Tennis Players, What's Your Favorite Shot?

I haven't played for two years now... :(

The most satisfying shot to hit is the topspin backhand line-drive - I still have vivid memories of the handful of these that I've actually been able to execute perfectly. I recall playing an old schoolfriend (who rarely beat me before we were 17 - then he grew five inches in a year, joined a tennis club on his doorstep and I rarely beat him after that) in the summer of '87 at North Cheshire TC; just one of those days when I couldn't mistime a shot if I'd tried - up something like 6-3 6-1 4-1, he wrongfooted me with a deep volley and I switched direction and whipped a backhand pass down the line. I think we both laughed - in a kind of "we'll be back to hitting no-pressure forehands into the bottom of the net next week" way.

My topspin c-c f/h was much better with a wooden racket but, like Lex, I've always been awful overhead. This accounts for my other favourite shot of yore - chasing back a lob (that I should've just smashed) and leathering the hell out of a f/h on the turn. Serve can be quite good, volleys are barely functional, sliced b/h not bad.

I've gone from Wilson Sport to Slazenger Firepower to Wilson American Ace to Donnay GC to Dunlop Impact Comp Ti over a period of 25 years and have probably got worse with each racket. Or just older.

hahaha

well, i think i'm doing pretty well - i haven't played in a while now, not with anyone good. i don't know, maybe a year and a half to two years since i was challenged. it's just hard to find ppl around me.

n e way 2nite we went out in the thick of the tumultuous weather and it started to lightning on us.

it was dark and i was flubbing my backhand - u kno the framed, in the net shots. last time my backhand was like driving deep. inconsistent much? ARGH WHY can't we all have our own indoor courts, and hitting partners, all the time??????!!!!!!!

Serve that hits my doubles partner in the back of teh head

2 handed backhand. makes me feel like a can swing a baseball bat with authority.

sliced forehand pat that ensures opponent has one more chance to make ass of him/herself (or, more likely, put the ball away)

2 handed backhand, because it's the only one that's minimally competent

so much control on that shot usually

1) One-hand backhand pass down the line OTM. I'm usually two-handed on backhand but sometimes I just feel it.

2) Forehand topspin lob a la Agassi.

3) About once per match I'll attempt a flat serve and I'll make it about once in ten tries, this means I'll hit a flat serve in once in 5-6 years. But it always feels nice.

4) The nutty 'tween the legs shot, chasing down a lob. It's easy really.

forehand topsin lob a la Hingis Yum =P

altho i pretty much a backhand lob 2

*pretty much luv

ok, updates. still into the inside-out forehand, this will never change. except when i get a short 2nd serve, i tend to overkill it and bounce it back to the fence.

serve is improving... i mean, very slowly! but the fun shot of the moment is the down the line backhand. catching the ball just high enough to be able to flatten it out low. good times great oldies.

ooh and i had a good drop today!

one handed backhand a la Justine Henin

followed by da smasheroo

generally, shots that involve retard strength and not a lot of technique

My first serve, the one time in ten it goes in. It looks like a proper first serve, it's quick and everything!

nice!! my boyfriend told me that i GRIN when i serve. not grimace, but GRIN. this is news to me.

When I was 13 or so, I developed a talent for crushingly brutal and deadly accurate spin serves and, based almost solely on my serving ability, won many matches against my fellow middle-schoolers in local and statewide competitions. Too bad my utter failure to develop any kind of backhand skills whatsoever thwarted my potential as a serious tennis player.

Similarly, at around the same age, I could hit line drives, triples & home runs with the best of them in little league, but was always stuck in left field b/c of my extremely poor throwing accuracy.

Also, I can hit 300 yard drives, but can't putt. WTF coordination?

surmounter, were u playing on the court next to ours? :-)

mine? if i can get it over i am happy. :-)

that one where you actually hit the ball back into the other court

haha, basically same as stevienixed

oh see sometimes i'm really bad at getting things in. i keep trying for the corners. this is mostly when i'm very rusty

x-court FH, as ever...my game is like a miniature hack version of Elena Dementieva's - FH is a weapon, BH is at best solid, serve is non-existent.

oh I also really like playing slow, high-bouncing shots to my opponent's BH, almost always good for inducing an error.

yes! although i have to tell you i like a high ball on that side. but you gotta throw in some big spinners every now and then, get em off balance

btw your game sounds kinda like mine... although i'm working on the backhand weapon thing

i like watching your slow, high-bouncing shots, just like i like watching elena demantieva's

short angled shots are always great too. at this level, players are much more easily confused by suddenly having to run forwards a bit rather than side-to-side.

otm. short angled SLICE kills

Singles: Catching the tape just enough on a forehand slice to change direction a little & bring the opponent up short. And then shrugging like, "Aw, that was luck!"

Doubles: chest-high volley back atcha.

drop
inside-out forehand too

my crosscourt forehand is improving. when it's great, it's great, but sometimes it comes up a little short, which i hate.

backhand down the line is messing me up some, but the crosscourt backhand still pretty solid.

my volleys are doin pretty good

but wtf i can't hit a drop for my life these days. oooh BUT i've nailed a few of those cross court slices when right up at the net. i love thoooose

the over the head hail mary after successfully (barely) chasing down a back court lob.

ohhh I JUST did one!!! it felt awesome

i've been using a lot of topspin lately for fun. sometimes it really messes with people!

I love a backhand slice, it's so effortless, and it's slow so it buys you time to reposition/rest a sec.

YES. but i'm sooo not good at them yet. i usually try it out against the wall.

used to love hitting forehand slices off of topspin shots, my game was almost entirely based on just returning the ball w/ as much spin as possible and then forcing the other player to try and hit winners or charge the net. beat a lot of much better players by just returning the ball over and over..eventually they'd get impatient and start making unforced errors. good serve and volley sampras type players usually did pretty well against me, though. haven't played since high school really, i miss it a lot. poor dusty wilson prostaff

ugh, just reading about your game reminds me of this guy named "T.R." who, in high school, would beat me without ever hitting a winner against me. He just kept the ball coming back. That sort of patience and control is unbecoming for a teenager amirite.

i once played a kid in a high school state tournament who played my exact game and we had a couple of rallies that must have lasted over 5 minutes. almost every single point involved 20+ returns! longest match of my life and he ended up barely beating me. at the time i likened it to meeting shadow link @ the end of legend of zelda 2. anyway, i'm sure my game was really annoying to my opponents, but that was sort of the idea - get in their head

also, topspin forehands down the line are really satisfying, esp when you're running off the side of the court to return a shot and you can creep it in the back corner

one-handed backhand down the line. Booyah.

so apparently i can't hit any shots anymore. it's been 2 years since i've played. i know it usually takes me a while to warm up, but i used to be, like, good.

someone please tell me it will come back to me.

please.

inside out forehand drive volley

weirdly, the 2 parts of my game that i used to hate came back to me without any practice: my serve and my volley.

everything else GONE.

Last time I played I pulled every single muscle in my mid section.

ok. i cannot believe it has been 9 months.

i am going today to play against the wall. i am going to start going twice a week. i hope i do not embarrass myself.

haha aw surm

any ilxors play USTA?

have u, kev?

u guys.

shortening the backswing is always a great tip for a recreational player. a long backswing adds little if any power and greatly reduces margin for error

i played pickleball this morning for the first time in 5-6 years. great game but i wish there were some younger people there haha

surm - thx !

a few to-be-expected losses since the new year has started.

1 to 'gerry' again, guy is just methodical. he stays v even-keel. maybe twice a match i will hear him say to himself 'cmon gerry' after an error. i do notice if i can get him in close game score situations late in a set he gets satisfied w playing rallies and not going for winners, though its tuff to get to that sitch vs him. looking back, i can barely believe i took a set off him 6-3

im 16-5 now; really only had 1 'bad' loss i think, vs a guy hitting really heavy topspin who ive played better against before, also idk y it only occured to me like once the match ended to hit more to his backhand

there is also a guy ive seen a few times in past yrs who was playing this wk......hes MINIMUM 5 yrs older than me (and shorter) but he played 3 nights in a row this week vs basically the 3 best players on the ladder (one of these being 'gerry') and he beat two of them & in not that difficult linescores

ive really only watched him a few times & cant tell how hes that good, his swing looks awkward

in past yrs ive overheard his name and stuff and remarks abt like "yeah he plays every day for two weeks straight and then gets injured and u wonder why"

one of the best players here who doesnt/cant play often cuz hes a doctor apparently authored this

Lessons learned from my BMW and Ayn Rand, The Christian Century, 2015;132(6):27.

Remember at the club I was a member of in my late teens/early 20s there was this *ancient* (to my eyes) white-haired dude who only really played doubles with a massive Prince oversize racket and barely moved more than three steps either way on court. My old schoolmate - 20yo, six foot three, serve-volley, tried to clobber the hell out of groundstroke - drew him in the last sixteen of the club summer singles event. Lost three and one. "Every ball came back". (I lost the same day two and five to some 35yo guy I never saw there again who had some kind of Woolworths wooden racket from about 1972 and was smoking during our knock-up; leftie - his serve to ad court was like a spin-bowler's slider. I was up against the side fence trying to reach it.) We fancied ourselves as young hotshots but, actually, against steady old geezers who just knew how to slice a ball onto a sixpence we couldn't keep the ball in court enough to win points.

decided to join a ladder because of this thread 8)

nice good luck !

had nearly an identical match (tho he won) vs the same old timer as my 10.22.2015 post; guy is kindof a hardass, I am not sure if it is strategic or like failing eyesight but he thinks every close line call of his shots that I say are out, are in; I wouldn't say it rattles me but it is annoying

it also only just clicked in that his service motion looks so much like gasquet it is uncanny

played 'gerry' again, really good match and I had soo many break point chances, beyond the few I did convert, and like 3-4 really long deuce games on my serve. I remember holding once at love in the 2nd set and every other game was close. I lost 3-6, 6-7 (10-12)

ive also now given him the nickname in my head of the slender man cuz he is long and sallow and soft spoken as to be nearly silent

I think im like 21-9 now? idk

Played tennis a lot between ages 12 and 18, picked the racket up again last year only to tear my achilles' tendon during my second training session :-(
Got back on the court 6 weeks ago, started on a gentlemen's team two weeks later and am slowly getting back into it throughout the league matches. Not the most logical way to go about it (also so far I've lost all my matches) but it's been fun nonetheless. Am at/just past (I hope) that point where you've taken up something technical you haven't done in years where you think "I used to be quite good but all my shots are hopeless now wtf". Played a free session yesterday evening with a team mate, just 90 minutes of battering away and it was so much fun. Making adjustments to/optimizing my strokes, footwork, swing, grip. Trying to get more consistent, basically. Re-discovering how much it helps to play as "loose" as possible. It really feels great to play again.

my game is def prone to longer rallies (beat a dude last night who def mumbled "pusher" to himself under his breath and got salty and threw his racquet a few times) but one good technique ive worked on is on short balls to return deep, generally @ my opponents BH side @ rush/sneak in to the net behind it, its v effective when I can execute

No shame in being a pusher. Just get it back. You’ll win, especially at many levels of recreational tennis.

I got called worse, because I just had an ugly game. Could never overpower anyone, so I hit basically all junk shots, spins, weird bounces, drop shots, boring you to death by just hitting lobs. Whatever it took to win.

yea i draw the line at lobs but otherwise vary speeds/spins as much as i can

whats the move when playing another guy who just gets the ball back a ton also? I couldnt figure out a great strategy..

semi-mad @ myself cuz I was 4-0 to start this season, w some good wins, & last night lost to a guy I should've and have mostly beaten. had a 4-1 lead in the first but hit a long skid of unforced errors & dropped it 4-6. came back to win the second 6-2, all closely played games, then just got behind in the tiebreak 3rd set and couldnt catch up~

"slender man" got me again, it was a really fun match tho; scoreline of 7-6, 2-6, 6-2; every point was p hard fought and I was wiped the fuck out by the third set, happy to even get two games there, esp cuz I was down 4-0 and held serve twice

no earthly idea what my record is this season anymore, not sure they are keeping it, & been somewhat up and down but still playing usu twice a wk

played a dude who looks like a younger paul giamatti 2night, lotta pace which was good; after 2-2 first set i won the next 8 games, ultimately winning 6-2, 6-1; giamatti got on tilt and just hit a ton of errors; hope i play him again

last match i got back a ball on a stretch backhand that i was super proud of also btw

fun couple weeks, posting so i remember:

vs youngish nondescript polish guy - split sets then lost a super tiebreak 12-10; this guy is p robotic, hits topspin off both wings; takes forever to serve

vs pakistani guy ive played a bunch - feel like i shdve won in straights but i lost a 2nd set tiebreak and then f'd up the supertiebreak w a lot of dumb errors; i was serving really well/hard this match & had 5-6 to-my-eye-on-a-line aces all of which he called faults, tho in the past hes always been fair tbh; he was also getting over the flu and coughing between every pt so, props

vs tall skinny bald dude -- hadnt played this guy in a couple years; he got up on me 5-1 1st set & then i won 7 games in a row; ended up 7-5, 6-2; he plays just fast paced & think i was playing too fast early on; forgot a bit what its like to play someone who can't really hurt me/doesnt hit winners;

vs semi-crotchedy older dude -- he got up on me 4-1 1st set & i came back to win 7-5, then second set i won 6-0; good match, competitive pts, he hits like squash-ish shots, also rarely hits winners except sometimes on nice angles; this guy used to serve & volley more but only tried it a bit this match, his serve isnt good enough for it to work rn; 2nd set was more competitive than the score,i did hit 4-5 good forehand winners

vs tough, prob 15 yrs older than me ex-military brazilian dude tnight, i came back from down 1-4 in the first set to up 6-5, though down break pt & we had a looong rally where he ran down like 6 balls....ultimately to go for a drop shot where he lost his balance and rolled headlong into the net, it was gnarly (he got the ball back but right to me m/l)

after that he was kinda cooked, i won 7-5, 6-0

Loving these bagels to finish!

there is also a guy ive seen a few times in past yrs who was playing this wk......hes MINIMUM 5 yrs older than me (and shorter) but he played 3 nights in a row this week vs basically the 3 best players on the ladder (one of these being 'gerry') and he beat two of them & in not that difficult linescores

ive really only watched him a few times & cant tell how hes that good, his swing looks awkward

in past yrs ive overheard his name and stuff and remarks abt like "yeah he plays every day for two weeks straight and then gets injured and u wonder why"

― johnny crunch, Friday, January 20, 2017 7:39 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i finally played this guy for the 1st time. he is 20 years older than me. i took the first set off him but then i was fuckin gassed & couldnt put up a tonne of resistance..scoreline was 3-6, 6-1, 10-1 he won; he hits a lot of diff spins and gets a lot back, few winners but does occasionally pound a forehand; nice enough dude but hes the type that doesnt really listen in a convo and is only waiting for his turn to talk again

good match yesterday vs another lefty (im a lefty btw), hard fought match, i won 6-3, 6-4; he served really predictably idk for a purpose of trying to go at my backhand but i was fine w it as i would know it was coming and could easily block it back; i also hurt him repeatedly by hitting my forehand down the line when he was cheating to cover cross court; he moved & hit well tho for being older than me + kinda stocky

I haven’t played in years — I should get back at it. I’ve never had a real backhand, but can survive on slices from that side. My favorite shot has always been the inside out forehand down the line. When it works it looks good and feels even better, the way you get the other player stepping away and they have to watch the ball tailing away from them down the alley. Love it.

nother good one, abt as close & long as a first set as i can recall ~ ended up losing it 6-7 in a tiebreak but had chances to serve it out at 5-4 up and then again at 6-5 up, ugh; there was also a game, me serving at 1-2 with @ least 15 deuces

second set i was up 5-2, again serving for the set & was broken & then the club was closing so we had to stop

opponent hurt me this match w his forehand down the line; he and i are p even tho, thin margins

v satisfying match tnight, won 6-1, 6-2 vs a younger dude who beat me the last 2 times we played. hes a good all-ct player w a big forehand. tnight i served really well & think i did a good job varying depths of shots to force him to hit a bunch of errors. it was still a tighter match than the scoreline, several long deuces..

About to play my first USTA 5.0 match. I teach tennis but haven't played competitively since college and that was 18 years ago. We'll see if I can bring it...

ha I haven't clicked on this thread in a while and enjoyed reading the j.c. tour diary :)

I love tennis so much, but circumstances have not allowed me to play much. I look forward to getting back out there some day

yelploaf, how did the usta match go?

Thanks for asking, jc. I lost my first three matches quite handily, then switched back to my preferred string and won 2 since. Tonight is the last of the season and I'd love to make it to .500.

o good luck

i played in a local tournament ~ had 6 matches in 8 days

lost the finals of my division, which was best of 5 sets; my opponent was literally half my age and had had a bye and two walkovers to get there; no sour grapes honestly, it was fun

played at my club last night w a friend of mine, we are well-matched & its always competitive & fun -- like half an hour after we started, maybe the two best players ive ever seen came on the court next to us ~ one had the same forehand as delpo just loud & heavy and the other guy was also just crazy good, a snapping stroke w flat easy power

it honestly threw us both off a little & during our changeovers we were like damn we are not playing the same sport lol, cool to see though

in 7 months or so I’ll be working part time, and am going to be looking to get back into this in a major way

I’ve been playing with a couple of people I’ve met in boston off and on for a couple of years now…we’re all 4.5ish level…last time I played USTA was when I was 19 or 20 probably, was a 4.5 then and am probably playing the best tennis of my life now. just a smarter and more consistent player now I think

was just vacationing on hilton head SC and got a lesson from a great teaching pro I like down there, mainly working on my forehand and forehand volley. for some reason my backhand has been the solider side lately. he says I can probably hang with some 5.0s but in a tournament setting Im sure I’d be humbled pretty quickly considering the last sanctioned match I played was over a decade ago

been getting really into pickleball lately too, and am just now starting to see the game and am able to hang with real 4.5s (in doubles, hardly play singles due to general culture leaning toward doubles - will probably seek out some singles tournaments once I have more free time next summer). great game, tons of badminton skills that are transferable once you play at a decent enough level