ETI 002 | The Modern Game of Tennis – accelerate the racquet head

The modern tennis stroke is based on initiation of the upper body counter clockwise rotation and transfer of this rotation to rotation of the racket about the wrist joint. The relatively slow rotation of the big body, when it passes to the small body, the wrist together with the racket, results in a tremendous speed.
Just watch clips of the top players. The upper body rotation stops completely when the racket hits the ball. The upper body rotation passes completely into the racket rotation.
In an ideal stroke the arm, shoulder and chest muscles do nothing. The upper body drags the racket

I really think that every stroke – hit efficiently – could best be described as as ‘coiling and uncoiling’ … ideally around a strong and balanced core. If the arm and grip are relaxed – the proper stroke technique (including lag from the wrist) will happen ‘naturally’ as you ‘uncoil’ and your arm and racket rotate around your core.

The service motion is nothing more than an overhand throwing motion, the FH – is basically a sidearm throw (from various heights) and the BH is a frisbee throw ….

A lot of the confusion re: proper stroke technique is a result of focusing on what the racket head is doing instead of focusing on what the core, arm and hand are doing.

Always good to remind yourself to Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) – a lot of good things happen if you just get your strings on the ball with a smooth and relaxed swing.

Jim

Thank you for the response. The reason i ask is because one of the flaws with my forehand has been that i start the swing with the racket and then moving my hips and body etc. Your video above has been of great help by suggesting a slight lag the other way. Should there be such a lag between moving up and towards the net and starting the racket movement?

To date my early instruction, I can tell you that the first ‘real’ rackets that I bought were a 2nd hand wooden TADavis that I used for wall work and warm up and later an Arthur Ashe Comp 2 (still have that one!). After 20 years away from the game except for occasional hitting when I could find someone to play with, I started playing again and modeled my game on the modern approach. But my early muscle memory has continued to surface at odd moments and when I am fatigued or have not had enough sleep, enough to erode my confidence on the FH side.. I make a nice rotation with my core and shoulders, start to uncoil, and next thing I know, my racket is pointing at the front fence! I have been aware of the contrast in techniques, but until this lesson have not visualized the situation as a conflict of two models being applied simultaneously.

Technique is from within the stroke; the model is the overview, from which technique springs.
This lesson has put me much more in control of the process. This is very helpful!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mentalblock/465718926/in/photostream/

For “guy” about why I “blame” Vic. 🙂 From page 49 of Vic’s book, which I just *loved* (along with his videos) and practically memorized back when I was starting tennis.

The various contortions I went through in attempting to hit topspin forehands without dropping the racket head below my hand had me a basket case for decades. Well, I’m pretty much a basket case, anyway, but that made it much worse. 🙂

Just finished watching the first (amazing) set between Federer and Nadal, and the presentation offered many opportunities to note the various combinations of “sidespin” and topspin on their strokes on both low (well, at least one by Nadal) and high balls.

I *think* I’ve maybe noticed that the Fed, against both Djokovic *and* Nadal, is cracking that high one to his backhand much harder than in the past, and I think at least *some* of what he’s doing is going more “across” with a near “vertical” long axis of his racket – much like they all do with high balls to their forehands. While physics-wise this seems more or less “doable”, actually getting it done with enough accuracy to matter against these monsters likely requires a superhuman effort – by a superhuman like the Fed.

I also hold out the possibility that I may be merely hallucinating. 🙂

Kevin
Savannah

Hi Jim,

This is also a good article. I wrote to you earlier today about the serve and the difficulty I had.
I tried more pronounced “winding-up” and it not only helped to make my serve relaxed, but improved my toss (parallel to the baseline) and the overall consistency.

Old school has proved itself again – thank you! You are damn right about the basics and the useless complexity of the approach to the serve as seen in many “tennis guru” sites.

Chavdar

I’m working on a theory – at least to me it’s a theory; others may already have the same sort of thing figured out and refined.

My theory is that the modern swing, as opposed, especially, to what you showed with the back to front fence thing of the olden days, keeps the racket face pointing (more or less) to both the target line and the (vertical) trajectory line for a maximal period of time.

The video you just showed, while it shows the “lag” stuff well, sort of skips over, if not actually *hides*, this theory of mine, as you let the racket head pass up your hand, even with your demonstration of the “modern” stroke. That is, you don’t keep the wrist “lay-back” in your demonstration past the point of contact.

I’ve argued with John Yandell in the past (not typically a pleasant pursuit :-)) about whether the wrist “un” lays back during the forehand forward swing. Sharapova seems to do it a lot, and Agassi only a little – and his seems to snap back to full “laid-back” as the ball pushes against the string bed at contact.

Anyway, my theory sez that this laid-back wrist keeps the racket face, as it arcs around through the hitting zone, pretty much facing the target for an extended period of time.

Folks speak of the “windshield wiper” of the topspin forehand, but I like to back it up to where the butt of the racket starts both up and *to the right* after the lag of the “late loop”. At some point, the racket face goes from “way closed” to just a little closed (or, maybe even vertical) through the hitting area. I suspect that there is a good bit of variation of the amount of “closure” through various parts of the swing for various versions of the topspin forehand, *especially* as far as how the racket face acts with balls at the height extremes. But, once it gets to this “near vertical” orientation, I think it kind of stays there for something like 90º or more, *and* keeps facing the intended target line for a similar portion of the stroke.

I think the theory is fairly robust in that I think most all of it holds up with topspin backhands as well. I also like the way it goes with the way balls curve in flight based on the height of contact.

I don’t think most folks notice how much the pro’s balls curve in the air. When Roddick hits a topspin forehand off a very high ball, that ball curves heavily left-to-right on its path over the net, as the clockwise path of the racket face, when up high, is heading right-to-left. (If you’ve ever seen a “screwball” serve, I believe it’s done in precisely the same manner).

Conversely, as Andy seems to love to do on a running forehand passing shot down the line (and this only happens on a low ball), the ball curves right to left (sometimes even starting out in the doubles alley before curving back inside the singles line) due the racket face traveling (at least partially) left to right when down low on its clockwise path, with racket head seriously lagging behind the hand before catching up and passing it. This is one of those cases where we’re likely to see the “reverse finish”, because the racket had to move *so* much faster than the hand in order to apply the necessary spin (and add upward trajectory on that low ball??)

I’ve tried teaching this a bit to friends and family by having them imagine a pane of glass leaning slightly forward, with its base somewhere around their feet, and with the pane maybe a foot or two in front of them out in front of their faces. I then have them imagine sliding the stringbed clockwise against that pane of glass. (I’ve also stolen the idea of having them try to protect that pane of glass by making sure that the ball doesn’t get past it). I forget whose idea that was, but it worked great for me at one point along the way.

Also, that “leaning” pane of glass points out that low balls are contacted less out in front, generally, I believe, than high balls. Plus, the racket face can be more “closed” on the high balls (racket head more in “front” of the hand), as the trajectory doesn’t have to be so much “upward” on those balls.

Looking at tons of slow-mo video, I’ve noticed that only on very high balls is the long axis of the racket horizontal (or more steeply upward) at contact. On most balls, the racket head is still below the hand. Whilst I’ve often heard “low to high” for topspin, to me, the “hand path” and the “racket head path” are two massively different ideas. Brian Gordon even seemed to like that separation when we’ve talked about it. (Can’t wait for him to bring out his study of the forehand – supposedly soon).

As this set of photos shows, I blame Vic Braden for screwing up my topspin forehand for decades. 🙂 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mentalblock/sets/72157600094800395/

Anyway, while both the hand and the racket head go from low to high, they travel through much different paths and at much different rates of speed. This differential varies, of course, depending on how much topspin is applied, but I’m not sure that there is enough emphasis on this by most instructors.

I’m also convinced that a *lot* of the upward trajectory that gets produced by topspin strokes is due to how far the racket head is dropped below the ball, *regardless* of how much the hand, itself, goes low-to-high, and regardless (at least to some degree), how open or closed the racket face is on the stroke. I’m not sure of the physics here, but I’ve seen photos with parts of the tennis ball sticking over a quarter of an inch *through* the strings. I’m thinking that this could at least be partially responsible for the upward trajectory of the ball that is gained from having the racket face accelerate upwardly from below ball height (and even with the racket face slightly closed).

I’m still working on making the concept even more robust by making “slice” fit the theory, but I think I’m making a little progress with it. 🙂

I love your stuff, and enjoyed discussing the serve with you a while back.

Kevin
Savannah