Your Strokes:
Jacky Duchamp Forehand

Analyzed by John Yandell

Extreme grips are here to stay at the highest levels of tennis. That's not much of an insight because, obviously, they are in the wide majority. But what about at the club level?

Many coaches including myself teach beginners conservative to moderate forehand grips, along the lines of Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and Andre Agassi. This fits the type of ball club players deal with, balls that yield a strike zone around waist level, that aren't super heavy and bouncing 5 feet off the court. (Click Here for more on this whole issue in the Osmosis Forehand article.)

These are also great grips for beginning juniors because they learn how to hit through the ball--don't worry they'll slide under the handle soon enough on their own. There's another huge bonus, which is more conservative grips make learning the volleys far more natural.

This is because the feel of the forward motion--going through the ball around contact is more similar off the ground and at the net. This contrasts with the heavy hand and arm rotation needed on the more extreme grip groundstrokes which often makes the volleys feel totally unnatural and alien. My personal feeling is these grips hold up very well until you get into high level junior play.

But what about club players who have established games with under the handle grips? How applicable are the more extreme grips for them? How can forehands based on these grips be improved? Or can they?

Which brings us to this month's Your Strokes. As is obvious in the animations, Jacky does not have a Federer-style grip--or anything remotely close. He was a huge Jim Courier fan and tried to develop his forehand patterned on Courier's technical style.

For whatever reason, Jacky's grip actually ended up somewhat further under the handle than Courier. In fact his grip is probably about the same as Rafael Nadal's. Not a full western but at the most extreme edge of semi-western--about a 4 1/2 / 4 1/2, according to our forehand terminology. (Click Here.) But the real problem was that the rest of his technical swing elements didn't match this extreme grip style, as we'll see. It's not the way either Courier or Nadal hit the forehand with an under the handle grip.

The Player's Decision

Even though he plays at the 3.5 and 4.0 club level, and there were problems with the stroke, Jacky was very comfortable with his grip, and--let's put it this way--was emotionally attached to keeping it. He'd experimented with moving back toward an Eastern but found that doing this basically destroyed his ability to hit a forehand of any kind.

Since he was active in league play and club events pretty much all year, it seemed like an impossible task to attempt that type of fundamental change. But probably the bottom line was that he just loved hitting heavily spun forehands.

So he wanted to keep the grip even though he was not satisfied with the effectiveness of the stroke. Not only was it inconsistent, he also felt he was not hitting it with the full amount of spin that should have been possible with the extreme grip.

So this presented a very interesting challenge for me when we did his video analysis. I've worked with quite a few players with a similar grip at higher levels. But it was something new to try to create a model of an extreme forehand that fit his level of play.

To me it was an experiment, but the results turned out to be amazing. We were able to reduce his inconsistency and increase both his power and spin. Honestly, I was a little surprised. Here's what the analysis showed, and what we did.

Grip Swing Mismatch

Although Jacky had the extreme grip, his swing pattern actually was based on technical elements that corresponded with old style classical style swings. So the fundamental issue we had to address: there was a mismatch between his grip and his swing style.

In his preparation, he pointed his left arm directly at the ball, rather than coming across the body. He also hit with a neutral stance. Worse, he used this step with the front foot to complete the turn, instead of turning more fully first. The result was he ended up with a very awkward, narrow stance which restricted the natural rotations of the swing.

In the forward swing, he tried to swing directly through the ball and finish with the racket more or less on edge. This is the way Welby Van Horn would teach an eastern forehand finish--or the way I would, or most pros would, if they player had a moderate grip. (Click Here to see a great article by Welby on that.)

But it's not the way the arm needs to work on the forward swing with this grip. That was a huge problem because the hand and racket have to turn over fairly radically to really get the racket through the ball.

So, since Jacky had Nadal's grip, why not pick him as the model for some of these elements? To him that seemed like an exciting prospect and that's what we decided to try. We made the caveat Jacky wouldn't be likely to elevate 2 feet off the court and make contact at shoulder level like Nadal does on so many balls. Instead, we looked at the things in the stroke that were more basic.

Universal Preparation Problems

We started with the turn. I've written about it so much it feels like a cliche' to me. It's also been recognized by high level coaches and is widely taught at the elite junior level. but I'm still constantly amazed at how little understood the fundamental elements of preparation are by players at the club level. (Click Here for the forehand article series that discusses this.)

"Take Your Racket Back Early and Point Your Left Hand at the Ball."I was taught that and you probably were too. But regardless of grip, that's not how a high quality technical forehand is hit. And Jacky had the same problem, as we saw above.

So we picked a great image of Nadal making a strong unit turn, setting up his weight on the outside foot and stretching his left arm across the body. Next we worked until Jacky could model a good approximation of this move and the ending position. We did it without the ball first. Jacky had to demonstrate it with his eyes open and eyes closed, creating an internal visual image.

Now, here's where an important coaching challenge came in. We needed to improve the turn, but the cramped neutral stance had to go. His hand rotation, extension, and finish needed radical change. But I believe it was Sting who once said: "Too much information, driving me insane."So it's important to work on only a limited amount of change at one time.

So the first step was to just let Jacky get comfortable with this radically stronger preparation move, and he got a great feel for it pretty quickly. You can see that the legs look stiff and could still coil more, but the body turn and the arm position look much, much better. Better than virtually every other player at his level I observed at his club.

What was equally great was that improving his turn pushed him off the neutral stance without any actual analysis or discussion. Once he turned further and stretched the arm, he naturally positioned better on the outside foot, and stayed open during the swing. So that was two fundamental changes, one of which occurred absolutely naturally, just by pursuing things in sequence.

Next we looked at the forward swing. You can still see that even with the great turn and the natural open stance, Jacky was still using the original finish with the racket on edge and also, how this really limited his extension after the hit.

So the next step was to model a new finish based on the hand and arm rotation in the forward swing, again using Nadal as a blueprint. (I've talked a lot about Rafael's forehand and how his hand and arm rotation work in the followthrough. Click Here for more detail on that.)

As with the turn, we worked to physically model this motion, moving from the contact to the finish and developing check points. These were the wrist at about eye level, the hand turning over about 180 degrees, and especially the greater spacing between his hand and his torso. I had him replicate the model physically both with his eyes open and closed, and encouraged him to create his own detailed mental image of the movement.

The result was pretty amazing. Watch how he was able to hang onto the strong turn and the open stance, and then add the new finish. See that the racket turns over pretty much the full 180 degrees. But the finish also goes forward to eye level and with good extension. We also worked on the need to turn that hand over faster on shorter lower balls--a weakness in this style that club players need to be able to deal with, but most rarely can.

The amazing thing was, using the video modeling and direct visual feedback, Jacky was able to solidify these changes over the course of one weekend. On the second day, we played some backcourt rally points, and I could feel how the increased amount spin he generated could be a real weapon at the 4.0 club level.

The danger with this style is hitting short, but with the better extension, his depth was quite good. He bounced a few balls up to a height that I found truly annoying with my Pete Sampras 3 / 3 forehand grip. Again, it's not the solution for everyone--but it was interesting to see this style become highly functional, and see how it could work players for club players who are in love with the extreme style grips and spins.