Backhand - 2.How to avoid overhitting when you get a real sitter

How to avoid overhitting when you get a real sitter

Shorten it! Shorten your tennis racket and shorten your backswing! They haven't invented a racket with a button that shortens the grip for these sort of shots, but you can achieve the same effect by shifting your hand up the grip a couple of inches. This should give you the feeling that you've got more control over the swing. Shorten your backswing too - just a shoulder turn will do. But still go for a full follow-through, because the last thing you want to do is trade your overhitting for a "nothing" shot!

Prepare early - but not too early!!

Beginners are invariably told to "prepare early!" It's good advice while you're developing your tennis technique. However, performance tennis players who are looking for a little extra racket speed must pay some attention to biomechanics.

The backswing stage of the action involves stretching the muscles to store elastic energy for the forward swing. If there is too much of a pause between the backswing and the forward swing, the benefit of the stored energy can be lost. Obviously it's not good if your elastic gives out on you!

For maximum efficiency, try to time it so that there's little or no pause between the completion of your backswing and the start of your forward swing.

If you're used to taking the tennis racket back very early, you might find it a useful compromise to prepare early and then quickly take the racket back still further prior to swinging forwards

Hitting bigger without hitting bigger!

You can achieve more power on your groundstrokes by transferring your weight forwards, by swinging faster and by hitting more through the ball. These are things you can apply without too much tinkering with your technique.

The power drives of the modern game, however, are produced by adopting an open stance and driving up from the legs and rotating the upper body (hips, trunk and shoulders) and if you're not already doing that, the change is fairly drastic and you probably need to book some lessons.

But let's try thinking laterally for a minute. Your basic tennis technique is sound and you don't want to bin it, but you do want to inflict more damage on your opponent. Ok, so why not try this - take the ball earlier! Instead of waiting for the ball to drop, step in and take it at the top of the bounce. Once
you're comfortable with this (and it'll take a while, so be patient!), try taking it on the rise.

You'll have more angles at your disposal and your opponents will have less time to prepare for their shots. It's kind of hitting bigger without hitting bigger! Cool, eh?

Hitting on the rise

There's plenty of good tennis reasons to hit on the rise. What are they? Well, you can hit with more power because your opponent's pace is still on the ball. Also, you give your opponent less time to recover and therefore less time to prepare for the next shot. And the more you move inside the baseline the more you see over the net, enabling you to open up the rally with angled shots. If you like getting into the net, hitting on the rise gives you a better chance of closing in.

So, how do we do it? For one thing, you need to get inside the tennis court during the rallies! Easier said than done - it's a psychological leap because you're leaving that familiar comfort zone behind the baseline - so try it in practice first! The other thing that will take some adjustment is your backswing. There will be less time for it, so you need to make it as efficient as possible - a good shoulder turn will probably suffice. Relax at the knees and stay light on your feet. Start your swing early enough to ensure firm contact just out in front of your body. Although you've had to adopt a more compact backswing, accelerate the racket head and follow through smooth and long and full.

One thing you've got to consider is the angle of the ball as it comes on to your racket - instead of a flat or downward trajectory, the ball will be angling upwards onto your strings. You'll find you won't keep the ball in the court if you use an open racket face. So adjust your grip to close the racket face slightly. It's probably a good idea to brush up on the ball to impart some topspin. This will give you a greater degree of control.

Open or closed stance?

I often get asked what's best - an open stance or a closed stance. And of course there isn't a definitive answer. You can argue the merits and demerits of each until the cows come home. It's true that clay courts suit open-stance players and faster courts suit the sideways-on stroke. Ultimately, it comes down to your own athletic and tactical preferences.

Open-stance players can use powerful trunk rotation and produce great racket-head speed, but they find that their centre of gravity pulls to the left (or even backwards) during the stroke, discouraging forward movement.

The step-in forehand, on the other hand, imposes a limit on your swing because your front leg locks up your body, but it encourages forward transfer of weight and therefore favors players who want to close in on the net. By taking the ball on the rise, players who use this technique can cut out the opponent's reaction time and apply pressure by approaching the net. This can be just as devastating as a booming open-stance forehand, especially on fast surfaces.

One word of caution. Open-stance is a bit of a misnomer. It refers to your feet. It does NOT mean having your shoulders parallel to the net! If you use an open-stance forehand, you must coil and then uncoil your hips and shoulders, otherwise there is no benefit to it whatsoever.

Keeping your backhand approach shots low

You need to use backspin to keep the ball low after it bounces. To do this, you need to deliver a kind of high-to-low glancing blow - but be sure not to come down on the ball too severely, otherwise you'll end up just chopping it and losing the pace.

Players like Pete Sampras often add sidespin to the sliced approach. This is produced by moving the racket across the ball with an outside-in action, i.e. from outside the line of the ball's flight to inside the line, as well as high-to-low. This makes the ball skid low and away from a right-hander's backhand.

Make a full shoulder turn and take your racket back at around shoulder height, with the face slightly open. Support the throat of the racket with the fingers of your non-racket hand and keep your wrist firm. As you swing through the ball high-to-low and outside-in, keep the racket face slightly open and try to get a l-o-n-g contact. Extend your non-racket hand back behind you for balance and keep your knees flexed throughout. Avoid opening your shoulders.

It's generally a good idea to aim your approach shots parallel to the sidelines. That gives you your best chance of covering the angles on your opponent's passing shot. But you should vary it occasionally, especially if your opponent is weak on the backhand.

"Shrinking" the Strike Zone

When you're hitting groundstrokes, you'll find it easier to control the tennis ball if your contact is somewhere between mid-chest and knee, a comfortable arm's length away from you and just slightly in front of your body. This is your ideal strike zone.

When your opponent hits the ball, it arrives with gradually diminishing speed. It rises after the bounce and then levels off for a moment as its speed dies.

If you can adjust your footwork so that the levelling-off moment occurs in the middle of your ideal strike zone, you've cracked it! Tennis is a breeze!

But it isn't always that easy. Although most balls level off somewhere between shoulder-height and knee-height, sometimes the ball bounces too low or too high. You may have to hurry forwards to short balls and you may have to bend your knees to cope with low balls. High-bouncing balls travel through your strike zone twice - once on the way up and again on the way down, so you have the luxury of a choice.

The face of your racket must be square to the ball at contact. Swing it up through the strike zone from below the level of the ball, finishing above it.

A common mistake is getting in line with the ball, with the result that you get jammed by it. It's okay to position yourself on the tracks, but remember to dodge aside before the train arrives!
The strike zone is important in baseball, too. Rules committees frequently argue over its definition. When the umpires "shrink" the strike zone, there are more home runs and the hitters (and the fans) are happy. But when they allow a larger strike zone, it favors the pitchers and the home runs start to dry up.

Let's apply a baseball analogy to tennis. Let's say you're hitting balls at all different heights, one ball up around your armpits and the next down below your knees. Well, clearly this is the equivalent of a baseball umpire allowing a large strike zone. And your opponent - the pitcher - is just grinning all over his face.

Use anticipation and footwork to shrink that zone and start scoring!

Is having just a slice backhand the end of life as we know it?

Tennis players with one-handed slice backhands sometimes feel frustrated and envious when they see the top pros cracking two-handed backhand winners. They tell me they don't want a slice backhand any more - they want a slice of the action!

However, I never advocate switching from a one-handed backhand to a two-hander. In my opinion, that's a backward step. The two-handed stroke presents you with problems in terms of reach and there's absolutely no guarantee that you'll compensate by producing more power. It's not that I'm against two-handed backhands per se, far from it. It's just that players with effective two-handers typically start at an age when they lack sufficient strength in the arm and wrist for a one-hander. It's forced on them. The best of these players develop the shot and develop the athleticism to make up for the reach restrictions. But if you're used to playing with a one-hander and you can execute it with a reasonable degree of competence, you should stick with it and try to make it more reliable and more versatile.

The slice backhand is not a purely defensive shot. Used as an approach shot, it skids low and forces your opponent to lift the ball for you to put away with a comfortable volley. Slice makes the ball float further in the air allowing you to dominate your opponent by maintaining good depth. So don't turn your nose up at it. Build up your appetite and help yourself to a bigger slice!

For more bite on the shot, prepare by coiling your upper body using a hip and shoulder turn and bend the elbow of your racket arm. Then straighten your arm as you hit through the ball. If you keep your elbow locked, you'll restrict your swing and end up chopping at the ball.

The slice backhand is least effective against a net-rusher. Instead of learning a two-hander, I recommend developing a flat or topspin drive to give yourself a better chance of making a pass or at least making your opponent contend with a dipping ball.

Two-handed backhands - is time running out for the closed stance?

Although most players still prefer to strike the two-handed backhand from a closed stance whenever possible, the success of the Williams sisters is encouraging more and more players to use an open stance. Venus and Serena use their tremendous leg and upper body strength to compensate for the loss of linear momentum. The technique enables them to cope better when they're rushed into playing a shot (e.g. a service return) and also to recover their court position efficiently by pushing off the outside leg to return towards the middle of the court.

Let's consider the grip first. Although you can hit a perfectly effective two-handed backhand with your dominant hand placed in an eastern forehand grip, you ought to be using an eastern backhand grip (or at least a continental grip) if you want to use topspin and if you want to be able to hit the occasional one-handed shot. Your dominant hand really only provides support - it's your non-dominant hand that should actually provide the power for your two-hander and you should put it into the eastern forehand grip.

Load your weight onto your left foot (assuming you're right-handed) and coil your hips and shoulders. The amount of backswing depends on what you want to achieve. Typically, a shorter backswing will facilitate more control and a longer backswing will generate more power. Keeping your head as still as possible to control the uncoiling of your hips and shoulders, extend your racket out towards your target for control and depth. Complete the shot with a full wrap-around follow-through and push off to recover for your next shot.

If, like Venus and Serena, you have the required athleticism, you might want to make open stance groundstrokes the basis of your game, but even if you don't, practise an open stance two-hander and you'll be able to compensate effectively when you're rushed for time.

The 'Whys' and 'Whens' of spin on groundstrokes

Batting a ball to and from over a net is okay, but it's very basic. If tennis was a language, we're talking morse code. Once you can master the basics, what you really want to do is make the ball do stuff - you want to make it talk, don't you? If tennis was a TV set, you'd want more than just an on-and-off switch and a volume control - you'd want a channel selector and a brightness control and a contrast control and so on. If you're going to control a rally, you need to control the ball. And that's where spin comes in.

With groundstrokes, your spin options are topspin and slice.

With topspin, the ball dips to the ground quicker and bounces higher than you'd expect from a ball with no spin. It allows you to hit harder - and higher over the net - with less risk of hitting long. It also allows you to dip balls at the feet of an incoming volleyer. Use it as your stock rally ball, but flatten it out a bit to go for winners. Topspin is a player's insurance policy and you shouldn't be allowed to drive without it!

With slice (or backspin), the tennis ball floats through the air longer and bounces lower than you'd expect from a ball with no spin. It allows you to hit deeper and lower, forcing your opponent to hit up on the ball - very desirable if your opponent has an extreme "closed" grip or you're approaching the net for a volley or an overhead. Use it as an approach shot and use it for defence when you've been stretched out of position, because the ball will travel slowly and buy you time to recover for your next shot. A slice backhand is essential to an attacking net game, such as that deployed by Tim Henman, Pat Rafter, Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe. It can be particularly effective to combat topspin with slice, since the direction of the spin is maintained rather than reversed, i.e. you're actually adding to the existing spin on the ball.

When you first learn how to play spins, it's okay to experiment and see what you can do. It's like when you get that new TV set and you sit there playing with the remote! Eventually, you'll get familiar with it and just use the controls you need.

Regards.
Dave Winship