Thank you, Nick!

I wouldn’t say the wrist is firm but it’s surely not rolling over at contact.

Maybe this video explains better what you want to know about the wrist: https://www.feeltennis.net/forehand-topspin-drills/

What I would like to check is that with topspin, the wrist should not be rolling over and should remain firm. Thanks again, Nick

Hi Bilal,

Let me answer by a question: if you want to throw the ball with your hand across the net from the baseline and I ask you to throw it higher over the net – do you have to think about a higher finish with your arm?

Or can you just do it?

If you a drive a car and want to turn more to the left, can you just do it or do you have to think about moving your arms in a certain way?

Hope that answers your question.

As for aiming higher and hitting long, well, you need to find the right speed and spin that still keep the ball in.

That is what the challenge of tennis is really about – it’s not at what position you follow-through but at what speed, height and spin do you choose to hit each ball that comes to you with different heights, speeds and spins.

You constantly need to judge how to hit the ball so that you keep it inside the court. It is one of the most difficult sports in the world so don’t expect that there is answer out there that will help you keep in the ball in the court all the time.

All of us who play tennis well have played for hours per day and for years until we mastered the heights, speeds and spins that allow us to play consistently and accurately.

You suggested someone here to aim high to get more depth. Does aiming high mean that I have to finish my follw through higher?

Normally when I try to aim high, I lose pace on my shot and every 2 or 3 shots later, I hit the ball long. Please help.

Thanx …

The issue of counterproductive tension in the body and jerkiness in the stroke is a big challenge for most adult recreational players, and juniors that are pushed into tournament competition too soon (practice controlled competition is healthy if it is used to build confidence, strength, and ball control using efficient technique that will when developed not break down under pressure).

Yet, we do need to create some elasticity in our strokes and as such there does need to be kinetic tension built up to generate force and speed of movement. This is the fine line that must be crossed to develop high performance stokes IMHO. The player cannot be “limp” relaxed vs. actively relaxed states needed with creating high ball and spin speeds to use tactics that force errors.

Good point, KSandberg.

I don’t agree though that rolling the ball doesn’t work well when the ball is falling – in fact it works even better because the ball is going down and rolling motion is going up hence there is more friction and therefore better feel for topspin.

And one more experience from my side: 95% of the adult recreational tennis players I worked with are not capable of hitting the ball on the rise WHILE maintaining smoothness, good timing and using their whole kinetic chain.

They are tight and can use only their arm to hit the ball because their brain cannot calculate the timing and firing of the whole kinetic chain in that short amount of time they have when they are hitting the ball on the rise.

That’s why one of the first things I ask them to do is to move back and hit the ball on the way down if possible because then they finally feel they have time and they start relaxing. I also play very slow with them, mostly giving them floating slice shots.

Once they start relaxing the body starts to loosen up and the kinetic chain works.

And ONLY now when they have a reference point of how it FEELS when the whole body is engaged into the stroke they can move in and attempt to hit the ball on the rise more often and then they can compare if they were able to execute the stroke properly or whether they tensed up and shortened it too much.

So again, in theory I agree with you that hitting on the rise is good and that’s what the pros do, but the majority of the visitors to this site are recreational tennis players and hitting the ball on the rise does much more harm to their game development than good.

Hi Chris,

First, this is just one example of hitting a ball and to me it’s one of the fundamental ones.

Secondly, you may misinterpret what I mean by the roll. The roll doesn’t mean that the racquet face is closed.

It only gives the player the FEEL of how the strings interact with the ball.

The hitting in the ground drill exaggerates this idea so that the players “get it”.

When they hit over the net, their racquet is much more vertical.

How vertical is it depends on the incoming ball (speed, height, falling or rising, spin or slice, etc.) and on what they want with their ball (fast, high, lots of spin or not, short or long, etc.).

So there are many variables that determine how vertical the racquet face is and at what angle we swing at the ball.

Therefore discussing one single example is not going to work…

For example, I personally hit the ball on a groundstroke in at least 5 distinctly different ways where “rolling” is just one of them.

I’ll try to describe with words what I do since that’s the best we can do like this with no real live interaction…

I can roll, sweep, slap, drive, push, whip, block and probably a few more ways of dealing with a ball…

I am sure Novak has at least 10.

The feel based approach I use is not something you can describe very scientifically or analytically. Your logical mind will never find the exact answer here.

This is more intuitive approach where we feel something new, we get that “aha” moment, and from then on we have new neural pathway which we deepen and enrich through the repetition and understand much more through “feel” and mental image how to play the ball rather than through exact scientific logical analysis.

Can you clarify or show me where in the video the roll occurs? It is just a roll from an open face to a closed face?

Thank You,

Chris