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You might have to, to get proper regularity, have balls that are equal pressure shall we say. So the balls are similar and don’t vary too much. So, you wouldn’t have one that was worn a lot and another that was brand new. You really need a set of balls in there. Then you can get great drills out of it - all sorts of things. You don’t have to have it alternating. You can have running drills that fit in with...

Yeah. I mean I only realised this recently. Because I thought the better tennis ball machines have a big advantage because they can, you know, hit one to the left court, hit one to the right court and keep you running backwards and forwards which is... it’s a great drill to be able to do, but you’re paying well over the odds to have that feature where as if you had... if you used cones you can get the same... you can have the same footwork and good workout even with the simple machine, can’t you?

Well even better...  you strengthen the leg on the right turn; you can strengthen the leg on the left turn by running certain ways to get to the ball. It’s the regularity of the ball that is important, because you can use you own imagination to set up certain things. You can even run backwards to play a ball from a ball machine - if you run a person around the court. In other words, providing the ball machine is regular, a player can run in beyond where he knows the bounce is going to be so that he’s back-pedalling to play the shot all the time. And so he moves forward, the ball comes out, he back peddles, hits the ball, he moves forward again.

Or you can put the ball machine short and get him to run forward by always starting from a back position. So you can do all sorts of things and get movement into it. And... when I’m looking at a very good player, I often look to see what his imagination is like when he plays. And you can do that with a ball machine. You can use your imagination to upgrade your movements around the court.

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