Loosen the grip with Paul Prior

One of the greatest contributors to poor performance under a stressful tennis match is tension and a tight forearm. Being looser allows your muscles to flex and generate more speed to the racquet head. Not only will you see greater ball speed, but spin!

Target Practice

Targets are great, they bring a challenge, but also bring focus. Additionally targets are a great means to train technique.

The Accelerator

This drill helps to develop the players ability to adjust to fast incoming balls to play defensively, but still with the racquet and ball speed to neutralize their opponents strong stroke.

Waiting for the ball

One of the most intriguing questions that I have had in studying tennis for all these years is, Why do better players look like they have more time to hit the ball than beginners do?




If players of higher levels hit the ball harder, theoretically they should have less time to hit the ball than a beginner who hits the ball slower. It is an illusion I have come to see!




because more advanced players have a faster swing, they can start their swing later than the beginner with the slower swing, giving the advanced player more time to get into position to execute their stroke.




You need to hit with a faster swing, not only to hit more effectively, but to buy yourself more time to hit the ball!

Hip the ball for Successful Tennis with Paul Prior

The rotation of the hips is important to allow the power to continue flowing up through our bodies and into the racquet and ball. The hips are the link in the Bio-Kinetic chain that cause the most breakages. This exercise assists in developing not only the movement but timing too of when to rotate the hips!

Benching the Groundstroke

A great way to develop the technique of the groundstrokes. It limits the body movement, and works the racquets movement.

Modern Tennis?

I always find it very entertaining with a laugh under my breath when I hear coaches talk about the modern way to play tennis. I always ask myself the same question, how much has the game of tennis really changed? To be more specific, How much have the principles of tennis changed over the years?

Imagine you woke up this morning, turned the television on and heard the breaking news (I suppose in this day and age, you would get it in your Facebook feed), that the governing body of tennis, the International Tennis Federation, had changed the dimensions of the tennis court, adjusting not only the lines and court dimensions, but the official net height. This would constitute a sit down and rethink how tennis is played and taught, a modern way of tennis. Or suppose the International Tennis Federation changed their name to the Inter-galactic Tennis Federation with tennis only permitted to be played on the moon or planets where there is no gravity. This too would bring about changes to the way tennis is played and therefore the way tat the game needs to be taught. That to me is the Modern game of tennis!

I have come across this so many times with so many parents being convinced by some coach that their son or daughter needs to train with them to learn how to play the game of the pro's and modern methods. Unfortunately I have so often seen these coaches ruin a very good natural talent.

Theory of watching the tennis ball

It is pretty simple, you can not hit something that you can not see. If you were in a totally dark room, even with your eyes open, the chance of you hitting an object that is stationery is pretty much slim to none.

The most important object in a tennis match is the ball!

I often watch the professional players play a match and am reminded that the best players in the world focus and do the basics better than everyone else, with the most basic part of tennis being to hit the ball in the middle of the racquet head.

It took me almost 25 years of playing tennis to shout “Eureka”! I still recall the time and practice session that I was having so vividly. I said to myself, “Wow, I can see the ball”, but it also got me thinking. In all the years of tennis and tennis lessons and coaches that I worked with, why did none of them ever teach me how to watch the ball. I was doing what I think most players do, I was tracking the ball with my eyes and head. Just before contact I would quickly move my eys to the contact point of the stroke. The problem is that in those milliseconds of time, I would lose the ball and not be able to refocus fast enough on the ball to see it just before contact.

I think that this principle is applicable to all sports where the player is hitting a moving ball similar to baseball, cricket or lacrosse.

Something is seriously wrong with tennis globally

As we head into the new year, 2016, I thought that I would start with a slight rant about the state of tennis as I see it. Tennis is one of those sports that is truly global and attracts a massive following all over the world. A lot of people follow tennis and the results etc. and many people play the game recreationally even though they might not show up in the official numbers.

I have always believed that the game of tennis is BIGGER than me, bigger than the ATP, ITF and WTA. When people involved in the games management forget that, they start to create problems for the themselves, not tennis, as tennis will live on longer than the individual and associations.

Here are just a few points that I am interested to hear your feedback on;

1. Income of professional players
As well as Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova and the likes at the top of the game are prospering, in a sport like tennis, it is incredible how badly the whole picture needs to change. Laurynas Grigelis, finished the 2015 year as number 300 on the ATP rankings. He is 24 years of age and in the prime of his career of which he has managed to earn a staggering $215,080. If he had completed a degree from college and performed as well as he has on the tennis court in the business world, he would have earned almost $500,000 by now. The 300th placed women on the WTA tour is Polina Vinogradova who at 22 years  of age has earned $83,891 in her career with $12,616 earned in 2015. This is below the poverty line in income, never mind the expenses that she or someone else is paying. To be in the top 300 of any discipline in the world, should not leave you in this type of financial position!

Lets compare to baseball, the Major League has a total of 750 players based on the 25 man roster. The minimum player income for the Major league is $500,000.00 per year. So in a league that has more players than those in the top 300 players of both the men's and women's games combined, the salary payments of the MLB far exceed that of the tennis players.

Tennis is not managing to attract enough new blood and with so many of the top 100 being over the age of 30, it means that tennis is heading for a period soon where most of the top players will be completely unknown to the fans.

2. Global reach of the sport
For a sport as global as tennis, I am confused why the reach of the elite athletes doesn't span the globe. I understand about sponsorships etc. but why are there not more Grand Slams in continents that love the game of tennis and are fanatical about it. Why does Paris have on the ATP, the Grand Slam, a Masters event and normal tour events when Africa and South America can not even host one Masters event? There is a huge imbalance and false representation of tennis. Makes me wonder if the FBI should too have a look at these associations like the did at FIFA.

Most the stadiums hosting a tennis tournament are almost completely empty for most of the tournaments matches, this is hurting in so many ways including the image of the sport when someone finds the tournament on TV and sees the apathetic support of the sport.

3. Team sport?
Sports like cycling and motorsport have made individualistic sports into team sports. In doing so, they have protected the athletes as well. So when you think that there is a problem from the first point of income in the professional sport, the pay for the athletes in the sports like cycling and motorsports from these teams are very financially viable. The individual athletes are also well protected for the marketing and branding of themselves.

The ATP and WTA are really just glorified "Unions" and are not in a position to protect the athletes and sport for the long term. I would love to see some of the previous champions start to work with smart business people to redraw the competitive tennis structure, keeping in mind that there are less players entering the fray of professional tennis careers, with a gigantic exodus of the major stars coming in the near future!