Hi guys
This is a very interesting tactical exercise. it consists of making an outside service to take the player out of the course; generally the player will return cross on our forehand and we will have the opportunity to attack this returned ball... we will take it early enough to play it long line.
Generally this tactic allows either to score the point or to put the opponent in difficulty and obtain a favorable ball to finish the point.
With the ball machine
To practice this exercise you need a slightly special setting of the ball machine:
First we will place the ball machine on the backhand side so that the player's eye is centered on a ball coming from the same place as the real returner hits.
Next we will program the ball machine so that it sends two balls
1) A first ball will go into the net, it serves no purpose except to give a signal to the server to serve
2) the player serves his foreign service
3) We program a delay of 3, 8 seconds and the machine sends the return: A cross forehand
4) the player enters the ball and returns long line
We program the machine to give it a delay of 10 seconds so that the player can fetch balls and we restart the sequence.
Some ball machines will allow you to do this program exactly, other ball machines do not allow you to make sequences, so you have to adapt accordingly.
Download this sheet in PDF format
