 Here we have footage from Andy Gilliot's video analysis session with me from Thursday the 9th of July 2020. Now during this session we spent an hour filming Andy's strokes and a bit of match play at the end as well. To give a quick overview of Andy's tennis, Andy is currently the Avenue Tennis Clubs men's captain. He mainly plays doubles, regularly competing in the club's doubles events in both men's and mixed doubles as well as playing for the men's teams. Now alongside tennis Andy has played a fair bit of touch tennis as well, which I think has massively helped his skills on the tennis court with regards to his hand skills, his reactions, and also his ability to hit with more spin and that be topspin and slice as well on his ground strokes and his serves. As a tennis player Andy is a solid all-rounder. He does prefer doubles as he likes being at the net. One of his favourite shots is his sliced backhand, although he's able to drive his backhand as well. He's got a pretty good forehand. It's on the flatter side of the spectrum, but he hits it with a bit of topspin too. Andy brings a lot to the tennis court outside of his game with a positive attitude, very encouraging with his doubles partners, always smiling and it shows off the court too. He's a huge asset to the club, helping to run the winter and summer club tournaments as well as setting up weekly team practice for all of the club members. Now enough about you Andy. I'm going to talk to you now before your head gets too big. And I'm going to start by talking through your forehand. Now in all of this footage, I'm going to talk through your game starting from feet upwards. Every shot in tennis starts from the ground force energy coming up through to your upper body. Now, on your forehand in particular, if you have a look at this first video or this first clip of your forehand, you can see that you favour your right leg. Now, what this creates is an open stance on most of your forehands. Now, not all of your forehands, some of your forehands you do step in with your left leg, but most of the time you do favour your right and you're stepping in with that open stance. Now an open stance is where your feet and your hips are facing the net. The good side of this is when you're under pressure and when you're pulled out wide, it can give you good balance moving laterally on the court. But as a doubles player, there's not as much lateral movement. In fact, mainly you're going to be moving up and back. So if you could work on stepping in more with your left leg and having more of a neutral stance, so slightly more sideways on, it would allow you to get a little bit more of a unit turn, a little bit more rotation through your shot and a bit more body weight transfer going forward to the direction you want the ball to go to. Without that unit turn and rotation, you're forced to use your arm to generate power. And as soon as you try to do that, you actually lose control of the racket face. So if we could generate power from our legs, our hips and our shoulders, you will be much more efficient on that forehand side. If I slow this shot down here, you can see it in action. So you've stepped in with your right leg and your take back rotation is pretty limited. So you can see that your hips and your shoulders are nearly square onto the court. Now, if you can get that take back to be slightly bigger with your shoulders and hips more side on, you'd be able to get a lot more racket speed through your core rotation. And you can see here that most of your power is coming purely from your arm. And that's where you get that crossover with your right and your left arm here, which is another thing we've spoken about before. So linking in with the stance and using a bit more of a unit turn, we should be able to make use of your left arm slightly more. And what we should see is just before that racket head starts to swing forwards, your left elbow should be kicking back behind you. And that will help to initiate that upper body turn at the end of your swing rather than crossing your arms over here. You should see that left arm more behind you, almost catching the racket next to your shoulder or over your shoulder. Your actual swing path and contact point is pretty good. And you do get topspin on that forehand, albeit nearer to the flatter end of the spectrum. But that's your game style. You like to hit it fairly flat. All in all, your forehand is looking pretty good. I would just suggest trying to spend a bit of time working on getting that left leg out in front of you so that you can explore with more unit turn, more rotation to make your forehand slightly more efficient. So moving on to your backhand and you can see here, as you do prefer to step in with your right leg, this actually helps you on the backhand side because stepping in with your right leg allows your shoulders to get more sideways on so that you can swing the racket through the ball. With the single handed backhand, you don't actually need to rotate as much as you do on the forehand side. In fact, keeping those hips and shoulders slightly more sideways on can help you to be more accurate. Your swing path is pretty good. I would suggest trying to make more use of that left arm. As we said before, on the forehand side, the left arm is very important in all of your ground strokes. And as you can see here on your backhand, what you tend to do is your left arm gets left behind your body. If you can separate your arms and feel more of a stretch across your chest so that left arm finishes back behind you and up, you'll get a little bit more pop and it will help also help you with your balance. Try to picture some of the best single handed backhand players such as Roger Federer, a Dominic team. They really feel that stretch across their chest. I think that will be something that you could benefit from. Now, I know you prefer to hit your slice backhand and we'll go on to that in the in the next clip. And I can also see it in the way that you're holding the racket for your drive backhand. Now, when you hit your drive backhand, it does tend to be pretty flat. It doesn't have a lot of topspin. Therefore, it decreases your margin for error. So if you want to hit the ball with more pace, you've got to hit it pretty close to the net to make sure that it stays in. Now, because you've got the chopper grip on your drive backhand, it does make it incredibly difficult to hit with topspin. And as you can see here, when your racket reaches the contact point, your wrist seems to be in a slightly uncomfortable position. You can see that it's arched over. It's bending over in front of you. Now, that's because your grip is more suited to having an open racket face. So what you're subconsciously doing to flatten the racket out is turning your wrist and that comes with a lot of risk. Because as soon as you turn your wrist, there's a lot more angle change that can happen when you make contact with the ball. So the ball can spray. So you may find that sometimes when you hit your drive backhand, you'll randomly make an unforced error. And I think that could be down to the way that you're holding the grip. I also think that longer term, if you use that grip a lot and somebody hits the ball a lot faster to you, it can start to feel uncomfortable and longer term, it could even create injury. So I do think that if you're keen to hit your drive backhand more often and hit that backhand with a bit more topspin, I'd be tempted to move that index finger knuckle around from the chopper grip on bevel number two, around to the top of the racket, bevel number one, which is the eastern backhand. And that grips one of the more common grips that you'll see professional tennis players using when they're driving through their single-handed backhand. It would just allow your contact point to be nice and flat when you're hitting the ball without bending your wrist. It will be in a much more stable and comfortable position. When you look at your backhand from this angle, you can actually also see that your contact point gets quite close to your body. Ideally, we'd like that contact point to be more out to the side of you so that you've got a longer lever allowing you to hit with more power, but also more control. I think this happens because you're more comfortable when the ball gets close. So I think the aim would be to slightly adjust that grip when you're trying to hit the drive backhand. And that in turn will help you to get your contact point further away from you. It will take a bit of time to get used to, but I definitely think it will be worthwhile. The best time to do it is when you're hitting up and down on half court. Lots and lots of repetitions as opposed to when you're playing in matches. Inevitably, when you're playing in a match, you're going to hit more slice backhands and you're probably going to go back into your most comfortable grip, which for you is your chopper grip. So the more time you can spend hitting balls up and down with a partner, the better that backhand is going to get. So moving on to your slice backhand, which I think and I think you'll agree is one of your best shots. It's great for you on your return of serve, when you hit that low angle cross court from the ad side, but also in a rally, it can get you out of a lot of trouble. And I think the reason why you like it so much is because you are dominant with that right leg. So as you can see here in these clips, you're always stepping in with your right leg, getting your hips and your shoulders sideways on your grip, the chopper grip or the continental grip suits the backhand slice a lot more than it does the topspin or the drive backhand. So it's allowing you to get those strings pointing slightly upwards, slightly open and for your racket head path to swing from high to low. You can see here that the racket swing is pretty good and it's pretty consistent. Just like the last two shots that we've spoken through on your forehand and your drive backhand, I do think that you could make more use of your left arm, especially on this backhand slice here. So as your racket head moves forwards to make contact with the ball, that's when your left arm should be splitting and you should be feeling a good stretch across your chest. Now, start off gently and kind of getting used to the feeling of your arm separating. But the better you get at it, you want to make that movement quite sharp and quite quick to give you a much more punchy slice so that you can use that slice as more of a weapon rather than just as a kind of steady chip ball cross court. All in all, Andy, your slice is pretty good. Just make use of that left arm slightly more. So up to the net now and we're going to start by looking at your forehand volley. So just like your ground strokes, ideally you want to be stepping in with your opposite leg. So, you know, if you're swinging on the right side of your body, you want that left leg to come forward to allow your shoulders to rotate sideways on. And it's exactly the same in the volley. And as you can see here, you are actually doing it more often when you're up at the net. You're slightly more comfortable at the net. However, on this forehand side, you can still see that occasionally you are stepping in with your right leg. Now, there is a time and a place to step in with your right leg. And that's when you're really stretching out for a wide ball and you can't reach it in any other way. Now, it is not quite as important when you're at the net because the aim of the shot is not to hit with power. It's not to hit with a big swing. So the rotation isn't quite as important, but it will help you to have a slightly more stable base and it will help you to get into a good habit if you can. So try to focus on that. In this clip, you did find the ball machine quite difficult to get used to, but after a few, you were seeming to get your iron. The best volleys that you hit were the ones that you stepped much closer to the net for and took the ball before the ball started to drop. And the same is to be said when you're playing in a tennis match. The earlier you can make contact with the volley, the better. Ideally, you want to be meeting the ball above the height of the net rather than letting it drop beneath the height of the net for obvious reasons and being able to hit down on the ball. To help you to take the ball earlier, an earlier preparation would be useful. And as you can see here, your ready position is pretty similar to your ground stroke ready position. It's actually around your waist height. Now, when you're at the net because we want to meet the volley above the height of the net, it's actually better to hold that racket slightly higher up in front of you so that it doesn't have to move as far before meeting the ball. So if you can get that racket head up slightly higher, I think that it would help you to prepare earlier for your volley and to make a much more crisp connection with the ball. Looking at the backhand volley, again, like your ground strokes, you can tell you're a lot more comfortable on this side. You're stepping in with the correct leg. Your racket's preparing up nice and high. You've got a good grip and you're making contact with the ball in the right place. In general, I've seen a huge improvement in your net game. Even in the recent couple of weeks, your footwork is so much better. You're more springy on your toes rather than kind of waiting for the ball to come to you. You're looking to hunt and you're looking to poach. So definitely keep that up and in all of your matches that you play, when you're practicing, try to intercept more often. Push yourself out of your comfort zone because the more often you try it, the better you're going to get at it. So don't worry if you miss a few at the start, you'll get better and better the more attempts you have. The only one point I would make about the backhand side, and if you look at this clip here, and all of your backhand volleys in fact, you can see that your ready position when you're waiting for the ball is more on the backhand side. Now, this was probably because you knew that the ball was coming into your backhand. However, if you look back at the forehand clips too, it does sway slightly to your left, which can create a late take back on your forehand side. So if you can, try to get that ready position higher, as we said on the forehand, but also in a neutral position pointing straight down the court. That way you'll have an equal opportunity to prepare early on your forehand and your backhand volleys. So on to the most important shot in the game, and it's your serve. I actually think this is another one of your strengths. You tend to get a pretty consistent ball toss. Your contact point is good. You can use good variety between flat and sliced serves, and you can hit different parts of the service box. So it's definitely a good weapon. I think there's one thing that you could look to improve, and it's the position of your left arm after you've tossed the ball up. Now, just like your other shots, you don't tend to use your left arm in the most efficient way. And on your serve in particular, your left arm kind of stays bent. Your elbow is bent and it stays quite low. What this does is it stops you from getting a good shoulder tilt. So although your serve is still pretty strong, I think it could have a little bit more power just by creating a more upward left arm. So if you could point that left arm up a bit straighter and get your left shoulder higher than your right shoulder before hitting the ball, you'll get the benefit of getting a good shoulder over shoulder rotation. So what I mean by that is your left shoulder starting above your right, and then as you go to strike the ball, you'll throw the racket up towards the ball, and your right shoulder will then finish above your left shoulder. Because your serve is already a pretty good shot, we don't need to make huge changes to this. But just by thinking about holding that left arm up slightly straighter, we'll make a difference straight away. Here, we'll look at your forehand and backhand return. And we've got you on the ad side, because that's where you tend to play most of the time when you play doubles. It's not the greatest angle. The camera's pretty close to you, so we can't actually see your initial setup here. But what we can see is how you move to the oncoming ball. Now, a good return is pretty much the same as a forehand or backhand, but with a slightly abbreviated swing. You have less time to react, so that take back needs to be quite short, allowing you to have time to get the contact point out in front of you. You seem to do this pretty well on both the forehand and backhand sides. When you're looking at the forehand movement, however, what tends to happen is you set up for the ball and you move sideways to meet the ball in line with where you started. So you kind of stay about a metre behind the baseline. Whereas when you look at your backhand return, you tend to move out to the ball, but also forward, so you're moving at a diagonal, allowing you to meet the ball nearer to the baseline. Now, I think if you could do this more often on your forehand side, it would be a slightly more effective shot. And I think you'd agree with me. I think your backhand return tends to be more reliable than your forehand side. So if you can, try to step in and take that ball a little bit earlier. I find that the best way to practice the movement on the return of serve is to stand a good metre or two big steps behind where you're planning on meeting the ball. As your opponent throws the ball up, you take a large step forwards. As they make contact with the ball, you split step. And then as you go to strike the ball, you're stepping in again. So it'll give you slightly more momentum going forwards, meaning that you don't have to swing quite so fast, but you get the same power through your body weight transfer. This will allow you to have a short take back and early preparation, but without having to swing super fast with your arm. So in this last part of the session, I wanted to see you in a live situation. So we did a couple of rallies and we played a little tie break just to make sure that everything that you were doing with the ball machine in the static drills was realistic to what you would normally do when you're in a live situation. So in this first rally, we'll just talk through the positioning and your footwork. So here you can see your right leg leading, your right leg leading again. Slightly more semi-open stance on that one. Right leg, so open stance again. Right leg, open stance again. Backhand, right leg. That was better on the backhand. Right leg on the backhand. Still right leg in front, back foot pivot. Right leg. So from that clip there, you can see straight away that that's the norm for you. You tend to prefer stepping in with the right leg for the backhand side. That's great. It gets your sideways on. For the forehand side, however, we need to be doing it slightly more often. As I said at the start, stepping out with your right leg if you're under pressure laterally, so if you're pulled really wide on the court, that's a great thing to do because it allows you to push off and recover quickly. But any time the ball is in that middle third of the court here, or if you're playing doubles, if it's just in front of you or slightly to the side, you should use that time to step in with your left leg so that you can get more of a unit turn and get a bit more body weight transfer going forwards. So at the end of the session we played tie-break to seven points. Now, obviously Andy you're a double specialist and we are playing singles here and playing just seven points doesn't give a real true reflection of an overall match. It's quite tough to perform under pressure in just seven points. But as you can see, I do it very well, especially when the camera is watching me. So looking at this first point, I hit a serve into your body and it's hard to see where you're standing here, but it seems to be that you've chosen to hit a forehand and I actually think maybe your backhand slice would have been a better option here, but again it's tough to see from where you're stood. So interestingly, on this second point you've gone straight in for the serve volley which is a very brave tactic on the singles court. Unfortunately you weren't quite as quick as Pat Rafter, but you made a good effort. I just managed to get that ball to dip a bit too low and made it difficult for you. On the third point, you've done it again. You've gone for the serve and volley. This time I wasn't able to get that ball to drop down to your feet and you look a little bit quicker into the net which made that second volley, that backhand volley much easier for you to get it past me. Great shot. Point number four, I remember this one well and you were very excited after your serve and volley approach on the last point. You went for a huge take back on that forehand and that's why it sunk into the bottom of the net. So just remember on the first serve in particular you want that take back to be much shorter. If it's a slower second serve, that's when you can get that take back a bit bigger to accelerate through the ball. So we had a nice rally on the fifth point. Unfortunately my first serve was pretty wide which had you on the back foot straight away. You made a good return cross-court. I hit the open court and this backhand here is the one that gave me the opportunity to really turn it on and step into attack. But a good point, I was just on the offense from the get-go. If you could have made that backhand a little bit deeper when you were on the run, I think it would have made things a lot more tricky for me. In point number six you get your second serve in and we get into a little slice battle but that last slice for you, you were just leaning back which floated the ball up and out of the court. So even when you're under pressure like that and on the back foot, try to stand your ground and get that front shoulder to move forwards through the ball. In point number seven we have another second serve from you. We get into a little rally and I managed to hit this deep high forehand, pushing you back, creating a short ball opportunity for me and I'd chip that backhand near to your feet and you don't move quite enough to get back behind the ball. I put you under a lot of pressure with me being pretty close to the net and after that point I asked where you were aiming and I think you said you were aiming cross-court but from where you're stood it's quite a small margin for error. So in that situation there if you do find yourself out of position the best option would be to chip one up high, try to lob me and get back behind the baseline ready to defend. Point number eight we get into a decent little rally again. Footwork is looking good from you Andy. I would just say if you could try to get back to the middle slightly quicker you'd have more time on the following ball and yeah, you hit a couple of lobs. First one was a little bit easy for me I should have put that one away and we won't mention the second one. Point number nine is probably another point to mention another mistake from me there. So I've got myself another match point let's see how you deal with this one. Oh, I forgot you asked me to delete that one, sorry. So that's a wrap. Hopefully by watching back and listening to me talking through my analysis you can see that you've got a lot of strength in your game and the few things that I did pick out I emphasised and it probably sounded like I was ripping your game to shreds but actually when you think back to it there's only two real main things. Number one is your positioning mainly on the forehand side and trying to be slightly more neutral with your stance so stepping in with your opposite leg try to be a little bit more sideways on when you can be so that you get your body weight transfer going forwards allowing you to get a little bit more upper body rotation through your shots as well. The second thing was really making more use of your left arm and that goes across the board in all of your shots so whether it be on your forehand to try to get that left arm to come back with your racket on your backhand side to try to split your arms on your drive and on your slice backhand as well and when you're hitting your serve trying to keep your left arm up slightly taller so that you can get more shoulder over shoulder tilt and finally when you're at the net and around the net trying to get that ready position slightly higher so that you're prepared earlier for that oncoming ball. So hopefully you found watching yourself useful but yeah, I hope that all the information I've given you will help. Let me know if you've got any questions or if anything that I've said doesn't make sense and I will see you soon. Take care.