GB ladies’ seniors head coach Nigel Garton has revealed some of the tactics he’s worked on with his squad ahead of the inaugural Plaza Padel Nations Cup in Amsterdam.
Garton is one of British padel’s most revered coaches and was part of GB men’s best ever fourth-placed finish at the World Team Championships in Madrid in 1992.
He has overseen winter training camps with GB’s senior senoritas ahead of the Amsterdam jamboree on 10-12 February, which will pit GB ladies’ seniors sides between over-40s and over-55s against Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and an ‘All Stars’ ensemble,
In a Padel Paper exclusive, Garton has revealed some of the fundamentals of the work he has been doing to bring preparations to a peak.
“The challenge for us is that the foreign teams have played a lot more padel than our ladies, whereas we have tennis players who have converted recently. But I think the ladies have the tools to deal with it now.
“When we got started the ladies were making far too many mistakes and our main priority was to cut these down and stop playing so much like tennis players in playing so aggressively.
“I wanted to get them playing to zones that are more percentage-based. We talked a lot about volleying middle and about not missing wide.
“This involved splitting the end wall into nine panes of glass. If I’m playing with you, and I’m left court and you’re right court, the first pane of glass on your right-hand side and the first pane of glass on my left-hand side are both glass one.
“Then you have glass two and the first back pane of glass is glass three, the next is four and the middle one is five. So they are the nine panes of glass.
“What I was trying to getting across to the ladies is that they had to go more to glass five as there is a much larger margin for error if you go there. Then if you want to go wide and actually play into glass one, the ball then comes back into the court where the opponent is.
“So you are actually better off going into glass three where the ball then goes into glass two or one and goes back up the court as it’s just safer.
“Also going for glass five and three is less error risk than going for the side glass, but if you play to the side glass too much it actually brings the ball into the court to the player.
“The second aspect was to stop the ladies hitting smashes so hard! Obviously to use the hard smash when needed, is fine, but as mostly ex-tennis players they tend to play the ball quite high (above the head rather than to the side) and hit it hard, so it just bounces back up and is then easy to attack. That is to be avoided.
“We also looked at playing the Australian (formation) in which you serve wide then serve slower so it gives you more time to get to the net.”
Garton has combined his role as Operations Manager and Head Coach at Tennis World Middlesbrough with masterminding preparations for the Plaza Padel sponsored event. His key challenge has been to get his girls to think like padel players rather than converted tennis players.
“When you play tennis you always volley cross court because the player at the net stops it or intercepts it, but when you play padel the two players opposite will be at the back when you have come into the net.
“So, if I’m the left court player and I want to come in, I actually want to volley more on my side than the other side as it will attract both opposing players to the middle and open space to the sides.
“The next thing which is interesting is where the second bounce is. It’s okay hitting a great volley but if the second bounce is a long way forward it gives them a lot of time, so you want the second bounce to be before the white line.
“We also talked about the fact that when we lobbed we wanted the ball to bounce beyond the white line, hit the glass and bounce three or four times before it came back to the white line. That means the player can’t attack off the wall so easily but only lob back. That means really taking height into account. Even if you lob short with height, it gives you time to get back into your defensive position.”
Garton is hopeful his imparted wisdom will have a positive impact in Amsterdam, where Sally Fisher will skipper the GB side.
“There was a pleasing reaction to all of that content and it was all taken on board very well,” said Garton. “They made very quick improvements from not making so many mistakes.
“I am interested to see how the girls will go and I am sure that the experience of mixing it with some of the best players in Europe on a competitive court will prove invaluable to them.”
