Hitting the Shot You Wanted, but Doing it Well

 In almost all rallies that last more than a few shots, someone will get to hit the shot they want.  Or get a chance to hit the shot they want.

Almost all of the "sitter" shots are at the kitchen line and are fairly high above the net.  

So what happens?  About 40% of those "easy" shots end up going into the net.  I have a theory but before I get to that let's set the scene a bit. The sitter is the culmination of all the play of the point.  You've made shots that were not easily attackable and now you have one you should be able to put away.  This is the shot you've been waiting for.

Technically what I think happens is that most people increase their swing speed by about 50%, which changes the timing of the strike.  You end up hitting the ball with the paddle pointing into the net.  If you had hit it with your normal swing speed, the paddle face aligns with the open court.  

As I mentioned in a prior post about the push shot, the paddle face alignment to the proper target during a shot, if the shot is a swing, is a small window of opportunity.  Swing early and a right hand forehand shot goes left, a late swing goes right.  Most of the slams are forehand shots but on a vertical plane, so early goes into the net and late goes into the back fence.

My solution to this error, and it's my solution to many, many errors, is don't swing harder than your usual shot.  We think that a hard, speedy shot will be successful and it frequently is, but it's prone to producing errors.  People who make few errors are very difficult to beat.  Fortunately they are very rare at the rec level.  If you want to be unbeatable, just get your shots in, don't try to put them away.  I'm frequently called "nonchalant" on the court, and it's usually when I hit a shot by not hitting it very hard.  There is a lot of time to hit a ball.  More than you think and it takes experience to use this time to hit the ball properly without over hitting it.  

Having said all of this.  I struggle with hitting these shots too hard as well.  We get keyed up in the moment and the speed and can't manage to hit a hard drive softly, or a sitter gently.   But I work at this.  

I was talking to one of the regulars at the park today and he had coached tennis a lot.  He is signed up for the Harvest Crush  tournament and we had discussed how frequent errors are a problem.  He and his partner spent a couple of games just counting the number of out shots they hit.  He found that keeping track of how many they made them less likely to create them.  I think that works.  I keep track of service errors per week and also I'm very aware of service return errors.  If I'm playing well, those two statistics are small numbers.  I want to get better at the push shot from a prior post, and then those pesky sitters that frequently go awry.  

There are a number of books written about sports called "The Inner Game of X."  for skiing, golf, and tennis written by Tim Gallwey.  These books are worth reading.  What he suggests is that your mind can figure out very complex things if you just let it.  Give your mind a task, provide some feed back and then iterate.  I'm familiar with the golf book, and as an example, you might want to change your wrist at impact.  He would tell you to just hit balls and for every shot give a number to how successful you were in getting your wrist to do what you wanted.  He found that it didn't take long for your mind to solve the problem with little analytical effort on your part.  

That's enough for this post, I feel I'm on the way to another book, so I'll close.   If anyone tries these feedback ideas I would be interested in knowing how well it works.