Technical Flaws in Pro
Two Handers: Milos Raonic

John Yandell

Milos Raonic has a huge game—a serve and a forehand that are at the level, or close to the level, of the very top players. His backhand is not. It's not as powerful and is also way more inconsistent.

The question is why. The answer is he has fundamental technical problems. The problem is at the speed of the modern game these are impossible to see clearly with the naked eye.

Previously we used Tennisplayer high speed video to look at the technical flaws in John Isner's backhand (Click Here.) We found that there was a basic incompatibility between his grips and his hitting arm structure.

John hits his backhand with both arms straight or close to straight at contact. But his grip with his bottom hand is too weak for that configuration—not rotated far enough toward the top of the frame to be called even a mild continental.

Milos has a different set of problems than John, but problems that are equally fatal—at least to success at the highest levels of the tour. These have to do with his backswing and the timing of his hip and shoulder rotation.

That's one of the things that is so fascinating about the two hander. It turns out to be surprisingly complex. There is a lot of technical variety and a lot of things that can go wrong. (For an overview of the range of technical variations on the two-hander, Click Here.)

Unlike John, Milos has a great grip shift to a strong continental with his bottom hand. His top hand is in an eastern forehand with the heel pad behind the handle.

His top arm is straight at contact and the bottom arm is bent at the elbow. This is similar to Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, who have two of the best two-handers in pro tennis.

Position of the Hands

So Milos's grips should work great with his hitting arm shapes. But they don't. The reason is the positioning of his hands in his backswing.

It destroys the timing of his torso rotation. Great two handers like Djokovic and Murray make contact with the shoulders at about a 45 degree angle to the baseline and the hips often rotated significantly less.

Milos's hips and shoulders are way ahead of that. They rotate until they are parallel, or close to parallel, to the baseline at contact.

To determine this I looked at over 30 Raonic backhands frame by frame in our High Speed Archive (Click Here.) In over half of them his shoulders were parallel to the baseline or very close. The rest were at around a 30 degree angle or less, still off optimum. And unlike Murray or Djokovic, Milos's hip rotation is equal to or ahead of his shoulders.

This is a fatal problem because the open torso position dissipates the energy of the body rotation before contact. It's not transferred into the shot.

The result is Milos has to rely on his arms. This is why when you watch him play with the naked eye one thing you can see is that his backhand sometimes looks jerky, like it's happening in two parts. The body rotates and then the arms often visibly jerk forward.

So what is the problem with the backswing? It's the position of the hands and arms when they start to drop and then move into the forward swing. His backswing is really high, but the more significant problem is the spacing from his body. The hands are way too far away from the torso.

The extreme outside position of his hands means that when the hip and shoulder rotation start, the hands lag behind. By the time they catch up at contact, his torso has rotated way too much. This is why he is so open at contact.

Sometimes the hips can rotate further than his shoulders. For Andy and Novak the hips are usually rotated the same or less. At times their hips stay almost sideways. So Milos's hip rotation can be twice as much or more compared to Djokovic or Murray.

Backswing

So what about that backswing? Both Novak and Andy have much lower and more compact backswings than Milos. As the body turn starts, their hands come basically straight back or slightly upward on a diagonal and stay close to the body.

At the highest point the hands of both players are usually no higher than mid torso. But even more important is the spacing. Djokovic and Murray keep their hands only a few inches to their left of the torso.

Milos has his hands significantly higher than either Andy or Novak. The top hand can be as high as shoulder level. But again look at the spacing. His hands might be a couple of feet from his body. Novak and Andy are half that or probably less.

Watch how this effects the forward swing. Novak and Andy both pull the hands in tighter still as the arms and racket drop to and the forward swing begins.

Look how their hips start to rotate just about the time the hands get to the bottom and start to move forward. But look one more time at Milos. Look at the spacing of the hands and the early body rotation.

From this position Milos's there is little or no additional possible rotation. The arms move out through the followthrough essentially on their own. For Andy and Novak, the hips and shoulders work with the arms and continue to rotate as the arms and racket extend.

Solutions?

Not confident that Milos is likely to address this problem, but if he were to do that, where would that start? At this point I will keep confidentiality with the members of Milos's team I have shown this footage too...

One hypothesis would be a lower backswing. But that's probably not even necessary. There are other great two handers that have high backswings, as high or even higher than Milos. Look at Juan Martin Del Potro and Fernando Verdasco.

Del Potro's hands can reach around shoulder level. Verdasco goes even higher and actually points the racket tip slightly forward at the opponent.

But both these players keep the hands close to the body like Andy and Novak, and move to a more inside position at the start of the forward swing. Both of them have great rotation patterns, with the shoulders at about 45 degrees at contact and the hips rotated about the same or less.

So now when you watch Milos miss all those two handers and revert to the slice, you may have an understanding why. Hard to believe he could win a Slam with one side so much weaker...If I get the chance, next time I will try to corner Milos himself and see if he is interested in that same understanding.