Buddy hitting

Buddy hitting is a great way to practice and improve your strokes by matching with a player of a similar standard with mutually convenient availability for practice sessions.

We are not currently running a scheme to match you with a buddy however there are many ways of finding yourself a suitable hitting partner by attending coaching, club Mixers, Team Tennis or playing in the Singles boxes and looking out for someone of your standard who you get along with, or asking other players/coaches for recommendations.

There is a great ‘Tug of War’ game you can use as a foundation for hitting practice:

• Start at 5 points each
• One of you either serves or feeds a ball to the other who must hit it back nicely – if either the feed or return aren’t good enough, you can catch the ball and start again with no change in score
• Once the feed & return has gone smoothly, play the point to win.  The winner goes up to 6 points, the loser to 4
• Alternate who serves/feeds every point – best if ensure each player has 2 balls at the end of each point
• Continue in this way – winner up 1 point, loser down a point (e.g. next point might be 7-3 or back to 5-5) – until someone reaches 10 points and wins the game

If you’re well matched you might learn to call this “Fives AGAIN?!”, or one of you might be frequently ‘On the Brink’ (9 points) or come ‘Back from the Brink’ – one game could take 5 minutes or over an hour!

You can play either within the singles court or, for better doubles practice:

• Deuce to Deuce court (RHS to RHS) and/or
• Ad to Ad court (LHS to LHS)

ie. only using a half-court each side, playing diagonally with tramlines in (so a ball landing on the wrong side of extended centre line is out)

If you play this game after a warm-up then finish your session by working on a particular skill, e.g. taking turns to feed each other volleys or smashes, or practicing playing a drop-shot or serving, and do this weekly, your game can’t help but improve!