As you are all probably watching the French Open this week, you may as a tennis player never had the experience of playing on this surface.

Personally my first time was in the Spanish National Veterans Championships near to Barcelona, where for me it was playing tennis on another planet.

So different, bounce, movement, everything, and after a week it still was not enough time to learn how to play on "this stuff".

In the Uk there are the odd club around with clay, but in most cases ours are called shale, which is not really the same.Shale courts from my memory have lines in white plastic pinned to the surface - in Barcelona the lines were built into the court (as Roland Garros) made from cement or acylic, but as you can guess, if you slide to the line and then the line is higher on one side, you can get some weird bounces.

Also the surface changes dramaticlly with the weather, after rain they play like pudding and in the hot sun play really fast.The wind can also change the surface by blowing the top level about and so making it patches of less clay to patches of deeper clay.

Anyway, here are some tips to play on clay -
FROM THE BASELINE
This first change concerns your ground strokes and is this - hit them higher over the net with a bit more topspin.

It sounds like a no-brainer but you would be surprised how many people don't do it and for many people adding more topspin "at will" is something they need to work on.

If you can do this however, you will find that this will not only help with your consistency, but will also help to push the balls deeper into your opponents court as well as getting the balls up at heights that they may find difficult to handle.

The second change is to hit behind your opponent more often.

Hitting behind your opponent means hitting the ball back to the same part of the court that your opponent has just hit from.
It means not always going into the open court (unless you can obviously hit a winner of course) and has 3 big advantages.

1. With your opponent probably recovering towards the centre of the court the "behind" ball means they have to quickly change direction to go back again. Doing this on clay is very difficult because of the slippery nature of the surface and so will end up with them struggling to maintain balance and footing and therefore struggling to control the ball.

2. You will also find that you make less errors as this often means a cross-court shot (more space to aim into and lower part of the net) and you are not "over hitting" in an attempt to put the ball away into the open space.

3. You will pick up a lot of free points if you can do this well as your opponent is sometimes forced into trying to end the point quicker than they would normally want to or they will be forced into a very defensive shot just to stay in the point while they slide around.

WHEN SERVING
Just like Federer, focus on getting a high percentage of first serves into play.

Because the clay surface negates the power of even the fastest of serves, your second serve may well be vulnerable to attack.

So, getting more first serves into play will mean your opponent gets less "looks" at your second serves and therefore less chances to attack it.

If you don't do so already, you need to develop a good spin serve that you can be aggressive on as your first serve.

A slice is good but a good kick serve will be better as it will bounce up higher and be harder for opponents to attack.

AT THE NET

Remember I said earlier about the use of the hitting behind your opponent when playing from the baseline??

Well, I also said when you get the chance you should attack - and that can mean getting to the net to finish off the point.

Just be aware that volleying on clay is different to volleying on a hard court or grass court.

Because the ball doesn't "go through" like it does on other surfaces, you need to make a couple of small adjustments.

1. Use more angles and short/drop volleys
The lack of depth on your volleys will work in your favor as getting up speed and possibly changing direction will be hard for your opponent as they attempt to get to your shots.

2. Bodyweight into ball
If you do decide to play a penetrating volley, then getting your bodyweight behind the ball and moving it forwards into the ball will help it gain momentum off the court surface and away from your opponent.

MOVEMENT
I have found that the number one thing about playing well on a clay court has nothing directly to do with shots.

It is in fact about your movement, more specifically - SLIDING.

Sliding into the ball on a clay court is vital and is the one thing that the players who don't grow up on the surface find the hardest to add into their game.

In fact most people think that you have to learn to hit the ball and then slide.

No!! You have to learn how to slide into your shots and then begin your recovery for the next ball - and that requires timing.

So how do you learn to do this? I NEVER DID AFTER ONE WEEK - FELL OVER ALOT THOUGH!!!

Well, one of the best ways I have seen is to just get out there and slide around.

Getting a partner to throw a tennis ball onto the court in different directions while you run to and slide around to get the balls before getting the ball back to them is one of the best ways to work out how to move and recover on a clay court.

Just progress/transfer this game to when you have a racket and are hitting balls and you are well on the way to feeling comfortable and moving better on "the dust".

SUMMARY
So there you have it, a few simple things you can do to make your game more effective on clay.

Try to implement them slowly and you will be more successful over the season.