Hi Jon,

I’ll try and explain that in one of the future articles. The wrist is quite passive in the most basic forehand. It’s laid back and it stays laid back all the time through contact.

We can rotate the forearm and that moves the wrist but we don’t really do much with the wrist joint before or at contact.

So most of what you see with the wrist happens rather than what we “do”.

Of course, at the pro level hitting heavy topspin on a slower ball, the wrist is more active but I would not teach or recommend that to recreational players as they will only mishit the ball too many times.

Actually, the wrist doesn’t break but it goes from laid back to neutral as you’re making contact. It seems like you are stretching the wrist back and letting it release (flex) into the shot. It’s not a slap exactly but a motion that imparts topspin. Is that right?

Thanx John for a complete explanation, including a usefull drill! I wil try it out the coming days. The tip of Tomaz hitting against a towel,I successfully used for my children to learn to hold the racket face to hit the ball. I will practice your suggestion the next days.

I’m using a semi-western and am struggling with balancing to explode into the ball with al kinetic chain energy, while “extend my arm” more for more control, direction and depth in my shots and how to fully coil-uncoil my body with a windshield-wiper follow through… Both open-stance and steppping-in situations. When drop-hit a ball it’s fine and I have a nice clean shot. When on court, there are to many situations where I get sloppy and my balls land short or not that precise with my FH…

That’s why I’m following all the tips over here to more feel the ball to be in control. Visualizing helps me a lot to simplify things (that’s main reason why i get sloppy; to much to think about); so that’s why I got into push-pull visualization.

@Tomaz: Keep bringing those fantastic videos! It really works, after understanding the mechanic technique and reasons behind it; simplify and visualize and focus on the tactics!

That sounds great! Thanks Tomaz.

Great tips, John. I have used the towel with the serve but only once or twice when teaching the forehand. I’ll try it again with one of my students who has problems hitting the ball well with a western forehand grip.

I use the towel also for the player to hit it with the racquet – square on – and when they do, a good sound is heard and they feel more resistance.

I’ll show the “towel tennis drills” in one of the future articles.

Thank you Robbert for your inquiry and interest in my comment.
My response is going to be separated into two sections. The first one will explain what the coach was saying in regards to pushing and pulling, and the second part is explaining in more detail how you have to almost step away from the ball to hit with a western grip.

To visually see how the push and pull concept works when it comes to hitting the ball, lets start by imagining that you are holding a long bath towel. Now let me start by saying that a towel is a god-send when it comes to helping with your groundstrokes and your serve, which I will show how it helps with answering your question.

With the bath towel, go through the motions as you would when hitting the ball. in order to get the towel moving and gaining speed, you have to step in and push through forward with the towel. Now that you are moving stepping in and pushing through the shot, in order to get the towel up and over your shoulder, you need to starting bring the racket up and over your body, and while doing this pulling it over your shoulder. If you do not pull the towel up towards your should and just go through the same motion as you did before hitting the ball, your hand will be over your should, but the towel will just be laying across your chest and not over your shoulder.

I promise that if you practice your ground strokes with a long bath towel for about 5-10 mins before picking up your racket and focus on getting the towel completely over your shoulder, you will be doing what the other coach was explaining and your groundstrokes will be crisper and more powerful.

Now onto my second part of this post.

What happens when you have a western style grip for your forehand, you cannot step into the ball to generate power…if you do you will hit the ball straight to the floor. In order to hit the ball in the middle of the racket(where usually the sweet spot is), you do not step into the ball as you would typically with a continental grip, rather you would have a more open stance and you would put more of your weight on your back foot. The perfect example of this is the video Tomaz included in this post. If you watch Rafael Nadal and focus on the time-range between 58sec and 1min 15sec, you will see the preparation Nadal does so that he can hit his western grip correctly. All of his weight is planted on his back foot and then he twists his body around and uses this twist and wrist to generate power and spin on the ball. This can be seen between 1min 12sec- 1min 15sec on the video, and shows what Nadal does to hit with such power and spin.

Every grip you can use for hitting the ball (continental, Eastern, Semi-Western, Western) all have their pros and cons.

With the Western grip you have such great spin on the ball, but you lose considerable power. To generate power, you have to hit with more body torque and wrist snap. From my experience with this grip, my wrist would get tired more easily and I also started developing wrist issues.

I hope this helps, please comment back if you have any questions on my response or if I can help with anything.

Nice remarks John! Can you explain (or give some hints) where I can understand better your “pull away” from the ball and the connection with the extreme power and the sweet spot? I’m very interested in this concept since I heard another coach telling to push (before the ball) and then pull-and-across (follow-through).

Good points, John. Eventual move to a semi-western grip is what I would recommend too.