Nadal’s low ball FH

5263 said:

but are you talking ww Fh?
I need "some" lay back in my wrist with my grip, to hit the WW Fh unless the contact is very high.
Maybe not a lot.
Could depend on what you consider neutral.

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if by ww you mean you can see through the strings during the wrap around then yes.

so what i'm saying is that if you do not use your arm when you swing, which is difficult for most ppl, have that whippy wrist, racquet flip back, ssc, type of swing then you will be making contact with a very close to neutral wrist. this is an advanced fh. not bragging or anything but this is how i hit my fh and i can tell you that when you hit w/ neutral in this style you get better control because your hand is in it's most natural position at contact and you get better pop because those few centimeters of going from laid back to neutral or close to neutral make a difference. Also the sound of the hit is different believe it or not.

also i've noticed that the more of an inside out type of swing you have the more neutral the wrist will be. By that i mean the hand starts the forward swing closer to the body and flies outward away from the body on it's way to contact. Players who don't have this inside out type of motion will hit with more laid back wrist at contact. Most vids of people on this site i see do not have this inside out motion.

The inside out motion, imo is a better, more biomechanically correct motion than your typical 'straight at the ball from ptd' position because if you just stand and rotate your body your arm will fly outward right? Like lockandroll's chinese drum video. Centripetal force.
So if you dont fight this motion you get more good stuff imo. More speed. Looser arm. That's my theory.
This 'theory' of mine is also discussed on Yandell's site.

Cheetah said:

Fish hits with laid back wrist more often but in that pic he looks jammed or something.

That's not his normal current stroke which is more like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtmLwq0YwWI

...which is only very slightly bent back at contact. That racquet angle in that vid is because thats what a very close to neutral wrist looks like when contact is made out in front. freeze the vid right at contact. try to image there is no racquet there to make his fingers bulge under the racquet which gives a laid back appearance when there is often not. it will look like he just has his arm laid out with like trying to catch a feather in his palm.

mardy's swing is a little different than others. he usually makes contact with his torso not pointing completely at the net. like in that pic. it's a touch of an older style fh still remaining in his swing. if he makes contact while rotating, not using his arm, facing the net at contact his wrist would be less laid back.

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This is set of the pictures from your video. It seems that Fish hits with significant laid back wrist/racquet (or not?).



Fish also rotates his body very intensively. Before contact the angular path of his body rotation is more than 90° and arm rotation about shoulder joint just roughly 45°. :shock:

1) Fish has a weird stroke. This is why noone talks about his strokes or emulates them. and his takeback is weird

2) He is hitting in a closed stance.

3) Fish does not hit with the 'inside/out' type of stroke i mentioned. he comes straight at the ball. (more than most ppl)

4) He is just about jammed on that shot. look how close his elbow is to his body.

5) and once again.. that pic shows he has only a slight laid back wrist. definitely not 'significantly'.

I asked you to hold your racquet in a neutral position in a mirror to see what it looks like. looks like you haven't done that.

Cheetah said:

1) Fish has a weird stroke. This is why noone talks about his strokes or emulates them. and his takeback is weird

2) He is hitting in a closed stance.

3) Fish does not hit with the 'inside/out' type of stroke i mentioned. he comes straight at the ball. (more than most ppl)

4) He is just about jammed on that shot. look how close his elbow is to his body.

5) and once again.. that pic shows he has only a slight laid back wrist. definitely not 'significantly'.

I asked you to hold your racquet in a neutral position in a mirror to see what it looks like. looks like you haven't done that.

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Can you please first read all my posts in thread http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=395364. I will really appreciate any negative comments about this stuff.

Your recommendations I cannot follow because they are too general. :shock:

read all your comments? it's 11 pages. :neutral:

how about you hold your racquet w/ wrist neutral in front of your body at contact point position and take a picture of that. then post that picture here first?

Cheetah said:

how about you hold your racquet w/ wrist neutral in front of your body at contact point position and take a picture of that. then post that picture here first?

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That is what I was thinking of asking you to do with your WW type Fh contact
point. I'd like to see your neutral wrist contact with a WW.

Cheetah said:

The picture you yourself posted of djokovic shows him making contact with a neutral wrist.

Don't make me post a 100 pics showing the opposite of what you just said.

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BTW neutral wrist doesn't mean that the racket is in line with the forearm. WIth a conti grip this is usually true but with a western or SW the racket is still layed back if the wrist is neutral.

dominikk1985 said:

BTW neutral wrist doesn't mean that the racket is in line with the forearm. WIth a conti grip this is usually true but with a western or SW the racket is still layed back if the wrist is neutral.

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noone said 'the racquet is in line'. i stated as such numerous times in this thread.

5263 said:

That is what I was thinking of asking you to do with your WW type Fh contact
point. I'd like to see your neutral wrist contact with a WW.

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ok i will if you post a picture of your laid back wrist contact for comparison.

I'm not sure what the disagreement is about. The way I see it, if you start with a relaxed take back, where you're not death-gripping the racket, the racket will lay back on its own as you go forward and rotate.

I watched an instructional video the other day where they called this "getting into the slot." The mardy fish pictures are a perfect example. He hasn't contorted his wrist with any extraneous motions when he intitially takes it back. As he starts his stroke forward, his arm is going forward, but it is still holding the racket, so the inertia of the racket naturally lays back the wrist.

here's a video of Nadal doing what I'm talking about. The racket gets really laid back as soon as he starts moving his arm forward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pm9vxTKTlM

Mardy Fish has a better forehand than anybody that posts on this board. It's textbook. Maybe not quite as good as his backhand but his backhand's amazing too. Fish's forehand does break down before his backhand. He's worked on his forehand a lot and it's world class now. It reminds me a lot of federer's. What's wrong with it?

FrisbeeFool said:

I'm not sure what the disagreement is about. The way I see it, if you start with a relaxed take back, where you're not death-gripping the racket, the racket will lay back on its own as you go forward and rotate.

I watched an instructional video the other day where they called this "getting into the slot." The mardy fish pictures are a perfect example. He hasn't contorted his wrist with any extraneous motions when he intitially takes it back. As he starts his stroke forward, his arm is going forward, but it is still holding the racket, so the inertia of the racket naturally lays back the wrist.

here's a video of Nadal doing what I'm talking about. The racket gets really laid back as soon as he starts moving his arm forward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pm9vxTKTlM

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Yes that's exactly what i'm talking about. His wrist here is very very close to neutral. it's not flexed. it's not deviated. maybe there's a very slight bit of extenstion maybe, because he's hitting with a severely closed face. but if you took the racquet out of that pic and just look at his hand it would not be angled, contorted or bent back.
and the 'bulge' that makes it look like it's bent back is not a flexed wrist. that's his fingers going around the handle. look at the upper part of the wrist that's facing the sky. kind of like he is doing a closed hand volley ball serve.
no angle there. neutral.

Oh, I thought it was laid back because he is pulling the racket forward and the intertia of the racket lays back his wrist naturally, and when he makes contact he has leverage and clean solid contact because at that point the wrist is still laid back.

I don't know what half these terms mean, so it's hard to say. I think If you're worrying about whether your arm is flexed or deviated or supinated or whatever, you're putting too much thought into it. Most good players probably don't even use those terms to think about their strokes, and if they do, it's because they studied exercise physiology or sports science later, after they had learned the strokes as a kid.

Here is famous Nadal low ball running forehand winner with great clockwise sidespin. The ball flies around net post with a height below the net cord.:shock:


Figure 1. Nadal actions


Figure 2. The ball path


Figure 3. The ball path, different angle

It was actually the body English that made it work.