We asked our Lakeshore Head Tennis Pro, Sujit Das for some of his quick tips for improving your Tennis performance in regards to your strokes, your tactics, and even your mental game! Making these simple adjustments to your game can make a big difference to your overall performance.

3 Tips to Improve Your Strokes  

Grip Less

The majority of club players grip their racquet tighter than they need to, this not only leads to stunted strokes and but can also lead to injury. Think of how you hold a fork or a pen, you don’t death grip it, you control the grip mostly through your fingers. Having a looser grip allows for better maneuverability. 

Breathe 

Most club players don’t consistently breathe out when they hit, and this might be the missing ingredient in improving your game. Breathing out helps to keep your arm and body relaxed through impact, takes the fear out of missing, provides the body with muscle memory, and helps to prevent injury.  

Reception Skills

The first and sometimes only thing on most beginner/intermediate players minds is hitting the ball, and this is what causes players to get too physically close to the ball as they are so anxious to hit it. Everything you do is based on what you get, different incoming balls require different outcomes, therefore paying more attention to reading the incoming ball will lead to making less mistakes.  

3 Tips to Improve Your Tactics 

Play to Your Strengths

Many club players compete like they rally, with the objective of just getting the ball back. A Majority of players have a much stronger forehand than backhand, but you rarely see the effort to run around their backhand to hit their best shot. The other example of this is not stepping up and punishing second serves. This is great opportunity to send a message to your opponent!  

Exploit Weaknesses

One of your jobs during a tennis match is to frustrate your opponent, because when you do that, you will take them off their game and the match is for your taking. Find out what they don’t like, whether it be their backhand or coming to the net, and give them a large dose of it!  

Learn to Neutralize

When you are in trouble during a point, don’t go for the heroic shot (no matter how good it may potentially feel!), learn to hit slower and with more height and try to get the point back or close to even terms, then you can look to take control.   

3 Tips to Improve Your Mental Game 

Does it Matter if You Play Well?

It took me a while to realize this, but you don’t need to necessarily play great to win, it is all about finding a way to win. “Playing well” should be defined by finding ways to win and staying mentally tough during a match, not by how good your forehand was that day.  

Tennis Matches are like a Seesaw

Matches can swing different ways sometimes, but most of the time there are many ups and downs, and you can’t overreact, you have to just ride with them. If you’re opponents are playing lights out, just tell yourself “they can’t keep this up” and just hang in there until their level comes down and then make that your time to strike!  

Positive Body Language

I can usually walk in during the middle of a league match and tell who is winning and losing just based on their body language. This is easier said than done, but you need to always walk around the court like you will eventually win the match, because guess what, if YOU don’t believe it, it definitely won’t happen! You must believe in yourself!

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more tips, please contact Sujit at sdas@mayfairclubs.com. Like this content? Check out our other blog post from Dr. Melissa Cutler where she explains the benefits of cross training for Tennis.