The interviews with top tennis players can teach you so much about the mental game and the how champion minds work.

Roger Federer is one of the most intelligent tennis players on the tour and taking the time to think about his answers in interviews can be extremely rewarding.

Roger recently won the Cincinnati Masters tournament where he beat Andy Murray in the semifinals and Novak Djokovic in the final.

Here’s are some of the more interesting parts of Roger’s interview Roger after his semifinal win against Murray… (more…)

Tennis ball machine drills are a great way to improve your game when you don’t have a partner to play against. Ball machines are also very useful for perfecting specific swings.

If you’ve just bought a tennis ball machine, or your thinking of renting time with one from your local club you probably could use some advice on how to get started.

Before we get into that you need to remember that there are a lot of different tennis ball machines, some are very complicated with many settings, others are simpler and give you less options.

It is well to your advantage when a machine has many settings so don’t be afraid to try it!

Here are some practice tennis ball machine drills that you can use to get started. These drills will work with most machines. (more…)

The Montreal Masters ATP tournament ended with Andy Murray winning it and reaching the #2 ranking, but there were also many interesting things that happened in this tournament.

While you may have read the headlines of magazines or online sites and thought:«Hmm, that’s interesting.«, you may have missed the deeper meaning of the events that took place in Montreal.

The most interesting were these two:

1.    The Top 8 ranked players on ATP ALL reached the quarterfinals in the modern history of ATP.

This might sound as an interesting headline but when you think more deeply about it, you realize that the top 8 players on ATP (when they entered that tournament) have NEVER ALL reached the quarter finals of the tournament until now.

Well, what does that mean? (more…)

This is a guest post from Arturo Hernandez sharing his experience playing on clay courts. Thanks Arturo!

The Balancing Act – Playing Smart Tennis On Clay Courts

For the last two months I have been struggling in tennis.  This was a combination of factors.  My strokes needed some more tuning up.

I played on clay all summer after 9 months on hard courts.  And I was in Germany playing a bunch of clay courters who had at least one less major issue to deal with: adjusting to a clay court game.

Over the past two summers I have struggled on and off with when and how to attack on clay.  It has served as a real eye opener with keys even for the hardcourt player.

Last week, I played a very defensive player who drives others nuts because he gets everything back.  (more…)

I’ve seen Nicolas Massu play live for the first time in Umag 2009 and he is now one of my favourite players.

The forehand of Massu is just unbelievable; he can take the ball early, hit it with massive spin and yet the ball is still extremely fast.

Nicolas Massu played the first round against Blaž Kavčič from Slovenia, that’s why I went to see the match.

Nicolas – nicknamed Vampiro   – quickly took control of the match with his devastating forehand even though Blaž did everything possible to keep the ball to his backhand. (more…)