One Handed Backhand Part 4: The Forward Swing

The forward swing: extreme and classical styles.

Get ready because–finally–in this fourth article in our series, we will actually see someone hit a one-handed backhand! Just kidding, but we have spent the first three articles looking at grips and preparation and backswing–everything leading up to the forward swing and the hit. And now, hopefully it’s time for the payoff in terms of what actually happens at contact and beyond.

We’ve seen how players across the grip styles all start the preparation with a unit turn. (Click Here.) We’ve seen that there is a lot of variety in the backswings, and that although some of the extreme players have the biggest take backs, others are quite compact, and that there isn’t any simple correlation between backswing and grip style. (Click Here.)

We also found that all the top players reach a common position with the hand in relatively tight to the body at the bottom of the backswing, and this position coincides more or less with the completion of the shoulder turn and the step to the ball.

So what happens next?

It’s minimalistic: the straight hitting arm start to finish.

Hitting Arm Position

On all the strokes, one essential component…