Tennis Strategy
Your tennis strategy will often revolve around a certain type of style, although you are always free to change your play style on a whim to respond to certain situations. The most common styles a player can use in tennis include the counter pusher, aggressive baseliner, all-court, and serve-and-volley. Mastering one style can help you play better, sure, but learning all four can help you tremendously as you adapt to real-time matches and different opponents. Of course, the best way to learn tennis strategy is through first hand experience, as you’ll be able to improve naturally while discovering your preferences in play style.
Counter Pusher (Defensive Baseliner)
counter pusher
A counter pusher is basically a player who “pushes” back any shot, returning the right shot for whatever their opponent sends their way. The goal of this style of play is not to hit winners, but to strategically outlast your opponent until they make an unforce. Counter pushers often have a lot of stamina, and are very consistent and rarely make errors. As a counter pusher, you should think of yourself as a wall (minus the concrete and plaster, but with a touch of psychological warfare), with the sole objective of returning all your opponent’s shots.
The tennis strategy used by counter pushers include:
- Staying at the baseline to return all of the opponent’s shots
- Using lots of top spin, sidespin, or backspin to counter the opponent’s aggression, placing shots in disadvantageous locations that make it difficult for the opponent to return
- Surprising their opponents by returning their hard shots
- Having lots of consistency to outlast the opponent
- Staying patient and mentally tough to get a point