Helping you to play better with the skills that you already have is the primary goal of our Tennis Whisperer program. In this missive, we focus on overcoming your natural dominance, and in particular your feet.

We’re hard-wired neurologically from birth to being right- or left-handed. We prefer using one dominant hand, and for most of us, one eye.  And when we first learned tennis, our coach inadvertently focused on our dominance.

What isn’t well-known, however, is that you can be right-handed but have a dominant left foot or left eye —  “cross-dominance.” 

Forehands are preferred if you’re right-handed and left-eyed (or vice versa) because you can stroke the ball comfortably in the sight of the dominant eye. Backhands are a challenge though. Right-handed, left-eyed players, for example, sometimes lose the correct backhand stance, because they have to turn to keep sight of the ball.  The ‘fix’ so to speak is to open up your stance to take away your eye dominance. 

While strength training can build muscle on your nondominant side to improve your balance, strength training will not address the eye, hand and foot coordination required to consistently hit a tennis ball well.

But what about return of serve which requires you to move to the ball from a standing start while maintaining your balance? Foot cross dominance is now key, effecting your stance, stroke and footwork.

In our short video below, we show you how to build the neural pathways to ‘balance out’ your foot dominance. Notice how our model, Pamela, uses a basic crossover step to trap the ball on either side. Note, a partner is probably preferred but you can use a wall if you want to practice alone.

Remember to start slow, and be patient with yourself. It takes time to repave the neural pathways, particularly if you’ve played for many years.

The good news: you can teach an older dog new tricks. And remember, have fun while you’re learning your new tricks.

The Tennis Whisperer

How do the stars set up their racquets to enhance their game? And how has the evolution of racquets changed tennis itself? 

By Anthony Colangelo

JANUARY 20, 2020

is perfect hair held by a perfect headband against a pressed polo shirt, Roger Federer walked on to centre court at the Queensland Tennis Centre for his first tournament of 2014 to an adoring crowd.

A real-life glimpse of Federer was enough to transfix even the most casual tennis fan but, on this occasion, if you were in the know, it was his equipment that would have held your attention as much as the tennis God himself.

Federer had broken with a decade of tradition and got himself a new racquet.

The whole of 2013 had been a career low for the Swiss champion. Usually No.1 or No.2 in the world, he’d ended the year ranked sixth. A premature exit from Wimbledon, in the second round, had marked the first time in 36 consecutive grand slams that he had not made a quarter-final. He’d lasted until just the fourth round in the US Open, a tournament he’d won five times before.

These results represented, in the minds of some, the start of a career plateau for the then-32-year-old, with back injuries among the factors blunting his dominance.

But Federer arrested the slide.

He hired a new coach – his childhood hero, six-time grand-slam winner Stefan Edberg. He set about mending his body. And, perhaps less obviously until he appeared on court in Brisbane, he changed his magic wand – the racquet he’d wielded through his rise to tennis legend.

For a certain weekend warrior type of tennis player, changing racquets might offer a seductive solution to a subpar game. After all, it’s easier to spend a few hundred dollars on new equipment than it might be to work on a weak backhand or sluggish legs.

And a change can’t do much harm, right?

At the elite level, there is nowhere to hide. Just as any adjustment in stroke will be identified and perfected so will every variable gram, inch or centimetre in a racquet be scrutinised. The racquet is the player’s key weapon and one with which he or she has a symbiotic relationship. If a change is to be made to this set-up, it will be for good reason. And even an improvement of 1 per cent is a good reason in international tennis.

For Federer, at that moment in Brisbane, the stakes could not have been higher.

More recently, in the lead-up to this year’s Australian Open, eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that Serena Williams has stepped out with a new racquet.

How do stars such as Federer, his on-court arch rival Rafael Nadal and Barty and Williams set up their racquets to boost their games? And how have changes in racquets over the years changed the game itself?

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