Most club players lose rallies because they go cross-court too early.

Straight line hitting does three things:

In a match you want to use the straight drive to open up space on the T for you to move up the court and look for the volley. It also opens up space in the rest of the court for you to hit the ball as your opponent will be in the back!

It’s important to practice games where you focus on this one thing so you can really groove the shot and make it a part of your game.

Here’s two conditioned games you can play with someone:

1- Length game- This is where you both hit the ball to the back of the court with every shot bouncing behind the short line. Try not to get too carried away with playing cross courts as the focus here needs to be on your straight line hitting.

Then you can progress the game with this second one:

1- Length game with volley boast- This is the exact same game as above, except on the volley you can play the boast. The key here is to make sure you keep it relevant to improving your straight line hitting. Yes you can play a volley boast off their cross court, but the main way you want to be playing the volley boast is off a good straight line shot where you have them pinned in the back corner and you then send the ball into the complete opposite corner with the boast. This means you’re stretching you opponent out with the open space on the court.

See how many straight lines you can hit into a target width of 5 floorboards.

Or, to make it even more challenging, put a shoe out in the area you would like the first bounce to be (roughly half a rackets length behind the service box) next to the wall.

And see how many targets you can hit with your straight drives in 5 minutes.

Let me know how you get on!

See you at the next email being sent next week!

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Thanks,

Grace!