The fifth and final day of training at the European Tennis Academy Naturns tennis camp in South Tyrol. What about the early bird? The kids didn't catch the worm at 8:30 this morning, but they certainly learned a lot about tactical maneuvers in singles . And they bravely and with great motivation defied the cold and early morning fatigue!
...and what does that look like in practice? What do you kids do against an opponent who's incredibly good on their feet, returns every hard shot from the baseline, and makes very few mistakes themselves? The children knew exactly what kind of opponent Joe meant by that question.
A winning strategy against these "bogeymen" is to vary the shots in length, height, and spin . Three zones were marked out, into which the children were to hit balls of varying lengths, ensuring no zone was played twice. Next, they tackled spin variation – switching between forehand drives or topspin and slices. And then came ball height: low shots over the net, high topspin, and everything in between. Here, too, the children were asked to rate their own shots aloud on a height scale. Between these exercises, Joe would gather the children for short coaching sessions, explaining the tactics and engaging them in the discussion with insightful questions.
In the afternoon, at 2 p.m., the tennis camp entered its final stretch: "Which shot is the stronger one?" asked coach Alex. For all three, it was the forehand. So the next exercise was for the kids to play cross-court backhands, moving around the backhand as often as possible and applying pressure with their stronger forehand. In other words, they were encouraged to make better use of their own strengths .
In the next, more advanced exercise, the kids played points onto half the court and, as soon as the ball came in shorter than the service line, were instructed to attack and play out the point. Again, the stronger forehand was to be used as the attacking shot. The final exercise involved playing the ball in underhand and then out. Volleys and points scored with an inside-out forehand were rewarded with two points each.
At the end of the last training session, Alex asked the children again what they thought were the most important "learnings" of the week . Definitely the 1-2 count to get a better rhythm. Then, breathing through the stroke until the end, and finally, the kids are taking Charly home with them – that voice in their head that "bothers" us tennis players with all sorts of different issues and sometimes throws us off course. In any case, the kids have taken away quite a few things from the tennis camp week to help them outsmart Charly!
We're now going to spend a few more days on a family holiday in South Tyrol and will write up our summary of the tennis camp for you once we've had some time to reflect. But I can already tell you this much: it was five mentally intense days that brought the children many new and truly valuable experiences!
Many thanks to Alex and Joe from the European Tennis Academy - you did a great job!
Sign up now and be the first to know about new tennis hotels and tennis camps, as well as great promotions. You
can unsubscribe at any time. Please see our privacy policy .