I figured this would be a good and often contentious place to start. I had a conversation with a gentleman at a wedding this weekend. It seems that he is a pretty good golfer and he gave me some pointers that I truly believe will help my game on the course. Unfortunately, when it came to accepting my advise on the tennis stroke he assured me that his father had been quite the tennis player and inflated his NTRP rating as many golfers do with their handicap. Disregarding old standards in tennis are particularly hard for folks who learned the game from traditionalists that have not kept up with the modern game. The first thing you need to do is let go of the ideology of the past. We all know that equipment has changed the game immensely. I will not bore you with the details of why in this post. I will concern myself with how.
You see Caroline hitting a series of forehands in this video in slow motion. She begins with a forehand from the backhand side of the court (off the feed no doubt) and progressively works her way wider to the forehand side. She ends with an errant shot. Don't be confused by the smile on her face. The smile is more that of a child getting her hand caught in the cookie jar than of the joy a purely stuck shot brings.
What I would like to focus on is three parts:
1.) Her foot placement.
2.) Her "unit turn." The unit references the turning of her whole body; core, shoulders, and hips especially. These parts should be moved in concert, hence "unit."
3.) Her recovery position.
The major bone of contention that my friend at the wedding had was his preference for the closed stance forehand. I attempted to explain to him that the new technology in the game puts a higher priority on rotational momentum, i.e. the unit turn, than it does to linear momentum. In the past, stepping into the ball with the left foot and moving into the court was a high priority, especially considering that the goal was to hit a quality approach shot and finish the point with a volley. One of the reason that you don't see as much net play anymore is because linear momentum has been replaced with rotational momentum. Getting weight and movement behind the ball is not as important as how well you can turn on a ball.
You need to see a couple of important things when Caroline strikes the ball. The first thing she does when she identifies forehand is to turn her right foot toward the sideline. She does this because at the same time she is beginning her unit turn by putting all of her weight over the right foot. Try leaning over your right foot and turning your shoulders with your right foot pointing at the net and then with it pointing toward the sideline. What you will find is that you lose your balance and fall toward the sideline with your foot pointing toward the net. Turning the foot outward allows the legs to balance your weight by either bracing backward or bending downward. This also gives you more ability to adjust to balls that are not directly in the strike zone.
Her unit turn allows her to coil her body like a spring. Upper level players will not only allow the spring to release as they strike, but are also capable of firing their core rotation for added torque. In order to release the spring you will see Caroline leave the ground. She is not jumping. She is allowing her feet to come off the ground. When your feet are anchored to the ground the prevent the base of the spring from fully uncoiling, the top can still rotate, but the bottom is grounded, limiting torque. Likewise if you jump you are pushing too hard with your legs. That can stiffen them in the air and have the same effect. Just slightly leave the ground with your legs relaxed for maximum effect. Land on your left leg in the same fashion that you loaded on the right. This will ensure a full unit turn. Start by allowing your body to return to comfort. Loading makes you legs burn and you back whine. Just begin to slowly release your body from the coiled position before you start any movement with you arms or hands.
What you will notice on Caroline's final shot (an error) is that her stance is closed and her feet are grounded. As a result, she is unable to adjust to getting jammed by the ball. Her body does not rotate, it moves backward in a linear fashion in an attempt to move away from the ball. If I had to guess, she missed well long. The beauty of the open stance is when you learn to control the release of your spring/unit turn you can rotate earlier to get out ahead of a ball inside your body or slow it down to hit a ball that is too far away from your body. The feet leaving the ground allows you to adjust by landing the left foot toward either sideline in order to adjust to these problems as well. One day I will discuss why you should hit the ball cross-court when you get jammed and down-the-line when you must reach out.
Notice that Caroline's court position in what I assume is a cross-court rally is on the forehand side of the court. Too many players recover to the middle after each shot, another topic I will discuss in more depth at a later date. This promotes the closed stance because in order to get to balls that stretch us we must cross over with our feet and turn our shoulders. If the ball arrives quickly there is not enough time to make the first step I discussed earlier (turning the right foot to point toward the sideline). As a result, the shoulders close and we can never get a full unit turn. The greater problem is a tactical and mental one that I will cover in my next entry. But, basically, if you are in the middle of the court you are left to guess where the ball is going. It can go either way. If you hold one side of the court the ball is either coming at you or going away from you, cutting down on the guessing game of defensive and offensive options. In the middle of the court the ball is always going away from you especially if you opponent is not hitting from the middle of the court.
