Tennis lovers rejoiced yesterday when the Australian Open got underway in Melbourne. The Open marks the beginning of the tournament year for tennis players, so for the past eight weeks, they have been concentrating on reaching peak fitness, according to Dr Rob Duffield, lecturer in the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Once the frenetic pace of the tournament year gets underway, “It becomes quite difficult to find time for physical conditioning, so a lot of tennis coaches and tennis players do their fitness work on court using practice drills. The problem with these drills is that you don’t really know what’s going on,” said Dr Duffield, who spent part of last year quantifying the physical responses to popular tennis drills. His results will be published soon, and will be beneficial to tennis coaches. “Coaches can say well, this kind of drill is very aerobic and will improve physical fitness, while that kind of drill will increase shot velocity and shot accuracy,” he said.