After a year of playing tennis, here are some things I wish I had known sooner.
Tennis is one of those sports that’s easy to have a love-hate relationship with. It’s a lot of fun when your shots are going in the right direction and when your serves are going in — but it’s equally as frustrating when the opposite is happening, which is an inevitable part of it.
I started playing tennis about a year ago, and this is something I eventually had to get used to if I wanted to remain consistent enough to reach my goal of playing with my dad (who’s been playing tennis his whole life). Let me tell you, I am still far from this goal. A year in, and I still very much consider myself a beginner. But, I have learned a few things that might help someone who’s in the same place I was some 12 months ago.
So, here are four things I wish I knew before I started playing tennis.
The learning curve is higher than other racket sports
When I first got into the racket sports craze, two of the first ones I got into were pickleball and badminton. The first time I tried both sports, I didn’t play with a coach or trainer, but even so, I managed to get the hang of things quickly enough to start rallying with my friends within my first hour. I wasn’t any good, but in my first session, I wound up decent enough to keep the ball or shuttlecock in play and actually get a few competitive games in.
Thus, when I started playing tennis, I figured it would be similar to my experience with pickleball and badminton. I thought maybe I’d enroll in a few lessons and then I’d be able to play comfortably. I was sorely mistaken.
Unlike other racket sports that are pretty easy to pick up, tennis has a much higher learning curve and you can’t get away with poor technique as easily. It’s not one of those sports you can just jump right into, and it’s a good idea to start with the guidance of a coach. They’ll teach you the proper grip, the right form for your forehand and backhand swings, the right footwork, and the right way to serve, among other fundamental techniques vital to playing properly.
Putting all the fundamentals together takes guidance and a lot of practice. You’ll probably need more than just five to ten sessions with your coach to get it all down comfortably. I’ve been practicing with the same coach for a year and am still refining my strokes.
So if you’re going to get into tennis, you should know it takes time to hone the techniques that will make you a good player, but the effort will eventually pay off.
Using the right racket matters
Tennis rackets can be pricey so many beginners might opt to borrow one before committing to purchasing their own. I did the same.
When I first started playing tennis, I was borrowing rackets from my family members, and off the bat, this was a problem. Every tennis racket is different and as I kept switching from one to another depending on which was available to me, I noticed that I started to become inconsistent. After all, I was continuously adapting to playing with different racket weights, balances, and sizes — and in tennis, any minuscule adjustment can lead to big changes in performance.
Doing this can prevent you from progressing more steadily, so I would recommend just sticking to one racket right from the beginning.
Eventually, I landed on just one borrowed racket, and my game started to improve because I had removed one variable. However, once I hit a point where I was focusing on the power of my shots, I struggled to control my grip on my racket. Returning faster balls would shake my grip and sometimes even cause me to drop my racket mid-rally.
It was only then, maybe six months into playing, that I realized that the grip size of my racket had been totally off.
The grip size of the racket I had been using was more fit for someone twice my size; it was three sizes too big. So when I brought the grip size down, I finally had much better control over the racket and was able to play with more consistency.
Lesson learned. Having a racket that’s suited to your size and your experience level matters more than you might initially think, so don’t skimp on the equipment. In a sport that demands a pretty high level of precision, the devil is in the details.
Every coach coaches differently
Starting tennis with the guidance of a coach is the right way to go. But once you have a pretty solid foundation you can rely on, you might benefit from learning from different coaches.
Every coach will have a different way of teaching their students. One coach might have a different serve technique, another might have different advice for your volleys, and one might have a unique tip for timing your shots. Discovering different approaches to the same skills might allow you to find the one that suits you best.
In my experience, I was struggling with my service. When I first started learning how to play, I could never seem to serve over the net, no matter what I did. However, when I started to branch out and seek advice from different coaches, I gathered a lot of different techniques that eventually helped me get it over more frequently.
Another case in point: one coach I was taking lessons with preferred a two-handed backhand volley, while another one preferred a one-handed approach. By learning both ways, I was able to find which was most effective for me.
Every tennis player is different, yourself included. So once you get the basics down and find a level of confidence, start taking advice with a grain of salt. Seek advice whenever you can, take what feels right for you, and leave what doesn’t.
It might take a while before you can actually play a game
This is something I badly wish someone told me before I started playing tennis. As I mentioned earlier, the learning curve for this sport is pretty high. It takes a while before swinging the racket becomes comfortable enough that you don’t need to actively think about your form while you play, and until you reach that point, you might not be able to play a proper game.
A few months into tennis, a friend and I thought we had taken enough lessons to rally on our own without a coach for the first time — and it was a trainwreck. We spent the better part of the hour just running after the balls because we couldn’t rally more than three shots at a time.
Some months later, when I started to get better at rallying with my coach from the baseline, I thought I might be ready to rally with my dad — but it didn’t work out, either. My dad is an advanced tennis player and is used to competing against equally advanced players, whereas I was mostly used to my coach feeding me slower shots.
Given the discrepancy, I struggled to return his fast-paced shots while he struggled to slow them down for me. In the end, we wound up just getting a basketful of tennis balls and turning it into a training session for me.
All of this is to say that tennis is not as easy as the pros make it look (thanks a lot, Federer). It’s definitely fun and it feels good when you know you’re making progress. But in my one-year experience, I’ve found myself wanting to break my racket in frustration over my mistakes many times over (a habit I can ill afford).
But if you’re going to get into tennis, the one thing I will say is this: you need to love the process. You’ll need to love coming back to the court even though your last session kind of sucked. You’ll need to be okay with serving way off before you find the sweet spot. You’ll need to be okay with doing countless drills before you can fully unleash your competitive side in a game.
This is not to say that every player will have the same progression. As I said, every player is different, and you might be able to rally pretty soon after starting out. But, everyone I’ve asked agrees: to become a truly skilled tennis player takes time. So the bottom line is that you have to be willing to put in that time.
Banner image from Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.