Chennai, Nov. 2 -- India's women's tennis number one Vaishnavi Adkar says her heavy topspin forehand
gives her a distinctive edge on court and it could become a defining feature of her game as the 21-year-old sets her sights on breaking into the world's top 200.
In women's tennis where flat, powerful groundstrokes are commonplace, Adkar's ability to impart heavy topspin gives the ball
a higher trajectory and makes it kick up sharply after bouncing.
It forces opponents to adjust their contact point and often pushes them behind the baseline, making it difficult to attack with the same authority.
Among the notable singles players in the current generation, only Adkar's forehand stroke has considerable spin.
Sometime back Karman Kaur Thandi also had a lethal forehand but her career has been hampered by injuries.
"The forehand that I have, I have a lot of spin on it, which not a lot of girls, especially in India or Asia, have.
It's pretty similar to the one the players have in Europe. So, the players here struggle to play against it," Adkar, ranked 344, told PTI in an interview ahead of the WTA 250 Chennai Open.
The Pune-born player says the shot came naturally to her, but turning it into a consistent weapon has required deliberate work with her coaching team.
"Since I started playing tennis, I used to hit the ball really hard. But I think the spin just came naturally with it.
To develop it even further and turn it into a weapon, we obviously
had to work more on it and fine-tune it.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.