In this video we're going to talk about a backhand drill and really gonna help you work on your placement, which is the second most key fundamental area of anyone's tennis game consistency and placement. 

Just one quick note, if you still need to work on consistency with your backhand, make sure you check out the forehand drill, because you can do that exact same drill on your backhand side, and it really helps you gain more confidence and consistency. 

For this drill, you can equally work on the forehand side, but we're going to focus it on the backhand side. So I want you to understand the idea of placement and it's really simple. Wherever the bracket face is looking at contact, that's where the ball is going to go. So what this means is if I'm hitting a backhand here, this would be what I consider on time, which would make the ball go straight. 

And so by swinging starting the racket where I'm making contact here, the balls gonna go straight. If I wanted to get the ball to go more cross court on my backhand side, what I need to do is start my swing earlier sort of rise in my contact point earlier, hence having the racket face look more cross court.

 And if I want the ball to go more, let's say inside out on my backhand side, I would start the racket swing later having my racket arrive at the contact point later having the racket face look more to the inside out kind of backhand area. So the drill we want to do today is simply focus on hitting the ball cross court, you can do this with a partner or you can do with a ball machine. 

And so the drill you would do is try to hit 10 balls cross court, as you hit every ball, what you're saying on time is late or early or on time, meaning that until you hit the ball cross court, you can either say on time or choose to say nothing. If you hit the ball to cross court and you miss it wide, you're going to say I need to swing later, meaning that I need to wait early so my racket doesn't wait longer cross court on time.

Now, if you hit the ball is more down line, you will tell yourself I need to swing earlier. So my racket gets a contact point sooner making the ball go more cross court. This is all about timing. And the more you can train yourself to think later or earlier or say nothing because it's on time, the better you are going to get and making sure you can hit the cross court. So again, you want to do this 10 times with your partner, just focusing on hitting the ball cross court, after you do this drill. 

Another great drill is having the same setup where you're on the backhand side But now your partner is going to be on their forehand side on the other side of the court and you're gonna hit down the line, which means you want to be on time, doing these two drills are going to really help you hone in on your placement. 

Because the two biggest placements in tennis it's going to be cross court and down the line. And if you can master these, it's going to really give you an edge over your opponent being able to place the ball and potentially getting the ball to their weakness much quicker than they can get the ball to your weakness.