Tennisguy777
Professional
Well I've been playing tennis for almost 9 years now and I am a lefty. When I was a child I was 100% left handed and my parents tried to stop this natural leftism by forcing me to use my right hand. Well they sort of succeeded. I can use both hands for most activities. I can and do eat with both hands, play sports with the left hand mostly and I write with my right hand. My right hand is considerably weaker than my left and I am working it out to see if I can bridge the gap in strength. Now how does this relate to tennis you ask. Well although I have a very good lefty forehand and serve and all other aspects of tennis. I do not posses a decent back hand. I've tried for years for a decent lefty 1 or 2 handed backhand and was never able to master it. But for some reason the right handed backhand and stance are very clear in my mind and I can visualize them and feel more natural when I do them. Well the other day I went to hit on the wall with my right hand as I'd heard from a teaching pro's video that on a 2 handed backhand the non dominant hand does 90% of the work and after a few minutes of hitting righty forehands I became shocked. I was surprised that the right handed forehand came natural to me almost too natural it scared me. Aside from my right hand being a little weak. I was consistently spanking right handed forehands at the wall. What was even more scary was how aggressively I was hitting the ball. when I play as a left hander I tend to play a relaxed game even on my forehands. What amazed me was I was hitting right handed half volleys at the wall after like 20 mins of practice and I had correct instinct and anticipation of where the next ball would land. Should I continue this and go 2 forehanded? Should I do a Sharapova (She's naturally left handed) and plays right handed completely? How come it came so natural to me? Could it be that my mind knows all the shots from my left side and is flipping them to the other hand? I am really confused now because I think I should have maybe started out as a right hander. I've never been coached, taught myself how to play. I was the #2 player on my HS team 5 years ago. This backhand problem was what was holding my game hostage at the 4.0 level. I've played other sports including soccer and I never invested this much time (not even 5% of the time I spent on tennis) and resources into them as I did for tennis had I done so who knows where I'd be now.
