Your Strokes:
Chris Thurstone Forehand

Analyzed by John Yandell

Is the left arm stretch the easiest, the most overlooked, and the most beneficial adjustment a player can make on the forehand regardless of level? No doubt in my mind.

When we began our high speed filming projects more than 10 years ago, there were many startling discoveries, but one of the most interesting was observing how top players actually prepared on the forehand. Nothing I had seen or read in the teaching literature accurately described the relationship between the body turn and the stretch of the left arm across the body.

Yet there it was in player after player, from Sampras to Agassi to Gustavo Kuerten to Marat Safin. As our filming continued and new champions emerged, we saw the same key component with Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.

I’ve written about the critical role of the left arm in the preparation multiple times both in the pro analysis articles in the Advanced Tennis section, and in Your Strokes articles. I’ve presented it at dozens of coaching conferences around the world. It’s been written up in the general press and in articles I have done for Tennis magazine in my role as an instructional editor.

But the concept still is far from universally accepted much less applied in the world of club tennis. Virtually every time I go to the San Francisco Tennis Club and look out over the rail at those beautiful indoor courts, I see some avid player struggling on his forehand due to late or technically poor preparation.

The tendency is common even in high level players. And even in Tennisplayer subscribers, who may have read the articles, but often still need work mastering the role of the left arm when I have the opportunity to film them.

The two most common pieces of advice you will hear on preparation on the forehand at the club level are "Get your racket back early." Or "Start the forehand motion with a loop backswing."

Or another "modern" mantra that’s even worse, "Stalk the ball with your racket in front and don’t begin the preparation til after the bounce."

Following these directives, the result will be rushed, late, or at best incomplete preparation. And none of them bear any relation to the way great players, or players with good forehands at any level, actually initiate the stroke.

In reality the turn starts with the body and the feet and with both hands on the racket. When the turn is roughly half complete, the hands separate. The left arm then stretches hard across the body, pointing at the sideline and completing the shoulder turn, usually pushing the shoulders something past 90 degrees to the net.

Although top players adjust the exact timing of the completed turn to the depth and the pace of the oncoming ball, a great checkpoint for developing it is to time the left arm stretch to the ball bounce on the court.

So I think the point bears repeating and may for a long, long time to come. It was driven home for me for the infinite time when Chris Thurstone, a highly nationally ranked 40 and over seniors player came to see me to work on his serve.

Chris made a breakthrough on his serve motion, which in and of itself is worthy of a Your Strokes article. But what was fascinating to me was how he instantaneously improved his best shot, his forehand, by making one adjustment—correct--by improving his left arm stretch.

I usually have players hit 75 balls or so off the ground to warm up regardless of what stroke we are going to work on, and I also usually put the high speed camera on them at some point out just to see what is happening. So I filmed Chris hitting groundstrokes, but then we went right into working on his serve.

After working through the new framework for his serve motion, I asked Chris if I could show him his forehand, and he agreed. The video showed the turn was partial and incomplete.

Chris’s hands separate quite early. Although he is turning his shoulders, they never reach the 90 degrees plus position. And this is of course related to his left arm, which moves across his body, but only partially and is short of the full left arm stretch we see in pro technique.

It wasn’t a bad turn, just incomplete. To me it was apparent to me that he was leaving a significant increment of power undeveloped.

After Chris and I looked at his forehand I followed this up by showing him a couple of Roger Federer forehands as model images of how the left arm works in the body turn.

We noted the Federer checkpoints, then went out on the court and I had Chris do some physical modeling. This is critical to the process of change. In my experience, it isn’t ultimately helpful to describe potential changes unless the player is able to replicate them as part of a model motion without the ball.

The fact is that learning or improving physical motions is not a verbal process. It’s visual and physical, or kinesthetic. In my work we use the image to get to the physical position on court and to the feeling in the body.

The image and feeling are like two halves of the same whole. This is what I call a kinesthetic image. No matter how well a player "understands" some technical point the forehand or any stroke, thinking about this in words won’t help.

Having a clear image and a corresponding feeling is what allows players to create change. The image and the feeling can then also be used as a key to activate the stroke in actual play.

As a high level player, Chris already understood this basic point about seeing and feeling. So creating a physical model position for himself of the left arm stretch had a huge, immediate effect. Within about 2 balls Chris incorporated the adjustment as if it had been part of his forehand all his life.

I watched as the stroke became far more explosive, virtually instantaneously. At the same time, the overall effort level was reduced. This was not just my observation. It was what Chris reported feeling himself.

Everyone wants to "play like the pros." There are many fallacies and pitfalls involved in trying to do so, and it’s highly debatable what pro elements apply to what level players on what strokes.

But world class preparation on the forehand—by learning the left arm stretch—is not one of them. It’s something that a beginner can learn—or in the case of Chris Thurstone, an elite level national seniors player.

There is a final key point that may be critical in developing a pro level turn for yourself. This regards the use of the neutral or square stance in which the front or left foot steps across and forward into the shot with the front and back toes roughly parallel along the target line.

Another massive "modern game" buzz phrase is "open stance." Pros allegedly hit the forehand "open" and of course, club players should follow this "modern" precept—at least in the view of some.

There are however problems with the assumptions in that argument. First there is no such thing as "the" open stance. Pros in fact hit most of their forehands semi-open with the front foot significantly closer to the net than the rear, so that the line along the toes is more like 45 degrees to the baseline.

But many club players copy the extreme version of the open stance with the toes of both feet parallel to the baseline or something close. This is a variation that top players in general only use when forced by circumstance.

When club players imitate this, in most cases, it severely limits their ability to develop a good turn. Ironically in seeking to copy the "pro forehand," they make it impossible to develop the most foundational element of the body turn with the left arm stretch.

Players at all levels do need the ability to hit from multiple stances—neutral, semi-open, and at times fully open. But the potential benefit of that stance flexibility is often negated by the lack of a body turn when lower level players try to hit open on a regular basis.

The neutral stance is typically used in pro tennis when the ball is lower and/or shorter. For the average player this is also appropriate and usually more appropriate because the ball contact height rarely reaches shoulder level as is common in the pro game. (For more on the misunderstood role of contact height, Click Here.)

But the neutral stance has a more fundamental benefit. Stepping forward and across with the left foot makes it much easier and more natural to develop a feel for the full body turn which includes fully turning the hips. And this turn is critical to developing the left arm stretch.

For too many players the hips get stuck when the left foot stays completely on the left side. If you are trying to improve your turn, work with the neutral stance model in the animation of Federer, and hit balls initially that are in the center of your strike zone and not at the upper edges.

You can see this in the last animation of Chris’s forehand. In working with Chris initially I set the ball height to be comfortably at about waist level.

Without telling him, Chris naturally stepped into the ball with a neutral stance. Watch how he completes his turn, steps into the shot, and absolutely cleans the ball.

From this basic ball, it was easy for him to adapt to higher bouncing balls that require opening the stance. But Chris also can use the neutral stance to control the contact height, playing the ball on the rise, staying up closer to the baseline—all with the extra power from the full turn and with less physical effort.

These are adaptations players at all levels can make. And again, unless you play at a very high club level with players who create serious spin and pace, many many forehand will be dead in your strike zone with the neutral stance.

So go ahead, video yourself, compare your motion to the pro models, develop and great left arm stretch and watch your forehands explode effortlessly past your opponents.