How to Improve Your Tennis Backhand - Tennis lessons

Speaker 1: The one handed backhand, perhaps one of the prettiest shots in tennis. Starting with Joe in the ready position, the ball, and he's a right handed player, the ball coming to his left. He starts with a turn of the hips and shoulders, his racket head is up. He now, after he gets that good turn he takes a step with his right foot towards the approaching ball, and he starts pulling that racket forward. Meeting the ball out in front, and finishing out towards his target. And the racket head is a little bit more vertical at the end to help him get a little brush on the ball. Can you show that to us again, Joe? It's pivot, step, and reach. The key here is hit that ball out in front, and his stroke will maintain that beautiful swing. If he catches it late, he'll break down, so timing is everything in life and in backhands. And I think also what's important on the one handed backhand is to stay what I call linear. Which means when I turn to hit that shot, I am not going to let my body rotate into a pirouette. I'm going to try to stay on the line of the ball. So when I hit it, I'm going to stay through that ball, not rotate and make the ball flight out. Finally there is a grip change, we start in the forehand grip but as you turn those hips, Joe, you also turn the hand. Keeping the left hand on the throat of the racket, and executing the stroke. You don't want to waste time doing one, two, it's altogether. Speaker 2: And that's very important because without that change of grip, you won't hit a solid backhand, it'll tend to go up in the air. And that's the tennis backhand.