Hello Tomaz,

Have so far had a good flick through the ideas it the Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and I look forward to really getting into it.

Just a quick question for now based on a game I played earlier against an attacking & competitive aggressive baseliner, which I lost & is still haunting me.

I’d say I’m an all-rounder but his game dictated play throughout & gave me no rhythm, largely as in rallies his deep groundstrokes esp. on forehand were a lot quicker & harder than I’ve been used to & I struggled to cope with putting them back deep & with any control.

So throughout I was experimenting with suitable techniques eg on my forehand shorter swing & tighter grip & others without satisfactory success, I am a strong & athletic player, still learning after just a year, with a very good level for this time.

I feel that I am capable to handle this type of pace esp. on my forehand & also this type of player but just for now I would appreciate if you could advise on the best forehand technique for handling such power & pace on defence ie stance, grip, swing etc?

Since I don’t see your forehand I can only assume what’s going on.

Typical reason why a player cannot handle fast paced shots is because he plays too much with the arm (and the racquet).

The arm itself is too slow and too weak (except in Nadal’s case ) to move so fast and control the angle of the racquet face.

You need to focus on BODY ROTATION which will automatically prepare your backswing and put no stress on the arm.

You are also able to prepare much quicker if you just rotate your hips and shoulders as opposed to taking your racquet back.

And when the ball comes fast, you can rotate your body just partly for preparation and then rotate forward again for a stroke which will give you enough power and stability to hit the ball well.

When I do this, I feel that my body rotation is responsible for 80% of the power of my shots and my arm only about 20%.

That’s also the way to return fast serves. It’s just body rotation without any loops or backswings.

Andre Agassi was the master of this so see if you can find some videos of him returning.

Here are 3 pictures that show his forehand preparation and contact and you’ll see that the preparation is done mostly by turning the body.

(These photos have been long on my hard drive and I don’t know the original author. I can give credit (with a link) to the author so please contact me if you recognize these photos as yours.)

How to learn this?

1. Put the butt of the racquet on your right hip (if right-hander) and just rotate your body to see how the racquet moves forward and backward together with the body.

2. Have someone toss you a ball and you try to bump it with the racquet (still on your hip!) by just rotating your body backward and forward.

3. Hold the racquet away from the body at the comfortable distance and again try to hit the ball just by rotating your body.

4. Combine this feel with your arm movement and try to use mostly body rotation for power.

And for some fun and good old times check this video of Andre Agassi playing Roger Federer (age 17!) in Basel.

Related posts:


• Top 10 Tennis Tips To Increase The Speed Of Your Serve
• 5 Tips For Better Serving
• Do You Lift Or Swing The Racquet To The Contact Point?
• Tennis Grips Dilemmas
• Feeling The Stroke In Tennis Compared To Golf

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Tennis Instruction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.