My tennis, seen by a pro: what happened when I sent Lauryn two clips of me playing

I have spent the past months telling other people this is what online tennis coaching ought to look like: send us a clip, and a pro will tell you what to work on for your tennis, speaking to your tennis inside your own footage. This week I got around to sending in two clips of my own.

The court was Avondale Park in West London. A public court on a Saturday afternoon, the sort where beside you youngsters are enjoying a casual game with their mates or equally there's a ribald exchange between long running amateur rivals. The whole spectrum is on display, which is part of the fun. I was going to prop my phone against the fence, which is all that's required for our online coaching platform to work, but in the end another coach taking a break kindly filmed it for me, perhaps hoping (I know all the coaches there well and they are a great, rambunctious bunch) that I would best my hitting partner (who was the head coach, William). I didn't in the first clip (game) but managed to in the second.

The reviewer was one of our Pro Mentors, Lauryn John-Baptiste, a touring WTA professional with a career-high ranking of World No. 270. She watched both clips from her own front room on a weeknight and sent me back a personal video for each one. Between the two she saw two things worth changing and one thing worth keeping. I am publishing all of it below.

Clip one

Lauryn’s read, in my rendering from what she says out loud is below. I'm one of those annoying lefties by the way.

Your starting position on the serve is good. You’re side-on early. But your back leg then comes past your front leg during the motion, which forces your hips to open more than they need to, and you finish square-on into the court. Stay side-on for longer. Drive up and forwards. Ball toss a little further out in front. That’s where the power and the control and the consistency all come from.

On the first point I like that you came into the net. When you approach, recover inside the service box, midway between the net and the service line, not on the line itself.

Your forehand, good, you’re trying to dominate with it. Make more space so you can set your feet and load your legs with a wide athletic base. You’re getting quite close to the ball. Prepare earlier, or your elbow ends up jamming into your body.

Three observations in a shade under seven minutes of watching. One on the serve, one on court positioning after an approach, one on the forehand. Nothing about grip theory. Nothing about how Djokovic cracks his forehand. Nothing I could have learned from a YouTube video, because none of it was about anyone else’s tennis. It was about mine, on court, in a specific situation, with the right level of specificity.

Clip two

Well I lost that game and swapped ends. I kept the serve as this practice was about trying to hold serve under match conditions. The sun peeked its way further out from the clouds and I tried to do better as a thank you. I managed to do just that.

Her read of the second clip:

Immediately, see the improvement on your forehand. The spacing is much better, it looks more consistent. You prepared earlier, set your feet, transferred your weight forward. You’re using your forehand as a weapon.

On the serve, the left foot is still passing the right, [remember I'm a lefty] still forcing your hips open too early, still costing you power and control. Stay side-on for as long as you can.

And it’s great you’re still coming to the net. You’re spotting early when your opponent’s under pressure. Good job.

What I took from this

There is a tidier version of this story I could tell you and it is not the true one.

I did not watch Lauryn’s review of clip one and then go and play clip two, although now I am sending clips in frequently to try to shore up my service motion. I played both clips one after the other and Lauryn watched them together, later, from her apartment after one of her training days in between tournaments. The improvement in the forehand between clip one and clip two was not the result of any coaching intervention. It was more to do with intent, I think, and the legs loosening up a little, something the legs of most players over forty (read fifty), need to work into.

I did not know I had done anything different. That is the point. Lauryn noticed I had, described what specifically had changed, and gave me a sentence I can now use to reproduce it: set your feet, load your legs, transfer your weight forward, forehand as a weapon. Without her review I would have remembered clip two as vaguely more enjoyable than clip one. With it, I have a specific mechanical pattern I can look for the next time I am on court. That is a materially different thing.

The serve did not move between clips because the pattern Lauryn is describing, the left leg swinging through and squaring me up, has been in my motion for years. It is not going to leave in an afternoon. It is going to require several weeks of paying pointed attention, in a way you can only pay attention to something you have been told about, and several more of these reviews before the new pattern is available to me at 5-all. But I now know what the pattern is. Which, again, is the point. And I'll then be working with Lauryn and our other Pro Mentors on the next pattern and the one after that. I'll never play Wimbledon or even win the open tournament at my club (there's some seriously good, twenty and thirty year olds strutting about) but I am not embarrassed about loving the game and wanting to be the best I can be, with the time that I have.

What this is, and what it isn’t

It is not a coaching video I bought. It is not a subscription library. It is not the seventeenth YouTube channel run by a former tour player teaching everyone the same forehand. It is a real coach, sitting in her house on a weeknight, watching two clips of me actually playing tennis, and telling me, with a specificity that is rare even with on court coaches who can't see your game the way video analysis allows, what to work on for the next three weeks. In seven minutes. From footage I filmed on a phone.

That is what All Court is obsessed about - your tennis. Until this week I had only been describing it. Now I have used it, on myself, and published the result, back leg passing front leg and all.

Send us your own

Send us a clip of your tennis. A touring pro will watch it and tell you, the way Lauryn just told me, one or two specific things to work on. Match footage or practice. Any reasonable angle. Existing phone footage is fine and up against the back fence or propped against the net post is also fine. It does not have to be pretty. Mine was not particularly.

You will find out something about your game. It may or may not be what you wanted to hear. But it will be about your tennis, not somebody else’s.