SF Tennis Freak

This is the second of a three-part series (Take Stock/Take Time Off, Training Tips for Upcoming Season, and Equipment Changes) that will focus on things you can do to help your game during the off-season.

Question: Do you have any tips/suggestion for off-season training? What should I focus on to help improve my game for the upcoming season?

Answer: Here are three (3) things to remember as you start training in the off-season.

1. Set goals!

Give yourself specific goals for the upcoming season. Whether it’s serve consistency, playing more doubles, or working on your fitness, etc. Just remember to keep them simple and attainable, with a mix of both short-term and long-term goals. If possible, try to set goals that you can measure and track as you go along.

2. Work on your game!

Pick one or two things you want to work on in the off-season, and take the time to work on them. Getting together with friends for practice drills is an excellent way to work on your game. It’s okay to play occasional practice sets, but try to keep the focus on drills. If all you do is compete year-round, it’s easy to develop bad habits that will keep you from improving.

3. Work on your fitness!

This is the perfect time to strengthen key muscle groups that can help your game AND prevent injury. Take the time to develop your rotator cuffs and surrounding muscle groups in your shoulders. Work on your core to help stave off lower back issues. And stretch, stretch, stretch! Working on your flexibility is also a great way to help with injury prevention.

Got a tennis question? Send it via email or tweet for “Ask Marla”, a (hopefully) weekly (or biweekly) question-and-answer with Marla Reid of San Francisco’s City Racquet Shop.

About Marla

Marla Reid is a respected tennis pro/coach in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s coached nationally-ranked teams and players, and has over 15 years of experience at the NCAA Division I, II, and III levels. Marla owns and operates City Racquet Shop in San Francisco CA.

About City Racquet Shop

City Racquet Shop offers, superior products/services, outstanding customer service, and a community-oriented destination for tennis players to shop, hang out and talk about tennis.

City Racquet Shop online: www.cityracquetshop.com
City Racquet Shop on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/city-racquet-shop-san-francisco
City Racquet Shop on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cityracquetshop

This is my version of taking stock/taking time off…

This is the first of a three-part series that will focus on things you can do to help your game during the off-season. It was inspired after I asked Marla about suggestions for off-season training. Her response surprised me, and led to this three-part series (Take Stock/Take Time Off, Off-Season Training, and Equipment Changes).

Question: Do you have any suggestions for my readers about what to do in the off-season?

Answer: Before you do anything, take time to evaluate your past season!

Think good and hard about how your season went (good and bad), and then pick two or three things that you want to work on. Maybe take some tune-up lessons with a tennis pro, view instructional videos on YouTube, or simply work on drills with friends. The important thing to remember is that this is NOT the time to compete.

If you need to take time away from the game to help your body recover from the season, this is the perfect time to do it. Sometimes in tennis, we hit peaks where our game levels off and we become stagnant.

Those are the times that it’s good to get away to rethink your game, let your body recover, and then re-start once you’re mentally and physically refreshed.

Got a tennis question? Send it via email or tweet for “Ask Marla”, a (hopefully) weekly (or biweekly) question-and-answer with Marla Reid of San Francisco’s City Racquet Shop.

About Marla

Marla Reid is a respected tennis pro/coach in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s coached nationally-ranked teams and players, and has over 15 years of experience at the NCAA Division I, II, and III levels. Marla owns and operates City Racquet Shop in San Francisco CA.

About City Racquet Shop

City Racquet Shop offers, superior products/services, outstanding customer service, and a community-oriented destination for tennis players to shop, hang out and talk about tennis.

City Racquet Shop online: www.cityracquetshop.com
City Racquet Shop on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/city-racquet-shop-san-francisco
City Racquet Shop on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cityracquetshop

Since the purchase of my HEAD Speed MP 315 (18×20) racquet a few years back, I’m an avowed HEAD fan. However, after recent hits with some other sticks in the HEAD family, my fan-dom has become a bit more qualified.

Don’t get me wrong. I love what the extremely versatile Speed line has done for my game. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to equally positive experiences with the Extreme, Instinct, Prestige, or Radical lines.

Two cases in point are my experiences with the two racquets in this review: the Extreme Pro 2.0 and the Instinct Mid Plus. They’re both solid racquets, and are currently being used by some very good players on the WTA/ATP pro tours. Does this translate to a successful racquet of choice for the average club player? My answer is a qualified “Maybe”.

Check out my thoughts on each and see if either might be the right racquet for your game.

Racquet Review: The Extreme Pro 2.0

Racquet Review: The Instinct Mid Plus

(As with most of my equipment testing, demo racquet was graciously provided by City Racquet Shop. Please check them out if you’re in the San Francisco Bay area.)

(Per usual, here are the caveats on my racquet reviews. I’m a 4.0 player with a fast swing that generates more than enough power and topspin from my western grip. I hit a slice backhand for tactical purposes, but generally use a two-handed drive. Please view this racquet review accordingly.)

16 x 19 string pattern, 11.1 unstrung – 11.8 strung (55 lb. Stamina 16g), 100 in.²

The Basics: Power, power, and more power! That sums up my hitting session with the HEAD Extreme Pro 2.0. Used by Richard Gasquet and Mikhail Youzhny, this racquet is one of the most powerful racquets I’ve hit with in a long time. Since I don’t necessarily need more power in my game, this was a tricky racquet to demo.

Fortunately, the Extreme Pro comes with a dose of control to help mitigate its’ excessive power. Without that control, recommending this racquet to anyone who already has decent power in their strokes would have been a non-starter.

Forehand: The best way to hit an effective forehand with this racquet was to pretend as though I was hardly trying. And as most players know, that’s hardly a realistic strategy when you’re in a pressure-filled match. Whenever I found myself “trying” to put some extra pop on the ball, it would fly uncontrollably.

Backhand: Because my backhand is a little more temperamental than my forehand, controlling my two-handed backhand shots was even trickier. it was hard to find my comfort zone.

Serve: The racquet was surprisingly comfortable for my serve given its’ power. IT was still challenging to find the comfort zone where I could attempt to put some pop on my serve AND also keep it from hitting the back fence.

Volleys: Volleys were okay. Good volley technique is especially helpful with this stick.

Overall: The HEAD Extreme Pro 2.0 is too much stick for my tastes. I can see it being a beneficial for someone who needs more power in their game.  For those who already have a decent power game (but not the greatest technique), you’ll spend most of your time trying to keep from hitting the back fence. Use at your own risk.

(As with most of my equipment testing, demo racquet was graciously provided by City Racquet Shop. Please check them out if you’re in the San Francisco Bay area.)

(Per usual, here are the caveats on my racquet reviews. I’m a 4.0 player with a fast swing that generates more than enough power and topspin from my western grip. I hit a slice backhand for tactical purposes, but generally use a two-handed drive. Please view this racquet review accordingly.)

Maybe it’s just the guys with, but I’ve noticed a growing (and disturbing) trend of “When in doubt, call it out!”

Most players make fair line calls, and typically only err when facing the loss of a critical game, set, or match point. I refer to these as “wishful thinking” line calls, because they genuinely see the call based on what they want to believe. But now it seems that the overwhelming need to win is overtaking the need for fair play, even in the social tennis ranks.

I play social doubles with a great group of guys here in San Francisco. Though there have been a couple of occasions where someone’s made some pretty bad calls, most of the time everyone else is pretty good with them.

On Monday, I was at the tail end of a tight set, serving at 8-7 in the tiebreaker, when I received one of the worst calls I’ve ever seen on a clear service winner. It was a great serve into the body of the receiver that had skidded off the service line. However, to the utter amazement of my partner and me, his partner called it out.

I immediately stopped play and had what I will only describe as a “frank conversation on bad line calls made in order to prevent a loss”. After some back and forth, we ended the conversation by agreeing to “take two”. I did that only because one of the guys in the group had his young son courtside, and I didn’t want to model secondary “jerk” behavior in front of him. But to be honest, the set was over for me.

When someone crosses that line in a match, I’m “done”. I promptly lost the next two points en route to losing the set. Though I could barely bring myself to shake hands afterward, I did so anyway. I wasn’t going to compound the sour ending by being a bad sport.

I’ve been hooked before on calls, but this time was different. My umping work has given me such a strong desire for fair play (in order to promote the best tennis/fun) that I struggle in situations like this where the win comes at the cost of good sportsmanship. Tennis is supposed to be fun, especially social tennis is supposed to be fun. Calls like the one I got the other day make me want to immediately walk off the court. If it can’t be fun, I don’t want to be there.

There are a lot of cool guys (and a couple of women) who play in this group, so it’s easy to avoid playing with someone you’d rather not. We’ll see how it goes the next time I see him there, but odds are that we won’t be playing again anytime soon.

Some might question why I let a bad call get under my skin to this extent, and the answer is simple. Tennis is fun for me, so any time spent on court with someone who kills that buzz by hooking line calls is wasted time. Others might not be bothered at all by this type of behavior, and God bless them… but I’m not one of them!

I’m posting this to make people think about their own calls. Or at the very least, maybe I can embolden someone to call out players who try to make clearly bad calls on important points. If we don’t, the offenders will think that it’s okay to ruin other’s enjoyment of the game for the sake of winning. And then we all lose.

I’ll end with two great line call mottos to live by:

1. A ball that’s 99% OUT is 100% IN.

2. If you can’t clearly see the ball out, the ball is good.

Take your pick, and take it to heart! 😉

I have a long history with Volkl racquets!

Back in the day, I used the Volkl Tour 10 V-Engine. In fact, I think it was my racquet of choice for almost 8 years. It was what some call “a player’s racquet”, and was supposed to help improve my game as my technique got better. Two surgeries later, I gave up on that idea in favor of one that would better suit the changing needs of my body and game.

Though I’m pretty happy with my current racquets, I wish I would have had been able to demo either of these Volkl Organix line racquets. I’m an extremely brand loyal kind of guy, and have always enjoyed the balanced feel of Volkl racquets. After demo’ing these two Volkl sticks, I’m certain that I would have stayed in the Volkl racquet family if I’d gotten to these first!

On the suggestion of the good folks at City Racquet Shop, I took the Organix V1 Mid Plus and Organix 8 (300) out for a hit, and was pleasantly surprised. I spent a fair bit of time with them hitting baseline shots, and also played a competitive doubles set with each. The racquets were strung at mid-range, and both had a grip size was 4 3/8. Here are my impressions and purchase recommendations.

(Per usual, there are a few caveats to my racquet reviews, based on my own game. I’m a 4.0 player with a fast swing that generates more than enough power and topspin. I hit a slice backhand for tactical purposes, but generally use a two-handed backhand drive. Please gauge this racquet review accordingly to your own game and personal preferences.)

Click Here for the Volkl Organix V1 Mid Plus Racquet Review

Click Here for the Volkl Organix 8 Racquet Review