Do Hitting Arm Positions Really Matter?

3 great straight arm forehands. The straight arm forehand. Roger, Rafa, Alcaraz, they all have it. According to the great Brian Gordon it’s one of the forehand gold standards. And I believe him, although he himself makes the caveat that very few players are capable of achieving it fully. I have never read anything about developing a straight arm either with Rafa or Alcaraz either. Correct me though if you have found something about it somewhere that I missed. So maybe the straight arm is the gold standard. But then we have the new Australian champion Jannik Sinner. Great forehand–obviously. Brad Gilbert nicknamed it the “Fearhand.” Guess what? Jannik has a double bend hitting arm structure. Check out all the Sinner forehands in the High Speed Archives. (Click Here.) What does double bend mean precisely? That at the start of the forward swing, the elbow is bent, tucked in toward the torso. And the second bend is the laid back wrist. This structure is maintained at contact and out into the followthrough. The release of the wrist only happens well after the ball is long off the strings. Sinner’s double bend—elbow bent, wrist laid back. Look at the sequence of…