It is rare to find an elite tennis player who does not have impeccable footwork. While some people are naturally-gifted movers, footwork takes considerable practice to master. Most top tennis players spend years practicing and refining their footwork.
Each time you hit a tennis ball, you want to accomplish three goals, related to footwork:
- Be on balance.
- Rotate your hips into the shot (except for shots with which you are trying to absorb power rather than generate power).
- Recover efficiently, and to the correct position on the court, for the next ball.
When most people learn tennis, they are taught to step forward with their front foot and then hit the ball. While this can be the correct way to address the ball in some situations, it is really a small piece of the footwork puzzle.
Tennis Footwork is comprised of these basic movements:
- Step
- Lunge
- Pivot
- Jump/Transfer
- Hop
- Spin
And a stroke sequence is not complete until you have successfully recovered for the next stroke. So you will always need to execute a recovery step, with the purpose of pushing off and moving in the direction where you want to be positioned for the next ball.
The startpoint and endpoint of each stroke is the ready position, in which you will have your body in an athletic stance and hopping lightly on the fronts of your feet.
Here are the key groundstroke footwork patterns:
- Front shuffle front foot pivot
- Rear 2-foot pivot
- Quarter spin
- Mogul move
- Power move
- Front foot hop
- Lateral foot hop
- Transfer jump
- Closed pivot
- Rear 1-foot pivot
- Rear foot hop
- Reverse spin
Here you can see these footwork patterns in action:
And here is a brief demo of the main footwork moves:
Your challenge as a tennis player is to instinctively know, in the instant that you see the ball come off your opponent’s racket, how you are going to approach the ball and execute the stroke so you can be on balance, rotate your hips into the shot, and recover. This is relatively simple when your opponent hits a medium height ball right to you. Things get much more interesting, and challenging, when the ball is wide, or short and low, or pulls you back to the fence. Or, when you will find yourself far away from your recovery point for the next shot.
By practicing and mastering the 12 patterns above, you will be prepared, in the heat of the moment, to make the right decision on how to execute your footwork and recover for the next ball.