Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

How to Hit Your 2026 Tennis Goals

• Will Boucek • Episode 268

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0:00 | 22:14

2026 is nearly here, so it's time to reflect on the past 12 months and set goals for next year. To help you, I wanted to share five ways to hit your 2026 doubles goals. It's not easy to improve. You must be intentional with how you spend your time on and off the court.

  1. Playing against better players
  2. Fix your technique
  3. Get in better shape
  4. Improve your strategy
  5. Play more tennis

I share the most efficient and effective ways to approach each way to improve, including in matches, clinics, and lessons. You'll also learn ways to track your progress.

There are spots still available for the rally trip at Indian Wells, March 3–6, 2026. Email will@thetennistribe.com or click here to learn more and sign up.

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Holiday Welcome & 2026 Goals

SPEAKER_00

Hey everyone, welcome to the show and happy holidays wherever you're listening from. Today we're going to talk about how to hit your 2026 tennis goals. So I'm going to cover five different types of goals that you can set for 2026 that will help you improve your doubles game. And then I'm going to kind of deep dive into how I think about each of those five ways to improve your doubles game. So we're going to talk about several different options that you have. I actually shared a lot of this in a recent newsletter, but this episode is going to dive even deeper into each of these areas in terms of improvement. Before I get to the first of the five ways to improve your doubles game, very briefly, a few of you have signed up for the rally trip at Indian Wells. There are spots still available, so I just wanted to mention that. If you are still interested in that, you can reach out to me if you have any questions. My email is will at the tennistribe.com, or you can check out the show notes where I'll link to more information and where you can sign up. Basically, it is an all-inclusive tennis vacation to Indian Wells March 3rd through 6th in 2026 during the BNP Perry Ba Open. You'll be able to play six plus hours of tennis. I'll be on the court with you the whole time, giving you strategy advice, giving you tips for your doubles game. And then we'll also be going to the tournament together. We'll be sharing meals together. I'll be doing a strategy presentation for you as well. And we'll be watching some of the best tennis players in the world while staying at the La Quinta Resort and Tennis Club, which is one of the premier tennis resorts really in the country, but certainly in the Indian Wells area. So it's going to be a ton of fun. I know a lot of you have signed up already, but we do have spots still available. And if you have a group, we are offering group discounts as well. So reach out if you have any questions. I will link to it all in the show notes. So let's dive into all the ways you can improve your tennis game in 2026. So number one, play with better players. This is the best way to improve your game, probably with a combination of some of the other ones, which I'll talk about here in a second. When you play with better players, they simply expose your weaknesses and they force you to correct them. There are certain things you can get away with at the 3-0 level that you cannot get away with at the 3-5 level. There are certain things you can get away with at the 3-5 level that you cannot get away with at the 4-0 level. And it's different for every person. This is not, you know, all 3-0's don't have a good return or don't have a good second serve or whatever it is. It depends on the person. It really does. And for you, it might be your backhand, it might be your volleys, it might be your serve or second serve or return. But whatever it is, playing against better players will expose that and it will force you to correct. There's nothing like playing with better players to kind of apply that pressure and force you to make corrections. They will certainly expose your weaknesses and force you to improve. So you can do this in clinics or in matches. In clinics, it's pretty obvious, just ask your local pro or your coach if you can move up a level in your clinic and play with some of the higher level players. In matches, it's a little bit different. If you can enter a league that's a little bit higher-level league, or just if you have friends who are better players than you, try to play with them as much as you can next year. And another way to do this, if you are maybe having trouble finding some of those better players, is to try to win matches with weaker partners. So if you're a 4-0 player and you can't find any other 4-5 players in your area to play with, that's okay. You can still play against other 4-0 players and try to win with a 3-5 partner against those players. And that will help you. That's kind of a different way to try to improve your game. And it'll really challenge yourself to come up with different strategies and try to do a bit more to help out your partner, who in that case is the weakest player on the court. Recently, for my members, I actually did a premium video lesson on how to think about being the weakest player on the court, and then a separate lesson on how to be or how to think about being the strongest player on the court. And in both of those scenarios, there's things you want to focus on to continue to improve your game. So that is one of the best ways for sure to improve your game in 2026. Simply try to play with better players or try to win matches with weaker partners if you're not able to find better players. But that could again include clinics, it could include matches or even just one-on-one practice. Just ask somebody who's a better player than you. Hey, will you go out and hit with me for an hour? Or will you go out and just rally with me or play some sets cross-court or even play single sets? That'll help you as well for sure. So let's move on to number two, uh, fixing your technique. Now, this can apply to any specific shots, any specific area of your game. There's a few things you have to think about when you're trying to improve technique. So, number one is you probably need a good coach. Um, a lot of coaches are not great with technique. Honestly, I don't trust myself coaching technique a lot of the time. When I do work with players and am coaching them on technique, I'm very quick to um disregard any advice that I give them if they feel like it's not working for them. And that's really important. I don't want to go in and tell somebody to do something specific with their serve. And if they're not getting it after five or ten minutes, I don't want to keep telling them, no, this is it, this is it, you have to do it this way. I don't want to keep banging my head against the wall because I'm clearly not giving them something that is getting through to them. So I need to come up with a different way to do that. And your coach needs to be the same way. They need to have the knowledge to approach your technique differently, maybe than your doubles partner or than some of their other students, because every player is different and every player has slightly different styles in terms of technique, and a good coach should be able to kind of model the proper technique based on your style. You can definitely use online resources to improve your technique. Uh, Jonathan Stokey from Stoke Tennis has a great Instagram and YouTube channel, so I would check that out. Um, Ian from Essential Tennis does a great job. Peter Freeman, who's been on the podcast recently from Crunch Time Coaching, uh is also a very good technical coach. And then you might even read a couple of books. So The Inner Game of Tennis is not really a technical book, but it helps you improve your technique through kind of mindset and uh playing a bit more freely. And then recently uh I shared in the newsletter that I read a book called Golf is not a game of perfect. And it's about golf, but the principles apply to tennis as well. Uh the author talks a lot about how to kind of clear your mind and let your body just make the swing. And that certainly applies to tennis. So I feel like it's going to help my tennis game. I just finished it last week and haven't played since, but I feel like it's going to help my tennis game, even though it's a golf book. So those are a couple of book recommendations that I would consider if you're trying to work on your technique. Um, in terms of a framework, how should we do this? So if you're trying to fix your technique, whether it's your serve or volleys or returns or ground strokes, you have to spend time on it. There's just no substitute for this. So I do see a lot of people who say, you know, I'm trying to work on my continental grip on my serve, or I'm working on my top spin forehand, but they don't hit enough top spin forehands. They don't hit enough serves with the continental grip. You've got to be very deliberate with this. So you can do this from a time perspective or you can do it from a reps perspective. So you can say, I'm gonna go out on the court. We'll use a couple examples here. So let's say you have a week second serve. You can say, I'm gonna go out on the court and hit second serves only. I'm gonna set up my targets deep in the service box because if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know I'm very big on second serve depth. I want you to get that second serve deep in the service box. So I'm gonna go spend 20 minutes twice a week only hitting second serves. 10 minutes and adduce, 10 minutes and add, or maybe alternate back and forth. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is say I'm gonna hit 100 second serves, 50 adduce, 50 add, and I'm gonna do that twice a week. So you can do it by time or by reps. Obviously, you'll need a basket of balls to be able to do this, um, or a partner who can practice their returns and hit back to you. But um, you want to choose either an amount of time per week or an amount of or a number of reps per week that you will be uh dedicating to this. And I think you need to do it for at least one month, up to three months to really improve your technique. Uh but again, with this, you've got to get the technique, the motion, the motor skills correct for each of these shots. If you don't have the proper grip on your serve and you're trying to learn a continental grip serve, but you're not actually using the continental grip, then it's not going to work. If you're using a continental grip and you're trying to hit a topspin forehand, it's just simply not going to work. So that's where the good coach comes in, and then also using some of those online resources to try to learn some different drills and tactics to work on the grip and then work on also the motion for each of these shots. Um, if I had a week second serve, that's how I would approach it. So I would go out with a basket of balls, either choose time, choose a number of uh reps, and then go through that. Another example might be serve plus one volleys. So get a ball machine, get a coach to feed to you, and you can do it five minutes on the deu side, five minutes on the add side twice a week, or you can do 50 to 100 balls deuce, 50 to 100 balls add, do that twice a week, set up your targets, practice angling the ball off the court. For returns, you might be working on cross-court returns, lob returns, down-the-line returns, uh, the return and volley, whatever it is, you have to get the reps in. And again, that can be time or you can count the number of reps. Either way works. So fixing your technique will certainly help you improve your game. It's certainly, I would say, probably the most difficult, um, maybe the next one's the most difficult of these five ways to improve your game next year. But it depends on the player. If you have spent tons of time playing with better players and tons of time working on strategy, which I'll talk about in a second, and you're in good shape, technique might be the highest lever for you to pull. Um, I've talked about this in the past where you have different areas of your game that you can improve. And if you're somebody like me who studies strategy so much, I can't spend a whole lot more time on strategy and improve my strategy. I probably need to spend more time on court and work on my technique more to actually get better at my game. So you have to kind of judge that for yourself as well. So let's move on to number three. This one I didn't include in the newsletter a couple of weeks ago, but I think it's obviously super important. And that is just to get in better shape. Um, this is gonna have more benefits than uh just tennis. Obviously, you'll you'll probably feel better, you'll probably be more productive at work, you'll probably be uh just feel better overall mentally and emotionally as well, but getting in better shape can certainly help your tennis game. Um, that could include getting healthy from an injury. So maybe you tore your meniscus and you had surgery or you did something else and you're recovering from some type of injury, doing that rehab to improve your fitness is going to help you improve your game. If you're not recovering from injury, getting faster is probably the best way to improve your game. So your ability to cover the court, especially from the baseline, and then also your ability to move and be kind of explosive and be able to fake and poach from the net is also going to improve your game a ton. So that is mostly about quickness, explosiveness, agility. That's gonna really, really help you a lot. And then the last way to get in better shape, um, I guess there's really two more, but one would be to get stronger. So going to the gym and lifting weights or using resistance bands, doing any sort of resistance training. Um, I started doing this a bit more probably three, four, or five years ago, and I noticed it became just easier for me to hit a forehand. I didn't have to swing as hard to get the same amount of power and spin on the ball. Um, it just became a little bit easier because I got stronger. And then the last one is to get a bit more fit, right? So you can work on, I suppose, stamina or long distance running or running sprints, different things like that. So that that would help not only your quickness and your speed, uh, but also your fitness level. So if you do play a lot of um long matches, if you play in the heat, improving your fitness level will certainly help you get in better shape, and that will lead to better results, especially in some of those long uh three-set matches. Number four, become smarter at strategy. You knew this one was going to be in here somewhere. Um, I'm gonna share kind of how I think about this, and I I talked about this in the newsletter recently as well. But one thing you have to decide for yourself is what is your best method of learning? So if you're going to become smart at strategy, you have to either learn that by listening to something like this podcast. If you're listening to this, especially this part in the episode, I assume that you do listen to things. Maybe you listen to audible books. I know I do, and that's one of the ways you learn. Another way that you can learn is reading. Uh, I have four ebooks on the website that are available to recreational and club level members. You can also purchase them separately. I'll link to them in the show notes. But those ebooks are over 200 pages of strategy on serving, returning, um, net play, and baseline play. And you can read that and become smarter in strategy that way. And then other people are more visual learners, so you can watch videos. So you can watch one of the strategy courses, you can watch the videos on my Instagram channel or YouTube channel or watch other people's YouTube channel. There's lots of content out there, especially on YouTube, to improve and learn your uh doubles strategy. There's four areas that I like to focus on in terms of strategy. So, number one is serving. So you can get better at knowing when to use certain serve formations or simply get better at knowing how to execute each of those formations. And then you can also get better at knowing what plays to call. So I don't have to improve my serve to start calling plays. That's just a something I can change tomorrow with my doubles partner. Um, the technical stuff that we talked about earlier, you're gonna actually have to spend a lot of time on the court to improve your serve. But to start calling plays, you don't need a whole lot of time. You just need the knowledge on how to call the plays. For returning, knowing what type of return to hit against certain types of servers and certain types of serve teams. And then also return formations, knowing when to play two back, when to be more aggressive as the returner's partner, what plays to call, you can start to poach on second serve returns or on your partner's second serve returns. So that can improve your strategy. Uh, net play is probably the biggest opportunity for most club level players. That's what I find at least. Improving your strategy at the net is a huge opportunity for you to apply more pressure on the opponent, help your partner hold their serve better, help your partner win more of their return points, uh, and also hit more winners and hit more finishing volleys at the net. So most players play generally a bit too conservative, or they get out of position at the net, or they're not very confident up there. That's why I think that's the biggest opportunity, and it's the thing I focus most on, especially in a lot of my doubles camps and clinics. And then last is baseline shot selection. So this is a really important one. It's kind of an underrated one. Um, most players are a bit too aggressive from the baseline and not conservative enough at the club level. Um, there are certainly players out there who do kind of lob everything from the baseline and they're perhaps too conservative, but improving your shot selection and positioning at the baseline can help as well. So become smarter, become smarter at strategy, and you will certainly improve in 2026. And then last, this one is very simple, but it's actually maybe the hardest to execute or one of the hardest, and that is to play more tennis. Um, as club-level players, as adults, we have jobs, we have families, we have other hobbies. Um, a lot of you, you know, probably have a lot of things going on around the house. And it's hard to play more tennis. It takes a lot of time, but there is no substitute for simply playing more tennis in terms of improving. I guarantee if you play more tennis in 2026, you'll be better than you were at the beginning of the year if you play more tennis in 2026 than you did in 2025. So you have to decide and be very intentional with this. Where is that time going to come from? You have time with your family, you have your job, you can work less, you have other hobbies that you can quit. This past year I've actually played uh a little bit of indoor soccer, which has been a really fun kind of fitness um challenge for me, and it's also been fun socially, but I may have to quit that if I want to play more tennis next year. You might have to start watching less Netflix during the week. Um, I know a lot of people like to binge Netflix shows. I've done that uh before as well, and I feel like if you do too much or watch too much TV, then um it's gonna cut into your tennis time. So you might have to cut something like that, or it could be something totally different. But you have to cut that time from somewhere and be intentional with scheduling it. So this is one of the areas that I'm personally going to try to improve next year. I didn't play a lot of tennis, to be honest, uh, this year in 2025. And I'm going to be very intentional with scheduling this. I'm gonna choose two days a week where I'm gonna play for two hours uh during the afternoon, and everything else is gonna have to kind of fit around that because it's gonna be one of my higher priorities for the year. I want to get on court, I want to play more, I want to film some uh and really try to improve my game that way. One of the biggest takeaways from a recent podcast with the 3-0 team that I trained and uh for a couple of hours, and then ultimately a few weeks later, they won USTA Nationals. One of my biggest takeaways from the conversation with them was that they were playing five plus days per week leading up to nationals. So they were just playing tons of tennis, and there's no substitute for that. Being on court, hitting a lot of tennis balls is going to help you improve your game in 2026 100%. So that's it for this episode. Uh, if y'all have any questions at all about improving your game or about technique, strategy, anything like that. let me know for sure and I will talk to you all very soon.