I dont feel the bh slice with new balls

[toth]

I know it would be good to practise a lot with new balls but in reality we practise usually with old balls.
My usual game is not bad with new balls but my bh slice game is a disaster, all balls go out, wide and long too.
Could you recommend me how to adjust the bh slice to new balls?
I usually play on red clay.

Thank you for your answer
Toth

 

[toth]

My own tipp would be swing slower, longer(?!)

 

[ErrorMachine]

Looser grip and aim more central. Keep the weight on the front leg and follow through

 

[travlerajm]

String tighter for new balls.

 

[TennisDawg]

Put more slice on it.

 

[toth]

Put more slice on it.

More slice helps to keep the ball in play becouse of the longer ball contact or something else?

 

[Rosstour]

My own tipp would be swing slower, longer(?!)

Swing harder not slower

 

[toth]

Swing harder not slower

I dont understand the physik if i swing faster why dont go the ball more out?
Only more topspin helps, as i would think(?!)

 

[Rosstour]

I dont understand the physik if i swing faster why dont go the ball more out?
Only more topspin helps, as i would think(?!)

More backspin will help too.

My 5.0 buddy told me to swing harder because I was pushing all my FH slice long. I started to swing harder and lo and behold, the balls started really biting and not sailing any more.

 

[toth]

Could someone explain the physik why more backspin help to play the ball in?
A lot of Internet instructor and TT threads says pure slice serve is not safe, if you want to play safe add topspin for the slice serve (topslice).

 

[Injured Again]

Could someone explain the physik why more backspin help to play the ball in?
A lot of Internet instructor and TT threads says pure slice serve is not safe, if you want to play safe add topspin for the slice serve (topslice).

It is not about more underspin helping the ball to drop in, it is about you needing to control the angle that the ball comes off your strings.

Until you reach fairly high levels of play, all balls that you hit after the bounce will have topspin on them, even if your opponent hits a slice. The spin rate will roughly equal the speed the ball comes off the ground, so faster balls will have more topspin after the bounce.

If you try to hit underspin on a groundstroke and the downward speed of your swing is not as fast as the ball is spinning, the ball will come off your strings at a higher angle and fly long.

New balls fly through the air faster and come off the ground faster, with more topspin on them. So for you to control the angle the ball comes off your strings, you have to either swing faster or close the racquet face when using new balls.

When you miss the ball wide, that is a timing problem. You’re most likely late because the ball is faster. In those situations, just pretend your opponent is playing with the wind behind them and make the same adjustment.

 

[ratherlosethanpush]

I know it would be good to practise a lot with new balls but in reality we practise usually with old balls.
My usual game is not bad with new balls but my bh slice game is a disaster, all balls go out, wide and long too.
Could you recommend me how to adjust the bh slice to new balls?
I usually play on red clay.

Thank you for your answer
Toth

Don't use old balls, they don't spin or compress appropriately and are horrible.

I'd rather use trinitis than them which aren't quite 'normal' in performance terms. This would be my ball machine option.

Practice with newer balls or use the repressuring cans or other options to prolong life. This would be my hitting partner option.

 

[toth]

(Is more difficoult for the top player playing backhand slices safely on clay than on fast courts becouse of the heaviness of the topspin of the incoming ball on clay?)

 

[toth]

In an earlier bh slice thread i have read looser grip is rather for more defensiv slice, tighter grip rather for more offensiv slice(!?)
I think today i rather would need the defensiv slice for more difficoult incoming balls.
(As i see pros use less slice on clay in general)

 

[10sbeast888]

all inconsistencies stem from 1 problem - the racket face angle is changing thru the contact. watch your motion slowly - is the angle changing? you should have the same angle 1 ft before and after the contact.

 

[toth]

all inconsistencies stem from 1 problem - the racket face angle is changing thru the contact. watch your motion slowly - is the angle changing? you should have the same angle 1 ft before and after the contact.

With old balls i did not have this issue
I think becouse with old balls worked, the issue is i have no feel for new balls, it has changed something and yet i did not found how to adjust

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

More slice helps to keep the ball in play becouse of the longer ball contact or something else?

Dwell time (ball contact time on the stringbed) can be increased with lower string tensions. There are quite a few physics studies / articles that discuss this. While lower string tensions will usually result in a greater ball speed, longer dwell times are generally regarded as less desirable.

Very little has been written (scientific sources) on dwell time varying with swing speed. I believe that this is because that there is very little variation in dwell time for different swing speeds. Typical dwell times are about 4ms for standard string tensions —regardless of swing speed for the most part.

I have come across a couple of scientific sources that indicate that the stringbed effectively becomes stiffer when the ball is struck very hard. This means that there can be a (slight) decrease in dwell time for very fast swing speeds.

I suspect that this change in dwell time might only be a decrease by a just few percent than a typical dwell time. I’m not sure that we can really do much with this minor change in dwell time since it is substantially shorter than human reaction times (which are on the order of hundreds of ms).

Note that you can impart more spin to the ball with a higher RHS. This higher spin rate can help with ball control but not sure if it has an effect on feel.

A brand new ball could be a bit stiffer than a used ball. This is likely due to a somewhat higher internal air pressure. (The condition of the felt and the elasticity of the rubber might also be very minor contributors to the perceived stiffness of the ball).

A brand new ball with a slow or medium swing might yield a slightly longer dwell time than a very fast swing. But not sure if we can attribute this small dwell time difference to something you can feel or do anything about.

The Physics of Tennis: How Tennis Strings "Go Dead — Part 1"

Study to determine the physical parameters that correlate to what tennis players refer to when they say a string goes dead or loses tension and resiliency.

twu.tennis-warehouse.com

 

[Injured Again]

(Is more difficoult for the top player playing backhand slices safely on clay than on fast courts becouse of the heaviness of the topspin of the incoming ball on clay?)

Clay courts are slowest, and because the spin rate correlates to how fast the ball bounces forward, the amount of topspin off a clay court will be lower than on a faster surface like a hard court..

 

[toth]

Dwell time (ball contact time on the stringbed) can be increased with lower string tensions. There are quite a few physics studies / articles that discuss this. While lower string tensions will usually result in a greater ball speed, longer dwell times are generally regarded as less desirable.

Very little has been written (scientific sources) on dwell time varying with swing speed. I believe that this is because that there is very little variation in dwell time for different swing speeds. Typical dwell times are about 4ms for standard string tensions —regardless of swing speed for the most part.

I have come across a couple of scientific sources that indicate that the stringbed effectively becomes stiffer when the ball is struck very hard. This means that there can be a (slight) decrease in dwell time for very fast swing speeds.

I suspect that this change in dwell time might only be a decrease by a just few percent than a typical dwell time. I’m not sure that we can really do much with this minor change in dwell time since it is substantially shorter than human reaction times (which are on the order of hundreds of ms).

Note that you can impart more spin to the ball with a higher RHS. This higher spin rate can help with ball control but not sure if it has an effect on feel.

A brand new ball could be a bit stiffer than a used ball. This is likely due to a somewhat higher internal air pressure. (The condition of the felt and the elasticity of the rubber might also be very minor contributors to the perceived stiffness of the ball).

A brand new ball with a slow or medium swing might yield a slightly longer dwell time than a very fast swing. But not sure if we can attribute this small dwell time difference to something you can feel or do anything about.

The Physics of Tennis: How Tennis Strings "Go Dead — Part 1"

Study to determine the physical parameters that correlate to what tennis players refer to when they say a string goes dead or loses tension and resiliency.

twu.tennis-warehouse.com

Dwell time (ball contact time on the stringbed) can be increased with lower string tensions. There are quite a few physics studies / articles that discuss this. While lower string tensions will usually result in a greater ball speed, longer dwell times are generally regarded as less desirable.

Very little has been written (scientific sources) on dwell time varying with swing speed. I believe that this is because that there is very little variation in dwell time for different swing speeds. Typical dwell times are about 4ms for standard string tensions —regardless of swing speed for the most part.

I have come across a couple of scientific sources that indicate that the stringbed effectively becomes stiffer when the ball is struck very hard. This means that there can be a (slight) decrease in dwell time for very fast swing speeds.

I suspect that this change in dwell time might only be a decrease by a just few percent than a typical dwell time. I’m not sure that we can really do much with this minor change in dwell time since it is substantially shorter than human reaction times (which are on the order of hundreds of ms).

Note that you can impart more spin to the ball with a higher RHS. This higher spin rate can help with ball control but not sure if it has an effect on feel.

A brand new ball could be a bit stiffer than a used ball. This is likely due to a somewhat higher internal air pressure. (The condition of the felt and the elasticity of the rubber might also be very minor contributors to the perceived stiffness of the ball).

A brand new ball with a slow or medium swing might yield a slightly longer dwell time than a very fast swing. But not sure if we can attribute this small dwell time difference to something you can feel or do anything about.

The Physics of Tennis: How Tennis Strings "Go Dead — Part 1"

Study to determine the physical parameters that correlate to what tennis players refer to when they say a string goes dead or loses tension and resiliency.

twu.tennis-warehouse.com

In short do you tink too (like me) that i schould strive for more feel on the ball and longer ball contact can help in this point?
(Excuse me for my poor English)

 

[Injured Again]

In short do you tink too (like me) that i schould strive for more feel on the ball and longer ball contact can help in this point?
(Excuse me for my poor English)

There is nothing you can change in your swing that will alter the dwell time by any significant amount.

 

[travlerajm]

the amount of topspin off a clay court will be lower than on a faster surface like a hard court..

It’s actually the opposite of this. Ball picks up more topspin off the bounce from a slow claycourt.

The effect is most obvious if you try to slice block a return of a hard flat serve on the rise on red clay, where a stroke that works fine on hardcourt will make the ball pop up off your stringbed on the clay. A dense tight stringbed comes in handy.

 

[GAS]

Life is too short to play with old balls.

Spoiler

That's what she said

 

[toth]

It’s actually the opposite of this. Ball picks up more topspin off the bounce from a slow claycourt.

The effect is most obvious if you try to slice block a return of a hard flat serve on the rise on red clay, where a stroke that works fine on hardcourt will make the ball pop up off your stringbed on the clay. A dense tight stringbed comes in handy.

Am i good interpret that slices is more difficoult to hit and less effectiv on clay than on fast court?
As i see top matches it can be right

 

[travlerajm]

Am i good interpret that slices is more difficoult to hit and less effectiv on clay than on fast court?
As i see top matches it can be right

It doesn’t have to be more difficult to hit. You just need to recognize that the launch angle will be affected more by the spin generated by the bounce (and that this launch angle effect is exaggerated by new balls).

Slice can be very effective on clay, but because it doesn’t push your opponent back as much, you have to use it carefully if playing someone with a good spinny clay forehand.

 

[TennisDawg]

More slice helps to keep the ball in play becouse of the longer ball contact or something else?

Not sure how to explain it other than feeling the ball being sliced. If you can hit slice with old balls then maybe adjust for a quicker bounce. Sometimes tennis is about feel more than anything else.

 

[toth]

Much better today!
My hitting partner give me a lot of good practise balls, and i noticed, if i turn more, my slices are better.
I suppose with the new balls i had to prepare quicker, nevertheless as i focused on quick decent turn, my slices were decent.

 

[Injured Again]

It’s actually the opposite of this. Ball picks up more topspin off the bounce from a slow claycourt.

The effect is most obvious if you try to slice block a return of a hard flat serve on the rise on red clay, where a stroke that works fine on hardcourt will make the ball pop up off your stringbed on the clay. A dense tight stringbed comes in handy.

What is your proposed mechanism where a ball that bounces off a court with less forward velocity spins faster than one which bounces off a court with more forward speed? Broady and Cross have already established that under the vast majority of circumstances, court surfaces and balls have enough friction to fully engage and enter a rolling regime before the ball rebounds off the court.

 

[Injured Again]

Much better today!
My hitting partner give me a lot of good practise balls, and i noticed, if i turn more, my slices are better.
I suppose with the new balls i had to prepare quicker, nevertheless as i focused on quick decent turn, my slices were decent.

The higher a ball is at your contact, the more you have to turn sideways. If you try to slice a low ball, you can almost hit it facing straight on and reaching almost directly forward if it is below mid-shin height. Glad you have figured out a part of the puzzle.

 

[travlerajm]

What is your proposed mechanism where a ball that bounces off a court with less forward velocity spins faster than one which bounces off a court with more forward speed? Broady and Cross have already established that under the vast majority of circumstances, court surfaces and balls have enough friction to fully engage and enter a rolling regime before the ball rebounds off the court.

Think about it. It’s actually quite simple.

The more a court surface grabs the balls surface and slows it down, the more torque it is applying to the bottom surface of the ball, with the force vector of the torque directed opposite the direction of ball travel, and the torque vector (the cross product of the force vector and the radius of the ball) acting in the direction of added topspin.

 

[Injured Again]

Think about it. It’s actually quite simple.

The more a court surface grabs the balls surface and slows it down, the more torque it is applying to the bottom surface of the ball, with the force vector of the torque directed opposite the direction of ball travel, and the torque vector (the cross product of the force vector and the radius of the ball) acting in the direction of added topspin.

I suggest you read page 103 of "Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsay. Chapter three is about "Balls and Bounce". It starts by comparing how when a person trips, their foot stops but the remainder of their body continues the forward motion. It reads:

When a ball hits a surface, it starts rotating because the top of the ball is traveling faster than the bottom. The difference between a trip and a slide is that for a trip, your foot comes to a complete stop instantly, but the bottom of a sliding ball takes a bit longer to come to a stop. On a slippery surface it takes a relatively long time for the bottom of the ball to slide to a complete stop. On a rough surface a sliding ball stops more quickly, but in either case, at the moment each ball stops sliding, it will have slowed and changed its spin BY THE SAME AMOUNT. In other words, if the bottom of the ball comes to a stop before the ball bounces, then the slipperiness or roughness of the surface will make no difference at all to how fast the ball rotates or spins when it bounces.

As I said, it has been established that balls enter a rolling regime for the vast amount of shots. So if a ball is to have more angular velocity than forward velocity, there must be a mechanism by which the ball spins faster than the ground in which it is in firm and static contact with once it enters that rolling regime. If you know of that mechanism, then you should contact Cross and Lindsay - I'm sure they would be interested!

 

[travlerajm]

I suggest you read page 103 of "Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsay. Chapter three is about "Balls and Bounce". It starts by comparing how when a person trips, their foot stops but the remainder of their body continues the forward motion. It reads:

When a ball hits a surface, it starts rotating because the top of the ball is traveling faster than the bottom. The difference between a trip and a slide is that for a trip, your foot comes to a complete stop instantly, but the bottom of a sliding ball takes a bit longer to come to a stop. On a slippery surface it takes a relatively long time for the bottom of the ball to slide to a complete stop. On a rough surface a sliding ball stops more quickly, but in either case, at the moment each ball stops sliding, it will have slowed and changed its spin BY THE SAME AMOUNT. In other words, if the bottom of the ball comes to a stop before the ball bounces, then the slipperiness or roughness of the surface will make no difference at all to how fast the ball rotates or spins when it bounces.

As I said, it has been established that balls enter a rolling regime for the vast amount of shots. So if a ball is to have more angular velocity than forward velocity, there must be a mechanism by which the ball spins faster than the ground in which it is in firm and static contact with once it enters that rolling regime. If you know of that mechanism, then you should contact Cross and Lindsay - I'm sure they would be interested!

You are overthinking this.

It’s the same mechanism that allows you to hit with topspin where the ball’s surface travels upward much faster than the stringbed. Overspin can be generated from ball compression in certain conditions that are common in tennis.

Also, there are many conditions, such as the case of a flat serve on red clay, where the the bounce off the court surface generates a lot more topspin post bounce than the ball had before the bounce.

 

[Injured Again]

You are overthinking this.

It’s the same mechanism that allows you to hit with topspin where the ball’s surface travels upward much faster than the stringbed. Overspin can be generated from ball compression in certain conditions that are common in tennis.

Also, there are many conditions, such as the case of a flat serve on red clay, where the the bounce off the court surface generates a lot more topspin post bounce than the ball had before the bounce.

I'm not overthinking anything. I'm reporting what is in the Technical Tennis book.

You write:

It’s the same mechanism that allows you to hit with topspin where the ball’s surface travels upward much faster than the stringbed. Overspin can be generated from ball compression in certain conditions that are common in tennis.
So you are saying that a court surface moves horizontally back and forth like strings do in snapback? If not, then what is the mechanism by which overspin can be generated from a court surface that is basically immobile and where the ball enters a rolling regime with the court surface prior to separating from the court after the bounce?

You write:

Also, there are many conditions, such as the case of a flat serve on red clay, where the the bounce off the court surface generates a lot more topspin post bounce than the ball had before the bounce.

Not arguing that at all. Almost **EVERY** bounce generates topspin off the court surface. But a ball that bounces forward with less velocity, regardless of the roughness of the court surface, has less topspin than a ball which bounces off a less rough surface with greater forward velocity. If you disagree with this, then you need to contact Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsay and have them revise their book.

 

[travlerajm]

So you are saying that a court surface moves horizontally back and forth like strings do in snapback? If not, then what is the mechanism by which overspin can be generated from a court surface that is basically immobile and where the ball enters a rolling regime with the court surface prior to separating from the court after the bounce?

A red clay court acts much like a poly stringbed to generate overspin.

It’s not the snapback that generates overspin, it’s the freedom for the mains to travel within the plane of the stringbed, enabling ball’s rotational MOI to generate overspin. The stiffer the stringbed, and the more freedom for mainstring movement, the more spin.

If you don’t believe me, string up a dense pattern racquet with limp low-tension kevlar/poly. The kevlar doesn’t snap back when you stretch it like fresh poly, but the limp kevlar/poly stringbed will produce noticeably more extreme spaghetti-string-like high rpm spin than any full poly bed.

In the case of red clay, the surface is somewhat lubricated, and effectively more slippery with respect to latter stages of ball impact than a grippy hard court.

As the ball decompresses during the bounce, its effective radius expands, so that its rotational moment of inertia causes the ball’s surface to want to move backward faster than the rolling condition (overspin). This is more likely to happen on the lubricious clay surface than on a hard court. Of course, a slippery racquetball surface is at the opposite extreme, where the court surface might not create enough friction to even generate the rolling condition.

 

[Injured Again]

A red clay court acts much like a poly stringbed to generate overspin.

It’s not the snapback that generates overspin, it’s the freedom for the mains to travel within the plane of the stringbed, enabling ball’s rotational MOI to generate overspin. The stiffer the stringbed, and the more freedom for mainstring movement, the more spin.

If you don’t believe me, string up a dense pattern racquet with limp low-tension kevlar/poly. The kevlar doesn’t snap back when you stretch it like fresh poly, but the limp kevlar/poly stringbed will produce noticeably more extreme spaghetti-string-like high rpm spin than any full poly bed.

In the case of red clay, the surface is somewhat lubricated, and effectively more slippery with respect to latter stages of ball impact than a grippy hard court.

As the ball decompresses during the bounce, its effective radius expands, so that its rotational moment of inertia causes the ball’s surface to want to move backward faster than the rolling condition (overspin). This is more likely to happen on the lubricious clay surface than on a hard court. Of course, a slippery racquetball surface is at the opposite extreme, where the court surface might not create enough friction to even generate the rolling condition.

I look forward to any slow motion video that shows a ball exiting a clay court bounce with a rooster tail of clay court material ejected from this over spin condition.

 

[travlerajm]

I look forward to any slow motion video that shows a ball exiting a clay court bounce with a rooster tail of clay court material ejected from this over spin condition.

 

[Injured Again]

That picture shows a ball pretty much directly above the impact point, which is totally unrelated to how a groundstroke would hit the court at a relatively shallow angle. And we need video of this rooster tail of ejected material behind the ball to demonstrate that significant overspin exists, because a picture tells you nothing about what happened.

 

[travlerajm]

That picture shows a ball pretty much directly above the impact point, which is totally unrelated to how a groundstroke would hit the court at a relatively shallow angle. And we need video of this rooster tail of ejected material behind the ball to demonstrate that significant overspin exists, because a picture tells you nothing about what happened.

 

[Injured Again]

Again, it’s impossible to know what is happening from a picture.

If this is such a big effect, there must be video of it.

I’ve played on both green and red clay and have never noticed any such effect.

 

[travlerajm]

Last year I played 4x per week, alternating between fast hardcourt and red clay, sometimes against the same players. The effect was obvious, especially because I use a slice chip on all my forehand returns. On the clay I need to aim my chip return lower and hit through the ball more to produce the same shot without the ball popping up and going long.

The effect is also a lot more pronounced on dry clay than on wet clay. I notice it a lot more when I play in the dry thin air of Mendoza or Sántiago than I do in Paraguay. When I play on clay in dry air places, I prefer to string tighter.