Your Strokes:
Rohan Gupta Forehand
Analyzed by John Yandell
This month let's take a look at the forehand of junior player and recent Tennisplayer subscriber, Rohan Gupta. If you read the Forum he has also become a frequent poster under the login Eaglesburg and is giving our regular contributors some things think about. (That's always good.)
When you watch video of Rohan hitting you can feel his excitement for tennis. To me his forehand looks pretty explosive and he is obviously generating racket speed.
But when you look at his swing shapes, there is no doubt he can make a big leap in the quality of the ball he produces on his forehand. How? By understanding two points about the so-called "modern forehand," and then one point that is timeless to all eras.
Rohan's forehand definitely is a "modern forehand." Too modern. It has two elements that are often considered "foundational" to modern tennis. The reality is they aren't. This makes them limiting factors in his basic swing. The first is his consistent use of fully open stance. The second is his super radical wiper finish.
Both those elements are part of modern tennis and have important situational applications. But they are variations.
Unfortunately they are often advocated as basic forehand gospel in elite junior coaching. But they don't actually correspond to what the top players do.
The third point has to do with posture—something that isn't strictly modern and transcends the generations. I will get to that later, because the "modern" issues I think are more important and if corrected might cause Rohan's posture issues to disappear on their own.
What Forehand Is It?
We are talking here about developing a power topspin drive. By this I mean the ability to hit with speed, depth and heavy spin. This is the forehand that players use as a weapon, hit when the can create their preferred set up and execute their full forward swing.
How do the fully open stance and the radical wiper detract from that? They limit the amount of energy developed in the body during the coiling, and then further limit or reduce the transfer of that energy to the ball in the forward swing.
If we look at the best players we see their preferred stance set up is not fully open, no matter you may have heard or read or seen on You Tube. The preferred stance is semi-open and there are critical reasons why.
Semi open means that a line drawn from the toes of the back foot to the toes of the front foot is at about 30 to 45 degrees to the baseline. This is compared to the wide open stance where the same line across the toes is parallel the baseline or close.
Why is this important? Because it facilitates a full body turn. Look at Djokovic's semi-open set up. Draw that line from the back foot across the front foot and it's somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees to the baseline.
Now watch how his shoulders turn past perpendicular to the net. Look how far his hips have turned as well. At least 60 degrees.
Look at his opposite arm stretched all the way across his body, parallel to the baseline and perpendicular to the sideline. These are all parts of the same whole in generating the maximum amount of loading and coil—the full pro turn.
Now compare that to Rohan. It's not that his turn is terrible. It's pretty good. But he can't really maximize the turn because of his stance.
Look at the position of the feet with the line across the toes almost parallel to the baseline. Now look at the shoulders and the hips.
The shoulders turn around 90 degrees to the net. The hips are turned much less.
Then there is his left arm position which is bent at the elbow and not fully stretched across. We've actually looked at all this in Andy Murray's forehand and seen how he has a similar problem due to open stance--somewhat less coil than Federer, or Nadal or Djokovic. (Click Here.)
But the full turn position isn't difficult or something that only top players can create. It's actually one of the pro elements that is easiest to achieve.
Virtually any player at any level can create a fuller turn and immediately pick up real additional racket speed. We saw this recently in another your strokes article with actual radar gun speeds before and after as proof. (Click Here.)
So that's the first point for Rohan—get off the open stance. Develop a feel for semi open, and learn to push the body turn to the fullest.
The Wiper
The second point is the wiper. When we look at Rohan's grip it's an extreme semi-western or close to it. (Click Here for more on understanding grips and the hand checkpoints.)
His heel pad is solidly on bevel 4. His index knuckle looks like it's also on bevel 4 or possibly slightly higher.
A basic component in the forward swing with these grips is heavy windshield wiper rotation. The question is how does this rotation of the hand arm and racket relate to the other basic component in the forward swing?
The other key component is extension. What is extension? The movement of the hand arm and racket forward and outward toward the opponent and the opposite side of the court. (For more on the relationship between these components Click Here.)
In the power players maximize extension. The position in the forward swing can be delineated with simple checkpoints. Look at Djokovic.
Novak's hand has come across to the left edge of his body. His wrist is at about eye level. And note particularly the spacing between his hand and his torso. It's probably 2 feet or more.
It's often believed that the wrap around the body or over the shoulder is the key to racket speed. That's backwards.
The extension generates the racket speed. The wrap is the natural consequence of that speed and is in fact the deceleration phase that helps prevent injury.
At the completion of the wrap the racket head is moving at the slowest speed by far in the entire forward swing. (Click Here to read more about the Myth of the Wrap.)
Premature wrapping motion is a characteristic of players trying to wiper too much too fast. This pulls the racket to the left too far too soon.
The forward swing is on an arc. But that arc moving not only upward, but inside out to the contact and then back inside in during the followthrough. But this arc needs to approximate the shot line around contact.
By wipering too much too soon, the player changes the arc and pulls the racket head to the left away from the shot line. When this happens, even if the racket head has tremendous speed, the energy is not being translated efficiently into the shot.
This is probably the biggest problem in Rohan's swing. Watch how little extension he has. At the point where Novak's spacing is two feet, Rohan is a few inches.
This despite the fact that the swing is quite explosive. But that explosive energy is only going partially into the ball.
To be fair there were a couple of examples in the video Rohan sent me where his extension was better. But that was also interesting in the context of what he has posted about his inconsistency on his forehand.
Power drives should have similar swing shapes and checkpoints. A lot of swing variety on similar balls can be a source of errors and one that can be puzzling and frustrating.
Posture
The last point I mentioned at the top was posture. The goal should be to keep the line of the torso straight up and down or perpendicular to the court, like your spine was suspended by a wire from the sky.
This month we have a great new article from Dan McCain on movement that stresses this point (Click Here). It's a timeless element if you look back to John McEnroe or Don Budge or any of the great movers.
I have to say Rohan's posture is pretty good on most balls. But on some you can see him leaning somewhat to the side when he sets up. The radical wrap might be pulling slightly backwards off balance on some swings as well.
But I think the stance and the lack of extension are the elements he needs to address first. Establishing these elements might help with that automatically.
Then Rohan can add the thought of really staying upright from the waist in both the coiling and the uncoiling phases. It all actually works together.
In any case this Djokovic forehand is a model of great posture. Watch how will he maintains the vertical line of his torso to the court all the way through the motion, despite even launching himself into the air with both feet.
I have described this regularly, but the key to actually creating these changes is not just understanding them. The key is creating physical models with the checkpoints described for the full turn, the semi-open stance, the extended finish, and the upright posture.
This means physical modeling, practice swings with the checkpoints in front of mirror, and the conscious effort to create mental images and kinesthetic feels. These non-verbal keys then become the pathway to effortless execution on the court.
Stay tuned, something tells me we are going to see some improved forehand video from Rohan in the Forum.
