JEFF COHEN: Hello, I'm Jeff Cohen. In today's segment, we're going to talk about return of serve. In an earlier segment we talked about the serve and how important it is. Well, without a doubt, the return of serve is also very, very important. It's how you get the ball back in play. All right, so we'll start with the fundamentals. For those of you that have a two-handed backhand, you've got a huge advantage. And what I mean by that is when you're waiting on the serve, you want to make sure with your bottom hand you're holding your normal forehand grip and with your top hand, your non-dominant hand, you want to make sure that is set with your backhand grip. Now if it comes to your forehand, you're already set. You just got to make a quick shoulder turn. You don't have to make a grip change. On the backhand side, if somebody serves to your backhand, as you're making your shoulder turn and you're getting your racket back, you're going to balance the racket with your non-dominant hand and you're going to make a grip change with your bottom hand as you're turning your shoulders. So basically, if the ball is coming slow enough, you have plenty of time to make that grip change with your bottom hand. If it's a serve coming at you at about 100 miles an hour plus, then what you're really going to do is bunt the ball back with your top hand anyways. So that's a big advantage for those of you that have a two-handed backhand return. So now that you're committed with your grips, the first thing you want to do is you want to make a little split step which is basically more or less a little bunny hop, and you want to do that prior to the server making contact with the ball. So right when the server throws the ball up and right before they make contact with the serve, you want to do a little bit of a split step or a bunny hop and that will help you push off and move to your left or push off and move to your right if you have to move left or right in order to go get the ball and return a serve. Once you've made your split step, now it's a matter of turning very, very quickly. So if it looks like if you're left handed and it's a forehand, all you' going to do is make a quick little shoulder turn, get your racket back. So once you've got your shoulder's turn and your racket is on its way back to hit the return of serve, remember, the length of your back swing is dependent upon how fast or how big the incoming serve is. It's coming in quickly or it's a big serve, you want to shorten up the back swing. If it's a weak serve, you can do one of two things. You can grip and rip, take a big back swing or you can stand inside the baseline and take it early, or better yet you can chip and charge. Take it early, run to the net and immediately apply pressure to the server. From a tactical standpoint, where should you hit the return of save? If it's a doubles--if you're in a doubles game, why don't you start off with percentage tennis and try to hit the majority of your return of serves cross court at the server's feet. Occasionally, you want to test the net player at the net by hitting the ball at them. They may not want to be at the net. Or better yet, if they're crowding the net, throw up a lob on the return of serve. Keep them honest.
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