Tennis Ball Machine: An Overview
Sunday, May 31st, 2009A tennis ball machine is a wonderful way to advance and improve your tennis game. Not only will you better your strokes, but you can get a wonderful work out too! Tennis has been a part of my life for years and I have ball machines an un-placeable part of my game.
A tennis ball machine is designed to aid in a players development. They are a terrific automatic training aid that can feed tennis balls with precision to wherever you tell it to on the court. They have the ability to control the speed, spin and height of the feed. In most cases the ball machine will oscillate, or move back and forth forcing the player to move and hit the ball.
Regardless of your level of play, you will benefit from the use of a ball machine. They are not meant as a substitute for a coach or an instructor, but they are a great supplement to help create a consistent, dependable, well struck stroke. Repetition is the key to your success, you need to hit a lot of balls.
Your tennis coach may use a ball machine to enhance your lesson, as it will allow them to concentrate on you and not the feeds. With a ball machines ability to feed a great variety of balls, you are not limited to working on just one stroke. In fact, a ball machine can help develop just about any stroke with the exception of the serve.
Generally, tennis ball machines are put together well and typically come with a warranty and service. Ball machines will vary in price from a few hundred dollars to upwards of several thousand dollars. The price will really come down to the different features and options you select.
So, it is important that when you go to buy a machine you ask yourself some basic questions. If you are a beginner your requirements now, will be very different than in the future, so keep that in mind. Other things to think about are, do you need a transportable machine, a battery operated machine or a pneumatic (electric) machine, and of course how much does it cost?
Furthermore, the ball machines will come with a variety of options and you want some of those. I encourage you to get one that can vary the speed of the ball feed as well as oscillate. A ball machine that oscillate will really help you work on your foot work. Another great feature is one that can vary the depth of the ball it feeds and apply different spins. This is a great feature, because as your game develops you will be met with players that have all of these abilities.
There are very basic machines out there, that are inexpensive, but they are extremely limited on what they offer. You are likely to outgrow them rapidly. There are tons of machines on the market, many of which offer you the features we talked about. Now your job is to go find the perfect tennis ball machine!