Fault Tolerant Tennis — Complete Archive (122 Articles)
The complete library of biomechanical analysis, contact point consistency, and kinematic stroke tolerance from Fault Tolerant Tennis. Learn how to eliminate unforced errors by building high structural margins into stroke mechanics.
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How Strings Create Topspin
This article summarizes our frontier knowledge on how strings produce spin. It heavily relies on research available at Tennis Warehouse University . Further articles will be more s...
2026-08-25 Read Guide → -
From Theory to Habit
This is our online program. If you’re looking for in-person coaching, click here. No more confusion. No more guessing. When you sign-up , your forehand won’t get better...
2026-06-01 Read Guide → -
The “Good in Practice, Bad in Matches” Myth
In short, you are almost certainly not good in practice either. Re-contextualize the information you receive from practice, and you’ll stop being confused by your match level...
2026-03-11 Read Guide → -
When Footwork Doesn’t Matter
Every elite player has elite footwork. Every elite stroke is preceded by elite footwork, and non-elite strokes are almost always preceded by equally non-elite footwork. Ergo, good ...
2026-02-22 Read Guide → -
You Must Win Without Rhythm
“Rhythm” in tennis means different things to different players, but here’s how I’ll define it: You are “in rhythm” when your neurological patter...
2026-02-21 Read Guide → -
Executive Function – The 4th Skill Class
Attention is a limited resource. As you play, hundreds of sensations, decisions, and distractions compete for your limited attention. Executive function is your ability to manage t...
2025-10-14 Read Guide → -
The “Hip-Shoulder Separation” Catastrophe
We cannot access our forehand swings directly – we only have access to the Forehand Function , a neurological process that runs in the brain, which processes our sensory inputs int...
2025-08-23 Read Guide → -
The Forehand is a Function
Imagine you’re at the eye doctor, staring at the vision chart. You can see every single line in perfect acuity, even the tiniest line at the very bottom. You have excellent v...
2025-06-30 Read Guide → -
The Intuition Paradox
In 1974, Tim Gallway wrote a book called The Inner Game of Tennis which contains, to this day, one of the most useful models for improving in sport. His thesis was simple – i...
2025-02-27 Read Guide → -
The Forehand Press Slot
This position is magic on the forehand . I call it “the press slot,” because it’s a dynamic position you reach by pressing with your pecs – the strong muscl...
2024-09-01 Read Guide → -
Strike, Don’t Swing
Tennis is a series of strikes , and strikes are like snowflakes – no two are exactly the same. No two forehands are exactly the same. No two backhands are exactly the same. W...
2024-08-01 Read Guide → -
What Makes a Great Tennis Class
A tennis class should make you better, fitter, and most importantly, absolutely love tennis . At Fault Tolerant Tennis, we design our classes around five primary areas: Ball-striki...
2024-07-10 Read Guide → -
One Simple Athleticism Hack
While playing tennis, tilt your torso . It sounds simple, and it is, but this minor adjustment will drastically improve your balance, movement, and stroke production. Tilting your ...
2024-06-27 Read Guide → -
Never Miss Your Approach Shots
In tennis, “probing” refers to the act of spacing your body with respect to the ball, and it is one of the most important drivers of consistency while playing. The imag...
2024-04-25 Read Guide → -
The Receiving Loop
In the 2011 Miami Final, Rafael Nadal hit a winner past Novak Djokovic that looked rather strange on TV ( the point ). The ball landed quite close to him, at least, close in the sc...
2024-04-08 Read Guide → -
The Split-Step: Why, When, and How
The split-step is an athletic hop done immediately prior to receiving a ball in tennis. The player hops a few inches off the ground and lands with their feet wider than shoulder wi...
2024-04-02 Read Guide → -
Positive, Neutral, and Negative Balance
Here’s a simple way to understand the basics of balance in tennis. Shots can be played in: Positive balance – your weight ends in front of where it started. Neutral balance – your ...
2023-10-28 Read Guide → -
Balance Secrets in Tennis
Many skills in tennis are easily visible – any casual Wimbledon fan will be quick to gawk at Carlos Alcaraz’s incredible forehand or be awed by Roger Federer’s immaculate feel . Mo...
2023-06-14 Read Guide → -
The Brutal Math of Consistency
Imagine two tennis players, both very consistent: Player 1 makes 98% of their shots. Player 2 makes 97% of their shots. Who wins, and by how much? For now, assume neither has a big...
2023-05-18 Read Guide → -
Alcarize Your Dropshot
In the Barcelona 2023 final, Carlos Alcaraz hit nine drop shot winners against Stefanos Tsitsipas. Nine. In two sets. How is Carlos Alcaraz so unbelievably lethal with this shot, w...
2023-04-28 Read Guide → -
The Anxiety Secret (Never Choke Again)
Today, I played 20 points with a student, and during those 20 points, he missed eight feeds. Eight . That means that, 40% of the time, he didn’t even start the point. During ...
2023-04-17 Read Guide → -
See The Ball Like Novak Djokovic
When you think of “ consistency ” in tennis, who’s the first player that comes to mind? For most, it’s Novak Djokovic. Novak is one of the best movers on the tour, and he has perfe...
2023-03-21 Read Guide → -
1 Habit For Perfect Ball Striking
Would you believe me if I told you the shot Aryna Sabalenka is executing above can actually be practiced without a tennis court? Well, it can. There exists one, singular habit you ...
2023-02-27 Read Guide → -
Stop Finishing Over Your Shoulder
The image above is Frances Tiafoe’s follow-through after a serve return. Looks terrible right? The shot must have been a shank, or if it did hit the strings, must have produced som...
2023-02-04 Read Guide → -
4 Steps to Stroke Production
All strokes in tennis, and I mean all strokes, share 4 key elements. While the specifics of implementation vary for each stroke, at a fundamental level, high quality ball striking ...
2023-01-22 Read Guide → -
Why You Miss for No Reason (It’s Vision)
Movement and stroke production can only get you so far . To really excel in tennis, on each shot, you have to know exactly: Where the ball is How it’s moving Without this ski...
2022-12-02 Read Guide → -
4 Fixation Visual System
It isn’t literally possible to “watch the ball” in high level tennis. At least, not all the time. The ball is simply moving too quickly for your eye to track it u...
2022-11-17 Read Guide → -
Immediately Improve Reaction Time
Many of my lower level students are totally lost when receiving a short ball, even when it’s really not that short. The ball’s second bounce is past the service line, a...
2022-11-02 Read Guide → -
The Saccadic Tracking Loop
“Watch the ball” isn’t as simple as it sounds. When an object’s motion is sufficiently fast, it’s actually impossible for the eye to smoothly track th...
2022-09-20 Read Guide → -
Anatomy of a Tennis Mini-Game
Tennis not best understood as a single, uniform skill. Rather, tennis exists as an interconnected set of different, related skills. For any given tennis skill, once a certain level...
2022-09-09 Read Guide → -
Secrets of the Eye
“Keep your eye on the ball,” is good advice for a 5-year-old . It is a rough, approximate instruction. When analyzed with a 5-year-old’s level of understanding, it accurately descr...
2022-09-06 Read Guide → -
“How Can I Miss That?”
You miss a shot, and you get frustrated. “How can I miss that?” “What am I even doing out here?” “Has all my practice been for nothing?” It’s an inner spiral that’s effected many a...
2022-08-26 Read Guide → -
Don’t Watch The Ball Like Federer
I know, I know. The way Federer watches the ball is beautiful. It’s elegant, it’s graceful, and it looks really, really good in slow motion. But it is not the way every...
2022-08-21 Read Guide → -
Triple Flexion Athleticism
There’s a lot that goes into athletic movement, but the basic idea is pretty simple – the more muscle you can recruit to help you move and balance, the more athletic you’re going t...
2022-08-13 Read Guide → -
Smashing Through Plateaus
There are three critical, broad skill classes you need to master in order to be an elite tennis player. In order, they are: Stroke production Vision Movement If you’re good a...
2022-08-05 Read Guide → -
Coco’s Cannon
You’re 5’ 9’’, 140 lbs (1.79m, 64kg), and female. How hard can you serve? Answer: at least 124 mph (200 km/h) , because that’s how fast the rocket Coco Gauff threw down in her thir...
2022-07-16 Read Guide → -
Bad Decisions… Or Just Bad?
What do Karue Sell and Scott Adams have in common? Believe it or not, both have addressed a very common, often misunderstood match play decision: When should I take my forehand up ...
2022-07-01 Read Guide → -
5 Critical Serving Insights
The serve is a technically difficult shot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t master it. Below are five critical insights that aren’t immediately obvious when you st...
2022-06-18 Read Guide → -
Zverev’s Brutal Injury – What Can We Learn?
Nothing is more painful, frustrating, and sometimes, devastating, than injury. We all remember the great Roger Federer shedding tears after losing the 2009 Australian Open final, o...
2022-06-05 Read Guide → -
Why You Can’t Return a Kick Serve (Saccadic Blindness)
When you watch professional players return serve, they rarely look rushed, and when a player hits heavy spin at them, they never look bothered. There’s a clip from an exhibition to...
2022-05-14 Read Guide → -
Alcarize Your Forehand
There’s one defining aspects of Carlos Alcaraz’s world class forehand that often gets overlooked – generous use of gravity . Carlos’s unique mechanics are precisely the resul...
2022-05-07 Read Guide → -
How to Hit the Perfect Forehand
The calendar just switched over to April, and I’d like to christen the new month by recapping the technical underpinnings behind a perfect forehand. Before we start, a quick ...
2022-04-01 Read Guide → -
Is “Snap Your Wrist” Good Advice?
Well… no. Not empirically, anyway. Just look around at your local courts, club, or league, and you’ll see plenty of “wrist snapping,” despite seeing precious little, you know… good...
2022-03-26 Read Guide → -
The Rafa-Style Follow-Through
The “buggy whip forehand.” The “reverse forehand.” The “over the head follow-through.” It goes by many names, but my favorite pays homage to the...
2022-03-06 Read Guide → -
The Felix Flick
I get this question a lot: If I’m trying to master the modern forehand, who should I emulate? Look no further than 2022 Rotterdam champion Felix Auger-Aliassime . We always t...
2022-02-20 Read Guide → -
The Secret to Saving Your Knees
When a person is standing straight up, their weight is balanced over the center of their foot. The knee, like the foot, is a beautiful, well engineered piece of biological machiner...
2022-02-12 Read Guide → -
Losing the Feeling
The perfect forehand release is elusive. That loose, explosive, natural flick through contact feels amazing when it works, and when it’s not there it feels… frustrating. One day yo...
2022-01-28 Read Guide → -
“You Can’t Teach That”
What is a “forehand,” really? For many, it’s simply a tennis stroke, but for us, it’s something else. We consider “the forehand” to be a class of related movement patterns . The en...
2022-01-16 Read Guide → -
The Swinging Volley is a Cheat Code
There’s one shot in tennis that changes the geometry of the court in a way unlike any other: The swinging volley. This shot allows a player to attack in ways that are physically im...
2022-01-07 Read Guide → -
“I Just Started Missing.”
Ever wonder why sports books try really, really hard to get you to place parlay wagers? It’s because the parlay bet, a bet type where you bet on multiple events, and ALL of t...
2021-12-19 Read Guide → -
The Power of Patience
If you can keep the ball heavy enough , deep enough , and, most importantly, in the court , for longer than your opponent, you’re almost always going to win. Most tennis poin...
2021-12-12 Read Guide → -
Abandon Anger
Anger wastes mental energy and clouds judgement, two clear detriments in any competitive setting, so while anger certainly has its uses, “useful emotion in the game of tennis...
2021-12-03 Read Guide → -
Accelerate Late, Like Jannik Sinner
Velocity is a measure of speed and direction. The sentence “my racket was moving fast when I struck the ball” is referencing the racket’s high velocity. Accelerat...
2021-11-26 Read Guide → -
1 Trick to Stop Missing Forehands Out
Almost every tour player prepares for their waist height forehand with their strings down , often with their palm down as well. Some even begin with the hitting face of their racke...
2021-11-19 Read Guide → -
Why Sprint to Net?
Sprinting to net changes the geometry of the court, in a way that allows you to be aggressive without increasing your miss rate . There are certain shots your opponent can hit that...
2021-11-12 Read Guide → -
Certainty is a Feeling (and Cheat Code)
Certainty as an epistemic state is a lie. A human being can never truly be certain about something, and most people have far higher confidence in their predictions than is warrante...
2021-10-27 Read Guide → -
Serve is Out = Great Return, Explained
Your opponent hits their serve long. “Out,” you say, as you swing at the ball anyway. Lo and behold, the shot you produce on this return, a return that, by all accounts...
2021-10-22 Read Guide → -
1 Trick to Eliminate 90% of Net Misses
Tour level players hit surprisingly high over the net. The amount of net clearance they’re getting is pretty difficult to see from the typical broadcast view: the bird’...
2021-10-16 Read Guide → -
Your Brain Will Trick You (Into Missing)
Sometimes, it’s amazing now “ lucky ” Novak Djokovic gets. He hits line after line without missing, appearing to aim to targets not even 6-inches wide, and yet never hitting the ba...
2021-10-08 Read Guide → -
Develop Your Coaching Immune System
Due to modern information technology, you have literally thousands of hours of tennis coaching at your fingertips, at all times. Go on YouTube and search for something as simple as...
2021-10-01 Read Guide → -
Emma Raducanu’s Elite, Explosive Forehand
There are many ways to hit the wide forehand, but Emma Raducanu’s way is the best way. At Fault Tolerant Tennis, we believe in finding our most efficient biomechanics for a particu...
2021-09-19 Read Guide → -
Battle of the Girls who ATTACK
We’ve talked before about how, in singles tennis, shots that you can execute at less than 80% are essentially useless – you’ll lose too many points from missing those shots for wha...
2021-09-11 Read Guide → -
Leylah Fernandez – The Roger Federer of the WTA
Sensational 18-year-old Leylah Fernandez stands at 5’ 6’’ 104 lbs (168 cm 47 kg). Her opponent in the 4th round of the 2021 US Open was former grand slam champion Angelique Kerber,...
2021-09-07 Read Guide → -
Heal Your Body In Motion
You’re out on the court and something hurts. Maybe it’s your elbow, maybe your knee, maybe your heel. Don’t panic. Pain is a part of life, especially when it comes to athletics. It...
2021-08-27 Read Guide → -
The Forehand “C” – Myths vs Reality
The “C” swing path on the forehand does exist, but I’m not a fan of its current mainstream classification as a first principle of the forehand, because it isn’t one. The shape and ...
2021-08-20 Read Guide → -
The Mystery of the Continental Grip
Look at the two grips above. By some definitions, both can be considered the “continental” grip. Both have the index-knuckle on bevel 2 (marked by the yellow line), and...
2021-08-13 Read Guide → -
A Primer on the One-Handed Backhand
The one handed backhand is a simpler stroke than the forehand. If that doesn’t seem accurate to you, chances are you’re executing the shot incorrectly. There are only a few fundame...
2021-08-06 Read Guide → -
Stop Losing Winnable Matches
One of the beautiful things about learning a fundamentally sound, fault tolerant forehand , is that the speed of said forehand can be easily dialed up or down, without fundamentall...
2021-07-31 Read Guide → -
5 Goals for 5-Year-Olds
The primary goal of a tennis lesson isn’t to make your student a better player in the single hour you have with them. If that happens, great, but it’s a secondary bonus, not the pr...
2021-07-23 Read Guide → -
Is “Coach-You” a Terrible Match Coach?
We’ve already discussed how to play better in matches twice before. Here are those two articles, if you’re interested: Vision Will Transform Your Match Play Great In Practice, Bad ...
2021-07-16 Read Guide → -
The Serving Throw Vector
The serve is a throw . The serving motion in tennis utilizes the exact same throw chain as all the throwing motions across sports. The baseball pitch, the volleyball spike, the NFL...
2021-07-09 Read Guide → -
Wait Then Fire – Success in the Absence of Rhythm
The final phase of forehand preparation is a waiting period . The forehand swing is not a single, continuous motion. There isn’t a uniform, rhythmic flow from from preparatio...
2021-07-03 Read Guide → -
Vision Will Transform Your Match Play
Vision might be the single most underrated tool in every tennis player’s toolbox. Sure, every coach tells their students to “watch the ball,” but what does that really mean? And wh...
2021-06-18 Read Guide → -
All Forehands Are Inside-Out Forehands
I work with a 10-year-old girl named Anna who presents with an interesting issue. When she’s pulled out wide on the forehand, her stroke looks great, but when the ball comes ...
2021-06-11 Read Guide → -
Flat, Spin, and Everything in Between
The primary way you adjust your forehand is by altering the tilt of your torso through contact. As we’ve discussed before , there exists only a small range of optimal movement patt...
2021-06-04 Read Guide → -
Great In Practice, Bad in Matches
Why is it that so many players feel like they play great in practice, and yet can’t produce that same level of tennis in matches? In two words: Mental Resources. In a match situati...
2021-05-28 Read Guide → -
The Queen of Clay
Back in 2005, the 19-year-old Rafael Nadal won his very first French Open title, beating then world #1 Roger Federer in 4 sets along the way. Last year (2020), at the same tourname...
2021-05-21 Read Guide → -
What is Proprioception, Anyway?
Proprioception is a sense, like sight or smell. A person’s sense of proprioception is their sense of where their limbs are in space. You might be wondering: isn’t that just a subse...
2021-05-14 Read Guide → -
Compact, Efficient, Elite – Aslan Karatsev’s Versatile Forehand
In almost every article, I say something along the lines of “lead with the hips” or “power comes from the hips, not the arm,” but how do you actually put that concept into practice...
2021-05-07 Read Guide → -
Free the Feet, Free the Hips
Whenever possible, you want to power your forehand using both of the primary engines that accelerate the stroke: positive balance and rotation. Lean into the shot, ending with your...
2021-05-01 Read Guide → -
Yelling Isn’t Coaching
Let’s start with a funny story, told by strength coach Matt Reynolds, detailing the absurdity of how Baylor football players are “coached” during their strength and conditioning. H...
2021-04-23 Read Guide → -
The Power of Neutral
At Fault Tolerant Tennis, we talk a lot about offensive tennis. That’s for good reasons, two specifically. When your strokes lack fault tolerance, it’s your offensive tennis that s...
2021-04-16 Read Guide → -
How to Hit Really Really Hard (Without Missing)
At the start of our forehand power checklist , we distinguished between effortless power and effortful power. Obviously, in order to hit really, really hard, you have to use both, ...
2021-04-06 Read Guide → -
Which Forehand Stance is Best?
The following is an excerpt from the book The Fault Tolerant Forehand , which will be released on April 15th ! In the open stance, the feet are parallel with the net, and contact i...
2021-04-02 Read Guide → -
Tennis Makes you Better at Every Sport
At Fault Tolerant Tennis we teach fundamentals . We don’t start with tips and tricks. We don’t start with this limb position and that joint angle. We start with the human body and ...
2021-03-23 Read Guide → -
The #1 Forehand Consistency Killer
I can’t trust my forehand. I’ve heard the above sentence more than any other when it comes to fixing the forehand. It’s an extremely common problem that I struggl...
2021-03-19 Read Guide → -
Training to Crush The Pusher
In order to beat a pusher, you need high percentage offensive shots . Most players at the recreational level do not posses high percentage offensive shots, and yet they attempt off...
2021-03-11 Read Guide → -
Develop the Feel of Federer
Many people assume that “touch” and “feel” are simply natural talents. They are not – like everything else in tennis, touch and feel can be trained. W...
2021-03-10 Read Guide → -
Drop Feed for Forehand Development
The following is a page from The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon ( click here ). There exists an extremely common issue impeding foreha...
2021-03-05 Read Guide → -
Forehand POWER Checklist
There are two kinds of “forehand power.” The first is effortless power . Effortless power is the power we gain simply by using proper biomechanics . It’s gained w...
2021-03-04 Read Guide → -
Dominate the Slicer With Heavy Low Forehands
The following is a page from The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon ( click here ). At Fault Tolerant Tennis we teach fundamentals . Our a...
2021-03-02 Read Guide → -
Thou Shalt Not Backswing
When I say that the volley should utilize “no backswing,” I mean no backswing. Not a quick backswing, not an abbreviated backswing. No backswing. The racket travels directly from i...
2021-02-26 Read Guide → -
Out, Up, and Through
The following is a page from The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon ( click here ). Every player has been coached to “brush up the back of...
2021-02-23 Read Guide → -
Jen Brady – The Girl Who Rips 3500rpm Forehands
Jennifer Brady hits her forehand like a man. And that’s a really good thing. Not just in the sense that Jen Brady’s forehand is awesome, and the forehands on the ATP tour are also ...
2021-02-19 Read Guide → -
What is Fault Tolerance, Anyway?
“Fault tolerance” is a term from computing – it refers to a machine’s ability to remain functional even in the face of a fault, a small problem. For example, imagine that one of th...
2021-02-19 Read Guide → -
How the Feet Liberate the Hips
The following is a page from The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon ( click here ). A full hip rotation is impossible if both of your feet...
2021-02-12 Read Guide → -
Foot Striking – The Overlooked Key to Speed
The human foot is a masterfully designed piece of biological machinery. It’s job – to safely absorb and transfer the force generated when our bodies hit, and then press...
2021-02-07 Read Guide → -
Foot Striking Warm Up
If we’d all grown up barefoot from birth, we’d probably strike the ground properly without even thinking about it. Alas, since that’s not the case, proper foot st...
2021-02-07 Read Guide → -
The Athletic Ready Position
With almost every skill in tennis, there exists a prevailing myth that natural talent is the primary factor driving success. You’ll frequently hear tennis commentators, awestruck a...
2021-02-02 Read Guide → -
The Serve is a Throw
The serve is a throw. That line is both the title and the first paragraph for a reason – it constitutes the single most important insight that underpins effective serving. If you c...
2021-01-31 Read Guide → -
5 Signs of a Great Coach
A great lesson is worth infinitely more than a bad one. And I mean that literally. It isn’t worth double, or triple, or quadruple its less effective counterpart. No, the difference...
2021-01-26 Read Guide → -
Mixed Strategy – An Antidote to Guessing
A mixed strategy is a strategy in which we mix our shot selection decisions for a given situation; we won’t hit any shot 100% of the time. Consider an extremely common situat...
2021-01-20 Read Guide → -
Balanced Strategy – The Mathy Version
For every probabilistic decision in a non-cooperative game, there exists a balanced ( typically mixed ) strategy which creates indifference in the opponent – it doesn’t...
2021-01-20 Read Guide → -
A Common HESBA – The Inside-Out Approach
For many players, the highest equity shot before adjustment when given a short, high ball up the middle is an inside-out forehand approach shot. Most players can hit their inside-o...
2021-01-19 Read Guide → -
A Commonly Overused Mixed Strategy
One of the most common situations in which players adopt a suboptimal mixed strategy is doubles return of serve. In many matches, no, you don’t have to hit your serve returns...
2021-01-14 Read Guide → -
Highest Equity Shot Before Adjustment (HESBA)
For every situation from which we have to select a shot, there exists a best option barring strategic adjustment from our opponent. This is our highest equity shot before adjustmen...
2021-01-11 Read Guide → -
The Optimal Frequency is Often 100%
Many players assume that doing the same thing over and over again is inherently bad, because it’s “predictable.” This is a misconception. Our goal isn’t to ...
2021-01-11 Read Guide → -
Basic Strategy – Where’s My Edge?
Tennis strategy is best understood at the level of individual shot selection decisions; for each unique situation we are forced to play, we have a different strategy, appropriate f...
2021-01-11 Read Guide → -
Win Anyway
When we’re on court, we don’t complain. We win. To the questions below, there is only one productive answer – win anyway . The manner in which we go about this may vary from ...
2021-01-10 Read Guide → -
Dynamic vs Static Positions
While there are numerous different teaching mistakes that lead to ineffective coaching, many of them stem from the same fundamental misunderstanding – confusing cause and effect. S...
2021-01-07 Read Guide → -
Adjusting To Low Balls The EFFICIENT Way
The following is a page from The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon ( click here ). The key to effective stroke production is efficient bi...
2021-01-06 Read Guide → -
5 Ways Elite Players Make Their Own Luck
Many events in tennis appear lucky. The ball dribbles over the net for a winner. Someone hits a second serve ace on the line. A forehand is shanked high and deep, and ends up landi...
2020-12-30 Read Guide → -
The Modern Forehand – A Biomechanical Masterpiece
The following is the introduction to The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon . When performed correctly, the forehand is a stroke with a ve...
2020-12-29 Read Guide → -
The Pusher’s Strategy is Better Than Yours
The pusher’s strategy isn’t very good – hit the ball back into the court and never play offense. Clearly, the pusher is wasting at least some opportunities to get...
2020-12-24 Read Guide → -
A Shot’s Probability Distribution
Tennis is random . Each shot is best understood not as a particular result (winner, error, rally ball, etc.), but as a probability distribution of possible results, from which a pa...
2020-12-24 Read Guide → -
Tennis Is Random
Tennis doesn’t feel random, because, as we swing, we feel like we’re in full control of the racket, and thus the result of the shot. This control is an illusion. Each stroke genera...
2020-12-23 Read Guide → -
Gold: “Roll Your Racket Over The Ball”
Ah, "roll your racket over it" – the epitome of everything that’s wrong with tennis coaching, our Coaching Cues Hall of Shame champion, and probably the sente...
2020-12-21 Read Guide → -
Three More Examples of the Winning Attitude
We’ve already discussed the common trap of incorrectly believing that winning is your goal, when, in reality, it’s something else. Typically, these winning imposters lo...
2020-12-20 Read Guide → -
Silver: “Point Your Butt Cap at the Net”
Our Coaching Cues Hall of Shame silver medal goes to a cue which creates unhelpful wrist tension and destroys effortless topspin: "point your but cap at the net." The but...
2020-12-20 Read Guide → -
Do You Actually Like Winning?
No really, do you? Because most of us instinctively think “well of course I like winning,” without taking the time to really internalize everything that entails. Many assume that t...
2020-12-19 Read Guide → -
Bronze: “Bend Your Knees”
“Bend your knees” is one of the most overused and oversimplified cues given not just in tennis, but in sports in general. When most coaches say “bend your knees,” they are tr...
2020-12-11 Read Guide → -
Two Rules that Govern EVERY Shot
The following is a page from The Fault Tolerant Forehand , available in eBook and paperback formats on Amazon ( click here ). The Fundamental Theorem of Tennis is two rules that go...
2020-12-11 Read Guide →