Tennis at Home

Here are some tennis games and practice exercises you can do safely in your house, yard, or driveway.

Tennis Pool

Make a pool table on your floor with ten tennis balls you'll hit into pockets using your tennis racquet as the cue stick to hit a specially marked tennis ball as the cue ball. Make the pockets out of paper bags or thin-walled boxes (like cereal or Kleenex boxes) taped to the floor. Walls may provide one or more sides of the table; you can make more with boxes or boards. Use your racquet more like a golf putter than a pool stick to hit the cue ball into the other balls to knock them into the pockets. You can play against someone else as in pool or you can see how many shots it takes (probably a lot!) to "clear the table."

Control Series with SpeedBall

A SpeedBall (the original true-bouncing foam tennis ball) makes rallying easier in general and much easier in small spaces like a driveway. You can make an improvised net out of a ladder, several boxes, a rope strung between two chairs with a sheet hanging on it, etc.. The Control Series is a progression of increasingly challenging rallies. Many of my high-school and adult tennis students have done these on the tennis court. The first seven will fit into a driveway; the last three need an actual tennis court and will be omitted here. Start by trying four consecutive hits at each level before moving on to the next. If you can get through Level 7 at four per level, try to repeat the series with eight consecutive hits at each level, then twelve. Stand roughly 40 feet apart for the groundstroke rallies, 12 for the volley rallies.

Forehand to forehand groundstrokes.
Backhand to backhand groundstrokes.
Criss-cross groundstrokes: A hits to B's forehand, B to A's backhand, A to B's backhand, and B to A's forehand.
Forehand to forehand volleys.
Backhand to backhand volleys.
Criss-cross volleys: A hits to B's forehand, B to A's backhand, A to B's backhand, and B to A's forehand.
Micro-rally: Draw a short line 54" from the net on each side. Every shot of the rally has to land between the net and the line (or the extension thereof). Forehands or backhands are allowed.

Penn makes a foam ball with an ideal bounce and weight for at-home rallying. It's widely available online by searching for Penn QST 36 Foam Tennis Balls. Just make sure you get the foam, not the felt, as the latter will show up in your search, and they look quite similar.

Balloon Tennis

Standard balloons are fun for preschool-age kids to hit up in air, but for older players rallying back and forth, the balloons that are made for punching are much better, as they'll actually fly where you aim them in calm air. You won't need a net unless you want to make the game competitive, where you win a point when the balloon hits the ground on your opponent's side or s/he hits the balloon out of bounds. An online search for "punching balloons" will yield plenty for sale.

Tennis Golf

Tennis Golf is one of our favorite games on the court, and Giant Tennis Golf is a treat we enjoy once in a while on the big ball fields. The basic idea is to get your ball to each target in as few hits as possible. Wherever your ball ends up after each hit, you pick it up, take one big step if you wish, and hit your next shot. To make the game fair, each player has an appropriate par. When I play with kids, my par might be two while theirs is five; if I hit the target in two and one of them hits it in four, s/he is ahead of my by one. Tennis golf will work nicely in a big back yard without too many cacti, or you could play a gentle, putting version inside the house, starting, for example, in the living room and having the refrigerator in the kitchen as the first target.

Tennis Bowling

Tennis Bowling will work indoors or on a driveway. Use empty water bottles as pins or make cylinders out of sheets of paper or empty cereal boxes. Set up ten pins in the standard bowling configuration and try to knock them over by hitting tennis balls at them, either putting style indoors or more like a low forehand outdoors. To maximize the fun, each player would have his/her own set of pins to knock down, and the contest would be to see who can knock all of them down with the fewest shots. In a light wind, an inch or two of water in the bottoms of water bottles will keep them from falling over until they're hit.

Serve Toss Practice

Tossing the ball for the serve seems as if it should be easy, but many players at every level find it surprisingly tricky. The classic way to practice the toss for a power serve (not a kick serve) can be done almost anywhere. Place a racquet on the ground so that (for a righty) it extends from the toes of your left foot toward an imaginary right net post (opposite for a lefty). Toss the ball roughly six inches higher than the tip of your racquet can reach, using your normal wind-up, etc., and see whether you can get the ball to land on the strings of the racquet on the ground. It's not easy, but if you start getting close most of the time, you'll have a better toss than most players do.

Serve Trainer

Meeting the ball at your full upward reach is essential to a strong serve. You can make a serve trainer in your back yard if you can tie a rope, which we'll call a "clothesline," between two trees or other supports. Tie the clothesline so that it's around two feet higher than your racquet can reach. Drill a hole through a tennis ball, holding it with a clamp so that you won't get cut if the drill bit slips. Run a short rope through the tennis ball and tie it in a loop around the clothesline so that the ball hangs at the height you can reach just above the center of your strings if you're stretching up on the tips of your toes. Do your normal serve motion with a toss (of an imaginary ball), wind-up, etc. and swing up to hit the ball. It should whip around the clothesline a few times before settling down for another hit. If more than one person will use the trainer, tie the clothesline so that someone can raise or lower it by tightening or loosening it from the ground. Developing a feel for stretching up to hit the ball is extremely helpful, as most players meet the ball too low without feeling their lack of stretch.

Best Shots and Points Videos

YouTube has a ton of best-shots and best-points compilations. The following have better video quality and selection than most. They pack a lot of entertainment into short watching times (roughly 3, 5, and 2 minutes):

Best Tennis Shots Of 2019 � HD (men)

WTA-top 10 best points ever at the Rogers Cup (women)

This one's video quality is excellent throughout, and the shots are amazing:

Roger Federer's Greatest US Open Shots