Your Strokes:
Danielle Dotzenrod Forehand

Analyzed by John Yandell

This month we are introducing a new series in Your Strokes, featuring Danielle Dotzenrod. If you watch the Tennis Channel, you probably recognize Danielle as the host of Fit to Hit. You'll also see her this year covering the 2010 Australian Open. And soon, you are going to see her as the new spokesperson for Tennisplayer in our Tennis Channel commercials.

In general, I dislike manufactured marketing hype. That's why I'm excited about doing the commercials with Danielle - they are going to be a little different than what you usually see on TV.

Although she has been an athlete her whole life, Danielle has been playing tennis for just a little over two years, and is incredibly passionate about becoming the best player she can. When I met her we agreed that the basis for our commercials would be her first hand experience with Tennisplayer.

And so this new series was born. We'll start with her forehand this month, and over the rest of the year, work through all her strokes. Once again I'll be working with my friend and fellow coach Wade McGuire on the project. Besides hitting with Danielle, his input has already been invaluable - and we also have to thank him for use of the gorgeous private court you see in the video.

So what about Danielle's forehand? It is always interesting to see how players combine the myriad possible technical elements in the various strokes. When I first saw her hit, it was obvious she had natural ability, and was swinging very freely--always a good thing.

Swing Shape

But the most interesting thing about her forehand was the shape of the swing. Although she had purposely decided against taking formal lessons, she had worked on the basics with a friend who had stressed an over the shoulder finish as the key to topspin.

And Danielle was hitting topspin. But I wouldn't really have called her forehand a topspin drive. She couldn't penetrate the court, and because of this, the shot wasn't really a weapon. It was more of a looping, mini-moonball. It went over the net by 6 feet or more, and tended to land short. She was putting a lot of effort into her swing, but the energy wasn't really paying off in terms of the type of aggressive ball she wanted to produce.

When we looked at the video, it was obvious that the emphasis on the over the shoulder finish was having a negative effect on the path of her swing. She swung outward toward the target well, but when she reached the point of maximum extension, her hand and racket were far too high. This sharp upward component was generating spin, but was making her forehand arc too much and robbing her of power.

There were other technical issues as well. Danielle had a decent unit turn, but like so many players, didn't really push the turn to completion. As we have seen time and time again, top players stretch the left arm fully across the body and the shoulders turn 90 degrees plus to the net. This is fundamental at any level looking to maximize power. (Click Here.) But Danielle wasn't making this position.

Her turn also happened too slowly. For this reason, she sometimes looked rushed on what should have been routine rally balls. The timing problem was probably contributing to her tendency to overswing. In addition, I thought her backswing was too high, with her hand reaching about the top of her head, actually higher than most pro players.

Finally there was her hitting arm configuration and her contact point. Danielle had a great grip - a modified eastern or mild semi-western - perfect for hitting aggressive drives. She also stepped into the ball naturally and hit with a neutral stance. But a problem was that she combined this neutral stance with a straight arm hitting position. This combination was further reducing her potential power.

The topic of the shape of the hitting arm has stirred up a lot of controversy since we first discovered that top players such as Federer and Nadal and DelPotro hit many forehands with the arm straight at the elbow, rather than using the more predominant double bend configuration. (Click Here to see the differences in these two basic shapes.)

The straight arm works great at the highest levels, at least for some gifted players, and there are plenty of lower level players all over the messages boards on the internet testifying to its miraculous powers.

But one point often missed about the straight arm is that it is almost always paired with an open stance and extreme body rotation. This rotation can be close to twice as much as on a more classical swing.

Typically it is also associated with much higher contact heights than the vast majority of players will ever face. (For more on the critical, misunderstood subject of Contact Height, Click Here.)

Coming off the ground with one or usually both feet, elite player rotate until the right shoulder is actually pointing toward the opponent. This means that at the critical moment of contact, the shoulders are still moving, rotating forward and around. The contact point therefore falls somewhere in the middle of the overall rotational pattern.

But all this doesn't really apply in recreational tennis, and probably not even at the 4.5 to 5.0 level. The problem for Danielle was that her body had stopped rotating at contact, with her shoulders already wide open and parallel to the net. This meant that the motion from the contact to the finish was mostly arm.

The Sequence

So the questions were, as they always are, how much to change which parts when, and in what order? Was the first point to work on the finish? The contact point? The turn? The backswing? The body rotation? The hitting arm?

My experience in working with players is that, on the forehand, there are two basic positions that can be magic in correcting a wide range of technical problems. Rather than isolating each problem and treating it separately, you have to work on them in the context of the whole motion.

You do this by identifying model positions with simple checkpoints. The models aren't rigid or absolute. No player ever hit two identical forehands anyway. Rather they are a guide, a kind of blueprint with the potential to correct multiple factors at the same time.

Turn Position

The first position is what I call the pro turn or the full turn position. We've looked at this at the top of the game and seen how it applies across the levels. (Click Here.) And Danielle took to it virtually instantaneously. Here are the checkpoints. Her left arm is straight and stretched fully across her body on a line that is parallel to the baseline and perpendicular to the sideline. The shoulders are turned 90 degrees plus, and the head and chin are turned back over the shoulder.

This turn move starts immediately when the other player strikes the ball. The timing and components are virtually identical for world class players from Roger Federer to Justine Henin and for good forehands all the way down through the levels.

That strong, immediate turn immediately improved the timing of Danielle's preparation. The turn move, video shows, should be complete when the ball bounces on your side of the court. For Danielle, the best part about this adjustment was that it started to happen automatically as she incorporated the new turn.

The other fascinating automatic adjustment was in her backswing. I never mentioned to Daniellle that I though her backswing was excessive. I wanted to see how she reacted when we improved her turn, because often I have seen players automatically compact the backswing when they improve the turn, and do so without even knowing it.

That is exactly what happened in her case. Note in the animation of the new turn that her hand is at shoulder level, a perfect height, and almost a foot lower than before.

This type of natural change is huge because it reduces the amount of input the player has to process. It doesn't always happen this way, but the beauty of working with key positions is that they can correct multiple problems simultaneously, without complicating the analysis for the player.

Extension

The second magic position I showed Danielle was what I call the extension of the forward swing. This is the furthest point the racket travels upward and outward toward the target, before moving backwards over the shoulder in the final deceleration phase.

The extension point is the key to power and consistency and is a combination of outward and upward movement. With Danielle the two were out of balance. The outward or forward movement was great, but the upward motion was too extreme with her hand finishing well above head level. This was why despite all the effort in her swing, her ball was loopy and lacking pace.

The checkpoints for the extension point are simple. The wrist and hand should be at about eye level and should also reach about the left edge of the torso. You see this position consistently in pro tennis when the players are driving the ball. Extension can also be combined with various amounts of hand and arm rotation, or windshield wiper action. (Click Here.) But for Danielle, the idea was to create the simplest model possible to provide a basis for an aggressive drive.

The reason the model extension position is so effective is that this position determines the actual path of the racket. The path the racket is traveling determines the position of the racket at contact. This in turn determines the relative amounts of outward and upward movement. So using these checkpoints to reach the extension position creates hard, deep drives, but drives that still can be hit with various amounts of topspin.

So the two positions work together like magic. If a player makes the full turn and then reaches the right extension position in the forward swing, he or she will automatically generate power and develop tremendous consistency as well. The combination allows any player to create a reliable forehand weapon.

So developing this extension point and correcting her extreme over the shoulder finish were the next steps with Danielle. To do this she learned to model the swing very precisely and to visualize the checkpoints. Then she began to hit balls. Almost immediately the trajectory of her shots flattened out, and the ball was making a thumping sound coming off the racket.

To make the transition from the old finish, I also had her stop every few balls, notice exactly where the racket was, and then physically correct it to move closer and closer to the model extension point.

Here is where another one of those additional natural changes also started to happen. As she got more comfortable with the new extension point, the shape of her hitting arm started to change, moving from a virtually straight configuration to an almost perfect double bend.

When the video showed that this was starting to happen naturally, we took the time to look at it and to have Danielle actually model it as part of the movement in her model swing from the turn to the finish. As the video shows, with her conservative grip and neutral stance, this pushed her contact point further in front When Wade and I watch her hit the feeling was of increased solidity, consistency, and pace, but with far less effort.

Because of the extreme wrap finish she started with, I encouraged Danielle to focus intensively on the extension point and let the wrap come back gradually and naturally. I felt that if she consciously tried to produce the over the shoulder wrap, it would make it very difficult to consistently reach extension.

It takes guts and a little faith for a player to really make these types of technical transitions. What Danielle found in her process was pretty typical. First, she began to absolutely crack some big forehand drives. She also had some balls that were still too loopy. She also had some bad errors and extra miss hits that come naturally when you make technical changes. However what all players find is that if you persevere the new becomes the norm - and so natural you can't believe that this wasn't actually your forehand along.

That's the direcition Danielle is headed in. A week after our work she called me to report that the new forehand was solidifying more and more and her pace and depth continuing to increase.

You can see the huge difference in the last animation. Now she has an incredibly solid foundation, and the basis for adding for variations in stance as well as variations in the amount of hand and arm rotation or wiper action in the finishes. Something we'll be looking at, among many other things, in future articles.

Stay Tuned!