for any of you that struggle with being able to hit Drop shots I'm going to show you a progression
that's going to help you develop the so important feel for the drop shot and I'm also going to show
you what the technique should be when executing forehand and backhand Drop shots I often say
that you shouldn't attempt Drop shots if you don't possess the feel or the fundamentals of
the drop shot so the best exercise to develop feel for the drop shot is the following one
you're going to throw yourself a ball and you're going to try to catch the ball on your strings
without the ball bouncing off your strings you are learning the so important absorption of the ball
the way you're going to do this is the ball is going to come down and the racket is going
to slightly go down with the ball you can also do this with a partner where you're hitting the
balls back and forth to each other and trying to catch the ball without the ball bouncing off the
string and here you can see Sarah and I practicing this exercise and she had a little bit of a hard
time with this drill at first it's not as easy as it looks it does require a player to hold the
racket very Loosely and also what should happen is that the ball doesn't bounce off the string
and that requires the player to go with the racket in the direction in which the ball is
traveling from so it took her a few tries to get the hang of it here I had to show her how to do
it by demonstrating the movement of the Racket and then finally she was able to do it on the last try
now you might be wondering how does this relate to the drop shot well it's going
to relate to the next progression which is going to be a volley drop
shot and here absorption of the ball is crucial okay here we go Sarah absorb
do it again don't play with the wrist I can see sometimes you're bending your wrist like
this it's unnecessary okay you don't need to bend your wrist you simply need to absorb the
ball with an open racket face and stay steady okay you keep yourself contained within the
shot don't have your left arm go out the other way contain yourself here and just work on absorbing
that's too much continuation it's too much through the ball absorb the ball more even more more
you don't need to imagine trying to come underneath the ball and cut under it like
this you don't need that all you need is an open racket face at the moment of contact and the
ball impacting your string that in itself will make the ball have backspin and come bounce on
my side and come back over to the other side you don't need to go like this like keep your
wrist in the same position with a loose hold and let's see what happens yes yes those are perfect
yes yes Sarah perfect forehand excellent dropper it's important to remember that when you are
receiving a ball from the baseline with more pace the absorption of the ball is easier and
therefore Drop shots become much simpler to execute so what I did here with Sarah was I
backed up to the Baseline started hitting the ball a lot harder to her and she because of
the progressions that we did previously had a much easier time handling Drop shots with
more Pace coming at her she however still has a problem on her forehand Volley where
she spreads her arms apart so we have to work on keeping the arms more contained so that she
doesn't lose balance on her drop shot and she did a much better job towards the end
so once you have successfully hit Drop shots from the net with an open racket face by absorbing the
ball you're going to slide back to the Baseline and from here you obviously are not going to be
able to just absorb the ball and have the ball have backspin once it bounces off your string
you have too much room to cover in other words so you need a little bit of a swing and what is the
swing supposed to look like it's a high to low swing the racket starts High it goes down and
it continues to go down if the ball happens to be below your knee level this is not when
you should attempt Drop shots but if you do you need to scoop the ball up which is sub-optimal
so we're going to try to hit Drop shots that are a little bit higher ideally at the waist
height or the chest height this is a perfect zone for a drop shot if it gets below the waist it
gets tricky and if it gets above the chest it gets tricky as well now again you're going to
need a loose hold of the Racket and this is where the first two progressions come in very
handy because you're going to try to absorb the ball as much as possible the path of the
racket is going to be diagonal it's not going to be straight down but when you make contact you
need to have a soft hold of the Racket and not allow the racket to go through the ball
so now that you're at the Baseline
so there needs to be a little bit more of a swing now the swing has to be high low and
then continue to go low now if the ball happens to be low you don't want to be doing Drop shots
anyway you want to do Drop shots when the ball is at least at your waist or higher but when the ball
is lower you would need to scoop the ball back up like this to make it go over but we don't have to
worry about that because I'm going to give you the perfect feeds and you simply continue from a
high point into a lower contact and then continue going down with the racket while you're doing that
the racket face needs to be open and most importantly the first two progressions will help
you absorb the ball better so you're not holding the racket too stiff and rifling through the drop
shot because that's going to be very inconsistent and it's going to probably shoot the ball too far
so a soft hold an absorption of the ball and a continuation downwards see what you have to imagine
it's almost like a diagonal line going down this way it's not straight down like this that won't
work it's a diagonal line in this Direction that's your continuation so you start here
contact and a diagonal line downwards like that
What about my body weight?
look you want to keep your body as still as possible the more wild your body is
the more unstable the contact will be so keep your body stable remember that when you're using Drop
shots you're going to be in a perfect position you're going to be in control of the rally your
opponent is going to be in distress so you can keep your body as still as possible
so you can execute the shot that's technically quite challenging okay so it's of course a lot
of recreational players will attempt Drop shots when they they are in distress in
defense situations where their body is flailing all over the place and it's almost impossible to
make good Drop shots that way so you have to keep your body in control okay and don't worry about
the body helping the arm too much you do need to you know of course be in a more athletic
position you don't want to be too loose but you don't have to rotate or anything
like that just execute this drop shot very similar to how you were doing it at the net
the only difference is that the swing is going to be a little bit longer exactly exactly right
Sara these are looking so much better good start a little bit higher with the racket you'll get more
under spin good a little bit softer feel come on softer hold yes wow so good backhand drop shot
that is excellent on the backhand drop shot you have a little bit more feel there compared to your
forehand okay now Sarah I want you to disguise the drop shot so you're going to pretend like
you're gonna blast the forehand you're gonna take your racket back and load the same way you do when
you're hitting the forehand hard but then in your takeback you're going to change your grip and do a
disguised fake drop shot okay disguise a little more disguise like this come on load your body
wait a little bit longer come on disguise longer
go again disguise longer wait longer and then you go here here come on yes that's it do it again
go again continue downwards a little bit okay absorb the ball a little more
okay not bad come again
yes Sara that's excellent nice work the final and the most difficult progression in developing your
drop shot is trying to hit a drop shot out of a live ball situation see what happens
with a lot of players is that once they start rallying and the ball is coming fast to them it
becomes challenging to find the right ball to hit a drop shot on in addition to that often
the old muscle memory kicks in and players go right back to their old drop shot technique so
if that's the case with you you have to go back to the progressions and repeat them as
often as possible once you have the ability to pull out a drop shot in live ball situation
like Sarah was able to do in this lesson now you're gonna repeat these progressions over and
over again and eventually you are going to be able to utilize Drop shots in a match situation
oh how are you feeling on those Drop shots you feel like they've gotten better remember that
when you build your repertoire as a player this is going to help you tennis is not all about serves
forehands and backhands you need to learn how to volley you need to learn how to slice and of
course you need to learn how to drop shot as well when you do possess good feel when you do possess
good fundamentals on the drop shot even then be careful with over using the drop shot because
you're going to lose the surprise Factor you only should pull out this shot every now and then
oh
yeah I knew it was coming
my reflexes are getting slower and slower
I knew it was bound to happen because you're hitting so hard and I can barely get my racquet on the ball
I'm not ready
I gotta get ready over here