Traveling For A Tennis Competition

Have you ever told one of your non-tennis friends about your worldly travels to some distant destination, only to them it sounds like a nice, easy trip? Little do they know all the elements that go into traveling for competition. From prioritizing a good night’s rest, getting the meals your body needs in order to perform at your best, lugging tennis racquets and bags with extra gear through airports, and occasionally having to do all that with a language barrier, it’s definitely not anyone’s idea of a relaxing vacation.

Traveling the world as a tennis player as a junior, prospective college player, or even a professional is not as glamorous as it may seem, especially when your resources are not vast. Learning to travel on a fixed budget is one the most important things you can do early on. Some of the simplest things we take for granted when being at home, such as a comfortable bed to sleep in or having access to the foods we enjoy, can become massive obstacles on the road.

How do we tackle these obstacles?

It all comes down to preparation, scheduling ahead of time and planning. Having a calendar schedule for the year with all of your prospective competitions lined up will allow you to fit in proper training beforehand, give you ample time to book flights and hotels while they are still cheap, travel early to tournament locations to acclimate to weather conditions, and have a big-picture plan that will yield success in the long-term.

Once you have a big picture schedule set, you can start booking out your flights and hotels. For flights, google recommends booking on a Tuesday night EST between midnight and 6AM Wednesday morning. Flights seem to be at the cheapest point of the entire week during these times. Booking far enough in advance can save you hundreds of dollars—we all know how frustrating it is to see a flight that’s less than two hours cost more then $200 when you book week of.

For hotels, I highly recommend using AirBnB which provides affordable options to rent anything from a shared room, to an entire home, depending on how many people are traveling. The reason I recommend AirBnB is because of the accessibility to a kitchen. On the road, being able to cook food for yourself that is familiar to your stomach can save you loads of trouble. I have heard countless horror stories from players and coaches that picked the wrong spot to eat at and end up spending weeks bedridden and unable to travel home. I myself had an awful experience in which I spent my time glued to a toilet bowl, the night before a second round main draw match at a futures event. Severely dehydrated and lacking energy, I got rolled. This taught me to always travel with activated charcoal (a natural remedy that gets unwanted poisons to bind to it which helps the body get rid of them) and to opt to cook for myself when possible.

Lastly, I do recommend packing bars, protein powder, prepackaged nuts, dehydrated fruits, and jerky that can be used to hold you over in case you are not able to find the food you want. Granted when traveling internationally, not all countries allow produce to be brought in, but protein powder and bars are almost always allowed.

If you plan to make a trip for domestic or international events, make sure you plan out as much as you can. Research how you plan to get from the airport to the hotel, how you will get from the hotel to the tournament site, if there practice courts available on site or elsewhere, as well as where can you get food nearby both the site and the hotel. Of course, you can do this all on location, but it is important to be comfortable in an uncomfortable location. A massive part of that is being prepared ahead of time.

I hope that you guys find these tips helpful!

Coach Gary

The Importance of Your Serve +1

Have you ever been on a tennis court and felt lost? Have you ever felt like you had no idea what you were doing, trying to do, let alone what your opponent was doing or trying to do?

If this sounds familiar then you might be playing reactively instead of proactively. As a competitive tennis player, you want to use your strengths to both exploit your opponents’ weaknesses and protect your own. In concept, this may seem complicated, but it can be boiled down to one word: awareness.

A keen sense of awareness about both your and your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses provides you with the basis to form a strategy. You are no longer hitting forehands cross court for the sake of hitting balls cross court, but because you have recognized that your forehand is far superior than your opponents’ forehand. Choosing your shots with intention and purpose will eventually break them down for a short ball or an error.

Developing awareness and strategy is the first step towards becoming a dominant force on court. The implementation of strategy itself is known as tactics. Tactics can be mental or physical. For example, if you are playing someone who is very tall, the tactic would be to expose their lateral movement and change of direction, which is likely poor.

There are many ways to implement or execute the same tactic depending on the patterns you choose. A pattern is a two or more shot combination. Coaches often teach patterns starting from the ground, however I believe patterns can also begin off the serve and return. How can we ignore the serve--an element of tennis that makes up 50% of a match?

As a coach, I am a strong believer in incorporating serving and returning into pattern building. Without an understanding of how the serve, return and ground strokes connect, you end up with a disjointed game. Without understanding the game a a whole, integrated practice, your incredible forehand, for example, will never be as effective as it can really be.

As you develop your game with variation in shots, spin, speed, height, etc., it is important that you are connecting all of the pieces as they would apply to a real match situation. Mastering your Serve +1/Return +1 patterns will separate you from the pack.

In theory, we’ve taken you from feeling lost on court to having intention with strategy, tactical direction, and the patterns that will bring your tennis to life. The important thing to remember is that almost 70% of all matches are decided within the first 0-4 shots of a rally. This statistic supports the idea that most matches are decided by the better server. Therefore, it’s critical to work on and master your Serve +1 patterns in order to set yourself up for success.

To help you improve your Serve +1, I’ve created a Tennis Playbook filled with strategies and tactics to level up your game. If you have ever wondered which Serve +1 pattern to use when playing an All Courter and how this pattern may vary when playing an Aggressive Baseliner, then this playbook is for you.

Download your FREE Tennis Playbook below!

Coach Gary