In this paper, a control law based on the ideas of backstepping is presented. A plant model, motivated by mechanical systems, serves as controller design model. In order to ensure robustness and an improved convergence time of the closed loop system, techniques of sliding mode control are introduced. The convergence time of the closed loop system is estimated with the help of Lyapunov's direct method. A real world system is considered in order to discuss the performance of the proposed strategy. The controller parameters are tuned based on stability conditions and numerical simulations. Finally the performance of the method is compared to two alternative control strategies.