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How Good Are Your Tennis Volleys?

Does my volley game live up to scrutiny? This is the first and only question you should ask yourself on your way to becoming a better tennis player.

Unless you are a glutton for punishment and prefer to run Kilometers behind the baseline versus a short dash to the net, a couple of stabs forwards and you are done with the pain, volleying should be one of your options.

Once you develop a whiff of what the volley can hold for you, you will be like a train at full speed and you just want to go forward and finish points at the net.

The mastery of the volley is a very complex and at the same time enormously rewarding task. There is no other shot in tennis that so much equally challenges both players, the one at the net and the baseliner. Here we come back to the initial question, can you really volley? And I will ask you a series of questions:

- Can you pick-up difficult low volleys around and behind the service line and make them?

- When I say make them, I mean can you do something with them or place them technically and tactically on the right spot?

- After you -made- that first difficult volley are you able to move swiftly an dexterously forward behind the path of the ball you just hit and cover adequately for the next shot? When I say cover, I am not talking about guessing, I am talking about anticipating and move to the next shot and eventually put it away.

- Following an attack being it a serve and volley or an approach volley, are you able to put away, waist high, shoulder high or above the shoulder, volleys? I mean without the highly inaccurate swing volleys! (Even though if you good at it by all means do it!)

- Are you so good at volleying that you are able to constantly fool your opponent and wrong foot him with your volleys? Or hit behind them in tennis jargon?
- Do you have an overhead backhand volley?

- Caught in no man's land or around the service line are you able to effectively turn half volleys to your advantage?

- Are you able to feather a drop volley from any position at the net?

- When stretched to the limit can you still make a decent volley out of it?

- Can you produce an angle volley at the right moment?

- Do you know how, where and when to hit an approach shot?

- Do you have a top class overhead smash to back up all of this?

All of these questions I just asked are the kind of scrutiny your volleys will be under by your opponents shots. If you were able to say yes to all of those challenges, you would be among the very best three players that come to mind in the last 20 years which could do all of that; Patrick Rafter, Pete Sampras and Tim Henman.

You may say, what about Roger Federer? Roger is very close but, because of his overly sideways head position, when it gets fast he makes some darn awful blunders at the net which do not belong to the same class of volleys I am talking about.

Of -ALL- great champions Roger Federer is the only one that volleys with his head sideways (please look above). This translates in many important situations into disastrous errors.

For well over 4 years I have been trying to warn teachers and young players NOT to copy this element of Federer's game, it is bio-mechanically incorrect, leads to plenty of miss-hits on frames and some humilliating mistakes. As a proud man that Roger his, he will say, he does not go to the net more often because it tires him more.

Not true! He knows it is his achiles, if well exploited by his opponents.

There are tennis players from the past which I was lucky enough to watch playing, that volleyed even better than Patrick Rafter, Pete Sampras and Tim Henman and to mention just a few; Lew Hoad, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall.

They all volleyed at a level that very few in centuries to come will ever do. And Pancho Gonzales stands as the ultimate serve and volley player supported by a superior serve than all the above.

Notice how unlike Roger who is volleying from very easy positions, all of these great champions whether stretched to the limit or not, always strive to keep their heads (eyes) looking forwards.

These days trying to find on TV serve and volley sequences or attacks that make sense to teach, is like trying to find the chicken that lays golden eggs, very hard! Nevertheless, there are players to watch with good volley skills and they are:

- Roger Federer (if you do not copy his side-ways head position).
- Andy Murray
- Novak Djokovic
- Jo-Wilfred Tsonga
-Gilles Simon
- Venus Williams (Yes! She volleys better than most men on the ATP!)
- Mario Ancic (when healthy)

Unfortunately I can not mention any of the USA or Australian men players but, the wrong development decisions by their federations (link to article) and the following of certain baseline one mode tennis 'gurus' lead to turning two of the very best serve and volley producing nations into deserts.

This brings to mind the speech 'Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You, by John F. Kennedy' 'and ask what you can do for your country'.

You are responsible for your tennis do not let others decide for you, be courageous, be strong, work hard and intelligently, develop a maximum of skills and they should include among other aspects of the game; the serve and volley, the volley and the attack (link to article).

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Sergio Cruz

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