Put Away Short Balls Easily

Imagine having the best baseline rally of your life where you're hitting amazing shots, moving your opponent from one side of the baseline to the other. Both of you are a bit tired and finally, you get that easy sitter in the middle of the court only to make that frustrating mistake.

This is one of the most common problems at the recreational level where players have a difficult time putting balls away. As a result, they stick to the baseline rallies or force a trip to the net. In today's article, I'm going to explain why so many rec players struggle with putting balls away, but it's not only that. I'm also going to tell you what you need to do to finally start putting balls away, and there's one word that's gonna put everything in context, and that is trajectory.

Trajectory

What you need to understand is that trajectory is the most important factor when it comes to putting balls away, and I'm going to give you an example of a shot that has the most favorable trajectory when it comes to putting the ball away, and that is the overhead.

I want you to think of it in the following way: when I hit an overhead, I can hit it at a very steep trajectory, meaning that the angle is going to be severely down so that when the ball bounces, it's going to be so high it's going to bounce right over the opponent's head, and that is the easiest way to put the ball away.

Now, when I say it's easy to put away, I understand that a lot of you guys at the rec level struggle with overheads. Even some professional players struggle with overheads, and the simple reason for that is that most players don't practice the overhead enough. What you need to do is build the right overhead technique, and you simply need to incorporate hitting overheads into every practice session.

Lower Balls

How about balls that are not over our head, that are lower? Here we also have to think of the trajectory. Let's take volleys as an example. The hardest volleys to put away are the ones where we hit the ball with an upward trajectory. In other words, when we have to bend down, you hit the ball below your waist. It's going to be very difficult to hit the ball straight; they'll hit the net, and naturally, we'll have to hit the volley with an upward trajectory.

The easiest volleys to put away are ones that can be hit with a downward trajectory. If you remember the Bryan Brothers, the greatest double team in the history of tennis, they tried to hit every volley with a downward trajectory. They would get so close to the net with almost their nose touching the net, and they would put volleys away with a downward trajectory because that is the easiest way to put the ball away.

Sitter Service Line Shots

The most important factor again is the trajectory of the ball. If you allow the ball to be very low, and sometimes you don't have to allow it to be low, sometimes it's low by design. For example, if you're returning a slice, but in any case, if the ball happens to be low, now you have to hit the ball with an upward trajectory.

Now, this is not as big of a problem as it is at the net because here we can apply topspin. However, here comes a big caveat because we are so close to the net, we're also closer to the other baseline, and when we apply topspin, the ball doesn't have a lot of room, so it can fall inside of the baseline. So even if we apply a lot of topspin, often the ball will still be long.

What we have to do in this area of the court when the ball is lower, we have to reduce our swing speed and not go for the kill. Keep your swing speed between 50 to 80 percent, place the ball well, and this is how you have to handle low balls around the half court.

Again, think of the word trajectory. If you are able to hit the ball higher and hit it more at a downward trajectory, now you can hit the ball as hard as you want because the ball doesn't have to go with an up and down type of shape. Now, the ball can go straight down, very similar to a high volley or an overhead, and you can hit this type of ball as hard as you want, whether it be a forehand or a backhand.

Waist Problems

A lot of you at the recreational level completely ignore hitting the ball above your waist. A lot of you guys are comfortable swinging from the waist, and when the ball gets a little bit higher, you either let it drop down or you try to take it early off balance. Both of those options are bad when we're talking about the half court. The way you want to approach the half court is that whether you take it while it's still on the rise or on its way down, you have to manage to play the ball a little bit higher so that you can hit it with a downward trajectory.

Keep in mind that the swing has to be different from your regular swing. We talk about the forehand; generally, you want to have a high type of swing on a high forehand. This is not going to be the case if you want that downward trajectory to take place. What you'll have to do is either swing straight across the body or indeed swing high to low.

Swinging high to low will depend on a lot of factors: your body height, the height where you actually take the ball, and how close to the net you are. A shorter player might not be able to do that unless they're very close to the net.

Backhands?

Now, how about the backhand? Yes, the backhand is going to be very similar to the forehand. I will say that the two-handed backhand, we're talking about high balls, is going to be a little bit easier to put away than a one-handed backhand. One thing that I want you to understand is something that a lot of high-level players do is that when a ball is soft and it's high and it's in this part of the court, it is going to be very easy to run around that ball.

If you happen to have a sitter ball, a higher ball, you have to work really hard to get around that ball and hit a forehand from the backhand side. The way you want to approach half-court shots is that once you recognize the ball, you have to be super explosive and make the first few steps very quick. Then when you get close to the ball, you have to settle yourself. You kind of have to hit the brakes, position yourself well so that you're in the right place at the right time. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you overrun a sitter ball, and now you end up making contact behind.

Steady Wins The Race

There's no better feeling in tennis than having the entire court open and having a super simple shot where you can hit it very soft into your open court. And this is still a winner. It doesn't matter if you hit it 20 miles an hour or 100 miles an hour; a winner is a winner.

How do you get the court to be completely open? You have to work with the geometry of the court with angles and open the court up and create opportunities where the entire court is going to be open for you, and it's not going to require you to hit a shot of high quality. You can just stroke the ball into the open court.

Final Thoughts

And guys, here comes the most important part of this lesson, and that is the fact that a lot of you guys ignore this part of the court. You might even like taking some volleys, and you like playing from the baseline, but you ignore practicing the half court. The reason why you're making a mistake is that you're ignoring this part of the court in your practices.

You need to start incorporating overheads, high volleys, and all types of balls from the half-court area into your practices if you want to have any chance to start putting the ball away like the pros. The pros wait for opportunities like this. They wait for an easy overhead; they wait for an easy volley. They're only looking to get that sitter and a half court to finally start putting the ball away. You guys are doing it the opposite way. You're trying to put the ball away from difficult locations in the court, especially if you're far behind the baseline.