Guys we've all been there. We played tennis
outside possibly in the middle of the day the sun is right above us
and we toss the ball up for the serve we look directly into the sun
and we are blinded and have a hard time hitting the serve or even the next ball.
So there's a few things that you can do to make this less painful. And one thing
you can do is play with the hat and sunglasses. Now this is
something that's obvious but unfortunately
we as tennis players are very sensitive to wearing
certain things. For example we can't play with a watch
because that might disturb our two-handed backhand or
might be moving around during the point and the same goes for wearing sunglasses.
I personally cannot play with sunglasses on because i feel like
they're gonna come off when i'm serving. They also tend to fog up
and they're just a really annoying uncomfortable thing. And believe it or
not the same goes for wearing a hat during matches. Personally I can only
wear a hat backwards when i play a tennis match
because i feel like the brim of the hat is impairing my
vision somewhat especially when i toss the ball up I do not like the
feeling of wearing a hat. So for me personally the best way to
play tennis is without sunglasses and without a hat. Now one thing you can
do to make looking into the sun less painful whether it be an overhead
or a serve is you can try to block the sun with
your non-dominant hand. So on the overhead
you will have to know where the sun is and you simply try to block it with your
hand. So in this case the sun is about right there
I'm going to try to block it with my hand and this does help.
On the serve it's a little bit more tricky because you have to make sure
that the blocking of the sun doesn't influence your toss in a bad way
but you can do the following you can toss the ball
you're going to know exactly where the sun is and once you have tossed the ball
you're kind of blocking the sun with your non-dominant hand you
spread your fingers this way and you put your hand against the sun
and this can make looking to the sun a little bit less painful. And the
absolute best thing you can do to fight the conditions
outside on a tennis court whether it be the wind or the sun
is to study the conditions and then make decisions
accordingly. So for example right now it's 12 o'clock
and it's August so the sun is pretty central but it's not
right above me it's a little bit to the left and I have to know this depending
on what side I'm serving from. So when i'm serving from this side the sun is
a little bit to my left this is not going to influence my toss
in a bad way because i know my toss is going to be directed
towards 12 o'clock or 12 30. So when i toss it to 12 o'clock from this side
this has absolutely no effect on my vision because
the sun is going to be positioned to the left of me. Now on this side we're going
to have a real problem because the sun is going to be to the right a little bit
and now if I toss the ball in my normal location I'm going to be
looking right into the sun. Now interestingly in this particular
case the sun is a little bit behind me so if I throw the ball
further out front I'm going to be looking into the sun a lot less. So if I
throw it out here and all of a sudden it hurts less to
look up. Another thing that I could do on this
side is toss the ball a little bit more to my left because there's no sun
on this side. Yes this will influence my serve a little bit in a negative way if
I'm not used to this type of toss location
but on the other hand if my vision is not going to be negatively impaired this
might help my game overall. So simply on this side if i
throw a little bit to the left on the toss
this doesn't influence my vision negatively in any way
and it's going to help my shots that are going to come after the serve.
Interestingly tennis courts are always built north to south
in other words this side of the baseline is south
and if i go in this direction it's directly north and the sun is going up
and down east to west. So this is something
that you have to keep in mind when you're playing tennis. The sun will
always be either to the left of you and to the right of you depending on the
time of the year there's going to be some
situations where it's going to be right above you and that is the time where
it's going to be very difficult to avoid the problem of looking into the
sun. Something very interesting will happen on those days where you can't
avoid the sun and you're going to be looking straight at it.
So when you throw the ball up and you look right into the sun you will not be
able to see the ball and you will not be able to see the
contact but interestingly even though you can't see the ball
you will still make clean contact most of the time.
And the reason why we can't see the contact on the serve is because the
acceleration is so fast the contact takes place in milliseconds
so there's absolutely no way that we can see the contact on
the serve. The point i'm making with this is that you shouldn't worry about
looking straight into the sun and not seeing the contact because you
never see the contact on the serve and you can still get the serve in but
the real problem starts is once you have to hit the ball that
comes after the serve. In my personal experience
the few times when the sun was on a really bad location
it wasn't avoidable what happens is you're going to be kind of blinded
for a couple of seconds right after the serve but the vision will come back
rather fast. So the only thing that's tricky is the ball that comes after the
serve you have to really try to make that first ball and then after
that the vision is going to go back to normal and this is
just one of those things in tennis that we have to suffer through and try to
make the best of it. All right guys so let me finish off this
video with trying to avoid the sun on this particular serve. So let's study
the sun. Okay it's going to be right here right above me but it's a little bit to
the right. So if I throw the ball at 12 o'clock I
should be okay. I'm also gonna throw it a little bit
further in front to avoid the sun even more
and I'm going to try to block it with my hand and let's see what happens.
Perfect I didn't lose my vision at all it wasn't painful at all. I felt like I
avoided the sun completely. So guys if you keep some of
these things in mind when you're out there playing tennis in the middle of
the day on a bright sunny day it can hopefully
make it a little bit less painful.