It’s a sunny, brisk day that had birthday parties and work obligations preventing us from having a quorum for the ladies drill group. We still made it work and I think everyone got something useful out of it.
*I have no idea if I used the word quorum correctly but it’s a fun word.
I continued the normal routine of starting with dinks but I changed the drills, using a game from the clinic I attended on Sunday. I couldn’t do it exactly like I wanted because I didn’t have the correct props but I improvised and everyone seemed to like it.
People were still able to focus on dinking but they had targets and tasks in order to prevent giving up extra points. We played 2 games, each with slightly different rules, and we rotated around each time, seeing different styles of dinking with each game.
Of course I wanted them dedicate some work focusing on drops. I moved the targets over to the corner and had them do cross court drops. I was worried balls would be flying everywhere but it was pretty controlled and seemed to be successful. I could have spent more time on drops but I decided just to give them a hint of it and move on to the next drill.
Because I had 3 people in each group I decided to feed them balls in 3 spots on the court. Baseline drives, transition drops, lob from the kitchen. The lob is tricky because even though they aren’t on the move, I wait until they get there, it isn’t a super realistic scenario. But almost every time I ask them to do a lob someone says something like I never practice lobs. So I figure any practice is better than no practice.
We played the kitchen game (every third has to be in the kitchen) and everyone did well with it this time. I played in so I was returning the ball fairly hot but they still made a drop happen.
The group after us cancelled so we had some extra time and played a game they called Mortimer. It was fun because 6 people were involved. Each team of 2 had a Mortimer, who was required to stay behind the baseline. Mortimer could play after the initial return of serve. It was pretty wild because almost all of the shots Mortimer took were surprise shots. The opponent would think they won a point and there was Mortimer hitting the ball back. If one of the 2 players on the court lost the point they traded places with Mortimer.
It was really fun and generated a lot of laughs which was a perfect ending to a good drill session.
