On Taking The Racquet Back
"Players of all levels have good days and bad days...On bad days, 99% of the time it is your timing that is throwing the rest off. People either tend to rush or they do too much too early. That is, 99.9% of the time the player is not tracking the ball long enough before hitting it...It is easy to fix a bad day. You just have to correct the mother of all errors, the one underlying cause: bad timing. After that, everything starts feeling better and you can trust your strokes as much as on a good day. Therefore, when you are in trouble, check your timing and apply the solution: track the ball longer and longer, waiting as much as possible, tracking it with your eyes, your racquet, your hand. You may be running to reach the ball, but your hand is stalking it, still in front. Forget about having to be perfectly positioned, forget about racquet preparations, forget about thinking at all. Just track the ball as if you were going to catch it with your hand or stop it with the racquet, then give it your usual whack! You may lose some power in the process, but you'll be confident that the ball is going in the court. Then you can go for power again, increasing the amplitude of your swing. If your timing is still good, you'll feel wonderful: your power strokes are going in and in. Most players, including pros, may think this is too easy a solution, and don't believe in miracles. I'd like to insist: if there are some possible miracles in your tennis, this is one of them."
Oscar Wegner, Groundstrokes Magazine, Summer 2008
