It might come as a surprise to tennis fans that the player who may invigorate the slumping women’s tennis tour (discounting the Williams sisters) may not be a flashy, grunting teenager, but instead, a veteran 26-year-old mother. Kim Clijsters, the 2005 United States Open champion and former world No. 1, will make her return to the W.T.A. next month at the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open in Cincinnati.
Clijsters has been slowly warming herself up for the summer hard courts of America since announcing that she was coming out of retirement in late March of this year. She played a Wimbledon exhibition in May against Steffi Graf, then handily beat Michaella Krajicek, a former top 30 player, in another exhibition last month. This month, Clijsters will return to American soil on the World TeamTennis stage, playing for the St. Louis Aces. In the spring of 2007, Clijsters retired at 23 after winning one major, 34 tour titles and holding the top ranking for 19 weeks. She cited boredom, injuries and the desire to start a family as reasons for stepping away from the game.
Ok, I heard about this last night and tried it. This is a great little test and skill enhancer. We are not working on improving any stroke in particular however your whole game will improve.
The drill goes like this.
What you need – 2 players. One Serving and the other Receiving. 2 balls – one for the server and one for the receiver.
- The Receiver starts the drill by bouncing a ball on their racquet, not letting it touch the ground.
- The server serves another ball whenever he or she is ready. – Second Serve speed – about 80% serve.
- The receiver must continue to keep bouncing the ball on their racquet, hit the ball the server served and continue bouncing the ball on their racquet.
It sounds difficult however you work it out after a few serves. What I worked out is – tap the ball gently only leaving the racquet about 1 foot. Just after the server makes contact with the ball tap the ball higher (not sure how high I was not watching the ball in the air – I was focussing on the return- maybe 3 meters)
This really trains you to work on your peripheral vision and after a while you are actually become quite relaxed and confident you can make the return and keep bouncing the ball on your racquet.
After you have finished that drill try hitting normal returns… How easy are they now !!!
By overloading your system you work on all your senses. An advanced version of this would be to have people throwing balls at you, random noise next to you, or obstacles you need to step around. When all these distractions are taken away and ‘all’ you have to do is hit a return it much easier !
What do you think? Leave a comment or let us know another drill you like and use 
Michael
