Lawn Tennis and How to Play It

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 239, 29 December 1927, Page 7

Lawn Tennis and How to Play It

By RENE LACOSTE (Exclusive to THE SUN) XII. THE BACKHAND STROKE Most players are much weaker backhand than in forehand play. Even among the experts, backhands seldom carry the speed of forehands. O’Hara Wood, Tilden, Williams and Richards are among . e best backhand players, but Johnston, Cochet, Alonso, Harado and Patterson are all more dangerous when they play forehand. It is perhaps natural that the backhana should be the more difficult stroke and that in becoming accurate and

reliable it should lose aggressiveness. That, however, makes it all the more important that backhand play should be thoroughly practised. Weak strokes should always receive more attention than strong ones, for, to become a real champion, you must be able to play one stroke just as easily as the other. Tilden and Suzanne Lenglen owe their overwhelming superiority over other experts to the fact that their game is so good, not in any particular stroke but in every direction. FOOTWORK AND GRIP

In backhand play the rules of footwork yre those of forehand play, but reversed. Remember never to face the net, never to push the ball, and always be ready, as you await the ball, to turn quickly so as to get your footwork correct.

The grips are nearly the same as for forehand play. Johnston plays a very accurate sliced stroke with the! Western American backhand grip and some other players, including Aeschlimann, use it for strong “rolling” backhand strokes. But it develops a tendency to pushing the ball and is weak on low balls, so that beginners should certainly avoid it.

The English backhand grip has many exponents, Richards, Alonso and Feret in particular using it with success. But it produces a rather defensive stroke, slightly undercut and not so good as the aggressive backhand which O’Hara Wood and Borotra get with grips similar to the Eastern American grip used by Tilden. Personally, I

use a backhand grip which is halfway between the English and the Eastern American grips; it is rather American in the position of the handle under the hand, and entirely English in the low position of the elbow, in having the thumb along the handle, and in the action of the wrist. In a good backhand the wrist must play its part exactly as in a good forehand. The wrist must be taut, the handle of the racket must be at right angles to the forearm, and the striking face of the racket must be turned rather toward the right side of- the court than toward the net. SPEED OF THE BALL As in the forehand, speed in the backhand stroke results from a combination of momentum, speed of swing, weight of racket, spring action of the arm body rotation, shift of body weight and follow through. All of these are needed. Personally I rely largely on body rotation in my back-/ hands. But, as in the forehand stroke body rotation is a delicate thing to master. At the end. of the stroke at any rate it "must be not so much a horizontal turning of the chest as a downward rotation of the shoulder and the upper half of the body on the pivot of the hip Be careful that you do not use so much body rotation that at the end of the stroke you are brought to face the net. Personally I believe so 1 strongly in the necessity of avoiding this that I sometimes turn my back to the net and follow-through my stroke diagonally from right to left instead of forward. In the same way when playing forehands I sometimes follow through from left to right. : aning on in the direction in which I l ran to meet the ball. The most common varieties of 1 the backhand stroke are the j straight backhand drive, the rolling backhand, the sliced English ! backhand, and the Californian I sliced backhand. With ill! these four, the trajectory of the racket head is very similar to

Uiat belonging to the forehand stroke. The preparatory swing brings it upward and behind the player, and then, either with or without a pause, it is brought down with a bent arm and wrist which soon straightens for the forward, horizontal stroke. In the straight backhand drive the ball is struck horizontally and the stroke is finished at the height of the impact. In sliced backhands, the ball is struck downwards and the stroke finishes low. In topped backhands the ball is struck upwards with a high finish. There is less wrist action in twisted backhands than in the equivalent forehand strokes, although in Tilden’s and Richards’s backhands the wrist motion sends the racket head under the ball, or well over it in the rolling drive, very much as in their forehand topped drives. Spin is useful in backhand play, but it is more difficult to master than ;n forehand play because it implies a greater alteration in the trajectory of the racket. Do not forget, however much you may want to acquire spin, that speed is the first essential of a good stroke. To change the direction of your backhands, as in your forehands, you must move your feet. Never alter your swing.