Tennis - for beginners

father-ted

father-ted

father-ted

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Joined
25 Aug 2008
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Location
York, UK
Started playing tennis with the wife and daughter last year, during lockdown as another way top help with maintaining some level of fitness.

Just joined to play on a couple of local courts, nothing special but very cheap (£50 for the family for the year).

Any tips?
We have our own raquets and balls, other than that we have no idea lol
 
YouTube has some great guides ranging from grip positions and how to strike the ball to tactics on court and types of spin.

If you want to get more out of it than family fun, most clubs offer coaching sessions which would be well worth it.

Having played tonight, the best bid advice I can offer is don't try and play with flat tennis balls, it sucks.
 
Funny enough started playing myself few months back, never played before but picking it up pretty quick.

For now just playing at a local park to start with, once get more mileage on me might look into some club around here with nicer courts.
 
Qualified ITF coach here. Best advice I can give is to get a couple of lessons each with a decent club coach who can teach you the following essentials:

Forehand and backhand basic technique, including the grips (very important).
Serve basic technique (trophy position and ball toss to start).
Volley basic technique.

Expect to pay anywhere from £15 to £30 per hour each for lessons. Negotiate a discount for buying a block of lessons if you can.

YouTube is great but what it won't be able to do is show you how to make the small corrections in real time that make such a big difference. Getting the basic technique right from the start is super important - as soon as you start hitting balls your muscle memory starts to learn that way of moving and hitting, which can be pretty hard to undo. Once you've got solid foundations nailed, then YouTube can be really helpful. Intuitive Tennis is a superb channel with one of the best coaches out there giving loads of instruction online for free - but I'd stress that this can't replace an in-person coach.

Joining a local club will probably be the best thing you can do (when they all open up from this lockdown again anyhow) - get into the cheap group coaching sessions once you've had a few lessons as described above and you'll be well away.
 
I've been playing since I was 4, so can't really recall being a beginner, but I completely agree with the above. A couple of coaching sessions early doors will go a long way. I've recently gone to a few group coaching sessions despite having played for 30 years, and my backhand and serve have improved hugely as a result.

That said, a few straightforward tips for beginners:
- Either stand on or just behind the baseline, or at the net. Don't stand in half-court. If you do, you'll be trying to pick up a lot of balls bouncing at your feet, and it's much easier to run forwards from the baseline than to run backwards from the service line. Obviously it's not an absolute rule (eg if you're playing non-competitively against someone who's consistently dropping the ball short, move forward a bit), but in general it's one of the most important things to follow and something a lot of beginners get wrong
- When volleying, keep the head of the racket higher than the wrist. If you're volleying a low ball, bend your knees. As one of my old coaches put it, "move the machinery"
- Move your feet - get in a position where you're comfortable to swing through the ball. While lessons are a good idea, the swing in tennis is technically much easier than in a lot of sports. The hard bit is getting yourself in the right place
- Serving is probably the hardest aspect of the game for a beginner. Focus on your ball toss and where you strike the ball - try to throw the ball with a straight arm, as it will mean less moving parts and the ball going upwards more consistently. Throw the ball something like 1.5-2 times your height, and reach up for it. If you feel like you're hunching over when you serve you're hitting the ball when it's too low

In all seriousness, though, have a think about what you want to get out of it. If you just fancy booking a court with your wife and daughter don't worry too much about technique and just have fun - if you overthink it you'll get frustrated. But if you want to improve and learn the sport a bit, a couple of lessons early on is the best thing you can do. @Spleen Sauce will know better than me, but presumably you can book some lessons for you, your wife and your daughter to do together which will save on money and mean you can keep enjoying it together.
 
You might be able to find a coach who would give you a group session together but almost all good coaches will suggest individual lessons to get started, primary reason is that everyone will learn at a different pace and it's far too easy to concentrate/copy what someone else is doing when you're starting out, even if you do that unintentionally/subconsciously. As a coach you want to be teaching people of a similar age when doing group sessions - how old is your daughter if you don't mind me asking? If we're talking very young, then you could get her into a club and some group coaching and she'll probably fly. If a teenager, a couple of individual lessons will probably be better to start, same as you would an adult.

As Manic says, all depends on what you want from it really. If it's just a bit of fun and you're happy with that then carry on as you are :) this video is literally exactly how I start out teaching an adult so worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqgcykDGB2A
 
Daughter is 23, wife is 46 (I think lol), I am 49.
It is just a bit of fun for us, however the daughter and I are enjoying it more than the wife and we are both really competitive....so we may take it a step further and get some lessons.

Some great advice here, many thanks :-)
 
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