Step across and punch is one of the most common instructions I hear players repeat back to me when they talk about volley technique. It’s also one of the worst pieces of advice you can receive at the net.
I see this all the time during lessons. A player comes up to the net. We check the grip. Continental. Good. Then the feed comes in at chest height, one step to the right or left, and the instruction is step across and punch the volley. Over and over again. Everything feels solid. The ball goes in. Confidence builds.
And then the lesson ends, and the player goes out into a real match.
That’s where the disconnect shows up. In real tennis, nobody feeds you the same comfortable volley again and again. Once you establish yourself as an attacking player at the net, your opponent’s number one goal is to not give you an easy ball. Volleys come at different heights, different speeds, different spins, and from different distances. Sometimes you’re right on top of the net. Sometimes you’re stretched back near the service line. Reaction time changes constantly.
Step across and punch works great in a controlled drill. It breaks down almost immediately under real match pressure.
What great net players do differently starts with understanding how much help they’re already getting from their equipment. Modern rackets and strings are designed to return a surprising amount of energy without you doing very much at all. We actually tested this once by placing a racket on the court in front of a ball machine and firing a ball straight into the strings without holding the racket. The ball still came back over the net.
That experiment says everything. If the ball hits the strings, the racket does a lot of the work for you. You don’t need to stab at the volley or punch it with your hand. In many situations, stepping in and adding force actually makes things worse. The more you try to do, the harder it becomes to control placement and feel.
This is where calmness becomes such a big part of good net play. Successful volleys are about precision, not power. If you understand how much energy is already coming back off the strings, you can relax your hand, quiet your arm, and let the racket do its job.
The second piece that separates great net players is how they move the racket. The racket does move through the ball, but not because the hand or wrist is snapping at it. The motion comes from bigger, stronger parts of the body. The hips, torso, and shoulders rotate together as one unit, and the smaller parts stay relaxed.
When you watch high level players in slow motion, you’ll often see the racket get pushed back slightly at contact. That’s not a mistake. That’s absorption. When a ball is coming at you fast and you’re trying to angle it or keep it low, you often want to take energy away, not add more. A tight hand makes that almost impossible.
Developing this kind of touch is what I like to call building your hand IQ. You need to learn how different grip pressures change the result of the volley. A firmer hand sends the ball deeper. A softer hand absorbs energy and keeps the ball shorter. Once you understand that, placement becomes much more reliable, even under pressure.
When I work with students on this, we start by doing almost nothing. Just holding the racket and letting the ball bounce off the strings. Then we experiment with different grip firmness levels and notice what changes. Only after that do we add movement, and even then the movement comes from simple body rotation, not punching or stabbing.
The biggest takeaway is this. If you build your net game around small, fast, tense movements, you’ll always be fighting inconsistency. If you build it around calm hands, smart body movement, and an understanding of how little effort is actually required, your volleys will hold up when it matters most.
That’s the difference between practice volleys and match ready volleys, and it’s why step across and punch holds so many players back.
Your coach,
Ian
