We sat down with Angela Crossley, Head Coach of Angela Crossley Tennis Coaching, and the recipient of the 2014 LTA Coach of the Year who outlined three drills you can play with your friends and family to ensure you’re building consistency and your game is progressing at a steady level.

All the below drills can be played alongside your family and friends at your local tennis courts – so you have no excuses not to book a court and give them a go to help take your tennis game to the next level.

Magic Roundabout

This game is very similar to champion or king of the court. Four players stand on the court in a standard doubles format, with two players being labelled as the ‘champions’ and the other two the ‘challengers’. The challenger on the right serves the ball in to start the point and the rally.

If the challengers win the point, all players move round one space anticlockwise with the player who served in the previous round becoming a champion. If the champions win, they must run to the outside of the tramlines and back into the position while the challengers rotate one place, so the challenger who started on the left moves to the right to serve. This is an effective exercise to help practice your hitting consistency in a game-style format.

Racket and Ball 

This is an exercise that can be played between two or four players. You should agree before the game that the first team or player to 20 points wins, or you can increase that number if you’re looking for more of a challenge.

Each time a player hits a ball in, that’s classed as one hit. Players or teams should keep track of how many hits they make within the rally. For each completed rally, the winner will earn the same amount of points as shots they hit in the rally, while the 'losing' team will earn zero points.

The winner is the first player or team to reach the agreed target - super simple, but an incredibly effective way to find consistency in your hitting technique.

A doubles match with a twist

If you want to go back to basics you could simply play a doubles match, except you say that every point starts after a rally of four shots. You can have your opponent serve, you return and then begin your rally of four. Whoever hits the last shot in, wins the point. This is a fantastic drill to build consistency in your hitting and your serve by setting a minimum rally target.

If you’re not confident in your serve yet, you can use the service box or half of the court – you don’t have to both be on the baseline. When you’re getting to grips with play and learning, making the court area slightly smaller allows you to focus more on where the ball is going and hitting the return in to gradually build up your consistency.

All of these games can be applied to any shot you want to focus on building consistency on, whether that be a volley or a serve. For example, you could introduce a rule that states your serve has to land in before the rally can begin, and you have to have a rally of five – the person who lands the last shot in wins the point.

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