Learning Modern Tennis

I played Adam two weeks ago. I told him I was tinkering with how I hit my strokes. He replied that, at his age, and how often he plays, he's content with the way he hits his shots. There's no arguing, outside a big serve, his strokes are effective, and that this allows him to simply play. The nirvana of sports is to reach a point where you simply play. Your body already does what it should do.

Being vaguely dissatisfied with my tennis strokes, I find myself wanting to modify the way I hit.

It's interesting seeing how, what I read 20 years ago, has changed.

Here's a simple example. The two-handed backhand. Once a novelty, three players made the two-handed backhand fashionable: Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, and Chris Evert. Of course, there were others hitting with two hands, from Cliff Drysdale to Harold Solomon to Tracy Austin.

When I first learn to hit the two-handed backhand, I read something interesting. The experts said "you should hit a two-handed backhand like a one-handed backhand, with the top hand there for support". This thinking influenced me quite a bit. It has some advantages, especially if you have to let go of your left hand, and slice the shot. However, if you're able to flip the racquet some, you can adjust the grip, even at the last minute. You can even use your left hand to adjust it for a slice.

As I've mentioned before, there are a lot more resources on the web, and that has revolutionized how people can now learn tennis. This wouldn't be so intriguing if tennis wasn't so hard to begin with.

For example, the single hardest stroke to master in tennis has to be the serve, and yet it's the most important. The serve involves a toss, knee bend, body bend, wrist pronation. You literally have to practice this over and over and over again. But when you're by yourself, it's hard to see what you are doing wrong, and because of that, coaches make a pretty penny teaching tennis.

Yesterday while playing tennis, I decided on a whim to do something different. I tossed the ball lower, out in front, and then snapped the wrist. People tell you that this is the wrong motion, that it's not a wrist snap so much as a pronation, but there is still that aspect to it. That addition really put a lot more pace on my serve. The result was quite a bit flatter, to be fair. Indeed, even as I was snapping, I found I was still hitting my serve long, and so I really had to aim down.

Now, in reality, I'm not aiming down, but my mentality is that I hit up and think it's not up, and so when I hit "down", I'm not really doing that at all. My brain just thinks it's down based on years of tennis.

I find myself watching slow-motion of Roger Federer, and imitating that. Of course, you can only imitate so much. He has a lot more physical talent than I do, but beyond that, even as you watch in slow-motion, what do you pick up? You might be, say, staring at his feet, and how he lines it up, or how his arms are positioned, but be unable to tell how loose he's gripping the racquet, or just how fast he's hitting it.

I'd focus on Fed's arms, and realize his feet were doing interesting stuff. There's this constant back and forth. I'd see something, try it out on the court, then go back and see what Fed is doing, and realized I missed something.

One of the better sites for watching pros hit their shots is Hi-tech Tennis. They have a lot of videos, though the angle and quality isn't always that good (players get chopped out). But what is good is the ability to pause the video and single step forward and back to see what's going on.

Again, I should point out that it can be hard to see things. For example, how much does the pro cock his wrist? How much does the shoulder play a role? How much does the hip play a role? How close should the ball get before you swing? All of these are hard to tell when you watch video.

The next step, I believe, is to start recording my shots.