How to Beat a Pusher | Tennis Tactics

In today’s tennis tactics tutorial, I teach you how to beat the dreaded pusher.

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[deldridg]

My tiny 12yo son met a 15yo pusher today who is double my boy's size, who hit soft dribbly serves, absolutely no winners, loopy returns etc. He even played huge lobs to bounce the ball over my lad dozens of times to the embarrassment of his dad. The set went for almost 2 hours, with most rallies 20 shots or more - some closer to 40. My little 32kg fighter kept in the game (first to 8 games) with almost no errors and got to 6 all with some very gutsy hitting before finally running out of steam to lose 8-6. It was hard to watch at this level - quite high ranked juniors and everyone watching were shaking their heads in disbelief.

Ultimately my son didn't have the strength to capitalise on the shorter, higher shots every time but he had the right mindset, though he did say he get pretty frutstrated! After watching this vid, perhaps we'll try to get more game time with this pusher. Great advice and much appreciated. Cheers from Sydney - Dave

[pbalajiusaf]

I'm a 4.0-4.5 player who plays with aggressive serve + forehand combo and pushers are my kryptonite since I love pace. 100% agreed on mentality part because I go down rabbit holes where I dump the short +1 into net or hit it long and end up losing 6-2 6-1.

[KazimDas]

Nikolai, Thanks for this video and for all the others too. I'm a 3.5ish player playing 3.0 USTA league and I like to play deep baseline. In my last USTA singles match, I faced a player whose shots never really fell outside the service line. Everything was a slow push or slice and I found myself slicing back leading to me losing first set 2-6 and losing my serve in the next set. Then I recalled this video and decided to play aggressively and go through my shots no matter what. I tried to deploy all the strategies from this video and eventually I managed to win the match in 3 sets. Your videos are so helpful and I really appreciate you for all the videos on this channel. I'm out on the west coast else I would've loved to have a private clinic with you for myself and teenaged daughter, Suzanne. Once again, thank you!

[yuyifu]

I think playing against pusher is the ultimate test of fundamental techniques.

[shoopieable]

I've watched a few tennis coaching videos online and I find yours the best. This one I had to comment on. I'm an intermediate, slightly advanced player. I'm the guy on the other side of the court. I've never been called a pusher before, but that's exactly what I am. I just call it "being defensive". It's quite incredible how many much more technically competent players I can beat. I'm the guy that annoys many opponents. It also helps that I'm incredibly quick around the court. From a pushers point of view, one thing I've found is that when I'm confident, and can find some aggression, then I've found a great combination which gives me a lot of options on the court. For me, that requires regular match play and working on basic confidence in my aggressive strokes. Keep up the good work!

[docstranger]

Thank you so much for taking the time to make this video. This was exactly what a I needed to learn after losing to a pusher by thinking I could just make him go away with hard shots. It didn’t work and I ended up using all my energy in the first set. Now I will use these tactics and train harder, sleep better and eat more healthily in order to beat the pusher.

[PFBruno]

So needed this! In my experience, most pushers/moonballers, and cut/slice the ball a lot, which really gives you a short & low ball below the net. This is my biggest kryptonite because I don't have the patience needed to play long points and wait for the higher ball to put away. Sometimes you can push pushers back off the baseline, but many of them are good at lobbing too, so I often have to reset and get back to the baseline and start over. Its exhausting!

[karadagmert]

1.Shots' angles are very important, make the pusher run.
2.Come to the net more often for volleys
3. Pushers don't like short balls, their comfort zones are back, so diversify your shots. 2 back, 1 short etc..

[EricAvissar]

Excellent video, cannot stress the importance of mentally committing to an exhausting grind going up against a good pusher. If I think I can make the pusher wear down before I do, I like to make them suffer. I beat one last night playing lots of slices, moonballs and dropshots to make him uncomfortable. If you’re willing to get down and dirty, you can beat them with a combination of aggressive play and a taste of their own medicine.

[adamcherry]

I just had a 2 week holiday where I devoured all of your videos, especially enjoyed the Shamir series as it was the one most relevant to my game.
Just played my first singles game since holiday against someone I'm normally evenly matched with (both in the same club team) and I didn't drop a game. Thanks so much for creating all of this content, it's great and I love your teaching.

[massimocappato]

First time in my life a YouTube video made me win a match. I watched it the night before a match I feared quite a lot against a rock solid defender, it made all the difference in the world!

[AdamScarchilli]

First, I love your videos and you have lots of high quality tactics for improving play! However, your own ability got in the way of showing how to beat a pusher. I would love to see you coach someone against a pusher with long rallies. You hit winners literally left and right, but we can't do that at the rec level. We all have to wait for the right moment - which is 2-3 shots for you, but 20-30 shots for most of us.

If most players had your abilities, we would not have a word for pushers - they would always lose and go extinct.

[HeavyTopspin]

Great video for the most part! But I have to disagree for the reason that underarm serves work for Kyrgios and Bublik has little to do with the spin; it's because they catch the returner standing 10 feet behind the baseline expecting a big serve, and they also quick-serve so an inattentive opponent doesn't even realize the ball is in play until it's halfway there. All the spin does is make sure it lands short in the box so the returner has to take it on the run and hit an uncomfortable shot.

[circuitdesign]

When you play someone with a weak serve, you should mix it up between crushing the return and using drop shot returns. A good disguise on your drop shot helps.

[JacObi-Wan-KenObi]

I had pushers in my club. One I figured out and eventually started using his tactics against him. He was so used to standing far back and use the force of the ball from other players in the same tournament ladder. Obviously he was conserving energy. We were hitting like mad against him tiring ourselves out, making plenty of long balls and even when we hit inside the baseline he just dinked the ball back. He was good at running side to side and got used to it. When I started push-balling him he had to run more forward and backward and that finally got him. Another guy I made running side to side with slow angled ballls and quite often I threw in stop balls. Though, as you point out, patience is key.

[jeffgreenwell]

Thank you for all the helpful advice in this video. Playing against pushers has been one of my greatest sources of frustration when playing tennis. Thank you for giving me and so many others the tools, advice, strategies, and motivation to improve our games.

[tennisslicer]

Like you said play against pusher, we have to have strong mental mind set for the shot and enough energy to play 3 hours match otherwise you will lost to him.

[huntersims]

Thanks for the excellent tip. You're absolutely right about having to hit numerous high balls, at about shoulder height, when playing pushers. I'll practice this on my ball machine.

[TrishanthDiwate]

He is not a pusher, he is an imposter, he is too good a player to be called a pusher.
You should play against MEP to demonstrate :)

[darrentaylor]

This video is excellent, you managed to cover everything that I struggle with when playing against pushers.