CHAPTER 1

Modern Tennis and Topspin

In the last two decades professional tennis has taken a big jump technically with the acceptance and use of topspin among most players.

Topspin is a forward roll, just as if the ball were rolling forward on the ground. It is created by brushing up on the ball while stroking. You lift the racket much higher than the intended line of flight of the ball.

The air friction on top of the ball will be considerably higher than that on the bottom. The air below the ball will escape much faster, creating a zone of lower air pressure that will also slow the ball and pull it down

That, in addition to the force of gravity, makes for a much more pronounced downward curve. The ball will drop much sooner than if it had no spin at all (a "flat" ball). The faster the ball rotates forward, the more downward force it gets.

Although still not widely taught at the beginner and intermediate levels, topspin is a tremendous advantage to any player. It allows you to hit the ball with great force, well above the net, knowing that it will come down in the opponent's court. The ball is also going to take quite a jump, making it difficult for your opponent to advance to the net or to hit a winner from the backcourt.

This happens very often at the professional level. You see many rallies between the top players in the world where the ball doesn't clear the service line by much, but it is still very effective in keeping the other player back.

High Topspin

A ball hit high with a lot of topspin slows down as it goes forward and up. Then it accelerates as it comes down, making it difficult to judge how the ball will bounce. Such a ball usually kicks high and toward the backcourt. That makes high topspin effective, even on hard courts, in keeping your opponent back.

Confidence Builder

Topspin is a great tool and also a confidence builder. When you are afraid of missing you don't have to hit a softer shot to be safe. You know the ball is going to drop in the court if you rotate it enough. Your fear doesn't show since you don't need to slow down play to keep the ball in the court.

With topspin, you can also clear the net by a wider margin. With practice you get the feel that the more you hit up, the more the ball comes down. That is why I teach this technique to the beginner, the intermediate, the advanced player, and the pros who haven't mastered it yet. It encourages them to hit much harder, even under pressure.

When to Learn Topspin

The techniques used in this book to teach groundstrokes develop topspin naturally, right from the beginning.

Although this learning is done at slow speeds at first, the swing developed is the same low-to-high stroke used by the pros.

I consider this a very basic part of learning to play tennis well. Topspin requires that you apply much more upward force to the ball than the intended path of your shot.

If, on the contrary, you learn from the beginning to apply your force coincident with the intended line of flight of your shot, it will become an instinctive habit, something that will be difficult to shake in the future. You hit the ball with a certain direction of effort and you relate this action to the speed and height of your shot, and to where the ball lands. If I later tell you to lift your strokes with topspin, you'll probably panic. You'll be afraid of hitting the ball too high and too far.

You may understand it intellectually, but deep inside you are conditioned differently from your prior experience. You haven't instinctively built the feel that comes with topspin: the more you hit up on the ball and the more you roll it, the more it comes down.

Players who have hit flat most of their lives and now want to hit topspin, may need hundreds of hours of practice to master this new feel.

For all these reasons I like to see beginners hit up and use topspin to bring the ball down in the court, rather than forcing the ball down as soon as they develop some faster shots. Their tennis instinct is virgin territory. A beginner needs to get the feeling from the start that lifting the stroke causes the ball to curve down.

Not one of the beginners I taught with topspin was afraid of hitting the ball out. Whenever their shots went beyond the baseline, they rolled the next ball more.

Topspin builds up your confidence. Flat hits cause innumerable errors, lessening your confidence.

As you progress as a topspin player, you'll learn to rotate the ball more and more efficiently, whether on your forehand, backhand, or serve. The safety factor in your shots will always be in your favor. Should you decide to risk a few, you can hit some flatter shots, but you can always revert to safety when needed by going back to topspin strokes.