If you’re a tennis fan, you’ve probably thought about giving the sport a try yourself.
You’ve got the gear you need, and now you’re ready to hit the court. You’re super excited to experience that amazing sport, and you want to commit yourself to learn it.
After that, you realize that tennis isn’t that easy to learn as a beginner. But hey, don’t give up just yet!
Why Tennis Is Hard to Learn and Master
We’ll give you a brief idea as to why tennis is challenging to learn. Keeping this information in mind will help you progress faster and save you time.
Of course, your first few training sessions may not be the most fun. Keep at it and you’ll slowly improve after a while.
Net sports are pretty popular, and tennis is no exception. Being an Olympic sport, it’s quite hard and competitive.
It requires a great deal of focus and precision, as is the case with many other Olympic sports.
Working on enhancing your mobility, in addition to regular repetition and conditioning yourself to a style of play will skyrocket your skills to a whole new level.
Tennis Requires Long Years of Practice
Many people prefer to teach their children tennis from a very young age. It’s pretty common to see four or five years old kids holding small racquets.
This is just to give you an idea about how hard it is to learn tennis. It’s not a rule that you must learn tennis a few years after you’re born.
While it’s true that learning tennis has a steep learning curve initially, once you get a good grasp of what you’re doing, you should be able to progress at a faster pace, and you’ll enjoy the sport more when you get good at it.
It may take years until you actually feel super confident in your ability to play tennis, so give it time.
While many people may just forget about it, dedication and continuous practice will eventually help you master the sport.
The time it’ll take to learn tennis depends on your fitness level and how athletic you are. Though, this doesn’t mean it’s a requirement since regular practice will make you more fit over time anyway.
Tennis Requires a High Level of Hand-Eye Coordination
Playing in a small court allows you to improve your hand-eye coordination easier than in a bigger court.
Skilled players usually warm up in the service box before their matches. This helps loosen up the muscle groups of the arms and legs, in addition to training the eyes to focus on the ball.
Good eye contact is crucial in tennis. Whether it’s the serve, volley, or groundstrokes, focusing your eyes on the ball can greatly impact the effectiveness of your shots.
Mastering this skill takes some time, so don’t get put off if you don’t do it right in the beginning.
While you’re working on maintaining eye-contact, you’ll feel that you’re naturally more aware of the position of your arms.
You’ll know when you’re extending your arm just enough to hit the ball, and you’ll also find yourself using the non-hitting arm as a guide to make it easier for you to estimate the distance to the ball.
A Tennis Player Needs to Get the Timing and Precision Right
Timing is another thing you need to get good at to be able to play tennis like a pro. In the beginning, you’ll notice that your timing is off.
Either you swing the racket too early or too late. This affects the distance the ball will travel.
Depending on whether you’re lagging or leading with your swing, you’ll either hit the ball too far in front of you or a little far back.
Ideally, you’re supposed to hit the ball just in front of you at a distance equal to an arm’s length.
Another thing you have to work on is your precision. When you first start out, you won’t be able to guide the balls where you aim. In fact, just getting the ball over the net will be an achievement for you.
However, you don’t win matches by just getting the ball over the net. You need to be able to aim the ball where you want it to be because that’s how you get more points.
Over time, you need to focus on adjusting the angle of your racket and change the pace/speed you swing with.
It’ll take quite some repetition and practice to perfect your timing and precision. Nevertheless, even when you get there, you’ll still need to improve to up your game.
Playing in a small court is good in the beginning. Once you feel that it’s getting less challenging, it’s time to move onto the full court. Progressing slowly is the key here.
Final Thoughts
To wrap it all up, tennis may be hard to learn, but it isn’t impossible. It just requires more dedication than many other sports.
The fact that it’s an individual sport means that it’s all dependant on you and your mindset.
It might be easier to learn from other players in group sports, but you can make up for that by playing against other players who are slightly more experienced than you are.
Humans get better at anything with repetition. Just keep practicing and you might be the next tennis champion.