No serve and return, no victory – that was today's tennis camp motto

Training on the third day of the tennis camp with the European Tennis Academy in Naturns started at 8:30 a.m. today. Although the sun was shining, it was still quite cold. Therefore, the team decided to hold the first session indoors.

Today's training session should focus on the serve and return – two shots without which a victory is hardly possible. And despite this knowledge, they are practiced far too little in so many training sessions – especially the return.

To warm up, the key points from the first two days were reviewed: early meeting point, focus on the ball. The kids started playing on a small court and had to say "1" when jumping and "2" when hitting. From behind, the focus on the backswing was emphasized by saying "Now" at the start of the backswing and by calling "Step" when jumping into the pivot position as soon as the partner opposite hit.

No serve without a goal - do you always remember that?

Then a warm-up with target practice : the children had to announce which cone they wanted to aim for. The focus here was: always set a target first, then serve.

Then implement the focus point: serve, then play the rally cross-court.

After that, there was a special return drill : two children took turns serving, with the returner aiming to make as few simple errors as possible. A double fault by the server and a return error counted as double points.

In the afternoon session, after warming up, they went straight to serving. Then they put what they had practiced that morning into practice in a match situation. And the children quickly realized that their focus in the match was significantly less effective than in the morning training session .

"Perfectly normal," as coach Alex reassured them. The children repeatedly tried to recall their focus and improve as a result – focus cards on the fence of the field helped them with this.

Despite somewhat adverse weather conditions with increasing wind and rather cool temperatures, the relocation went quite well.

Some impressions from the third day of training