Not everyone has the comfort of always having someone to practice tennis with. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re forced to practice tennis alone, don’t worry because you might be better off. There are plenty of ways to effectively practice by yourself. Let’s go over the most effective ones and learn how to do it all by yourself whenever you feel like training.
If you’re a beginner tennis player, it wouldn’t hurt to learn some of the best tennis drills for beginners that are designed to allow you to quickly progress to a more advanced player. This way, you will have the basics down and can freely practice tennis all by yourself.
Top 3 Ways to Practice Tennis Alone
It’s often much better to practice alone because you can take things slowly and at your own pace. You also have the comfort of not feeling ashamed when you fail, as no one will be there to see you until you get better. So, here are three amazingly effective ways to practice your tennis skills alone.
Use a Ball Machine
Without a doubt, a tennis ball machine is the best way you can practice tennis alone and improve rapidly. If you have access to a tennis ball machine, you can freely skip the rest of the methods we have on this list and stick to only this one.
These machines can be set to throw the ball according to your skill level. So, when you master one speed you can increase it and try harder to become faster in tennis and return even more aggressive balls. The tennis ball machine practice method is the best because it’s scalable and allows you to increase the difficulty level as you progress.
Also, if you’re wondering how to practice forehand and backhand in tennis alone, the ball machine is going to be the best way to do so. You can’t really self-feed a backhand easily, as it will get tiring pretty quickly. But, with a ball machine, you have time to prepare for any type of tennis grip or swing you wish.
Use a Tennis Wall
The next best thing after the ball machine is a tennis wall with a net drawn on it. The net has to be the exact height of the original one on the tennis court. This mimics a real player returning the ball just like on a real tennis court.
The only difference between this method and the ball machine is that you have to self-feed the ball at first and hit it more accurately so that it bounces back towards you. This is also one of the best ways to practice tennis alone without a court.
When you think about it, this can be a much better practice method as it allows you to become more accurate and improve ball control. If you don’t have access to a professional tennis wall, you can easily improvise one yourself.
Simply find any wall that’s big enough, draw a line across it based on the height of a real tennis court net (3 feet 6 inches), and simply start hitting the ball above and as close to the line as you can without hitting it or going under it.
Practice Tennis Serves on the Court
The serve is often the most important shot in tennis. Getting good enough to score a perfect ace as often as you can requires a lot of practice. Best of all, you don’t need a partner to practice your tennis serves with. You can easily educate yourself on how to improve your tennis serve online and apply those methods on the court by yourself.
Get as many balls as you can and head over to the tennis court. Start hitting the types of tennis serves you want to improve and keep score of how many you’ve made and how many you’ve missed. You can try to learn how to hit a kick serve, flat, and a slice serve with a coach or a friend before practicing alone. After that, simply hit as many serves as you can until you start seeing progress.
Self-Feed Tennis Balls for Groundstrokes
Self-feeding the tennis balls to hit a groundstroke is a great way to practice tennis alone and improve your skills. Self-feeding the balls and hitting them allows you to improve accuracy by deciding freely where to aim the ball on the court.
This also improves your speed, as you have to throw the ball in front of you and immediately get in position to hit it. This drill doesn’t train you to return aggressive balls but it will help you become more accurate with your returns as you practice more and more.