Have a Question for Me?

[leis]

Clay Footwork

John: Any thoughts on learning soft court footwork, including the slide. I knew of some pros who untied their shoe laces during practice on hard courts because they couldn't get access to soft courts that day. The untied shoe laces forced them to stay balanced or they would run out of their shoes. It also helped them quickly adjust to the "tippy toe" movement needed to initiate a running motion - a motion that hard court players have difficulty with when trying to quickly adjust to certain types of soft courts.

[johnyandell]

Yes, except that the height of the racket head should be at about ball level at the start of the forward swing.

[malice]

Ok just went back to read the stuff.

Just for confirmation.

Preparations are identical to the topspin , however..

- Use a continental
- Prepare the angle of the racquet face to be partially open
- Move straight through the shot , relying on the angle to generate spin.

For clarification , is it good to imagine a somewhat similar topspin backhand's swing path ?

Did i get that right ? Going out to hit tomorrow , gonna give it a shot.

Thanks again and sorry for taking up your time

[johnyandell]

Don't TRY to square the face, It doesn't have to be square and isn't on many bhs. Of the deflection of the hit causes it to be square only.

Look at the Don Budge slice drives in the Stroke Archive.
Also read the article in Your Strokes on Carl Sutherland's slice drive.

You want to try hit through with the angle of the face set.

Also if you use that stronger grip it's going to float period. Mild continental is ideal.

[malice]

I would like to ask for some help regarding the BH slice-drive.

I have read most of the Slice articles (mainly Mr.Trey Waltke's) on the site but i just cant seem to hit the Slice-BH with any authority whatsoever.

My main problem is often hitting the ball long by quite a large margin.

I cannot seem to square off the racquet face for some reason , especially when i increase racquet head-speed.

A habit has developed on my BH slice , whereby i shift my grip closer to that of a heavier - BH grip to square of the face. This however robs me of alot of pace and penetration , resulting in "floaters" unless i really use a severe downward chop.


Basically , how do i go about

- Squaring my racquet face for contact
- Hitting through the ball for slice
( Am i suppose to take the ball far infront of me or closer than a topspin drive ?)

Please let me know if you need any other specific details

Thanks and AWESOME site !

[jstr]

% of time on volleys

What % of the time on volleys near the net should one feel like "catching an egg " on the strings instead of more of a more aggressive put away type action? It seems that aggression leads to "swinging" the racquet which leads to errors...

[johnyandell]

Lansdorp says it's the best for the topspin lob.

[leis]

Reverse Forehand

John: Loved the 3 finishes article. At a tennis sport science conference several years ago, I heard the reverse forehand referred to as a "buggy whip" because you pop the whip upward. I like to use that finish on a topspin lob for some reason(probably because my opponent pressured me while at net and I caught the ball late).

[johnyandell]

I haven't looked at the timing of this over hundreds of clips, but you do often see the top players relax their hands in the preparation phase. For example, Haas does it, but Federer doesn't.

I'm not sure it's a big deal. The grip shift is easy and natural and doesn't take that much time or ususally cause problems for experienced players.

There were some Spanish players who did exactly what you are suggesting re: one extreme grip. Just turned the hand over without switching the grip.

[leis]

Grip change Methods

John:
Has anyone reviewed video to look at grip change techniques, especially under shorter time periods such as the service return? It seems that many of the pros open the fingers of their racket hand prior to a forehand or backhand grip commitment(your high speed footage of Justine Hardin). When the racket is rotated, there will be less grip resistance during rotation. Many one handers seem to switch to a backhand grip with a small pivot of the racket at the junction of the hand and index finger of the racket hand. The non racket hand simply pulls the racket throat to pivot the rotation. Extreme grips obviously have further to travel for rotation and techniques probably vary. It is not inconceivable that someone in the future could have such an extreme one handed backhand grip that they could use the same grip for the forehand by simply moving the arm over to the forehand side without a grip change!!

[kurtvanhook]

kurt's bh

Hi John,

Here's what I've found after carefully considering your comments on my admittedly "weird" BH racket takeback (and after hitting and videotaping many many balls over the last few days) :

1) Grip : Part of the reason that my racket was angled was that my grip was off....not quite eastern backhand but more rotated more towards a continental - subtle rotation but definitely a problem. This made it hard to make the racket vertical on the backswing. When I get the grip right, shot is definitely better.

2) From studying the Gaudio/Federer/Phillipoussis/henin/Kuerten BH clips, I see that the racket initially goes back perpendicular to ground with the unit turn, but racket face always is "pulled up" by the left (non-dominant) hand so that the face is level to, or even above, the head, at the completion of the backswing. This element, which I think is key (well, at least to me it is!), is not mentioned in the Phillipoussis BH article, nor in the one-handed backhand portion of your book "visual tennis". .This element facilitates a loop, of course, and more racket speed. Timing is a bit more of a challenge than with my previous, flawed, straight takeback, but when I get this sequence correct, I get effortless power.

3) The biggest bonus I'm getting out of the looped, elevated-to-my-head backswing, is that now I can power through balls that are a little bit higher up in my sweet spot wheel-house strike zone. Before, the always-low takeback would force me to take all of these balls 1)on the rise, or, 2) with a high slice. Now I find I can rip through them with an efficient low-to-high swing angle....as shown clearly in some of the kuerten slow mo BH clips.

This has been a huge epiphany for me, John, and sincerely thank you for this insight! When I think I've got it right, I'll send you more clips if you don't mind.

I'm off to the US Open Qualifying....do you want to to file a report from the field?

Kurt

[kurtvanhook]

wild ideas..

John, I can't tell you how much I enjoy this site....just renewed for the year.
The clips are just unbelievable....your approach to athletic movement gets me thinking about other fluid sports movements that demand this type of analysis

Ideas for satellite sites - or a bonus addition to this site. I realize that this is probably a cost-prohibitive dream....but one can dream, no?

1) golf swings (pga/lpga tour players)
a) golf swings of current/former ATP tour players (Lendl, Sampras come to mind)

2) Baseball batting swings : how sweet would a Rod Carew/TonyGwynn library be?

3) Baseball infield : Ozzie Smith, Omar Vizquel, Jeter.....fast and slow studies of them fielding balls at short and throwing to first....I could seriously watch that kind of stuff all day long.

4) baseball pitching - Koufax, Ryan, Clemens....wow.....

5) Basketball jump shots : Again, I could watch Mike Bibby, Peja, Tony Parker, Wade, shoot j's all day.

[johnyandell]

Good question. It's very tough to see the subtle differences in the grips--the top 50 players looking player by player, that would be tough. I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of video to get the ones I did. It's there as a research project for someone though... you just need to spend a few dozen hours in the stroke archive.

I think the biggest percentage of the men are 4 3 1/2 as I said in the article, but I haven't counted. In general we suppose that more extreme grips go with clay, but not sure the corelation with type of court always holds. The better players tend to win--that's the bottom line--yeah maybe the grips have an effect when you get to Federer vs Nadal on red clay.

The women will will be looking at as a separate series. They are definitely more conservative grip wise--more in the Agassi to Nalbandian range with few excepts (Petrova, Groenefeld).

[JanWaechli]

vh grips

it would be very intressting to know the % of grips for the top 50 players. women and men! also the relation of preferred sourface they play on. can you do that? and will you cover the women anytime soon?
thanks, and greatings to gangi from jan

[johnyandell]

Couldn't agree more. The big, circular loop is a sacred cow. Unfortunately, it doesn't function the way so many coaches think. If you look at the Lansdorp FH article there is an amazing animation of Pete age 10 or so--very compact classic loop--no closed face elbow lead etc.


More on this coming next month!