Generating topspin on the forehand dink

Resist the temptation to use extra wrist 👊

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Frequently Asked Questions 🚨

1. How much do you warm up before matches?

I like to have a thorough warm up. I hit probably 30 minutes at least of dinks and drops, with a little half-court point play from the kitchen mixed in too. Ideally I finish with a game or two before I go on court, so all in all about an hour total. The most important thing to me is to get my heart rate going right before I step out on court. If you’ve ever seen me before a match, I’m doing pushups, side shuttles, and of course bouncing. My warm up is exactly what you’d think based on how I operate on the court.

2. What drills do you do to work on your hands?

I almost exclusively do the “bad dink, speedup” drill for counter practice. It’s as simple as it sounds: feed your partner a high dink and they whack it somewhere. Maybe for the first few I’ll have my partner tell me where they are going to get adjusted to the speed, but it’s mostly unknown. It’s definitely the most realistic drill to work on your hands - it’s hard! You shouldn’t get every ball back. If you are, then your partner needs to work on their speedups. A lot of good players like doing cooperative hands, and I think there’s a place for it. I personally don’t like training my brain to hit the ball softer than I would in a match.

Max has 0 chill 🤣

ppatour

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Quick Debrief from Max

First of all, they literally edited out my apology. I raised my hand and said sorry like a normal person. The second question I keep getting is “were you aiming at the face?” No! Obviously I was going for the body bag, but my target was Collin’s right shoulder. I missed my target by like 4-5 inches. If you look closely, his paddle was pretty low towards the backhand side. I had hit a couple of those balls right through the middle earlier in the match. I wanted to make it as hard as possible for him to hit a backhand. That shot was borderline insane, but it made sense based on the context of my prior shot selection and his paddle position. Ryan and I almost had this one! Lost a nail biter 12-10 in the third - watch out for Fu Freeman in 2025.

More PPA updates 🏆

James gets double silver in Utah 🥈

Our favorite coach went on quite the run in Utah, reaching Championship Sunday in both men’s and mixed doubles. Jimmy is back to cooking on the left.

Clinics with Ryan and Rachel in Tampa 🚨

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