Matthew Supert

I recently discovered an amazing app for the iPhone and my Apple Watch. It is called Swing Tennis and it will track all of your shots during a tennis match. It does this automatically, using the accelerometer to track the type of shot and spin you use. It is pretty amazing. 

You can input some specific information while you play a match, tracking the score and faults for serving very easily. There is some additional tracking such as unforced errors, etc. if you want to track it, but I have not felt that was necessary at this point. 

One of my favorite apps at the moment. 

Tennis season is ongoing right now and I am having a terrible spring season. I have basically forgotten or lost the ability to hit a forehand. I am not sure what it is but my shots this spring literally are hitting the back fence. I consider myself to be a pretty decent tennis player. My back hand, volleys and service are doing pretty well, but I just cannot hit a forehand at all. 

The whole mechanic of the swing feels "off" and I am afraid I am actually developing bad muscle memory at this point. A good forehand has this satisfying connection with the ball that you just know feels good when you hit it. The ball has topspin and momentum. Whenever I hit the ball right now though my whole body positioning and contact with the ball feels awful and either end up hitting the ball into the ground or into the back fence. It is quite frankly embarrassing. 

Megan was kind enough to go out to the court and hit with me this past Friday and I thought that I had found my stroke again. I had two matches to play this Saturday due to the weather this past spring. My first matching in the morning was a solid win. Not my best game ever, but I had my confidence back. When I got to my second match in the afternoon though, things fell apart. I quickly devolved from being able to it a solid shot to not being able to hit a forehand at all and I quickly lost the second set 1-6. 

So I think I need to do a radical change on my tennis store before I settle too far into this pit that I am defending into. I feel like my mechanics are already "damaged" with my one handed forehand so I am going to start practicing a two handed forehand. My backhand, even before this ordeal has always been my better groundstroke. The two handed action forces my body into a more proper position. I can't swing as easily with an open body, etc. 

I feel that a two handed forehand will help me shorten my swing, but also force me to swing through my stroke rather than swing "up" on my stroke, which I think is what I am doing right now. It will be an experiment over the next week or two, but I hope it can help me get my game back on track. 

reading the details online it seems that the 2HFH has the opinion of many has having consistency, something which is my most needed item at this moment. 

The summer tennis season ended this past week. I broke strings on two of my rackets and I figure that sort of sums up my season this summer so far. All of my matches were pretty close, but I couldn't pull any of them out. I finished 2-5 for the summer session and frustrated is the mildest term I would use. 

I can't quite say exactly what it is that has me not playing well. In fact I feel I am mostly playing good tennis, but it seems like I am either hitting winners or hitting unforced errors into the net. Perhaps it is a patience thing. Let's just hope the fall season plays a bit better. 

Have you ever had one one of those games where you couldn't miss a shot? You are just on and you are making incredible shots that you normally wouldn't make. Hit the angles, get the digs, make to impossible shots and return them like a pro? Yeah, that was my opponent today at tennis. I honestly did not play an awesome game, but I was putting some really nice shots into corners that most opponents would not have gotten to. The guy I played tonight not only got to my shots, but hit really solid winners back to me. More than once he would put a perfect a perfect lob over my head while I was at the net and it would land right on the back of the basline.