I took two Nick Bollettieri clinics when they came to the Virginia Beach area. One of the clincs was packed and, fortunately for me, one wasn’t. At the sparsely attended clinic I got to spend extra time with one of the instructors, Miguel Rosa who helped me out on lots of things which I’ll cover in future posts. One of the best things he pointed out to me had to do with my one handed backhand.

My one-handed backhand has always been powerful and pretty reliable. I’d prepare with a high racket on the backswing and loop below the ball to really whack it.

Although Miguel was very polite in all his dealings with me, he was no nonsene when he pointed out to me that I was burning tons of energy on my backswing and also that I wasn’t coordinated enough to reliably duplicate the loop on the backswing. Also, he pointed out that I was too slow to use such a long backswing as the quality of opponents and pace of the ball increased.

He told me to simply take the racket straight back and low. This saved all the energy and time to make that big loop and the backswing was so short that I could duplicate it over and over without fail. It also allowed me to be more than ready for fast paced balls that I would have been pretty shaky on with the old backswing.

Try it out. I think you’ll like it.