This section emphasizes the importance of making decisions as early as possible. Why is this important, because playing tennis is really all about time. Listen to this.

Tennis is a game that involves time, and what we want is a lot of time. We want to rush our opponents so they have little time, and we want a lot of time.

Now, that said, what specific shot allows us to make the earliest decisions while playing? The answer, you guessed it, the serve. The first drill you will see as an example of how to train early decision making while serving. We have set up numbered cones to designate a target direction, but note, and this is important to realize, note that the cone itself is not the target. Create target areas that can successfully be hit. Make them large enough so that the players can succeed. Take a look.

This section on decision making is geared towards helping your players simplify their choices and make up their mind as early as possible. So with the serve what easier situation is there then the serve in terms of make up your mind before you hit the ball. Too many times you ask your players, great serve, did you mean to hit to there? Sheepishly they say no, I didn't.

So let's see if Holly can call out the number where she is going to be serving, prior to contact, loud enough, that all of you can hear. Number one. Now, we are not aiming for the cone, we are aiming for the little zone around it.

Simple exercise but very powerful. Try it and you will be amazed how much harder that exercise might really be then it looked. Ideally, set up a target area around the bull's eye of the target to clearly define and set the goal of the exercise. Here is what it would look like.

You call out three or four. It may have to be the figure, and that's okay. Good shot, one out of two.

Not quite, right? There we go, two out of four. Let's give her a couple of more to hit the number three. Look at that, got the edge, three out of five, three out of six.

Let's see if she can hit above 50%. A little shallow, see, so maybe we make it bigger for her. The point is to make it large enough so that they can succeed.

Besides the serve, all other shots in tennis also require quick and early decisions.