salsainglesa
Semi-Pro
I experimented today with the volley. I am confident on my volleying technique so I can tinker with it without causing havoc to my game, as it happens everytime my groundstrokes grips turn by 1° or less. Of course that is a little exagerated.
Well the story goes like this.
On my volleys I can use several grips, depending on the situation. Normally, 95% of the time, I volley with an eastern grip. Or so I call it. This grip emulates the palm of the hand on the forehand side and the back of the hand on the other, so I get great touch and feedback from the string bed in this way. Thats what I like.
But when I started playing I learned to volley with a conti grip, so I can use that one too.
Some observations:
Contact points change with grip. With eastern, the fh contact point is slightly more infront than the bh side.
With conti, its the other way around. bh more in front.
Also, the wrist can compensate for this, and keep the same contact points for both grips, but you have to bend your wrist with the continental.
Regarding shoulder turn it is deeper on the backhand side with conti than with eastern, and less necesary on the fh side.
The two handed volley had several grip variations,but eastern-eastern was my choice to start, since conti-conti had the wrist bent and it felt akward to me. The two variations I used were with either hand on the bottom.
An interesting thing is that I found that the hand on top was the dominant one, so this can help develop skill on the weak side. And the volleys from both sides can be treated as either backhands or forehands. Since bending the wrists is perfectly posible.
It was surprisingly easy to use the 2hv, with good raquet head stability from the get go and great potential to develop tremendous feel and suberb racket head awareness.
Shots going directly to the body were a major drawback, since you have to move a lot more to get out of the way of the ball and direct it, but as stated the easiest way of doing this is leting one hand off the racket and volley normally. Still geting out of the way seems doable, but you have to turn your shoulders a lot, since you loose freedom with the racket hold with both hands.
The reach is also a big weakness, on low, high and away balls. So once again a 1hv is needed.
One good aspect is that adding spin was a piece of cake, since you can move the racquet head faster in short spaces, and that helps to produce heavy underspin, very useful in drop shots adn angling volleys, but the ball has to be on the strike zone.
One advantage Ibelieve is, when at the net in a quick exchange in doubles you can move a heavy raquet really fast and a volley that surprises you can be handled with ease.
As a final thought, if you have no volley, learn to volley one handed. If you have only a 2 handed volley, learn the one handed. If you have a one handed volley you can add it for some special cases. It wont take a lot of time to learn, and can help you develop your weak side and some raquet head awareness wich can be useful even if you only do it for fun.
Well the story goes like this.
On my volleys I can use several grips, depending on the situation. Normally, 95% of the time, I volley with an eastern grip. Or so I call it. This grip emulates the palm of the hand on the forehand side and the back of the hand on the other, so I get great touch and feedback from the string bed in this way. Thats what I like.
But when I started playing I learned to volley with a conti grip, so I can use that one too.
Some observations:
Contact points change with grip. With eastern, the fh contact point is slightly more infront than the bh side.
With conti, its the other way around. bh more in front.
Also, the wrist can compensate for this, and keep the same contact points for both grips, but you have to bend your wrist with the continental.
Regarding shoulder turn it is deeper on the backhand side with conti than with eastern, and less necesary on the fh side.
The two handed volley had several grip variations,but eastern-eastern was my choice to start, since conti-conti had the wrist bent and it felt akward to me. The two variations I used were with either hand on the bottom.
An interesting thing is that I found that the hand on top was the dominant one, so this can help develop skill on the weak side. And the volleys from both sides can be treated as either backhands or forehands. Since bending the wrists is perfectly posible.
It was surprisingly easy to use the 2hv, with good raquet head stability from the get go and great potential to develop tremendous feel and suberb racket head awareness.
Shots going directly to the body were a major drawback, since you have to move a lot more to get out of the way of the ball and direct it, but as stated the easiest way of doing this is leting one hand off the racket and volley normally. Still geting out of the way seems doable, but you have to turn your shoulders a lot, since you loose freedom with the racket hold with both hands.
The reach is also a big weakness, on low, high and away balls. So once again a 1hv is needed.
One good aspect is that adding spin was a piece of cake, since you can move the racquet head faster in short spaces, and that helps to produce heavy underspin, very useful in drop shots adn angling volleys, but the ball has to be on the strike zone.
One advantage Ibelieve is, when at the net in a quick exchange in doubles you can move a heavy raquet really fast and a volley that surprises you can be handled with ease.
As a final thought, if you have no volley, learn to volley one handed. If you have only a 2 handed volley, learn the one handed. If you have a one handed volley you can add it for some special cases. It wont take a lot of time to learn, and can help you develop your weak side and some raquet head awareness wich can be useful even if you only do it for fun.
