Hey Maks,
Good to see you playing a match, heres some notes I took whilst watching.
– Recovery after serve needs to be quicker. Stay low after serve, sometimes standing to tall and high after a serve.
– Play more wide to his forehand and bring him back into his backhand. Often your first ball went into his backhand, which he was able to put pressure on you by going into your backhand quickly. If you went wide to his forehand more, he would have been moving a lot more and struggled to keep up with you.
– You serve very well lots of variation and spin, one thing i think you should do is serve more float/no spin serves. When you do the reverse he was returning your spin and it was making it awkward for you. Also, I think if you serve long more often your shorter serves would be more effective, your opponent predicted you were going to serve short so he was ready.
– Sometimes you are stopping after each shot (ball watching) and standing high… look at 5.60 for example, after your first 2 strong backhands you should have now been ready to follow up with a strong forehand. Recovering quickly is important, set yourself up during the rally. After one or 2 backhands you want to be looking for that strong forehand of yours. Also going more forward on that forehand will help, you do this well at 6.33 good work Maks!
– Your first open up shots are effective, but I feel to many go into your opponents bat, find the opponents cross over point more.
– Watch at 9.59, notice how you come up on your last forehand, you need to get lower on your legs and transfer your weight forward into the ball and not up. This will help MASSIVELY.
Maks you have a great game, you have all the right shots and ideas, its just about bringing it altogether. You’re doing the right thing, playing lots of matches and really thinking about your game. I love it, the fact you’re sending me this video shows you are willing to learn, this is everything and key to success, the will to learn! Keep working on your movement, do lots of skipping and side stepping practice. Check out the fitness drills on the Academy and do them, it will help your game.
Simplify your game, at the moment when I watch you play its like watching Timo Boll… reverse serves, open ups etc.. this is great however there are times you need to keep the game more simple. Your opponent would have struggled a lot more if you did long fast flat serves and short serves with no spin. He was able to put a lot of pressure on you from your own spinny serves.
P.s it’s great to see your reverse is working well in a match now, you didn’t miss any, this was an issue you had before.
Hope this helps.
Keep up the good work 🙂
Dan
