Mastering the contact point: How to read the ball and get in the perfect position to hit it

Mastering the perfect contact point is vital when it comes to playing your best tennis. Here’s how you can practice reading the ball and learn to hit the optimum contact point every time…

In this post I’m going to strip tennis right back to what I believe to be the absolute basics.

At its heart, tennis can be divided into two main skills – the very foundations on which your game is built. The first is your ability to send the ball: simply, to hit it over the net and into the court on the other side.

The other skill is your ability to receive the ball: to understand what the ball is doing on its way to you in order to get into the best position possible to then send it back. 

The point at which send and receive meet is the contact point. And by this I’m not referring to the ball being struck in the middle of the racket strings (although this is desirable), but instead the position of the ball in relation to your body when you hit it.

(For most shots, this will be hitting the ball in front and at a comfortable distance to the side of you. But all shots are different in terms of their desired height: for a forehand trading shot from the baseline you’d probably want to make contact around waist-height, but an attacking finishing volley might be more shoulder-height… talking to a coach can help you with this if you’re not sure exactly what it should be).

Having a good contact point is the very essence of playing your best tennis. It means you are balanced and you are able to have a strong body weight transfer as you rotate through the ball: your technique is able to work to its maximum so you can hit your best shot with the least amount of effort. It’s so important to get right that when I coach beginners it’s the first thing I teach; and with more experienced players it’s the first thing I look at, and make sure they’re aware of. 

I truly believe that once you have developed your sending and receiving skills, which will result in having a consistently good contact point every time you strike the ball, you’ll feel your game really move to the next level.

The core skill of receiving: reading the ball

So we know that your ‘sending skill’ is your ability to hit the ball over the net, but what does it mean to have a ‘receiving skill?’ The basic skill of receiving is reading the ball: picking up on all the clues and signals that can tell you where and how the ball will bounce, and therefore telling you where you need to be in order to hit it back with the ideal contact point.

Reading the ball is primarily about working out its five main characteristics: 

• Direction - For most players, this is the first thing your brain picks up. Is it coming to your forehand and backhand? That’s the first decision you make, and the earlier you make it, the sooner you can get your racket back ready in preparation.

• Pace – How fast is the ball travelling to you? Do you need to get your racket back quickly? Do you have time to hit a full shot back or should you just block it?

• Height – How high has the ball been hit? Can you reach the lob or do you need to quickly get back? Do you need to retreat for a higher bounce or bend your knees for a low ball?

• Depth - Do you need to run forward or backwards to get in position?

• Spin - What spin, if any, has your opponent put on the ball? Can you predict where the bounce will take the ball?

The very best players are effective because they’re so good at reading the ball early. They are able to answer these questions all at once at seemingly-impossible speed. Instinctively, they can get their racket back in preparation, move their feet efficiently to get in the right position behind the ball and strike it with the ideal contact point.  

They look like they have all the time in the world. 

How to get better at reading the ball - The Shout-Out Game

Reading the ball is an absolutely critical tennis skill, but we can forget, or sometimes just don’t even know, that we need to focus on it during training just as much as we do on our ability to send the ball back over.

A good starting point for practicing reading the ball is to play The Shout-Out Game. This game will help you to develop your skills to see the ball early, the exact moment your opponent hits it, which will give you more time to then work out the characteristics of it. This ultimately gives you more time to prepare and get in a suitable position to send your desired shot back.

How to play 

The Shout-Out Game is split into various progression stages. To begin with simply shout ‘Now!’ every time your opponent/partner on the court makes contact with the ball. This will encourage you to be much more aware of what the player the other side of the net is doing, ie striking the ball. In my experience, players who haven’t worked on their receiving skills generally react to the ball a little late - long after their opponent has hit the ball and when its already come over the net to their side - which makes it much harder to accurately read and therefore get into an ideal position to strike back. These players are missing out on earlier time available to read the ball ie the moment it leaves their opponents racket, so end up feeling a little rushed.

Repeating this ‘Now!’ shout-out encourages you to be more aware of the ball much earlier, and allows you to react to what your opponent is doing, rather than just what they’ve done.

It’s extremely good practice for buying yourself more time and can be used as a brilliant training game for players of all abilities and experience.

Once it has been practiced and you feel more in tune with the ball as your opponent hits it, you can then progress to using that time to begin to work out the ball’s individual characteristics…

Breaking down the characteristics

Start with the direction. Every time the ball leaves your opponent’s racket, shout out which shot you are going to hit back according to which direction it is travelling, ie ‘Forehand’ or ‘Backhand’.  Try to call these cues out as early as you can - before the ball travels over the net to your side of the court, or even the moment it leaves your opponent’s racket – and prepare your racket straight away as you move to the ball.

Once you feel that you can read the direction early (i.e. you are consistently calling the correct direction before the ball crosses the net to your side), do the same game with another characteristic – for example, depth. You could shout ‘Short’, ‘Medium’ or ‘Deep’ according to where you think the ball will bounce on your side. 

And so on with the other characteristics - height (‘High’, ‘Low’), pace (‘Fast’, ‘Slow’) and spin (‘Flat’, ‘Topspin’, ‘Slice’.) 

Once you feel confident, you can even begin to merge them: ‘Forehand deep’, ‘Backhand slice’ etc (perhaps limiting yourself to just two or three characteristics at a time otherwise it can seem a bit much!)

Reading the ball: moving to the next level

However, reading the ball well is about much more than just understanding the five characteristics of the sent ball after it has left your opponent’s racket. 

When we play tennis we are always trying to do what we can to buy ourselves more time. It could be whacking up a high defensive shot to allow us more time to recover, it could be getting the racket back early as we move to the ball so we’re not rushing with our swing. Whatever it is we do, having time on the court just makes everything easier. And the earlier we can read the ball, the more time we have to get in the right position for the best possible contact point. So it’s about being proactive. 

One of the main reasons that inexperienced players look rushed is that they only start reading the ball at some point after it has left their opponent’s racket, whereas an advanced player can begin reading earlier, by picking up on clues well before the other player even hits the ball. In this way they create time for themselves.

So how can you achieve this advanced level of ball-reading?

First, you can watch your opponent. Observing how your opponent plays the shot gives you an instant insight into what the ball will be doing on its way to you. Have they cut under the ball to slice it? Have they wound up their forehand and swung through at maximum speed, or were they on a defensive stretch, barely making contact and only able to push it up over the net?

Have they changed their grip, so you can anticipate the spin? Are you expecting a slice, a high topsin moonball or a flat attacking firecracker?

Second, you can go back even earlier than this. What shot have you just sent your opponent? Was it a short ball they can easily attack you with? Was it a tight angle that’s got them stretching wide? Or have you got them scurrying to a little drop shot?

Being aware of these answers can help you anticipate what might come back before your opponent has even hit the ball. And it is this anticipation, matched with your sharp ability to read the characteristics of the ball, that will get you on the path to next-level tennis!

So next time you’re out on the practice court, have a go at playing The Shout-Out Game. You’ll be amazed at just how much more time you’ll have to get into position ready to strike the ball back with that perfect contact point!

See also:

Rallying: 3 top tips every beginner should know

Smart tennis: why you should hit a lot more balls cross court

Lizzie Flint is a writer and a practicing level 3 LTA professional tennis coach.

She has been in love with the game since picking up a racquet at the age of four – and she has seen it from every possible angle: playing, analysing and reporting on tennis all over the world. Read more about Lizzie here.