Perfecting Topspin in Tennis: Step-by-Step Guide

Topspin allows you to hit harder and aim higher without making mistakes, so it's critical for beating good players. This special lesson will reveal exactly how the pros make so much topspin, plus special drills to maximize yours to level up your game. This is topspin. Imagine this ball is traveling towards the other side of the courts in this direction. That green arrow represents the direction of rotation, end over end, over the top, in the direction that the ball is traveling. And as it rotates in that direction, those little pieces of felt that stick out of the ball grab the air, and that rotation of the air around the ball creates a high pressure pocket over the top of the ball, a low pressure pocket below the ball, which pushes the ball downwards. So practically what that means is as the ball travels towards the other side of the courts, all of the things remaining equal, the more topspin the ball has, the sooner it's going to dip and dive down into the court on the other side. Here's what that looks like in real life. As this ball is coming up towards contact for Roger, I want you to look at how the ball is rotating end over end towards him. So that means to get the ball to rotate end over end in the direction he's hitting the ball, he has to actually reverse that spin. Anytime the ball lands on your side of the court, the friction between the ball and the court surface causes the ball, even if it was hit with slice, unless it's a drop shot like with a ton of backspin, with that exception out of the way, when the ball comes forwards and lands on your side of the court, it automatically starts rotating towards you. So for Roger to hit topspin back, look at how as he hits upwards past the point of contact, he reverses the direction of the spin and now it's rotating towards us. It's that rotation that curves the ball. If you've ever watched high level tennis on court level, you know what I'm talking about. There's this aggressive dip and dive on the ball. It just feels like magic. It feels like they have extra gravity or something, which allows them to hit the ball incredibly hard and keep it in play at the same time. Before we dive into how to make maximum topspin, we need to discuss a couple of misconceptions out there that do not lead to topspin in real life. And one of them is this idea of curling the racket like around the top of the ball and kind of massaging or maneuvering the strings. Here's a quick illustration of that from the man that hits with more topspin than anybody ever in the history of the game. As Rafa makes contact with the ball, I want you to notice how the very next frame the ball is gone. This video was shot at 240 frames per second. If you do the math on that, that means each of these images, each of these frames is about four one thousandths of a second. And so it's actually a great illustration just to show that we only have one frame. That's how fast the ball comes and leaves. And there isn't any kind of flipping or twisting or manipulating of the racket because there's just no time to do it. It's gone before Rafa could possibly do any kind of manipulation. A lot of people also seem to think that if we hit the top of the ball, that's also what makes topspin. And I can see how people could think that because sometimes swings look like the racket is flipping over the top of the ball. As Roger's racket comes to meet the ball, look at how it flips and twists like all of a sudden. And in real time, it looks very much like the racket is like flipping over the top of the ball. But at 240 frames a second, when we slow it down, we see that the reason why the racket is twisting is because the ball is coming in contact with the bottom edge of the racket and that destabilizes the racket. And so, again, just like with Rafa in the very next image, four thousandths of a second later, yes, the racket is flipping and covering, but it's a symptom. It's a byproduct. It's because of where the ball hits, his racket's no longer in contact with the ball and his racket keeps twisting. And it's simply because he meets the ball off center. So watch this very next shot, same practice session, just a couple of swings later. And this time, as he meets the ball, look at how now contact is being made right in line with the handle. And so nothing gets destabilized this time and the racket stays consistent and steady because nothing threw it off. And so Roger is hitting with topspin on both of these shots, but it's not because of the flipping or twisting or covering the top of the ball or anything like that. We'll talk about exactly why it is in just a second. First, we need to talk about this final misconception, and that is by adding a reverse finish or buggy whip finish like Rafa or by adding on a windshield wiper follow-through that you're magically automatically going to hit topspin. And unfortunately that's not the case. The finish is a byproduct of the other technical elements that created the topspin. I see, unfortunately, regular everyday players like me and you add those things on to a flat shot thinking that they're creating topspin, but they're actually not. We'll talk about why in just a second. This simple phrase explains how topspin is made. The face sends it, the path bends it. That means in that split second, that five thousandths of a second, when the ball touches the strings, wherever the angle of the strings are facing, that's what sets the starting trajectory of the ball. And during that same instant, whatever path the racket is on, that's what determines how the ball is going to be rotating and therefore how it's going to bend or curve. So with that in mind, this is what a flat tennis shot looks like. The ball is being hit in this direction. The green arrow represents the path of the racket. The racket face is also in line with the path. So as the racket and the face collide with the ball, both going in the same direction, the ball is going to take off in a straight line without any significant spin and so without any curve or bend to the shot. Here's what that looks like in practice. Watch the path of Del Potro's racket as he makes contact. I'm going to go back to the point of contact and actually just draw a straight line from the ball backwards. And I want you to watch his racket as he approaches the point of contact, how level and straight it is. And so this is going to be a shot that travels with basically maximum power and force, but with minimum shape and curve, which means it's not going to have a lot of margin for error, but it's going to get to its target in a This is what a topspin shot looks like. The racket face is pointing towards its target, but now the green arrow, the path of the racket, is showing us that the racket is traveling in this direction. And so as the racket meets the ball and it moves past the back of the ball, that's what rolls the ball forward end over end and causes it to spin in the direction of its target and curve it down into the court. So here's Rafa again, righties, sorry lefties, but it is what it is. I want all the righties to see this so that it's the same. Remember that Del Potro swing? Look at how different this looks. If I draw a line level at the point of contact this time, and we check out the path of the racket, look at how steeply his racket is coming up towards contact. And all of that energy and momentum swooping up past the back of the ball ultimately is what spins the ball and turns it and rolls the ball to give it that curve moving in the other direction towards the other side of the court. In case you're wondering, this is what slice looks like, or backspin, like slice on a ground stroke refers to backspin. Now the path of the racket is traveling downwards, the face of the racket is forwards, the forward facing racket face is going to keep the ball relatively level, and the downward path is what's going to give the ball that backspin traveling in the direction of its target. Hitting with lots of topspin is cool, but what's even more cool is winning lots of tennis matches, and that's exactly what you're going to learn how to do at TennisSecret.com, where I'll show you how to cut your errors in half in your very next match. Most tennis points end with somebody making an error, so this training is critical if you want to win more matches. Before we dig into the drills that you can do at home to develop huge amounts of topspin, I want to show you some practical real world examples of recent students of mine. One student that isn't hitting any topspin, and we'll see why very quickly, and the other student is making a lot of topspin, and you'll see why, and then we'll get into the drills so that you can do this yourself. So I'm going to draw a line, remember that line I drew for the professional players? Here's the point of contact, and if we draw a line, I'll try to get a nice flat one, going straight back, what is the predominant direction of the racket here? Traveling towards the point of contact, and so as contact is made, my face was slightly open, so we have a little bit of upward path, so the ball is going to make it over the net, but there isn't enough energy going upwards past the ball to roll it, so it's not going to have the curve on the other side, which means the harder this player hits the ball, the farther it's going to go, and it's never going to dip and dive back into the court again. By the way, watch how this player immediately after contact flips and turns the racket over at the end. I see this all the time with players, and this, listen, this happens so fast, and it feels like this would be contributing to some kind of something on the ball, and making it hopefully like get it down on the other side of the courts, but the reality is the ball is long gone, and so this quick flip and twist after the ball is off the strings has no impact over what the ball actually does. Here's another one of my recent students. Look how different this direction of attack is with his racket. Instead of just dropping his racket down to the level of where he's going to make contact, he's got a loose enough arm and early enough timing to drop it way down below that point. Look at the ball coming into the frame here, and so if I draw that same kind of line right at the point of contact, straight back away from where the ball was, we can see there's a totally different direction of attack on this player's swing. It's going to result in a ton of forward rotation, and when you add a bunch of acceleration to that, you get the kind of really aggressively dipping and diving and high bouncing shot on the other side of the court. You've been super patient. Let's get right to the step-by-step drills now. I've used these drills with a ton of students with a lot of success. These are feel exercises that will help you get into the groove of hitting lots of topspin. So step number one is to choke up on the racket, hold it by the throat, and just rotate the tip of the racket back and forth at a half circle. So you see how the tip of my racket is going back and forth? I'm going a little bit past half circle here, but I'm just getting the feel of what it's like to rotate my hand, my forearm, my wrist back and forth. So in other words, I'm turning my entire chain here from my shoulder, my bicep, my elbow, my forearm, my hand. Everything is just pivoting and rotating back and forth. And after you get a feel for that, drop a couple balls and actually hit just with that motion. And your goal here is two different things. Listen for the sound. You should hear a really aggressive clicking sound. That clicking sound is the strings moving. When they grab the back of the ball and the racket is traveling upwards, the strings shift and then click back into place again. So you're listening for that clicking sound or brushing sound, sometimes people call it, and you're visually watching for a curve. Watch the curve of my ball here. As I hit upwards past it, look at how there's a big arc in the ball. So you're listening for a click, you're watching for an arc. Spend five or ten minutes and just get a feel for that. The second progression is you're going to grip the racket the way you normally do down on the handle and just practice going straight upwards. So from maximum dropped, like relaxed hand and arm position, and then ideally from behind the ball, just raise the racket straight upwards past the point of contact. So just practice that idea a couple times, just going vertical. Then start to drop a couple balls to yourself and practice going past the ball with that really vertical path. And again, we're looking and listening for the same indicators. We're listening for a click and we're watching for a really aggressive curve or bend in the ball. The third progression is to execute that exact same drill that we did up close to the net, but now back in no man's land. So we're just simply creating a little bit more space and notice how now I'm bringing my racket back a little bit further. So I've got a little bit more runway to be able to give the ball a little more energy, but I'm primarily focusing here on relaxing and dropping my arm and hand as much as possible so that I'm coming up from the lowest position possible past the back of the ball. And we're looking for that curve and that bend. We're listening for that clicking sound. And then once you get good at that, what you're going to do is begin with the racket head upwards. So we can practice this dropping phase of the motion and then use that momentum from a low position to go upwards past the ball to create tons and tons of spin. So this is your fourth drill now is to start with the racket head up, practice seamlessly dropping it and then moving up into the rest of the swing, then drop and try to make that one seamless motion from a high position to a low position and up to a high position again. The fifth drill is now to go all the way back to the baseline and put everything together. Start with the racket head in a high position and practice seamlessly dropping it to as low as possible position and then bringing it upwards fluidly past the point of contact. So we're making contact with a vertical motion. Now we're really rolling the ball towards the other side of the courts. And if you practice this more and more and bring it into your game, you're going to start being able to hit the ball much harder with much more margin for error and still keep it in play on the other side. If you want to continue mastering your forehand, make sure you check out this lesson right here, which tells you why you should stop trying to make contact out in front. Super critical. Don't miss it.