I played tennis a few times when I was young, but never anything serious
During 2020 we started playing casually just for fun, but quickly tennis started consuming almost 2 hours a day 6 to 7 days a week
Now 3 years later and I can tell you some of the benefits as well as the journey I went on.
Benefits
Some of the benefits that I personally noticed are:
- It’s fun! Just the act of hitting the ball and espcially when you hit a good shot is enjoyable
- Good exercise I lost about 20lbs and have become much healthier
- Making friends Met lots of people and made new friends in different cities on the tennis court
Improvement Journey
For me the number one thing is the amount of time aka “fun” I put into it. My hitting partner (wife) and I plaid almost every day and soon were hitting around 2 hours a day.
Forehand was the first thing to improve after a few months but still very inconsistent. Initially I used a one hand backhand but was trying to hit too hard with improper technique and ended up with a severe case of tennis elbow that lasted almost 2.5 years. I then switched to a 2 hand backhand and had a basic backhand going in a few months. Then you have all the other areas to work on such as volley’s, overheads, lobs, footwork, serves, and returns.
The shots I neglected the most were the serve and return of serve. Around year 2 I started seriously working on these but I would say they are still the weakest part of my game.
How much did we improve? In year 2 we would occaisonally hit with an ex d1 level college player and could hang from the baseline albet not as good as he is.
Weakness continues to be gameplay IQ, doubles play, serves, return of serve, and somewhat weaker on volleys in doubles.
Due to the benefits of tennis as I mentioned in the beginning I would not change a thing and whether I continue to improve or not will make tennis a life long game I enjoy.
