“You can’t return that serve!” “I’m sorry!” “You can’t!” “I don’t care if you pay me $1000 for this secret 1-hour lesson. You can’t consistently return that deep spinny sidespin serve with 10 variations because you don’t have real strokes. You are trying to chisel and block back those serves that are 2000 rpms, and it isn’t going to happen.”
This is the conversation with many new students that I get on a daily basis.
There are 2 primary ways to read the spin – watch the racket and watch the bounce. The pitfall that devastates most beginner/intermediate players is the timing. When they don’t know the spin, they panic and trap the ball too quickly. The correct move is to wait. Wait. If you couldn’t tell the spin from the contact point when your opponent touched the ball, then wait. Let the ball rise, then even drop a bit before returning it.
How does that make the return easier? There are 5 ways…
“You need to attack his middle.”
“I recommend that you play 80% of your hits to his transition point.”
“Hunt the elbow – play the elbow – your opponent gets jammed easily!”
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