Category: Groundstrokes

How To Feel Topspin In Tennis The Way A Pro Hits It

While various devices are available to help you feel the topspin of a tennis stroke like a forehand or a backhand, they are relatively expensive and might be used for only a short period of time before you don’t need them anymore.

In addition, while you can experiment with trying to feel the topspin, you don’t really know how that should feel when a more skilled player hits topspin.

This raises two questions: How should a topspin feel, and what are the different variations and adjustments you have to make during the game in terms of topspin to control the ball well?

There’s a very simple way to demonstrate that without any need for special tools. Your coach or a higher-skilled player can easily help you feel how they hit a topspin.

Feeling And Understanding The Topspin And Its Variations

I help players feel the topspin by simply hitting them on the back of the shoulder (gently, of course).

(Special thanks to Julio for helping demonstrate this concept.)

I first hit them directly, which we call “flat” in tennis, so that they can feel what a flat or direct hit feels like.

This is how a flat shot feels like…

Then I hit them at a slight angle. That means I hit them “partially”.

… and this is how a topspin stroke feels like.

That’s actually how we hit topspin on a more advanced level.

We don’t “brush” the ball, but we “graze” it.

The idea of brushing the ball is fine for a total beginner to give them a really clear mental image of topspin and get them started.

I like to use the idea of “rolling” the ball against a wall or a partner’s racket.

You can even do it yourself, as you can see in this video (also, you can see that I am not the only one teaching topspin with a rolling idea):

But, once we play at higher speed on a higher level, the idea of brushing or rolling doesn’t apply very often when we want to hit the ball with topspin. (Note, however, that it applies on heavy topspin shots like a topspin lob or loopier balls, perhaps from defense.)

A much better idea and feel is to imagine grazing the ball.

Here’s the dictionary definition of the verb “graze”:

verb (used with object), grazed, graz·ing.
1. to touch or rub lightly in passing.
2. to scrape the skin from; abrade:
(The bullet just grazed his shoulder.)

When we graze the ball, we don’t slow down the racket.

In fact, we just partially hit the ball with the same or even an accelerated racket head movement.

In contrast, the idea of brushing typically causes players to slow down the racket in order to execute the brushing motion.

By doing so, you’re losing the speed of your shot and the amount of topspin since you’re slowing down your racket at contact.

(I explained this same idea in another way in one my previous articles on advanced topspin technique.)

Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to grazing the ball is that the more we are inside the court (closer to the net), the less we need to hit the ball directly and the more we have to graze it.

Consider a situation when we’re well inside the court attacking a short ball.

If we hit the ball too “fully” (too flat), we’ll give the ball too much power, and it will fly long because we have way less court to hit into.

Therefore, we need to hit the ball partially (graze it) in order to apply lots of topspin but not lots of power.

As you now see, hitting a topspin forehand or backhand is not just one simple task or movement but a skill that requires the ability to hit the ball very precisely.

Developing The Skill Of Precision When Hitting Topspin

One of the biggest challenges of the game of tennis is adjusting your stroke according to the incoming ball (high, low, topspin, slice, fast, slow, etc.), your position on the court and the direction you want to hit.

So, when it comes to topspin, you need that skill or precision in order to adjust the RATIO of hitting fully into the ball and partially hitting the ball.

In other words, you need different ratios of flat and topspin – meaning hitting straight into the ball (horizontal vector of the racket path) and hitting the ball partially (vertical vector of the racket path).

If you’re far behind the baseline hitting a defensive shot, you need to hit well into the ball with some topspin because you need the ball to fly far.

But, if you’re inside the court attacking a short ball, you need a different ratio of flat and topspin vectors.

You need to hit the ball less directly and more just graze it.

This skill cannot, of course, be developed by you reading and theoretically understanding this article and consequently being able to play with different topspin ratios.

It requires specific drills that develop the skill of precisely hitting the ball with the right amount of topspin.

The most fundamental way to begin are by completing mini tennis drills (playing within service boxes) because hitting the ball with topspin and keeping the ball in the service box requires you to hit the ball very precisely.

Various mini tennis drills develop better precision of hitting the ball with topspin.

If you are not precise, you’ll immediately hit the ball too long or into the net, and that gives you instant feedback on how to adjust on the next shot.

Playing full court, of course, gives you a much greater margin for error, and you may be hitting the ball quite imprecisely while still landing it in the court.

If you play this way, you may not realize that that same stroke won’t work well at higher speeds.

I will post more ideas in the future on how to develop the skill of spinning the ball in tennis, but for now, you can just experiment with these 3 drills (players play cross court):

• The coach plays a slow, floaty slice, and the player hits topspin.
• The coach plays a topspin, and the player has to stop the ball with slice and then play topspin.
• The coach and the player both play topspin.

I invite you to experiment with the idea of grazing the ball (instead of brushing it) when you hit topspin shots (especially inside the court when dealing with short balls) and let us know how it works for you in the comments below. 3 Shares

Related Posts

Ideal Tennis Serve Position At Contact

How To Diagnose Stroke Problems – Two-Handed Backhand Example

Tennis Serve Video Analysis And Drills For A Higher Toss

Tennis Serve Fundamentals – The Swing & Throw 10 comments Top rated comments first XT July 31, 2018

Tomaz – interesting concept. Would this grazing action also be “representative” of what happens on the serve? Vote: Share Tomaz July 31, 2018

Yes, grazing applies to serves too – meaning topspin and slice serves.

We can teach initially brushing in order to give the student a clear idea but eventually one needs to accelerate the racket head faster and “grazing” is probably a better trigger word to use. Vote: Share Thayr Richey July 30, 2018

Communicating tennis concepts verbally is difficult. Your use of the term “grazing” was very useful. As a senior play who has taken a lot of lessons and looked at a lot of tennis instructional videos, I have found that many coaches’ terminology is usually vague.

Thank you. Vote: Share Tomaz July 31, 2018

Thanks for the feedback, Thayr. I think we need to constantly look for better ways to teach… Vote: Share Marcelo July 27, 2018

Tomaz, great, great explanation, for all but especially for beginners.
As always very didactic, but poor Julio !! LOL
Thanks for your tips.
Greetings. Vote: Share Tomaz July 28, 2018

Thanks, Marcelo!

The sound of hitting here in the video is quite strong but the actual hits in reality were really gentle. Vote: Share Arturo Hernandez Corpi July 26, 2018

Hi Tomaz,

I like the grazing idea ALOT. As you have written (said, recorded, shown!) it is much easier to feel something than it is to say what it feels like. I suppose we could get into a long conversation about how this leads to all kinds of problems in human relations. But that digression is perhaps more appropriate for another forum.

The interesting thing is that you are proposing that we make someone feel what you are doing to them. In this case they feel you creating topspin as if they were the ball. Then that person will feel what they should do to the ball. One of the realizations I have had recently is that topspin feels to me as if my whole body is producing it. I really have started to feel this in my serve but also feel it in my groundstrokes.

Have you thought (or written) about how people transfer an image or feeling of themselves moving into what happens to an external object?

Is this like a fusion of the self and an external object?

Does this question make sense? Vote: Share Tomaz July 26, 2018

Hi Arturo,

I agree that the more skilled you are the more you feel it’s “you” hitting the ball and “you” applying topspin and not feel the arms or even the racket disconnected from you.

At high level the racket is simply an extension of one’s body whereas on a lower skill level the racket is a tool with which player wants to hit the ball.

As in all sports, it takes time and practice to reach such levels. Vote: Share Anne July 26, 2018

Hi Tomaz:

I have been continually taught to “brush” or”roll” the ball for topspin & have minimal success achieving good topspin especially when I am trying to execute a short ball stroke.

Thanks for your “grazing” tip…I will try this tomorrow a.m.
I really like your method of tennis instruction…

Anne Vote: Share Tomaz July 27, 2018

Thanks, Anne, give it a shot but start easy, with less than 50% power at first. Also, don’t take the instruction completely literally.

None of the instruction we can give in words or video can explain what actually happens in 0.004 seconds that the contact lasts.

Yes, that’s 4 thousands of a second.

So with every instruction the player must experiment and try to find and feel the concept that the coach was explaining. Vote: Share

Add your comment… Previous Post Tennis Serve Video Analysis And Drills For A Higher Toss Next Post How To Diagnose Stroke Problems – Two-Handed Backhand Example

Short balls in tennis are opportunities either to start dictating the rallies and pressuring your opponents into mistakes or to finish the points if the balls are really short.

Yet, so many of these short balls are wasted because players do not move quickly and smoothly towards them. Instead, they end up in awkward positions from which they make more mistakes when they should be making points.

While there are many ways to move to a short ball, we can narrow down the movement patterns to two types of footwork used most commonly, depending on whether the ball is just inside the baseline or whether it’s a really short ball closer to the service line.

Two Types Of Short Balls And How To Move Towards Them

A simple way to define short balls and movement towards them is to place them in two categories:

• shorter balls just inside the baseline where you need some adjusting steps to get to them, and
• really short balls that land around the service line where you actually need to run towards them.

Two types of short balls that result in different footwork patterns

Let’s see how the footwork patterns and other elements of tennis technique differ depending on which type of short ball you’re receiving.

Shorter Balls Just Inside The Baseline

When you have to move forward 2-3 meters (6-9 feet) towards the ball, you need to use an adjusting footwork pattern.

The sequence of actions you need to do is TURN – STEP – SHUFFLE and HIT, of course.

This applies to the forehand as well as one-handed and two-handed backhands.

The most common mistake that players make in this situation is that they don’t turn their upper body first (unit turn) and simply run towards this short ball.

Then they realize they have to execute the whole stroke from start to finish in a very short amount of time.

That’s why the stroke is rushed. The player is not balanced, and this typically results in a poor shot or even a mistake instead of allowing the player to take control of the rally.

So, it’s crucial that the player first turns their upper body and makes one step forward before making the final adjustment to the ball with the shuffle step.

That way, the player will have already executed half of the stroke at the beginning.

The player is now in a correct neutral stance position that allows for good balance and weight transfer, and the resulting shot is therefore very likely to be a good one.

Really Short Balls Close To The Service Line

When the ball is bouncing around the service line and it’s not struck with pace, you will have to run towards it as the previous footwork pattern doesn’t get you far enough nor is it fast enough.

Players will, of course, run towards this short ball, but they will usually make a very similar mistake like in the previous case. Specifically, they will not turn their upper body and start the stroke preparation along the way.

They will typically just run towards the ball. Then, once they reach it, they will realize that they still have to execute the whole stroke and therefore run out of time to do it well.

The correct sequence of actions is then RUN – TURN ALONG THE WAY – STOP and HIT, of course.

This is a more difficult sequence of movements that requires more coordination between the arms and the legs since the player needs to keep running and start the upper body turn and stroke preparation along the way.

That’s why it’s really important that you practice this because it does take some time to master.

The benefit of mastering this footwork is that it gives you the ability to get to a short ball quickly, in the correct stance and with your stroke already prepared to fire.

And that, of course, will allow you to win most points where you receive a short ball. Just make sure you know how to