David Collins Interview: Volley Drills, 3 Fears at the Net, & Developing Doubles Players

0:00Welcome to the doubles only tennis podcast where you learn the best doubles lessons to improve your game and win more matches while getting to know some of the top doubles players and coaches on the planet. I'm your host Will Bochuk. This podcast, my weekly strategy newsletter and my website all focus on the goal of better understanding the sport of doubles and helping players like you improve faster through actionable advice that you can use in your very next match. My goal is to provide the best doubles resources in the world and to do that I study, analyze and work with players at every level of the game all the way up to the ATP and WTA tours. If you enjoy this podcast consider becoming a tennis tribe member to go even deeper and take your doubles IQ to the next level. Members get access to premium podcast episodes, weekly video lessons, monthly

1:01strategy webinars, courses, e-books, gear discounts and a lot more. Go to vtennis tribe.com slash memberships to see all the benefits and sign up. Here's today's episode. You're about to hear another conversation with a coach from Indian Wells. This time David Collins. He coaches John Pears and Michael Venus. Before I get to this podcast episode though, a couple of quick announcements. A lot of you have been reaching out wanting to attend some of the doubles camps. I've got two coming up in April. So number one is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It is going to be April 11th and 12th. It's only about a 30-minute drive from the DFW airport. So it's easy to fly in and out of regardless of where you live. You probably have a direct flight to DFW. And then I've got some hotel recommendations on the page, which I'll link to in the show notes. So you can click on that to learn more and to get signed up. Right now I believe last I

2:02checked I had eight spots available in that. So I do expect it to fill up the deadlines going to be coming up in the next week and a half or two weeks depending on when I release this podcast episode. And then another camp will be the following weekend in Miami. So if you live in the Miami area or wants to fly in for that, we're going to have an afternoon into morning session. The morning session is currently sold out. There is a wait list for that. If you want to sign up for it, the afternoon session does have some spots still available. But I expect it to fill up very soon. So again, I'll link to that in the show notes as well, so that you can learn more about that and get signed up. So let's dive into this episode today. Coach David Collins coaches John Pears, who won the Australian Open Mix doubles title this year and last year. So back to back champion. He also won the Olympic gold medal with Matt Ebtan back in 2024. David also coaches Michael Venus, who is a rolling

3:07Garros champion in men's doubles. And then he coaches two rising players, Emily Appleton on the WTA side and then Max Bayzing on the men's side. In this conversation, we chatted at the site in Indian Wells, so at the tennis garden there. And we talked about volley drills. He shares how to execute two different volley drills, one of which he actually performed with me in front of our group and sort of embarrassed me because my volley technique wasn't up to the ATP standard that he is used to. We also discussed his story, how we got started in tennis, how we got into coaching. Then I asked him about the three fears that he says most club level players have at the net. So he describes each of these three fears and you probably have at least one of these. And then he talks about how to overcome each of the fears that players have at the net. After that, we talked about how to develop a club doubles player. He actually manages a club back in the

4:10UK. So he has a lot of experience working with doubles players at obviously every level of the game, but club levels specifically is what we kind of dive into. And then at the end, we talk about how to make doubles more popular. So this is a really fun conversation. David does a really good job of explaining the drills in a way that you'll be able to kind of walk away and go and execute them on the court with your doubles partner or with your coach back at home. So I think you're going to get a lot out of this and really enjoy this conversation. So without further delay, enjoy this conversation with coach David Collins. Hey, everybody. I'm here back at Indian Wells this time with coach David Collins coach. Welcome. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming on. So you coach John Pierce here and then Michael Beatis as well. What did you do today in practice? So today, we had solo practice. So it was just John. We had a practice

5:11partner. We had Marcelo Mello because we played points all this week and because of the day before the match, we just did a practice session, extended warm-up, some specific things that needed to be worked on ahead of the match tomorrow, whatever he'll play with Alex Diminar. Okay. So you're doing I've had in specific drills and patterns that you think you need against this team tomorrow, because you still have them, is that all right? So yeah, we've scouted the team. So some of it was to do with playing our strengths to their weaknesses and also just making sure that we're doing the best that we can do with our with our job. So they're making sure that surfers are presented as high, making sure making a lot of returns and then some specific volley patterns. But yeah, it's more like an extended warm up, but with specific things added on throughout the session. And then what's the status on Michael Beatis? And he's been out for a little bit. Yeah. So Michael had surgery in October after it getting injured at

6:16the U.S. Open. So he hasn't played tournament. He's been off. So he'll use a protective ranking and he'll come back in Miami next week and play with Yuki Bambri. And he's, yeah, he's done great, really, really pleased with the work that he's put in and proud of the work that he's put in over the winter period. There's been a challenging time, but he's done really well to get to get through that and to be back on the match court in 10 days time or so awesome. It'll be great to see him back as well. So we're here in Indian Wells. A few days ago, we had a group of club players and you were nice and up to come spend some time with me and chat with them. And like I was saying earlier, if I had known you were going to embarrass me with this volley drill, maybe we wouldn't have brought you in, but all jokes aside, describe the volley drill that we did the other day or the, I don't even know if you'd call it a drill, we did it in this living room, setting in a hotel room.

7:19So yeah, it was, it's trying to emphasize the point that on volleys, especially the forehand volley, to keep your hand as far in front of the body as possible so that you don't turn away from the contact. So what we did, we had you standing facing me with a racket, first of all, and I fed you a ball. And the first reaction for you was to turn your right shoulder. So the racket went back away from the, the ball, the impact point that we wanted. So you went back away from the contact point, and you had to turn back to go back to the contact point. So you, you wasted time in that situation. And generally, you're going to catch the ball a little bit late. And there's too much movement with the racket, especially with the ball is coming faster. So then we took your hand off the racket. And I asked you just to catch the ball in front of you with your, with your right hand, with your, with your fingers, facing up, not your fingers, facing down. So almost in the same position as you would hit a forehand volley. And you didn't move your shoulder at all. You just kept your hand in front and you

8:19reached forward to, to catch the ball. So then we put the racket back in your hand. And we gave you a couple so that you could volley with your hand in front with the racket in your hand. And then the final stage, the tough stage of that drill is, I will either say volley where you have to volley the ball or I'll say catch where you have to catch the ball. So you have to let go of the racket grip and push your hand forward to catch the ball. But you, you finished much better than you started. I struggled a bit at the beginning. There was a lot of pressure with everyone watching as well. Wasn't expecting to have to perform in front of everyone. But yeah, that was such a good drill because technique is not something I focus on a whole lot. Right? Like I specialize in strategy because it's what I'm more just interested in and love. But obviously there's a place for technique. There's no doubt about it. So I love little drills like that to learn. And now I can give them and kind of take that to some of my own players. So I thought that was really cool and wanted to share that. Tell us your story. How did you get

9:23started in tennis to kind of where you are now? So I played a little bit as a pro. Wasn't good enough or didn't play for long enough to to be able to get to where you need to be to make a living out of the sports. So then I turned to coaching first of all at a recreational level. And then as time has gone by, I've combined the two with pro players as well as the club players at the club I teach at in the UK, which is called St George's Hill on tennis club. Big club. We've got 34 courts. We've got a good program there, both adults and juniors. And I work with four pro players there as well as looking after the coaching team that we've got and managing the coaching program. So the U2 you mentioned already, John, peers and Mike Venus. And then the other two is Emily Appleton, who's around 350 in singles and around 75 or 80 in doubles and Max Basing, who's primarily playing singles. He graduated from

10:26Stanford in the summer and he's now close to 300. So I have those four players, which is good. There's a real contrast with all of the work that I do at the club with the pro players and also the club members as well. The club members also we get to join in sometimes with the pro's, which they really like. And then again, the contrast of having both male and female players and also singles and doubles. So it's across the board, it's quite a broad spectrum of coaching, skill with those different players. So I want to move to practice on Instagram. I have this video that I posted every six months or so. And it's you feeding to John on the practice courts here at Indian Wells from a couple of years ago. And John is in the middle of the service box, probably a little closer to the net. And you are feeding from the baseline and you just rip

11:27balls at him. And then you shift over a little bit and then you hit a few more balls and then you shift it over again and then you hit a few more balls. So describe the purpose of that drill and kind of how it applies to the match court as well. Yeah, so that yeah, I remember that drill. And I've seen it a few times on your page and it's good. There's some good comments that come that come underneath. But that drill primarily is for John or the service partner. It was John in this case, being in the service partner position. So with the serve coming from different areas. So either the serve would be wide. So I'd be feeding from outside the alley or close to the outside tram line or I'd be feeding from the middle of the baseline to replicate a body serve or I'd feed close to the center mark on the baseline to replicate a serve that's gone down the tee. And then John will be covering a specific area. He'll either be covering his side of the court or he'll be making a poach. So in the feed will be determined by the pattern that we've arranged.

12:28I'm not just randomly hitting balls and hoping he's going to get it because at the speed that the ball is being fed, we could just put the ball past him in a whole double score because it's just him. So it's sort of within his range, maybe at the extent of his range, right at the right at the end of it on some of the balls. And we also will throw in a lob so he doesn't just get comfortable sitting on top of the net, knocking balls off. But again, it goes back to the drill that we did with with you and I in the in the lounge of the room, keeping his hands in front when the ball is especially coming very fast because if as soon as you take the racket away from the impact, you're going to be in trouble. So when you're doing that drill and this is one of my favorite drills to do with club players too because they never work on these angled volleys right all the time when they're working on volleys, they're practicing hitting back to their doubles partner. So then they get out to the match court and they coach or make the right move and then they volley back to the baseline player. But when you're doing this, how do you think about the reset for John? I'm always

13:35some of the time, I feel like I'm not that worried about the movement pattern, but other times, I want them to get the movement pattern and the volley. How do you kind of balance that? So we'll time each feed will be timed with his split step. So there's two ways we can feed it either. It'll be just a drop feed. So he'll move forward, split step and then I'll feed or he'll wait for me to bounce the ball, then he'll split step and then I'll see that. There's two different timings because he's got to get used to different timings on the from the returner. If the returner is taking the ball earlier, obviously he's going to have less time to move at the net. If the returner is standing further back, like some of the singles guys do, he's going to have more time to make his move and he can't move too early because then they'll look to beat him down the line, maybe with the ball. But yeah, it's a good exercise. We will do that every single session, that drill just to try to make sure that there's enough numbers, enough volume on the service partner

14:38so that when they get on the match court, they're really sharp. Every ball that's come to them, they're either getting the ball off the court or if they don't get it off the court, they're finding the back end of the player at the baseline. Got it. Yeah, I call that the most important volley in tennis. That's one of the, I think I have like an Instagram kind of slide thing where I call it that because it is really like it's it's so important to have that first volley after the return. So I want to move on to a question. I asked you the other day and feel free to give the exact same answer. Unfortunately, we weren't recording it. But if I gave you a player, a club player today and said we have to make them as good as possible over the next 12 or 24 months, where would you start? So the first thing we do, we would have a look at them play to see you know how they play doubles. What game style do they have? Do they stay at the baseline? Do they stay at the baseline and lob? Do they like to return them volley? Do they like to serve

15:40where do they sit in the sort of spectrum of the game? And then once we've got an idea of where they play and where they're most comfortable, then we will look at how we can improve the areas that they're already good and then make the weaker areas slightly less of a weakness. So we get like a slightly higher base level and then the good things will try to make a little bit better. So how do you think about each of those? So there's the weaknesses. So like I don't like hitting back hands from the back of the court. Luckily in doubles, I can mostly run around my back hand, especially in my level, they're not hitting it quite as hard as these guys out here. So how do you decide if we're going to focus more on you know sharpening your strengths or kind of asking your weaknesses? So I think there has to be as much work done on both. A lot of the time some some coaches certainly at club level will focus just on things that the club player or recreational

16:46player are not very good at. So and then if you're not working on the strengths as well as the weaknesses, the strengths stop being so much of a strength. You've got to continue to sharpen the sword. I guess it's quite a good analogy because if you leave it alone, it's going to get blunt and then when you need to use the sword, it's not going to work for you. Right. That makes a lot of sense. So let's go through some of the net play stuff we talked about the other day. You said there were three fears and I feel like I've heard this from Louis and a lot of the kind of British coaches. So three fears at the net. So can you go over those? Yes, the three main fears for recreational players, club members would be firstly getting passed down the line. They feel like they're letting their partner down if they get passed down the line. But they don't feel like they're letting their partner down if they get beaten cross court with a ball because they've got their partner behind them as a backup. But we tried to get them as upset with the ball beating them cross court

17:47as they are with the ball beating them down the line. That's one of them. The other one is getting lobbed because generally the recreational players don't have a great overhead. So we do a lot of work with trying to get the members hitting a lot of smashes in each session because in recreational play, the lob is a key part and the final one is getting hit with the ball with the ball being hit hard straight at them. It doesn't happen a great deal because at recreational level, the ground stroke speed isn't particularly high. So the reaction speed will be relative to the ground stroke speed. It's not like you've got somebody like Mike Venus hitting forehands against a club member. That's not going to be a great match yet for people up there. But they would be the three biggest areas. And I think that's quite comedy. A lot of the British players, I'm sure that you've spoken to on the past. We've gone over those things as well with you. Yeah, for sure. I love I love hearing it from different people though because each time I hear something new and the thing I think I take away from you describing it is being just as frustrated, getting passed

18:53through the middle as down the line. I don't think I've heard it put like that before. I really like that a lot. I think that's one thing the listeners can kind of take away. I think they don't worry so much about it because the partner is standing behind them and they can get a ball. If they get passed down the line, the partner, assuming they haven't moved or signaled or planned a poach, where the player at the base line has moved behind them to get the ball, it's going to beat them down the line. But if we try to get them to sort of cover their territory, I like to put cones down or lines down on the court and tell them now you're a football or soccer goalkeeper. So if you can defend your goal and make sure no balls go through your goal, then then you're doing a great job up at the net. And then we just have to agree on the territory that they have to cover because it will be different for some players to other players based on the physical aspect of the player. If they're young and athletic and they can move pretty well, then the space that they're covering can be a little wider. If they're an older club member, their space is going to

19:55be smaller, but there'll still be consistent guidelines between the way the pros cover the court and the way the members cover the court. It just might be a slightly smaller area for the clubs. Yeah, that's one of the things that feel like a lot of club players maybe don't understand. And even, maybe even pros is that the game and the strategy and the tactics are all very similar. It's just happening so much faster out here. I do think the lob is more effective probably at the club level, but as you said, they're a little bit slower to get back. The overheads aren't quite as good. And the lob that Mike Venus hits is the same speed as the lob that a club player hits. Right, you can't hit a faster lob. So I think that's the one area that's kind of a difference. There's a few, because the service partners are so close now. So that you're trying to get as close as possible so that you can get the volley much easier to get

20:55the volley off the court if you're closer to the net. But that does leave you susceptible to a ball that goes up and back behind you. So you've got to make sure you're doing the work physically so that you are able to get back with, you know, two, three steps max to get to the service line. If you can get to the service line before the ball gets to the service line, you've got a pretty good chance of making the overhead. But if the ball beats you to the to the service line, you're going to be chasing the ball. And once you start chasing a lob, you're not in a great position. Right. So I want to shift to one final kind of topic here. And that is making pro doubles more popular. What have you seen change since your time on tour? And then what would you like to see going forward to help get more eyeballs on pro levels? That's a great question. But maybe I think that you know, the doubles guys work just as hard as the singles guys. They do spend just as much court time. But the rewards are nowhere near as big because the publicity around what they're

22:01doing is nowhere near as big as the publicity for the singles guys. So if you look at viewing figures for a singles match with some of the top guys playing. If you look at a doubles match with the top guys playing, it's not even not even not even comparable. And a lot of the time the doubles guys are stuck out on outside courts with not, you know, it's not well publicized. So if it's not well publicized, people are not going to come and come and watch. So it's almost a chicken and egg situation. You're not going to, the product's not going to grow unless you invest in the publicity of the product. There's, there's especially at this tournament, a lot more singles guys will play. But the main for me, the main thing is that the publicity around it because the doubles guys, you know, they're fantastic players. All of the top guys, you know, their skill set is unbelievable. It's very different to the to the singles players. But the majority of the world, tennis at club level play doubles, not singles. So it's strange that there could be a much better

23:04job done of marketing it, promoting it, making the players more visible, giving them more time on show courts, on bigger courts. Then the kick back from that is people know who they are, the publicity is greater. So I think that that could be one of the big things is the publicity side of it. Yeah, it could have kind of a snowball effect, but somebody has to get that ball rolling a little bit. Yeah, there has to be a desire to, for it, for it to happen. And at the moment, I don't think there is a desire from, yeah, from the, the tool to make it grow as much as possible. Right. What, where would you start? And also, would you make any rule changes to doubles? A lot of people say that they would like the servers partner to start behind the service line or switch to only one serve. Would you make any rule changes? I think, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't rule wise. I don't think there's an interesting one having almost, I think is,

24:10I'm not familiar with pickle, but I believe the service partner can't touch the ball. Is that right? In pickle ball? There's a similar rule and pickle ball. Yeah. So I don't, because how many doubles points end with the serve and service partner? Yeah, cleaning up at the net. How many times do you get an extended rally? And when there is an extended rally, the crowd of what crowd there are, depending on which court they're on, go crazy because they love to see an extended rally with, you know, quick hands, there's volley to volley, you know, quick reactions, you know, the crowd really enjoy that. So if you could extend the rallies by maybe either having, as you said, the service partner slightly further back, could you do it with one serve only so that the returner has more advantage. It's easier for the returner to get the ball past the service partner. So then the rally starts to extend. So I guess they're two ideas. But I don't think, well,

25:10I don't think it would change. Yeah. But I think the players also adapt when they adapt to situations. If the serve, someone's serving super fast, players get better at returning. If players are great at returning, the service partner has to get better at taking up good spots up at the net and cleaning up. Right. So whatever changes, there's always an answer to the question that's been asked. Yeah. And that's how it continues to evolve, I guess. Yeah. I think like without, I mean, without the marketing, these real changes won't matter anyways. Yeah. Right. Like if nobody's able to find it on TV or nobody's watching on the court, then it doesn't matter how excited it gets if there's no eyeballs on it. Yeah. Because for example, on a, you know, masters, every doubles is is televised or streamed or streamed at 500. It's streamed or televised. 250 is not that at that level of the game that don't. The only place you can find it are on

26:15gambling websites where they stream the match. So there is a camera on the court, you know, often the guys are playing because the singles guys have played on that court and it's been televised. So there is a camera, but the the tour for some reason doesn't want to publicize the doubles at 250 level. When I've asked them about it, the answer was because the product, the production of the product, not the product that they've got on the court, that the production would not be a suitable standard for them to to stream it because it would just be a fixed camera. That seems like a load of crap to me. It's strange. That was the answer I got. Well, I so I watch a lot of these matches from home because I can't come to all these tournaments and especially Australia, some of the outside courts, but like often the quality of the video, it's like you're looking through a fish bowl and the camera's way above the court. Yeah. And they stream those. Yeah. So like if that and it is being streamed to a gambling website. So just

27:21click, press the button to click the stream on. I don't know how difficult or easy that is, but the quality at some of the, at the Australian open is one thing out because it's the most recent major. Like the quality of those is really poor and they stream that. So like why is the quality, the quality is not any worse. Yeah, it's some of these other shows that that seems like they just don't want to deal with it. Yeah, it's just strange. That's frustrating. Okay, so last question for you. This popped into my mind something we talked about the other day. I think it was a question from one of the club players. They said, you know, we play a lot of leagues here in the states and a lot of times a captain is trying to figure out who to pair together. Yeah. And you talked about some of John's strengths and weaknesses and who's an ideal partner for him as an example. Can you share how you think about pairing together different double styles to make a great team at a club level? Yeah, at a club level. So yeah, club level. I think the most important thing is firstly,

28:24players have to play where they're comfortable. If they're not happy being up at the net and they don't volley very well, then stay at the baseline. There's no one to say you, there's no, you have to play at the net or you have to play at the baseline or you must always come to the net as a team together. If you're not great at volleying or you're frightened of getting here or you're worried about getting lobbed or passed down the line, then play to your strengths. So play where you are most comfortable firstly. But secondly, it's in a club environment. I think it's great to contrast skills. So if you've got one player that loves to be aggressive and loves to come to the net and to intercept a lot and compare them with a player who's very consistent from the baseline. So the person at the baseline can do all the work and the person at the net can take all of the credit rather than have maybe two net rushes or two players that like to both stay at the baseline. I think the contrast of one and the other is great. Nothing on the tour also. It's great to have that contrast with a team. Yeah, I feel like you see that on the tour too. You'll see

29:28teams make a deep run in a tournament who both have similar styles and against certain teams. It works really well and then they run into a team that it doesn't work well like if both players are, you know, we only have one mode and all we do is get to the net. Eventually you'll find a team that's good at lobbing or really good defensive back or something like that, right? Yeah, I agree. Awesome. All right. Well, this was a ton of fun, David. Thanks for coming on. Hopefully we can do it again and best of luck this week with John. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the doubles only tennis podcast. If you're interested in diving deeper into the world of doubles strategy, I've created tennis tribe memberships that allow me to bring you more podcast episodes, video lessons, webinars and other doubles content on a weekly basis without relying on paid ads. The lessons inside the membership will help you better game plan with your partner, optimize your practices and become the smartest player on the court. Go to vtennis tribe.com

30:31slash memberships to learn more and sign up. You can also join my free newsletter on our homepage where I share a new doubles lesson every week. If you want to connect, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook or contact me through our website. Thanks again for listening.