Tennis advice

[tennisproiamnot]

We have moved and only space for dc10 in new club is with children a year older (dc is last year primary and the other kids are in secondary so it is a bit of a difference) and on full court (she was still on half court at last place).

She is not as good as the other players and she still can't get a serve (or a drop serve most of the time) in, for a full size court, and struggles to get a rally over 2 or 3 hits!

She is getting despondent. My question is - is this just practice? If she keeps practising over and over she will eventually start to get it the serve and drop serve in? I think that the rally will improve in time, it has improved a bit since start of year. Serve has deteriorated though.

The coach is getting them all to play against each other, move around a lot, and he gives continuous advice on serving and technique.

If I were you, I would invest in a couple of private lessons, serve is hard to learn in a group lesson, but she can probably learn it within a few private sessions and then she should be fine.

Thank you, but impossible to get private lessons where we live! But what you say is helpful, why is it hard to learn serve in a group?

Practice is really what will make it. Buy a bucket and fill it with (decent) tennis balls, and take her down to the courts and feed her a bucket of forehands, bucket of backhands, mixed, then volleys, and serves too a couple of times a week at least and you'll soon find she's improving rapidly.
If you can hold a racket then rally with her-focus on getting the ball back and how many you can do rather than brilliant shots.
You can also do target, hit crosscourt/down the line etc. One game I do with ds is the longest rally but ball has to bounce in between the tram lines. It takes a bit more control!

The club I grew up playing at, one of the older players used to tell this story:
"When I first joined this club there were a group of teenagers who came down regularly to play a few games together. They were all keen, but didn't know a lot but improved rapidly when they started.
The worst player was by far and away Stephen. One day when he was coming off court looking miserable he said he never won and asked for any tips. I told him practice was the main thing, and to practice whenever he could.
So after that he used to come down with his box of four (white) balls and hit them over the net, then go round and pick them up and hit them back again. When I saw this I gave him a spare bucket of balls to use. He did this for up to a couple of hours a day, sometimes waiting a long time for a court (single players had no rights to a court and there were only 2 courts, so if 2 couples came down both wanting to play singles he immediately had to leave the court).
When he was 20yo he became the men's champion and stayed champion with a few missing years until he was in his 40s.
What was the difference between him and his friends who were so much better? A bucket of balls."

Thank you very much MargeratThursday, I think dc will find that very inspiring! I will get them down to the local court between weekly lessons to practice.