Right handed tennis

Right-Handed tennis.  I only attempted this after a tennis friend suggested that I try it.  I didn't believe it would work and secretly thought I would humiliate myself on court.  Luckily that did not happen.

This brings me to the picture of Rafael Nadal who is in fact right handed, but was taught to play tennis left handed from an early age.  Hence his current left handed status.  I saw somewhere in a newspaper article that if you try a task with your non-dominant hand a couple of times, by the time you do it the third time, you will be able to do it fairly well.  I haven't researched it in depth but it must be great brain stimulation to try and do simple everyday tasks with your other hand.

Back to tennis.  So I luckily am availing of a top class coach who has been hitting with me for three weeks now.  It's a great way to sharpen tennis skills because you have to track the ball faster and have the racquet back earlier to anticipate the ball.  That is, you have to be ready earlier to return a shot.  He told me that early on he played a match against a totally ambidextrous player.  This guy warmed up hitting left handed, and then once they started the match, was playing right handed shots equally, so he covered all the best angles.  Another friend of mine, who was trying to reach a very tricky shot, passed the racquet into his left hand and returned it perfectly!

Serving right handed felt really weird at first.  You have to break down the shot into several steps and freeze when you take the racquet back.  Much practice resulted in an acceptable serve, even a slice serve, which some people try for weeks before they can get.  So that was a nice unexpected result...

I will have to research the "brain" angle on all this right vs left handed work.  It's great fun, and just goes to show that even though you may think you can't do it, you should try, and then you can!!!