The Forcing Approach

Developing the approach correctly will yield opportunities even for players without great natural volleys.

The approach shot is vastly underutilized in today's game. This is true at the pro, junior and club levels. That is the bad news. The overwhelmingly good news is that if players understand the right concepts and implement them, they can make the approach shot an important component of their game, and significantly enhance their ability to win. By adopting and practicing the principles presented here, they will find volley opportunities that can be exploited, even with a net game that is not particularly potent.

Why are approach shots so rare? It is not that today's players are incapable of learning a good approach game. The problem is that they don't develop it early enough, and therefore, they never really become comfortable with it. If players are able to learn the various elements and put them together at an early age, they will then be comfortable using them in matches. As in so many aspects of the game, your comfort level drives what you are going to do. This article and the ones that follow will lay out a pathway to accomplish this goal.

An effective approach and volley involves multiple components. You need to have the right starting position on the court. You need to know how to move to the ball. You need to know how to load and move through the ball. You then need to learn how to segue forward and do a split step. You need to be able to cut off the volley and finish by moving diagonally.

There are a number of different skills to put together. It'snearly impossible to learn all the elements at one time. I break them down one by one. in order to isolate a particular element and master it. This gives the player confidence, and then he is able to tackle the next one. Over time he will ultimately string all the elements altogether.

A forcing approach does enough damage to create an easy volley.

We'll start with the "classic" approach shot off a short ball. By that I mean an approach shot hit in a forceful, penetrating manner. This causes your opponent to reply with a relatively easy ball that you can volley away for a winner. Although you want to hit a penetrating shot, you are not necessarily looking to win the point outright with this type of approach shot.

Unlike the "chip and charge" tactic used by such players as Rafter and Edberg, my version places a premium on hitting a forceful approach. Rafter and Edberg were all about establishing good net position, where they could then utilize their extraordinary volleying ability. Due to this superb volleying, they could often come in on less potent shots. Most players need their approach shots to do more damage, so that the opponent's passing shot presents a relatively easy ball to volley.

The road to a forcing approach starts before the short ball even presents itself. You need to position yourself just 2 or 3 feet behind the baseline in your groundstroke exchanges. In other words, you need to hug the baseline. From this position, you can effectively move forward and attack the short ball which lands relatively closer to the net.

Great approach players hug the baseline.

Initiating the approach from this near the baseline position has three advantages. First, it cuts down the time that your opponent has to react to your approach shot, since there is less distance between you and him. Second, you have to cover less ground to reach a good volleying position. Third, you have a greater chance of being able to catch the ball on the rise (that is, before it has reached the peak of the bounce), something which has benefits that I will detail below. If you examine the players in tennis history with great approach games, such as Jimmy Connors and Don Budge, or Federer, you will find that they all hugged the baseline.

In contrast, if you position yourself 6-8 feet behind the baseline it is very difficult to have an effective approach game. Take Juan Carlos Ferrero as an example. He has tremendous groundstrokes that can produce short balls but his ordinary baseline position is so far back that he generally can not jump on those balls to hit effective approaches and achieve good net position. Rather, he will arrive at the short ball a critical fraction late and try to whack the ball for a winner.

I find that many players, at every level of the game, position themselves like this. They play 6 or 8 feet behind the baseline, or even further. From this position they have no chance to develop an effective approach game. They also leave themselves vulnerable to short low balls from the opponent.

If you currently position yourself this far behind the baseline, it will take sustained practice to learn to hug the baseline. It can be a difficult habit to break. You may need to make some technical changes such as earlier preparation, a shorter backswing, or learning to read the ball better off your opponent's racket.

To help my students break the habit, I will play baseline points, but with a wrinkle. The "normal" point counts as one but if a short ball is hit by one player and the other player is late reaching it, he loses five points. I do not assess a penalty for missing the short ball. Rather, I asses a penalty if the player is late to arrive at the short ball. After playing this game, all of a sudden my students start positioning themselves much closer to the baseline.

Playing from far behind the baseline gives you no chance to approach.

In addition to proper baseline positioning, proper mental attitude is another prerequisite. Players with effective approach games are constantly looking for the short ball. They have an opportunistic frame of mind. They want the short ball. In contrast, many players today do not like the short ball because it draws them in towards the net where they are very uncomfortable.

Perception skill is a nother prerequisite. I see so many players who do not react to the short ball until it has practically bounced on their side of the net. I joke with some of my students that they play as if a giant curtain has been placed on their side of the net hiding the opponent's shot, with the curtain only lifted after their opponent's shot has passed the net. In contrast, players with good approach games read the ball off their opponent's strings and perceive the trajectory and relative pace of the ball very quickly.

I was fortunate to play against some of the best players of all time such as McEnroe and Connors. The amount of "information" they could instantly process on ball trajectory, spin, and speed was amazing. While shot mechanics are quite important, there are many players with excellent shots who do not come near the upper echelons of the game. Often it is due to the lack of ability to "read" the game. While few players will have the genius to read the game like McEnroe, Connors, or Roger Federer, any player can vastly improve his or her skills in this area by simply becoming aware of their importance and consistently working on them.

Read the speed, spin and trajectory off your opponent's racket.

Concentrate on the ball as it comes off your opponent's racket and make an early judgment as to its trajectory and speed. Do not be discouraged if you make some poor judgments. Eventually you will find yourself getting a much better jump on the ball. This means that you will be able to detect the oncoming short ball, and start moving in before your opponent's shot has passed the net.

I can not stress enough the importance of learning to read the game. Your brain should constantly be calculating your opponent's realistic shot possibilities, given your court position, his court position and the type and quality of shot that you have hit to him. For example, if you see a two-handed player stretched out wide behind the baseline so he has to resort to one hand and her racket is up high on the backswing, you know he can only play a short slice or float a deep slice. Therefore, you step inside the baseline and hit an approach shot off the short one or hit a drive volley off the deep floater.

Very accomplished players will take this one step further. When they sense that their opponent is in trouble, they move forward inside the baseline even before their opponent hits the reply. Connors was a master of this play, as is Roger Federer.

Smart players sense when the opponent is in trouble and move inside the baseline.

The best players quickly recognize their opponent is in a corner and off balance and know that the odds of the opponent hitting a weaker, short ball have greatly increased. By moving inside the baseline, they can jump on the opponent's short ball earlier with all of the attendant advantages. This can be an incredibly useful tactic. Once you start looking to use this play, you will be amazed how many times you will be able to move forward due to your opponent's is weakened position.

The concept of the line of the shot is the single most important mechanical principle in hitting the approach. By the line of shot I mean the line that the ball travels from the contact point to your intended target. For example, if you are hitting a down the line approach and aiming at a target three feet inside your opponent's baseline, the line of the shot is from your contact point straight ahead to that target.

If the body and racket move along the line of the shot the approach has force and penetration.

It is critical that you keep the line of shot in your mind's eye as you near the ball. To hit the approach, you should imagine that you move your body and racket along that line.

Technically the lines created by the body movement and racket movement are not exactly the same. This is because you hold the racket to the side of your body. So in reality the lines are parallel. But to keep things simple and to help create a powerful mental image, I will refer to the body and the racket traveling along the same line.

Why is this critical? If both your body and racket move along the line of the shot, your approach will have force and penetration. Unfortunately, far too many players move haphazardly with their body traveling in one direction and their racket in another. This is why keeping the line of shot in your mind as you hit the approach is the key organizing principle.

Move on a diagonal to the ball so you can move forward along the line of the shot.

When you spot the short ball, you should move so that your last couple of steps before contact can be straight through the line of the shot. To accomplish this, your initial steps from the baseline position should be reasonably large (so as to eat up a significant amount of real estate). You also should move at a diagonal to the ball. You want to move diagonally untilyou reach a spot that is behind the oncoming ball. From there you can then move forward along the line of the shot.

To repeat this critical principle: move diagonally towards the ball so that you can then move forward straight along the line of the shot. When you have reached this position, you change your steps to short adjustment steps. These steps are also parallel to the line of the shot. This is particularly important when you are learning the approach. The small steps help you create the right line and maintain balance.

Use short steps to position and then glide through the approach.

As you stroke the ball (and after you stroke it) your body should continue to move along the line of the shot. Unfortunately, many players are still moving at an angle to the line of the shot when they are hitting the approach. Their shots do not penetrate because their body momentum is not in the direction of the hit.

What you want to do is to glide through the approach along the line of the shot and remain on balance. Although you are moving forward as you stroke the ball, you do not want to move at a break-neck pace. Rather, your body moves in a controlled and balanced fashion. Top players sometimes move to and through the line of the shot with larger steps, but this is more advanced and based on a deep feeling for the proper pattern.

After you have finished the shot, you should go back to taking larger steps in order to quickly cover enough distance to reach the proper volleying position. Finally you split step and move diagonally towards your opponent's passing shot. This completes the proper footwork "cycle." (More on this in future articles.)

Hitting effectively on the rise requires a shorter backswing.

Now lets move to the key shot mechanics in hitting the approach. You will be hitting your approach shot from a position that is well inside the baseline. This means that for any given target point in your opponent's court, your shot has considerably less distance to travel than if you struck the ball from behind the baseline. Your forward body momentum is supplying additional power. Ideally you are also hitting the ball on the rise. Given all these factors, you do not need or want a big backswing to generate power. Unfortunately, many players take the same size backswing on their approach shots as they do when hitting groundstrokes from behind the baseline. The result is that there is too much power and they are unable to control the ball.

Sometimes players will try to adjust by adding a large amount of topspin in an attempt to keep the ball from going long. But even if their shot goes in, the topspin slows the shot down and results in a less penetrating approach. There can be exceptions when a heavy topspin ball is a good approach against certain players but generally you want to avoid using heavy top on the approach.

Good loading means the weight on the outside foot and a full shoulder turn.

There is another reason to keep the backswing short. As I mentioned, ideally you want to hit the approach shot on the rise. Hitting a ball on the rise is harder to time than hitting a ball on the descent. Trying to hit the ball on the rise with a big backswing creates major timing problems. A shorter, simpler backswing is the solution. Think of the players who were master of hitting the ball on the rise such as Connors, McEnroe and Agassi. They all used relatively short backswings when hitting on the rise.

While you want to keep the backswing short, you still want good "load" on your approach shots. You want to prepare by having your weight loaded on your outside foot (e.g., for a right-handed forehand approach shot you want to load the weight on the outside right foot). You also want your shoulders fully turned. You want your power to come from your body rotation and forward momentum, not the length of the swing.

As previously discussed, your racket should move through the line of the shot and your body should move along the same line. Your weight transfer should also be through the line of the shot. You go from the weight being loaded on the outside leg to the inside leg which is stepping forwards You only want to use moderate topspin on the approach so your shot moves through the court.

The shoulders should stay level on the approach.

As you are stroking the ball, keep your shoulders level as they rotate forward. When you are hitting big topspin forehands from behind the baseline your hitting shoulder can first drop and then rise up as you are hitting the ball. In contrast, when hitting the relatively flat approach shot, you want the shoulders to stay nice and level as you stroke the ball.

Different tennis shots have a different feel on the racket. When crushing the ball from the baseline, the feeling of the ball is more of an explosion off the strings. As you work on these shots, you will learn to distinguish these different feelings.

Click here to hear Gene talk about the central concept of shot line.

On the approach shot, you want the feeling of the ball dwelling on the strings. I tell my students that they should think, on the approach shot, of a lacrosse player who catches the ball in the netting of the stick and runs several steps forward before passing the ball. I realize that in reality the tennis ball only stays on the strings for a fraction of a second, and that it is not significantly different for the various shots. But the lacrosse analogy is useful since it makes the player focus on feeling the ball on the strings and emphasizes the concept that you want to move forward on the approach shot.

As we discussed at the beginning, you should not attempt to learn all of the elements of the approach at once. Rather, break the approach down into its elements and learn those elements one by one. The first step is learning to play just 2-3 feet behind the baseline. I might then have my student practice the footwork alone, almost like learning a dance routine. The racket work can then be added to the footwork but without actually hitting the ball - in other words, combine the footwork with shadow swings.

The approach and volley should be learned as a series of elements.

One effective approach shot drill uses a medicine ball to mimic the stroke, rather than swinging a tennis racket. If the medicine ball throw goes straight along the intended line of shot, I know my student is on the way to mastering the approach shot. Next, the student can practice hitting fed balls. After the student becomes comfortable with that, we can play points from the baseline and I will mix in short balls so the student can practice the approach shots in a real exchange.

The whole idea is to build-up the shot in stages and have the student become comfortable with a natural use of the shot.actually I highly encourage you to work on your approach shot according to these progressions. It's a proven method of developing world class technique and adding this important and very satisfying new component to your game.

New Tennisplayer.net Associate Editor Ed Weiss worked directly with Gene in developing this article and filming the click through movies.

The Forcing Approach

Gene Mayer