Question 14

A: Absolutely not! I'm a 4.0 tennis player and find that tennis enhances my golf stroke and visa versa. My brother is a 5.0 U.S.P.T.A. tennis instructor and we've discussed this many times.

The mental toughness, and the court and course strategies relate to each other in playing the percentages that are will within your abilities. Your ability to forget a bad shot or bad round suggest the type of attitude to take to both games. Understanding what your weapons are, and working hard on your weaknesses is crucial in both golf and tennis.

From a purely technical side the forehand stroke in tennis is remarkably similar to a correct golf stroke. With the Ideal Mechanical Advantage golf stroke you place the club in the palm of your hand, not in your fingers. Even if you play traditional 2-axis golf the impact position is very close. But remember once you put the golf club in the fingers of the bottom hand, meaning rear hand, you must rotate the forearm and the hands to create speed and to square the club face at impact and separation. Imagine that you placed a tennis racquet in your fingers and swung through, trying to rotate the racquet face back to square at the moment of impact and through separation, not to mention the fact that your body would be moving upward and backward away from the ball. This is something you would never attempt to do. No one has ever done this with a tennis racquet because it would be foolish and downright silly to do so. Unfortunately, it is what is required of you if you hold the golf club in the fingers of your hands.

To tell what is similar at impact for both golf and tennis, I am going to speak from a point of view of your power zone. This would be a ball in tennis that is approximately waist high; in golf your ball position should normally be between your sternum and left or forward shoulder. Single-axis ideal mechanical advantage technique allows you to make a straight line motion to the golf ball like a top spin forehand.

• No. 1: Your racquet hand will be extended back toward your forearm at impact, the same as impact with a golf ball.

• No.2: Your arm will be bent and the racquet will be on the same plane as your forearm; in golf your right arm will be bent, assuming you are a right handed golfer, while the shaft will be on plane with the forearm. If you play traditionally it will attempt to straighten to the forearm plane. What you are doing is shortening the radius to create speed. Our power is created from solid contact, flexion of the wrists and straightening the arm. Remember that power is horse-power, meaning speed. The faster you swing your arm and the stronger you snap your wrist, (provided that you do it at the proper time) the more power/speed you put on the ball.

• No. 3: Your head will be behind the ball or contact point and your right shoulder will be lower than your left. Again we are talking about your power zone, not a ball that is shoulder height, and of course we can place the ball position with golf precisely in our power zone.

• No. 4: Your weight will be moving forward and I highly advise stroking where you are aiming. Both golf and tennis share these traits. When you are practicing the short/sand game in golf you are making a similar if not identical motion to lob a shot in tennis. What happens is you use a high arm follow through and go from low to high. This technique is shown in my short game video.

One last piece of advice would be to swing a heavy club or a heavy racquet to build up the correct muscle groups for the motion.

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