Teaching the One Handed Backhand:
A Leap of Faith

About a year and a half ago, progress had stalled on my student Nathan's two-handed backhand. I tried everything I knew to make the stroke more natural and fluid, but it didn't look or feel quite right in comparison to the rest of his game.

We tried grip adjustments, stance adjustments, many types of drills. Nothing seemed to push the stroke past a certain point. Then his father made the bold suggestion that we try the one-hander.

I thought it could be crazy to make that switch with a nine year who had been hitting with two hands for 3 years. But as I thought about it more, I relented and made a massive change of direction.

Was abandoning the two-hander crazy?

The idea of a one-hander for a nine year old goes against overwhelming conventional wisdom, especially in the competitive world of Florida junior tennis. And the two hander is no doubt the right shot for many players.

Some would argue that with young players you should wait, maybe even years, before even contemplating that kind of switch. But I knew the change would be a process and that the sooner we started the sooner we would see progress.

And so we explored the one-hander. From day one things seemed very promising and I never looked back.

Going into this experiment there were already several factors that made me suspect the change would work for Nathan. First, Nathan is extraordinarily strong for his age, is very coachable, and picks up things quickly.

But there were technical indications as well. His two-hander tended to lack natural forward shoulder rotation and he also had the tendency to take his racquet back behind his body in the backswing. These were liabilities for a two-hander but natural components of the one.

As we began to discuss the change Nathan was super excited about developing such a unique and special shot. I think Nathan himself had been frustrated with the results of his two-hander and was happy to try something new. He also liked that the one hander was different from his older brother who hit with two hands.

Still we still started slowly. In the days leading up to making a permanent change we would just try 10-15 one handers to see how it went for him. Often times I would catch Nathan doing some additional one handers on the wall by himself or shadow swings as he was walking to grab a drink of water. I could tell he really liked it.

But the ultimately persuasive point was dropping a ball in front of a 9 year old and watching him absolutely rip a one-handed backhand after only two days of working on it. Although we continued to work on it and refine it, this is pretty much the same shot in the Interactive Forum in the February issue of Tennisplayer. (Click Here.)

ROGY

The graduated ball system, or ROGY, had played a key part in Nathan’s development from the beginning. It did as well in his transition to the one-hander. We thought it was critical that Nathan see the ball at a bounce height that was comfortable for him. So we used the green dot ball extensively.

This put his contact height in a comfortable zone—similar to what a fully grown player would see with the yellow ball. Although we transitioned to the yellow ball over time, we continued to use the green dot balls on occasion, especially when working technically. In my opinion the use of the ROGY system represents a big advance in junior development and is appropriate even for players with elite junior aspirations.

Technical Elements

So what was the technical approach we took in making the change? We started with a model: a classic Roger Federer style backhand.

Especially in the beginning we showed Nathan a lot of Federer backhand video. He is a very strong visual learner. Since he was six years old I could show him something on the court and he would mimic it almost perfectly.

I was familiar with Roger's backhand since I had been a video analysis coach when I worked at the IMG/Bollettieri Academy. So we studied quite a bit of Federer footage, especially in the high speed archives on Tennisplayer. (Click Here for the Federer backhands in the archives.)

After the initial developmental stage we used less video but we continued to look at Federer periodically to emphasize the feeling of how he was striking the ball. We also looked at Nathan's motion on video in comparison to our model.

Simplicity

From the very beginning, we kept the explanation of the concepts simple. The first was the deep core turn. From the other side I wanted to see the back of Nathan's right shoulder.

I told Nathan that if he was wearing a shirt with his name on the back, I wanted to see the last 3-4 letters as he turned and took his racquet back. I also wanted to see that his front shoulder was under his chin.

This deepening of the turn was accomplished in part with the left arm pulling the racquet back next to the left shoulder. But I emphasized that there was a difference between the turn of the feet and the turn of the shoulders and this was a critical disassociation because the shoulders turned further.

Another backswing cue was that the right arm was to remain loose throughout the turn. For the backswing height we tried different things and ended up asking him to keep his hand around head height at the highest. I think that Nathan takes this somewhat higher backswing because he is young and small and that he will change this over time.

We also spoke to him to some extent about Federer’s eyes and head. We stressed how Roger's head stays still. But also that he does not turn his head backwards away from the ball. This is important because many players move their head and eyes backwards and look away from the ball in an attempt to copy Federer.

Linear Acceleration

Compared to the two hander it was important for Nathan to understand that the one-handed swing was far more linear. We defined linear acceleration as gaining racquet head speed in a straight line through the hitting phase of the swing and not coming across and around the body.

This meant keeping the chest facing the side fence or perpendicular to the net. I asked Nathan to imagine keeping his chest sideways and keeping that racquet going as fast as possible in a straight line parallel to his chest.

We even would tape a 3 or 4 foot line down on the court surface and set him up right over that line. Then, we would have him hit some hand-fed balls while trying to stay close to that linear visual.

Back Arm

I also explained to Nathan how important the motion of the back arm was. We wanted him to pull his hands apart from each other keeping both hand over that line. We wanted him to stay sideways and have the feeling of opening the chest (but not rotating it) through the opposite movement of the hands.

A critical point that is rarely taught is that we wanted the left and right arm traveling the same speed. We wanted them both accelerating as they moved in opposite directions. Even players who try to oppose the left arm often miss this. In reality this back arm acceleration is a power source for racquet head speed that taps into the muscles in the back.

The speed of the back arm is also important because the back arm creates counterbalance. This keeps players sideways and keeps them from losing control of the racket head when they decide to really accelerate through the shot.

All this was a very different use of the torso compared to the two-hander in which the rotation of the hips and shoulders drives the forward swing. The difference is very important to understand in transitioning to a one-handed shot.

As John Yandell has shown, there is still some forward rotation in the hips and shoulders on the one hander, particularly in advanced closed stance swings. (Click Here.)

And I've seen studies of players like Amelie Mauresmo and others with more extreme grips who rotate quite severely on the one hander. But I would normally not teach that style, especially to a 9 year old.

In my opinion that style is very difficult because it tends to lead to over rotation and a lack of hitting arm extension, resulting in a loss of control and power. It is probably best not to stress it as a conscious movement at any level.

Letting Go

In addition to accelerating both arms, we wanted Nathan to have the feeling of staying loose through the forward swing similar to the feeling of throwing a frisbee. The feeling is that nothing is forced and the arm naturally comes through and also releases naturally depending on the ball shape the players wishes to create.

We wanted Nathan to relax and let go with his right, hitting arm after accomplishing this linear path. We pointed out that the linear path only lasts so long in the extension phase of the swing before the racket comes around to somewhere around the right shoulder in the style we had chosen for him.

Stance

Even though high level one-handers hit with extreme closed stances, to develop the stroke we wanted Nathan to learn to step more directly into the ball. This was important for a number of reasons.

First, 9 year olds, even strong one like Nathan, don't possess the strength it takes to create balance off ultra wide stances. Second we were concerned about the pressure on his knees, with the extra torque that comes from twisting in wider stances, especially when the front foot is more parallel to the baseline.

Third, we wanted him to learn how to develop power from stepping linearly into the shot, rather than by adding the extra rotation that goes with a closed stance. Although it's ok for him to step across somewhat as you see in some of the video examples, we wanted him to set up behind the ball with the left foot and step forward.

Spin

Initially we wanted Nathan to learn to create power with a very clean stroke and didn't worry about spin. But as he become comfortable with the stroke we wanted him to learn how to rotate his arm, wrist, and racket to create topspin.

This is sometimes described technically as learning to supinate the forearm. But we made the explanation much simpler.

I showed Nathan that the thumb was going to be pointed up in take back, down at the bottom of the backswing, and up again as his hand finished above his right shoulder. I also pointed out that the racquet head and hand were going to be moving much faster than the elbow as his hand turned up and out away from his body.

There were some issues at times about the hand not releasing in time and the elbow would drag forward too long leaving the racquet face open. After showing Nathan a video of how Federer pulls the elbow through and then releases the hand there was a lot of improvement.

Hitting on the Rise

To introduce Nathan to hitting on the rise we first started off with hand feeding. This is usually the way I introduce new concepts. We wanted him to understand all the timing options: on the rise, as the ball is falling, or when the ball is at the top.

Then I moved to other controlled feeding methods including the ball machine to allow him to just get a feel for the timing of hitting the ball as its rises. Next we began to discuss movement and how it played a large role in hitting on the rise in different areas of the court.

On mid court balls for example the had to make a decision. Shorter higher balls with a lot of topspin could probably be handled easier taking a step or two back as he hit them on the rise.

The deeper balls landing closer to the baseline would be handled easier by just holding his ground or taking a small step forward. We stayed away from the idea of running back 8-10 feet and made it seem like hitting early was a normal way to time these balls.

Same Side

Throughout the process we used the ball machine at various times. This got me out from behind the basket and on the other side closer to Nathan.

It was crucial for me to be on the same side of the court, watching from every angle, and filming. One of the incredible resources on Tennisplayer is that the clips are shot from many different angles. The biggest thing coaches should try to accomplish when using video is to really see what is there, not interpret what they think they see. You have to get close to the player, and look at every shot from many different angles.