Increase the Pace of Your Tennis Drills

Often time the more competitive tennis groups (ie. 4.0 men or tournament level juniors) find regular drilling slow and eventually uninteresting. A great way to speed up the game and add a huge dose of bravado is by instituting the "burn rule". What is the burn rule?

Simply, a burn is a clean winner. So the burn rule rewards those players that hit clean winners. Before everyone starts shouting about this goes against high percentage tennis just relax. In no way, am I endorsing low percentage / high risk tennis; however winners are a part of the game of tennis. Every player tries to hit them. The problem usually arises with the timing of trying these shots. By incorporating the burn rule into competitive practice games, you now open up the perfect opportunity to instruct on the do's and don't of when to attempt winners.

For example, using the burn rule with competitive juniors in the game of Olympics, almost all competitive junior players will try to blast a winner on the first ball. More time than not they will miss horribly. This affords the coach the perfect opportunity to point out winners aren't just about brute strength but about working the point and setting up good high percentage chances to hit and make (the important part of this) winners.

The burn rule can be used in any competitive game or drill where you have one player or team trying to get to a top court or champion's side. It states that if a challenging player hits a winner, they take the champions spot automatically. If the champion hits a winner, then the challenging player's turn is over. I will outline this quickly in an example of "Hot Seat.

Play this game best of three points. Which ever net person loses the second point then that is the person that is replaced by the challenger. Now using the burn rule, if on the first shot the challenger hits a clean winner down the alley, they automatically take over the spot of the player they passed.

This adds an extra level of excitement and fun to any game. It allows stresses the importance of setting up and working points before pulling the trigger on the big winner.