Coaching Blog – The Boast Technique

Coaching Blog – The Boast Technique

I’ve talked about the boast before in terms of when to play it what you are aiming for, but here I think it’s worth looking at the technique itself.

One thing I realised when coaching last week, was that the best piece of advice is to play the boast more like a drop than a drive. By this I mean the technique needs to be more open so the racket face is more geared towards control, rather than the racket face being more closed and geared towards power, like a drive.

Club players seems to want to play the boast at a million miles an hour and smack it to the front from a big, drive-like swing. In fact, the boast is a control shot that needs to be played with care and attention to detail. This attention to detail is; an open racket face to put a bit of slice on the ball which helps to control the shot. Lean your head towards the ball. Play the boast from a medium sized backswing and smallish follow-through.

When you become good at it, only then can you consider whipping it in with more pace, but that comes from slicing across the ball and also titling your wrist. It doesn’t come from taking a bigger backswing and whacking it harder.

As you can see from both these photo’s of James, he’s a a great position to push in a boast to manoeuvre his opponent into the front corners. His backswing isn’t too big, racket face is open and his head moving towards the ball. All he then needs to do is slightly angle his wrist towards the side wall the split second before impact and he has a lovely, controlled boast. Perfect.