We have Lee Drew back this week with us, bringing his wealth of experience as an elite coach, professional referee consultant, and PSA TV co-commentator. He’s created a great new series for us, that looks at skill development and ball control.
Lee comes from an elite playing background, establishing himself in the top 50 of the PSA world rankings during his professional career. This playing experience, along with the insight and experience he brings with him from the other areas of the game he’s involved with, means he’s a real authority on all things squash.
The new playlist explores the importance of your racket skills, and how the ability to better control the ball gives you a number of big advantages in your play. Lee discusses what constitutes a skilful player, and how that skill allows more command of where you’re able to put the ball, and how that then leads to more create and convert opportunities.
As ever, we have some great clips from world-class PSA players demonstrating the kind of skill that Lee discusses. These professional examples show how they’re able to adapt to situations that arrive on court and use their elite ability to manipulate the grip and the racket to put themselves in position to create positive outcomes.
Most importantly, the playlist looks at exactly how you can transfer these skills into your own game, along with some drills and tests you can use to practice your ball control and assess your improvements as you move forwards.
The aim of this blog is to give you some ideas of sessions you can use to start exploring the key fundamentals of this area and help you effectively develop the kinds of skills you can use to best effect in your matches. With both Lee’s expert guidance and the elite professional demos provided, this playlist gives plenty of great learning opportunities in an area that is fundamental to your success on court.
We’ve put together a selection of both solo and pairs sessions for you to try, built around the main technical points that Lee discusses. Watch through the videos from the playlist and then click through the links to the sessions below to check them out, and discover how better racket skills and ball control can really boost your shot options on-court and add an extra dimension to your game.
Put it into practice
This session consists of a selection of solo ball control drills to practise on-court by yourself.
This pairs session contains a variety of pairs drills and routines to practise, to help you better develop your racket skills as discussed by Lee in the playlist.
Being a better all-round athlete helps you get into position quicker, and make you stronger and more stable when you get there. Check out this challenging physical session, to help you build those physical foundations that will help with your ball control.
Related content
Attacking patterns of play with LJ Anjema
In this series from LJ in New York, he takes us through three attacking patterns of play to set up a winning shot in the rally.
Angles of attack with Jesse Engelbrecht
Jesse is back to show how to use angles in attacking shots and hit winners more often.
Let us know how you get on with the sessions, we’d love to hear your feedback!
Haven't seen the full series yet?
Lee Drew takes you through his guide to skill development and ball control. He shares some simple tricks and tips to help you become more creative on court, find space on court and thrive in challenging situations.
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