flat to topspin for oldie

[dct5]

...this'll date me, but I was taught, and have used for the past 40 years the Continental grip, with a sawed off wood racket at a time where you ONLY wore white.

Anyway, getting back into it, I have been told that adding topspin will give me a larger percentage shot (yes, too often it flies just long) and I'm looking for tips on how to make the shift. I guess I want to keep my flat forehand to blast when appropriate, but for those baseline rallies, a topspin would be way cool. But without changing my grip. Is it possible? Not those hugely topspin strokes, but any advice on shoulder/elbow stuff that could help?

[Jon Hampton]

You can get a lot of topspin with ANY grip, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. However, if you're going to hit topspin with a continental or eastern grip, which aren't condusive to topspin, you're going to need tremendous racket head speed--just take a look at Federer's forehand.

You have to work on putting a lot of emphasis on brushing the ball upward as opposed to forward. Flat groundstrokes put a lot of forward velocity on the ball while imparting little spin to the actual ball. Topspin, on the other hand, focuses on brushing up the ball and imparting air pressure on the top of the ball, which causes it to drop a lot faster. The trick for you is to find out how much topspin you want to add. Chances are, you don't want to change your whole groundstroke, so I'll give you this bit of advice: brush up on the ball when you contact with it. If you think of a tennis ball as having a nose, when you make contact with your racket, try not to break the nose off, instead try to bend the nose upward as much as possible while the ball is on your racket.

And remember, practice makes perfect. Have someone feed you balls and try to work on brushing up as much as possible. Remember...high racket head speed while pushing up through the ball...as much as you can without causing constant mishits.

[Frank Silbermann]

If you want to learn how to hit topspin with a continental grip, get a video of Rod Laver, Tony Roche, or Illie Nastase. You might try the video "Kings of the Court."

[dct5]

Great, thanks for the tips! I'm off to the courts to try it out. I can do topspin brushing motion with a double handed backhand when I don't slice, so surely I can get my forehand to behave.

Ah, love those pros of old! Saw Laver years and years ago play in Berkeley. He and Kenny Rosewall were favorites, as was Arthur Ashe.