See if you can stump the system by posing a question you don't think can be addressed by any type tennis instruction or specifically CTM. Conflicting advise like if you should lift up and stay down on groundstrokes or any other conflicting tennis information you have noticed over the years.
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1.) Short ball to a forehand: when to go inverse, when to go closed? 2.) Wide ball to one handed backhand: when to go open, when to go closed? What are the cues or heuristics I can follow to make this decision easy and automatic?
Mid-point, how do I decide between closed stance and inverse stance on short forehands requiring me to move forward? And how do I decide between open stance and closed stance on my on-the-run topspin one handed backhand? Do we have heuristics for these, is it a matter of always favoring one over the other, or is it a scenario where you let where you're at in your stride decide for you? I realized recently that I don't have any cognitive awareness on this matter and I'd like to shore that up.
On a single handed backhand there are like two different instructions, styles to hit a top spin shot.
To me the old is spreading both arms after prepping and follow thru not to turn over. This style is by default producing slower ball and significantly less spin. And it is straining the playing arm a lot more, cause impact seems to stay more at the body line rather than way forward your stance. Also the slower racket head speed means the ball has bigger effect on the racket, cause the kinetic energy (mv2) is so largely dependent on the velocity.
My, golf and ice hockey background derived take and the hardest modern backhands on tour looks to rely on lifting and rotating really hard throwing the racket head over (Thiem, Wawrinka and latest Federer a touch more modest).
However both ways have their benefits, but mixing up will result a mess. As an example, if in hurry or just countering a return of 1st serve you just need a little upward motion and ever so slightly closed or neutral stringbed for put topspin to pull the ball back onto the baseline, best option could easily be; prep, spred arms and push up. For attacking 2nd serve however I’d prefer strong rotating and throwing the racket at the ball for higher rpm and ball speed.