Tennis is much like golf and other technique intensive sports in that all of the top players do certain things the same way, and yet no two players ever look the same while executing their game. How is that possible?

Coming to the net immediately after a serve is a great way to mix things up in your singles play, and something that everybody should be doing most of the time in their doubles play.

Ever watch a professional tennis match on TV, and wonder to yourself "why do they keep hitting the ball back to each other?". Often times you will see pros get into repetitive cross court court rallies. The reason is, each is waiting for an opportunity to hit down the line that would give them an advantage. Hitting cross court is safer, and they know it, so a smart player will often only hit cross court unless there's an opportunity that out weighs the risk.

I say "good miss" to my students often when their technique was solid and their resulting shot was close to being very successful. I often get cross eyed looks from people who haven't taken many lessons from me before when I say this, and I find that most people are incredibly difficult on themselves when missing a shot by the smallest of margins. That is why I'm writing on this topic today.

If you don't know how to keep the ball in play first and foremost, trying increase how aggressive you hit the ball is going result in more errors, keeping your ratio of points won to lost the same if not worse. So lets look quickly at the three main ways that a tennis point can end:

This week's article is about why you need to be at the net as much as possible in your doubles play. In lower level and intermediate team practices that I teach there seems to be a constant debate over whether coming to the net all the time is good or not

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.

In my teaching of both singles and doubles players I encourage my students to come to the net a great deal. I love the net personally, but if approached incorrectly this strategic move can become much more difficult that you bargained for. I will split up this article into three main parts: when to approach, where to place your shot, and where to place yourself when approaching the net in singles. Enjoy!

So how do you hit an overhead correctly? I'll break down the basics into three main parts including the turn, positioning and contact.

Doubles compliments your overall game by forcing you to become comfortable at the net using volleys and overheads, so if you're not already mixing up your play time with both singles and doubles definitely start!