Transcription
Today, we'll be going over the backhand slice return. So, this return is characterized by hitting a slice, which is a return that has a lot of backspin on it and is generally deep in the court, at least ideally.
So, how we want to be hitting this shot? First of all, backspin is created by the combination of two things. We want an open paddle face combined with a downward swing. What this does is it counteracts and creates a ball that goes forward but with backspin.
What a lot of people neglect on this is a good amount of drive through the ball as well as down. A lot of people will only chop down, and that doesn't give you enough depth on your return, okay? So, a very important part of this shot is that to get the good effects of the backspin, we need something that has both pace and is relatively low to the net.
What a lot of people do that causes the ball to go up and lose that pace is we open the paddle face as we're hitting. That causes the ball to go up because the paddle face is more open, and we lose pace because it slides off the face, okay? So, really, you don't need a ton of open face. We need a little bit of open face combined with that swing path, okay?
It's also very important that to get that pace, we're allowing our momentum to transfer through the ball. So, something like this, we're not on our back foot. We are going through the ball. You can see my momentum carried me in, and I was definitely coming down on the ball with a good amount of weight transfer. So, weight transfer and hitting off the front foot is super important here. It's almost like chopping the ball. Here to here. A lot of weight in the front knee and front foot.