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Here is a little tip for you for your swing preparation on both the forehand and backhand sides or it might just be a check to make sure you are doing it correctly. It involves which side of the racket you strike the ball on and using that racket as a guide.

On your forehand when you take your racket back you want the side you hit the ball with pointing towards the front forehand corner. This means my racket face is such that when I bring it down, without doing too much to my wrist, the racket face is open at contact point.

The same goes on the backhand for the preparation in that the side that I am going to hit the ball with is going to face the front backhand corner. Same theories really, I have on open racket face at the top of the swing which leads to an open racket face at the contact point.

One thing we commonly see the wrist rotates at the start of the swing, which means we have the back side of the racket facing the corner. If I bring that down to the contact point this closed racket face will hit the ball straight into the floor. I will have to do a lot of work with my wrist to correct that on the way down. This makes timing your shots more difficult.