Tomaz,

First off, let me thank you for your email updates.

If you have time, I would appreciate your perspective on tennis ball machines.

As a former golfer (30+ years), I was accustomed to playing and practicing by myself. Now I’m a tennis player.

Beyond working on my serve alone, it seems that ball machines are the best substitute when I don’t have a playing or hitting partner available.

Here are a few questions I have:

1. What do you think is the best way to use a tennis ball machine?

The ball machine can shoot tennis balls very accurately at the same spot over and over again which is difficult to replicate even with feeding from the basket. So you can use it to work on your technique.

You know where the ball will come so you can focus on what to do with your arm or legs or wrist or whatever and you don’t need to use brain power to calculate ball trajectory.

You can also adjust your point of contact – whether on groundstrokes or volleys. If you feel that you are late on the shot which is very common, you can experiment with different points of contact since you already know the exact ball trajectory and you don’t even have to move.

The third way to use a tennis ball machine is to get into good rhythm. It shoots the balls in the same rhythm so you can adjust to that and in a few minutes find your perfect timing. This is best used when you lose some timing which typically happens on tournaments where you get so many different balls and are constantly jerked around.

The fourth way to use a ball machine is to use it for conditioning and movement. It can shoot balls left and right and make you run. But this is only partially good since there is no opponent to adjust to. Check the answer to question #2…

2. How can a ball machine practice replicate real play?

It can’t. Even is you set it up to play the balls left-right or randomly, you’ll not be able to READ your opponent (since there isn’t anyone) which is the key to anticipation.

You’ll train yourself to react ONLY to ball flight which is much too late for any type of advanced tennis. You’ll also not be able to cover the court properly since you need to adjust your position on the court according to the position of your opponent. And the ball machine doesn’t move…

3. Why do some players choose never to use a ball machine?

The reasons are explained in answer #2. Good players can get rhythm just by hitting with each other and then they need situation as realistic as possible.

4. What is the most inventive use of a ball machine you’ve seen?

The tennis ball machine can replace a feeder when you have more players on the court and you want to drill them. I’ve seen a couple of good drills where there were 4 players on the court in 2 lines and the ball machine gave the player on the left a groundstroke and a volley and then switched to right side and shot a groundstroke and a volley to the player on the right. The players hit those 2 shots and then moved to the opposite line.

5. Are there any challenges in using a ball machine for practice?

The real challenge is to really know what to use it for. The main situations are listed in answer #1. In real life, the ball machine has to be set up, filled with balls and after it’s done you need to pick up all the balls and start again.

In reality you also won’t hit 40 or 60 shots in a row especially not with the exact same speed and distance and spin. So this kind of training is much easier than real tennis where you NEVER get two shots with the same characteristics.

Training with the ball machine has its place in the whole training of tennis, but it’s far from being necessary. There are thousands of excellent tennis players who never hit with the tennis ball machine…

Related posts:


• 6 Tennis Ball Machine Drills That Work For All Levels
• 3 Ways To Play Aggressively In Tennis
• Taking The Initiative In Clay Court Tennis
• How To Improve Your Tennis Off-Court
• Hitting on the Run And Fast Balls With A Western Forehand

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 3:38 am and is filed under Tennis tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.