Hey everyone, welcome to the 54th episode of Baseline Intelligence. On today's episode, I'll recap my favorite technical tips from 2023. So sit back, relax, and prepare to become a smarter tennis player. All right, today I'll be giving you my recap of my favorite technical tips from the past podcast season. You know I'm huge on the mental side of the game, making sure you have emotional control.
knowing your tactics, knowing how to compete well, as well as several other things that could be under the mental umbrella. But it is important to have solid fundamentals and to hit the ball well. So I know some of you gravitate towards that area, so I thought I would include some of my favorite tips from the 2023 season. So to begin, we're going to start with Andy Fitzell, and he spoke about the time it takes to change.
and the circumstances that could prevent a player from pursuing a technical improvement in their game? Well, yeah, you have to be open to change, number one. That's for sure. If you have any doubts about the change, then it's usually not going to happen. If the pain of changing is greater than the pain you feel when you lose, people don't change. So, you know, you have to be kind of all in, so to speak. You go, okay, hey, I look at the science of that, the rationale.
the fact that makes sense. Now let's go do it. If you can do that, the process is going to go a lot faster. I think the average for most people could be eight weeks is what Vic used to say. And you get it, you lose it, you get it, you lose it. You know, it takes time, and there's definitely some frustration. You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable when you're making changes. But really, I think a lot of it's mental, where how many reps you're going to put into it.
And how much you kind of believe, okay, this is it. I'm going to make it. I'm going to do this. You can't have doubts. What a great line he said, where if the pain of change is greater than the pain of losing. then you won't change. It's just perfectly said. Changing a technique is painful. A lot of times you'll get worse at first, but it's 10 steps back to take 100 steps forward. It takes time. It takes a ton of focus and effort.
and it might even take months to see the reward. So if you're looking to improve a stroke, don't expect it to be quick and easy. Before we get into specific shots, I'm going to play another clip from Andy, and really his entire episode is like a technical masterclass, so I highly recommend going back and listening to that episode again.
But in this clip, he talks about the necessary movements to create pure topspin on your ground strokes. Well, I mean, it's cliche to say low to high, but we say inside out. you know, inside out, low to high. So from close to away from your body, where if you're up too high, most people don't get below the ball. So if you're up too high, let's say ball level, then the swing goes more outside in.
So you always want to be swinging low to high inside out. And then that's where the friction with the tennis strings against the ball for those few milliseconds, the low to high swing path. So whatever angle you swing up. And the speed that you swing up will determine how much spin the ball gets. And then you're going to have basically a vertical racket face close to it. I mean, you could say, okay.
few shots that are hit really hard somebody may have a racket face that's slightly closed but it's not like you're going to tell your student hey yeah just close the racket face three degrees there you know it's like just yay Just keep the vanilla ice cream in the bowl first, and then you can add the magic shell and sprinkles later. Low to high and inside out. Two simple checkpoints. Did you swing up on the ball?
And was your racket face vertical or even slightly closed at contact? Not a lot more to it than that. If your ball is clearing the net with height, but no topspin, your racket face is likely open. If you're missing in the net... you likely aren't swinging up on the ball enough. So moving right along to someone who does swing up on their forehand an insane amount, Steve Johnson. And he came on the pod and he talked about the swing thought that he has on his beautiful forehand.
The good thing for me is on my forehand side, sometimes less is more. When I see ball, I hit ball. That's kind of my motto. But if we're going to get technical, for me, when I'm not hitting ball as well, I get very open. You know, I get very open. My left arm, obviously not to this extent, but if you watch like a Golbis from five or six years ago, the way he had his left arm kind of like as a stop, like a crossing guard kind of thing.
That's horrible for me. I like to keep my left side in. I want to imagine there's basically a foot rope in between my left and right wrist, and I want to turn with one. turn all the way back, and then obviously at impact, you're going to let the left arm go through. But I want to stay closed as much as possible with that arm. Because once I get open with the left side, everything kind of goes away. My power goes away. My timing is a little bit off.
So that's the biggest thing that I focus on when things are not going well on the forehand. It's important to know he was talking about the feeling of having his hands tied or handcuffed together about a foot apart. Obviously, he separates them more than that.
but that is his feeling to keep himself in sync. A lot of people fly open with their left side, which forces them to swing across the ball, which obviously can lead to shanks or even sidespin. Very similarly, Shelby Rogers showed a tip on her backhand. that she has for cleaner contact and better timing? I would say
trying not to get your racket too far behind you because then you'll be late trying to catch up to the ball. And a lot of people get that when they step too far across themselves with their right leg. So you kind of close yourself off and close your shoulder and then your racket gets way...
too far behind and you end up being late a lot of the time. So I see this on two-hand backhands all the time. And when you wrap it behind your body, you end up swinging across the ball horizontally instead of swinging up on the ball vertically.
Across the ball will get you side spin. Vertically will get you more top spin as Andy Fitzell mentioned. Both Steve and Shelby had very simple thoughts. There wasn't too much going on their heads because if you're thinking about grips, posture, balance, take back, etc. It can get incredibly overwhelming, but they each had one simple tip or swing thought that helped them swing up, get clean contact, and rip the ball with topspin.
Tommy Paul's coach, Brad Stein, came on the podcast and he shared how a backhand slice really helped Jim Currier get to world number one. And in this clip, he shares his technical advice for hitting a better backhand slice. I think there's a couple of key elements. Obviously the slices, it's a little bit of a different swing because you're hitting the ball with a slightly open racket face. So it's a little bit more of a high to low swing rather than a low to high swing.
I'd really like to see guys try and maintain the swing path through the line of the ball relatively long as they're coming underneath the ball and creating underspin on the ball so that it doesn't get too choppy. and there's a little bit more penetration on the ball. Are you saying vertically choppy? Yeah, vertically choppy. You know, I mean, you're coming from a high position to a low position on the ball, but you don't want to make that too...
Vertical, you know, you don't want to make that too high to low like and really
chopping the ball from that position. I always like to use the visual with players of suggesting that if they were trying to swing their racket through an open window, that they would, you know, a window that's probably... two by two or four by four or something that you know you would go straight through that window so that you weren't hitting the sides or breaking the window or anything rather than and that part comes really with the perspective of you know just behind the ball
to just in front of the ball and through the contact point you're obviously coming from a little bit higher but if you're coming down at a very you know extreme angle you're probably not going to make it through that window And your ball is going to have a lot more underspin, but it's probably going to have way, way less penetration. I know a lot of coaches who won't even use the word slice because that makes players think of chopping down too much. Yes, it is a slight high to low swing.
but a lot of players take this way too far. I like my players to warm up their slice with as little underspin as possible so they get the feel of the racket face that's only slightly open and it's more of a drive. From there, we can easily add a little more spin if necessary, but I find we rarely have to do that. And the last shot of the day, the serve. Here's Joel Myers sharing some serving advice while analyzing the incredible serve of Ben Shelton.
I mean, his serve is so athletic. I mean, there's so much upper body coil that goes into that. There's so much back leg loading that goes into that.
and for as low as his ball toss is and you know that's a a good thing i'm not saying that is a bad thing a low ball toss doesn't mean a low contact point you know um but as low as that ball toss is the speed at which he gives down and up is so quick it's so explosive you know look at it how he comes in and out of that drive so i think if there's something that you're probably looking at you know and many players have a
ball toss it's probably too high i was at the san diego open this week i saw a few that were pretty high and the ball toss goes up and the player goes down into a knee bend and they're almost holding a static squat you know for a second waiting for that ball to come down
and you've got to think about being you want to be a little more explosive when you lower that toss you've got to come in and out of that leg drive a lot faster so you think about like a an nba player going up for a two-handed dunk they're going to come in and out of there leg drive really quickly the knee flexion is not 90 degrees you know it's it's very very minimal but it's very quick and so when you look at a ben shelton obviously he's a unbelievable athlete and he's super explosive
But the speed at which he gets that leg drive off and that serve off is very impressive. I don't think you can necessarily imitate the amount of torque he puts on his body. But you can certainly take things away like the ball toss height, getting in and out of your legs quickly and tossing forward. You know, he's a hugely aggressive server and the ball toss is going to be inside the baseline.
Mark Kovacs came on the show about a year ago, and he talked about how important the back leg was to serve power. And Ben really loads in coils, which is something so many players out there can learn from. And the big takeaway, as always, is keeping that toss just as high as you can reach or only slightly higher. You have more time to hit the ball clean this way, you improve your disguise, and you won't have to deal with the sun or wind as much.
There's so many advantages to an efficient toss, so I encourage you all to practice this in the new year. And this officially wraps up season two of the podcast. A total blast for me. And like I said last week, the show is growing at an incredible rate. So I truly appreciate all of you who listen. We have some cool things in store for next year. Some new guests.
some subscriber-only bonus episodes, along with our normal interviews. So stay tuned for all of that. And as I mentioned last episode, I would greatly appreciate you leaving a review or a rating on Apple or wherever you listen to the pod. It helps the show get found by new players and coaches, so I'd really appreciate that. Happy New Year, everyone, and the show will start up again in a few weeks with Jessica Pagula.