Single Backswing Syndrome

Lets face facts - pro-level strokes are not pretty. We marvel at the results, the athleticism, even the overall grace of their performance, but their strokes look downright painful. Just look at a still image of the pro serve in the scratch-your-back position. The shoulders, elbows, even the wrists are contorted into a position that looks more alien than human. Our prejudice in favor of the successful among us distorts our perception of the way that the pros actually address the ball. Our minds tend to "pretty-up" their strokes. Similarly, we tend to visualize our own strokes based on our own success or lack of it. When I used to produce training videos for tennis camps in the 70's, most duffers were flabbergasted and quite pleased to see their strokes on video for the first time. They imagined themselves stumbling around the court, jerking their rackets out at the balls with nothing that even resembled grace. A-players were less pleased with their own images, having presumably imagined themselves prancing across the court with effortless poise and striking at the ball with reliable power and impeccable timing. In fact, there wasn't much to choose between the videos of the A and C players, which annoyed the A-players no end.

The cognitive distortion with which each of us regards our strokes is mostly harmless to one's game; with one very glaring exception - the illusion of a single, smooth, circular backswing. As casual spectators watching the pros, that is what we see them do. They seem to take long looping backswings on their groundstrokes, complex and continuous backswings on the serve and no backswing at all on their volleys and "gets". That would be wrong on all three counts. In fact, the pros take two distinct backswings on each ball strike (see Double Pump). The first is the unit turn, a jerky, violent affair designed to quickly get the shoulders turned and set the feet in a stance that best permits the theft of momentum from the earth. It occurs while you are running for a ball, trying to get into or stay in dynamic balance, and are trying to decide what to do with the ball when you get to it. You may have seconds to complete it or milliseconds, depending on the situation, but it must be completed or the stroke will fail.

The unit turn is unique for each encounter with the ball. The unit turn ends in the pose, a momentary snapshot of a body position that is designed to prepare the body and racket for what is to come. The pose may coincide with a pause of a few milliseconds, or it may have no duration at all, melting directly into the lock phase or "backswing proper". The lock is the second component of the backswing, and it could not be more different from the unit turn. It must be relaxed and repeatable. It is a complex sequence that prepares the arm and racket for the storage of control and spin forces that are stored in the arm muscles during the load phase. The tempo and duration of the backswing proper do not vary from strike to strike, only from one type of stroke to another. Professional tennis players are pretty good at timing the unit turn such that there is no time wasted hanging out in a pose, which is why their backswings appear smooth and unitary.

But, assuming that a backswing comprises a single, continuous move is a grievous fault for those of us with dubious athletic phenotypes. Trying to weld the unit turn to the lock to create the illusion of a beautiful, flowing single backswing is only possible if you have hit more than 10,000 repetitions of a stroke and even then it is dangerous. A proper unit turn is all about "Hurry-up and get 'er done!", while the lock is all about "Relax, take your time, do it right!". Each of these components has its own unique personality. They form a very effective team but are also completely incompatible with one another and must be kept separate and distinct, at least in the player's mind. Smashing them together into one motion can lead to delays in preparation or tension and sloppiness in the lock - either of which is disastrous. Treatment and prevention are a matter of respecting the individuality of the unit turn and lock and giving each its due.

Symptoms and Signs

Our species loves to club things into submission. One might, therefore, expect that our bashing abilities might have evolved at least as fast as our talent for talking others into doing the clubbing for us. Regretably, efficient cudgeling is not a universal trait. When faced with something that needs a good swatting, most of us draw back, wait a while, and then strike - a 'technique' that lacks control and power but feels quite natural. For talented athletes, such a basic 'swing' feels inelegant and incomplete. They expect a 'snap' of the wrist, whether they are going for a nail with a hammer, a ball with a racket, or a noggin with a hockey stick. The snap comes from drawing back, pausing momentarily, then drawing back more before immediately drawing forward. The sudden change in direction at the end 'locks' the forarm muscles, preparing them to store control and power forces during forward acceleration. For natural athletes; no snap means no joy.

For the rest of us, achieving snap is challenging. On can be snapping away on Monday and 'just swinging' at the ball on Tuesday. The symptoms of 'just swinging', a.k.a. the Single Backswing, are not subtle: late hits, mishits, moonballs, shanks, stuffs, dribbles... all of the flaming detritis of Tennis Hell, but the cause-and-effect relationship between these effects and a single backswing (swinging) is complex. Late hits, for example, result when a single backswing mashes together two very different components of a stroke - the unit turn and the backswing proper - at the expense both. The unit turn needs to be a quick and violent motion while the backswing proper must be smooth and relaxed. Trying to 'smooth out' the unit turn has a disasterous effect on preparation making you late for everything. Misshits result from a similar mechanism, but in the case of mishits the problem is pulling the racket too far back on the single backswing, basically pulling the racket head back off of its path or track to the ball. The unit turn should end in a pose with the racket head at or just behind the expected point of contact. In a short stroke like the volley, the position of the arm aand racket in the pose and at the moment of contact are identical. When hitting a long stroke, like the topspin forehand, the racket head stops well behind the point of contact. Either way, in the pose the sweet spot of the racket face must be parked somewhere on an orbit that includes the point of contact between racket and the ball. As the ball approaches the expected point of contact, a short 'backswing proper' pulls the racket head slightly furthur back along this orbital flight path. If, during the backswing, you draw the sweet spot of the racket head away from its path-to-the-ball, then you will mishit the ball. The path-to-the-ball of the sweet spot is determined by physics, not by you. If you 'derail' the racket head during the backswing, there is no way to recover the stroke and a mishit will inevitably occur. Try hitting a nail from a position with the hammer behind your left ear and you will understand the problem. A single backswing that conflates the unit turn and the backswing proper eliminates two vital opportunities to get the racket head on the right track: a pose and a distinct and relaxed backswing proper. The pose alows you to rough-out the position of the racket head relative to the rackets head's track-to-the-ball allowing the brain a few milliseconds to compare the racket's position against the preceeding thousands of times you have sucessfully attempted that stroke. You can then fine tune the position of the racket during the backswing proper. A smooth, circular, single backswing, while pretty, prevents both of these adjustments and randomizes the position of the racket in the backswing inevitably resulting in mishits.