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First Fundamental: Understanding the Contact Area
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First Fundamental: Understanding the Contact Area
Ean Meyer
All strokes have a beginning, middle and end. By far the most important of the three is the middle, or the contact. Everything else you do; backswing, follow through, footwork, and concentration is secondary to the moment you make contact. This is true for all of your strokes be it ground strokes, volleys or serves.
Style is not a fundamental. The shape of your backswing and how far you’re taking the racket back is relative only to the spot where you make contact. It is sometimes shocking to see how misinformed players are about this important component. They’ll spend time, and money, adjusting style elements while neglecting this critical piece. The end result? New, fancy moves with the same poor scores.
All strokes should initially be learned from the middle. A lot of times coaches will tell you to “Get your racket back”. This is actually damaging advice. Players who train with extended backswings never develop the feel for good contact. With an extended backswing most of your energy moves in a horizontal swing path across your body instead of a vertical path to the target. This is a waste of energy and time.
Start with your racket very close to the point of contact, hit the ball and extend the follow thru. The area just before contact, during contact and right after contact is called “The Slot”.
A long backswing means a short “Slot”.
A short backswing means a long “Slot”.
The longer the “Slot”, the better the shot.
With practice, you’ll develop your feel for contact and slot length, and increase your backswing.
The best way to correct problems with your contact area is to play mini tennis. You can also do self-feeding drills. Take a ball and drop it right in front of where you feel perfect contact. Start with virtually no backswing and, as you progress through an entire basket, increase the size of the backswing without changing the point of contact.
Watch the video below for an illustration of the point of contact.
Ean Meyer, a professional tennis coach since 1987. Over the years, I’ve worked with every level of player from beginner to professional, coaching tennis for over 25 years and have worked with many different levels of juniors and adults. In this time I have worked at high performance academies including Bollettieri’s, Seguso-Bassett, Evert Tennis Academy and most recently, the Harold Solomon Tennis Institute. I’ve been published in tennis magazines in Brazil, Venezuela, Italy, South Africa and the U.S. and have conducted seminars for coaches in different countries. My coaching philosophy is very simple: Develop strong Fundamentals in 4 areas – Technical, Tactical, Mental and Physical.
Visit his website at: https://eanmeyertennis.com and https://tennis.pro/
Source: tennisplayer.net archive — Contact Point.docx (John Yandell teaching library, 2002-2022). Extracted and rendered as HTML for Tennis Future Lab.