Tennis Practice Focusing on Patterns

It's important to note that this video is out of order. I highly recommend hitting at half-pace or at your preferred warm-up pace first BEFORE doing my Patterns, like "One FH/BH down-the-line, one FH/BH crosscourt".

Yesterday, I watched an old YouTube video "Safin vs Nadal" in Montreal in 2007. I just watched the first set and although I'm a huge fan of Marat Safin, it's important to take the tennis shortcomings during those times and learn from them. Safin had times in that match in which he would counter-attack with so much offense, but he should have known Nadal would be able to handle it. Maybe back then not many people did, but due to the commentary with Patrick McEnroe and another gentleman, Nadal had already won 3 majors, yet had an ATP Tour Ranking at No.2 (Federer was No.1).

Another thing Safin had room to improve was that one time when he was at net for his first volley, he took one huge step, as opposed to taking those few small steps as we saw John McEnroe and Sampras do on first volleys.

In this video, I specifically made both those keypoints in my tennis training and made massive progress with both shot selection in the context of the type of ball to hit, as well as more quick, small steps, even though I could have just stood open-stance and hit heavy.

I just watched the first set of the match so I'll try to finish it when I get the chance! I recommend watching it without fast-forwarding too much to really get into feeling and sensing what the players were thinking and feeling back then. In addition, it's always very insightful to learn from Patrick McEnroe, who was commentating with another gentleman on the match. Great insight and interesting to compare and contrast with today's very high tennis standards.