4 Tips to STOP Missing Those EASY BALLS

We've all been there, and it is incredibly frustrating when you get into a position and you miss an easy ball that you know you shouldn't. And very often it's not your technique. In this video, we're going to give you 4 areas to focus on to avoid you missing the easy ball. I'm sure you can all picture this where you set the point up brilliantly, you hit a fantastic shot in the corner, you get an easy ball, it just comes over the net, you're going in for the finisher and you end up hitting in the net or in the glass, and it is so frustrating. Your partner is holding their head in their hands and your opponents are laughing, thinking they've got away with it. Before we get into the tips, my name is Sandy Farquharson, founder of The Padel School. We've developed a platform that helps thousands of players incrementally improve their game with focused training, and we've worked in person with players right the way from beginner, their first time on a court, up to 2 national level players over the last 15 years, so I am sure that I'll be able to help you make less mistakes and not miss as many of these easy balls. The first tip is focus on your footwork. So often the ball comes over slow and so players move slowly, like the ball comes and they think, oh, I only need to take one step because it's so slow, and they end up being out of position and swiping at the ball when really this is a time to focus on that footwork. And it's almost like micro steps. You're taking all these adjustment steps to get round the ball, to get yourself in the best position possible. The ball is slow, so there's no excuse for you not to be in a good position here. And so much of that is the footwork and adjustment around the ball. Now, if you want to improve your footwork in general, there's loads of things that you can do off the court to improve foot speed and sharpness and being on your toes. We've actually got a course, Faster Feet for Paddle, They're follow-along videos, 4-minute, 8-minute, 12-minute videos where I'm going through footwork exercises. You can sign up to padelschool.com, you can get access to that straight away and immediately start working on that off court so you don't need to waste your on-court time, and that will help you be faster on the court. But here it's around being fast and doing lots of little adjustment steps when the ball is slow and easy. Tip number 2 is Get a stable base on the contact. If you've got the time, there's no reason you should be off balance. So you've done the little steps and now you set, set your feet when the ball has bounced and they're in a position so that you hit. If you are not moving with the feet and then you end up leaning and rushing and you're off balance, more than likely your swing contact won't be consistent. So tip number 1 was the fast feet. Tip number 2, stabilize the base nice. Doesn't have to be a really wide base, it can be shoulder width but make sure the feet are planted when you hit that contact. Now, this is obviously very different if the ball comes fast or it, it's off a tricky shot or it comes off the fence. You want to have sharp feet and not hit a stable base too early, but here the ball is easy to read, it's slow. Set your base just before you're going to swing and make contact. Tip number 3 is focus on the ball right up till contact. Because a clean contact is what you want in this scenario, particularly if you want to be accurate and finish the point. So the ball is bounced, you've set the base, watch the ball right up onto the racket. Try and hit the ball in the middle of the racket for most of your shots, and particularly here if it's an easy ball, but watch it right up onto the contact. If that's something that you know you need to work on, you can practice that within the match. It's great to practice that within a warm-up or within drills. You can actually even do this off-court as well. Again, we've designed course, Ball Control, where you can do loads of exercises off the court at home practicing your grip and practicing ball control and watching the ball right onto your racket so that you can be consistent every time. But here it's really important that you watch it right onto that racket. If you end up not watching it and watching your opponents or getting distracted, it's very easy to not hit the center of the racket and therefore make a mistake because you haven't had a clean contact. The fourth tip is mental focus. Now you're in this position and it's easy for me to say, oh, just concentrate, concentrate on the ball and you should get it in. That is also true. But what I want you to do is next time you come up to this is get to a position and say to yourself, I want to hit this as a very good setup. Instead of thinking to yourself, I want to hit this as a winner, say to yourself, right, I've hit a good shot, they're in trouble now, I've created a space on that court, I'm going to hit one more setup. And get your fast feet into position, set the base, watch the ball onto the racket, and hit a good setup. And if you think of it as a setup, often your head is still within the point and you're still focusing on the point and how you can win and strategize for the point. And it's easier for you to be more consistent when you come up and you say, oh, this is the finisher. It's almost like the finish line is just there. All you need to do is tap it away and you're done. And it's very easy to lose concentration on that shot. So when he gets that position, think of it as a good setup for the next one that you might finish. And it may be the case they may get it back, in which case the ball may come back easier again. Think of it as one more setup. That is what paddle is essentially, is a series of setup shots that trying to put your opponent under pressure until you can eventually use one of them to win it. An important thing to remember when it comes to missing this easy ball is that It happens to everyone. When I'm commentating for Rebel TV at the Premier, you see players coming up and then hitting the smash and it clips the top of the racket and it gets sent into the stadium. This happens regularly at the pro level. I don't mean regularly for one player in a match, but regularly pros are missing an easy ball. So you can do it too. Don't be a perfectionist and think you can never make a mistake because then you're going to get frustrated within your game. It happens to everyone. The other thing is that Once you've hit it and you've made that mistake, you can't fix it, you can't change it, right? You've just got to press reset and get on to that next point. Let us know down in the comments if you struggle with the easy balls or you know someone that does. Please do share this video over. But the real key is around the footwork, getting in position, and good ball control. Those are two courses that you get when you sign up for the Padel School membership. You get access to those two courses They're all exercises that you can practice off the court. I'll put the link to the platform up here, but head there if you want to improve your game and never miss an easy ball again. Well, I say never, it may happen.