travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
Dear Andy Roddick,
It’s very important that you read this. So hopefully you have a friend or at least a friend of a friend that who can deliver this letter to you.
You have been the most talented server in tennis since Sampras retired. The best server in the world is supposed to win Wimbledon. I believe you have the talent to join the All England Club along with other giant servers of the past – guys with names like Becker, Stich, Sampras, Krajicek, and Ivanisevic. Your serve is obviously not the problem. But to win Wimbledon, you must be able to volley well. If you could back up your crushing serves with decent volleys, you’d have enough game to beat Federer. And you certainly wouldn’t be embarrassed by a 19-year-old Murray repeatedly drawing you to the net on grass. Your ranking is slipping. Your serve’s not enough anymore. The time is right for you to retool your game. You need a racquet that better suits your game.
Your struggles with your volleys are not entirely due to technique. All of the best serve-and-volleyers both past and present play(ed) with racquets that are much more stable on volleys. A stable racquet is one which has a high rotational moment of inertia about its balance point. In other words, a stable racquet has a more polarized weight distribution, with less weight in the middle. The moment of inertia about the balance point is called the recoil weight.
In order to maximize power on your serve, you have customized your racquet to have much of the added weight near the throat. Adding the weight there allows you to greatly increase your hitting weight (rebound power) with minimal increase in swingweight. This type of “depolarized” setup allows you to serve at 150+ mph, even when you string at very high tension compared to most other pros. It’s a good setup for hitting hard and flat shots with precision, and your racquet setup has helped elevate your serve to be one of the best in history. But your extremely depolarized setup has some drawbacks that are unnecessarily putting a ceiling on the rest of your game.
By depolarizing your racquet, you have made the recoil weight very low compared to the racquets of most pros. Because of your relatively low recoil weight, your racquet is unstable on volleys - too unstable to win consistently with serve-and-volley tennis at the pro level. Even when the ball hits the center of your stringbed, the low recoil weight allows your racquet to pivot about its center of mass, causing an inability to control the depth on your volleys. Your volleys are adequate on high balls when you can hit them downward into the court. But it’s the low volleys, where precise depth control is required, that give you trouble. You can’t expect to be able to volley like Sampras if you use a racquet that is 10% less stable than his was.
Your depolarized setup has another key disadvantage that severely limits your groundstrokes. A depolarized setup like yours is good for flat balls, but you can’t hit topspin unless you take a steep uppercut at the ball. When someone comes to the net against your backhand, your options are limited because you can’t hit the sharply angled crosscourt passing shot like most of your rivals can. Your favorite shot in that circumstance is to rip it flat over the low part of the net right at your opponent – as you know, that’s not going to work very often against top tier pros. Your second option is to rip it flat down the line, but since the court is short and the net is higher, it’s a low percentage shot. You hate trying the sharply angled cross-court backhand pass because you need to take an unnaturally steep uppercut to execute the shot – also low percentage.
Your forehand is also held back by your depolarized racquet setup. You like to hit with heavy topspin, but because your racquet is setup in a way that limits spin, you need to take sharp uppercut swings for your forehand to stay in the court. If the ball is coming at you with lots of pace, then a steep uppercut swingpath is a recipe for a mishit. So you are forced to return from 10 feet behind the baseline because your groundstrokes are a mismatch for your racquet setup. Your baseline game would improve significantly if you tweaked your racquet to have a more polarized, more spin-friendly setup. A more polarized setup would allow you to generate just as much topspin but with a flatter swing trajectory. A flatter swing trajectory is required to return serve from closer to the baseline, because it is easier to time. And when the ball is coming at you slowly, you could still utilize your uppercut forehand, and the more spin-friendly setup would result in a heavier, spinnier ball that would probably be more difficult for your opponent to handle.
A more polarized setup wouldn’t necessarily hinder your serve. As long as you dropped your tension to account for the lower hitting weight, your power level could remain the same. And since the more polarized setup would increase you spin potential, your margin for error on your serve could improve, so that your second serve could be as dominant as ever.
So to summarize, increasing the moment of inertia about the balance point of your racquet would:
1) Improve depth control on your volleys.
2) Give you more topspin on you backhand.
3) Allow you to use a flatter swing trajectory on your forehand return.
4) Add margin for error on your big topspin forehands.
5) Add margin for error on your serve.
So here’s how I suggest you tweak you racquet:
1) Measure the swingweight of your racquet, and use the parallel axis theorem to calculate the moment of inertia about the axis 4cm from the butt (I’) You can do this using the fomula: I’ = I + M*(12*R – 84), where I is the standard measured swingweight about the 10cm axis, M is the mass in kg, and R is your balance point in cm.
2) When you adjust the weight distribution, make sure you keep I’ the same, or maybe increase it by 1 or 2 kg-cm^2. That way you your effective swingweight will be about the same, so it will be easier to adjust your serve to your new setup.
3) Move the added mass near the throat downward toward your hand, so that it is centered only 2 or 3 inches from the butt.
4) Add a few more grams to the hoop at 3 and 9, enough to bring your effective swingweight I’ back up to the original value, and bring the balance point back to its original value.
5) Reduce your tension enough to bring the power level back to the power level of your original setup.
If you are willing to make this change, it will pay dividends for you in a big way. I want to see you succeed and become the next American Wimbledon champion. You are a one-in-a-million talent, but in order to fully realize your potential, you need to use a racquet that fits your game. As a fan, I hope you are open-minded enough to try this advice soon. I would understand if you wait until after the US Open to make this change.
Once you win your first of several Wimbledons with your revamped, more polarized racquet setup, you can thank me by sending me the racquet you used to close out your final match. I don’t think that’s too much to ask in return, especially since I will have helped you design it.
Sincerely,
Travlerajm
It’s very important that you read this. So hopefully you have a friend or at least a friend of a friend that who can deliver this letter to you.
You have been the most talented server in tennis since Sampras retired. The best server in the world is supposed to win Wimbledon. I believe you have the talent to join the All England Club along with other giant servers of the past – guys with names like Becker, Stich, Sampras, Krajicek, and Ivanisevic. Your serve is obviously not the problem. But to win Wimbledon, you must be able to volley well. If you could back up your crushing serves with decent volleys, you’d have enough game to beat Federer. And you certainly wouldn’t be embarrassed by a 19-year-old Murray repeatedly drawing you to the net on grass. Your ranking is slipping. Your serve’s not enough anymore. The time is right for you to retool your game. You need a racquet that better suits your game.
Your struggles with your volleys are not entirely due to technique. All of the best serve-and-volleyers both past and present play(ed) with racquets that are much more stable on volleys. A stable racquet is one which has a high rotational moment of inertia about its balance point. In other words, a stable racquet has a more polarized weight distribution, with less weight in the middle. The moment of inertia about the balance point is called the recoil weight.
In order to maximize power on your serve, you have customized your racquet to have much of the added weight near the throat. Adding the weight there allows you to greatly increase your hitting weight (rebound power) with minimal increase in swingweight. This type of “depolarized” setup allows you to serve at 150+ mph, even when you string at very high tension compared to most other pros. It’s a good setup for hitting hard and flat shots with precision, and your racquet setup has helped elevate your serve to be one of the best in history. But your extremely depolarized setup has some drawbacks that are unnecessarily putting a ceiling on the rest of your game.
By depolarizing your racquet, you have made the recoil weight very low compared to the racquets of most pros. Because of your relatively low recoil weight, your racquet is unstable on volleys - too unstable to win consistently with serve-and-volley tennis at the pro level. Even when the ball hits the center of your stringbed, the low recoil weight allows your racquet to pivot about its center of mass, causing an inability to control the depth on your volleys. Your volleys are adequate on high balls when you can hit them downward into the court. But it’s the low volleys, where precise depth control is required, that give you trouble. You can’t expect to be able to volley like Sampras if you use a racquet that is 10% less stable than his was.
Your depolarized setup has another key disadvantage that severely limits your groundstrokes. A depolarized setup like yours is good for flat balls, but you can’t hit topspin unless you take a steep uppercut at the ball. When someone comes to the net against your backhand, your options are limited because you can’t hit the sharply angled crosscourt passing shot like most of your rivals can. Your favorite shot in that circumstance is to rip it flat over the low part of the net right at your opponent – as you know, that’s not going to work very often against top tier pros. Your second option is to rip it flat down the line, but since the court is short and the net is higher, it’s a low percentage shot. You hate trying the sharply angled cross-court backhand pass because you need to take an unnaturally steep uppercut to execute the shot – also low percentage.
Your forehand is also held back by your depolarized racquet setup. You like to hit with heavy topspin, but because your racquet is setup in a way that limits spin, you need to take sharp uppercut swings for your forehand to stay in the court. If the ball is coming at you with lots of pace, then a steep uppercut swingpath is a recipe for a mishit. So you are forced to return from 10 feet behind the baseline because your groundstrokes are a mismatch for your racquet setup. Your baseline game would improve significantly if you tweaked your racquet to have a more polarized, more spin-friendly setup. A more polarized setup would allow you to generate just as much topspin but with a flatter swing trajectory. A flatter swing trajectory is required to return serve from closer to the baseline, because it is easier to time. And when the ball is coming at you slowly, you could still utilize your uppercut forehand, and the more spin-friendly setup would result in a heavier, spinnier ball that would probably be more difficult for your opponent to handle.
A more polarized setup wouldn’t necessarily hinder your serve. As long as you dropped your tension to account for the lower hitting weight, your power level could remain the same. And since the more polarized setup would increase you spin potential, your margin for error on your serve could improve, so that your second serve could be as dominant as ever.
So to summarize, increasing the moment of inertia about the balance point of your racquet would:
1) Improve depth control on your volleys.
2) Give you more topspin on you backhand.
3) Allow you to use a flatter swing trajectory on your forehand return.
4) Add margin for error on your big topspin forehands.
5) Add margin for error on your serve.
So here’s how I suggest you tweak you racquet:
1) Measure the swingweight of your racquet, and use the parallel axis theorem to calculate the moment of inertia about the axis 4cm from the butt (I’) You can do this using the fomula: I’ = I + M*(12*R – 84), where I is the standard measured swingweight about the 10cm axis, M is the mass in kg, and R is your balance point in cm.
2) When you adjust the weight distribution, make sure you keep I’ the same, or maybe increase it by 1 or 2 kg-cm^2. That way you your effective swingweight will be about the same, so it will be easier to adjust your serve to your new setup.
3) Move the added mass near the throat downward toward your hand, so that it is centered only 2 or 3 inches from the butt.
4) Add a few more grams to the hoop at 3 and 9, enough to bring your effective swingweight I’ back up to the original value, and bring the balance point back to its original value.
5) Reduce your tension enough to bring the power level back to the power level of your original setup.
If you are willing to make this change, it will pay dividends for you in a big way. I want to see you succeed and become the next American Wimbledon champion. You are a one-in-a-million talent, but in order to fully realize your potential, you need to use a racquet that fits your game. As a fan, I hope you are open-minded enough to try this advice soon. I would understand if you wait until after the US Open to make this change.
Once you win your first of several Wimbledons with your revamped, more polarized racquet setup, you can thank me by sending me the racquet you used to close out your final match. I don’t think that’s too much to ask in return, especially since I will have helped you design it.
Sincerely,
Travlerajm
