Hey Casper! Ok I’ve had a look at these videos you sent now so firstly the backhand against backspin I don’t think your technique is bad at all and a couple of small areas to focus on will really help you improve this. The first thing I think is you often get a really good contact on the all and get a lot of spin but sometimes you tend to get a bit tense and can miss time the shot which is why you feel it’s inconsistent. So trying to really be relaxed and accelerate forwards a little bit more into the shot will help you. Try to think about going down a bit more in your legs before the contact and then pushing up into the shot. This will help you pause slightly and not rush the shot as well, it also means you get more energy from the legs and your arm has less work to do so it can stay more relaxed.
So with the Par Gerell serves it looks like you’ve got a solid foundation, a couple of things I think will make a big difference to these serves for you are really focusing on the body action and your core muscles and not so much the arm movement. A bit like if you play a strong forehand topspin you can’t just use the arm you need your body to help. So think about really twisting into the ball and accelerating the body through the contact.
I Also think at the moment on each of the serves you are really thinking about getting backspin and really trying to add the topspin to the topspin serve. However to make each one more similar try to focus on having the same action, the way to do this is remember that both serves are a sidespin serve, one is just adding a little backspin and one is adding more topspin however both always have sidespin. So if you can focus on hitting really around side on both serves they will look a lot more similar, I think it’s important to get the disguise so both look similar as this is where players will make mistakes.
So focus in having the wrist down and relaxed as Par mentions in the masterclass and also really contacting on the side of the ball, then when you do the backspin you just finish slightly downwards and adjust the bat angle sightly more underneath at the last minute and for the topspin again contact on the side but more or less follow through in a straight line, try not to actually brush the bat upwards because this is where people can start to read the spin.
I think if you focus on these areas you’ll soon see a big difference because a lot of the skils and technique is there it just needs some small changes. Let us know how you get on! All the best, Tom 🙂
