Preview: USTA Nationals Training - Winners vs Errors, Rally Length, Team Roles, Lob Fests, & Formations

I recently helped two 3.0 ladies' teams prepare for USTA Nationals. The 1st team actually won Nationals in the 40+ division this past weekend.

We spent 30 minutes discussing strategy before playing doubles for a few hours. This episode previews the first 10 minutes of the strategy discussion with the 2nd team, who heads to Nationals next week.

• How doubles matches are won lost.
• The importance of understanding rally length.
• What to practice leading up to nationals.
• Members only: My favorite ways to force errors
• Members only: Team roles.
• Members only: The 3 things that give 3.0 to 4.0 players the most problems and how to fix them.
• Members only: How to win lob fests.
• Members only: Using the 2-back formation.

To hear this full episode and watch the video, become a Tennis Tribe Member.

• Members can watch the video here.

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Transcript

Errors Decide Matches

SPEAKER_00 1:15

I recently had a USTA team reach out to me who was headed to Nationals, and they wanted some help with their on court training and practice leading up to the tournament. So what I did is put together a 30-minute presentation on the court, followed by two hours of doubles, where I helped them with their strategy, watched their positioning, their movement, their shot selection, and helped them improve. And what you're about to hear is that first 30-minute presentation. Now the video is helpful for this, and I'm going to make that available for Tennis Tribe members as well as the full 30-minute conversation. If you're not a Tennis Tribe member, check out the show notes. You can learn more about it and sign up there to get the full 30 minutes. But if not, you're still going to get the first 10 minutes or so of this as a preview of this conversation. And you're going to get a lot out of that as well. So when I put this presentation together, I had to think of information that I could give them that they could implement in only a few weeks before they headed off to Nationals. So I had to kind of condense the information. I had to give them the most important things. And I feel like I was able to do a pretty good job of that. We talked about how doubles matches are lost and not won. We talked about the importance of Rally Length. I actually asked them a question about Rally Length that all of them got wrong and they were very surprised by. And that led to a little bit of a discussion about practice, what they should actually practice in the few weeks leading up to nationals to get the best bang for their buck, if you will. After that, we talked about team roles. They were still trying to decide on a few doubles partnerships. So this helped give them a framework and helped kind of clarify a few things around that. Then we talked about three things that give 3-0 to 4-0 level players the most problems on the doubles court and how to fix those. And then at the end, we talked about how to win the lob fests. I gave them some ideas on how to attack a team that lobs a lot or that pushes. We also talked about the two-back formation and I answered a few other questions from them at the end as well. So I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode. Again, if you are a tennis tribe member, you can watch the video, which is helpful because I am kind of moving around the court and showing them some different positioning and movement patterns and shot selection things, but still with the audio, you'll be able to get plenty out of this. So without further delay, enjoy this presentation for a team headed to USTA Nationals. Thank you all for having me. Tara, thank you for setting this up. I uh uh my name's Will. I have a business called the Tennis Tribe. It's a double strategy and training company. I live in Fort Worth. It was about an hour and a half drive here this morning. Sorry about the timing. No, no, that's not that's not on you. Um so I work with uh professional players on the ATP and WTA tour, uh, work with players of the U.S. Open, helped the U.S. Olympic team last year, um, and it's all doubles focused. And then I also help club players like y'all improve your strategy as well. So the place I always like to start is kind of defining what double strategy is. So a lot of you, if you get private lessons or go to clinics, a lot of coaches really focus on technique. So it's like getting your continental grip right on your serve or your topspin forehand on your uh ground strokes, different things like that. And that stuff's really important, but it's really, really hard to improve. So for me to get like a proper service motion, if I've never had one before, it's gonna take months and months of work and training. But strategy is comprised of three different things, and they're all much easier to improve than technique. Uh, one is shot selection, so where I hit the ball, so I could hit it to the left side of the court, to the right side of the court, I could hit it higher over the net or shorter over the net, I could hit it deeper or shorter. So, where and how I hit the ball is part of your strategy. Your positioning. So when my partner's serving, I might stand here, I might stand here. I'm adjusting my positioning and then movement during the point as well. So, with technique, if I'm gonna improve my serve, it's gonna take months, like I said. But if you're standing here when your partner's serving, and I tell you to stand here, and all of a sudden they start missing a bunch of returns because you're covering the middle more. We didn't have to train that. You just stepped over two feet. So it's really, really simple and really, really effective as well. Um, so that is kind of a summary of strategy. That's why I love it so much because a lot of us have families and jobs, and it's really hard for us to improve technique uh because we just don't have the court time. When we're out here, we want to be playing matches and having fun. We don't want to be getting frustrated because we can't hit our top spin forehand, right? So that's why this is so much fun for me. Um, next, I want to talk about doubles and kind of understanding how matches are won and lost. So the first question for y'all um how can you win a point? Hey y'all, I'm Will. What are your names?

unknown 6:50

Kaitlin.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Kaitlin and Stephanie, okay. Um so how are points one in doubles? How can you win a point? A winner, okay. So a winner's one. How else can we win a point? The other team misses, so an error. So there's only two ways to win a point. Either we hit a ball that they don't touch, or they miss. So if I gave you a choice, you're about to start a match at Nationals, and I'm gonna tell you you can either choose to end the match with more winners than your opponent, or less errors than your opponent. Which one would you rather have? Less errors?

SPEAKER_01 7:40

More winners?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Who thinks less errors? One, two, three, four, five? Who thinks more winners? One, two, three, four. Okay, so the answer is less errors. Well, yes, but we we measure it. So how we determine the answer is we just measure how most points end?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Oh, with an error.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

With an error. So about 70%, if anything, it's higher than that. A lot of matches it's 80 or 90 percent. It seventy plus percent of points end in an error. So do you want to win the 70% or do you want to win the 30%? We want to win the thing that's happening 70% of the time. So our goal in doubles, and this goes for singles too. If some of you are playing singles in nationals, this is applies to singles as well. Our goal is not to hit winners, it is to not miss, number one, and number two, make them miss. Okay? So that's really important, especially for baseline players in doubles. I see a lot of baseline players trying to rip down the line winners and go for too much. We'll talk about kind of teamwork and how that uh lines up, and I know we want to talk about uh partnerships today as well, but that's one thing you've really got to understand is tennis is a game of errors. Points are not won, they're actually lost. Matches are not won, they are actually lost. So our goal as a doubles team is to get them to play bad. And this is what pushers are so good at, right? They never miss, and that's why they can be frustrating to play against. But their pushers has a negative connotation, they're actually really good tennis players. So if you ever watch Djokovic play on TV, like when he gets in a tiebreaker, he hits everything like five feet inside all the lines. He just locks down and doesn't miss. I mean, he's not pushing in the same way that we do at the club level. He's still hitting the ball pretty hard, but he's not going for the lines. He just doesn't miss because he knows that I'm not missing, I'm gonna force them to miss. Okay. Um so next, let's talk about rally length. What do you think is the most common rally length in doubles? Rally length. Rally length. So a rally of zero would be a double fault. A rally of one would be a serve, and the return doesn't come back. So that could be an ace or a missed return. Two would be serve, return in, and then I miss, or it's a return winner. All right, three, five, three, three, three, five. Any other answers?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I think we're a three, but probably. That's what I was saying. In my world, I would say seven.

Rally Length Myths Shattered

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Seven? Okay. Okay. Um, so this is something I learned from a guy who actually used to live in Dallas. He's in Austin now and worked with, he was a strategy analyst for Djokovic. Uh his name's Craig O'Shaughnessy, and he has a really good website for uh singles players. He's very singles focused. So if you are a singles player, yeah, you can ask me about it after and I'll I'll give you more info. Um but he's got a really good course that's only like 50 bucks. He didn't pay me to say this, but he's a he's a good friend that um is really smart, and I've learned a lot from. So I learned this from him. Um the most common rally length at every level of singles and doubles is one. One. The serve goes in and the return doesn't come back. So missed returns. So when we're at nationals, we're gonna have all these points where y'all are on the sidelines, you're watching the fifth match that's still on the court, and it's two all, and it's late in the third set, and there's a really long point that's 20 balls. And maybe you win the point and everybody goes crazy, maybe you lose the point, the other team goes crazy, and y'all are disappointed. I don't care about those points because they don't happen that much. The match is going to be one on missed returns, on making good serves, and then the first shot after. So the average rally length, we just talked about the most common rally length is one, the average rally length is four. Okay. So most of the time, the team that is better on those first four shots wins the match. Not the team that wins that epic 20, 30, 40 ball rally because they don't happen as much. So if there's something you can train between now and nationals, it's your serves, it's your returns, and then your first shot after that. Okay. Any questions so far? No? Okay. I'm gonna go back to my presentation because I have to see what's next.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

And that applies even at our level.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I've measured it at the pro level, and you'll start to notice it. Um now that you've told us? Yeah, now that I've told you, you're gonna see so many missed returns. Okay. It's gonna be like missed return, missed return.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

That's a lot of return. Like a nail.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Okay. So next I want to talk about we talked about errors. The most important thing is to have fewer errors than your opponents. That means not missing on our side and then forcing them to miss. So, what are some ways we can generate errors from them?