Everyone is distracted by the blue stripes on the New York Yankees uniform. That’s some line in a movie that explains why they win the World Series so often. Where our attention goes, is what we focus on. But attention directed to the wrong place will take away focus from other essential aspects of your tennis game.
The most underrated aspect of tennis development is everything that happens between your actual hitting of the ball. Most like to think about how they hit forehands and backhands and what kind of shots they can produce to make it beautiful. To win by swinging hard with spin, for example. So, as we naturally gravitate toward focusing on hitting the ball, we also tend to neglect everything else in between. But what you do between your shots is the most important aspect of your tennis game. It has more weight that determines how well you can play on a daily basis and how far your tennis level will go. It is also a part of your tennis game that you have complete agency over. You can't always hit the shot you want because your opponent may give you balls that limit your options. But your recovery, movement, ready position, and the way you pay attention to the ball are purely under your control.
If you watch the pro tennis athletes that are ranked from No. 1 through 200, you will notice they all can hit great forehands and backhands. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Carlos Alcaraz who is ranked No. 4 and the current world number 97 Denis Kudla if you watched them simply hit. Kudla can hit as hard as Alcaraz. The difference then is when they play matches — Alcaraz gets behind the ball more often than most other players. This means he can hit the shots he wants and be aggressive. So he plays with a high level of intensity that is difficult for most pro athletes to keep up with. All this is because he is a master at controlling what he does between his shots. The dominant players are really good at being organized with their movement and preparation between shots. They are consistent with how they recover and their footwork follows a logical method that optimizes their positioning for any type of shot. You should thus spend your time getting comfortable optimizing your movement to the ball and your recovery after hitting. The key is to be very consistent and disciplined with your movement and recovery. For example, if you recover back to the ready position the same way each time, then your preparation for your shots will be consistent and you won't have to worry about making many additional adjustments each time. But your ready position/stance is different each time you recover or your arms are inconsistently changing positioning too then you have to make more adjustments when you're preparing for shots. Having to make extra adjustments equates to making more movements which takes up more time and puts you at risk of being slightly late for your shots.
The top players are also hawks, they see the ball and anticipate where it will go and where they should position themselves. They are consistently focused on observing the ball so they can move and position themselves. If your attention is not 100% on the ball and when you do watch the ball you're passively looking at it, then you will not become a good player who takes control of most points.
From now on, when you practice, emphasize discipline with what you do between your shots. It will pay dividends down the road and you will unlock your ability to hit what you want when you want.