Passive wrist leads to loss of control on FH

TennisMaven

Banned
On the forehand stroke, if I keep a passive wrist then it leads naturally to racquet lag and buttcap facing the ball which is I think what is desired. This passivity of the wrist leads to a kind of 'snap' up at contact that results in very good spin when clean and correct contact is made. However, the problem I have is that when keeping passive wrist, clean contact is very difficult (even when looking at the contact point like Fed, although that does help). Sometimes the ball will skyrocket into the air, sometimes it will shank to one side, in other words it's very hard for me to control the ball path with passive wrist, especially if the ball is coming at a high speed.

Conversely, if I don't keep a passive wrist, very clean contact can be made each time since I can make minor adjustments necessary for proper contact. But then spin suffers dramatically. What to do? How can I improve the consistency of contact with a passive wrist to take advantage of the spin? Maybe my timing is just off?

Thanks
 

LeeD

Bionic Poster
Sounds like you just swtiched, or are still trying to switch to passive wrist idea, so it's something NEW to you.
NEW to you, you have to give it time to ingrain into your mind, and to adjust to.
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will any new stroke technique.
If it was soooo easy to adopt in one day, it wouldn't be worth the effort.
 

ace_pace

Rookie
LeeD is correct. You just need to get used to it. However specifically speaking, yes you will always have slightly less cleaner contact with the ball in general but the end goal is to develop more topspin to have higher consistency and average speed rates.
 

BevelDevil

Hall of Fame
Here's one possibility: Your contact point may be to far out front, allowing too much wrist action (or upwards arm motion) to come into play before contact. If instead you contact the ball slightly further back and to the side this should reduce the amount of unnecessary movement prior to contact while still benefiting from the additional acceleration of a loose wrist.

I'm not sure if this applies in your case since I don't know your details, but it's something to consider.
 
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