Ways to practice tennis

One of the main reasons that people quit tennis is because they don’t have someone to play with. Well, I realized that that’s not right, so I decided to come up with a list of alternatives to playing with a partner(because as everyone knows, partners are difficult to find). So here it is:

Ways to practice tennnis: 

• Practicing shots on your own with a bucket of balls

  • Pros: Easy and cheap to do, and it's pretty easy to choose what shot you want to practice more.

  • Cons: It gets very boring quickly, and it's very difficult to practice your backhand(although it can be done) simply because you have to drop the ball and then put your hand on the racket and then hit.

• Hitting shots against the wall:

  • Pros: You can do it anytime you’re at home, and you don’t need to pay any money. It’s great for new tennis players just trying to increase their accuracy and form, as you can draw a target on the wall and try to hit it.

  • Cons: As you progress in skill, it will become hard to effectively practice anything but volleys with this, and it can get boring after a while. 

•  Using a tennis ball machine to hit shots:

  • Pros: Easy to get a good workout, just turn on oscillation. It's also easy to not get bored, since you can spice it up by hitting whatever shot you want and making the ball machine hit higher or lower to practice certain things. It's also good for pretty much every shot, at any level.

  • Cons: Can get quite expensive, so if you are just starting, I wouldn’t recommend buying one, but you maybe could just rent it out. Also, you can’t practice your serves very easily with this(although you could just hit a serve, then have the ball machine shoot a ball to simulate a return)

•  Using an off-court tennis aid to improve topspin:

  • Pros: Using something like the topspin pro is great for practicing your topspin, which is a very important part of the game. It also shouldn’t be that expensive, depending on what you get. 

  • Cons: Can get expensive depending on the model and whether or not it's used. I think I would recommend getting it used, as the money you save is probably worth it. Also, you will find that you quickly get bored, as it is just hitting the same few shots over and over again, and you can’t easily hit serves and some other shots with it. (There are ways, but none I will cover here, perhaps sometime soon I will cover that in a separate article.)

•  Playing with a partner at a local tennis court:

  • Pros: You get experience with every stroke and you also get the added practice with playing against a partner, which allows you to learn how to beat people, not just how to play better.

  • Cons: Hard to schedule, hard to find a partner, and partners aren’t always available

•  Take lessons with a coach:

  • Pros: You get to practice with every stroke, and can easily ask the coach to work on specific parts of the game with you. You also get much more feedback than with a partner, as the coach has more experience in teaching people, not just playing.

  • Cons: Can get pretty expensive, and you can’t do it all the time.

Final Comparison

Ok, so now out of these all, what did I find was the best? Well, it's complicated, as most things are.

So first I would like to say, the best way to improve your game would be a mixture of taking lessons with a coach, playing with a partner, and using an off-court tennis aid. 

However, that doesn’t take into account the problems with trying to schedule with a tennis partner and the price of tennis lessons. So, with price in mind, we get a new best way to practice: play with a partner at a local tennis court and practice dropping and hitting the balls/serving. 

Although, now that I look at it, both of these are the extremes. I would say that the best way to improve fast and to not spend too much money is to do a combination of hitting with a ball machine (don’t buy one, that can get pretty expensive, which is why we started renting and leasing them: www.tbmrentals.com/rent) and to play with a partner sometimes (because you can’t play with a partner all the time due to schedule conflicts.) and don’t take private lessons that much, just a couple times a month. (This one is the one that I do, with less playing with the partner, and more lessons.)

Now, I want to mention that there are many other ways to improve your tennis game, through exercise and footwork, but I didn’t mention those here. To find ways to improve your game without hitting shots, read this: www.tbmrentals.com/tennis-drills