Why You Should (Almost) Always Hit The Ball Up In Tennis

How should you hit a tennis forehand and backhand to have a high consistency of shots? Here's a simple tennis tip: always play the ball up.

So let me show you what's the usual idea that players have and how the play the shots incorrectly...

If we split the different heights of contact into 3 areas we can say that we hit the ball at low contact point (which we'll define lower than the top of the net), medium height (which is between the height of the net and shoulders) and high which is above the shoulder height.

The reason why we define low contact point as all contact points below the top of the net because it's logical to players that they need to hit the ball up in order to cross the net.

What is not so logical to players and which is the topic of this video is that they should play almost all shots where the contact is in the medium and even high contact point also up.

What players typically imagine is that from medium contact height they should play straight, meaning horizontal and from high contact point they should play downwards.

The reason why that's not a good idea is because for one you're playing very close to the net and can easily miss the shot.

And secondly, it's very likely that your ball will land short and give your opponent a chance to start dictating the rally because the ball is bouncing right into their strike zone.

There are a few exceptions to this rule (namely playing the ball up):
- you can play a high contact point behind the baseline horizontally
- you can play a high contact point downwards when you're well inside the court
- you should play a backhand slice from a high contact point downwards (just make sure that the angle is not too steep)

0:00 Intro
1:20 Incorrectly Imagined Trajectories
3:19 Correct Trajectories (All Up)
4:25 Three Exceptions
7:06 Focus On The Ball Vs On Technique