Most juniors I coach in Sarasota can hit a clean volley when I feed them one from a basket. Stand at the net, toss a ball to their forehand side, and they punch it away with a square racquet face. It looks great. Then the same player gets pulled forward in a real point, the ball comes back faster and lower than expected, and the volley sails long or dumps into the net. The feed made them look ready. The rally showed they weren’t.
I’m Michael Boothman, and after 30-plus years of coaching I’ve stopped being fooled by how good a fed ball looks. The gap between “can do it off a feed” and “can do it in a point” is where most net play falls apart. The drill I want to walk through today — I call it Pass-or-Pressure — is built to close that gap. It’s one of my go-to games for juniors who are technically fine at the net but freeze the moment the point is live.
Why a feed lies to you
This connects directly to one of the Six Pillars I coach by: Live Ball Is the Method. Real learning happens in real rallies, not off a basket of fed balls or a ball machine. A feed removes the two hardest parts of net play — reading an incoming shot early and moving to meet it under time pressure. When you strip those out, you’re not really practicing the skill. You’re practicing a rehearsal of the skill.
The research backs this up. Skills learned in conditions that don’t resemble the real task tend not to transfer to the real task. The USTA’s player development coaching resources lean hard on game-based training for exactly this reason: kids get better at points by playing points, not by grooving isolated pieces. So the whole design of Pass-or-Pressure is to keep the ball live and put both players under a decision every single time.
How the drill works
You need two players and one coach or feeder to start each rally. Here’s the setup.
One player starts at the baseline as the defender. The other starts just inside the service line as the net player, or approaches to that spot on the first ball. The coach feeds one neutral ball to the baseline player to open the rally — and after that, it’s completely live. No more feeds.
The net player’s job: use the volley to apply pressure and finish the point. The baseline player’s job: pass, lob, or dip the ball at the net player’s feet to win it. Whoever wins the point earns the reward — but here’s the twist that makes it work.
Scoring: The net player only scores if they win the point at the net. If they get passed, or if they retreat back to the baseline to win, the point goes to the defender. The defender scores any time they neutralize the net player — a clean pass, a lob that resets the rally, or a dipping ball that forces an error. Play games to 7. Then switch roles.
That scoring rule is the engine. It forces the net player to commit forward and solve the problem where they are, instead of bailing out to the comfort of the baseline. And it forces the defender to actually construct a passing shot under pressure, not just push the ball back.
What I’m watching for
When I run this with a Sarasota junior, I’m not standing there yelling technique cues on every ball. I’m watching two things.
First, does the net player read the ball early? A good volleyer sees the defender’s contact and starts adjusting before the ball is halfway across the net. A late reader waits until the ball is on top of them and then lunges. If I see lunging, that’s a movement and timing problem, not a hands problem.
Second, is the net player hitting the volley to a target, or just blocking it back? This is the other pillar at work — Accuracy Inside Representative Conditions. I want the volley placed to a spot that makes the next pass hard: deep to a corner, or short and angled. My benchmark is the 85/100 Rule — I want to see a player make roughly 8 or 9 out of 10 volleys land in the intended third of the court while the point is live. Not off a feed. In the rally.
If a player can do that under the pressure of a live point, they own the skill. If they can only do it off a basket, they’ve got a rehearsal, not a weapon.
Scaling it up or down
For younger or newer players, start the net player already at the service line and shorten the court — play the point inside the service boxes only. That slows everything down and lets them win with placement instead of pace.
For stronger juniors, make the net player earn their position: the opening feed goes short, they have to hit an approach shot and then close, and only then does the passing battle begin. Now they’re stringing together approach, split-step, first volley, and finish — the whole sequence a real point demands.
Either way, the ball stays live and both players stay in a decision. That’s the point of the whole thing.
The honest version of net practice
I could spend a lesson feeding perfect volleys and a parent watching would think their kid looks polished. But polished off a feed isn’t the same as reliable in a match, and I’d rather a player struggle a little in a live game now than get exposed in a tournament later. Evidence beats appearances. A junior who’s won a few Pass-or-Pressure games against a real opponent has actual proof they can finish at the net — and that proof is what builds the confidence to keep coming forward when it counts.
If you want to see how the rest of my coaching fits together, the coaching philosophy page lays out all six pillars and how they show up in a normal Sarasota practice. And if your junior is technically solid but tightens up in real points, this is the kind of drill that starts to fix it — one live ball at a time.
See you on the court.
— Coach Michael Boothman