Anna Ivan

You have to have a weapon if you're going to reach the top of your game. As a former professionally ranked tennis player, my weapon was my two-handed backhand. To develop your two-handed backhand into a weapon, you must both drive the ball and hit it with topspin. Driving the ball will give you the depth and pace you need to put your opponent on the defensive.

Hitting the ball with topspin will give you consistent and safe margin of safety for clearing the net and still enable you to pull the ball back down into the green. In addition, topspin gives you greater placement control by keeping the ball on the strings longer than on a slice or flatly hit ball.

While I'm moving and positioning myself for my shot, I often carry the racquet head high and close to my body. This enables me to move in a quicker, more balanced manner. A high racquet head positioning also helps to attack high bouncing balls.

When your opponent hits you those moonballs, you have plenty of time to setup. Then I use a longer, looping swing to drive those balls with topspin. Now if my opponent hits the ball hard and flat to me - and therefore my setup time is shortened - I will instinctively take the racquet head back lower, ready to quickly drive up and through the ball.

Pointing Your Shoulder and When to Hit the Ball

Notice my legs, body and shoulders are turned more then 90 degrees from the net. This enables me to pivot and uncoil my hips and shoulders into the shot, thereby generating the power to drive the ball. A good way of setting yourself up properly is to point your lead shoulder toward the ball. Everyone tells you these days to hit the ball on the rise like Monica Seles or Andre Agassi.

Hitting the ball on the rise does rob your opponent of reaction time, but it requires extraordinary skill and timing. I was always more comfortable letting the ball drop - sometimes 50 percent from the peak of the bounce - before hitting it. This enables me to drive the ball with more consistency and power.

Don't necessarily follow my example. I just want to point out that there is no one way to play the game of tennis.

Brush Up For Topspin

When starting a two-handed backhand topspin shot, a key technique is to drop the racquet head and keep it lower than the ball. As the ball is dropping into your racquet face, brush up on the back side of the ball.

To get the feel for this technique, it helps to do a little exaggerated (because too much brushing up can lead to problems) visualization: 1) picture a clock coming at you on the back of the ball and try to hit from 6 o'clock straight up to 12 o'clock; 2) or, if you are feeling a little on the hostile side, put a face on the back side of the ball and practice hitting from the chin, scraping off the nose, and continuing up to the forehead.

Point of Contact and Follow-Through

Your point of contact should be slightly ahead of your lead shoulder. Notice most of my weight has already transferred to my lead foot as I'm about to hit the ball.

To drive through the ball, imagine three balls following each other in ascending order. If the player is right handed, push through the back of all three balls with your left hand while the racquet head accelerates up the back of all three balls.

The result is that the racquet head is coming up the back of the ball at impact and, at the same time, the racquet head is driving through the ball. Continue to follow through with the racquet, allowing your left shoulder (provided you're a right handed player) to come up under your chin.

Drive As Well As Brush

As a teaching instructor, one of the most common mistakes I see is when the player brings the racquet face straight up the back side of the ball. The player is correctly hitting topspin, but the ball either fails to go over the net, or the ball lands short on the opponent's side of the court. Don't forget to drive the ball at the same time as brushing the ball.

Becoming overly focused on generating topspin can lead to another mistake. Rather than driving and brushing up through the ball, the player uses a wristy shot and allows the racquet face to smother the top of the ball, forcing the ball into the bottom of the net. Remember, hit low to high.