Do Hitting Arms Matter?
The Two Handed Backhand

John Yandell

In the first article in this series (Click Here) we looked at hitting arm shapes on the forehand. The new wave in technical coaching, led by coaches such as Dr. Brian Gordon and Rick Macci, advocates the straight arm forehand.

It's hard to argue against that when you look at Carlos Alcaraz, and all time greats Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal. And you can find the straight arm up and down the top 100, and even on the women's side.

Sinner: Double Bend

The point of the article, however, was that Jannik Sinner has a double bend structure and has one of the very best forehands in the game. As important in that article was the point that the obsession with the straight arm in coaching, and especially in serious recreational play, obscures more important underlying fundamentals. Especially when Brian Gordon says very few players can actually hit straight arm anyway.

The take away was that players from beginners on up can and should develop the key underlying fundamentals regardless of arm structure. These are the full turn, and the extension on the forward swing.

And you know what? It's exactly the same on the two hander.

But what about the two handed arm structures? What are the variations there?

I am proud to say (might even say brag to say) that Tennisplayer was the first place where these structures were identified and documented through our revolutionary high speed footage. On the men's side there have been great two handers with multiple structures.

4 Variations on the Two Hander

In that pioneering article (Click Here), I identified 4 distinct two-handed hitting arm configurations. I called them: (1) straight straight, (2) bent bent, (3) bent straight, and (4) a rarer one, flexed, where the arms are only slight bent—not straight but not as bent as the bent bent.

Andre Agassi and Rafa Nadal are both straight straight. But most of the men are straight bent, meaning the bottom arm is straight and the top arm is bent.

Two great examples are Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev. Many people think have the two best two handers in the current pro game.

Most women on the other hand are bent/bent. Serena is a classic example. Why? There are a lot of theories about physical differences with the men, but I'm not sure that matters as much as the reality of what is.

Many people believe and maybe it's true that, for men at least, bent straight is the gold standard. But reality has a tendency to undermine big generalizations.

Bent Bent

There are currently multiple bent bent guys in the upper echelon of men's tennis. For example Francis Tiafoe. For example Daniil Medvedev. For example Ben Shelton. And of course some people will argue and say those aren't the best two-handers in pro tennis. And that might be correct.

But that leads us to Jannik Sinner. Here is a player at the very top of the game, with a great two hander. And guess what? Bent Bent.

The video clearly shows Sinner's hitting arm shapes at contact. Front arm bent. Back arm bent.

So if we could clone Sinner as a child and try to teach him bent bent or straight straight, or bent straight would his backhand be even better? No way to answer and it's kind of a ridiculous question.

But regardless of the debate over hitting arm shapes, a key question, as we saw in the forehand article, is what are the commonalities all these players share regardless of arm structure?

Underlying

And just like in the forehand article, the answer is two things: the body turn and the extension in the forward swing.

At the completion of the turn, all these players have the shoulders turned past perpendicular to the net at least a few to multiple degrees. This is regardless of differences in grips and backswing shapes.

Then as they hit, they extend. When the tip of the racket reaches the point closest to the net and opponent, they have one and a half or two feet of spacing between the hands and the opposite shoulder. For more on the two-hander see my series in the Advanced Tennis section (Click Here) and in Teaching Systems (Click Here).

These are the two simple, points that so many players miss and don't understand. This especially applies to the 99.9% of avid players below the pro level.

They worry about all the other elements in their swings. But these two are foundational across all the possible grip styles, backswings, and hitting arm structures. (Click Here).

Normally I teach these two positions and let the hitting arm structure develop naturally. Once I see (or the on court video sees!) what that structure is, we might go in and identify it and reinforce it with a mental image, but not at the expense of the underlying key fundamentals.

But what about all the backswing variations? We'll address that next. Stay tuned.