[zt from tt] Clean Contact in Tennis

Nov 1 2005, 01:29 PM #23
Bungalo Bill

1. Lengthen your swing at/after the contact point
Lengthen your swing out to the target. then come around. If you slow down pro strokes they go way out on almost every shot and then they break off and come around.

It is an optical illusion to be whippy at the ball or snap at it. Go through it, balance yourself, time your backswing so that when you begin the drop you can use this drop to help accelerate the racket.

Have you ever noticed that when a pro uses a similar stroke pattern (the entire swing including were the racket followsthrough) that for some reason it still looks smooth? Or still simply looks right? Do you know why? Because there is LENGTH in their strokes. Length smoothens out the stroke and makes it look pleasing to the eye.

However, what we end up doing is taking what we "think" we see on TV and thinking it is shorter than it really is and worse we think we are doing the same thing. Unfortunately, we get a lot of these "half" arm strokes. Jerky, ugly, and inconsistent. It just don't look the same.

2. Accelerate through contact point with square racquect face
A drill I once used was to slow down the racket speed and focus entirely on hitting the center of the strings for each ball - especially for the backhand side. During the drill, I did not place too much importance on the ball going in or over the net. I placed most of the importance on simply hitting the ball in the center of the strings.

This did several things for a player and that was to learn proper distance away from the ball and in training the visual aspects of judging the ball.

...

The key is to develop good racket head speed that is accelerating through the contact zone with a square racket face. You want to develop this racket speed without losing your balance or developing hitches in the swing because you are swinging too slowly or too quickly for your level of development.