If you ever attended any tennis coaching at all, you would, after a while, tend to associate coaching with the feeding of balls – whether it be from the basket, ball feeder, or hand-thrown – so much so that tennis coaching becomes synonymous with ball feeding drills.
As such, I have met some who question the value of coaching claiming that it is untrue to the tennis experience for rarely in a game or a live rally situation, you would be receiving such “easy” balls. There is certainly some truth in that sentiment, and Roger Federer once remarked that he too was not the biggest fan of “basket feeds” (but to be fair, also highlighted that it aided in ball timing and creating intensity1), but then again why do coaches still do it?
Is it because they have nothing better to do, or merely using drills as a lazy cover-up to avoid the hassle of rallying with students? Sad to say, this might be true of some coaches (yikes), and the temptation strong, but done rightly, basket feeds (here now referring to all ball feeding feeds as mentioned above) can provide immense value to your game development but it should never be the end-all. Here are three benefits of basket feeds – and (later:) where it should lead to:
1. Basket feeds help create a controlled learning environment.
The ultimate value of basket feeds, I believe, lies in its prowess in controlling one’s training environment for the sake of honing a particular skill or set of skills. In other words, basket feeds create an environment conducive to specific learning purposes – be it the learning and/or unlearning, and honing of skills, of building intensity – without extraneous factors that might otherwise distract, overwhelm and hinder progress. Imagine first learning the steps to hit the forehand with a topspin ball coming at you at various speeds and heights – the process and result, needless to say, would be invariably vexing and futile.
Basket feeds if administered rightly with intention and with the right ball conditions, would help one to not only focus on the particular skill set(s) but also (this is so important) to experience some measure of success. For how demoralising it will be to attain 0/100 tries of attempting a certain movement and feel for the ball – this will certainly be a surefire way for people to quit tennis and for tennis to gain a bad rep.
On the other hand, if one has mastered a certain basket-feed drill (e.g. >90/100 successful tries) and the activity becomes too easy, the level of difficulty of the drill can always be scaled up to make it more challenging for the learner (e.g. increasing the intensity of the feed, feeding a topspin ball instead of a flat ball, etc) – such is the adaptability and scalability of basket-feed drills for player development.
2. Basket feeds help you create good habits faster.
Sure, you can create good habits by just rallying or playing a tennis game all the time, but because the conditions change all the time, the amount and frequency of repetition you need and receive for the conversion of a certain stroke movement or skill to habit is lower and thus taking you longer to cultivate good habits.
In fact, from experience, more often than not, those players who mainly rely on live rallying or playing tennis games very rarely have good and sound technique but on the converse, have many bad habits that hinder the “flow” of their tennis. Basket feeds, then, can serve as a catalyst and even the solution for cultivating and accelerating good habit formation.
3. Basket feeds can aid in confidence building.
The progressive “success” one experiences in basket feeds done well can certainly be a confidence booster for one to eventually apply that new movement to a live rally or a game situation. However much tennis is technical, it is still largely a “mind game” in the sense that one’s confidence and attitude towards one’s game is positively correlated to one’s performance. Therefore, any form of confidence boost is always a welcome addition.
And finally for the great reveal (as you might have guessed)…
Basket Feeds should always serve and lead to the Live Rally.
The “Live Rally” – and particularly from the baseline – is when two to four opposing players hit a tennis ball(s) across the net to one another in a “live” situation where the ball movement is determinant on how the player hits it. This is what, to state the obvious, tennis is, and all basket drills need to serve the purpose of enabling players to be proficient in hitting in a “Live Rally”, and eventually progressing from basket drills to receiving and hitting “live” balls. So, do spend time on basket feeds (from hand thrown balls to ball feeder machines), but not too much and for too long, for the “live rally” is what tennis is.
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