Dan's Backhands

Thanks for sharing your backhands here on my blog, Ned. Your backhand has a lot of common elements with the pros. As soon as I've looked at the videos I was positively surprised to see how efficient they were.

To start you have a perfect unit turn during your preparation. I couldn't see any independent movement of the racquet and hand during the preparation, even when I analyze it frame by frame. Your racquet and left hand go at exactly the same speed of your shoulder turn just like any pro. The only difference is that the pro maintains his other hand on the racquet which you can't do.

Where can you improve?

I believe that, part of that answer can be find by watching the 4 different backhands here on my blog.





If we compare the first two shots with the other two there is a major difference between them. That difference is timing. If you freeze the video when the ball bounces on the court on the first 2 videos you can see that Ned still hasn't turned his shoulders completely and if you keep an eye on his racquet hand and racquet head we can see that they keep going back. The forward swing only starts when the ball is roughly on the highest point. As a consequence Ned was forced to close the stance where he brought his right foot across and even back on one of the shots to buy some time. He was rushed on those two shots and he probably hit the ball a bit too far back although is difficult to see it from this angle.





Notice how Ned on the last two videos corrected the problems of the first two videos. Ned seemed to be ready by the time the ball bounced and he was ready to start his forward swing just after the bounce. Because he had more time he stepped in with his right foot and took the ball more in front. As a consequence of that his extension seemed much better where the racquet kept going through the line of the shot for longer.

Of course there is much to be seen with Ned's backhands. Although I have already recorded him again and it will be very interesting have his backhand on the blog again.