What is more important in your opinion?

[djarvik]

Clicked Timing before I read your first post.

Well if your overall timing is off, then everything else is. But if by Timing you mean hitting the sweet spot on every hit then it's not as important as footwork.

Interesting. I think you are right by saying that "if timing is off - everything else is", but don't you think that before you get to the timing problem, you need to be able to position your self next to the ball to execute the technique/stroke?

What if your timing is perfect but you are hitting a continental grip forehand high to low while jumping forward? Sure, you will make a contact with the ball in the right spot, time it well - but still fail.

Obviously, all the elements are important, but there has to be one starting point. Where does it all begin? Personally - it is fitness and footwork. From there it moves to technique. Reason? Both of them are quite easy to train and are very much "improvable" to pretty much any human being.

Timing and rhythm are more skill and talent dependent. Both related to each other, rarely you have one without the other. These are also the more common talents that people are born with. They are also harder to train and for some - never possible. A sense of timing is a gift if you will, sort of like in Musicians. Sure, you can learn to play any instrument, but in order for you to be really good at it, you need talent.

So the easiest way to being able to maintain a rally, is to have your footwork down and to have your strokes drilled into your muscle memory, to the point where they all look rather the same and your legs do most of the work adjusting to the balls, in order to accommodate the stroke. A good way of thinking about it is that you should be able to adjust the aim while keeping the stroke the same, as opposed to adjust the stroke to accommodate the aim. If you can consistently do that - you will advance. As soon as you feel you have to change mechanics in an effort to accommodate aim - work on your footwork.

All of us have sense of timing and rhythm. In some it is more developed then in others. It is also something that is extremely tough to train.

This begs another question, how one would go about training their timing?

[djarvik]

Footwork, as technique, rhythm and timing are irrelevant if you don't even get to the ball.

A Wheelchair Tennis player would be greatly offended by the poll result.

Just getting to the ball is not what I understand about footwork. Otherwise you could just hand Usain Bolt a racquet and watch him destroying everyone. Putting yourself in a good position before hitting the ball is. Unless you mean that sheer running speed is also part of it.

Interesting subject. I think, it is possible to take a well developed athlete, a pro, from another sport, and in a span of 6 month or so make him into a very competent tennis player. About 4.0 - something many recreational players will struggle to ever get to.

I think Fitness is that important. What you get is a blank canvas on steroids. As a coach, it would be a dream. You can basically sculpt the strokes from start to finish, without having to be concern with fitness, flexibility, possible injury.

And the only reason I think it will stop around 4.0 is because of muscle memory. There is no way around it. You need to hit thousands of balls at that point to advance. Even then, I think in a year or so he can make it to a good 4.5.

[Corbon]

Good point about muscle memory.

For me court speed breaks down into 3 factors

-Anticipation
Being able to "read" the game and predict what the opponent is going to do in a certain situation. Is he playing a drop shot, long line or cross court by watching his and the racquets movements. This is part of tennis intelligence which cannot really be learned.

-Reaction
Not to be confused with reflex (which is something you have no control of). So the opponent made his move and it's tme for you to react to it or, to put it simply, to get out of the blocks.

-Speed
Simply the amount of time it takes to cover a given distance. I remember a commentator said that Nadal isn't a strong 100m runner (no times were mentioned, maybe 13.x sec.) and he doesn't need to be because in Tennis only the first 0-20m are important.

An athlete like Usain Bolt (or any other Olympic sprinter) is unquestionable an expert in Reaction (Bang means Go) and Speed but he will certainly never develop a strong Anticipation skill and there's just no use for it in Sprinting.

Tennis Intelligence is something that can't be learned. It's like a polyglot being naturally gifted at learning languages but not being able to draw a good painting. Thousands of players grew up playing tennis and were certainly fit enough to play a 5h game yet they never reached the Top 500 because they lacked that something. Of course, if you have "it", you can train it.

/off-topic

[Corbon]

But Fitness is definitely extremely important in sports where you're out on your own.

Maradona could afford being fat and lazy because he had 9 other strong field players who would do the running for him most of the time. But then he would deliver a 40 yards pass while standing still, right on a running Caniggia's or Batistuta's head who just needed to do the basic job of a striker.

[djarvik]

I think I disagree with your take on anticipation. Partially.

I think you putting together two types of anticipations:

The first type, is basically read/react type. See an opponent preparing for a slice and react, see him tossing the ball on serve to the left - slice wide is likely to come, see the opponent stepping into close stance - expect down the line etc..

And the second type is calculative type. Rather then reactive. Ability to read the game, find tendencies, favorite patterns. Read them and making a game adjustment to accommodate. Basically preventive.

Both can be categorized as anticipation, but one is reactive/passive, while other is preventive/aggressive.

The first type is quite easy to learn. Sure it is better with some people, as their eyes submit information faster, by "finding" it and the brain processes it faster. But this is something that can be trained and it hardly will prevent you from being good tennis player, even great one.

The second type is the one that hard to train. The ability to read the game, not shots. It is also VERY rare, even among the best players out there.


Examples of reactive/passive anticipation would be: Ferrer, Djokovic.
Both guys react, and do it better then anyone out there.

Examples of preventive/aggressive anticipation would be: Federer, Nadal.
While Federer is stubborn, he will adjust his game (except against Rafa). Nadal is mostly reactive, except when playing against Federer.

All players practice both types to a degree, but majority nowadays prefer the reactive/passive type. It is easier to practice and react, compensating by imminence fitness. The hard workers nowadays are the ones who succeed, and it is very rear that a player has equally both types. Somehow they don't coexist noways.


Anyway, just my take on this.

[Vieira151]

I chose Technique. Mainly it's because it's the only one I have and I can have decent rallies with it.

I think footwork would be joint top or 2nd most beneficial of the lot.

[Ali-Iqb93]

While hitting a drop shot most of the pros have similar footwork but only few like federer and nadal execute them perfectly but in the past djokovic had trouble with it. What's causing the difference between them? Offcourse technique.