Out in front rather than to the side

Moya meets the ball in front of his body with his racket laid back Hosted on Zooomr

I see many beginning players try to hit the ball with the contact point to their side. This makes the stroke harder for two reasons. First, it forces you to look to your side, making it harder for you to recognize what is going on on the other side of the net. Second, it gives you less leverage and strength to hit through the ball.

Instead, you should try to have a contact point in front of your body, as Carlos Moya demonstrates above. Lay the racket back, move the arm forward, and hit through the ball. With the contact point in this position, it's easier to use your peripheral vision to see where you're aiming the ball, and it's easier to make last second adjustments if the ball doesn't bounce the way you expected. With your arm in front of you, you also have the leverage of your body behind your racket. If the contact point is to your side, it puts more strain on your shoulder, and the power comes from all arm.

You'll observe that the pros almost always have a contact point in front of them unless they are caught out of position. If you observe regular tournament or league players, you'll also observe that the higher the level, the more players hit out in front rather than to the side.

Speeding up your serve

Take the racket up on edge toward the ball Hosted on Zooomr

This picture of Maria Sharapova's serve demonstrates how to get more power out of your service motion. Maria accelerates her racket toward the ball by pointing the edge, rather than the face, of the racket at the ball. It's much easier to accelerate the racket head on edge than it is to accelerate by pointing the face at the ball through the whole swing, so you can easily get a few more mph (or kph) out of your serve by simply using this technique. You'll find the hardest servers tend to take their racket up toward the ball on edge.

Of course, you don't want to hit the ball with the edge of your racket, so that's where pronation comes in. As the racket gets closer to the ball, you pronate your arm so that the face of the racket is in the proper position by the time the racket makes contact with the ball. If you aren't used to it, it may take a while to get the timing right, but this is really the most natural way to accelerate up to the ball, and you'll realize it once you start getting the hang of it. It's really not that hard, and it actually allows you to swing more freely.

Give it a try and you could soon be breaking your own speed limits on your serves!

Back from the Open

I had a great trip to NY. Luckily, it didn't rain during any of the session for which I had tickets. I saw some big time matches like Roddick vs. Hewitt and Federer vs. Blake, as well as the last set and a half of Youzhny taking down Nadal, but some of the matches I enjoy the most are on the outside courts, like this one (below) where up and comers Ana Ivanovic and Maria Kirilenko won their second round women's doubles match.

IMG_0535 Hosted on Zooomr