Forehand Tomahawk Backspin

The trick is to follow through away from the body. I have a tendancy to pull my hand back into my body. To do this make sure I don't throw the ball too far away from my body.

Thing to work on

Besides bringing a certain level of intensity to playing all the time. I need to work on predicting where the ball is going to land, particularly the depth of pushing. I should know where as soon as I see the ball leave my opponents racket. As of now I'm being surprised by where the ball lands sometimes. I would say I'm too often surprised. I should work on this not just for inm rallies, but also on serves.

San Diego Open

Played in the 1400 and 1550 and went 3-3. I felt that I had the ability to advance in both groups, but didn't execute well enough. My biggest problem was just my concentration level. I need to practice wanting to win every single point again. I've been a bit too lax at the club and can't find the correct level of arousal in the tournaments I've played recently. Besides this the people I lost to gave me a lot of problems in service return.

The one guy was making me return the ball to the middle of the table and then slamming the ball. He also had a really good down the line serve. I think if I worked to place my service return more I would have increased my chances of winning by a lot.

One of the other people I lost to had a very spinny forehand tomahawk serve. I should have just assumed the serve was back side spin, but didn't commit to it enough. Lost the last game in duece and had a couple game points that I squandered with bad serves.

The last guy I lost to was unrated. I felt like I had his number for the most part, but gave away a few too many points with pushing and looping errors.

All in all I played fairly well. The people I beat, I beat easily, spinning them off the table with my serves. Even the people I lost to I felt like I controlled my serve reasonably well. Unfortunately I had a big fail in service return. I seem to have trouble with serves that come nearly strait down the line at my elbow. My forehand pushing weakness probably contributes to this problem. If I can shore up this problem, I feel I'll go up a level.

Things to Work on Progress

Stripping down what I need to work on to the most important things. I've been playing somewhat badly recently and I think it's because I'm trying to incorporate too many things into my game. All these things require different footwork to support them and it's gotten too complicated to correct easily. I should strip what I'm working on to a very narrow range for a bit and focus on linking my shots together.

I've been working on backhand looping, placing pushes, opening smash, repeatedly smashing, looping forehands cross court from backhand side, and flipping.

My backhand looping is coming along. I feel comfortable enough with it that I don't feel that my backhand is a weakness anymore. I need to be careful that I don't try and hit my backhands too hard and just go for consistency.

My pushing is getting better. I'm able to read the spin on the ball and not pop up as many balls, but it's far from automatic. I also need to learn to control my pushes against pushes against my serves. I don't understand what to do with the sidespin that's coming back to me if I can't loop it. Placement and pace on my pushes are also a concern, but not as much as maintaining consistency and making the adjustments for spin more automatic.

I'm also trying to smash a little more rather than looping. This is still and experiment in progress. After I start smashing I need to work on keeping that pressure on. I'm missing too many of the smashes against fishing/lobbing. This is mostly a footwork, concentration problem. I also need to work on waiting for the ball to fall if it's too high.

I'm still missing too many of those cross court inside out forehands from the backhand corner. Some of this is that I'm trying to loop more of these cross court instead of down the line then before. I think for these shots I need to take a weaker shot and work on consistency.

Flipping is so difficult. My form is still very unstable and I need to work on it every week against the robot if I intend to keep flipping in matches. It's a very subtle change in angle to adjust from flipping backspin vs topspin.

For the next couple weeks, I want to narrow list down. I want to try a very specific sequence of serving, pushing, slow looping, and then smash. This covers many of the above in technique and will serve to improve my footwork for these shots too. Only work on flipping against weak opponent serves.

Note: My forehand backhand switching needs work too.