A player who walks on the court without any idea of strategy is like a boat without a sail.Drifting around until the inevitable, unless of course the opponent is equally short of strategy, then luck will prevail.

There are really only two ways to win points in this game
a) hit a winner
b)your opponent must make an error.

In basic terms all tennis strategy can be fitted into two categories;offense and defense.

Unlike other sports, in tennis you cannot defend a 3-2 lead and hang in there,someone has to get to 6 before the other.

How you do that is dependant on your
a)tennis skills,
b)fitness
c)personality.
This wil lead to your strategy.
To be totally defensive or totally attacking is impossible.Over the years the great players have been both, Borg and Chang were defensive and Sampras and Becker were attacking.

What is a defensive player?
Using a defensive strategy this player relies on his ability to hit one more ball into court than his opponent.Using his consistancy he rallies to the full and if his opponent decides to come to the net, uses the lob to a treat.
So patience,concentration and tenacity are his weapons, and in the right hands this strategy can be, for his opponent, like going to the dentist- you know your going to suffer.

 What is an offensive(attacking)player?
Best described as someone who relies on hitting winners and making his opponent force their strokes, so bringing in the forced errors.
An offensive player relies on power,speed,skill in hitting the ball close to the lines and nerve. Most offensive players are the net rusher type and so have a good volley in their rucksack.
From the net the ball can be put away easier, from the baseline these direct winners are alot more difficult.More difficult in as much that from the baseline a winner has to be hit at least 12 metres to reach the net, and then depending where its going to land, add on say another 8 meters (angle shot).
This is too difficult at our level.From the net a volley can be played a distance of 2 metres to win the point. So for us on our tennis planet a strategy that makes us attack the short balls, not with the idea to hit direct winners, and then move into the net for the volley, would be a sound idea.
So what sort of strategy do you have?
Strategy - Part Two
Up until now there have been a few players that win points consistantly from the baseline, but a whole lot more that win points from the net.
In the women's game a baseline attacker has certain advantages, that women in generally are slower than the men, this type of game has its advantages. The advantage follows from the general rule that " a succesful tennis player must be able either to run or hit" This means that the slower, less agile player has to hit the ball harder and take more risks than the quicker, more agile player. In this way the slower player can force the opponent to hit off balance and without preparation, and so the quicker player cannot take advantage of the slower player's lack of mobility.
A quick player can afford to take less risks because they are able to run down the shots of the opponent. But of course a quicker player by hitting harder takes more risks but can win the point this way against the slow player.Although they make more errors, they also are compensated by making more winners. By contrast its more difficult to hit baseline winners in the men's game because they are so quick.

Which strategy is best for you?
Start by asking yourself " Am I able to cover the net and consistently put the balls away with volleys and smashes?"
If the honest answer is no, you are, like it or not, a defensive player.If you do not play at a high level, you should consider winning by attack only if you have a dependable net game. In my experience the most common strategy mistake made by club players is attempting to be attacking players when they only have the shots to be defensive.They try to force by hitting ground strokes too hard or too near the lines so they make too many mistakes.They don't volley and smash well enough so attempt to win from their groundstrokes.And they never seem to catch on that the percentages are against them.
Maybe watching the Roddick's and Sharapova's produces false expectations.The champions have spent a life time learning to hit balls close to the lines at tremendous speeds.Us normal players are playing an entirely different game. And there is subtle psychological payoff for adopting the low percentage strategy of hitting the ball too hard.It lowers your stress during the match and reduces the amount of disagreeable effort you must spend on concentration and willpower.Most people find it more soothing to to swat away at the ball and leave their fate in the hands of the gods.Only the winners are determined to control the outcome of the match themselves.

Strategy 3
Tennis matches are not won with great shots.They are won with many, many pretty good shots.Its like chopping down a tree, you dont do it with one great strike, you do it with the accumuleted effect of many small strokes.There is no three point play in tennis, as there is for example in basketball.You can hit the greatest stroke in the world, and only get one point for it. And you can nulify this in one second by making an easy error.

In order for you to win, then, you must have more willpower and concentration than your opponent.This keeps your error rate low.You will ultimately win when your opponent runs out of willpower and the error rate increases.Your main task as a competitor then, is to maitain your concentration longer than your opponent. All the great pros have tremendous willpower and concentration.They can play every point at 100% efficiancy for four or five hours.This is so difficult.
Luckily, you dont have to do this! All you have to do is mentally outlast your opponent, and your opponent is not Federer or Sharapova. Most players dont realize their strategic shortcomings because most of their opponents make the same mistakes they do.As long as your opponent can't hit the ball in court more than three or four times per point, it won't be an obvious problem if you can't either.The outcome of such matches is random and usually depends on who happened to hit a few extra balls in on a particular day..and it makes for good social tennis, since no one can completely dominate.
Only when they play a "dare I say the word" dinker, do they have to face the reality of their own ineffectiveness.
The true defensive player or "dinker" as he is wrongly called,is prepared to hit ten, twenty, or more balls in the court per point.It does not take a nuclear physicist to figure out what will happen when if a player who misses every third ball meets a player who misses every tenth.Unless he can hit a winner on every second ball, the inconsistant player will get slaughtered. Dinkers are both feared ( I play a couple of guys like this and in my opion its like going to the dentist, you know you have to suffer to win) and reviled.
Just listen to the common complaints concerning dinkers your likely to hear.
:Dinkers don't play "right"
:Dinkers will never get any better (while the rest of us, of course, will)
:Losing to a dinker doesn't "count" since he uses an inherently immoral style of play. :Dinkers are, in fact ,cowardly little conservative people-probably accountants or solicitors.

But dinkers understand the facts of life at the recreational level of tennis.
As the great Vic Braden has often pointed out, the defensive player has the advantage at this level of tennis, it doesn't pay to take lots of risks.He aptly advises the club player, no matter how much trouble he may be in, to always give his opponent another opportunity to miss. Dinkers frustrate beyound endurance those many players who have not figured this out yet.For every player who thinks he is capable of htting shots hard and near the lines, the dinker simply shows him he cammot.
Since most players are loath to face this unpleasant reality, they disparage the dinker. Yet most of the great players started out as dinkers when they were young.They wanted to win and immediately understood that winning required consistency.As they grew and their game matured, they begun to hit the ball harder and took more risks.But because they learned first to be consistant, they were able to develop reliable strokes.It is more effective to learn to hit the ball in the cout first, than to hit it hard and later to hit it in.Hitting it easy and under control allows you to work out a mechanically sound stroke.Then when you miss you can understand why and adjust.But when you whack the ball without proper control , there is a random aspect to your winners and errors.It is difficult to adjust and correct your strokes because everything happens so quickly.

Real understanding of stroke mechanics may never develop. Learning the consistency and control allows you to develop the heart and habit of winning.
One of the world's top coaches, who was at one time among the top 10 players, Jose Hiqueras, is a stickler for keeping the ball in the court.No matter how much power his players may have or how often they can hit winners, he stresses that missing is a cardinal sin.he says if you miss a lot, you are going to lose no matter how many great shots you make.Jose hated losing.

As a general rule, you should hit the ball as hard as you can as long as you can keep it in the court all the time.And there is a limit to how hard you can hit before you start to lose control of the ball.All players have a certain range of comfortable power where they have relatively good control of the ball.Within this range their rate of error will be low.But if they try to play at a power which is above this range, their rate of error will increase.Ideally a player should play most of their shots at the yop of his or hers power range, but never above it.

So this is called rally speed, and when you understand what you are capable of, you then know what you are capable of.You can work on increasing your power in pracice, but in matches you need to do whatever it takes to win.If your control improves enough to allow you to hit harder and still keep the ball in, then by all means do so.Unfortunately, at the lower levels of the game this requires most people to hit the ball much easier than they might like.

This doesn't mean defensive players should never go for winners.The great defensive players of the past Borg and Evert did so when the opportunity arose.And they cetainly moved their opponents around the court to tire them and help them miss.If the ball is short and high enough, go for the put-away.But the key phrase is short and high enough.Like the hungry kid whose eyes are bigger than his stomach, most players overestimate their own abilities in this respect and go for winners too often.They seem oblivious to the fact that when they hit hard and near the lines, their errors generally out number their winners too often.Thats why the player who is prepared to hit the ball in court ten to twenty times per point and make liberal use of the high lob whenever in trouble is likely to win a lot of matches.

For the defensive player, especially at recreational level, it means being willing to stay out there all day until your opponent weakens.Its like a water fight, you splash him, he splashes you.Your eyes begin the hurt, but so do his.Each splash is annoying but not devastating.There is no way for either of you to develop a knock-out punch.So you both keep splashing away at each other until one decides the reward is not worth the punishment.

It is only in tournaments on fast surfaces that the advantage actually shifts to the attacking player (rememeber Nadal's defeat on grass in Halle after three days earlier winning the French Open)

The key is whether you have the required weapons to attack. In tennis, offense means attacking at the net with volleys and overheads.The points will be short and the net player must put away the ball quickly.If he has the tools to do so consistantly, offense is a great play.If he doesn't, he exposes himself needlessly to his opponents passing shots and lobs, and ultimatelt gets beaten. Offense versus defense.It's one of the great confrontations that makes the game of tennis multidimensional.Now that you understand the way points are won with offense or defense in a match, let's see the specific ways to best implement those two strategies..
Next episode..Baseline Strategy.