Pro Tennis

The backhand slice is mostly seen as a defensive shot to win time, change pace, and get back into position. But there are pros that use it as a weapon.

Have you been watching the Western and Southern Open? It’s nice to have ATP tennis back and I try to watch as much as time allows through TennisTV. They usually do a solid highlights package per match if you can’t watch the full match. Yesterday I saw a part of the match between Dan Evans and Andrey Rublev. I thought it would be entertaining and I wasn’t wrong. Rublev hits the ball like there is no tomorrow, while Evans is more of a strategizing player who cleverly uses the backhand slice more than most players on the tour.

There are a few players that resort to the slice more than not and most of them are one-handed backhand players. Federer is a great example of a player that changes direction, tempo, and uses the backhand slice as a weapon. He often uses a short cross-court backhand slice to draw the player in towards the net for example.

Feliciano Lopez is another player that prefers the slice over his topspin backhand. Perhaps they just feel like it’s an easier shot, but they do use it to great effect and can sometimes hit winners even with a slower shot as the slice.

Dan Evans Backhand Slice Masterclass

But yesterday was all about Dan Evans and how he defended and moved the ball around with the slice. He does not have a bad one-handed topspin shot when he hits it, but he definitely feels more comfortable using the slice. I would say 80% of his backhands are sliced. You would think that on the ATP Tour that shot would be punished over and over, but it’s not quite as easy.

If the slice is low and heavy and well-placed, you would need to have a Nadal-esque forehand to hit a winner. Nadal loves to play against that shot, but he is lefty with a massive forehand topspin jab. Most players don’t have that kind of weapon in their arsenal.

In Rublev’s case, he is a player that often goes for broke on both wings. He sometimes seems to lack that plan-B and in this match, he was missing a bit too much in critical moments to get away with it. And like always, Evans defended well, used his forehand when he had the chance, hit some nice volleys, and took the W.

So if you don’t have a great topspin backhand. Don’t worry too much, you can still get by with your slice backhand. Just look at players like Fernando Gonzales, Roger Federer, Feliciano Lopez, and Dan Evans (Del Potro also likes using the backhand slice a lot, perhaps due to pre-existing wrist injuries).

What do you think of the backhand slice? How often do you use it? 

Tennis returns! From today you can watch tennis live on the Challenger Tour. There are two tournaments this week. Prague and Todi.

I should really write, “Men’s Tennis returns” because the women are already underway from last week with Fiona Ferro winning the WTA Tournament in Palermo. There is also an exciting tournament on the WTA Tour this week called the Top Seed Open in Lexington. Serena Williams was upset yesterday in the quarter-finals by #116-ranked Shelby Rogers so we need to be prepared to see some “strange” results as tennis returns. It will, therefore, be interesting to watch tennis live on the Challenger Tour and see what kind of upsets we get on the men’s side of the game.

The Challenger Tour is the below the ATP tour in status and prize money, but due to the COVID situation and the constantly changing ATP calendar, we will see Stan Wawrinka play the ICLTK Prague Open. You can check out the draw for that tournament here. After a bye in the first round, he will play the winner between Lukas Rosol (remember when he beat Nadal at Wimbledon by just teeing off every shot?) and Roman Safiullin.

It’s hard to say who will do well when tennis returns. Who has had a good “off-season”? Who can handle the new situation with fewer to no spectators? It’s all up in the air at the moment. We just need to be happy that tennis is back and enjoy the action as it unfolds.

Live-streaming tennis free

The Challenger Tour offers free live-streaming on the ATP website in case you are keen to watch some live tennis again! I sure am. I’m not sure about the situation in Todi, but I have already watched some of the action from the Prague Open. Below you can find the top seeds in Prague. Not a bad line-up with Stan Wawrinka, Jiri Vesely, Pierre Hugues-Herbert, and Philipp Kohlschreiber.

The top players in the Challenger Tour event in Todi include:

Federico Delbonis, Gianluca Mager, Stefano Travagli, and Andreas Seppi. All pretty accomplished players, especially on clay! Italy has become a very strong tennis nation these days with players like Fabio Fognini and Matteo Berrettini leading the pack.

Will you be watching the Challenger Tour and who do you think will do well or poorly as tennis returns?

I am not sure if you have watched the Ultimate Tennis Showdown by now, but I really enjoy the new format and the production of the event…

The Ultimate Tennis Showdown is an exhibition event with a bunch of experimental rule changes. I wrote about it in my first posts about this summer’s tennis exhibitions. You can use cards to serve twice in a row (called “stealing a serve”), your winners can count times three, you can force your opponent to only have one serve (these cards last for two points in a row) and so on. It creates an interesting gamification element to tennis that is fresh and exciting. We’re all started for competitive tennis, but the format of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown is a timely test to see if we can find new ways to enjoy tennis.

The idea of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) is to provide tennis excitement in a fast-paced format. There are four sets to be played and every set has a time limit of ten minutes. The player who has won the most points after ten minutes wins the set. If they are two sets all after four sets, they will play “sudden death”. As you can hear, it is all pretty fast-paced and that is the idea.

UTS 2

UTS 2 is the follow-up to the first part. There have been some changes to the format, they have introduced a Women’s competition and they offer (perhaps for a limited time) the possibility to watch the Ultimate Tennis Showdown for free here. I watched UTS 1 on Eurosport and highlights on YouTube, but the only way to watch the night matches live was to subscribe to the service. The cost is €9.99 per month, but since it’s hard to say where this tournament will go in these “early days”, it seems like a slightly strange payment model.

I know it’s a quite drastic way to try to innovate tennis and I can understand people who can get on board with the scoring system or the fast-paced action, but if there is a time to see if tennis can reinvent itself, it is now. And although this will probably never replace the standard tennis format, it adds another layer to the sport that could bring another type of audience to traditional tennis.

I definitely think it’s worth a watch. UTS 2 consists of players like Gasquet, Popyrin, Dimitrov, Lopez, Paire, Verdasco, Mahut, Moutet, Zverev, Auger-Aliassme and Brown on the men’s side. In the women’s tournament, there are four players: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Alizé Cornet, Ons Jabeur, and 13-year-old Brenda Fruhvirtova. They will jump right into the Final Four on August 1-2, while the men will go through group stages.

Have you watched UTS? What are your thoughts?