The First Strike Principle

As promised to my FB friends, here's what I call "The First Strike Principle" of play. It's not something that's new, I'm sure, as it all sounds like common sense attacking play when I think about it, but having a convenient reference name makes it easier for me when I analyse and plan my own training and progress on the tennis court so here goes -

On Serve -
1.Place my serves to elicit a non-attacking return from my opponent. Since I'm not a good server with a big booming delivery and lots of variety (except by accident), I have to focus on being able to hit the two corners of either service court or into my opponent's body instead. The idea is to keep him guessing where I am going to put the ball - and when I do serve, to prevent him from being able to whack the return effectively. Better yet, if I can force him to chip or block or lob or mishit his return of serve and give me a weak shot to follow up without too much guessing or running.

2.Attack the weaker side at least 60% of the time, hit into his body at least 30% of the time and go to his stronger side the rest of the time to prevent him from covering his weaker side too much. Against most people, that means attacking the backhand mostly, I guess.

*Note - In doubles play, I focus on using whichever serve I have most difficulty hitting really well as my first serve, so you'll seldom see my applying this first strike attack on my service games since I'm playing doubles mostly. On second serves, however, I apply the First Strike Principle most of the time.

Against serve -
1.Focus on placing my returns effectively. It doesn't have to be a powerful shot as I think being able to go either down the line deep or angled 45 Degrees short crosscourt is just as effective, but it does have to be consistent.

2.Take the ball as early as possible so that the server has less time to recover and chase the ball. The idea is to pressure his serve so that he'll also make more mistakes trying to hit much harder to prevent me from taking his ball on the rise.

*Note - I am training this step by step -
a.learn to play a return of serve on the rise - never mind if I have to chip or slice the ball now, once I have got the timing, I can worry about getting a fuller swing on it.

b.learn to move in to attack the ball - once I have the timing for the rising ball comfortably, I then stand back a couple of feet so that I can take a bigger swing at it with more rotation. On top of that, since I have learnt to  read the ball better, I can also think about moving to the ball even earlier and crushing it with a bit more power.

c.start mixing up touch shots with deep heavy shots - not a good idea when I am still learning to time the rising ball (sometimes I'll even try to play it as a half-volley, too) that's why I'm making this the third and final stage of development for myself.

And this is all I am going to say. I've said as much as I can to be helpful but I am not going to give away all my secrets, I am afraid. I am Chinese, after all, and we always believe in keeping at least 10% back (more in my case since I'm such a lousy player!)