12th Lesson with Eldon
3/30/09 Monday 10:00A.M.
Chico Racquet Club
The wind was starting to kick up some, but Eldon and I decided that we would try to get the lesson in before it got worse. In today’s lesson we specifically wanted to work on getting more pop and penetration on my forehand drive. To start out I wanted to run by Eldon certain elements of the stroke that I had been thinking about and considered significant.
I began by telling Eldon that for a couple of hours on Sunday I had viewed the forehand drives of a number of professional tennis players on Youtube and noticed that every one of them was finishing their follow-through differently than me. I was not letting my wrist turn over naturally after I had hit through the ball. I suggested this was due to my early playing days’ instruction in which I was taught to hit a relatively flat ball with a continental grip. Eldon concurred. The player using the continental grip was taught to hit low to high extending the racquet head in the follow-through as far out in front of the body as possible. The wrist was usually laid back, but never allowed to flop or turn over anywhere in the production of the forehand stroke. I thought this correction to my follow-through might be significant. I’m not so sure Eldon thought similarly.
I questioned Eldon about when in the course of play I would be using this popping and penetrating shot that I wanted to develop. We talked about the fact that it was easier to hit an attacking ball with a ball that bounces higher, that that ball is easier to drive flatter since the stroke is created by starting the swing high and finishing high moving across the body, resulting in a deeply penetrating ball that has sidespin. The stroke that I was going to develop would be more of a waist high ball that I would hit up on creating topspin at the same time that I drove through the ball to create pop and power. I would be using a forehand grip that was halfway between the eastern and semi-western. This grip would allow me to hit out harder, but still keep the ball in the court due to topspin. Eldon suggested lower balls would be easier to deal with using the eastern grip. I mentioned that I had read on a blogging website that someone suggested the following: 1) a flat ball is offensive, an attacking shot; 2) a topspin ball is neutral, a rally shot; and 3) a slice is defensive, a counter shot. Eldon agreed this was true as a general principle. He also told me he didn’t want me to forget how to hit loopy topspin shots, that that type of shot can be valuable. At this point in my development, though, I need to own a popping, penetrating forehand stroke which will create some problems for my opponents. My age is not a factor. I have the ability. It is close at hand.
I also told Eldon I understood that I needed to extend my forearm relatively straight and take the ball earlier out in front of my body, that this would give me a little more power. I understood that up to this point in my development I had learned to create topspin by letting my hitting elbow flex or bend early-on in the production of the stroke, imparting plentiful topspin to the ball. I recognized this type of stroking was not going to get me the pop I wanted in order to make the ball penetrate the court decisively.
I also recognized as true what Eldon had observed while I was hitting on the ball machine, that I was struggling to create power, becoming too tight in my upper body and in essence muscling the ball. At times, this was at the least counterproductive and at the worst using a lot of energy and still not necessarily achieving the pop and penetration that I was striving for. In fact, on Friday I had strained a muscle in my upper back hitting on the machine! This was testimony to that awareness that mechanically I still was not grasping all of the elements needed to produce a forehand drive that exhibited power and pop, yet was fluid and created with minimal effort.
I told Eldon I was curious about the arc of the ball of the stroke I was trying to master. I wanted to know what it would look like and how high it would pass over the net. Standing his racquet vertically straight up with the butt of the handle resting on top of the net cord, Eldon explained that a well hit ball would pass over the net around the top of the frame. He also mentioned that from the player’s perspective it can often be deceiving to observe the exact height at which the ball is passing over the net since the player may perceive the ball to either be ascending or descending as it passes over the net. (The trajectory of the ball hit with topspin can vary considerably, also. Gravity, velocity and the amount of forward rotation on the ball affect this trajectory.
After this small discussion, Eldon and I warmed up with a little mini-tennis where I tried to put my attention on the ball as it touched my strings with each stroke. After a few minutes of mini-tennis I headed behind the baseline. Eldon took up his position close to the net where he could judge more accurately how high the balls I struck with my forehand were passing over the net.
What ensued for the next 30 minutes and a hundred balls or so was basically the following points:
1.) Hit out through the ball———–bypass the fourth corner ball of the imaginary square and go directly through diagonally from the back ball to the front ball.
(At this point in the lesson Eldon came over to my side of the court and made a square just inside the baseline by placing a ball on each of the four imaginary corners about two feet apart. He then had me stand along side the two balls that paralleled the doubles alley and told me to swing out across the square diagonally from the back ball near the baseline to the front ball furthest away from me. This is how Eldon wanted me to imagine the path that my racquet head would follow in hitting a penetrating topspin shot. He also mentioned that hitting out around through the other ball furthest from me on the baseline was okay, but that path was more associated with a loopy topspin stroke.)
2.) Extend the forearm relatively straight as you make contact with the oncoming ball.
3. Take the ball forward and out to the right———don’t let it get to close into the body. You can’t develop power from there.
4. Let the wrist roll over after going through the ball—-finishing high over the left shoulder.
5. Be sure not to let the right leg get too far forward so you can still load up on that back leg.
Doing all of these things by the end of the lesson I was finally starting to feel the power in extending and taking the ball further out front and also hitting out diagonally instead of around with the four ball set up. Hitting down the line let me feel that more. It let me feel the power and pop more easily. It felt so good when I finally got it today!!!
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