What is a split step in tennis?

Q: What is a split step in tennis?

A split step is a small hop timed with the opponent's contact. It loads the legs so the first step toward the ball comes faster.

Landing pre-stretches the leg muscles, and pushing off straight away returns that stretch as speed. On the return, expert players start the split around the server's contact and land about 133 ms after it.

TRACED · DJOKOVIC'S RETURN

Contact

Djokovic's return: eight instants traced from the footage, frame for frame. Hover or tap to flip; the dot marks contact.

Questions

When should you split step?

Start the hop as your opponent hits, and land just after, so you push off as soon as you've read the direction.

Sources

Navia, Avilés, Miller-Dicks & Ruiz-Pérez (2022), Journal of Sports Sciences