Backhand Complement

Marcus Paul Cootsona

Every tennis game has patterns. The pros have patterns. Look past their power and their personalities and you’ll see them. Recreational players have patterns too. Look beyond the randomness and the errors and you’ll see them too. And your tennis game has patterns as well. Simple ones. You hit every forehand crosscourt. Your backhand won’t track down the line, but you try it anyway. Complex ones. You retreat in indecision after taking a mid-court ball: but not always. You’re probably not even aware of these patterns. They may seem like random events or errors or just the way you hit the ball. But taken together, they show how you typically save a rally or close a point. Left unexamined, your patterns may help you or hurt you. You need to friend your patterns, because if you don’t, your opponent will.

I Ching for Action

All points have a structure. It might be chaotic, dependent on initial accidents of placement or power, or it can be orderly, put into the point according to a plan. All matches have a structure too; the bigger plan that determines the tactics for each point. The question is: who structures the structure in your matches? You? The opponent? The I-Ching? All successful players at every level are able to do two things: 1) Impose their game on their opponent, and 2) Make it hard for their opponent to impose on them. And sometimes talk their way into free racquets. So, who are you, imposer, or imposee? And what’s your style when you do impose?

Maybe it’s Roddick version 2003.0. You cash in with your big money shot whenever you get a chance and hope that’ll do it. Or maybe the pre-Gilbert Agassi. You enjoy watching the other player run coast-to-coast, chasing down balls like a crazed arcade duck. But great offense in tennis is more than just hitting the ball hard or even hitting it hard corner to corner.

This kind of random approach obviously works best if you command mutant swing velocity. But for the critical mass of players, this isn’t really a strategy, or much of a pattern. At it’s best, it’s a reflex or maybe a habit. At it’s not-so-best, it may even be a psychological condition — tenniopathy. All about you and your strokes, it doesn’t take the opponent and their game into account.

Remember, Roddick eventually added a slice backhand to prolong some rallies and Agassi went to 141 in the world before he found this ancient tennis wisdom pre-dating even the Open Era and increased prize money: Great offense considers the whole court and both players. It weaves together the opponent, your game, and the conditions and tells you what will do the most damage to an opponent’s game. It devises ways to keep the damage coming, whatever strokes that implies. This is where a strategic pattern starts and the wins begin.

An Open and Closed Court

Tennis strategy has been described as hitting the ball to the open court. And there are certainly matches where this is all the plan that’s needed. You hit a serve, the return comes back, there’s gaping open court across the net and you hit a ball there. Point over. On these days, do this every time you can. And be glad. But unfortunately, not every outing is a broad side of the barn gimme-fest. Against an opponent with some substantial skills, some moxy, and a plan of his own, these yawning chasms of point-scoring glee may be few. Sometimes you have to hit to the closed court. Put your opponent in a tight space and watch the errors mount as they try to fight their way out.

Closing the court starts with one good pattern. More is too much. Less is just blast and hope. Clearly you need something more than luck and a big forehand. But if you run a range of strategic options during a match, you are just slowing yourself down and thinking too much on the court. One pattern will do. Take a moment and picture the pros. Do they think on the court? As little as possible. And the very best pros, do they even think off the court? Of course not, but their coaches do. Since you may be between coaches at the moment, you have some pre-match thinking to do. Choose a simple strategy before the match that’s easy to remember during the match, and use it for the whole match. Take a page out of the pros’ playbook — think outside the court and just play tennis on it.

Intent to Contribute

Tennis is a social network. During a match, you and your opponent are connected and co-dependent for the outcome. What the other player can accomplish right now comes from the opportunities you provide them. The shot you just hit determines the shot they are hitting now. Except when serving, your patterns mold their game. Not everyone knows this, however. Some players will work certain combinations of shots for a while, and seeing no immediate payoff, abandon them and start in on some others, allowing the opponent to escape way too easily. But how can you expect to de-sensitize the other player to your intentions if you don't intend them for long enough to be intentional? You've got to make the plan, execute the plan and stay with the plan. That's the plan truth.

Here's a universal strategy and pattern sorter that works against every player regardless of ability: Figure out what the other player doesn't want to do and make them do it repeatedly. It sounds simple, maybe simplistic, but it's how to win. Many talented players lose by hitting repeatedly to their opponent's strengths. This is very polite, but you're looking for shots that taste good, not ones with good taste.

In a match, long rallies are just a sign that no one controls the point. To win, you want the other player to net it or hit it out as soon as possible. Not wanting this may be another psychological condition. One great stroke doesn't make a great player, but hitting to one location can make a great strategy.

One Opponent. One Strategy. One Target.

The tennis you want is Bludgeon Tennis: finding your opponent's weakest stroke and hitting to it at every opportunity. And when they hit it back, attack this weak stroke again and again until it crumbles. For most players (including the most excellent, Mr. Federer) this stroke is the Backhand Groundstroke. Work almost anyone's backhand over and over and you will win more points than they do. If you need proof, consider these two Spanish words — Rafael Nadal. After all, where would Rafa be in the rivalry stats without his relentless pounding of Fed's high backhand? Exactly. Dictionaries define bludgeon this way: to beat repeatedly with a heavy object or force or bully someone to do something or make one's way with brute force . I define it as Rafa for the masses.

Like a good pummeling, it takes a while to tenderize the prey. So keep at it even if it doesn’t score points at first. Depth and placement are the cake of this tactic, pace and spin are just the icing. So bludgeon on but bludgeon deep! Increasing the angle on each successive bludgeon helps too, if you can manage it. And if you want to hit it really hard, blast away, but you probably don’t need to. An incessant, deep barrage of strokes to the weak corner typically works just fine.

Won't hitting reliably and predictably to the opponent's weaker stroke in a match make it stronger? As someone famous once said, "no."

For starters, think of your own game. Does someone picking on a weakness in your game have that effect? Well, it's the same for everybody else at every level of the game. Like Andy Murray's mood, tennis vulnerabilities do not strengthen by being tested in a match. Pounding a weakness, making a player hit it over and over not only reveals it to you, it reminds them, as they repeatedly miss and miss-create the shot of just how weak it is. Their confidence falters and the stroke in question gets even more questionable. If your simple bludgeon strategy is well-executed and constructed effectively, it does not matter that the opponent knows it's coming. In fact, after a while it positively helps.

Soul Search and Recovery

Not only does doubt creep into their suspect stroke, there’s a physical toll as well. After every response shot the opponent makes, he or she has to try to recover to the center of the court or risk opening up the opposite corner for an easy winner. This recovery and reversing direction move, done two or three or four times gets harder to make and the opponent gets progressively more out of position on each move back to the corner and the center again. It’s like a public radio fund drive — dogged, single-minded, feared.

So will a quality opponent just keep hitting to you and allowing you to put them in the same box canyon? Yes. And if they don’t, you still get a prize. Stuck in an indefensible corner and losing ground on each move back to that corner, many opponents will try to hit a hero shot to somehow turn things around. They may make a few, so say “nice shot”, but on balance, their response shots will be ineffective and they will make errors in trying to overcome your tactics with their force.

The Visible Hand

Using patterns not only hikes up your score, it polishes up your technique for the strokes in the pattern. Groundstrokes naturally want to go crosscourt, but going repeatedly to the backhand corner of a right-hander improves your inside-out forehand. And inside-out forehands boost the set up, turn, and direction of all of your forehands. Using the backhand corner pattern also fortifies your crosscourt backhands and inside-out and crosscourt short ball closing shots.

And here’s another positive — since you are controlling your opponent’s court movement and positioning by hitting a variety of shots to one target, your aim gets refined and improved as you go. Though your pattern hurts your opponent’s strokes, hitting your shots to one place makes yours better in the course of a match.

Varying the strategy every so often can also tally some well-earned easy points. Pound your opponent into a strategic stupor and you can make easy winners by occasionally hitting away from the pattern. This works for all strokes including serves. Remember that no pattern works every time, and sometimes the opponent makes the hero shot. And sometimes you make an error. But if you’re winning 7 out of 10 points going time and again after one stroke, it’s a good strategy. So stay with it, and don’t start thinking!

Appropriate Occasions

That said, always play smart tennis. Decide on your strategy, but don’t outsmart yourself by going to it before it’s time. Let’s assume you’re using the backhand-corner pattern. Once you can control the point, through a short ball or a weak ball, hit as deep as possible to the backhand corner. Whether the response shot is a crosscourt backhand, a down-the-line backhand or maybe another mid-court piñata, pelota, drive it to the backhand corner again. If the opponent gets to this shot and sends it back, hit to the same corner again. Repeat until they make an error or you hit a winner. And they will. And you will.

And it all begins in that useless five minutes called the warm-up. Instead of being nervous, distract yourself by probing your opponent’s game for their weakest stroke. Hit hard and soft and deep and short shots to their forehand and backhand and see what gives them the most problems. Pick the stroke and start working it into your pattern as early as you can. Give it a few games and see if it works. If it does, stay the court. If not, still stay the court. Stick to the plan. Change plans only when your plan isn’t working on more than 40-50% of the points. If that’s happening, your pattern just un-friended you.

Even though we’re bludgeoning, wait patiently for an invitation to do so. Don’t force your way into this pattern if the opportunity is not really presenting itself. If your opponent hits one deep to your backcourt and you need to send the ball back in the same direction or hit a recovery shot, just do that. The pattern is no good if you can’t start it on solid footing. And on those occasions when you’ve been using the pattern successfully and the court on the other corner is wide open, hit an easy winner to that court and be happy. Or if the short ball opportunity presents itself and you can simply come up to the net and put the ball away, do that. Take the opportunities as they come, but work your pattern the rest of the time.

Forehand Complement

And, once you develop a good bludgeon-the-backhand pattern, begin working on another pattern for days when your primary one isn’t working and you need to go to the back-up. Against some adversaries, this might be the forehand or even the short ball. Luring a lumbering foe in with a short shot can easily be as effective as pinning them to a baseline corner. It’s a longer run from the backcourt to the net, and the miles add up over the course of a match.

And then there’s the other side of the racquet: identifying your opponent’s patterns and using them for your own evil ends. Figure out for your opponent’s patterns, then anticipate their moves and blunt their little bludgeon. Of course, having a strong pattern also prevents your opponent from using theirs. Match tennis could be described as “dueling patterns.” And you want to be the one setting the terms of the duel; say, graphite blends at dawn, perhaps?

So, when should I start using it? Any time. Today is good.

How Do I Practice It?

Every ball you hit, has to be hit somewhere, because, if you think about it, every ball is going to end up somewhere. To hone your patterns, you need to practice with intent. Aim every practice shot somewhere in particular. Placement and tactics win tennis matches, and they rely on shot control. These exercises coupled with steady stroking and a positive outlook will help:

• Have a hitting partner feed balls to various locations on your court — both sides and all depths — and respond by hitting the ball to a cone target or stand-up photo of your favorite nemesis placed in the backhand corner.

• Variation: Same drill as above to the forehand corner.

• Serve and during the ensuing point, hit only to the backhand corner of your opponent’s court.

• Return and during the ensuing point, hit only to the backhand corner of your opponent’s court.

Pattern Recognition

Become a connoisseur of tennis patterns. As you watch matches live or on TV, collect players’ patterns. Watch for their strengths and weaknesses and decide how you would play them and what one stroke you would attack if it were you out there against them. Then design the improved version of your own game around all the strokes needed for your pattern.

And Now?

Watching a tennis match through the lens of patterns will change your view of your game. It’s like moving up to strategy hi-def. When your pattern’s good, it’s clear and glorious. When it’s not, you see all the imperfections. Only in this case, make-up and lighting alone won’t help. You need a sound game plan.

Every tennis game has patterns. Know yours. Develop yours. Make sure that the shot you’re hitting is the shot you want to hit.

Practice Often. Play Well. Have Fun.

More next time…

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Marcus Paul Cootsona

Marcus Paul Cootsona is a teaching professional and author of Occam's Racquet – 12 Simple Steps To Smarter Tennis. Contact him at: marcuscootsona.com.