More of this Feature • Part 1: No Home Runs in Tennis

Related Resources • Sports That Help Your Tennis • Playing Tennis Without a Court • Stroke Repair Central

Another sport that can cause too high a tennis backswing is golf. I see two common golfer mistakes in tennis. Some players start with a high backswing, then hit slightly downward at the ball, which can only get the ball over the net if done as an intentional slice. Others start high, then dip the racquet head way below their hands before coming back up toward the ball. This creates the wrong kind of low-to-high motion: the racquet head cannot brush up the back of the ball properly, but instead hits flatly against the underside of the ball, creating too much lift and almost no topspin.

Racquetball causes a completely different set of problems. In racquetball, topspin is generally undesirable. It makes the ball jump up off the front wall, which only helps your opponent. Also, racquetball swings concentrate on the lower half of the arm, with a wrist snap that produces much of the swing speed. In tennis, letting your wrist snap through by keeping it loose (in the forward direction only!) can accentuate swing speeds, but the wrist action is always secondary to the motions of the whole arm and body. In tennis, using your wrist as much as you would for racquetball will harm both your game and your arm.

In theory, squash would have effects similar to racquetball, but I've run into very few squash players, so I have no observations to go on.

Another fairly rare sport, platform tennis, uses strokes that are much more like tennis strokes. In platform tennis as in tennis, topspin is desirable, but it's much harder to generate effectively in platform tennis and the attempt can cause errors. Playing a lot of platform tennis could cause a detrimental flattening out of your tennis strokes, but I think the risk is small, and platform is incredibly fun. It's also one of the few ball sports you can play outdoors in the wintriest of conditions.

That's about it for the list of sports that might harm your tennis strokes. I may have left out a couple about which I know almost nothing, but look like they could cause problems, such as cricket, but it's fairly safe to say that those sports I haven't mentioned shouldn't cause any problems with your tennis -- assuming they leave you in one piece. One bad day of skydiving might keep you off the tennis court for quite a while!