Your Strokes: Two Handed Backhand
The Closed Stance
John Yandell
We know that semi-open stance is the preferred option on the forehand, especially at higher levels. But what about the two-hander? Would you be surprised to know that at the highest levels, the preferred stance is actually closed?
We documented this in a presentation I gave with the USTA's David Ramos at a teaching convention at the U.S Open. Let's just say that a few of the 200plus coaching attendees were surprised. Dave counted literally hundreds of pro two-hander stances in live match play. Although all players need to be able to hit from all the stances—open, neutral, and closed--closed stance dominated as the preferred choice.
A Stance Test
My friend and colleague Miles Bentley brought two of his promising junior students to my court recently and we did a stance experiment. Miles had been working with both on developing that necessary open stance which is used for defense mainly. But Miles also wanted both players to work on open stance to increase the loading in the back leg--an excellent idea.
As I always do now, we used the pocket radar gun to measure ball speed. We measured 10-12 backhands for each player. Brad who is a lefty averaged 59mph with the open stance. Sam, the righty, was about the same, averaging 60mph.
Those are good numbers! The average speed of two-handers at the pro level is 70 to 80mph, and these guys are just in high school.
At the same time, we filmed both players in high speed video at 240 frames a second—about the same speed as most of the strokes in the Tennisplayer High Speed Archives. (Click Here.)
When we looked at technique, starting with the open stance for both players, they looked good! Both guys had good loading on the outside leg. good preparation and substantial shoulder turn. I think Miles' work on this has really paid off.
Next we asked Brad and Sam instead of hitting open, to take the cross step into the closed stance. Guess what that did to ball speed?
Again we measured 10-12 backhands each. The results were pretty amazing. There was a substantial increase in ball speed for both players.
Brad went from from 59mph to 64mph. That extra 5mph was about a 9% increase. For Sam it was even more. He went from 60mph to 68mph. That 8mph gain was about 13% faster.
Both players were now approaching the low end of pro ball speed averages. Impressive!
Pro Closed
This made me think back to the prevalence of pro closed stances from our U.S. Open study. Although we knew pro players overwhelming chose closed stance, the research we did on that didn't include any ball speed measurements.
With this article we have actual data about the ball speed differences in two-handed stances. I love it when teaching players, measuring their ball speed and videoing their strokes sheds new light on previous work on Tennisplayer.
Do you think pro players instinctively know closed stance meant higher velocities? I am going to say yes even if this isn't something pro players know consciously, much less had seen quantified. They just know how to maximize speed.
So why would that be? I think we can see the answer in comparing pro neutral stances with pro closed stances. (For a detailed article on pro two handed stances in this month's classic lesson, Click Here.)
Closed stance had an incremental but significant effect in increasing the amount of body rotation before the forward swing. Check out the difference in turn of the shoulders and hips for Novak—one of the greatest two-handers ever. The increased forward torso rotation from the closed stance had to have an effect on ball speed.
So?
What does all this mean for teaching at all levels? Should players at all levels be taught closed stance, especially initially? My opinion is no. The first stance should be neutral. Then I think the open stance. If players are comfortable and successful with those, then it's worth experimenting with closed. Probably the results will be similar to what we saw with Miles' students.
