LAWN TENNIS AND HOW TO PLAY IT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3773, 6 July 1926, Page 77

LAWN TENNIS AND HOW TO PLAY IT.

By Suzanne Lenglen. (Copyright.—For the Witness.) IV. The Backbone of the Game—The Forehand Drive—Keep Your Eye on the Bail —Swing, Timing and Follow Through. Although a game of lawn tennis, of course, always opens with the service, there are a good many reasons why 1 want you to study the forehand drive fust. You will have a forehand shot ten times as often as you will have a service, twice as often, probably, as you will have all the other shots in the game C together. That is why I call it the kbone of lawn tennis. Now I have already dealt with the proper grip for this shot. I have also mentioned the horizontal drive, and here I want to lay stress on one thing. It is your object, when you are playing any shot, to catch your opponent out of position, and it will be clear that the quicker you play the ball after it has bounced, the less time will he or she have to get back into a safe position. It used to be the custom to let the ball drop a good deal before it was hit, but that does not apply to-day. Take it at about the height of the shoulder. It will be difficult at first but it will pay in the end. And now for the proper way in which to play it—those details which are so important. The first rule, and it is more important than all the rest put together, is: “Keep your eye on the ball until it actually meets the racket!” I know that you will tell me you do this; I am just as equally sure that you don’t. If you do, then you are a good player already, and well on the way to more success. Of course, you think vou do! But watch yourself very carefully—and then watch others. You are so sure that you’re going to hit it with the centre of the racket—the only proper place of course—that you take your eye off it, anxious to see where it is going—before you have hit it! You should have made up your mind where the ball is going before vou start that long swing back which I told you about. After that the one thing to watch is the ball. Glue your eye to it no matter wbat is happening on the other side of the net. Watch it, if you can, till it leaves the racket. It sounds simple, but you’ll not learn it in a day or a week or a month or Even a season. In times of stress I am afraid we all take our eyes off the ball occasionally; and almost always disaster follows. Your hand and wTist and arm, you see, have to work with youT eye, and if your eye turns the job in, just before it is finished, what can you expect? Now here is another instruction, which, though it looks simple, you are going to find it difficult to carry out. Ninetynine players out of a hundred get too near the ball when they play not only this stroke but almost every other. You must get into the habit of standing well away at full arm stretch, so that you can get the whole sweep of shoulders, wrist, arm, and racket at work in one line. If you do that you will find it unnecessary to use a tremendous lot of force. The swing, the timing and the follow through will give you all the pace you want — and a good deal more than your opponent wants generally. To play this shot with a bent elbow is to lose not only speed, but direction as well. I mentioned, earlier in this series of articles, that there is hardly one lawn tennis shot which is played with the player standing square to the net. In the forehand stroke you stand sideways, (left shoulder to the net, weight well behind as you swing back, the weight to come in, of course, as you meet the ball. There are three ways of playing horizontal drives. Personally I don’t use top spin so I hit the ball with a plain racket, that is, with a racket which keeps at right angles with the ground. There is no spin at all on a ball hit this way. It is what we call a perfectly plain ball. Captain Wilding, who used to take the ball a little bit lower than what I do now, used to whip it up from behind, putting top spin on it, and this caused it to jump forward when it hit the ground. I am getting into rather advanced tennis now, but I may also remark here that top spin helps to keep a ball inside the line, as it causes it to dive down as soon as it begins to lose speed. A ball driven with top spin will often look to be going a yard outside the court, but will suddenly duck and hit just inside the line. The third way, a very common one in these days, is to turn the racket over slightly just as you hit the ball. The first five hundred times you try this you will send the ball into the net, and as a matter of fact, it is a dangerous stroke in the hands of a beginner. Perhaps we’d better leave it out for the time being. But the one stroke I do want you to avoid is the old “underhand lift” drive, for it’s quite cut of date. Years ago the ball was alllowed to drop to within a foot or eighteen inches of the ground, ar.d the racket was swung on to it with an upward blow, much after the style of an ordinary under-hand service. That stroke will never do any good in lawn tennis as it is played to-day. It cannot be made severe enough, and in my opinion it is not very accurate either. Of course most of you will havs seen or heard of Miss Ryan, who has still another wav of playing it. Miss Ryan, when a ball bounds at all high, nits it with her racket in an almost vertical

position, almost in the same way as the servioe. It is a gToat shot, and comes very fast off her racket, but naturally it is difficult to play when, on a soft court, the balls do not rise to any height. I have tried to give vou just an idea of every kind of forehand drive, but if you will take my advice you will stick to the first one for some time at all events. The ability to hit what, as I aay, we call a “plain ball” goes a long way in the game of to-day. It is a difficult shot to play with absolute accuracy, but once you have mastered it you will come to be known as a pretty dangerous opponent. In the meantime, by the way, don’t forget to practice that backhand grip I wrote about. Next week I hope to tell you some more about the way to play the backhand stroke, which is such a weakness amongst not only beginners, but even advanced, even tournament, oven Wimbledon players.