Dave's Backhand

Here we have Dave Brown with his topspin backhands.

04/06/10


When watching the videos for the first time the general view is that Dave has a good level of mastery on his backhand. The better the player is, the harder it is to analyze his strokes. With the HS video we can zoom in and find out where are the problems. We can only change and improve the imperfections of our technique when we know exactly what they are.

04/06/10



Dave starts his motion with a unit turn (great improvement!). His racket head is kept close to the left shoulder and the right hand goes up while David turns his shoulder.

04/06/10



The position of the right elbow on the full turn is indicating that he is not getting enough body turn.Actually from the side view if you freeze on the full turn you can see that the right elbow is just a little bit behind the right shoulder and they are almost parallel to the baseline.

04/06/10



After the full turn as David starts to bring the racket down towards the forward swing. On the next video the hands describe a loop coming down together and that seemed very strange when I first saw it. As I was comparing it with my own swing and other pros I've realized that what the pros do differently is that on the down swing they keep the right hand more leveled and drop more the left hand and racket head.

The next videos with a higher contact ball David doesn't do the same sort of loop with both hands and that aspect looks much better. Actually on the higher balls, in the beginning of the forward swing just before he releases his left hand David is getting his racket positioned almost parallel to the baseline much more than on previous shots.
04/06/10



A critical element on David's backhand is that on the drop when the left hand is released from the racket, the racket head doesn't get low enough before going forward towards contact, especially on the lower balls. It can be a consequence of not getting low enough with the knees before accelerating to the ball. Perhaps Dave can keep the left hand just a little bit longer on the racket and that might allow the racket to come lower.

However on this higher balls David's extension is not quite as good as on the low balls. His eyes are on the contact point and as they follow the ball during the follow through so his head is not still and it helps to bring the left shoulder forward.

04/06/10


It is not easy to analyze someone's shots specially if the player has a high level of mastery. The problem comes down to language. It is extremely hard to describe a tennis shot and it is so much easier to understand it through pictures or videos where the images get memorized on our brain. No matter how accurate my analysis are at the end they are just my perspective at the time. The videos are what really counts.