Footwork

I went to hit balls for the first time in a while yesterday with 2 work colleagues and was quickly shown how out of shape I have become. As I was laboring around the court I realized the importance of footwork. In my opinion one of the first things to go when your fitness drops is your footwork. It is also my opinion that one of the most important things on the court is footwork. Your footwork affects so much of your game. It affects your swing, your balance, your movement, your positioning and much more. My footwork was lazy (primarily because of inactivity) thus my strokes were slow and inaccurate. I sprayed the ball all over the court and I never really felt like I struck the ball well. If we had played a match I certainly would have found myself out of position in the points. The more you are out of position the more ground you have to cover. The more ground you have to cover the better shape you have to be in. You get the idea, solid footwork is essential. Roger Federer has the best footwork on tour. It is not a coincidence that his game looks so effortless and his footwork being so sound. Federer has the knack of making the difficult shots look easy, the reason for this is because he is alway in the right place at the right time. He gets himself there with his great footwork. Next time you are watching a match focus on the players footwork. Rotate between games focusing on the each player. See if you can figure out who is controling the points/the set/the match by the movement and the footwork.