Your Strokes:
Bastiaan One Handed Backhand

John Yandell

I love it when I get to work with players with one-handed backhands. Bastiaan came to San Francisco to work on his groundstrokes, and there it was—a one-hander on the backhand side.

Bastiaan is young, tall, and athletic. He hits a big ball and, with enough experience, could become a dangerous 5.0 player. More on his forehand or slice backhand possibly in other articles, but here let's focus on his one hand drive.

Bastiaan had a great grip—a little stronger than Federer, but not as extreme as Stan Wawrinka. Very close to Lorenzo Musetti. (Click Here to see Musetti's backhand in the Interactive Forum.) I like that. No reason to go more extreme unless, possibly, you are a high level college or tour player.

Bastiaan's preparation was also great. He made a full shoulder turn with the line of the shoulders going maybe 10-20 degrees past perpendicular to the net, similar to the top players. Height and position of backswing all good.

And he completed the turn at about the time the ball bounced on the court. Also awesome. He hit naturally with a closed stance which is dominant at higher levels and helps with that full shoulder turn.

If It Isn't Broken

We videoed all this at 240 frames a second. But there wasn't a need to talk about all of the above since it was happening naturally. In fact I think it's a mistake to call attention to elements that don't need work.

What the video showed though was that we needed to focus on the forward swing. When we watch tennis strokes with the naked eye, there is a tendency to overemphasize the very end of the followthrough.

On the forehand this is the over the shoulder wrap. On the one-handed backhand, it's the move of the arm and racket back and across the body.

It's natural to focus on this because the racket is then moving at the lowest speed in the forward motion—it's the deceleration phase. This is the consequence of the forward acceleration, but acceleration happens so much more quickly that it can seem invisible to the human eye.

I see an overemphasis on that deceleration position of the racket in so many players at lower levels. They swing for the position when the racket is going the slowest because that's what they can see.

The real key however is to focus on the extension of the swing—the point at which the racket has moved furthest outward closest to the target. From there, if the arm is relatively relaxed, the deceleration happens naturally.

The Arc

The shape of the forward swing is on a curve, but the shape of the curve is critical to maximize the transfer of energy into the shot. The arc of that curve is flatter than most people imagine on a good one-hander. The extension toward the target is less when players focus on the end of the followthrough.

So this is what Bastiaan and I did. We looked in high speed video at how his racket came across his body too quickly and lacked full extension toward the target.

Models

We put his backhand side by side with Federer, Wawrinka, and Musetti as models. And we noted the key position prior to the move across and back at the end of the followthrough.

With our model pro players you could draw a straight line across the shoulders and the arm at extension with the wrist at about eye level and the hand extending out at the maximum point toward the target.

After we looked at his video and the models, Bastiaan understood all this and we began making the adjustment. To do this, I asked him to physically model the extension, close his eyes, then visualize the checkpoints.

Then I asked him to model the forward swing in slow motion, first with his eyes open, then with is eyes closed, and to form an internal mental image of this motion with emphasis on the extension point. Then, when we started hitting ball again, I asked him to project that image of the extension point into space like a mental blueprint and swing through the image.

The shape of the swing immediately started to change and after a few dozen balls he was hitting the checkpoints repeatedly. His comment was that the new swing felt much easier.

But was there a way to definitively tell what the effect of this change was on the quality of ball he was hitting? Yes, it's called pocket radar.

In other work using a pocket radar gun, a club player picked up 5mph average on his forehand by improving his turn, going from 53mph to 58 mph. (Click Here.) A nationally ranked junior's forehand went from 75mph to 85mph, again with reported less effort. Click Here.

And it was the same for Bastiaan. He backhand went from 62mph average to 67mph, with a couple of those topping 70mph. His speeds were not only higher, they were also more consistent.

It is important to note though that the extension point isn't the actual end of the swing. Although players can stop there to observe the checkpoints as a training expercise, the swing does need to decelerate naturally.

This deceleration is the backwards and across movement after extension. The swing should not be or feel stiff and tight.

If the arm relaxes after extension, this continued movement should happen naturally and automatically. This video shows this is what happened for Bastiaan, making his swing full, complete, and technically correct.

A Little History

Many years ago I wrote an article called The Myth of the Wrap about extension and deceleration on the forehand side with some top regional juniors. This was when the USTA sent Greg Patton, Craig Kardon and myself around the country to do clinics. A common teaching mantra at the time at the academies was "Show me the butt of the racket."

What the video of these kids showed was the effort to do this was cutting off the forward extension of their swings compared to elite pro players. (Click Here.)

But that myth of the value of the wrap can die hard, even in the face of video evidence. To cite one example, I did an adult clinic at Indian Wells with Tennisplayer subscribers a few years after that.

We had some one handed backhanders in the group and they had a chance to watch Richard Gasquet play a couple of times when he was near the top. In the video analysis presentation I did I showed the sequence on Richard's backhand of extension, followed by his pronounced deceleration phase with the racket moving across and backwards.

But one of our subscribers was unconvinced when he saw him play the next day. He couldn't see the full extension with his naked eye and told me he thought the exaggerated motion at the end was the "real" key. He happily paid for the clinic but I am pretty sure he never maximized his one hander.

Bastiaan didn't have that problem. And I look forward to seeing and hearing how this all consolidated when he comes back to San Francisco.