Serving has been the major focal point on Monday and Tuesday this week, with the first segment of practice dedicated solely to strengthening the shot. Coach Davis, after watching his youngest son and former ATA athlete Blake Davis compete for Florida State University against Virginia and Virginia Tech this past weekend, explained to the group the importance of developing the serve as a weapon.

 

“At that level, everyone can serve,” Coach Davis said. “You MUST be able to drop bombs if you want to win in college tennis.”

 

The practices this week have started with technical instruction as a group on the serve, followed by 30 minutes of focused serving, working on specific targets and consistency goals.  Coach Strecker explained that players must get away from the idea that the serve merely starts the point.

 

 

“Your serve must be a weapon,” Coach Strecker said. “The idea is to earn some free points.”

 

After working on serves, the practices moved onto various technical and strategic lessons. On Monday, the players split into groups, with a groundstroke court, a volley court and an overhead court, with all coaches looking to clean up technical issues found in the areas.

 

 

The practice on Monday ended with the older group going to the hill for some fitness work, while the younger group hit the weight room with Coach Strecker.

 

On Tuesday, the group worked on using the backhand to pull an opponent off the court when in a cross-court rally. The coaches set up targets just outside of a typical ‘side-middle’ target. One player fed a cross-court backhand, and the other player had to make the first backhand into the wider target area and play the point out from there. 

“Players do a great job of this on the forehand side, but we need to improve as a group on the backhand,” Coach Davis said.

 

On Tuesday, eight players also went to Lake Travis high school to play some ladder matches. The results of these matches will influence the overall Academy ladder, which determines line-ups for things like duel matches against Claremont, or the upcoming Texas Cup.