Contact and Follow Through

The first step of the two-handed backhand progressions is to establish your contact point and then follow through. Your contact point should be about waist high and out in front of your body a little bit. Make sure you are using an acceptable two-handed backhand grip. From your contact point, you are going to follow through.

I want to make an important point about your follow through here because we are doing it a bit differently. You need to follow through and freeze with your arms fully extended out in front of you. My non-dominant arm is completely straight, and my dominant arm is just slightly bent. Freezing in your follow through with your arms like this makes sure that you are completely extended. You aren’t going to wrap the racket around your shoulder like you would on a normal backhand just yet.

Let’s watch me shadow this motion first. I start at my contact point and then simply push through the ball and fully extend out, freezing into my follow through at full extension. This is a very simple motion.

Let’s now watch me hit some tennis balls. I’m standing at the service line with my racket at my contact point, and I’m just pushing the ball back over the net and freezing into my follow through. From the back view, you can see that I am not trying to hit very hard at all.