Ladder is set in front of a player. The player tries to bounce the ball down with the racquet and hit each ball in the next square of a ladder.
In this drill, the player works on controlling the ball with the racquet. For many young players simple bouncing the ball is a boring exercise so using additional coaching aids is a good way to work on this skill for a longer time. Adding targets (ladder squares) to hit into makes this challenge more difficult so even really good players will have to put maximum effort to make the whole ladder at once.
A tiebreak is a short sprint where every point is worth the same as a break of serve. The players who win them are rarely the ones who hit hardest. Here is how to coach the patterns, habits and scoreboard thinking that win the big points.
Most club players practise the serve on its own and then have no idea what to do with the ball that comes back. Serve plus one is the pattern that turns a good serve into a won point.
Wimbledon has just crowned another champion, and if you watched closely you saw the same thing every year: the best returners quietly won the tournament. Here is how to coach a return that pressures the server rather than just surviving it.
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