points. That's how you're going to win a lot more matches than your peers. So that's number 10, never played for the high rate, highlight real. All right, three more to go. Number 11, use vertical space, because nobody practices it. Okay, so here's what I mean by vertical
space lateral or like horizontal would be moving right and left back and forth. That's what everybody practices. It's like every ball machine training session ever, every cardio tennis training session ever, every ground stroke, you know, practice session ever is just what we call windshield wiper drills as tennis coaches. You got you got two players starting in the middle of the baseline. One moves out to the right, hits four hands. The other
one moves out to the left, hits back hands and you recover back to the middle again. And you go back and forth, windshield wiper style. That's what everybody practices. 99 percent of the time. Everybody practices moving corner to corner, recovering back and forth. But guess what? The court is significantly longer front and back than it is wide, even
for doubles players. But nobody practices moving up and back. Some players do a small percentage of the time, but it's not a very big focus point for most players, most of the time. So I'm not trying to say moving players right and left is bad, but it's probably what the person on the other side of the net has practiced the most. So practice changing your heights and your depths and your spins to force your opponents to have to move vertically
forward. It's in backwards back to the fence and up to the net on your terms, not on their terms. That means practice your touch a little bit. Practice your backspin and your slice. Practice your heavy topspin. Heavy topspin, good height and depth is going to push people back to the back curtain, the back fence. And backspin and a little bit lower and shorter is going to force people out of their comfort zone forwards, especially if they don't like
the net in the first place. And the more you can mix that in and not over focus on right and left, the more matches you're going to win because nobody practices hardly anybody. I shouldn't say nobody. Such a small percentage of time is spent focused on that vertical movement and those vertical skills. All right, number 12. Don't watch the ball when it's traveling towards your opponent. This is such a big one. And I actually just finished
completing one of my favorite lessons. It'll be out on YouTube in a couple of weeks. One of my favorite lessons I've recorded in a long time has this title. It's not out as of right now, but it's going to have titles, something like Don't Watch The Ball. And tennis players have been told thousands of times to watch the ball. And so they've gotten in the habit. And it's also just human nature to watch the ball all the time.
And when the ball is traveling toward you and you're the one that's going to hit it next, then of course, all of your focus and attention should be on the ball. So you can judge the ball's trajectory and height and speed. So you can move to the right position and have the right amount of time in and spacing to make quality contact all like that. That's all that's all good. And it's all it's also all incredibly obvious, right? It's probably
the first time you ever picked up a racket. Somebody probably suggested, hey, you should probably watch the ball. It's like, it's like the most basic fundamental, fundamental, repeated advice ever. You don't need to be told for the 28,000th time to watch the ball. You know you're supposed to do that. But here's the thing. The moment you're done hitting the ball and the ball is left your strings. Your focus should go to your opponent and not
the ball. The ball is going to go wherever it's going to go, whether you watch it or not. Once it's left your strings, there's nothing you can do to change the trajectory. There's nothing you can change. There's nothing you can do to change where it lands. And your opinion of where it lands and whether or not it's in or out makes no difference at all as person rules is 100% in your opponent's court and it's their discretion to call it
in or out. So there's really no reason. And there's no benefit to watching the ball at all. What does make a difference is working to anticipate what's coming next and thinking ahead about what is the next shot from my opponent, not the shot I just hit in the present, but what shot is likely to be next from my opponent. And the way the only way to tell that and have an early indication of that is to watch what direction they're moving,
how they're preparing their body, how they're preparing their racket. What grip they have is their racket face open or closed? Is their balance quality or is it poor? Is their back turned towards me? Are they poised? Are they moving into the court as they get ready to hit? Are they moving away from the net as they're getting ready to make their swing? The combination of all of those things is how high level tennis players can reliably
know what's coming next, aka anticipate. And guess what? You can either be going down that checklist and watching them or you can be watching the ball and you cannot watch both at the same time. You can either be watching your shot to see if it's going to be in or not or you can be watching your opponent to tell what's going to happen next. So watch for their position, their balance, their preparation with their body, their preparation with
their racket. All that information can help you reliably know what's coming next with a high degree of confidence. Watching the ball will give you no indication of any of those things. So don't watch the ball after you've hit it. When it's coming towards you, of course, watch the ball. But stop watching the ball as soon as it's left your strengths. For a deep dive on that, keep an eye out on the YouTube channel for the don't watch
the ball upload. It'll be out pretty soon. All right, number 13. Save the best for last. This is mental toughness. At no point should you be time traveling ever, meaning moving your focus to the past or into the future. Either one of those decisions will kill your performance. Focusing on the past means ruminating on a bad air or a bad line call or maybe
a bad performance. You know, like, uh, man, the last time I played Sally, like I was also ahead and she came back and won the more mental energy you give to anything that happened in the past by definition, the less focus you have in the present and the less quality you're probably going to be able to perform the lower quality you're going to be performing. Same thing stands true for the future. Thoughts like, wow, what if I win? Like, like,
this could be perceived as like a positive thought, right? Like, I've never beat Steve before. I'm up 6351. Holy cow. What if I win? The moment your brain jumps into the future and starts picturing how satisfying this win is going to be. It's at that instant that you let your opponents foot in the door and you give them an opening to be able to take over the match. And of course, thinking, oh, man, I'm just going to like, man, when I
lose this match, my teammates are going to be so disappointed. My coach is going to wonder what the heck am I doing? What if I, man, what if I've been wasting all this coaching I've been getting and time I've been investing, investing in my game? The more you think about the future, the lower your performance and the present is going to be. Instead, in between points, put all of your focus only on the immediate present. The very next point,
what is my intention for target, for pattern? What is my plan? That is what your brain should be feverishly focused on point after point after point. That's how you're going to perform your best. Focusing on what's what's working right now? What is not working right now? What is my intention for the point that we're about to play? That's what should occupy all of your head space. You're, you're human. So there's going to be some drifting.
It's okay. No need to beat yourself up over shifting to the past or the present. Just gently bring yourself back to the, I'm sorry, no need to beat yourself up over drifting into the past or the future. Just gently nudge yourself back into the present again and refocus on what's important. Those thoughts about the past and the future are naturally going to pop up. Even the best competitors have that happen, but they quickly refocus on the present and that's what being in the zone is all about.
All right, hopefully I, I think this is just an incredibly value packed episode here. Went a little bit longer than normal, but here's the 13 again real quick. Be sure, lock homes, follow the 80 20 rule, go to the well until it's dry. Be predictably deadly over being sneaky. You only need 51% of the points. Don't make any subjective decisions. Commit to a six out of 10 tempo. Make big swings to safe targets. Use a set up shot focus. Never
played for the highlight reel. Use vertical space. Don't watch the ball when it's after it's left your racket and no time traveling. Keep yourself in the present. Each of these 13 things you can spend a lifetime trying to master. If you can get really good at just a few of them, you're going to be tough to beat. If you can be mindful and aware of all 13, eventually, over time working on these things, you're going to be incredibly effective
tennis player. It'll probably help you in other areas of life too. Thanks so much for listening today. Hope you enjoyed the episode. If you'd like free resource to show you how to hit your forehand with effortless smooth power, make sure to go to forehandpower.com where I'll walk you step by step through how to use your body more efficiently, more smoothly, and how to add 15 miles per hour to your forehand in just 15 minutes of practice. That's at
forehandpower.com. Thanks for listening today. I'll talk to you again soon. For more free, game improving instruction, be sure to check out essentialtennis.com where you'll find hundreds of video, audio, and written lessons. Also, be sure to subscribe to essential tennis on iTunes and YouTube, where we are the number one resource in the world providing passionate instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care and good luck with your tennis.