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Hi all! Very simple question: what causes sidespin on basic forehand & backhand groundstrokes?
Recently, I've been experimenting with a very heavy (370 SW) racket; it has really cleaned up my ground strokes and overall been a great improvement. With this much weight, I have to be ready early, and I have to let the racket do the work; there's no way to 'muscle' the racket around (without a big ortho surgery bill). This is intended as a training exercise; I go back to my primary racket (330 SW) for 'real' matches - and I've found that the heavy racket has really 'taught' me a much improved stroke with the lighter racket: large benefits in relaxed acceleration through the ball, improved core rotation, earlier preparation, and better depth / spin / control.
One curious thing: with the heavy racket, I notice that I sometimes get a lot of sidespin on basic groundstrokes. It's enough to be a bit of a problem: if I receive an easy crosscourt to my fh and attempt to take it down the line, I find that my shots often go about 1 foot wide over the length of the court - enough to put the ball out - and this is caused by a curved arc of travel. Other players confirm that I am sometimes generating a lot of this sidespin action, but only with the heavy racket.
I haven't had a chance to video my strokes yet, but I will in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm wondering what usually causes sidespin, what to look for: is the racket coming around late (am I late), is the contact point to deep towards my body rather than out in front, am I dropping the head of the racket? I know on my bh that I often swing too much across my body when I am late, but I'm getting sidespin even when I feel I have hit a clean stroke path; I've never had an issue with swinging across my body on the fh side.
Just looking for some educated guesses on this before I have a chance to video.
Thanks!
-frank
Recently, I've been experimenting with a very heavy (370 SW) racket; it has really cleaned up my ground strokes and overall been a great improvement. With this much weight, I have to be ready early, and I have to let the racket do the work; there's no way to 'muscle' the racket around (without a big ortho surgery bill). This is intended as a training exercise; I go back to my primary racket (330 SW) for 'real' matches - and I've found that the heavy racket has really 'taught' me a much improved stroke with the lighter racket: large benefits in relaxed acceleration through the ball, improved core rotation, earlier preparation, and better depth / spin / control.
One curious thing: with the heavy racket, I notice that I sometimes get a lot of sidespin on basic groundstrokes. It's enough to be a bit of a problem: if I receive an easy crosscourt to my fh and attempt to take it down the line, I find that my shots often go about 1 foot wide over the length of the court - enough to put the ball out - and this is caused by a curved arc of travel. Other players confirm that I am sometimes generating a lot of this sidespin action, but only with the heavy racket.
I haven't had a chance to video my strokes yet, but I will in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm wondering what usually causes sidespin, what to look for: is the racket coming around late (am I late), is the contact point to deep towards my body rather than out in front, am I dropping the head of the racket? I know on my bh that I often swing too much across my body when I am late, but I'm getting sidespin even when I feel I have hit a clean stroke path; I've never had an issue with swinging across my body on the fh side.
Just looking for some educated guesses on this before I have a chance to video.
Thanks!
-frank
Fascinating...
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