hi squashplayer

rita makes some valid points to which i would like to add.

i have said it before and i will say it again - the pros play squash, but not squash as we know it. be very careful in simply mimicking them without being able to actually play like them

the height you need to hit the ball depends on many factors

• court conditions and/or type of ball
• width of the ball (how close to the side wall)
• how hard the ball was hit and what spin was put on it
• speed/skills of the opponent
• position of the opponent
• stage of the match

what a rail or drive must do is to get the opponent to the back of the court or at least behind you. if you cannot do that against an opponent, you need to change something. the most common mistakes are hitting too low and too far away from the side wall.

• if your opponent is at the front of the court when you drive, you want it ideally to hit the back wall nick on the second bounce - that is the deepest it can be without it coming off the back wall.
• if you hit the same shot when the opponent is on the t, it may well be too short which means you need to hit it higher to get grreater length

as for being prescriptive about number of steps  and footwork follow the principles which you will see in many posts and our library - main one being "balance"

there are so many complicating factors at work that it is impossible to give you accurate info.

this is a dynamic game - with movement, to some extent, you need to let your body tell you which is the right way.

• the important thing is that your use the lower half of the body as a mode of transportation and the upper part of the body as the mode of controlling the ball. you need the two to act independantly
• the lower part moves and positions the body to obtain balance, the top part hits the ball
• remember that you need to move to the ball, hit it, then return to the t as smoothly as possible

good luck!

ps

one local opponent can hit the ball hard and 10 cms above the tin and yet i can retrieve it on the short line. another opponent can hit it at the same pace and height and yet i must move 2 metres towards the front wall to retrieve it. all this purely because the former hits the ball flat and the latter hits with a lot of underspin (open face).

guess which one is the easier to beat!

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The tags are listed in the Relevant Content on the lefthand side for your info now. There have been many previous posts/discussions about footwork/movement and ghosting.

Briefly, the front wall targets do two main things:

• if you aim high on the front wall, the ball will rebound higher, and this is controlled by the speed of the hit.
• the angle of the hit gives the angle of the rebound into the nick, side wall, corners, or back of the court.
• aiming around the cutline will ensure no mistakes but makes the shot very vulnerable to being volleyed. My preference would be high and soft or low and hard and not so much in-between.

Here in the link to Gold Trouble shooting.

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