Ask a group of juniors what shot they hate most, and you will hear a lot of answers about the second serve or the high backhand. But watch them play for twenty minutes and the shot that actually costs them points is quieter than that. It is the ball that lands right at their feet as they move forward—too deep to let bounce comfortably, too short to swing through. The half-volley. The in-between ball.
I am Michael Boothman, and after thirty years of coaching here in Sarasota, I have come to think of the half-volley as one of the most honest shots in tennis. It exposes footwork, it exposes panic, and it rewards players who keep things simple. Most juniors treat it like an emergency. It does not have to be one. This week I want to walk through the live-ball drill I use to turn that panicked scoop into a calm, repeatable shot.
Why the half-volley gets skipped
Here is the problem with how the half-volley usually gets “taught”: it does not, really. Coaches feed a basket of balls short so the player can practice a clean groundstroke, or they feed at the net so the player can practice a clean volley. The half-volley lives in the gap between those two feeds, and a basket rarely puts a ball there on purpose.
That is exactly why it belongs in live play. One of my Six Pillars is Live Ball Is the Method—the idea that the majority of court time should be spent in real rallies, not fed balls or machines. A fed ball arrives on a schedule the player already knows. A live ball arrives with all the awkward timing and odd depth of a match, and the half-volley is an awkward-timing, odd-depth shot by definition. You cannot rehearse it honestly off a basket. You have to meet it in a rally.
If you want the longer argument for why live ball beats machine reps for this kind of skill, I wrote about it in Live Ball vs. Ball Machine.
The geometry that makes it easy
Before the drill, one idea. Another of the Six Pillars is Technique Is Geometry—center contact plus a square racquet face. I tell players to coach the contact, not the choreography, and the half-volley is where that pays off the most.
There is no time for a backswing on a half-volley. There is barely time for anything. So we throw the backswing away and keep only the two things that decide where the ball goes: where the strings meet the ball, and what angle the face is pointing. Get the ball in the center of the strings, keep the face slightly open and pointed at your target, and let the ball’s own pace do the work. That is the entire technique. When a junior stops trying to “hit” a half-volley and starts trying to catch and redirect it with a square face, the shot gets dramatically more reliable inside one session.
A useful cue: “short backswing, long follow-through.” The energy is already in the ball. Your job is to guide it, not to add to it.
The drill: Feet-First Half-Volley Rally
Here is how we run it. Two players, one live ball, a coach who can restart rallies quickly.
Setup. Player A starts on the baseline. Player B starts a step inside the baseline, in the awkward zone—that no-man’s-land around the service line where half-volleys are born. B is not allowed to retreat behind the baseline. The whole point is to keep them in the uncomfortable spot.
The rally. Play out live points, cross-court to start. Player B will constantly receive balls at their feet because they are standing where those balls land. Every one of those is a half-volley opportunity. B’s job is not to win the point with the half-volley—it is to keep the rally alive and neutral with a square, centered contact.
The constraint that teaches the feet. Here is the piece that makes it work. Before every half-volley, Player B has to get low with a small split-step and take one adjustment step so the ball is out in front, not jammed into their body. If they reach and scoop without moving their feet, the point does not count even if the ball goes in. This connects to a third pillar, Movement and Conditioning in the Right Order—the body has to be prepared to move before technique means anything. A half-volley hit off balanced feet is a real shot. A half-volley hit off frozen feet is a prayer.
Scoring. Count how many half-volleys Player B keeps in play out of ten opportunities. Early on, most juniors land four or five. Inside a couple of weeks, seven or eight is realistic. That number matters, and I will come back to it.
Then switch roles. Player A gets their turn in the awkward zone.
Keep score, and say the number out loud
I never let a drill like this stay a feeling. A junior who “kind of got better at half-volleys” has nothing to hold onto next week. A junior who went from five out of ten to eight out of ten has proof.
That is Confidence Is Built, Not Given, another of the pillars—evidence builds belief, not praise. When a player can look at the actual count and see it climbing, the fear starts to drain out of the shot. They stop treating the in-between ball as a disaster and start treating it as just another ball they have a plan for. The number does the convincing. My job is just to keep it honest and write it down.
The target we work toward is eight out of ten in live conditions—that “85/100” standard I hold to across the board. Not on a friendly feed. In a real rally, off balanced feet, against a live opponent. That is the version that shows up in a match.
Why it is worth the trouble
You might reasonably ask why I spend group time on a shot that is not glamorous. Nobody posts a highlight reel of half-volleys. Fair enough.
But the half-volley is a stress test for everything else. It rewards early movement, calm hands, simple geometry, and a player who does not panic when the timing is bad. A junior who can neutralize the in-between ball is a junior who has stopped being afraid of the awkward moment—and that composure carries into every part of their game. The United States Tennis Association’s guidance on developing juniors leans hard on building competent, adaptable movers rather than one-dimensional ball-strikers, and you can read more about that developmental thinking at the USTA coaching resources.
The awkward ball is coming, in every match, whether the player is ready or not. We might as well make friends with it now.
If you want to see how a drill like this fits into a full session and a longer development plan, that is what our coaching approach is built around—real rallies, honest numbers, and one shot at a time.
See you on the court.
— Coach Michael