Playing in Wind, Heat and Cold: How to Adapt

What wind actually does to the ball

Wind does three separate things and it helps to think about them separately. It shortens or lengthens the flight of the ball. It curves the ball sideways. And it moves the ball in the last split second before contact, which is what really wrecks timing.

That last one is why wind feels so much worse than the numbers suggest. You can compensate for a ball that lands two feet shorter. You cannot compensate for one that dips six inches as you swing. So the master adjustment in wind is not a technical one, it is a spacing one: give yourself more room, take smaller adjustment steps as the ball arrives, and do not commit your body weight until late.

The second master adjustment is target size. Aim further inside the lines than you normally would, because the wind is going to take some of your margin whatever you do. Trying to hit the same targets you hit on a still day is how you lose a set to the weather rather than to the player.

And the third: get more balls in play. Wind punishes low-percentage tennis brutally, and it makes your opponent miss more too. In genuinely windy conditions the most reliable strategy in the world is to make one more ball than they do.

With the wind at your back

This end feels great for about two games and then starts costing you points. The wind is carrying everything long, so the balls that felt perfect at the other end now land a metre past the baseline.

Topspin is your friend here. Spin is what makes a ball drop, and with the wind pushing your shots deeper you need that downward force more than usual. Swing low to high, brush up more, and accept slightly less pace in exchange for the ball landing inside the court.

Aim shorter than instinct says. Target the service line area rather than the baseline and let the wind carry the ball to depth. A ball you think is a mid-court sitter will often land deep and heavy.

Your serve is faster and flatter on this end, which sounds excellent but means your first serve will sail long more often. Kick and slice serves become the smart plays — the spin fights the wind's tendency to push the ball past the service line. Drop shots are a bad idea from this end; the wind will carry them into a friendly bounce for your opponent.

Playing into the wind

Into the wind, everything comes up short. You have to hit deeper than feels safe, take more risk on height over the net, and generally add pace rather than subtract it. If you play your usual safe, loopy rally ball into a stiff breeze it will land halfway up the service box and get punished.

Flatten out a little. Heavy topspin is the wrong tool here — the wind is already killing your depth and topspin kills it further. A flatter, driven ball penetrates. Slice is the shot that suffers most: it floats, hangs, and sits up perfectly for an opponent to attack, so use it sparingly on this end.

The compensation is that this is the end where you can attack the net. Your approach shots stay lower and skid, your opponent's passing shots and lobs come up short, and any lob they hit into the wind is going to hang and give you time to put it away. Coming forward into the wind is one of the most underused tactics in club tennis.

Drop shots also become excellent into the wind, because the wind holds the ball up short exactly where you want it. And your serve loses pace but gains control, so this is the end to serve percentages rather than bombs.

Crosswind, your toss and your serve

Crosswind is the one that reliably wrecks serves, and the fix is mechanical. Before you play a point on that end, take two or three practice tosses and watch where the ball drifts. Then move your toss into the wind by roughly that amount. It feels wrong; do it anyway.

Lower the toss. A ball tossed high spends longer in the air and drifts further, so bringing your toss down to barely more than you need gives the wind less to work with. Shorten the whole motion while you are at it — an abbreviated, compact service action has fewer moving parts to mistime. Plenty of good players go to a short, almost abbreviated takeback for a whole windy match and lose nothing.

Then use the drift instead of fighting it. For a right-hander, a wind pushing the toss out to the right pairs naturally with a slice serve out wide on the deuce court. Wind pushing the toss back over your head pairs with a kick serve. You are not going to beat the wind, so let it choose your serve for you.

Two more things. Catch bad tosses — there is no penalty and it is far cheaper than a double fault. And your first-serve percentage matters more than usual, because in windy conditions a returner is already struggling, and simply putting the ball in play wins you free points.

The windy end is a mental test more than a technical one

Watch a club match in the wind and you will see something predictable: one player spends the whole match glancing at the trees, muttering, and holding their arms out in disbelief. That player almost always loses.

The reason is simple. You change ends every odd game, so both of you get the bad end roughly the same amount. The wind is not doing anything to you that it is not doing to them. But the player who is emotionally invested in how unfair it is stops adjusting, stops moving their feet, and starts hitting the same shots harder and hoping.

The practical version of this: decide before the match that the windy end is a defending end. Your job there is to hold serve, extend rallies, and let the conditions produce errors. On the friendly end, that is where you look to attack. Setting that expectation in advance stops the frustration that comes from expecting your normal game at both ends.

Also expect to lose some points to nothing but bad luck — a ball that hangs, a lob that lands in off the frame, a toss that dies. Those points do not mean anything. React to them the way you would react to a net cord and get on with the next one.

Heat: the work you do before you walk on court

Hot-weather tennis is mostly won in the hours before the first serve. You cannot rehydrate mid-match if you start behind — the body simply cannot absorb fluid that fast while you are sweating a litre or more an hour.

Drink steadily through the day before you play, not a litre in the ten minutes beforehand. And include sodium: sweat carries a substantial amount of salt with it, and after a couple of hot sets the amount lost is significant. An electrolyte drink, a salted snack, or salt on your pre-match meal all do the job. This is also why chugging large volumes of plain water on a very hot day can leave you feeling worse rather than better — you are diluting what is left.

Eat something. A long hot match on an empty stomach is one of the most common reasons people fall apart in the third set, and low fuel makes cramping considerably more likely.

Dress for it: light colours, loose and genuinely moisture-wicking fabric, a hat or visor, and sunscreen you have actually applied rather than intended to. Bring more than one shirt and more than one grip or overgrip — a soaked grip is both a lost-racquet risk and an unnecessary source of tension in your hand.

Finally, be sensible about timing. If you have any choice about when you play, the hours either side of solar noon are the ones to avoid, and an indoor or shaded court is not a cop-out.

Heat: managing the match, changeover by changeover

Use every changeover, every time, even when you feel fine. Sit down. Get in shade if there is any. Take small, steady sips rather than a large gulp. This is not stalling; it is the single most effective heat routine there is, and the ninety seconds exist for exactly this reason.

Cool your skin actively. A cold, wet towel across the back of the neck, a cap soaked in cold water, or ice under the hat all work, and they work better than you would expect for how simple they are. Some players carry a small towel purely for this. Do not pour ice water down your throat in large quantities — cooling the outside is more useful than shocking the inside.

Adjust your tennis, too. Hot air is less dense, so the ball travels further, and a warm ball is livelier and bounces higher. Expect your normal rally ball to land longer than usual, and expect more balls to come up around shoulder height. Add a little topspin, aim a fraction shorter, and take balls earlier rather than backing up into the fence.

Tactically, shorten the points. The heat is an opponent you are both playing, and long grinding rallies cost the fitter player almost as much as the less fit one. Serve and return with intent, come forward on anything short, and be willing to take a small extra risk to end a point in four shots instead of twelve. Take the full allowance between points as well — 25 seconds used properly across a two-hour match adds up to a lot of recovery.

Cramp and heat illness: the red flags you do not play through

Cramping usually starts as a warning rather than a seizure of the whole leg. A calf that twitches, a forearm that tightens on a serve, a hamstring that feels short — those are the early signals, and the moment to act is then. Slow the match down, drink something with electrolytes in it, gently stretch and keep moving rather than standing still, and stop hitting the shot that keeps triggering it.

Once a full cramp arrives, gentle static stretching of the affected muscle plus fluid and sodium is the standard approach. Do not try to power through it with a big serve — cramped muscles tear.

Now the part that matters more than any of the tennis. Heat illness is a spectrum, and it can move quickly. Feeling faint or dizzy, cool clammy skin, nausea, a pounding headache, unusual weakness or an inability to catch your breath are signs of heat exhaustion. The correct response is to stop playing, get out of the sun, loosen clothing, cool down and rehydrate. Not to finish the set.

The genuine emergency signs are neurological: confusion, slurred speech, disorientation, aggression or behaviour that is out of character, stumbling, collapse, seizure, or someone who simply is not making sense. That is a call-emergency-services situation. Get them into shade, start cooling them aggressively with cold water or ice, and get help immediately. Do not wait to see if they improve, and do not assume they are fine because they are still sweating — heat stroke can occur in someone who is sweating heavily.

To be plain about it: this article is general guidance, not medical advice. If you or your opponent are unwell in the heat, stop the match and get proper help. Nobody remembers who won a club league fixture. Everybody remembers an ambulance.

Cold weather, and a quick word on altitude

Cold does the opposite of heat. The air is denser and the ball is colder, so the pressure inside it drops and the rubber stiffens. The result is a ball that bounces lower, comes off the strings slower and feels genuinely heavy on impact. Expect to work harder for less reward, expect fewer balls at a comfortable height, and expect slices and low balls to skid and stay down. A fresh can of balls makes a bigger difference in the cold than at any other time, and keeping a spare can indoors rather than in the car boot is worth doing.

The real risk in the cold is not the tennis, it is your soft tissue. Cold muscles are stiffer, react slower and tear more easily, and calf strains in the first ten minutes of a winter session are depressingly common. Double your warm-up. Fifteen to twenty minutes of jogging, dynamic movements, gradual shadow swings and easy mini-tennis before you hit anything hard is not excessive — it is the price of playing in winter. Our warm-up and injury-prevention guide has a routine you can copy.

Layer so you can shed. A base layer that wicks, a mid layer you can remove, and a jacket for changeovers beats one thick top that leaves you either freezing or soaked. Keep moving between points instead of standing still, because your body temperature drops fast when you stop. And look after your hands: cold fingers grip harder, feel less, and mishit more. A thin glove or hand warmers between games, plus a dry overgrip, genuinely help.

Altitude is the mirror image. Thinner air means less drag and less air for your spin to bite into, so the ball flies faster, further and flatter, and topspin does not dip the way you expect. Balls also bounce higher. If you are playing somewhere significantly above sea level, take pace off, add topspin, expect your normal margins to disappear, and be aware that dedicated high-altitude balls exist for exactly this reason. Give yourself a session or two to recalibrate before you decide your game has abandoned you — and expect to be more out of breath than the score suggests you should be.