The 1 Strategy To Beat The “Pusher”

What would it take for you to finally frustrate

the pusher instead of the pusher frustrating you?

My name is Jeff Salzenstein,

founder of Tennis Evolution.

And you might be struggling against the pusher.

You may be actually using the wrong strategies,

but in today's video,

I want to actually give you one

specific strategy that you're probably not using that's going

to be an absolute game changer for you.

Let's get you to that video right now.

The pusher likes to do one thing.

He likes to

stand,

usually stand deep in the court,

and just get the ball back.

He'll move the ball around,

he'll slice and dice you,

he'll hit high balls,

he'll hit deep down the middle.

He's just trying to frustrate you,

and what ends up happening is you end up overhitting and missing shots.

And a lot of times, players

play straight ahead

down the middle,

or straight ahead

down the line.

Okay?

Or

deep,

deep

cross-court.

Okay,

that seems to be the base play until eventually you miss,

and I just don't see enough players using angle.

Now I realize for some of you that might be

easier said than done because you're not practicing your angles.

But I hope

after watching this video, you'll see and understand

the importance of hitting angles against the pusher.

So, when you play deep down the middle;

number one,

that's good to be patient and play down the middle till you get the right ball.

But where it's not good

is that you're just hitting it back to the

pusher over and over again and you're not making him

or her move.

We've got to make the pusher move a little bit at different times,

okay?

Get him or her out of the comfort zone.

So, you think about making him move.

Okay,

you start hitting cross-court deep,

how far does the pusher have to move when you hit cross-court and deep?

Not that far.

Okay,

he just has to take a few steps over.

So, that's where the angle comes in.

When you hit angles,

when you hit balls that go off of the single sideline

before

it hits the baseline,

when you do that,

you start to make

the pusher move.

So, that ball is down the middle.

That ball is down the middle,

patience,

and now there's a chance

to hit this ball with angle.

So look,

that ball went off at this angle here.

Off of the single sideline,

like I was saying,

that's your goal.

When you're playing tennis,

if you can get the ball to land short

and go off of the court

before it crosses over this baseline,

off of the single sideline,

you want to get the ball going in this direction.

If you can get that to happen,

you're going to start beating more pushers.

And it's usually beneficial to do this on the forehand

side because a lot of players can hook the ball

with their forehand easier than their backhand.

So, let's watch this again.

Rally down the middle,

be patient,

no rush whatsoever.

Ball's coming down the middle.

Now this ball right here,

you'll notice that it's hit with more angle.

So, Mads is on the near side here

has moved over

towards the forehand corner of the court.

He's got more angle to work with,

so it doesn't make sense to hit an angle

if you're standing in this part of the court.

You can't hit as good of an angle.

So, your goal is to wait until you get a ball that comes in this direction,

or in this case,

if you're gonna hit a backhand,

it would come in this direction,

where you have more angle to use it.

And at this point again,

your goal is to hit the angle

so that it bounces around the service line.

We want the service line.

We do not want the baseline.

If you aim deep cross-court,

like I said before,

you're not making

the pusher move very far.

But when you hit the angle,

he's going to have to move

this far.

That's a good distance to have to cover.

And not only does he have to move across,

but in many cases,

he's going to have to move up a little bit.

So, it's a double whammy.

Lots of advantages to using an angle to beat the pusher,

and you have the whole court to do whatever you want on the next shot.

Now,

in my opinion,

it's not enough just to hit forehand angles.

You want to be able to hit backhand angles as well.

Now,

we talked about earlier,

how

many times it's easier to hook the ball with the forehand off the court.

Just easier to hit angles with forehands,

but if you can hit angles with your backhand,

whether you have a two-hander or one hander,

you're going to be at a distinct advantage,

so this is a shot you should practice.

When you're practicing or on a ball machine,

get comfortable hitting backhand angles,

it will serve you well against the pusher.

Now let's notice this rally.

A lot of balls being hit down the middle of the court.

Again,

we're focusing on patience,

playing down the middle,

not taking a lot of risk.

The pusher's just standing back there,

and then when you get a little bit of angle,

you can hit that

angle backhand,

open up the court,

and win the point.

So,

one reason why it's so important

to use the backhand angle

is that many players have worse backhands.

So, you'll notice that Mads is playing down the middle for two, three balls.

And then as soon as this ball comes with angle to his backhand,

you'll notice he has a shot to hit an angle on now.

Look how far out he is.

This is a perfect opportunity for him

to hit a sweet,

sweet angle over here.

If

Mads had tried to hit an angle

from this area of the court more through the middle,

then the angle wouldn't have been as good,

and then it doesn't make

Simon move as much.

So, it's definitely better to wait until you get your

opponent to hit a ball actually towards the sideline,

and as long as you're balanced,

you do not want to hit an angle here if you're off balance.

But you can see

that Mads is on his front foot,

so

he's in a position

where he can hit an angle because he's balanced.

He's not struggling on this ball.

So, just keep that in mind that if you're not balanced and you're moving out wide,

just play the ball deep cross-court or deep through

the middle or even high down the line.

So, now watch this angle here.

Lots of spin on it.

The ball

actually lands,

the net's gonna block it a little bit,

but the ball actually lands way inside the service box.

So, he hit this ball like a passing shot.

You want to think about dipping it like a passing shot,

even playing mini tennis.

Sometimes, I tell my high-level students,

"Hit a lot of spin with top spin and try to

land it inside the service box and get that feel."

Many players don't have the feel

and then the ball ends up landing

deep cross-court here and it really doesn't do a whole lot.

So, practice landing that ball inside the service box.

Now,

something else that I want to show you technically.

So, if we look at

Mads' backhand here,

he's got a beautiful one-hander.

You'll notice a couple of things.

One,

he's on his front foot and he's stepped across his body.

A lot of coaches say never step across,

but on a one-hander,

it's actually quite natural

to step across,

so don't worry about that too much.

You'll also notice that his grip is pretty far over towards the backhand,

so it's easy for him to hit topspin

If he had a continental grip,

this would be more difficult to hit angle,

he might have to go to a slice here.

Now,

let's

fast forward this one frame at a time.

Look at his off-hand,

really helping him with balance,

okay?

And it really doesn't flail too far back away from his body,

but what I really want you to notice is look at that finish.

Look at that finish.

Part of it's because of the grip,

but you'll see

the strings are facing in the direction of where he wants the ball to go.

And then as this goes forward,

look how the strings are still facing at this point,

still facing in the direction of where he wants the ball to go,

and he uses what I call the "French flair."

He turns that hand over like the French do,

and that's how he gets that added topspin.

So, you want to add that French flair at the very end,

but make sure

when you do that,

that you extend first.

A lot of players don't extend when they use that French flair.

So, let's go forward,

excuse me,

a little bit more.

Notice when

he finishes,

he squares up a little bit,

not a lot,

but he squares up enough,

and then

look at where the racket is still.

The ball's about to go over the net and the racket is still in this position.

He hasn't brought it down to the ready position yet.

So,

this is an awesome position to model

when you're wanting to hit this backhand angle.

Just a little some technical footwork stuff that you can take a look at

as you're trying to beat the pusher,

you might as well know how to move and how to swing

as you're hitting this angle.

And, of course, he hits a great ball here,

and what I love about this is that remember Simon was back here

instead of running across the court because the angle was hit so steep and short,

he has to move up and reach for this low ball.

I'm gonna do that arrow again.

He has to reach.

He has to move up

It's got a mind of its own.

He has to move up

and reach for this ball.

And that's what we want.

We don't want Simon to be hitting this ball in his strike zone.

We want him reaching down

to his shoelaces,

by his shoelaces to hit that ball.

Look,

That ball's dropping and he's reaching for it,

and that's all because of the angle was hit so short.

He hit it so well,

the ball's popped up

and now Mads can just hit the ball to the open court.

I hope you got a lot of value out of this video lesson today.

And again,

if you use this one strategy

to hit angles,

to hit those angles against the pusher that's standing far behind the baseline,

you can completely

frustrate the pusher.

So, here's what I want you to do right now.

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