Keeping Your Focus on Court

Over the past several weeks there have been several questions submitted for the podcast on mental toughness, fighting anxiety and nerves, and tightening up on certain strokes during a tennis match or even practice. The mental game is a huge part of tennis, and something that truely affects every player, so it's obviously of huge importance to understand and work on as you continue to strive for improvement in your game.

A huge part of performing well mentaly during a tennis match or during a practice session is keeping your focus sharp, another way of saying concentration. Without good focus and concentration it's incredibly easy to lapse into a relaxed mental state where unforced errors are more easily hit, and a players attitude can plumit into a negative state of mind.

So how can we keep better focus on the court? Below I will go over the two main ways you can control your mental focus, and improve your mental game.

Control your eyes

At the recreational level tennis players let their eyes leave the court between points way too often, and this is a huge cause of distraction. I struggled with this in college as I was a little insecure playing the bottom of my team's line up after being "the man" in high school. I was constantly looking up into the viewing area trying to see who was watching me: My coach? Teammates? Friends from my hall or classes? Your eyes need to stay on the court, and preferably only on one of two things: the ball, or your own racket. During the points that you play your focus needs to remain as much as possible on the ball, no brainer. In between points, keeping your eyes down either on your racket, your shoes, or the court is a great way to keep your concentration. The pros are constantly fixing their strings between points, sure their strings move a lot, but this is a focus technique as well. Distractions come easily, your game will improve if you avoid them at all costs.

Control your thoughts

Firstly, it's essential that you keep your thoughts either positive or neutral as you play your tennis. Trust me, I understand how hard this can be. I'm a perfectionist, and I'm passionate about my tennis. That means when I fail to make a shot, especially one that I feel is routine and easy, its so easy to get angry and take on a negative attitude. Negative feelings can snow ball very quickly and turn your attitude sour very quickly, this in turn can lead to poor decision making, impatience, and overall poor play. Don't let short falls in your strokes or shot making break your focus and concentration, you need to stay sharp, and negative thoughts will destroy your mentality.

Secondly, its essential to keep your thoughts on whats happening in the present, and what needs to be done in the future. When a poor shot, point, or series of points is played, its very easy to dwell on it and forget what needs to be done to get back on track and avoid making the same mistake again. Another way that mental focus and concentration is often broken is through a poor or questionable line call by the opposition. Let it go. It's not worth it, trust me. Dwelling on any kind of negative event during your match can do nothing but hurt you. Being able to put those kinds of things behind you quickly, and replacing those thoughts with what needs to be done NOW is a skill that will serve you well if developed.

Singles Essential: Ground Stroke Depth

While on your quest looking for single dominance there are a a myriad of different things you can focus on to try and gain the upper hand against your opponents. Ground strokes, volleys, serves, overheads, etc. Within each of those specific strokes there are many factors that will decide whether or not it will be effective, things such as speed, spin, height and angle to name a few.

In today's game the ground stroke is becoming a very obvious necessity for anybody wanting to be successful at tennis, and in my opinion the first thing that must be mastered by anybody wanting a strong singles game is the ability to create deep, penetrating ground strokes.

Why Deep?

As you play tennis, depth of shot is going to go a long ways towards insulating yourself from attacks by your opponent. The deeper you're able to keep your ground strokes, the farther away you keep them from your own side of the court. The farther away they stay from your side, the better of a shot it's going to take to create an outright winner, or any other pressuring shot for that matter. Your job as a singles player is to consistently force your opponent to come up with truly great shots in order to beat you. The two main ways we DON'T want to lose are:

1. Creating so many errors you beat yourself
2. Serving up weak shot after weak shot allowing your opponent to force errors freely

By hitting deeply in the court correctly we can minimize our own mistakes by making long, relaxed, confident strings at the ball all while making it more difficult for our opponent to hit aggressive ground strokes or come in to pressure us with volleys.

How Deep?

In my private teaching, I am constantly encouraging my students to aim past the service line on their opponents side with their ground strokes. I introduce this goal immediately even to beginners after I've made sure they have a solid understanding of basic technique. From service line to baseline you have 18 feet of space to aim for this area. This means that aiming a forehand cross court (which is where you should be aiming a majority of the time) and past the service line gives you 243 square feet of court real estate to work with. Sound easy? It's not. Next time you go out to practice with a partner start a cooperative rally cross court using your forehand and see how long it takes you to make five in a row in this deep box of the court. Can you do it? How about making 10 in a row as a team? If you've never tried this before and you're below a 5.0 playing level you and your partner will be surprised how difficult it actually is.

Correct ball flight

There are two main factors that will make up how deeply your ground stroke will travel; speed and height. The higher and faster your shot is traveling, the farther its going to travel. What we're trying to achieve is a shot that passes over the net by around 3 feet, and has enough drive (speed) to carry past the service line on the other side of the court. The easiest way to do this in terms of technique, is to have a long relaxed swing that travels in an upward direction as your core rotates towards your target.

The best way to practice this is either with a practice partner or with a ball machine. As I suggested earlier, pick a specific number of shots to make in a row to a certain corner past the service line as a goal, and don't stop until you've reached it. When you do, take the same stroke and make that number in a row again to the opposite corner, and then go to your ground stroke on the other side of your body and accomplish the same goal to both corners again. Your target number should be at least five in a row past the service line, even if you're a beginner. This repetitive work will help you gain confidence in your ground strokes, and help you continue to develop a strong shot using either side, and aiming for either corner.

Now get out there and practice! If you have any feedback on this article, or any questions related to it you can post them in the Blog forum of the Essential Tennis message boards!