Improper Tennis
There is a conversation I have found myself paying more attention to with players, usually after a match where the feeling should be simple. They competed well, won new kinds of points, and made the opponent uncomfortable.
Then the comment from someone watching arrives beside the result.
Maybe they sliced too many forehands. Maybe the serve looked strange. Maybe they used a drop shot and lob pattern. The player may have been solving the match, but suddenly the question becomes whether they were solving it correctly.
“I am winning more, but people keep telling me I am doing tennis wrong.”
That sentence stays with me because it carries more than a technical correction. It can begin to sound like, “Your success does not fully count, because you did not achieve it in the proper way.”
The Picture of Proper Tennis
Tennis has a strong visual culture. We know what a forehand is supposed to look like. We know what a serve is supposed to resemble. The images are everywhere: lessons, slow-motion videos, academy courts, clips, and professional highlights.
Those references can be useful. But there is a risk when the picture becomes stronger than the observation.
Sometimes we see the shape of a shot before we see what the shot is doing.
A sliced forehand keeps landing deep and low, and the opponent keeps mistiming it. A serve looks close to a pancake motion, but the returner is late and cramped. A drop shot and lob pattern may look too simple, even though it is the pattern the opponent dislikes most.
Sometimes “improper” does not mean ineffective. Sometimes it means the tennis in front of us does not match the tennis we expected to see.
This pressure does not usually come from one place. It comes from the friend who says, “You cannot keep playing like that,” the club player who says, “It works now, but better players will punish it,” the coach who wants to fix it before it becomes a habit, and the online video with one clean version of the stroke. None of them necessarily mean harm, but the player may receive the combined message differently: you are not really playing tennis properly.
What Is The Shot Doing?
Before calling a shot wrong, I think we can ask a more patient question: what is it doing in the actual game this player is playing?
- Is it making the opponent move forward?
- Is it changing rhythm?
- Is it creating uncertainty?
- Is it exposing something the opponent does not yet solve?
These questions do not make the shot perfect. They give it the respect of being understood before being corrected. If opponents are not solving it, then it is currently part of the player’s solution. It may not remain enough forever, but there is information inside it.
“A working solution is not automatically a finished solution. But it is still a solution.”
That distinction lets us stay curious without becoming careless. It lets us help the player develop without asking them to apologise for something that is already helping them play.
The Future Opponent
One of the most common arguments against improvised or unusual tennis is the future opponent: “Against a really good player, that will not work.”
Sometimes this is true. A stronger player may attack the floating slice. A better returner may read the serve. A faster opponent may reach the drop shot and turn the point around. There are real reasons to keep developing, but an imagined future opponent should not automatically overrule the reality in front of us.
A player might be competing at a level where most opponents cannot handle the awkward serve, the low slice, the strange rhythm, or the simple pattern. Through those tools, they may be learning confidence, problem-solving, and competitive identity.
A future limitation is not the same thing as a current problem.
When the limitation becomes real, the game will often show it. The slice may sit up. The serve may stop creating weak returns. The drop shot may become predictable. That is a good moment to develop, but even then the answer does not have to be erasure. Maybe the unusual thing becomes part of a wider game.
What Gets Lost
The cost of calling a player’s tennis improper too quickly is not only technical. The questions they carry onto court may quietly change.
Before, they may have been asking:
- What is my opponent struggling with?
- What happens if I change height or speed?
- Where do I feel safe?
- What can I try next?
After enough criticism, the questions can become more anxious: is my forehand ugly, is my serve wrong, am I only winning because people are bad, do I need to look more like a real tennis player?
That shift worries me because it moves the player’s attention away from solving the match and toward defending their identity. I want players to listen to coaches and keep developing, but I also want them to feel that their own experience on court counts as evidence.
“The player’s experience on court is not the whole truth, but it is part of the evidence.”
Before We Call It Improper
Tennis can be beautiful partly because there are so many ways to solve it. Some players overpower. Some absorb. Some disrupt. Some build. Some improvise. At club, beginner, junior, and adult-learning level, that variety may be how people find a way into the game.
So when a player starts winning with a shot that looks unusual, maybe our first response does not need to be correction. Maybe it should be curiosity.
What does this shot give them? What does it take away? Who does it trouble? When does it stop working? What could we add, so the player becomes more adaptable without losing the solution they have already discovered?
You do not need to prove that every shot you hit is technically perfect. You do not need to defend every unusual solution forever. But you also do not need to apologise for finding ways to compete. Let the game help show what needs to evolve next.
Until then, maybe we should be careful with the word improper. Sometimes it describes something that is not helping enough. But often, it may only describe something that does not yet look like the tennis we expected to see.
You might also enjoy Technique Is Not a Shape to Copy and Why I Write Without Absolutes.