Clinic 01: AVAC 3.5+ Adult Tennis Clinic

In today's Adult 3.5+ Tennis Clinic at AVAC, Josh Martin, our tennis pro, had us focus on the following items

•  Forehand Technique

• Early preparation (prepare before the ball bounces)
  
• Hit the ball in front of you (most everyone is always late)
  
• Use timing of contact to control the direction of the shot (do not turn your body). This simplifies the shot as only timing changes
  
• Hit earlier for cross-court shots
• Hit normal for down-the-line shots
• Hit late: bad (jammed) 
• Swing 
• Shorten the swing (a long swing will not work for fastballs)

• Serve Technique
  
• After the service, get ready immediately. 
• Practice going back to "ready" position after each serve
• Toss the ball higher
• Better racket drop
• To disguise the serve
• Return of Serve
• Split step
• Turn
• Hit (power comes from forward momentum - not the swing)
  
• Step forward
  

After the clinic, I played singles tennis against Diego. 

Diego was able to return my fast serve. He mentioned that he could quickly tell where I would serve due to my lowball toss. In addition, after hitting the serve, I was too slow to get back to the "ready" position for his fast return.

Diego's serves were relatively slow, and I should have attacked them.