Without some of Hi there! Many pros, including the legendary Australian champion Ken Rosewall, used the slice backhand stroke as their only backhand. Last but not least, another element that will help you produce a fantastic serve is going for it and hitting with confidence. Discussion Boards If players like to attack the net and volley, they slice a lot. However, it makes it challenging to get under the ball and apply maximum topspin for the kick serve. Because of this added spin, the ball will bounce with significantly less height when reaching the opponent's side.The ball bouncing with less height then makes it more difficult for the opponent to return the slice, since they will have much less time to reach the ball from where they awaited the return. Heres a photo to show you what your contact point should look like for a slice serve. Even at pro level, doing damage is still all about the forehand. But knowing how to use the topspin to your game (strategy) has its advantages: Stand quite close to the table, an arms length away. Tennis is not recommended for individuals who. This toss placement allows you to achieve the proper racquet angle for those serves. If you are happy to slice the ball back, the standard slice technique can be used, making sure that you stay in a low stance, as the ball may stay quite low. Many players will want to take the initiative from the slicer by hitting an aggressive topspin. The kick serve gets its name from how the ball jumps or kicks up off the ground as a result of heavy topspin applied to the ball. As a result, the overuse of a hard flat serve can lead to giving away too many free points or forcing you to rely heavily on your second serve. If players like to attack the net and volley, they slice a lot.

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The slice can be a useful weapon, but it does have some disadvantages. The answer to this question depends upon whether you are aiming to reply in kind with a slice, or to hit a topspin. The slice backhand offers the following practical and tactical advantages: A word of caution: Slice backhands make poor passing shots. When your backswing is complete, your right shoulder is close to your chin, and your right elbow points in the same direction as your right foot. The slice forehand has many advantages, but using it for rally balls on slow surfaces like clay and some hard courts can result in the ball bouncing slowly and steeply, seemingly asking to be attacked.

Michael Kernicki is currently the Head Professional at the Indian Creek Country Club in Miami Beach.

Michael Patrick Shiels writes frequently for golf magazines and is the official golf writer of the PGA of America's Michigan section. Slice shots never travel with a lot of pace. The most common variations are the slice and the topspin. A slice ground stroke causes the ball to rotate backwards towards the person who hit the ball. Instead, the best option is to stretch wide, perhaps in an open stance, and move the racket from high to low and through the line you want the ball to travel. Slice shots can be good for making an opponent really stretch for a ball, but it is difficult to hit them with much pace. As a result, when the flat serve hits the court, it tends to bounce low and continue straight forward from where it lands in the court. A slice serve is a fantastic weapon on any court surface. The forehand smash is a fast, hard and powerful stroke that aims to force the opponent away from the table or to win a point outright. Once again, when hitting a kick serve, you should rely on your continental service grip, which is ideally suited for this serve. Noticed one disadvantage is playing on a slower court. The slice can be used effectively in several matchplay situations. With the kick serve, youll want to contact the ball from bottom to the top of the ball so that youre hitting or brushing up on the ball. Join the conversation with other members of the community. Your email address will not be published. Many pros, including the legendary Australian champion Ken Rosewall, used the slice backhand stroke as their only backhand. Topspin shots are used by most tennis players as their general groundstroke because it forces opponents to go backward. Oh, and I had lunch with Brad Gilbert once. Of all the serves, the kick serve is arguably the most valuable and highly sought after for players to learn. Your email address will not be published. What Does Game, Set, Match Mean In Tennis? For example, if youre up 40-15 when serving, you might throw a big flat serve in to try and close out the game. Over the years, many techniques have been developed in tennis to make shots more difficult to hit. Many leading players will use the block-slice return and forehand squash-shot described above. If you are defending desperately, you are unlikely to be able to execute a topspin lob. On your side, there is pressure to hit your second serve in, which forces you to take some pace off the serve and subsequently gives your opponent more confidence in their return. Some coaches will tell you that the short game can be more difficult in terms of short chops and banana flips. This is basically a drop shot played at the start of a rally, so the same arguments set out in the previous paragraph apply. This will allow you to hit the ball with a slicing action. A "tennis slice" is when the ball hits the ground and bounces back into play. Many pros, including the legendary Australian champion Ken Rosewall, used the slice backhand stroke as their only backhand. On the other hand, if you were to try that same serve against a 65 opponent, then you may find it lands much closer to their strike zone, allowing them to hit an easy return. Think of your racquet face as an elevator that you need to move to the right "story" or height to pick up the passenger, a bright yellow tennis ball! Slice shots don't bounce as high, either. Slow pace and the flat trajectory give your opponent two big advantages: more time and an ideal height, at about a foot above the net, to smash away a winner. If you miss, the pressure is still on your opponent to hit a great return off your slower second serve. You will have more time to return the ball, have a better stance, stronger strokes, more spin, and more confidence. When the racket and the ball make contact, the racket should be continuously moving in a direction close to perpendicular to the ball. A "tennis topspin" is when the ball is hit with a lot of power, speed, and spin on it. The three primary types of tennis serves include the flat, slice, and kick serve. Slow pace and the flat trajectory give your opponent two big advantages: more time and an ideal height, at about a foot above the net, to smash away a winner.

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Basically, you hit the slice backhand just as you would hit your standard backhand (both one-handed and two-handed backhands), changing only the following things about your stroke:

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1. On slice shots, the racquet doesn't come around and up, making an arc. Those two qualities can catch your opponent off guard and screw up her timing.

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• Slice shots travel in a flat trajectory. You don't have to lift the ball over the net in an arc and then get it to drop back down inside the boundaries of the court like you do with your other shots.

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A word of caution: Slice backhands make poor passing shots. This position makes it easy and natural to brush your strings under the lower portion of the ball, producing backspin. Upper Body Exercises Safe for Tennis Elbow, How to Choose a Grip Size for a Tennis Racquet, How To Handle The High Bounce To The Backhand Side In Tennis. In this article I will tell you what you need to know about how and when to play a tennis forehand slice by answering some of the commonly asked questions. The slice serve is a highly effective serve that can become a huge weapon when perfected. Nuanced shots can effectively deceive your opponent, causing them to approach the ball incorrectly while increasing the likelihood that they will not be able to return your shot. If youre playing on a clay court, you may love your kick serve, where you benefit from the higher bounces that make this serve even more challenging to return. However, with practice and the proper technique, you shouldnt need to swing considerably harder to create more spin. We're Gui and Karue. For most players, the kick serve has become the default second serve. easier to learn and to apply slice shots, and have better feel and control . Just before you start your forward swing, raise the racquet head to shoulder height, open the face so that the hitting surface faces up, and produce slice by cutting under the ball with a long, smooth stroke.

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The slice forehand is easy to master, and a fair number of hackers resort to it. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when hitting a kick serve. If your opponent has a very fast or heavily spun serve, and you are having difficulty controlling it with a flat or topspun return, a block return with a little slice can be effective. Disadvantages: Less consistent Worse aim Two hands Advantages: More consistent Better aim Disadvantages: Less power More effort required Quora User PTR Teaching Pro, Racquet technician Author has 468 answers and 678.1K answer views 7 y The one handed backhand really only has two obvious weaknesses in the hands of a top player. Rookie Road may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Once again, Ive provided a view of this serve in slow motion so you can easily see the nuances of the different pieces. Your opponent can do almost anything he wants with them, especially from a position up at the net. Both arms should be out in front of you. The forehand slice is a shot which is rarely taught or discussed in modern tennis. Related Tags. Straight flips can be much easier and quicker as the pips are less sensitive to spin. The best choice is, using a continental or Eastern grip, to cut sharply under the ball with a high-to-low action, following through either straight up the court or cutting across the line to impart additional side-spin. A player can add topspin to a shot by hitting the ball in a down-up movement, which causes the ball to rotate towards the opponent. Generally, when practicing a topspin forehand, players will implement a semi-Western grip, as you are able to apply a greater amount of spin to the tennis ball using far less effort. Instead of hitting through the ball as you would with a flat serve, youll want to hit up. The slice backhand suited their approach to the game, which was based on control rather than power. Serve and volley: Due to the shorter reaction time that you may have fielding your opponents return, it can be challenging to move forward and volley. Next, lets talk about how to make contact with the ball. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Its subtle, but hopefully, compared with the flat serve, you can tell the racquet is coming toward the ball at an angle with a bit of upward motion. A tennis slice is a means of hitting or returning the ball that puts a particular spin on the ball. Add to that the ability to hit your serve at different speeds to throw off your opponent, and you can begin to see why developing various types of serves can be such a huge advantage. How To Hit The Perfect Tennis Forehand Slice In 5 Simple StepsThe forehand slice in tennis can be a real weapon if you master the technique and use it at the. The amount of torsion the arm suffers increases as the court gets more worn, because bounces become more unpredictable, leading to more off-center hits. Believe it or not, when the pros hit a kick serve, their racquet is traveling at roughly the same rate or faster than their flat or slice serve. The sports divide into a few tiers of serving advantages. Retrieving a wide ball. Im extremely passionate about the mental and technical part of the game. When youre first getting started with tennis, your primary goal will likely be to develop a single reliable serve that allows you to begin a point and play the game. Topspin shots are also used to come towards the net as previously mentioned it pushes the opponent back, which gives you time to advance to the net. Slice shots that are hit from lack of confidence or in a desperate attempt to just get the ball back tend to float, and they travel through the air slowly. What makes the slice serve unique is the sidespin applied, which causes the ball to move from right to left (if youre a righty) and continue to move in that direction off the bounce. One of the biggest challenges of the game of tennis is adjusting your stroke according to the incoming ball (high, low, topspin, slice, fast, slow, etc. An out-to-in movement can be incorporated to add side-spin. He enjoys competing in county tennis leagues and ITF Seniors events. Swing forward with a high-to-low motion. Another essential element to the kick serve is racquet head speed. However, the shot is not always . The good news is that youll use the continental grip for all three types of serves, so you only need to learn this one grip if youre not already familiar with it. It is possible to play every single forehand shot as a slice, but this is unlikely to be the most effective way to play. Slower Pace: Kick serves are slower than flat or slice serves. With the topspin, he forces Federer and other opponents to either be pushed too far backward or to take a risk and hit the ball extremely early. Defensive Lob. Turn the racquet face as you bring it back so that the hitting surface ends up facing upward, as shown in Figure 1. Low bounce: as the name suggests, flat serves have minimal spin. However, its often one of the most challenging serves to develop.

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Figure 1: Hold your racquet at a 45-degree angle to the fence when you slice your backhand.\t

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3. 3. Disguise is key, so you will prepare as though you intend to hit an aggressive topspin, and, at the last second, cut under the ball with a high-to-low action, perhaps adding some side-spin for good measure. She has even used the shot effectively on hard courts, which is probably more difficult than employing it on softer surfaces. Swing forward with a high-to-low motion.

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Release the racquet with your left hand as you do this. Sliced returns need to be controlled with precision or else a volleyer can pick them off, especially in doubles. For example, if youre lucky enough to have access to grass courts, keep in mind that the slice serve is a fantastic serve for this surface. Here, well share as much knowledge and experience as we can, so we hope you enjoy it! Your email address will not be published. Implementing finesse into your shots when competing against other tennis players is a great way to throw off your opponent by forcing them to change their game plan on the fly. Aerodynamically it will appear to rise and then dip, kicking forward and up off the court surface when it lands. Heres a video that showcases the kick serve, including the toss, contact point, and racquet angle necessary to generate topspin. The slice backhand suited their approach to the game, which was based on control rather than power.

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The slice backhand offers the following practical and tactical advantages:

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• The slice stroke is simple. You hit under the ball, instead of through and over it, as you do on the flat backhand. Remember, when you serve, you have a considerable advantage because you begin the point on offense and can control and dictate the point from the start. When hitting a flat serve, youll want your toss to be roughly 12-18 inches in front of you and approximately 6 inches to the right of your tossing arms shoulder at the peak of the toss. The flat serve is perhaps one of the most sought-after serves in tennis because its synonymous with power and the ability to hit an ace. This photo was snapped at the height of the toss so you can get a sense of accurate placement. This leads to a higher bounce and less spin on the ball after contact with the ground. Turn the racquet face as you bring it back so that the hitting surface ends up facing upward, as shown in Figure 1.
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  This position makes it easy and natural to brush your strings under the lower portion of the ball, producing backspin. Follow through until your racquet arm is fully extended, with the head pointing toward the ground at a moderate angle. Its consistent, provides players with a significant level of control, and can be used to attack a returners weaknesses with precision.

  Michael Kernicki is currently the Head Professional at the Indian Creek Country Club in Miami Beach.

  ","authors":[{"authorId":10669,"name":"Michael Patrick Shiels","slug":"michael-patrick-shiels","description":" Michael Patrick Shiels writes frequently for golf magazines and is the official golf writer of the PGA of America's Michigan section. There are basically three major types of court surfaces: Hard Courts, Grass Courts, and Clay Courts. By common sense, it is known that in tight situations players have to use larger body parts to lessen the impact of their muscles tightening. Since many modern tennis players rely on their topspin forehand to dictate the pace of the match, the slice is most commonly seen as a defensive shot that can be used as a last-ditch effort. Table tennis forehand push. However, on grass, that same kick serve wont jump nearly as high, so you might rely on your slice serve, which stays low, making it challenging to return when playing on grass. Whether it's to pass that big test, qualify for that big promotion or even master that cooking technique; people who rely on dummies, rely on it to learn the critical skills and relevant information necessary for success. Follow through until your racquet arm is fully extended, with the head pointing toward the ground at a moderate angle. He used the slicing technique very often to outdo his opponents at the highest international stages of the sport. Grass is tough on the arm, though, because the ball hits the racquet with more speed, and more speed generally means more shock and torsion.

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