Sandy FarquharsonFounder at The Padel School | Elevating Padel Players' Performance

One big mistake club players make? 👇🎾

17 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:13

In this monologue, Sandy Farquharson explains a common tactical error among club‑level tennis players: over‑adjusting their game plan after witnessing a single spectacular, high‑risk shot. He illustrates how a successful aggressive smash can cause players to abandon previously effective strategies, such as serving and volleying with proper court coverage, and instead chase low‑percentage shots like angled topspin returns. Farquharson also highlights the psychological pitfall of giving opponents excessive respect—whether due to reputation (e.g., Spain’s team) or a few winning points—leading to premature point‑finishing attempts and missed opportunities. The overall message is to maintain balanced decision‑making, stick to core tactics, and avoid letting isolated successes dictate future play.

Chapters

Yeah, I think what happens is club players, they play a match and early in the match they might feed a ball and someone hits a big aggressive smash which may have been high risk but it ends up pulling off and they end up winning the point. I can't ever lob there again. Exactly. Unbelievable smash. The opponent goes, oh, I've got to now hit my passing shot through here. Or a big one we find is we tell players, right, serve and volley, come to net, concentrate on your court position so that you're covering the line, you're covering the middle. And they go, well, what about that shot with the angle where the returner hits a fast topspin cross towards the fence? And we say, right, if they go gone for it, great, well played. You know, either you're making your serve a little bit too easy, or if you've hit a good serve and they've gone for it, see if they can do it again and again. It's a low percentage shot, but all it takes is for the opponent to do it well once and then they go, oh, we can't do that anymore. And then they try and hit their serve faster and they try and cover that gap, but they leave other gaps open. And therefore, the decision-making side of things— and I think that we had this experience when the GB team, when we played against Spain— I think players give their opponents too much respect, either based off reputation, in this case with Spain, or based off one or two winning shots or one or two results against other people. And actually, really, you come away and say, well, we could— we were in that match. We could have been in that match if we hadn't have given too much respect and we tried to finish the point too early.