Sport Is Your Hobby

A big serve is a huge weapon in tennis. A powerful and accurate serve can allow you to control play, keep your opponent on the defensive and win a lot of short points.

In order to serve well, you need to have reliable mechanics, an effective pre-serve routine and a range of different serves. In addition, top servers know how to disguise their serve, so their opponent can not determine what kind of serve is coming their way. Furthermore, you need to understand the psychology behind serving well. In my view, there are two kinds of psychology related to serving. The internal psychology and the external psychology.

The External Psychology

Serving in tennis is a lot like pitching in baseball. In order to be effective as a pitcher, you need to master a variety of pitches and a variety of pitching locations.A baseball pitcher needs to keep a batter guessing as to the location of the pitch, the movement of the pitch and the location of the ball. These same concepts hold true in tennis when the server needs to keep his or her adversary off balance, confused and, when possible, guessing wrong. In short, if your adversary does not know where and how the ball will bounce, it is very hard to react to it properly.

A great server can move the ball around the serving box with different speeds, different spins and with great disguise. Being able to serve down the middle, out wide and into your opponents body makes you a tougher player. In addition,if you can disguise your serve, you can create a lot pressure for your adversary.Coming in behind your serve and attacking the net periodically, will also help to keep you opponent guessing as to what you will do next and keep him or her off balance.

Adjusting Your Serve To Attack Your Opponent's Body Type

In general, taller players have difficulty handling a serve into their body. Tall athletes like to extend their arms on the ball, so a serve out wide or a serve down the middle may be easier for them to return effectively, than is s a serve which jams them. Taller players also often find it hard to manage a serve which skids or slides and stays close to the ground.

Conversely, shorter players tend to handle balls that are served into their body better than do taller players. Obviously, because of their shorter reach, balls which require shorter players to extend for are usually more difficult for them to return. Similarly, balls which kick up high can be tough for diminutive players.

Realize that these are general rules and there are always exceptions to them. However, you will find it useful to observe your opponents closely and see if these strategies seem to apply to their strengths and weaknesses. If you have access to video of your opponents' previous matches, these would be useful patterns to note.

Adjust Your Serve For Different Surfaces

Realize that the tennis ball behaves differently on different surfaces. Clay,for example will slow down the pace of a big serve. On the other hand, a hard, flat serve can be a powerful and effective weapon on grass or on a hard court.

Adjusting Your Serve To The Score In The Match

Smart players consider the score when they step to the line to serve. If you are ahead forty-love, this is the time to be aggressive on your first and second serves. If you are behind in the game or the match, you may need to consider a more conservative serving strategy.

The Internal Psychology

The internal psychology refers to the players ability to develop the right mental state for serving effectively. Most tennis players who I coach want to "serve in the zone." In order to do this, they need develop a state of mind in which they are relaxed, focused and confident. I teach tennis pros how to place themselves in a hypnotic trance prior to serving and how to develop the right blend of relaxation, focus and confidence.

Once players learn how to integrate tools like relaxation training, visualization, self-hypnosis and positive self-talk into their serving routine, they tend to serve quite effectively. These skills are not complicated, but they take a little time and a little practice. Mastering the mental part of serving is a lot like learning serving mechanics. I generally teach relaxation techniques first and then teach people visualization and then self-hypnosis.

Different players require different kinds of mental training and psychological tools. One tennis player needed a hypnotic trance which helped him to feel more confident. Another needed to breathe deeply five times before every serve in order to relax. A female player used hypnosis to eliminate distractions.

Many of these top players use our stay in the zone cd program prior to learn how to get into a mental state which has the right balance of the three elements mentioned above. This program has a total of more than twenty trances for serious athletes.

Once you master the internal and the external psychologies of serving your game will probably move up a few notches and you will start to win more matches.

My best friend at the time and I were really into tennis in high school. We would talk about it nonstop during summer, from what kind of rackets were the best kinds to the newest updates in the world of tennis. He was a better tennis player than me and taught me lots of tennis tips while training for hours on the court. We were practicing for hours during many days of the week to make the JV team at our school.

Our training paid off. I made the JV team and he eventually went on to play Varsity. I was happy nevertheless, because he had been playing tennis for most of his life, while I just started really playing for a couple of months. It was my "second-hand" sport, but what drew me to the game was the constant action and awareness involved when playing the game. When dealing with sports, I don't like standing around. I always want to be on the move.

Unlike basketball however, you can't just be on the move running up and down on the court. Every foot step you take on the court matters, because tennis is a game about control. If you cannot control how you play, how you move, and how you occupy court territory, then you will not be a good tennis player. These things are essential to the game.

Just like when you swing at the ball, the most important thing you have to master is top spin. Without top spin, the ball will go flying out of bounds every time. Top spin helps the ball stay inbounds because the ball spins "inwards" causing the pathway of the ball to curve, rather than making it a straight line.

In order to have a perfect projection it requires control of how fast you hit the ball and how much top spin you put on the ball. This can only be done practicing swinging at the ball hundreds of thousands of times.

The second half of winning the game is understanding your opponent's weaknesses. Unlike basketball which you have four other players on your team to support you, the only other person out there to support you is yourself. That's why you must be able to identify the opponent's weaknesses and exploit them.

If they are only good at hitting the ball from the right, hit at the ball at their left every time. If they like to lob the ball up in the sky, make sure you hit it so back so fast they it catches them by surprise. Some people have no idea how to return balls that spin a lot, so adding more spin than usually can really mess up their swinging pattern. Whatever it happens to be, identify and exploit your opponents weaknesses, then you have the edge everytime.

Now, comparing actually practice to basketball season, practice in tennis was a breeze. Running was minimal. Tennis is a pretty straight forward game - no need for complicated plays or military-like drills. Just hit the ball back. Games were always fun to play because they were fast paced and mostly because you could control how you wanted the game to be.

This is what I liked about tennis. You were responsible for every point and you were responsible for your wins and losses. I liked this because unlike basketball, if your teammates don't know what they are doing and do things like ball hog the ball or are just plain clumsy, you suffer as a team due to something that is not entirely your fault. But with tennis, you have 100% control over everything.

What did I learn from tennis that can be applied to life? Well the first thing is life is about control. Whatever outcome you want in life, you are the person in control of it. Not the person across from you, not your friends, family, neighbors, people you see on TV; you are 100% in control of what your day will look like tomorrow do to you actions today. You can either lose in life or win in life, the choice is up to you and just like tennis, you must constantly practice in order to make things perfect. As they say, practice makes perfect, and it's no different from playing tennis or playing life.

The second thing is if you happen to be in a business where it is highly competitive (most business are competitive anyway), one thing that may help you out is learning about your opponent's weaknesses. It may not be necessary thing to exploit them, but see what they don't have that you can add to make your position better. Just like tennis, this requires observing you opponents while learning from their behaviors at the same time. Then just doing something different and better. By just mastering this one trait, you'll usually advance further than other people doing the same thing.

If you watch any professional tennis game, you can learn a lot from the players and how they go about winning the game. You can see it in games that really matter and how much effort they put in just to win that one point. Sometimes rallies will seem to go on forever, but in the end, you'll that the person who understands their opponent more and has control over the game, ends up winning.

Gain a competitive edge by learning from other people, but most importantly don't let life just win you over. Take control.