Your Strokes:
Miller Forehand

John Yandell

This month we look at Miller's forehand. But this article is about more than helping her improve it technically. It's about how my own teaching has evolved over about 3 decades—basically a revisioning of the classical forehand model.

So how did we improve Miller's forehand and how did that relate to the evolution of my teaching model?

In the late 1980s, Miller played on championship teams I coached at University High School in San Francisco. Tennis wasn't her main sport. She was a varsity soccer player and a varsity swimmer.

But Miller was a good athlete and played enough tennis to make the number one doubles spot. With a couple of exceptions over the years, our teams never had highly ranked tournament players. Our strength was our depth—the lower 2 or 3 singles spots and especially our doubles.

Part of the reason for that strength is that almost all our players—even if they never played a tournament--trained with me in the off season and/or the summer at my tennis school—Miller included. She was a great, dedicated student!