He’s the creep among the punches. He’s mean, annoying and disgusting. Very few people like him. But it’s hardly used. Many players don’t dare to play the slice.
If it is not played effectively, the opponent often has an easy game and you get big problems with the exchange of the ball. If the slice is not flat and played with a lot of cut, it turns from a monster into a friendly boy who does no harm to the opponent. The reason for this is often a weak wrist, which takes away the fire from the slice and defuses it. If you use the slice and it is regularly shot around your ears, you are a little bit the child who burned himself at the open fire.
You shy away from the slice and take it out of your repertoire. The slice stands and falls with the insertion of the wrist. If this is not stable enough, the slice becomes shaky and you lose control of the shot. The ball moves higher away from the covering, loses its cut and thus its effect. So what can you do if your wrist sometimes lacks stability?
If you set the racket rather low on the slice, you leave control and cut on the track. Novak Djokovic, for example, used the club quite flat a few years ago when he tried a slice. He was always a little bit ridiculed for his technique at the beginning of this complicated stroke. Over time, however, the club moved higher and higher at the beginning of the slice. The result was a long time coming, but now we can be proud of it. Novak Djokovic is now playing a quite decent slice, which he intersperses skillfully from time to time.
Try to raise the club. Your head and shoulder height serves as a guideline. If you place the club at the height of your shoulder or even above, you will get a better feel for the shot. In the following paragraph I describe an exercise that will help you to play the slice well – even if your wrist is not stable. The basic prerequisite for this exercise is the high placed bat.
Stand with your stomach in front of the net. The distance between you and the net is about one meter. Now put the bat up high, lead it towards the edge of the net and strip it with the bat. The open face of the club faces up to the sky, as if you were going under the ball with the slice. Now move your club face forward on the edge of the net. Imagine opening three bottles in succession with your bat. This is not only a good mnemonic, but also gives you a good indication of how far you should lead the racket through the ball forward. This simple exercise trains your sense of leading the slice and not just playing it wildly from below or tearing the club sideways outwards.
In order to gain even more feel and control for the slice, your stability is important. As a right-handed person, your right leg is at the front (left-handed person’s left leg is the left-handed one), your weight is shifted to the front leg and your body’s centre of gravity is shifted downwards, so that you don’t have to balance your body during the slice. With this attitude and the exercise described above, you will improve your slice and make it more effective. Don’t be discouraged if your first attempts fail and you don’t get the desired result. The slice is all about feeling. And you only learn that feeling in time.
Roger Federer’s technique is a prime example of this slice. Just take a look at how the Swiss Maestro sets the bat and then guides it through the ball. Good luck with the slice and good luck with the “Fiesling”.