The Elusive Contact Point

thebuffman

Professional
anyone who has taken lessons from a good coach will immediately understand the concept that at the moderate level of play, a player strokes the contact point and does not play the ball. at higher levels of play this does change a bit as more advanced players will play both the contact point as well determine the english to place on the ball to get it to do exactly what they will it to do. for this discussion though i am only speaking about the contact point.

the concept here is that the contact changes depending on the height of the ball. if a player attempts to groove the same stroke at the same contact point for every ball regardless of height, she will definitely run into problems like consistency, lack of power, lack of accuracy & placement, framing the ball etc.

if you will, consider while hitting your forehand, that there is a transparent arc placed in front of your body. at waist level if you took a natural forehand swing and stopped at the contact point of the arc, it would be moderately out in front of you. now, if you hold the racquet out in front against the transparent arc barrier and rode it up the arc, you would find that, at shoulder level, your racquet contacts the arc just about to the side of your body instead of out in front. if you rode the arc down to an inch off the ground, you would find your racquet contacting the ball close to the tip of your shoes.

the gist of this is that the contact point changes depending on the varied height of the ball. if you attempt to contact a shoulder high ball on the forehand out in front the same distance from your body as you would a waist high ball, you will produce a poor shot. this is why players preferring the leverage gained from hitting out in front on waist high balls will actually jump in the air in order to stroke the ball. they jump in the air not to look cool so much or to generate more power but to alter the contact point. jumping in the air moves the aforementioned arc back out in front of the body and helps them maintain tremendous leverage on the shot. this is the same for players getting low on low shots. it is to shift the arc allowing them to keep the contact point out in front of the body instead of closer to the side of the body.

this then creates tremendous issues for the 1hbh player. because it is difficult to create leverage on high balls to the 1hbh when the contact point has moved closer to the side of the body instead of out in front where the 1hbh gets its leverage. so to adjust for this high ball to the 1hbh, a slice is preferred since the slice stroke is inherently taken closer to the side of the body than out in front. the high ball to the 1hbh falls easily into the slice stroke of the 1hbh. sometimes though the slice is not the preferable shot depending on some situations and a topspin shot is deemed necessary. so the 1hbh'er finds themselves in a quandary: " my leverage is found out in front but the arc of contact is to the side of my body on this high ball." so the 1hbh'er must actually fall back onto the back foot (instead of moving forward onto the front foot) and stroke the back of the ball with much spin creating a more spinny shot instead of a driving shot. falling back and aiming upward allows the arc of contact to change once again to a more out in front position. the player will find also that falling back onto the back foot also allows them to maintain complete balance throughout the stroke and control the shot effortlessly.

the 1hbh'er must be careful though because this topspinny approach to the high ball produces more of a neutral shot and will not hurt the opponent on a sustained rally. to go on offense, she will eventually have to take the high bouncer off the hop (long before it can get shoulder high) and drive it flat or chip and charge.

just my take on the contact point. please chime in for good discussion.
 
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LeeD

Bionic Poster
Practice?
Tell Kuerten and Vilas that you cannot hit backhand topspins off high balls.
On forehands, you pronate. So on backhands, maybe supinate?
And practice.
 

thebuffman

Professional
Practice?
Tell Kuerten and Vilas that you cannot hit backhand topspins off high balls.
On forehands, you pronate. So on backhands, maybe supinate?
And practice.
i made some edits while you were posting leed. you can hit shoulder high 1hbh with topspin but most moderate level players should consider my post when doing so.
 
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