Volley Lesson: How to Volley Against Heavy Topspin & Heavy Slice (2018)

In this video, you'll learn the difference between volleying vs. heavy topspin and heavy slice.

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First of all, how do we KNOW the oncoming ball has topspin or backspin? Well, there’s a few ways. One way is we pay close attention to how our opponent’s racket is traveling towards the ball. If it’s approaching the ball from underneath, kinda going low to high, that’s going to be a topspin ball… and if he’s going from high to low, that’s going to create backspin. A topspin ball will typically have a steep arc to it, whereas a backspin ball will be a little bit more of a straight line, or a line drive! The other way is to look at the seams of the ball. Are they tumbling over, towards you? That’s a topspin ball… are they moving away from you? That’s backspin.

So let’s sort of preface this so we’re comparing apples to apples and assume that both shots we’re receiving are about a foot over the net at contact… just for experiments sake… We know that the height that we make contact is always going to have an effect on how we approach a given volley… in general, the lower the volley is, the more open the racket face is going to be (if we’re taking the ball out of the air) and the higher the ball goes, the more closed the racket face can be.

So, here’s the thing that helped me.

There’s two “types” of volleys.

Volley 1 is a “placement” type of volley. You know, a volley that you’re hitting a little bit more passively…almost like you’re catching the ball…you’re not trying to put a lot of juice on this volley, normally you’ll want to use the placement volley when you’ve got a wide open court and just need to sort of bunt the ball there, or if the ball is absolutely ripped at you, you don’t have a whole lot of time, and are just kind of reacting… just trying to get the ball in the court. That’s when we’re going to most likely see the placement volley”.

Volley 2 is more of an attacking volley. This is the kind of volley that coaches will tell you to “punch” or “stick” the volley… typically you’ve got your weight behind this ball, you’re moving forward through this ball, you might even have a little bit more of a back swing, and a little bit more of a follow through. You’re most likely going to use this volley when you’ve got more of a floating ball, when you have time, or if you NEED to whistle this ball through the court quickly. You’re going to attack it.

And the crazy thing is, depending on what type of volley you’re hitting, this will either GREATLY CHANGE your approach on the particular type of spin you’re receiving… or it won’t.

For example, if you’re hitting the “catch and place” volley the ball is going to have a pretty significant impact on the racket face.

A heavy topspin ball that you’re just trying “not to miss” or to “catch and place” or hit a little bit more passively is ALWAYS going to rebound higher off your strings… especially if you’ve got a slightly open racket face, like you want to do on most you hit out of the air.

So to counteract this, on our 1 foot over the net volley, we really have to make sure we’re making solid contact with the back of the ball, and we get a feeling that we’ve got the racket head above the ball going into contact if the ball is above the net. So we feel like we’re on top of this ball if we’re taking this ball above the net… again, if you’re playing this ball below the net, you’re going to want to get under the ball so you can volley up and over the net.

On the other hand, if we’re hitting that “Catch and Place” volley… and the ball’s got crazy slice on it… that ball is going to rebound much lower off a more “passive” racket face. So what do we do?

We gotta get a little bit more underneath this ball with our legs, and aim a little bit more towards the bottom of the ball to keep from dumping it into the net.

Remember, the catch and place volley is typically going to be used when you’ve got a wide open court or if you don’t have a lot of time to react to the oncoming ball because your opponent just peppered it at ya.

ON the other hand Volley 2, the attacking volley is a lot LESS disturbed by the spin… because we’re imposing our will on that ball, we’re probably a little firmer on contact, so the racket is winning the collision and telling the ball what to do.

In other words, if you can hit your volley aggressively (using good technique, of course), you’ve got good spacing to the ball, good alignment, good balance, and you have your weight going forward… you won’t have to worry too much about changing your approach to the ball. All things else being equal.

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