Coaching Happenings
Here’s a rundown of some coaching issues that came up this week.
During a junior class yesterday, one 6-year-old beginner was struggling to get his serve on the table. He kept smacking it out toward the net, and it would either go into the net, or way off the end or side. I kept explaining that his target was on his side of the table, just a few feet from him. Finally I put a quarter on the table near his end-line and told him that that was his target. Two amazing things happened. First, he became focused on hitting the quarter, and his serve began to hit both sides! Second, about five minutes later, he became so good at serving that I had him try the same thing with a downward stroke – and within a minute he was serving with backspin! Not heavy backspin, of course, but enough that he was pretty excited.
Another beginning kid was struggling with his forehand pendulum serve. I suggested he try a backhand serve – and within minutes he was serving a pretty nice sidespin.
One kid kept swatting balls all over the place. Later, at the very end of the class we had one of those “Hit the bottle of worm juice and I have to drink it” (well, Gatorade), and this kid became so fixated on hitting it that his stroke straightened out, and three times he made me drink it.
In private coaching, one player said he’d been having trouble with lefties – turns out the problem was he was so used to playing his backhand crosscourt that when he played a lefty he’d mostly go right to the player’s forehand (giving an easy attack). When he did go down the line, he struggled since he wasn’t used to doing it. So we did a bunch of down-the-line practice, my forehand to his backhand. (We’re both righties.)
