Forehand Drives and Using that Core

 John Cincola has a nice channel of PB content on YouTube.  He had a video the other day about forehand drives and I wanted to talk about that for a couple of reasons.

Let me summarize the stroke as John sees it.  He wants to face the shot head on and then take the ball just at or inside and in front of his right hand foot.  (Right hand foot???)  He doesn't move his feet sideways as you would hitting a tennis shot.  There is shoulder rotation, hit the ball in front of his feet and let the paddle wrap around his left shoulder.

I like this stroke.  With no real feet movement, it's really easy to reset for the return shot.  Also using your core in a rotational pattern and not, for example, moving your upper body towards the target, is efficient.  The stroke is also short.

I was using this a lot today while playing and I was getting very good power and speed from it.  Then I realized that with little modification, this becomes as excellent service stroke.  While I am happy to see some body and weight shift towards the target on a serve, it's not really required to get enough speed for a good serve.  I started using it as a serve.  I hit the ball lower than I usually do and with more speed.  My control was very good.  My consistency was excellent, I didn't serve out all morning -- but I usually will only serve out about once a week, so I can't claim more control with a small sample.

While I was thinking about this, I was watching my partners serve.  They had pretty good serves, they got them in for example and the depth and speed of the shots was fine.  I did see some body motion towards the target, again, something I like if you have trouble with serving.  But I could see from my partners that there was a lot of power loss in doing so.  The balls were hit from too far forward and as they had to reach for the ball to hit it, they hit softer shots than the effort they put in.  I think having a more square stance and dropping the ball off the front right knee and just using their core to rotate and hit the ball would be more efficient.

Pro tip on serving, you absolutely need to tightly control the location of your ball drop to control angle, direction, and spin.  If you miss serves then check this first.

Link to John's post: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9J9lwF01gSE

This stroke felt different to me.  I don't use my core rotationally much and I probably want to.  It felt good and strong and I'm going to pursue it.  Now let's seek understanding and progress in other areas.  I also play golf.  If you hit golf balls correctly, you also want this core rotation.  One of my many golf flaws is to move my body towards the target.  What I want to do is to force my body to stay somewhat stable and in position and use that leg brace to power a rotation via the core.  I'm hoping to make this work too.

Take a look at the video, it's all of 30 seconds long, see if it helps you.