It is possible to win many matches without hitting many winners, depending upon your level! If you are winning matches, I wouldn't care how many winners there were.
With that said, there are three ways to hit more winners: hit the ball harder, place the ball better, or both. And I can tell you I get most of my winners with placement, not power. Hit the ball where they're not.
Dec 21, 2008 Rating
i need winners against defensive players by: Anonymous
I win matches against people that have enough unforced errors, but against someone that barely makes unforced errors I need the winners. I'm ok with placement, but I don't know how to hit the ball harder, My balls hits the court near the baseline and goes up, what I think I should do is put more weight on the ball, twist my body while hitting the ball and hit the ball when the racquet is more closed, but I'm not sure.
Dec 22, 2008 Rating
Winners don't hit winners by: Tom
Some time ago I read somewhere an article titled "winners don't hit winners", and it made a lot of sense to me. Firstly I can safely assume that most of us are club players, weekend warriors and not professional players. Being a club players and weekend warriors, our unforced errors far outnumber our winners, and a fair part of the unforced errors are created out of our desire to hit winners. At least this is true for me. In the ebook that Tomaz has written, he wrote somewhere, "big hit, big target" or something to that effect. What he meant was you can go for your winners but make sure that you are still hitting within the safe target areas as described in his ebook. You do this only when your opponent was already stretched, so even if your "winners" came back to you, mostly these will be weak returns that you can put away easily. You may miss some, but playing this way your unforced errors out of your winners will be reduced, and you will feel less frustrated. Trying to hit winners when your opponents are not stretched by going for the lines is as sure ticket to disastrous game on the court. When I have only 2 hours on the court, I want to go home feeling good not frustrated even if I did not win the match.
Have fun on the court.
Jan 27, 2009 Rating
Set up your winners by: Josh
I understand where you are coming from. It seems as though you are already having some success with your current style of play.
Just remember that the majority of points won in a match are from errors; whether forced or unforced. You said you make few unforced errors which can only be a good thing.
However, winners wise, try rallying crosscourt with your opponent, and when they hit a slightly shorter/weaker ball, you can attack/change direction, setting you up for a winner into the open court.
What I used to always do was try to hit clean winners out of nowhere. This low percetange tactic resulted in many errors, and frustration, affetcing my entire game. I learned that it is better to hit a few forcing shots, to set yourself up for the winner/volley into the open court.
Aim closer inside the lines to increase your margin for error, so that if your shot is slightly off, it will still land just inside the line.
