What Is Swing Speed In Tennis & How It Affects Your Game?

Tennis involves a racquet used for striking the ball. There are a lot of words, definitions, regulations, and skills involved. A beginner’s understanding of tennis vocabulary and techniques can be challenging. Such words include stroke, which is the way you swing your tennis racquet to hit the ball. So, what is swing speed in tennis?

Swing speed is how a player strokes; slow, moderate, or fast. Rackets are designed for a different style of swinging. During a game, you would want to control and produce your power, feeling comfortable releasing the ball on the touch-on-touch shots, while keeping consistency all this narrows to swing speed.

Slow or moderate swing speed players have a slow and short offloading or blocking type of swing with or without much follow-through and are better suited to a racquet categorized as slow or moderate swing speed.

On the other hand, fast swing players are quick, ready, and have complete follow-through swings. They love to strike with a lot of torque and weight and are best suited with a fast-swing speed racquet.

How Does Swing Speed Affect a Game of Tennis?

Swing speed significantly affects dominance in a tennis game. Tennis power is solely determined by racket speed. If you want to improve your tennis game, you must learn to swing your racket quicker. The faster your swing speed, the faster the ball will fly, and your strokes will be more potent.

Any player will know that the final shot speed matters in a tennis game. 

However, to achieve this perfectly, you need to understand other tennis definitions as power potential, bounce speed, and impact speed. 

The total swing speed and ball speed just before a collision is the impact speed. The power potential for a particular hitting position is always a set proportion of the impact speed and varies for each location and racquet. Bounce speed is determined by the weight, frame stiffness, and string bed rigidity at the point of impact.

Nonetheless, swing speed is a key factor determining shot speed, as bounce happens when a racquet is already moving at a certain speed. The final shot speed is calculated by adding the bounce speed to the swing speed of the racquet from which it bounces.

For example, the racquet gives a set number of miles per hour to the shot for any given impact speed, while the swing speed adds a variable number. There is less racquet contribution to the final shot speed with a fast-swing speed than ball speed. On the other hand, slow swing speed compared to ball speed results in a higher effect of the racquet design on the shot speed.

Read also: 21 Incredible Tennis Tips: Improve To The Next Level

How Do I Increase My Tennis Swing Speed?

This question is probably not as black and white as you would want about answering. However, the notion is more complicated than simply “swinging harder” or something along those lines. It’s not always about strength.

There is no evidence that conditioning workouts such as weights, stretching, or other similar routines help you in improving swing speed.

As much as you need to be physically fit, the correct technique combined with staying relaxed results in a quick swing. Do not strain or muscle the ball as it reduces racket head speed. Swing speed is attributed to several interrelated factors. 

The critical factor in swing speed lies in power and control. An ordinary person can improve swing speed by using the wrist. However, this can significantly alter the racquet face, particularly within the contact area. Thus, even as the swing speed is increased, the control element suffers.

The aim is to increase swing speed by using a stroke that keeps the racquet oriented relative to the forearm while increasing angular momentum via rotational swing components produced along the swing path.

Additionally, the perfect way to increase your swing speed can be explained by science. Acceleration is velocity over time, and velocity equals distance over time. As a result, increasing swing speed is as simple as shortening the time it takes to complete a stroke distance or increasing the stroke distance within a certain period.

In many professional tennis plays, you will observe a classic “double bend.” This aspect of the swing is sped up as a unit through the contact window, resulting in a fully consistent racquet plane swung with an extended arm position which brings a longer swing path, or a more compact, shorter swing path that brings a faster swing speed.

Pros thus use this technique to build a longer stroke, typically by using a loop swing from the moment they begin to shoot. Many people, however, prefer a shorter, more compact stroke, which is frequently achieved by using a smaller radius, improving stroke velocity.

You might also be interested in how to add more power to your tennis racket. Your swing speed isn’t the only place where you can increase the power for your game so I highly encourage that you read the article about it.

Types of Swings In Tennis

In further understanding swing speed, you should also know the types of swings as they all vary in technique, differentiating their speeds in play.

Here are the basic strokes in tennis:

1. Serve – it’s the stroke used to start each point in a match.
2. Forehand groundstroke – it is the shot made from the baseline with your dominant hand holding the racket. For a right-handed player, the swing begins on the right side of the body and moves forward and across the body when you contact the ball. The palm of your hand is turned away from your body.
3. Backhand groundstroke – it is another type of groundstroke. It can either be onehanded or twohanded. Unlike the forehand, it is hit with the palm of your dominant hand facing the direction of the stroke.
4. Forehand volley – It is played closer to the net. It is hit with the racquet in your dominant hand, palm facing away from your body like the forehand stroke.
5. Backhand volley – it is hit using your dominant hand with its back facing away from your body.
6. Overhead smash – here, the player contacts the ball with the racket above his head.

Measuring Swing Speed

Yes, you can measure your swing speed. You use a professional radar to measure swing speed. According to GIG data, the average swing speed for men in groundstrokes ranges from 71 to 83 mph, while that of women ranges from 70 to 79 mph.

To sum up, swing speed is key to becoming an excellent tennis player as the faster you are, the more dominant you can be in a game (What Is Swing Style?) (What Is Swing Style?).