Fifth and last day of training in the tennis camp of the European Tennis Academy Naturns in South Tyrol. What about the early bird? The kids didn't catch the worm this morning at 8:30 a.m. - but they learned a lot about tactical moves in individual games . And bravely and full of motivation, we braved the cold and tiredness in the early morning!
... and what does practice look like? What do you kids do against an opponent who is super good on his feet, returns every hit from the baseline, no matter how hard, and makes few mistakes? The children knew exactly what kind of opponent Joe meant by this question.
A recipe for success against these "feared opponents" is to vary the length, height and spin of the strokes . Markings were used to create 3 zones in which the children should play with balls of different lengths, but no zone should be played twice. Then the spin variation was tackled - switching between forehand drive or topspin and slice. Yes, and then there was the ball height: flat ball over the net and high topspin - and everything in between. Here too, the children should classify their own balls out loud on a height scale. In between, Joe always took the children together for a short coaching session in which he explained the tactics to them and included them in the discussion with questions.
At 2 p.m. in the afternoon we entered the tennis camp home straight: which shot is the stronger shot, asked coach Alex. For all three it is the forehand. So the next exercise was that the kids had to play backhand cross and go around the backhand as often as possible and apply pressure with the stronger forehand. So use your own strengths more .
In the next exercise based on this, the kids played points on half the field and were supposed to attack forward as soon as the ball came shorter than the T-line and score the point. Here too, the stronger forehand should be used as an attacking stroke. The last exercise was to play the ball in from below and then play it out. Volley points and points with the forehand inside out were rewarded and counted as two points.
At the end of the last training session, Alex asked the children again what the most important “learnings” of the week were for them. In any case, count 1-2 to get a better rhythm. Then the breathing until the end of the blow and finally the kids take Charly home with them. In other words, the voice in our heads that “harasses” us tennis players with very different topics and throws us off the winning track every now and then. In any case, the kids took a few things with them from the tennis camp week in order to outsmart Charly!
We will now spend a few more days of family vacation in South Tyrol and will write down our summary of the tennis camp for you with a little "distance". But this much can already be revealed: it was 5 mentally intensive days that brought a lot of new and really valuable things for the children!
Many thanks to Alex and Joe from the European Tennis Academy - you did a great job!
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