The tennisforall Digital Tennis Book
by evvy

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Tennis Coaching Article: How to Play a Backhand pt. 4

If a symphony is an elaborate, harmonious composition of different elements, then what you see here is a mini symphony that takes place within the larger piece of the game.

When the animation starts to roll, absorb all the various elements that harmonise into the mini symphony that is Pete's backhand....

...the fluid turn and take back...
...the seamless looped join of back swing to through swing...
...the (sliding) inch-perfect anchor...
...the ease with which Sampras powers that racket head through contact...
...the trouble free journey of the racket, as it travels around the body, meeting up with the ball for just one, brief, perfect moment in time.

Ponder these things and consider this:
Without a perfect contact, the other elements in this composition would be completely and utterly out of synch. And for all the rackets and equipment in the world, if the ball isn't in the right place at connect, you may as well be playing on stilts, wearing steel toe-capped stilettos and brandishing a frying pan.
Stilettos?
Shush! So, become the hunter. Hunt down your perfect contact every single shot, like a sporting predator, and start working on perfecting your own mini symphony. But be sure to aspire after the major works of Johann Sebastian Sampras, not tin pan alley.
But I thought Sampras' backhand wasn't that good?
There were certainly peculiarities in Sampras' backhand that deserve more scrutiny than I have time for. But if it wasn't good enough, he wouldn't be (arguably) the greatest player of all time...would he? So I reckon it's good enough for us.