UNDERSTANDING & MASTERING CONTACT; The Three Parts of a Swing






Often, all a player needs to do to improve their groundstrokes is to better understand the various components of the stroke and understand the particular function of each part.

THERE ARE 3 PARTS TO A SWING 

There are 3 parts to a swing. The 3 parts are (1) The Back-swing (2) The Contact, and (3) The Follow Through. Here is a breakdown of each of these 3 parts of the swing.


 THE BACKSWING: 

The purpose of your backswing is to supply power to your Contact. The bigger the backswing the more power you can generate.

 A return of serve, for example, doesn't require much back-swing because the power you need mostly comes from your opponent.

 Strokes where you commonly want to generate most of the power yourself are general groundstrokes, and it's common to see players taking big backswings on high balls and mid-court "put-away" shots because they want to generate extra power.

The amount of backswing you take determines
how much available energy (power)
you can take to the ball 

THE FOLLOW-THROUGH: 

The follow-through is the release of energy from the stroke you just completed.

The size of your follow-through should be directly related to the amount of back-swing you created to hit the ball - no more, no less. They are related to each other. Back-swing creates power, and follow-through releases that power.

The follow-through also has another very important function to perform. It creates spin.

The higher your hand finishes after contact, the more topspin you can achieve.

If your hand finishes low after contact (chin height), the ball will have less spin. If your hand finishes above your head after contact, there will be a lot of topspin.

Topspin can also be achieved by finishing with a high racquet head, but this method can hurt the quality of your contact. The "high hand" method produces a much cleaner ball strike and maintains the penetration at the other side of the net.

The follow-through is a release of energy from
the stroke. The height your hand finishes
determines the amount of topspin
you will get.


 THE CONTACT: 

Of the 3 parts of a swing, Contact has perhaps the most important role to play. The role of Contact is to get the ball over the net (height) and in the direction you want (late & early).

The ball goes where the racquetface tells it to go. The racquet face position at the moment of contact will solely determine where the ball goes. 

 
SUMMARY:

 1.  The 3 parts of the swing described here all have different functions. Very often, players try to vary these roles. The most common instance is when players try to spin the contact in the belief that this will elevate them over the net.  Net clearance is the job of Contact, not spin.

 2.  Every stroke is different. Players should learn to adjust the amount of backswing, Follow Through or Contact depending on their needs in the point.



Location: Manchester, England

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