Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 409 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to drop shot like Alcaraz. Ataze, we're going to talk about disguise and grip change and technique, positioning where to move after hitting the drop shot and also training drills that you can use to develop a great drop shot. So let's go ahead and dive right in.
And the reason why this is so important is everybody practices moving right and left, but everybody practices hitting right and left and like making their opponents move like from forehand to backhand across the baseline. But hardly anybody ever practices moving forward and backward. And hardly anybody practices hitting deep and short or short and then deep. Even though the court is longer than it is wide. Isn't that interesting?
Even on the double court, there's more length forward and back than there is width, right and left. But nobody really practices except for Alcaraz. I've watched him practice his drop shots on the court before, like I don't drain a practice session. He's really fascinating to watch because he was alternating between just pounding forehands against his practice partner and then intermittently throwing in his drop shot.
And a big reason why it's so effective is he does practice the transition between the two and he sets up for both shots exactly the same. Whether he's getting ready to unwind and hit a powerful drive or heavy topspin shot or he's getting ready to drop it super low and short with a lot of backspin and both because he coils his body completely on both. He takes the racket back with his topspin grip and on both he brings his left arm across and completes a full coil using both of his hands.
And so I putting them side by side, they're identical for the first phase of the swing. And so that keeps his opponents from knowing which is coming and puts a lot of doubt in their minds, especially on a surface like a grass court or a clay court where it's even more of an advantage.
But even on the hard court too, somebody like a Medvedev who just hangs out way behind the baseline on average just can't stay back in that comfort zone area of the court as readily because they have to respect the disguise and the technique and the consistency and the precision of the drop shot from Alkaraz. And so it forces them out of their comfort zone into the net zone where they don't necessarily have their big strengths and that's something that you can copy as well.
It doesn't have to be nearly as good of a shot because we're not playing against professional athletes with professional athlete speed and quickness and agility. So if we just get the principles down, this can be super effective for us. So the disguise element is all the things I just checked off.
We want to prepare with the same amount of turn, the same grip ideally that we would normally use for a driver, topspin shot, and same preparation with our left arm across our body, whatever you normally do. Now one caveat here is A, for us normal players, most of our opponents aren't anticipating or paying nearly as close of attention as professional players. So this disguise, like part of it, in full transparency isn't the most important part.
The most important part is you develop your touch and your feel, your hands, whatever you want to call it so that we have the softness to be able to put the ball short in the courts. Having good disguise is a nice cherry on top of that, but if you're going to prioritize these things, then for normal everyday players, the disguise, I think is actually the least important part.
That's the part of that everybody kind of fixates on the most because it's kind of fancy and exciting to see him trick people and fool people. And it's tempting to want to do that ourselves. But most of the efficacy to be gained here by hitting the drop shot isn't it being sneaky or tricky or disguising it super well? It's just purely in the fact that we're hitting it effectively short at all.
Whether they saw it coming or not, we're still getting the benefit of forcing our opponents out of their comfort zone and forcing them into another zone of the court, forcing them to run in a different direction than they probably have practiced and trained to the point where they're as comfortable as on the baseline. So all of those are still a gigantic benefit even without the disguise. So after he's done his setup, what he does using the left hand, actually, I take that back.
He doesn't leave the left hand on the racket super long or long enough to help him change the grip. Normally, that's how you would change your grip from like a forehand ground stroke grip to a backhand ground stroke grip would be by using the left hand on the throw the racket to help make the turn in the twist. But Alcharez actually seamlessly transitions from a semi-western grip for his top spin forehand to about an Eastern forehand grip for his drop shot.
He doesn't go all the way to continental, which I recommend using continental. We'll talk about why in just a second. But just kind of side note, he does not use continental for his drop, his forehand drop shot. He uses an Eastern forehand grip, but he still has to change the grip and he does that seamlessly without the use of his left hand. And that just adds a tremendous amount of technical challenge and volatility for a normal everyday tennis player like us.
And so again, I don't highly recommend you try to copy that part of it, just in full transparency because most points end with the error. So if you're trying to make it like maximum sneaky and tricky and make it completely hidden in disguise and you're waiting until the last second and using one hand to change your grip, now we're getting like too fancy for an everyday tennis player in my opinion. You're better off shifting your grip ahead of time.
Even if it telegraphs it a little bit to your opponent, if you hit an okay drop shot, we are still checking off a lot of benefits and a lot of positive reasons why the drop shot is still super, super useful. So for everybody else, I think continental is the best grip. You totally can have a great drop shot with Eastern forehand grip. By the way, for not sure what the different grips are, you're not sure what I'm talking about. Just go to YouTube and type in Essential Tennis grip.
You'll see a bunch of tutorials there about what different grips are, how to find them, what they're good for. It's also great for touch shots because it's very easy to open the face of the racket. That's one of the two main technical elements that we have to check off to have a great drop shot. Technical element number one is we have to have a high to low motion with the racket. That's what creates backspin.
It's possible to hit a soft short shot in the court without coming high to low, just a blocking the ball and not creating a lot of backspin. It can still be effective. Honestly, still at a pretty high level. If you want to also have the ball check up and sit and stay short and not continue balancing forward through the court on your opponent side of the court, then adding a little bit of backspin can be really helpful and make it significantly more effective.
The only way to make backspin is to have the racket traveling downward as contact is made. This is convenient for Algrés because he uses a loop in his back swing. When he's setting up for his topspin shot, he starts with the racket high. When he sets up for his drop shot, he also starts with his racket high. The difference is on his topspin shot, the racket will loop back and then down and come up from below contact.
On his drop shot, he, at the last second, switches his grip and then starts from that same high position and comes downward to the ball instead of upward and creates backspin instead of topspin. The high starts and the low finish gives the ball backspin and the continental grip, or in Carlos's case, the Eastern forehand grip, makes it easier than a topspin grip to open the racket face and the open racket face gives the ball some loft.
It gets the ball up into the air, which we want because in order to hit the ball close to the net and have it go over the net, there has to be some arc to the shot. We can't hit the ball straight and have it land short on the other side and we also can't hit the ball straight forward and have it stay short on the other side.
If we hit the ball straight, it's going to cross over the top of the net and keep going and keep traveling through our opponent's side of the court and make it easier to get the ball. The open racket face helps us create a shorter shot and the open racket face, the short shot we're creating by opening the racket face that gives us the loft. Think of if you're a golfer, think of a flop shot and golfer like a chip shot. We're using a very lofted angle with a club face.
Tennis, we have to hit all of our shots with one club with one tool and so this is why changing the grip is, I don't want to say necessary, but it really is. If you want to hit a great drop shot consistently, having an open face is critical and opening the face as much easier if you change your grip to continental or eastern forehand. That's the technique side of things.
If you want to see frame by frame, slow motion analysis of this, you want to see Alcoraz actually doing the grip change and actually doing the hide-alone motion, then you can go to essential tennis and do, I'm sorry, you can go to YouTube and do a search for essential tennis how to drop shot like Alcoraz or just essential tennis drop shot will probably bring it up first and you can see a detailed breakdown of the actual technique.
Alcoraz has set up, he's disguised, he's changed his grip, he's come from high to low, he's opened the racket face to give the ball loft and to give the ball backspin, he's come from high to low. He's just hit his drop shot and now we have to decide where are we going next. This is a question I've received a lot over the years and the answer is it depends on how good of a drop shot we just hit.
When you watch professional players hit a drop shot, they usually wait a beat, a couple of strides of their opponents movement to see exactly how good of a drop shot that I just hit and how quickly are they getting there. Did they get a jump on it and they saw it early and we kind of sat it up or we kind of hit it a little deep and they're going to get there easily.
If that's the case, then you want to stay back around the baseline because if we just set up a weak sitting shot and they get up to the ball very quickly, then their first mode of attack is going to be probably hitting the ball aggressively and trying to put it away. The last thing we want to do is get closer to them if that's going to be their next shot. When you watch Alcharez practices drop shot, he'll kind of be leaning forwards after the drop shot but he'll be looking and watching.
If he doesn't like the shot, he just hit, then he'll retreat back to the baseline if he was inside the baseline to hit the drop shot, which normally is what is best. Hitting a drop shot from behind the baseline is extremely difficult. Generally, professional players are hitting a drop shot from at least a little inside the baseline and that's what I recommend for you listening as well and me, myself when I play.
If I'm hitting a drop shot from the baseline or behind the baseline, then generally it's a bad sign. I'm probably kind of punting the points a little bit and it's kind of a bailout shot. The closer you get to the net, the easier it is to drop it short on the other side and hit an effective shot. If after hitting that shot, you're like, oh, that was not a good drop shot. They saw it coming. They're going to get there no problem.
Then you want to buy yourself time and space by going back to the baseline, ideally before they get to your bad drop shot or less than effective drop shot. If on the other hand, they're running and sprinting and your ball barely clears the net, it's got a lot of backspin. You can tell there's going to be struggling to get there and they're reaching and kind of scraping the racket and it might even bounce twice before they get there.
You want to close forward because as they get closer and closer to the net and the ball drops to lower and lower below the top of the net, their choices and their opportunities as far as what's available to them, diminish dramatically. They can no longer hit the ball directly to your side of the net. They've got to clear the net. I'm sorry, directly to your side of the court.
They've got to clear the net and the only way to do that is by opening their racket face and what's likely going to come next is like a dribbler kind of shot, like barely over the top of the net, not very strong because they're reaching and stretching off balance and scrambling and sprinting and just kind of stretching the racket out in an emergency, kind of ask stitch effort to get the ball. We're not going to be receiving a ball with a ton of pace.
We're not going to be receiving a ball that's probably going to be very deep and penetrating. This is where a re-drop is very likely. When we've hit a great drop shot, another short weak shot back is highly likely. When you watch Carlos practice and he really likes his drop shot, he'll close in aggressively, almost like he's approaching the net when he sees that his opponent is scrambling and struggling to get to the ball. This is a critical part of being successful with the drop shot.
If you just hang out in No Man's Land, then you're exposed, especially if you hit a weak drop shot. If you also hang out in No Man's Land after hitting a great drop shot and your opponent re-drops back, then you're out of position and kind of, they just put you in the same position that they were in and they can turn the tables on you really quickly, even if your drop shot was really, really high quality. Make sure to follow it forwards.
The higher quality is it is and stay back in a defensive position the lower quality it is. That's the rule of thumb. That's the skies, that's the grip change, that's the technique. That's the positioning. Now let's talk about training. Here's three drills that you can do to develop this. For me, the most elusive, most difficult part of all of this is what I like to call hand IQ. IQ like intelligence and of the hand. Hand IQ means how aware are you of how firm or how relaxed your hand is.
And therefore, how much energy are you able to take away from the ball to hit a soft shot back? And in my experience, coaching players for over 20 years now, most players hand IQ is very, very low. And so they try to hit a good drop shot by aggressively chopping downwards and they think it's all about like trading as much backspin as possible.
And there's some truth to that, if you chop down really steeply and really fast, you will remove a lot of speed from the ball and you will put a lot of backspin on the ball. And so if you get the angle of the racket and the speed of the chop and the steepness of the chop just right, that's to be totally honest. That's how you can hit the best, you know, the type of drop shot that like barely goes over the net and then like bounces back over on your side again.
That's how you do it is by aggressively chopping downwards and getting just the right angle of path and just the right angle of the strings. And that's really, really hard to do. And so if you don't have great hands or feel or touch and you add a big aggressive chop on top of that, it's like, you know, our odds of success here are just extremely low. If you just want to throw it in there once in a while for fun, that's fine.
But if you want to use the drop shot as a reliable tool in your toolbox, then softening your hand to absorb some energy from the ball so that you don't have to chop aggressively is going to be dramatically more consistent and more reliable and more repetitive to hit a good quality drop shot. Not one that necessarily bounces back over to your side of the court, but we don't need that good of a shot for it to be to our advantage. So the first drill is what I like to call a do nothing volley.
And I know it's weird. We're going to do a volley drill here to start on the right path with the drop shot. Have a friend feed to you or set up a ball machine to feed kind of medium pace like neutral shots and stand up next to the net and receive the ball. And your goal is to turn to the side, set your racket up behind the incoming ball. Let's say on your forehand side and do nothing and just stand there.
It do not you're going to think I'm a little crazy as I describe this, but I've seen this over and over and over and over and over again. Dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of times over and over. I've described this drill and my student is like, yeah, okay, yeah, just stand there. Don't do anything. Don't hit the ball. Don't step. Don't punch. Don't guide. Don't flip your hand. Don't do any just nothing. Just stand there and let the ball bounce off the racket.
And I don't think I've ever had a student being totally honest here. I don't think I've ever had a student actually do that their first try. They always do something to flip or move the racket or punch the racket forwards right as the ball gets there. And your goal is to do actually literally nothing and just let the ball bounce off your racket.
And your goal here instead of stepping or punching or hitting the ball is to feel what tension is in your hand and watch what happens to the ball as we try different firmnesses with our hand. So to start, I recommend squeezing at a 5 out of 10. So if 10 out of 10 is as hard as you can physically squeeze the grip, squeeze at half of that, 5 out of 10.
And let the ball bounce off of your racket a couple of times and you might be surprised to find out the ball is still going to go over the net if you hit the strings. If you're standing up next, you know, pretty close to the net and you're receiving a medium kind of speed from ball machine or somebody feeding you a ball and you just hold the racket there and hold the racket at a medium firmness 5 out of 10. And just let the ball bounce off the strings. It'll go over to the other side.
And what's going to happen is your racket is going to get pushed back by the ball a little bit. And now if we can practice going to a 4 out of 10 and a 3 out of 10 and a 2 out of 10 and a 1 out of 10, that's what touches. That's what feel is. Is being able to manipulate and adjust how firm or how soft we are physically holding on to the racket.
The softer you hold on to the racket, the more the racket gets pushed back by the ball, the more recoils as the ball hits the racket and the less energy the ball is going to have coming off of our strings. And therefore, the softer and the shorter the ball is going to land away from us on the other side of the courts. So spend some time, ideally, repetitively just receiving the same speed.
Like ball machine is best for this because we can receive the, you know, it's basically a robot that can feed us the exact same speed and height and depth and width over and over again. And so we can keep the ball coming into a racket, a constant and make the very, and not move our body and not move our hand, not move the racket. And instead make the only variable be the firmness with our hand. And I want you to spend some time experimenting with the whole range.
Hit a couple with a 10 out of 10 grip, but not a lot because you'll start to, you'll start to hurt your, your elbow and your forearm eventually or your wrist possibly. Then do a seven, then, then do a five, then do a three, then, then do a one. Don't change anything else. And just watch the difference and how the ball comes off your, your racket. This is the most important technical element to having good touch and therefore a good drop shot. And that's why we're starting with this.
Okay. But after you just get that initial feel, then drill two is do some drop values on purpose. Put a basket about three feet away from the net on the other side of the net. Keep having that ball machine or your partner feed you medium speed shots and keep holding your racket there and not really don't really hit the ball. Just let it bounce off and now start to experiment with two things. How firm your hand is on scale one to ten and how open your strings are.
Open means facing upwards and experiments with different angles of the racket and different firmness of your hand until you can get the ball to softly arc, kind of loop over the top of the net and land short around the basket three feet from the net on the other side of the net. So what we're doing now without having to swing or like hit the ball off the bounce, we're just experimenting with figuring out how to fine tune those two different dials.
The angle of the racket, face, the strings, the angle of the strings and the firmness of our hand. And by turning those two dials back and forth, we can start to find the exact combination to land the ball just over the net on the other side softly. So we're not doing any hide-alow, we're not adding any backspin, we're not chopping at the ball, we're just making this as simple as possible.
And without doing anything, you can hit a perfect drop volley without adding any kind of swing or step or chop or backspin or anything just by getting the right angle with your strings and the right firmness with your hand. So that's drill number two. Drill number three is now step back behind the service line into no man's land. Do that same medium-pace shot, have it bounce in front of you now, adjust the ball machine if necessary. So it lands probably a little bit inside the service line.
And now practice starting a little bit above the height of contact, dropping your racket down through contact and feel how firm is your hand and feel how open are my strings and start to experiment by turning those two dials. Start with different numbers at its hand with your hand and different degrees of how open your racket strings are. And you'll start to see the ball softly arc off your strings with a little bit of backspin. And the softer your hand is, the shorter the ball will travel.
And the more open your strings are, the higher the ball is going to come up off your strings. And so by adjusting those two variables, you can start to dial in and find exactly the right combination of trajectory or loft and firmness with your hand. This is how you can learn how to hit the perfect drop shot. Now adding into this, all that other stuff we talked about, the disguise and your movement and figuring out where to go next and all that, that's also important.
But if you don't learn the technical elements and you don't raise your hand IQ and you don't learn how to adjust the angle of the racket face to get just the right shot, then all the rest of that stuff is really kind of pointless. So put in the work on the court with the ball machine or with a partner. It's a lot of fun to practice. Start to learn how to get just the right touch and feel and just the right angle.
And then you can start to sprinkle it in to your points, whether you're a singles player or a doubles player, to force your opponents to have to use that vertical space just as much as they use the lateral space and you can become a much more well rounded player and challenge your opponents in different ways. Hopefully it's been super helpful. Thanks so much for listening today.
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