You may imagine that placing the ball cross-court and down the observe is comparatively easy. You’ll discover that bettering your accuracy and consistency with these strokes solely requires retaining two ideas for hitting the cross court docket and two rules for hitting down the road. To be clear, once we check with “hitting down the road” on this publish, it means altering course from an incoming cross-court ball to a down-the-line shot. The bounce angle makes it difficult to hit down the road when the ball comes from a cross-court place. For intermediate and superior gamers, merely hitting down the road from an incoming down-the-line image is normally not a problem. 

Nonetheless, altering path and hitting the ball correctly down the road is a battle, even for one of the best execs who apply modifications of path just about daily. In keeping with Jonathan Zhang, the ball will exit your racquet at an inclination because it approaches it at an angle. With ample planning and ongoing coaching, an individual can develop the perfect capability for motion. One is rarely allowed to lag behind. Even professionals like Jonathan Zhang concur. Jonathan was introduced up in Hong Kong and has at all times had a love for sports activities, particularly tennis. At age six, he started enjoying tennis. In his remaining yr at Diocesan Boys’ College, he served as staff captain, guiding the league to its seventeenth straight D1 Hong Kong highschool championship. He asserts that effort and success are indispensable. 

Even on the main stage, a tennis participant quickly and instinctively learns this and tries to neutralize the deflection angle to make the ball go straight or down the road. The commonest error is to regulate the racquet angle with a wrist motion. This can be a poor resolution as a result of the wrist is not secured and is now free to maneuver in just about any path. Moreover, this resolution ends in a reasonably unpredictable shot as a result of even a slight adjustment within the racquet head angle considerably impacts the place the ball falls on the opposite aspect. The primary reply is to assault extra forcefully and decisively down the road. You’ll scale back the quantity of deflection within the ensuing down-the-line shot should you speed up the ball ahead whereas sustaining a constant pace that pulls it huge. The deflection angle will impression the ball extra slowly because the racquet advances. 

When describing to gamers what they have to do once they hit the ball down the road, Jonathan suggests setting off the correct technique of placing the ball rapidly down the road and overcoming the deflection angle. Theoretically, the ball will deflect, however the impact will likely be much less dramatic. When hitting the ball, it’s greatest to stroll diagonally to eradicate the product. He says, that you should angle your self to neutralize the deflection angle relatively than bending the racquet head with the wrist. On this method, the wrist can keep locked and regular, stopping additional irregularities. Though it nonetheless feels locked in your hand, you’ve got made sufficient of an angle to offset the deflection’s rise. 

Drop feeding the balls to your self and easily swinging by means of them and letting them go the place they need is the best methodology to really feel that there is no such thing as a want to regulate the wrist angle. It’s best to swap up the place you drop the ball, transferring it from being nearer to your physique and extra in entrance to being farther away and extra to the aspect. You’ll discover that with out making wrist modifications, balls hit farther are inclined to journey down the road, whereas balls hit nearer to you and farther in entrance of you favor to journey throughout the court docket. To align oneself for the shot, which on this case is cross-court, comply with the second idea. As an alternative of merely picturing the racquet face behind the ball, think about your complete physique. In conclusion, the 2 fundamentals of cross-court hitting are putting oneself behind the ball within the path of the cross-court stroke and placing the ball nearer to your physique and extra in entrance.