The dying art of the slice that actually stays low

Nearly everyone can chop at a backhand. Very few can make one skid, and the difference is a wrist that stays firm.

There are two shots wearing the same name. One is a floating, arcing under-spun ball that lands mid-court at a comfortable height and gets put away. The other is a knife that lands short of the service line, skids, and never gets above the opponent's knee. Both are called a slice backhand. They have almost nothing in common.

The difference is not effort. It's the opposite of effort.

Underspin fights gravity. Backspin generates lift on the ball's flight, which is why a hard-cut slice floats rather than dips, and why the harder you swing at it the more it sits up. That's counter-intuitive and it's why so many players never find the low version. They know their slice is too high, so they attack it more aggressively, which makes it higher. Then they give up on the shot.

What produces the skid is a firm wrist, a contact point out in front and slightly below the ball rather than under it, and a swing path that goes forward much more than it goes down. Think of pushing the racket through the ball toward the target with the face barely open, maybe fifteen degrees, rather than carving underneath it. Less spin, more penetration, lower bounce. The best low slices in the sport carry surprisingly little backspin. They're mostly drive with a touch of cut.

Court surface matters here more than for any other shot. On grass a skidding slice is close to unreturnable at pace, because the ball keeps its low trajectory through the bounce and the opponent has to generate everything from below the net band. On a gritty clay court the same ball sits up obediently and does nothing. Anyone playing on clay who leans on the slice as a rally shot is handing over the initiative once per exchange.

Injury-wise this shot is the kindly one in your bag, which is another reason to develop it. The stroke is compact, the arm stays relatively straight, and there's no violent rotational load through the trunk. Players coming back from shoulder or back trouble can usually keep slicing when everything else hurts. Ageing club players who lose the two-hander often find their game survives entirely on the slice for another decade.

So it's a shot that's easy on the body, brutal on certain surfaces, and hard to defend against when hit properly. And the reason almost nobody has one is that it's boring to practise and looks passive.

Practise it anyway. Aim for a bounce that stays under the net cord on the second bounce. That's the standard.