The title chosen for this book – TOP TENNIS (Tennis for Youths, Executives and Professionals) – is a homage to “Executives” because they will be great users of this document. They will make use of this reading to compensate their lack of time to practice tennis on the court. Mentioning “Youths” suggests that this work is directed to people of all ages, indicating the effort to make this sport popular in the country. I consider a “youth” everyone who knows how to live each moment of his/her life with appropriate intensity and joviality, being either eight or eighty-eight years old. Concerning “Professionals” has an obvious connotation. The reading and research of technical documentation are essential to the ones who embrace a career. At last, the main title TOP TENNIS portrays my will to make this book the initial mark for an escalade of the Brazilian tennis towards the top of the international scenery. Therefore, this work is dedicated to all of those interested in learning tennis with more depth.

Regarding the elaboration method of this book, I have chosen an objective and less sophisticated language. Sometimes words are repeated in benefit of clearness, for one knows how difficult it is to read and put in practice this enormous quantity of information about tennis at the same time.

To facilitate the reading, I have written the book based on a right-handed player. In some illustrations however, I have used a left-handed model to make clear that the explanations would be easily adjusted to left-handed people. My goal is to demonstrate that the forehand in tennis, no matter with which hand one holds the racket, is the one that hits the ball with the palm of the hand facing the ball and the backhand is the one that the back of the hand is pointed to it.

The technical reasons for the need of this book are based on the fact that there is no written material of this quality in Portuguese, and these blanks are to be fulfilled. Only someone who dominates a foreign language is able to read the available up-to-date theory, by importing it. As a result of this scarce level of technical information, we had only one big international star since the beginning of tennis practice in Brazil. Her name was Maria Ester Bueno, the world's number one during the 60's. On the men side, Brazil never managed to be among the world's top-twenty players, nevertheless Thomaz Koch was ranked close to this.

Athletes with great potential are unable to ascend technically and reach a higher level in the international scenery, because they begin their learning with wrong strokes and keep them along the years. This situation has been happening even with the best players in the country, who can't develop certain strokes demanded for their category. We will fix this problem through this book, by standardizing the techniques of coaching tennis and helping with the popularization of the sport in Brazil. In a decade we expect that at least two Brazilian tennis players will be within the top ten of the world. This book is a result of a twelve-year research on the most up-to-date and trusted international bibliography and, as a consequence, the standardization will come. For this reason, in the opinion of Paulo Cleto, former Brazilian Davis Cup coach and one of the reviewers of this project, “This work will become the bible of Brazilian tennis”. Regarding the popularization, it will come with the appearance of new idols in the sport.