Things to remember

Here are some of the things I'll need to remember, until proprioception kicks in:

Serve:

1. Preparation: stand sideways, right shoulder back. Let the ball hand and the racquet fall down naturally, then start throwing the ball as well as winding up the racquet.
2. The racquet hand ends up at the ear level.
3. Keep the throwing arm up longer, and look somewhat to the left of it.
4. Follow through: tuck the left arm close to the stomach. Racquet arm wraps around left side.

Backhand: take the racquet back, hold it with the left hand and very lightly with the right hand, wrist laid back. As with the forehand, the racquet goes low over the court, almost parallel to the ground at some point. Track the ball, and as you hit, keep the head down and watch your left foot.

Slice backhand: on the take-back, keep the elbow fairly high, shoulder almost parallel to the ground.

Freak Backhand Follow-Through

Just look at this thing:


You can imagine how much top spin he gets on such backhands. The left arm is stretched way behind his back.

Millenium forehand

I watched a flash movie of forehand technique called "Millenium Forehand," from http://www.virtualtennisacademy.com/. It covered the fact that modern pros flick their wrist on the forehand, which I already noticed from watching videos and photos. On the preparation, the racquet is taken back and pointing up at around 45 degrees (2 pm on an imaginary clock face). As they swing down, the racquet flicks down to point to 7:30 pm, with the wrist laid back to the fullest. The racquet butt points at the ball shortly after that. In some clips I saw, it almost felt like the racquet was going to scratch the ground--it was so low and almost parallel to the ground, as in this shot:

The lesson also covered the forehand preparation: left hand across the body pointing to the side fence, weight on the right foot, racquet taken back and pointing up:

Lesson 5

Last night I had my fifth session with Dan (he was away last week). I did not hit as well as two weeks ago, when I had just switched to a smaller grip (from 4 3/8 to 4 1/4). Volleys were OK, although I still need to concentrate on hitting through the ball, rather than hacking on it. I still tend to hit a lot of balls off the trailing part of the frame: instead, I need to pretend I'm hitting with the leading edge of the frame. Overheads were better than usual: I still mishit a few, but when I lined up and was in a good position, I made solid contact. Backhand misfired most of the time. Last time, I focused on keeping my head down and having my right foot in the field of vision--that helped a lot.