Tennis is a beautiful sport. It doesn’t matter if you live in America or Europe you can take racquet and have fun on the court. You can be tall or short and still achieve great results while competing during tournaments. Your character also doesn’t limit your opportunities in tennis – shy person as well as self-confident one can be really successful.
We all start from the same point. We take racquet into the hand and try to hit yellow ball. Then our goal is to hit it over the net and inside the lines of the singles court. Years later we start to compete and take part in many tournaments to confront our skills against different opponents. We pay attention to our development as well as we look carefully at our ranking position and possibility to play in better tournaments every year. First trophies get on the shelf and you have motivation to continue your athletic journey.
If you already compete in tournaments you are aware that players possess numerous strengths, weaknesses and playing styles. If you just started your journey with tennis you will discover this truth in few years when you get on the court during the first tournaments. As you can see it doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner or advanced player you need knowledge and skills to win against different opponents. That is why it is crucial to know what you can expect from different playing styles and what skills you have to develop to make sure that you can always leave the court as a winner.
Serve & Volley player
General strengths:
- Great serve
- Solid net game skills
- Offensive approach
General weaknesses:
- Weak groundstrokes skills
- Poor movement on the baseline
- Lack of patience
- Problems with winning returning gems
- Lack of defensive game
This style is less and less popular in modern tennis but from time to time you can be challenged to play against serve-and-volley rusher. This type of player loves to come to the net and looks for quick opportunity to leave the baseline. Most of the time he has great serve that is used to prepare easy volley to finish the point. Additionally this player is offensive minded and doesn’t care too much about mistakes. He wants to put pressure on the opponent from the first shot and even when he returns he looks for opportunity to shorten the point and move forward as soon as possible.
As you can simply imagine serve-and-volley playing style is based mostly on good serves and volleys. It means that to be able to beat this opponent you have to possess good returning and passing shot skills. If you are able to place the ball away from the opponent or hit it with control into the legs you have a good chance to win this battle. Additionally remember that anything you do to put your opponent into defensive position will give you advantage because defensive scenarios are not in his comfort zone. When you serve it is crucial to use your delivery to not give your opponent chance to come to the net so variety of your serves combined with good baseline game based on moving the opponents are factors that should guarantee easy win. (Do you want to know strengths and weaknesses of defensive player too? Read my other article that shows the real face of defensive style).
How to beat serve-and-volley player?
- Focus on good control while returning
- Break opponent’s serve as soon as possible to make him lose confidence
- Try to keep your opponent on the baseline while having own service gems
Can you point out 5 players who come to the net after the serve? Put your names in the comments box below.
Marcin Bieniek is a professional tennis coach. You can contact Marcin through his personal coaching website http://marcinbieniek.info. Marcin has been working with USTA, top 50 ITF and WTA/ATP players. Author of tennis book “Tenisowy Olimp” and frequent contributor to TennisPro and TenisKlub magazines. He was a speaker at International Coaching Tennis Symposium 2016 at Hilton Head Island, USA.
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