The Myth of the Dog

Does Roger Pat the Dog? When? Why?

Do you “pat the dog” on your totally modern forehand? You want to don’t you? Because that’s what Roger does. Just go on YouTube and the “experts” will tell you he does—he points his racket face down to the court and pulls it forward like it was coming off a table top!

Is “patting the dog” like that some kind of modern forehand magic bullet ? No. It’s the opposite. It’s one of the worst things you could possibly focus on.

Does Roger actually put the racket completely flat on the table top? Rarely. Roger closes the racket face but mostly to lesser degrees. And he also closes it at different points in the swing.

Rarely is his racket fully face down—that only happens on really low balls like in the animation above. Does he do it intentionally? No it’s a natural consequence of other underlying factors.

Accuracy

So how do these counterproductive teaching concepts get started? When I did the first high speed filming of professional players 20 years ago, the goal was to create a data base to see what the human eye could not see—what really happens in high level…