How many times have you hit a crackerjack approach shot; firm, deep and with lots of underspin, and a talented but less experienced opponent sticks their racket out and passes you cleanly? What is up with that? When I only stick out my racket the ball barely makes it over the net, much less finds the perfect flight path to humiliate the poor schmuck on the other side. What about players who can reliably make those low blocking volleys that skim along the net strap and drop in 6 inches from the opposite sideline. And forget about the drop volleys, pop-up lobs, half volleys, and lunge return-of-serves. Where is the book, pro or clinic that will teach me how to do all of that, consistently and effectively?

If there is one class of stroke that separates talented from not, it is the short stroke. It goes by many names; punch, bunt, squash, touch, dink, drop, pop and my personal favorite - the pus ball. What they all have in common is very economical and quick preparation, a minimal to non-existent follow through and lots of control. That last is the key. We spend a lot of time developing full, fluid strokes in tennis. They give us pace, spin, and directional control. Why would we ever short-stroke the ball? The answer is pretty obvious; sometimes you don't have time for the full unit turn, the big circle backswing and the long, laggy acceleration to the ball. You may not have time to get your feet and bodyweight set to effort that big push-off that steals momentum from the earth so you can project it at your opponents and pummel them with it. Given that an adequate power wave, unit turn, lock, load, lag and explode are all prerequisites for hitting with spin, pace and control, what do you do when you are just out of time?

Clearly of pace, spin and control the one we can most easily do without is pace. Pace is fun, but sometimes it is more trouble than it is worth. I hate feeding my opponents momentum that they can reflect back at me. I would much rather redirect balls away from them; make them scamper madly about the court like a monkey on a string. Spin is nice as well, but if there isn't that much pace on the ball, then I don't need much spin to hold it in. What I really cannot do without is directional control. That is the ability to turn a ball's momentum in a direction that suits me. Control is consistency. Control is placement. Control is victory (or at least sanity) in tennis. Persons of talent know this instinctively. They always seem to be in control of the ball. They don't just get to your drop shot and shovel it over the net, they slide it low and slow along the net; out of reach, out of sight but never out of bounds. So how do they do it?

Pure Control

Given our deep understanding of the foundations of stroking, lets build a short stroke, shall we? What we need is a stroke that gives us all of the directional control over the incoming ball that we might get from a more elaborate stroke, but that we can execute in half the time or less. We know that directional control over the ball comes from the application of impulse, which is an injection of directed stored force to the ball at the moment of impact. Remember you must store the force since there is no way to summon up a voluntary application of force over such a short period as the duration of time the ball is in contact with the strings (about .05 seconds). Neither mind nor muscle is that quick. So instead, during the backswing, we position our hitting arm to set up our muscles to be stretch-shortened springs and then store force in them. We call this process the lock and load. So let us start with that; we need to build lock and load into the short stroke to store directional control forces. In a longer stroke, like the forehand drive, we lock the arm into position then load the muscles as the racket starts to move forward. We then we continue to accelerate the racket by dragging it behind the wrist during a period we call the lag phase. During the lag phase, we inject raw kinetic energy into the racket head so that the eventual collision with the ball results in more pace. But, we have already decided that when short stroking, we are not particularly concerned about pace; the issue is control.

If you are trying to volley a 100 mph drive that your opponent has just hit at your head, your racket head speed could just as well be zero. You just want to stick the racket out into the path of the ball and, while you are at it, store and deliver the impulse force that will wrangle the ball into the flight path of your deepest desires. Thus we can eliminate the lag phase and gain precious milliseconds. So, after a short and violent unit turn and pose, the racket arm relaxes for a handful of milliseconds as shoulders reverse-rotate, throwing the racket back away from the ball; This move constitutes the lock phase, and it prepares the arm muscles to absorb and momentarily store control and spin forces. Next, the power wave reverses direction, and the shoulders rotate forward. The source of this power wave is variable depending on how much time you have. For a slice approach shot, it may come from the legs through the hips and shoulders. If your friend is trying to juice you at the net, it may come only from the shoulders and elbow. One transmits the power wave to the racket by pulling on the handle in the direction of the butt end. (see "Flashlight Forehand"). Ideally, it should feel like you are pulling the racket face across the ball. The foreshortened backswing, made possible by eliminating the lag phase, means that the sweet spot of the racket face is never too far from the projected point of contact, making addressing the ball almost trivial. As you pull on the racket handle the face of the racket will come forward into and across the ball. If this is beginning to sound a lot like a volley, your ears are sound. The volley is the prototype of all short stroking.

Ultra-Short Stroking

Now for the big reveal. You can store and deliver impulse to the ball in a fraction of a second just by snapping the racket face out in front of the ball from the ready position. This micro-stroke is how you deal with a ball that refuses to give you sufficient time to hit a fuller stroke. It is the ‘snapping’ action that makes this miracle possible. The unit turn, pose, lock, load and explode are all collapsed into a single, compact motion. Starting from the ready position with a loose grip and relaxed arm:

Ultra-Short Stroke
1. The shoulder rotates internally as your elbow extends away from your body.
2. The shoulder rotates externally as the forearm reaches out towards the point of contact.
3. The forearm stops abruptly just before the moment of contact.
4. Due to the momentum of the moving racket head, the wrist snaps, first back slightly then forward slightly into the ball. This snapping may be more of a feeling and less an actual motion.

The racket head may seem to beeline to the point of contact with the ball and may seem not to move forward or back at all, but the pinging or popping sound of strings meeting ball tell you something is happening that is much more than just a ball running into the strings. The core components of every stroke are all present but are a bit difficult to see, so let us tease them out:

1. Pose
   • =the ready position
   • no discrete unit turn
2. Lock
   • =extension of the arm and opening of the racket face
   • arm must be relaxed
   • grip must be loose
3. Load
   • =arm reaching full extension and stopping
   • inertia of racket winds up arm and stores control/spin forces
   • racket abruptly changes direction first back then forward
4. Explode
   • =allowing the Load to finish on its own
   • muscles and grip must stay relaxed

The Lock portion of the stroke is critical for determining the type of spin you are putting on the ball. If you want a topspin shot, you drop the racket head below the wrist, and for a slice, you keep it above the wrist. Of these two, underspin is much quicker, so it is more appropriate for very abbreviated strokes such as the block volley.

The ultra-short stroke, properly executed, is quick and subtle with excellent ball control. There may be no perceivable backswing or follow through, yet the report of the ball off the springs tells you that stored force has been delivered. A professional block volley is so compact that it is easy to believe that nothing is happening beyond just sticking the racket out and hoping the ball hits it. That is the misapprehension of most B-players, who tend to stick the racket out in front of the ball with a tight grip and rigid forearm and wait for the ball to hit the racket. With a tight grip on the racket, all of the muscle forces in the arm cancel each other, and thus the net force delivered to the ball is zero. The ball pushes the racket back with a dull thud, and the ball goes wherever it wants.

The key differences between the A-player's and the B-player's short stroke are relaxation and timing. If the racket arrives in the hitting position too early, any stored forces will dissipate. Remember, in a longer stroke the Lag phase acceleration keeps the control and spin forces bottled up until they are released just before contact. In the ultra-short strokes like the block volley, there is no lag phase at all so the control forces must be delivered immediately after they are stored. Too early and the force will dissipate and there will be no control. Being late is no better; it does no good to store force after the ball has left. In any short stroke, the duration of acceleration of the racket can be only a few milliseconds.

The grip is also critical; it must be soft. A soft grip is necessary for the forearm to relax through the entire stroke. That permits the forearm muscles to stretch-shorten in the specific pattern that leads to exquisite control over the ball.

Driving Through the Ball

So why not simplify short stroking by just driving the racket through the ball? Doesn't that add directional control? After all, it is a force applied to the ball at the moment of contact. Of course, the answer is "Yes, driving through the ball generates impulse, and so it does influence the direction of the ball, but in the wrong direction. The reasoning is this: You know well ahead of time where you want the ball to go; basically up at a slight angle just enough to get is safely over the net. What you don't know is where the ball is going to be when you hit it. As you line up on the ball in the backswing you predict where it will be, but you can only roughly estimate how high or low, left or right the ball will be on contact. As you move the racket forward your predictions become better but your backswing is whatever it is, and it is too late to change it. To get the sweet spot of the racket to the ball, you have to direct the racket face on a line between your backswing position and the point of contact. If that line doesn't happen to coincide with the desired line-of-flight of your strike, then any force you apply getting the racket there will send the ball off course. If, instead, you send a pulse of energy to your wrist where it can be converted to stored force in the direction you want the ball to go you become the master of the ball and the game of tennis. You also have the luxury of choosing the racket head's angle of attack to create spin and more easily address the ball, since basically all of the control is coming from the stored force and thus does not depend on racket head trajectory or even the orientation of the racket face.

So why not short stroke everything? The short stroke is quick. It is easier to address the ball, and you get tons of control. Well, many players, talented players, do. They get immediate success from short stroking and never see the need to develop long, flowing strokes. They forgo the pace offered by the lag phase for control and quickness. One contraindication for this strategy is that you might be called a "pusher". I don't care much for that term as it is pejorative, demeaning and belies the physics that is the foundation for the short stroke. I prefer to call such people Champions because many of them have rooms full of trophies at home.

A Dire Warning

Clearly, hitting powerful volleys and other short strokes are not 'against the rules'. Where would be the fun in that? There is nothing more satisfying than sending your opponents fleeing in all directions in fear of an impending, screaming volley winner. And who wants to baby an approach shot and let your opponent serve you up a fuzz sandwich? Talentless players struggle with adding power to volleys and other short strokes because of insufficient understanding and intuition about how to create pace. We push the racket at the ball instead of pulling across it; we hit with our arms instead of our feet; we start with a straight arm and finish with a bent elbow instead of the other way around and worst of all we hit flat instead of with spin. We need a huge, broad stroke to develop any pace at all.

Hitting short strokes with power is a simple matter of adding a short lag phase. To accomplish that you must first slightly extend the backswing proper by bringing the racket back a bit more along the racket's flight path.

The flight path of a slice looks like a ski slope, with a steep bit in the middle and flatter on the top and bottom. In a slice volley, for instance, one brings the racket slightly up and back, opening the face of the racket slightly. This mini-backswing should be powered by a reverse-rotation of the shoulders, which in turn are powered by the hips or the non-hitting hand. Note that you are bringing the racket head further from the point of contact, so you are increasing the possibility of a mis-hit, so less is more when it comes to the volley backswing. As you pull the racket across the ball, you will be storing control and spin forces along with a healthy dose of racket head speed to give your ball some pace. Note again that you still have to stop the forward acceleration of the racket in time to release the stored forces into the ball, and there will be a strong temptation to drive through the ball and thereby commit the sin of pushing. Make sure you are letting the racket do all of the work at the moment of contact; otherwise you could end up with your arm in a sling. With care, you can hit short strokes safely, with excellent control and lots of intimidation.