Your Strokes:
Kyle LaCroix Forehand

Analyzed by John Yandell

If you have ever hit with Kyle LaCroix or seen him play you know he has a monster game and a monster, straight arm forehand. He posted some video in the Forum of his forehand a while ago that engendered a lot of discussion about his backswing and the movement of the racket to the start of the forward swing, and how this was or wasn't effecting his shot trajectory or spin capacity. (Click Here.)

I looked at that video and as with so many other clips people post I couldn't tell a thing. Regular video flashing by at regular speed. No better really than the naked eye.

And that's the classic problem, what I call the problem of the invisible game. The human eye is too slow to see the critical movements in something as explosive and complicated as a tennis stroke. I tried to read some of the comments, but, as usually happens, I couldn't evaluate them in relation to the real time video.

Then I went to the Miami Open and stayed with Kyle. (Click Here for the Miami Adventure Part 1. Click Here for Part 2.) He was nice enough to let me work with an ITF top hundred junior and do an analysis of her serve at his incredible club, the Oaks at Boca Raton. (Click Here.) Afterwards, he asked if we could film his forehand and I said great!

We used the same camera I use with all the players I film, tour players, club players and everything in between, a Casio high speed camera that films at 240 frames a second with a high speed shutter. Traditional video is 30 frames a second, so even if you go frame by frame, you need to film about 10 forehands and study them all frame by frame or you can miss the critical elements--and you still might.

The result of the analysis? We figured out exactly what was happening on his backswing and made a relatively small adjustment that had a huge impact on the shot. So watch out Florida.

What was it we saw? Kyle himself had said in his posts that he tended to hit the ball hard and flat. Although he could obviously hit topspin, what the high speed video showed was how the start of his forward swing put a limit on his ability to accelerate the racket upward and therefore to really maximize his ball rotation as well as his control over net clearances, angles and depth.

So the answer was? When we looked frame by frame we saw that Kyle was turning his racket face slightly backwards in the backswing--not dissimilar to what Novak Djokovic does. Was that a problem? It works for Novak and there was no necessary reason to change it--at least on first appearance.

Then we looked at what happened next. As noted, Kyle hits with a straight arm at contact. But frame by frame analysis showed that Kyle started the forward swing with an extreme elbow bend.

When we look at Roger Federer or any other great straight arm player we see that the arm is straightened much earlier, at the start of the forward swing. Although Kyle straightened his arm just before contact, that forward movement with the elbow bent kept his hand from dropping, and, as you can see, his hand is slightly above ball level only fractions of a second before contact.

That means a smaller margin for error--and also it reduces how much he could really swing up, either lifting the racket from the shoulder, or with the wiper.

So the obvious solution was to straighten the arm sooner. Right? We tried that, with Kyle actually starting from the straight arm position at the bottom of the backswing. But when he went back to the full swing the elbow bend came back--an element that had been part of his forehand for thousands and thousands of balls over more than 20 years of tennis.

To me this is one of the fascinating aspects in coaching--seeing what changes are needed but also what changes are possible and the chain of cause and effect to make them. Obviously just focusing on the straight arm was not the right path--at least initially--so what next?

We decided to experiment with the backswing itself. Why? Even though there was nothing demonstrably dysfunctional in the motion he had, eliminating some extra movement there could save time that might help Kyle get to the straight arm hitting position sooner and start the forward swing from a lower position to the ball.

It would also potentially enhance the role of the shoulders. Brian Gordon's research has shown that the compact outside backswing of a player like Federer has a turbocharging effect by the way it stretches and sets up the shoulder muscles. Less motion, more racket speed. Who wouldn't want that combination?

We also made a small adjustment to one other factor: posture. As the before high speed footage showed, Kyle had a slight tendency to tilt or bend toward the ball. My hypothesis is that teaching a few thousand hours in the tropical climate of Boca Raton may have caused that one.

In any case, what we modeled was the outside backswing at the completion of the turn. The backswing motion is on a diagonal upward and back and slightly to the right. The face of the racket is also slightly closed, eliminating the extra movement in Kyle's backswing. This is what Rick Macci calls the "tap the dog" position. (Click Here.)

The effect was immediate. As the footage shows Kyle's hand came in lower, clearly under the ball. This allowed him to hit more upward and increase his spin levels. In addition he reported the entire motion felt like less work--and that's how it looked to me. All this the result of moving toward the Brian Gordon/Rick Macci outside backswing. (Click Here for Brian's article that goes into the biomechanical detail.)

The fact was, however, that the hitting arm was still approaching the ball with a lot of bend in the elbow. Kyle got the arm straight and in much better position to hit up and probably did so sooner, yet he didn't match the Federer model perfectly.

But the key point here is there was a real increment of change that made the stroke more functional and efficient. And this brings us to an important point about the teaching process which is almost universally misunderstood in traditional lessons.

"Just tell me what to do and I will do that and then the problem will be fixed forever." That's the mentality most lower level players have when they seek instruction. That may have happened sometime somewhere, but never anywhere or anytime that I ever saw.

Change happens in increments. Even for extremely accomplished players like Kyle. Even for extremely accomplished teachers.

The work we did moving toward a different position in a key part of the motion had a big impact. But the goal should not be instant perfection. The goal is to consolidate improvement as it happens. And then to try to achieve another increment of improvement after that.

This is another fascinating point. Sometimes when you try to work directly on the problem you don't solve the problem. And the work on Kyle's forehand showed that. Yes we wanted his arm straighter sooner.

But to get that change we had to work not on the arm position itself, but on a different, preceding part of the motion. And to change a part of the motion that was not inherently unsound.

And that's why teaching tennis will always be an art. It's the intuition and collaboration between the player and the coach that leads to accomplishment. Next time Kyle and I will see if we can get another increment of change and if that makes his forehand even deadlier! Stay tuned.