 Hey guys, Ashley here with a video on how you can improve your singles game, and mainly the reason I put this video together is we have loads of tennis clubs over England and the rest of the world slowly opening their gates for singles play only, leaving loads of doubles players not really knowing what to do on the singles court. So during this video I'm going to talk about five things that you need to consider when you play singles. I'm then going to take you through two main strategies that can help you to perform better on the match court when you're playing singles. And finally I'm going to go through two of my favorite drills which can help you to develop better singles play but can also help you double stuff too. So the first thing that you need to consider when you're playing singles is more space. There is more space on the court that you need to cover and there is also more space on the court that you can send the ball to. Now obviously when moving from doubles to singles the court actually shrinks so the geometry of the court is actually smaller but I'm talking about the amount of space that you have, the open space that you have to move into and the open space that you have to hit the ball into. Now bearing that in mind means two things, A you've got more options, more space to hit the ball into. On the flip side of that you need to move more around the court to get to each shot, mainly laterally. In doubles play you tend to move up and back slightly more but in singles in particular you need to cover the width of the court. Because of this you need to be quick moving to the shot but also quick at recovering and finally you need to know where to recover to. I actually made a video on this and I'll put it up in the top corner. Check that out and that will help you to think a little bit more differently about where you're recovering to. The second consideration is you actually have more time when you're playing singles. Now the reason being you don't have an opponent at the net at all times. When you play doubles you've always got that opponent there most of the time. You've got that opponent there waiting to approach and intercept to the net and as soon as they make contact with the ball it's going to have you rushed. You're going to have less time to react. Most of the time when you play singles your opponent's going to be at the baseline, at least they start at the baseline. So that's going to give you more time before they make contact with the ball and you make contact with the ball. If you've got more time on the ball that means you've got more time to prepare your racket. You've got more time to prepare your feet and if you prepare your racket and your feet early it's going to give you more options. When you play doubles you don't always have that luxury of time. So your swing might have to be more compact, your footwork might have to be slightly quicker and it makes for a more rushed shot giving you less options. So make the most of this when you play singles. So the third thing to consider is you actually have more shots or more opportunities to hit shots when you play singles. So first of all if you think about the serve you're actually going to hit double the amount of serves when you play singles. Same on the returns you're going to hit double. And for general ground strokes you're probably going to hit more than double when you play singles. Now you can look at this in two ways and we're going to obviously look at it in a positive way. The more shots that you hit the more rhythm you're going to generate. You're going to build a nice rhythm and you're going to see the ball a lot bigger. When you're playing in doubles and that rhythm is broken up by your partner getting involved and you having to wait three games before each service game it can affect your rhythm and make it quite difficult for you to see the ball big. So that's the positive way of thinking about it. If you think about it negatively it means you're going to get tired quicker. So it's a great opportunity for you to work on your fitness. If you can last the long rally on the singles court when you go back to playing doubles it's going to be a doddle. So the fourth thing to consider when you're playing singles is you have less decisions to make. Now when I talk about decision making it's more to do with receiving the ball. So quite often when you play doubles you've got to make a quick decision as to whether you're going to hit it or whether your partner is going to hit it. And quite often you make a decision but your partner makes a different decision and it makes things quite complicated. When you play singles you don't have anything like that to worry about. You don't need to think about whether the shots to mine or yours. You're going to take everything so you can prepare earlier and again you can have more options. Use that time to think about where you're going to send your shot as opposed to who's going to receive it. That's a great positive to singles. So the fifth and final thing to consider when you play singles is pressure. Less pressure on yourself. Now the reason I say this is because when you play doubles you have another player on the court on your side that you don't want to let down. It doesn't matter how nice that person is you're going to feel slightly pressured to get your serve in the court or you're going to feel slightly pressured not to make that mistake. How many times you've been on the tennis court and you're playing doubles and you've felt nervous when your second serve at advantage down you don't want to let your partner down. But if you're playing singles that situation is going to be slightly easier for you because the only person that you're letting down is yourself. Because of this it can allow you to play slightly riskier tennis. Use that to your advantage when you play singles. Be aggressive. Think about how you're going to play your points. You have nobody else to worry about but yourself. So we've gone through the five things to consider when you're playing singles. Now let's look at two of the key strategies that will help you to perform better when you're playing matches. Now the first one seems very, very obvious but again it's something that we underestimate and it's to be consistent. Now it doesn't matter who you're playing against whether you're playing against Roger Federer or Serena Williams. If you can make one more shot in the court than they do you're going to win that point. So consistency is so crucial in whoever you're playing against making that last ball, making that extra ball every single time. Now if you struggle with consistency there are some drills that I'll go through afterwards that can help you to become more consistent. But think about why. Why is your consistency not where you want it to be? Is it because of your fitness? Are you unable to stay in the long rally because you're out of breath? Is it because of your speed and your agility? Are you in the wrong position? Is it just because you don't have the patience? Some people like to blast the ball because they like short rallies as opposed to long rallies. Or is it your technique? Now if you can pinpoint why your consistency is struggling then you can really work on it. Okay so this leads on to our second strategy which is taking your opponent out of their comfort zone. So you'll use this strategy if consistency isn't enough. If you're playing somebody who's out rallying you or you're just struggling to keep that rally going you're gonna have to think about something different and you need to try to take your opponent out of their comfort zone. So to do that you need to know where their comfort zone is and what their weaknesses are. Some players have stronger forehands, weaker backhands. It could be a shot that's a weakness. However it's not always obvious. Sometimes it could be their movement so a player could struggle to move side to side. If that's the case hit from corner to corner. Some players struggle with speed or flip that around. Some players actually struggle when the ball's coming in slower. So think about who you're playing against. If you know them well then you can quite easily pick up what their weakness is and try to hit to that shot or make them move into those positions more often. If you don't know your opponent try to use the warmup or at least the first two games of the match to figure that out. In general most people prefer hitting their forehand to their backhand but try to figure it out yourself when you're playing those matches. So there's the two strategies. Be consistent and take your opponent out of their comfort zone. If you can do those two things well you can't go wrong. Of course there's plenty more to add on to that but they're a good place to start. So now we're gonna look at my two favorite drills for singles. Before we do though need to talk about consistency so we mentioned about the importance of consistency before. If you're struggling with consistency I suggest doing lots of half court rally work with a partner. Now when I say half court I'm talking about half of the width of the court so up and down a narrow channel. The reason this is good for you is because it tests your consistency, it tests your patience and there are less variables, less things that can go wrong because your opponent or your partner isn't making you run around. So you're able to just keep that rally going in a small space building that level of consistency. Now you can do this in a rally drill so you can see if you can do 10 shots in a row maybe 20 or even 50 shots in a row to really build up that consistency and resilience. You can also do it in match play. So half court points are a fantastic way of building up a really solid base of consistency. Now once you've got that level of consistency you're now ready to do the two of my favorite singles drills. The first one is called the bow tie drill. Now the reason it's called the bow tie drill is because when you're hitting the ball forwards and backwards with your partner it creates a bow tie shape. Now the way you do it is player one hits cross court player two hits down the line and you repeat it over and over again. So if I'm hitting cross court I'll send my first ball into the diagonal corner my partner will hit down the line. I will hit cross court, my partner hits down the line, cross court down the line creating the shape of a bow tie. Now again you can do this in rally drills so can you make one round of it four shots in a row, one, two, three, four. Can you do two in a row, eight shots, et cetera, et cetera. See how many you can get to make sure you switch with your partner so you're not just hitting cross court all the time and then to take it to the next level you can play competitively. So you're playing points against each other but one player is only allowed to hit cross court the other player is only allowed to hit down the line. The reason this drill is really good for singles players is because not only does it test your lateral movement from side to side but it also forces you to move your opponent from side to side too. So very realistic to a singles match. The second drill that I like to do for singles is half court versus full court. Now again when I talk about half court I'm talking about narrowing the width of the court. So if I'm in one corner my forehand side I will hit the first ball cross court my partner will go back to my forehand. I will hit down the line my partner will come back to my forehand so it creates a V shape. The person opposite me is working on their lateral movement and being able to pinpoint one area of the court is useful for pinpointing the weakness. I'm practicing changing direction and making my opponent move. Now again when you do this drill make sure that the person that's in one corner has a goal on the other side and then once you've done that switch around so effectively you've got four rounds. And again just like the bow tie drill and the half court drills you can do this in a rally based exercise or you can do it in match play based. Give those two exercises a go they are tricky but if you can get the hang of them they will really really improve your singles play. Good luck. So just to recap we went through the five considerations so when you play singles you've got more space you've got more time you're gonna hit more shots less decisions to make less pressure so think about that next time you come to the singles court the two things to think about when you're playing in matches make sure you're consistent and try to take your opponent out of their comfort zone and finally once you've built up your consistency through playing half court my two favorite singles drills were the bow tie drill and the half court versus full court drill. If you've got any questions about the video put a comment below hopefully you found it useful if you did be sure to subscribe to see some more videos like this. Take care guys.