The Zen of Tennis

Today, it was just warm enough to play tennis. Warm is a bit of an exaggeration. Despite being as warm as it has been for about two weeks, it was still chilly. Let the sunny skies not fool you. Still, who imagines playing tennis in February outdoors? It could be worse. It could be the midwest where the weather really is cold.

I wanted to try out my revamped strokes, which, I'm sure, to the untrained eye, doesn't look significantly different from the way I had been hitting it. And, honestly, it isn't so different.

I've been working on a few changes, which I'll outline, at least so I can look back at it, if need be.

Usually, I imitate various professionals when I try to learn to hit a shot. In the early days, the forehand was based on all the baseliners of the day. Mats Wilander, Bjorn Borg (especially Borg, despite the fact he had pretty much retired when I first started to play), Guillermo Vilas, and Ivan Lendl. I tried hitting a whippy shot like Lendl, but these days I don't do that so much.

Recently, I was watching the new sensation, Novak Djokovic (I was thinking that he's two years younger than the youngest guy among the engineers, and he's been really good for at least a year already). Djokovic has an odd hitch at the start of his forehand which seems to serve very little purpose, but I was trying to imitate that hitch too.

I know, it sounds kinda silly to imitate the pros, because even if you could analyze in slow-motion, what they were doing, you could probably not really get the true sensation of what their body was doing. Still, if we don't learn by imitating, then how do we learn?

When that wasn't working so well (it wasn't working badly, mind you), I went to the gold standard of players. Roger Federer. Compared to, say, Nadal or Djokovic, Federer's stroke is a bit simpler. It's not Agassi simple, but it's getting there. Indeed Agassi, for a player who hits his forehand as hard as he does, has one of the shortest preparations in the game, compared to how elaborate Djokovic is. This probably explains why he was able to return serve so well. His normal motion was so economical.

It's hard to explain, but Federer seems to use his forearm more when he swings. The other thing I'm imitating is that Federer sometimes puts his left arm in front of his body. I think this forces him to turn his shoulder more, so I'm trying that out as well. So far, it's working all right. I just saw some more slow-mo videos of Federer, and there's a huge acceleration that he makes just before he hits. Federer can also hit shoulder-height shots with quite a lot of velocity too.

The other shot I'm working on is my backhand. I can hit an OK one-handed backhand. I used to hit it before I switched to two hands. I still slice one-handed. However, many of the recent videos I've seen have emphasized hitting the two-handed backhand like a lefty one-handed backhand. One way I can make myself do this more is to clench my left hand tighter, and leave my right hand looser. I think I'm getting a touch more spin this way too.

Finally, although I was never a baseball kid, I've been thinking of the serve as more like a pitching motion, and seeing if that visual will help me serve better. The serve needs more work still, but at least I have more consistency, and can hit the second serve with more than a simple push. It almost takes a leap of faith to hit the second serve with that additional spin. The reason most people push their second serves is because it takes a rather quick fluid motion to make it consistently reliable. If you have hitches in the motion, it's bam, double fault. Pushing it lessens the pace, but it also limits how hard you can hit a second serve too.

I'm also trying to hit some drop volleys, especially to deal with quicker players. It was an idea I picked up from watching Tsonga, who, of course, is far, far more talented than me, but you can sometimes try a few ideas out from watching the best play, and I've been doing it all of my tennis life.