Learning New Techniques

First of all, I forgot two rules last time. They are fairly minor, but here they are: You must serve from inside the service box and it must pass the return line to be considered a good serve.

By now, I am getting a pretty good feel for how this sport works, even if every once in a while I swat at the air randomly. One thing I realized is that as a beginner I can easily lose my skills if I don’t practice every week.

In these past few weeks we practiced hitting the ball at the right spot on the front wall so that it lands in the back corner, which is hard to return. This is a good technique especially for serving. (See animation on right.)

Another technique we learned was hitting off the back wall. This can be hard to do if you are not comfortable with estimating where the ball is going to land. The idea is to practice returning the ball when it has been served with enough force to continue to the back wall. In this case, it can be beneficial to wait until it has hit the back wall and then to hit it. But remember, it can still only bounce once, so it must hit high enough so that it can be returned.

Sometimes we struggled this and practiced using a double bounce rule, which is useful for practicing new techniques.

AR

Next Post on 4/3: Doubles

Just FYI: The slideshow image was created on my DSI using Flipnote which is really awesome and apparently you can export them as GIFs.

The Basics and Rules

The first thing we learned when we were out on the court was how to serve. The main thing we focused on was hitting the front wall before without hitting any other wall and passing the service line on its way back. There aren't any tricks to this, except getting a feel for how the ball bounces back off the wall.
The proper way to serve the ball is to bounce it once and then swing the racket as though it were a golf club. (See diagram 2.1.) This takes practice to get your serve decent. We had to do ten good serves before we could learn anything else.
The next step is to learn to return the ball. You will need someone to serve it to you for this part. When returning the ball it may only bounce once before playing. To successfully return the ball, the ball must again hit the front wall, but this time the ball can bounce off of one other wall first, although this is not necessary. We practiced this in partners until we were comfortable with this.
The most important thing we learned was not the rules, but how to actually use the racket. To some people this may come naturally, but I had to work at this. Unlike tennis, the wrist is supposed to bend when swinging the racket.

Next post on 2/17: Practicing New Techniques