Serve and Volley: Implementation Drills: Part 2

The table not only allows you to practice serve and volley alone, it gives you a wide variety of "returns." In the last article we looked at three original drills I developed to incorporate serve and volley into your game (Click Here), part of my comprehensive new series. Now let's follow up with two more! The Table One of the biggest challenges in mastering serve and volley is getting a high number of practice repetitions. You need repetitions of the range of first volleys that are required become an accomplished attacking player. The table drill solves this problem in a fabulous way. I invented the table drill of necessity over 20 years ago. At 12 years old, I was serving and volleying against the wall. But I had to bounce my serve in front of the wall to create a realistic "return." Overtime this inevitably led to bad service mechanics. So I found a way to do it on the court, by placing a hard table (or two) around the service line in the receiver's service box. The ball bounces in front of the table, hits it, and then rebounds at unpredictable angles back to the server. This allows the...