Tennis is a beautiful, simple game to learn. There are only five main moves you need to make to start playing: groundstroke, volley, right foot strike, left foot strike, and head-and-arm-set. Once you understand the basics, you can start learning more advanced tactics and moves.
There are four main parts to playing tennis: being patient (circling the server), moving (legs and movements), serving/volleying (returns and serves), and overall strategy (mix of returns,serving, and staying calm).
This article will go more in depth on how long it takes to learn tennis and how to make sure you are ready for your first match. First off, let’s talk about what kind of people can play tennis.
Contents:
Learn the fundamentals
Beginning players should learn the following basic strokes and moves before playing:
How to volley
How to volley back
These moves should be learned as part of a complete package, so if you don’t already know some of these things, you will when you play.
Hitting the serve is one of the most important parts of tennis. How to hit a serve can be hard to pick up at first, but with some time and practice it becomes easy. The best players in the world know how to hit a serve!
Volleyballers should also know how to volley. Using your body movement and positioning to return a Volleyball shot is very similar to hitting a serves. Again, with enough time and practice, this skill comes easily.
Play matches
There are two main types of tennis play. You can either play sets, or you can go for hours on end in the match.
Set play means that you and your opponent try to get the ball in the same location on the court. You try to win the point, and then the next one. It is like a game of chess, with a different piece for each turn.
The second type of play is called non-chase play. This doesn’t mean that you don’t try to win quickly, it just doesn’t involve trying to get the ball in the corner, or in some cases, in front.
Join a club
There are many tennis clubs in the USA, and most are open to anyone who can play. Most offer lessons and are a great way to get into the game.
Most have a uniform policy, which may require a membership. Many offer discounted rates for new members.
It is usually good form to call your local club before going to join, as some do not accept new members without proof of membership.
Most have open play days where you can try the game without being committed to a course match, so go on an early morning or late night practice!
The best way to find a club that works for you is join them and play at least one competitive match with them- if you can’t do that, at least give some kind of lesson or start playing some matches with your non-tennis friends.
Find a coach
Find a local, online, or family-oriented coach that you get along with. Your coach should know what the basics of tennis are, how to teach them to you, and how to make you better at tennis.
The more experience the coach has with players like you the better. Players who go to less experienced coaches tend to learn less and do not always stick. Players who go to more experienced coaches can look up to them and learn new things.
The price of a good coach can be around $60 a day, or $360 per month. This price does not include your time, which must be spent on your own on how much you learn from them. It does include their time and supplies they use during lessons.
Practice every day
Even if you don’t take a single lesson, you should still practice every day. You can still get good by practicing your shots in different situations and working on your footwork.
You can learn a lot of things in tennis by just being more active and working on your game. This includes taking short breaks to work on your other parts of the game (shooting, serve, volley) and staying after practice to work on your craft.
Short-term practice is what you want to do most during the week for learning the basics of tennis. Tuesday is a good day to start with some practices, followed by Thursday and Saturday for an entire week.
Keep doing these until you see improvements in how you play! It took me awhile to realize how much time I needed to spend on my game, but eventually I did.
Have patience
You will never learn how to play tennis if you have no sense of when to move or how to stop moving. It’s important to have a sense of patience when learning new movements, things, or plays.
When you are playing in the first round of a tournament, it can be hard to keep watching yourself play and practicing what you do in between matches. You may be too focused on your now and past games to really think about how you need to practice now and in the future.
However, after you get eliminated from a tournament, you will have a much better understanding of what went wrong and can hopefully fix it next time. You will also have a better idea of what players are good at and what moves they use so that you can learn some new ones yourself.
Having patience is important when learning new things, especially if it involves taking things out on the court.
You need to be agile
Your serve and volley attacks need to be swift and precise in order to succeed. You must be able to shift your position quickly or you will be outmaneuvered.
This game is fast, so you must be agile enough to respond to his shots or take the opportunity to advance your position.
If you get caught up in trying to memorize all the timing and attacking strokes, you will not learn how to play at an advanced level.
At the advanced level, players use more complicated attacks and times them much slower. You will have a harder time learning what they are doing if you don’t know how to do it at a slower pace!
Learning how to play at an advanced level takes a lot of time, so do not spend money on lessons that take too long.
Have balance and coordination
When you learn new things, it’s good to remember how they work and why they work that way. For example, you can still be learning how to balance on a tennis ball, how to manage your movement on the court, or how to manage your anxiety around practicing.
Learning something new should be enjoyable and fun. If you are learning something without any problems, then congratulations! You are taking your health and health care very seriously, which is awesome!
But as we all know, the harder we try to get things done, the longer it takes. The more time that goes by with no progress, the higher our risk for disease and poor health.
Why is it so hard to get things done? Because many of us feel like we have to master everything in order to take our health seriously. We feel like we have to know everything in order to learn something new. But knowledge is not always (and mostly) a thing you need in order to learn something new.