An Interview With John Yandell
Part 1

Paul Fein

How do the pros hit wondrous shots and make it look easy? How do they run at breakneck speed while remaining agile and balanced? What are their most effective point patterns? What are the latest stroke technique trends, and which stars use them?

For more than 30 years, John Yandell, renowned San Francisco videographer, has studied these and other issues. Since 2005, his highly respected digital magazine, Tennisplayer.net, has helped coaches and players unravel the sport's fascinating intricacies. The website boasts a comprehensive database of 65,000 high speed clips of 80 world class players along with enlightening articles.

In a wide-ranging interview, Yandell discusses what he's learned and how multi-faceted Tennisplayer,net can make you a better player. Here is Part 1, excerpted from Paul's new book, The Fein Points of Tennis. (Click Here to Order.)

Why do many tennis experts and players consider Tennisplayer.net the leading tennis instruction website in the world?

The advantages Tennisplayer has are three-fold. First, we have the largest collection of high-level coaches and analysts. There are articles from multiple perspectives aimed at players at all levels. Second, we have the broadest and deepest stroke archives with the most players and the most clips—over 80 players and over 65,000 clips. Third, we have continued to expand our perspective by adding the Point Patterns Archives, and in the past few years, added more extensive high speed filming.

Tennisplayer.net has a Forum where leading coaches exchange ideas and insights. What are the most frequently discussed and hotly debated topics?

Some of the coaches who write for us do respond when they're asked, but it's mainly subscribers and I talking back and forth in the Forum. It's been people with sincere, technical questions about strokes mainly. We try to keep the discussion calm and reasonable. The straight arm forehand has been discussed a lot, but we've had a wide range of topics.

Is Tennisplayer.net a valuable resource for tennis fans and students who are not fluent in English?

Language is irrelevant to half of the website because the Stroke Archives are the movie images. So if you don't speak or read a word of English, as long as you can navigate the subscription process, you would have access to 65,000 stroke movies and over 80 of the top players in the world. You don't need to be able to read English to study that.

Approximately what percent of your subscribers live outside North America?

Around 20 percent of our members, and they come from more than 100 countries.

How can recreational and senior players benefit from your website?

There is a wide range of materials in the articles from coaches that are directed at all levels of players. Not all coaches share the same views, for example, on what grips and stances to use on the forehand. There is a wide range of information that people can find that applies to wherever they are and whatever they want to do. A lot of my work has been in trying to tease apart the technical components of so-called "modern strokes."

I almost always then go on to talk about applicability. We're all curious about how Nadal does this or that. But that's a separate question from "Should I try to do this or that?" So you have analysis and you have application.

I have found that certain players, especially senior players, are going to want to play with a compact classical style. And some other 65-year-old guy doesn't really care about that.

He just wants to know how Federer hits his forehand; so for him I could be more of an aesthetic undertaking. Or he may actually believe he can be Roger Federer. Everyone can navigate and use the site to suit his desires.

Do world-class pros play a style more different from that of recreational players today than pros did any time in tennis history? That's really hard to say because there is so little film footage of the history of pro tennis. In the little bits that we do have, you can see elite players at some point doing almost everything that you see pro players doing today.

You can see Bill Tilden hitting a windshield wiper forehand with an Eastern grip, just like Federer. You can see "Little Bill" Johnston smack a high forehand with a grip that's probably about the same as Nadal's. You can see plenty of open stance forehands. But I don't have any film of recreational players from the 1920s.

You can say that a lot of what happens in the pro game today is beyond the reach of the average club player. But that may not necessarily stop the club player from trying it. (Laughter.)

The one thing that is probably the most radically different is the changes in the equipment have led to more velocity and more spin and a lot of balls that are hit a lot heavier and higher. That is a big difference when we compare elite players from bygone eras with modern players.

A lot of what Nadal does is predicated on the fact that he is going to strike the ball at shoulder level, so that is an example of something very different from what you see in club tennis.

One of the most player friendly sections on Tennisplayer.net is "Your Strokes." What inspired you to create it?

There are people who are just techno-nerd students of the game, but most of the people on Tennisplayer are trying to get better. One of the ways to get better is by looking at oneself side by side with players who have good technical elements.

Certain commonalities go across from the recreational to the pro game. I am trying to show players how they can use what's on Tennisplayer as a resource to create their own stroke models and imagery of the technical elements that may be lacking in their strokes and what they need to become better technical players.

What is the procedure for players who want to use it? It explains right at the top of the section how to submit your video. We have some filming guidelines because some people send it in such a way that it's impossible to see what's really going on.

They don't film tight enough, or they don't use sports shutters on their camera. If they can film it in a way where we can actually see what's going on with their technique frame by frame, then we can do a comparison. One of the benefits of being a subscriber is that you have the chance to have your game analyzed right on the website.

And now you can do it for yourself in our new Side by Side section. Upload your video to Tennisplayer and compare it frame by frame to a pro mode for yourself. We have virtually all the stroke variations from top players to choose from as models.

The Point Patterns Archives on Tennisplayer.net is unique. What makes it special? And what are the most interesting and effective point patterns you have discovered?

What makes it interesting is that these are actually examples of how pro points are won and lost. You see a lot of the patterns people talk about, like "Hit two good inside-out forehands and then hit a backhand down the line or a forehand inside-in for the winner." The Agassi patterns are very demonstrative. A lot of the other pro patterns are a little more complex and difficult to understand because you see patterns that seem almost random, but yet end up resulting in either winners or errors.

One of the things I like about Tennisplayer is that I solicit the opinion of people who studied that aspect more closely than I do. Craig O'Shannessy for example. You see players change the diagonals from crosscourt to down the line, and it's very difficult to predict when and why they do this. But the point patterns of Federer, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic and Agassi are up there for people to study.

You told me the technology for high-speed video has evolved. Would you please elaborate about this new and improved filming.

The video technology makes it possible for the first time to shoot in high-definition at much higher frame rates and to store large amounts of data. The problem before was that if you wanted to study a few hundred strokes, there was no way to film it with these types of cameras because the storage capacity was too limited. But now that's been solved.

What are the benefits of this new technology?

It's clearer. And we're shooting at 240 frames up to 500 frames a second. That means that you have even more information and more detail about the critical moments of the stroke that are the most difficult to understand.

That's usually around the contact point, but it's also about the forward swing, what happens with the hitting arm and the hand and the wrist at each point in the swing. This technology is a categorical leap because we're going up in the resolution and in the amount and quality of the information.

Which TV tennis broadcasters and which tennis writers take advantage of the findings of videography?

It's been gratifying over the last few years is to see some of our research data make its way into the mainstream media. For example, our spin data has been quoted by everyone from Pat McEnroe to Dick Enberg to Chris Fowler.

Jon Wertheim devoted significant paragraphs to our work in his book, Strokes of Genius, about the greatest match ever played, the 2008 Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Our data has been in The New York Times several times and inThe New Yorker magazine. It's been cited in Vogue and Tennis magazine. People are starting to use the data we've developed as a way of giving more detail to what the pro players are actually doing.

In our first interview you said: "One of the fun things has been to collaborate back and forth with people like Rick Macci in the study of this film and to film kids at his academy and to discuss the intricacies of technique because there are so many things that can come together in a winning style." What have you learned from Rick Macci and other coaches? And what have they learned from you?

You'd have to ask them about the second question. What I enjoy when talking to Rick and Robert Lansdorp and another great Tennisplayer technical writer, Chris Lewit, is that they challenge me by raising questions that I haven't considered or haven't considered in the way that they raise the question.

Tennis isn't like golf, where you have basically one swing. You have about seven swings that can be hit from an infinite number of positions on the court. So no two tennis strokes are identical. Because the shot is combined with movement on the court, you have these tremendously dynamic biomechanical motions that almost defy comprehension. So it requires a lot of minds grappling with various parts of this.

For example, another coach who has made a major contribution and writes for Tennisplayer is David Bailey, the Australian footwork coach now based in Florida. He has done for footwork patterns what we tried to do with strokes and identify what he called "contact moves," which are a complete conceptual way of looking at how the players move around the court.

It entails the preparation, the movement out to the ball, the movement of the feet and body during the hit, and then the recovery pattern. This is just one example of something that you have literally dozens of possible variations that the top players are doing. The video resources at last give us what we need to really try to figure out what is happening.

Would you please tell me about the new filming protocols and studies you have done?

Part of that is what I just said: the high-speed filming and the high-definition filming at up to 500 frames a second. What we've also been analyzing on the website are three-dimensional studies that one of our writers, Brian Gordon, is doing, which allows the actual quantitative measurement and description of all these complex movements and factors that we see in the video.

For example, one of the things Brian and I did was a filming of Pete Sampras in an exhibition match he played against Sam Querrey. Now we are benefitting from the fruits of that because we've been able to answer questions like, "How fast is the racket head actually going at what point in a pro's serve?" The results are surprising and go against a lot of the conventional wisdom.

Specifically, what were the results, and what is the conventional wisdom?

For example, in the serve about two-thirds of the racket head speed is created in the last tenth of a second before the contact. You have a motion that takes about two seconds to execute from the start to the follow through. But the critical moment is around the contact point where you see the blindingly fast acceleration, and then right after the contact, the blindingly fast deceleration. You see the racket go from 30 miles an hour to 90 miles an hour in about 1/10th of a second, and then back to 30 miles an hour in another 1/10th. (Click Here.)

What does this mean? The conventional idea that we gradually build racket head speed over the windup and backswing is just not true. The windup and backswing are important, but their main function may be to position the racket and body for this final explosive instant. We need to understand this and grapple with what the implications are.

Does Andy Roddick exemplify this the most?

I don't know. We've never done a three-dimensional study of him. You can tell by looking at high-speed footage that something like this applies. Because if you look at any top pro's racket from the drop to the contact point, it's far, far fewer video frames than from the start of the motion to the racket drop. It's clear with Sampras, for example, that the racket head speed up to the drop is very constant and doesn't really start to accelerate much until he starts to drop his racket.

At the moment of the racket drop, he's still achieved only about a third of his total racket head speed. I'd like to know what exactly is happening with Roddick's abbreviated backswing. But it's definitely true that those few fractions of a second going up to the contact point is when most of the racket head speed is generated.

Rafael Nadal's backhand has been analyzed much less by TV commentators than the rest of his game. What are the special features that make it so effective?

I'm not sure it's evolved that much. It looks pretty much technically the same to me as it always has. In general, he hits about two-thirds as much spin on the backhand as he hits on the forehand. He hits about as much spin on the backhand as most of the players, about an average of 2,000 rpms (revolutions per minute). I think Nadal's backhand has not been understood. It has some unique technical characteristics that are different from most of the other modern players.

What are those unique characteristics?

You think of Nadal as a defensive player. But if you look at the technical foundation of his backhand, it's more like Agassi and Kafelnikov because he hits it with a straight hitting arm configuration with both arms, which is very rare in the pro game, where you typically hit with your dominant arm bent and the top arm straight. A lot of people talk about Nadal's natural right-handedness, but that straight left arm has more to do with his left side than his right side.

Nadal is seen as a defensive player, a counterpuncher, or a guy who likes to go from defense to offense. But he uses a technical style which has been associated with players like Agassi and Kafelnikov, who like to stand on the baseline and dominate rallies with angles. That style is associated with hitting the ball hard and flat, which is what Rafa tends to do when he tries to hurt you with that backhand.

What are the most important similarities and differences between the one-handed backhands of Justine Henin and former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone?

The similarities are more evident than the differences. There are probably some differences in the backswings, but that's typical of all players. They both have an extreme one-handed backhand grip.

That makes sense because if you are a relatively short player, particularly a short woman player, that extreme grip is going to allow you to deal with the higher bouncing ball. Compared to more classical backhands, Henin and Schiavone have a higher contact point.

Because of their tremendous racket head speed, you see these gigantic wraparound followthroughs. But they really hit out and through the ball. If you look at the moment of greatest extension, it's better, or at least as good as, the other one-handers.

Is that concept of hitting out and through the ball, as Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert notably did, a timeless concept to hit the ball solidly?

It's a timeless concept if you want to maximize velocity. I believe that. Regardless of the deceleration phase of the swing the pros use—and there are different wrap follow-throughs now, such as the over the shoulder, around the side, and Nadal with the radical reverse finish that Robert Lansdorp talks about, where he goes over to his right side and then back to his left − the common denominator is that when these guys are trying to drive the ball with pace, the racket extends quite far out in the direction of the shot before the deceleration phase and the wraps. Because this acceleration phase happens so fast, it is often missed by the naked eye. You can see it in high-speed video though.

What is kinesthesiology? Why is kinesthesiology important in your work and in coaching?

As I use the term kinesthesiology, I mean the feeling of the stroke. I believe learning strokes involves two things: imagery and feeling. You have to have the visual image or the model, whether it's conscious or sub-conscious.

You have to have the image of what you're trying to do. And then you need to have the feeling of what it's like to do it. So kinesthetics is important because if you can't feel what it is you want to do, you're not going to be able to do it.

How are the forehand techniques of players like Novak Djokovic, Robin Soderling or Tomas Berdych similar, but different from the forehands of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal? What makes their hitting arm structures different?

If you look at Federer and Nadal, despite the differences in the grips, both of them prefer to make contact with what is called a "straight arm" or a "straight elbow" hitting arm structure, where the arm is basically straight from the shoulder to the wrist. The interesting question is: Does Roger Federer make the straight hitting arm great? Or is it the straight hitting arm that makes Roger Federer great?

There is a tendency among coaches to be too much swayed by the flavor of the year. If Nadal hits with a straight hitting arm, then that somehow must be better and everyone should do it.

Brian Gordon has studied this and he believes it is biomechanically superior. He's probably right! And you see more and more top young players, for example Stefan Tsitsipas, who use it and have great forehands. But then look at Novak Djokovic who may end up with the most Grand Slam titles ever—bent elbow!

For the average player I don't really know if the straight arm is better or worse. A lot of coaches are saying that is the wave of the future, and it's technically superior. There are people teaching 60-year-old women to try to hit like that. But even Brian says it's very difficult to master, even for high level juniors.