Come on Shamir let me see that big forehand
And long again Shamir we gotta fix your slice man. So shamir those slices
are spraying a little bit i want to help you out
and improve your backhand slice but first of all can you tell me how you're
making slice on the backhand yeah i was taught to just set up here
and then make contact in front and pretend like
it's a table and you're going through the table you're going forward through
the table yeah. So the ball is obviously spinning
like this so how how does that take place how does the ball spin this way
the racket face the way in relation to the ball the racket face so you
you have an open racket face when you make contact
like that yes and you get underneath the ball and then that's how you make it
that's how you make slice okay so it's not wrong that's that's a
way to make slice but when you look at the best
players in the world you know players such as federer or nadal who have really
good slice backhands they don't make slice that way so let me explain to you
a few different ways to make slice. So shamir you are right if you open the
racket face you will get underspin but there's some problems with this.
So if you hit the ball very hard and you open the racket face look what happens
to the ball see how it kind of sits up yeah and now
the the slice is not as effective because what do you want to do with the
slice you want the ball to be low so your opponent has to bend
down and you want to make life uncomfortable
for your opponent. So how do you make the ball
to go lower where you have to close the racket face. So this
open racket face might work if you're very gentle with the ball for example
on a backhand volley if you're very softly hitting the ball you might be
able to get a low trajectory this might work or on a chip return this might work
but when you take a full swing on a slice and you really
accelerate make the ball go fast the ball has a
tendency to go up let me show you again so open racket face
you see how that ball kind of sits up and the second bounce is really not
that low but watch now when i hit a slice
backhand with a neutral racket face now you won't be able to see it because it's
going to happen too fast but look what happens to this slice look how much
lower this one is you see the second bounce yeah it's like
barely getting off the ground and this is a much more effective slice.
So the real easy way to get a neutral racket face at contact is to change your
timing because the problem is when you hit a slice
really fast you won't really know how the racket face is positioned you can try
it out see look when i hit this ball i don't really know exactly how my
racket face is positioned at contact. You try it out see
go ahead and really accelerate on your slice and you let me know whether you
you know how the racket face is positioned.
It goes so fast it's over in like milliseconds you try one more time i
take a full take back and slice it oh it happens it happens too fast those
are there's a really bad slice by the way yes yeah
but do you know do you have any idea how the racket face was positioned on that
one probably towards the ground that was
probably towards the ground but you really don't know right no i don't know
so there is a way to make the racket face more neutral
without doing it consciously at the moment of contact and that is by making
the timing a little bit delayed on the slice oh okay so let me show you how
that works see what happens is if i make contact
in a continental grip further out front see naturally my racket face opens up a
little bit yeah you see in a neutral wrist position
the racket face is open and the more forward i go the more the
racket face tends to open so you really don't want to make contact
way out front because look what happens if i make
contact later more behind my body you see how the racket goes more into a
neutral position yeah so if we take a look
where we should make contact it would be around the tip
of the front foot this is where the racket is going to be more neutral so
you got to pretend like you're hitting that way this is as far forward as you
can go with the racket this is going to give you a more neutral
position of the racket face
so the simple way to do it is to just delay the contact point and make the
contact a little bit later than usual okay
and the result of that is going to be a ball it's going to be a lot lower you
see that slice how low it is see it doesn't bounce very
high so let me address the other thing you said the slice is supposedly like
clearing a table with your racquet right yeah this is an old-school tip.
And this is how a slice used to be hit you remember a player named Ken
Roswall yes Yeah he's a grand slam champion and the
slice used to be hit differently the players used to
more massage the ball and play off the pace of the opponent
and yes indeed the slice was more of a linear slice where they were
like wiping something off the table with the racquet and the problem with this
slice is that you don't get the same amount of power and underspin
that you can get with more of a modern slice. So let me show you. You come on
this side okay so look at the difference if i go forward on the slice
like that versus if i go across you see the difference in
the underspin yeah see how the second one has a lot more bite on it
yeah so you got to realize slice is created by going
high to low that's how slice is created and so what happens
on a modern slice is this watch so the high to low motion
on the ball is what creates underspin so if i position the ball here
and if i go with my racket towards the ball going down on the ball
makes the ball spin this way that's under spin okay yeah
right and it doesn't matter how my racket face is positioned i can do this
with a completely neutral racket face and i still get under spin like this so
naturally what happens if you focus on hitting
high to low naturally look where the racket goes
i'm going to go down on this ball and look at the tip of my racket it's going
to continue to go down and then across my body like this.
So it turns into a circular swing path the slice
it's like a U shape. So you start up by your shoulder
you make contact with the ball here and you basically intend to hit
down on the ball and then naturally the racket is going to continue going down
and it's going to go around the body and then naturally it's going to come back
up on this side. So it's like a u look it start it starts here it goes down and
it comes back up on this side
Now it's super important that when you make contact with the ball that you
don't do any wrist movements because the wrist
movements will take all the slice out of the ball so if you like let's say
slice a ball and then you snap the wrist this will take all slice out of it so we
got to remember is that you have to keep the racket
strings parallel to the net so imagine the net is in front of me i
gotta keep my strings towards the net the whole time
as i'm continuing to go around the body like that okay
and then you can bring it back up on this side so basically all you got to
focus on is starting high going down and then continuing to go
down right now you know sometimes people like they stay
closed or sometimes
that's fine there's going to be some rotation on the slide so let's say if
you you hit a lateral ball just like your
one-handed backhand you're going to be set up
completely sideways but you already do you do a good job at that so
like a one-handed backhand you set up with that lateral step the slice you're
going to sit up the same way right and your shoulder blade is going
to be turned towards the ball and now naturally you're not going to hit the
ball like this this will not happen naturally you're going to rotate
into the ball a little bit and now to accommodate this swing path you can
continue to rotate after you've made contact and then you
to answer your question what will happen sometimes especially if you
pulled wide this back foot is going to come
around like that yeah and you're going to come
out with that back foot it's just a natural
continuation of the stroke a little bit delay it so here's the two things you
got to focus on you're going to make contact later we're
going to close your racket face intuitively just by making contact a
little bit further behind and then you're going to go high to low
but you're going to continue going down after you make contact you want to
picture visualize this u-shape of the racket high
low and then back high okay let me see it
oh again that's not bad make contact a little bit later
go again what do you think i don't know yet do it again see when i
see you leaning forward that means you're making contact too far in front
make contact a little bit later come that's a nice one and accelerate
the big advantage of this technique is that you can accelerate much faster
you can hit the slice very hard this is the problem with the with the
old-school slice like let's say like ken roswall used to hit that the guys used
to have to massage the ball and be very careful
because they were hitting forward right they're clearing the table like you say
but the advantage of this slice you can actually hit it extremely fast
you can accelerate fast and not lose any control and in fact
the more you accelerate the more underspin you're going to have and the
lower the ball is going to be on the second
bounce okay so feel free to accelerate quickly on this one
absolutely absolutely like you're putting more
rotations on the ball you're in fact slowing the ball down
which means that you can hit it much much harder does it make sense yeah but
you're going like this you're putting a lot more
underspin on the ball which means that you can you can rip it okay and the
racket faces like this well you're not gonna feel it it's gonna happen too
quickly so you're just gonna time it a little bit later
and i recommend that you set it up like really lateral like this with that
with that humongous shoulder turn that you did on your one in the backhand okay
there you go do it again come on rip it a little later
wow look at those crazy slice Shamir this is incredible do it again
come slice it what do you think you like it
okay these are crazy slices
nice come again Shamir I can't believe it man
do a few more
nice come again nice shamir come again
this is crazy
Shamir how did you learn this so fast this is unbelievable these are the best
slices i've ever seen give me a racket tap thank you got one
more that wasn't clean there it is all right good job