 Hey guys welcome back. So as you can see I'm not on the tennis court today I'm stuck in my office due to England's lockdown restrictions. Unfortunately over here we can't get onto tennis court but I didn't want that to get in the way of me creating more content for YouTube and help you to improve your game. So this video is going to look a little bit different it's going to be a bit more like classroom style format rather than me being on the tennis court but hopefully it'll be just as valuable and it'll be interesting to hear your feedback so do let me know in the comments what you think of this style of video and if you'd like to see more of them or if you prefer the on court style. In this video I'm going to be talking through the benefits of taking the ball early and approaching the net in singles and doubles. We're going to look a little bit at the angles that are in play when we're playing at the baseline and when we're playing at the net and help you to understand how the angles affect the way that you play. Let's get into it. So before getting into it don't forget to like the video comment below and subscribe to the channel it goes a long way in helping me to reach more people with my videos. So as I mentioned before and this is going to have a slightly different style to what I'm used to we're going to have a different camera angle so let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy. Okay so here is a tennis court that I drew earlier and we're going to start by looking at singles. So I'm just going to quickly draw around we've got two players here okay we've got player one and player two. Okay so we're going to talk with regards to player one so that's yourself. We're going to start by talking through receiving shots and then we're going to look at sending shots as well. Now your opponent at the other end when you're both at the baseline trading back and forth has the opportunity to make you run out to the right or out to the left. So from where they're stood at the back of the court there realistically they could send the ball to you into your left hand side somewhere out here or out to your forehand side here. These are probably two of the widest shots that they'd be able to hit from back here. Be very low percentage for them to aim somewhere shorter and if they did they'd have to hit it slightly slower giving you a bit of time to get up there. So realistically these are the two widest positions that they could move you to. Things to consider about the depth of your position the further back you are let's say if you were stood back here you would have to cover more distance than you would if you were to stand up on the baseline. So you can see here if your position is slightly closer to the baseline you don't have to move quite as far as you would if you were further back. With that being said if you decided to come up to the net here again your position, oh nice little love heart there, we'll leave that, your position would mean that you don't have to move very far at all to cover the two widest points. In fact just by standing in the middle of the court if your opponent is directly in front of you without moving just by reaching your racket from side to side you'd actually have it's not the straightest of lines luckily the iPad corrects that for me. You'd actually have this much distance covered around half of the singles court covered without even taking a step. The downside of being closer to the net is you have less time to react so choosing the right moment to come into the net is crucial in being successful. There's no point in rushing into the net on every shot because if your opponent has an easy ball they're going to hit it a lot harder into the open court and you're not going to have very much time to react however if you're able to keep them back behind the baseline with a good effective shot then coming into the net can help you to cover more space on the court but also it allows you to take your opponent's time away with you being that much closer to them. Okay let's think of this from the other perspective so as I said that we were talking about your position with regards to receiving shots now let's look at how you would send the ball. So when behind the baseline you're fairly limited with the angles that you can use the widest shots that you could play are going to be somewhere around here so your area that you can realistically hit is this triangle area in the center of the court however if you decide to move your position closer to the net let's say that you were in the service boxes volleying actually you're much more likely to be able to hit the ball into a wider space you could send the ball to here or to here and you can already see that actually you're able to hit the ball into more of the court and push your opponent a lot wider out of the court in either direction so by moving or pushing your position closer to the net you're giving yourself more options and you're giving your opponent a lot more pressure and a lot more space to move into. Now as I said before this is not to say that you should go into the net on everything and it's not to say that you should change your game style if you are a player that likes to play at the baseline then you can carry on doing that my suggestion is consider pushing your position slightly closer to the baseline that way it will give you slightly less distance to cover it will give your opponent slightly less time and by making just a one percent or two percent improvement in your game can make the difference between winning and losing those tight matches so consider pushing your position slightly closer the difficulty that you may have is it's tougher to time you have less time to react however if you practice in this way you will become more used to it and you'll be able to add that into your game when playing matches. Now in doubles volleying becomes even more important because you've got a partner that's going to be covering the other 50 percent of the court you only have half of the court to cover which means that if you can get into the net your opponent is going to have very little option and often have to resort to hitting a lob which if they don't get it right will travel out of play or will give you the opportunity to hit an attacking smash. Things to consider when you are playing doubles is your opponent's position so this player here now if your opponent gets pushed out wide it may be from a good wide serve or it may be from a rally ball that's pushed their opponent out into this position here if they're pushed into this position consider what their options are actually the wider you're stood on the court the more angles you have to play with so this player could hit a fairly safe shot into this position here they could also utilize the width and create an extreme wide angle this way so with that in mind if the ball has been sent wide the volleying player here should adjust their position slightly to move in line with where the ball has gone to this way they will have their line covered and to save this shot from happening now this player actually should move in this direction because as you can see they've got the opportunity to hit that wide short angle now you may feel that by shifting these players out into the wider positions you may worry about the gap down the middle of the court however if you have a player here and you have a player out here the gap is extremely small when aiming down the middle as you can see this player doesn't have very far to go to have it covered and this player could actually reach it without moving much at all so often you'll see a gap between two players but if that ball's traveled out wide don't worry so much if the ball goes wide move out towards your lines now on the flip side of this if you think about the baseline opponent at the other end receiving a shot from a more central position if this player here moves across to hit a shot from this position then it goes back to the the diagram we had in singles where the two options for the player are to hit the ball here or here so they have a much more narrow channel down the center of the court so this means that as a volley player you are now able to look to intercept towards the middle of the court and as you're serving position you don't have to worry about moving out to the wide position because actually it's very tough for them to hit that shot so serving down the tee or pushing your opponent towards the center of the court can really limit their options and it helps to get your volleying partner into the point to intercept and hit that winning volley through the gap if you try to hit that shot in a rally situation if you try to push your opponent to the center in a rally situation there's a risk that this player here can intercept and make use of that first volley into the space so think about your opponent's options but bear in mind wherever this baselineer goes the volleyer should follow if they get pulled out wide the volleyer should take a move out to the left hand side if they get pushed towards the tee this player has the opportunity to come across to intercept so there you go hopefully you found that useful if you are able to get on court and practice singles or doubles let me know how you get on with taking the angles into consideration and approaching the net more often hopefully with the knowledge of why coming into the net is a huge benefit to you you're going to have more confidence when you do so and therefore perform better when you give it a try thanks again for watching if you've got any questions about this video or other videos let me know in the comments below and i'll get back to you otherwise i'll see you in the next video