The Straight Armed
Forehand

By Jeff Counts

Straighten the Arm?

As impressive and ubiquitous as the double bend forehand is, there have always been players who straighten out their hitting arm on the forehand side. Mark Philippousis and Paradorn Srichiphan are two straight armed players who have been around for awhile. I have footage of Alex Corretja where I noticed he hits his forehand with a completely straight arm. But these players always seemed to be an interesting anomaly - quirky adaptations that didn't lead to noticeable improvements in the stroke.

  

There are two players, however, that have taken a quirky adaptation and turned it into a monstrous evolution in forehand technique. Federer and Nadal are both able to straighten out their hitting arms, and in so doing, generate a combination of pace and spin that we haven't seen before. The insane contact points, the blistering racket head speed, the phenomal spins on the ball - it all seems intimately connected with their straighter armed technique. While I ulitmately want to look at what these two are doing (perhaps in my next article), I want to lay some ground work first by looking at two examples of more conservative straight armed forehands. Once we get a sense of what is going on with these more toned down examples, then we can turn to the innovations that Federer and Nadal (and Versasco as well) can throw in the mix when they get warmed up and take things to the next level.

For this article I have chosen to look at the forehands of Fernando Verdasco and Paradorn Srichiphan. In the examples I give, their technique looks almost identical. I would like to note in advance, however, that the footage I use of Verdasco comes from him warming up in a practice session. After Verdasco warms-up, he starts to incorporate additional elements that begin to look less and less like Srichiphan and more like Federer and Nadal. I will leave those elements for my next article. For this article, the conservative Verdasco forehand, and the Srichiphan forehand, are excellent forehands for any player to model, and let us get a good sense of the basic stroke.

Pull the Racket Through A Slot

The straight armed forehands really show us how the racket gets "pulled" forward towards the ball, rather than "swung" at the ball. Watch how Verdasco and Srichaphan pull the racket forward, with the butt cap of the racket leading the way. As they pull the butt cap of the racket forward, the wrist will fully lays back to a ninety degree angle to the forearm. As the racket gets pulled forward, it travels forward and upward, as indicated by the slot lines on the two clips. The feeling here is one of pulling the racket out of someone's hand behind you by bringing your arm forward and laying back your wrist. If you would like to practice this technique, have your coach stand behind you and hold onto the tip of your racket. As someone feeds you a ball, pull the racket out of your coach's hand by lifting your arm forward and laying your wrist back. This will get your racket moving through the slot.

  

Lift the Arm All the Way to the Ball

Pulling the racket through the slot initiates the forward movement, but it is arm lift that brings the racket all the way to the ball. By lifting a completely straight arm to the ball, Verdasco and Srichaphan are able to contact the ball incredibly far out in front of the body. Pulling and lifting the arm to contact solves one of the big puzzles that any tennis player faces - the problem of the racket swinging across and around the body. If you take your racket behind you and "swing", the racket and arm will almost immediately start to arc around your body, giving you a late contact point and a swipe across, rather than through and up the ball. But by pulling the racket out of the slot and lifting the entire arm towards the ball, you overcome this arcing swing. It allows you to bring the racket and arm forward, meeting the ball solidly in front of the body without the circular forces that take the racket around the body.

  

Leverage

By lifting their straight arms to contact, Both Verdasco and Srichiphan's arms remain completely straight as the ball presses into their rackets, maximizing leverage. If you want to feel the power of leverage, try pushing an object (or pressing open a door) with your arm completely straight. Now bend your arm and push the object. I think you will be able to feel the power of extending your arm. Straightening the arm is a technique used in various sports to create additional force. In football, for example, running backs employ a "stiff arm" technique to drive off incoming defenders. Wikipedia provides some interesting insight into the physics of this straight arm technique.

The "stiff arm" technique in football resembles the straight armed forehand contact point. In both cases, force is maximized bewteen shoulder and hand.

Lift the Ball

If you approach the ball correctly by lifting your entire arm to the ball, on contact the ball will be compressing not only into the racket, but the hand, the arm, and the shoulder that supports the entire structure. By engaging this entire leveraging system, you create a tremendous amount of mass behind the ball. Now you want this entire leveraging system to drive the ball by lifting the arm upward. In the superimposed pictures below, notice how the shoulder and arm rise along with the hand and racket. This, in my opinion, is one reason for the "heavy ball" that pros hit. They work the ball with their hand, their arm, and their shoulder together. This lifting technique not only gets more of your body into the ball, it also keeps the racket on the same plane as the ball. Rather than swiping across the ball, the strings lift right up the back of the ball, providing a direct and clean collision.

One final point on this lifting technique is to notice how both Verdasco and Srichaphan have their rackets angled downard below the hand on contact. This downward wrist angle helps them lift the ball upward.

Lift the ball by lifting the entire arm upward. This causes the racket to continue face the ball well after contact, rather than swipe across the ball.

If you lift your arm upward on contact rather than swinging across your body, the strings of your racket will continue to face the net well after contact.

The Wrist "Catches Up"

So far I have looked at how the arm lifts the racket to the ball, and then lifts the racket upward on contact. Now let's look at how the wrist works within this larger arm lift.

Above I showed how the racket gets pulled forward and lifted upward through the slot, with the butt cap of the racket leading the way. The wrist flexes back and down to create a 90 degree angle between forearm and racket. This angle is maintained as the arm lifts upward to contact. However, you can't contact the ball properly with this much of a laid back angle. So watch how Verdasco lets the wrist "catch up" to the rest of the arm just before contact. This "catching up", I think, serves two purposes. First, it add some extra racket head speed coming into contact. And second, it gets the wrist angled properly to the forearm on contact. It is crucial to understand, however, that this isn't a "snap". It's simply a natural "catching up" of the wrist to the rest of the hitting structure. And it is this larger hitting structure that will lift the ball upward on contact as the wrist stays in a stable position.

The wrist "catches up" to the arm and the entire hitting structure lifts the ball.

Let's look at how Srichiphan uses the exact same technique with his wrist. As he lifts his arm upwards to the ball, his wrist flexes back and down to about a 90 degree angle to his forearm. As he lifts the racket his wrist remains in this laid back position. Moments before contact, as his arm continues to lift to the ball, his wrist "catches up" to the rest of his arm. On contact, the wrist/forearm angle is about 30 degrees. I call this "catching up" because on contact, the wrist and arm are in synch will lift the ball together as a unit.

The final piece I would like to note about the wrist is how the wrist angles downward on contact. Watch how both Verdasco and Srichiphan have the racket angled downward below the hand on contact. This wrist position helps them to lift the ball upward on contact. You can also slowly start to deviate the wrist upward (like slowly turning a door handle) on contact to create additional lift of the ball. While the wrist plays an important role here, I would like to stress that it is simply aiding the larger arm, from shoulder to hand, that is doing the powerful work of contacting and liftng the ball. The mistake I see people make all the time is to focus on the wrist, which causes them to lose the larger hitting structure that gives you the leverage, and solid lift of the ball.

Winshield Wiper

After lifting the ball upward, and going up the back of the ball, the trajectory of the arm and racket turns into an arc. This arc, which resembles the path of windshield wipers wiping across a windshield, allows you to really accelerate through contact and finish on the opposite side of the body. The old style of forehand was to continue out toward the target, but this caused the strings to break off the plane of the ball (rather than continue to face the net), and prevented the shoulder from driving the ball with its full range of motion.

After lifting up the back of the ball, the arm and racket follow a "windshield wiper" path, where the strings always face the net and the shoulder rotates the arm 180 degrees.

Summary

Verdasco and Srichaphan have very powerful straight armed forehands that I think are excellent models to copy. The straight arm gives them a contact point that is very far in front of the body, maximizing leverage. The straight arm also taps into a principle used in many sports where the extended arm "creates a force that is applied down the length of a straight arm, directly into the shoulder." In addition to these added forces, the lifting motion that this technique uses overcomes the circular swing problem where the racket swings around the body in a circle. Power on contact comes from lifting upward, which engages your entire arm, shoulder, and hand while keeping the plane of the strings in line with the plane of the ball. The wrist plays the smaller (albiet important) of role of "catching up" to the arm moments before contact. This creates some additional racket head speed and positions the wrist at an ideal angle to the forearm on contact. After lifting the arm upward on contact, continue in a full wiper motion that ends on the opposite side of the body.

Onward

In a future issue I will look at Federer, Nadal, and Verdasco when they really get things going. I think we will find that they use the straight arm in even more interesting ways. They are able to use the wrist more prominently to create additional racket head speed into contact, and on contact they are able to apply a tremendous "torque" on the ball that takes the model of Srichiphan to a new level entirely. But for now, I think the two forehands in this article offer an excellent model for players to copy, and a solid foundation in using a straight arm to lift and drive the ball.