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Tennis Lessons / Forehand / Step 3
Swing to Contact
How To :
1. Push off your outside leg and get the heel of that foot up.
2. Rotate your upper body towards the net.
3. Swing by dropping the racket down, then forward, as if it were traveling along an imaginary "C."
4. Make contact with the tennis ball in front of your body, approximately waist high.
Figure 1: Frank swinging to contact
To get to his contact point, Frank does the following three things at the same time: push off his outside leg, rotate his upper body towards the net and swing. You may notice that when he pushes off his outside leg, he gets his heel up. This allows him to rotate his body around more easily. Also, the racket is traveling down, then forward. Then end result is that he is making contact with the tennis ball in front of his body, about waist high. He is square to the net — facing the net — and the strings are flat on the back of the tennis ball. Having the correct point of contact is probably the single most important determining factor as to whether or not you will hit a good forehand.
Another thing you want to focus on is watching the ball through contact. This means you actually keep looking at where you hit the ball a split second after you hit. If you watch someone like Roger Federer, he keeps his eyes on his contact point well after the ball has left his strings. The reason you do this is because it makes it more likely you will hit the ball in the center of your strings. Put another way, hand-eye coordination works a lot better when your eyes are looking towards your hands.
You can also see that when Frank swings, his other arm gets out of the way. Although his arm does move out of the way as he rotates, he is not consciously pulling it in. The key here is to focus on your upper body rotation. It is physically impossible to leave the other arm extended in the same position and rotate around. If you concentrate on the steps mentioned above the other arm should take care of itself.
Common Errors:
Pulling your other arm out of the way when you swing.
Focusing on getting your other arm out of the way can be dangerous because it can have a negative impact on correctly executing the steps mentioned above. The most common result of trying to either pull or swing your other arm out of the way is that your shoulders open up too early. This means that you will be facing the net before you fully push off your outside leg or swing your arm and the racket around. This is also called "opening up too early."
Jumping, as opposed to pushing off your outside leg.
Relatively straightforward. The two are not the same thing.
Incorrect point of contact.
This could mean any number of things. You could hit the ball late / early / too close to your body / too far away.
Not watching the ball into your strings .
I talked about the pros of watching the ball into your strings above. The cons of not doing so are twofold. First, you are less likely to make solid contact, and second, if you start looking to where you are planning on hitting the ball this often causes your head to turn. Turning your head can sometimes cause you to turn your shoulders and open them up too early.
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