How to practice tennice with wall if you are alone?

1. Your serve often will get neglected when you can't find anyone else to practice with. This is actually the best time to work on your serve. I recommend that you buy a ball hopper (they make picking the balls back up so easy, and plus when you bring the arms down to use them as legs, you don't have to bend over to get another ball after every serve). With your ball hopper filled with tennis balls go and setup some targets at your local court and practice serving. You'd be surprised what an hour a day does for your serve. Check out the first link under "Sources"for a great online store where you'll be able to find a ball hopper.

2. Your volleys are also often neglected when you don't have anyone else to hit with. My personal opinion is that practicing volleys against a wall is more useful thanground strokes. Find a wall, give yourself about six feet from the wall and toss a ball against it. Volley and keep the ball "in play" and continue to get closer and closer to the wall. Your reflexes and your volleys will really improve with this. If you don't do it against a practice wall, then you can mark in chalk a line at 3 feet from the ground to give you an idea of the net.

3. Your footwork is something that can always be addressed, but it is often ignored totally. There are lots of drills that you can do that will help you "move towards the ball." The second link under the sources will take you to one such training resource. It's a special kind of ball that bounces unexpectedly. You'll want to toss the ball into the air, do a split step as it bounces (a split step is when you take a little hop and are ready to explode to another position), and try and catch the ball before it hits the ground again.

4. Your ground strokes are pretty difficult to work on alone. You can try hitting against a wall, but if you spend your time hitting against the wall and not against other players, you'll find that your "wall time" doesn't necessarily translate to good tennis. I remember that one summer, I spent at least an hour a day against the wall, and the next time that I hit with someone, I was spraying my groundies against the back fence. The reason was that during all that wall practice, I didn't have the normal feedback that a real court gives (how the spin will affect the ball's trajectory, how much power I'm putting on the ball, etc.)--all that the wall told me was how high over the net I was hitting. So, my advice is that if you decide to spend a lot of time hitting against a wall, try to spend as much time hitting with someone else. A better use of the wall is for volleys. A ball machine is a big investment. If you decide to buy one of those, do your homework and ask around before forking out the money for it.

My final suggestion is to check out the third link in the source list. The United States Tennis Association has put a "player finder" option on their website. There you'll be able to enter your zip code and the kinds of players you'd like to hit against, and it will give you some people's names. There is no substitute for a real person on the other side of the net.

I hope that helps!
Source(s):
http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/descpage…
http://www.gammasports.com/Gamma.cfm?Pro…
http://www.finder.usta.com/communitycent…

To put the tennis scoring system as simply as possible, one must win:
four points to win a game
six games to win a set
two (or, more rarely, three) sets to win a match
We'll call the players A and B.

By winning a coin toss or a spin of the racquet, A gets to choose one of the following:
serve
receive serve
choose an end of the court
have B choose
 Let's say A chooses to serve. B then gets to choose an end of the court. A may serve from anywhere behind his baseline between the right singles sideline and the center mark. The serve must be struck before the ball bounces, and it must land in the service box diagonally opposite  his. He gets two chances to get a serve in. If he misses both, he loses the point. If a serve that is otherwise good nicks the net on its way in, it is redone.

If A gets his serve in, B must return the ball, after exactly one bounce, into any part of A's singles court. A and B must then return the ball, after no more than one bounce, into one another's singles court until one of them misses.

 A will serve from the left side of his baseline for the second point of the game, and he will continue to alternate right and left for the start of each point of the game.

 Let's say A wins the first point. At the start of the next point, he must announce the score, his point total first: "15 - love." (Love = 0.)

B wins the next point: "15 all."

B wins the next point: "15 - 30."

A wins the next point: "30 all."

A wins the next point: "40 - 30."

 If A wins the next point, he wins the game.

 If B wins the next point, the score is "40 all," which is called "deuce." At deuce, one player must win the next two points to win the game. If, at deuce, A wins the next point, he has the advantage, and the score is called "ad in," which means server's advantage. If B had won that point, the score would have been "ad out." If the player having the advantage wins the following point, he or she wins that game. If the player with the advantage loses the point, the score returns to deuce.

With traditional scoring, games can go back and forth from deuce to ad over and over. The "No Ad" variation on the scoring within games allows for a game to be won by a margin of one point. Instead of "15," "30," and "40" used to note points, players may use "1," "2," and "3." At "3 all," the receiver may choose whether to receive in the left or right service box. The winner of that point wins the game.



At the end of the first and every odd-numbered game, the players switch ends of the court, and the player who served the previous game now receives serve. The server always begins a game by serving from the right. At the start of each game, he announces the number of games each has won, starting with his own score, for example, "3 - 2."

Once a player has won six games by a margin of two or more, he or she has won the set. If the score within a set reaches 6 - 6, the players may either continue to try to reach a margin of two (such as 8 - 6 or 9 - 7), or they may play a tie-break to decide the set. In tournament play, this choice will have been determined in advance, but recreational players often choose whichever option appeals to them at the moment.

In a standard "12-point tie break" (best of 12), one player must win seven points by a margin or two or more. The player who received in the game preceding the tie-break serves the first point of the tie-break, starting from the right. The other player then serves the next two points, the first from the left, then the second from the right. Each player continues serving two points per turn. Points are scored with counting numbers ("1, 2, 3 . . ."). When the point total reaches six and each multiple of six, the players switch ends of the court.

Starting a New Set

If the previous set ended with an odd-numbered total of games, the players switch ends to begin the new set. (A tie-break counts as one game.) They will switch ends after every odd game through each set.

At the start of a new set, the player who received in the last game of the previous set (or received first in the tie-break) now serves.

Completing a Match

In most tournaments, the first player to win two sets (best of three) wins the match. In a few events, such as men's Grand Slam tournaments, one must win three sets (best of five). Where time or fitness impose limits on the length of matches, a tie-break is sometimes used in place of a third set.

Recreational players often keep going until they're exhausted, even if one of them has won four sets in a row.

Doubles Tip for the Server's Partner #5: Aim offensive volleys past the nearer opponent. If you get a chance to hit an aggressive volley, such as on an easy, moderately high ball, aim your volley past the opponent closer to you, who will have less time to react than the one farther away.

Doubles Tip for the Server's Partner #4: Aim defensive volleys toward the farther opponent. If your opponents force you to hit a relatively weak volley, such as one you have to hit up on from below the top of the net, aim your volley toward the opponent farther away so that you will have more time to react to his reply. This principle also applies to one of the more offensive volleys you can hit up on, the drop volley, as aiming it toward the farther player may keep either opponent from getting to it in time.

Doubles Tip for the Server's Partner #3: If you're getting caught flat-footed, not reacting quickly enough, or not moving forward enough to intercept volleys, start at the service line, and as the serve passes you, move forward to the center of your service box and split-step as the receiver starts to swing. In addition to improving your volley, this technique keeps you out of the way of the server, which can be quite a relief if the server has a ton of power without matching control.

Doubles Tip for the Server's Partner #2: Poach aggressively. An aggressive poacher makes the receiver's job much more difficult. Worrying about what the server's partner will do makes the receiver less likely to pay enough attention to the ball and thus less likely to hit a good return, and even a good return will often get picked off by a well-executed poach. There's always some risk to poaching, and a poorly timed poach will usually cost you a point, but good poaching will win you significantly more points than it costs. Your poaches can either be opportunistic, when you see a return you can pick off, or planned, where you and the server determine beforehand whether or not you'll poach.

Doubles Tip for the Server's Partner #1: Fake poaches frequently. Poaching gives you the opportunity to use another highly effective tactic: fake poaching. Just before the receiver starts to swing, pretend you're about to cut over to pick off his usual crosscourt return, but stay put. You'll often fool the receiver into hitting toward what he thinks is the space you're about to leave. This works especially well on wide serves, where the receiver will think you're leaving a huge space open in the alley.

The most common mistakes done by beginners.

List of the most common errors in Lawn Tennis that are done by beginners.

1. Poking at the ball due to over-caution: It's surprising how many players have two sets of strokes: their long, fluid, practice strokes and their short, choppy, match strokes. When these players get into matches, they become so over-cautious, they're afraid to take a real swing at the ball. They just poke at the ball, as if enough gentleness will coax it into behaving properly.

Of course, you learn long strokes not because they look pretty, but because they work better. When you poke at the ball, your racquet is in the process of decelerating when it meets the ball. This makes it unstable, and the result is an unpredictable racquet angle that can send the ball all over the place.

In addition, short, pokey strokes generally don't produce any topspin, which is the best tool for consistency, and they don't generate any pace. Failing to generate good offense is a great risk in itself, because you prolong points you should have already won. You'll have no offense with pokey strokes.

2. Getting caught in "No Person's Land": When you move inside your baseline to get a ball, you have to either get back behind your baseline or move to the net right away. From inside the area between the baseline and the service line, you can't volley effectively, and any ball that lands behind you won't be playable with a groundstroke. If you're good at the net, move forward whenever you can hit a strong approach shot. If not, learn to backpedal quickly, but still go to net if you don't have time to get all the way back before it's time to hit the next ball. You don't want to get caught retreating when the ball arrives.

3. Hitting to your opponent: At every level of tennis, the easiest direction in which to hit the ball is the direction from which it came. This is one of the main reasons players tend to hit back to their opponents. We also tend to hit toward whatever we're most focused upon. By far the most conspicuous thing on the other side of the net is your opponent, so your attention, and thus your shot, tends to be drawn in that direction. To overcome this, try to focus your eyes on the ball while visualizing target zones on the court.

4. Not attacking dinky serves: Against many opponents, the easiest balls coming your way will be second serves. Inexperienced players hit truly dinky second serves that are just begging to be attacked. You can hit them hard and deep, at a sharp angle, or very short (drop shot). If you keep punishing these dinky serves, your opponent will probably start trying to hit a better one than he can, and his resulting double faults will drive him nuts. Frustration will increase his errors, giving you lots of bonus points.

5. Admiring your shot: Yes, hitting a good shot is central to tennis, but you can't rest on your laurels--at least, not right away. If you stand there watching the beautiful flight of your shot, you'll be way out of position when that beauty comes back. Generally, you need to start moving immediately back toward the middle of the range of angles your opponent could hit next. This position is somewhat diagonally opposite your opponent if you're at your baseline, and it's somewhat toward the ball if you're at the net.