If the serve is wide on the deuce side, I will sometimes hit into the alley for an outright winner.
Enough Is Enough: Should I Switch to Open Stance FH?
- Thread starter Cindysphinx
- Start date
If the serve is wide on the deuce side, I will sometimes hit into the alley for an outright winner.
Dartagnan64
G.O.A.T.
Don't ignore the reverse forehand suggestion! It is amazing for approach shots and returns. Seriously if you learn it - and you can - you will wish you started using it sooner.
Using a semi-open stance by default has made a big difference for me - I can push off my back foot as I would in a closed stance but can also swing my hips more through the ball as in an open stance. Moving forward on approaches I usually change to a closed stance, whereas getting pulled wide sometimes means an open stance.
Some days I practice shadow swings and approaches without even a racket or ball to figure out footwork patterns and work up a sweat.
I actually had issues hitting cross court FH from the deuce side - I'd hit them late and either send them down the middle to get poached or flying way long. What actually helps me sometimes is at around 9:15 in this video:
It's under "disguising the shot," but I find that it adjusts my contact point and timing so I'm reliably able to redirect the ball crosscourt. Line up in a closed stance, and when hitting the ball rotate through so that your hips end up facing the direction of the shot.
Some days I practice shadow swings and approaches without even a racket or ball to figure out footwork patterns and work up a sweat.
I actually had issues hitting cross court FH from the deuce side - I'd hit them late and either send them down the middle to get poached or flying way long. What actually helps me sometimes is at around 9:15 in this video:
It's under "disguising the shot," but I find that it adjusts my contact point and timing so I'm reliably able to redirect the ball crosscourt. Line up in a closed stance, and when hitting the ball rotate through so that your hips end up facing the direction of the shot.
Same, but the cutoff for me is from the shoulders up. My hitting buddy yells "NICULESCU" at me every time I hit the FH slice because he hates 'em.
Rosstour
G.O.A.T.
Wow. Great post. I see myself in it.
My left eye is terrible and I don't wear glasses. And I tend to generally 'rush' everything on the court so I over-run the ball and get too close to it. Thanks for writing this all out.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
Glad you found it useful. Most players get too close to the ball because they hit shots without full extension too close to them. If you focus on having an early takeback and then try to hit the ball more in front of you with good weight transfer and full extension, you will start stopping further away from the ball as you will not be able to swing out freely if you are too close. Most players have a cramped swing based on getting too close to the ball and they cannot just change their spacing without changing their swing - I think if they change their swing first to hit the ball earlier in front of them with full extension, the spacing automatically will change for the better over time.
Also, when I talk about dominant eye, it is not the same as having better or worse eyesight in one eye. I would suggest googling "dominant eye" or "ocular dominance" to figure out the simple test to find your dominant eye if you don't know which eye it is already - basically, your brain prefers the visual impact from your dominant eye to make judgments on depth/distance etc. If you watch pro doubles on TV, you’ll see the net player standing sideways many times with one side of their body more in front - this doesn’t correlate to their FH or BH side, but to their dominant eye side. They are coached to have their dominant eye in front to pick up the ball early at the net - many players have a sideways return stance also for the same reason.
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Rosstour
G.O.A.T.
I know which one it is, always have. It's my right, supporting what you said.
Re the other stuff, I have to almost tell myself to be lazier so I don't overrun the ball. It's a constant battle.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
The problem is that if you stop further from the ball but you use the same cramped swing you always used when you stopped closer to the ball, you will mistime the ball as it will be too far from you. You have to consciously train your swing to hit the ball earlier in front of you with more arm extension doing drills or the ball machine and then your feet will follow and stop further from the ball over time. You can’t train this while playing matches.
Rosstour
G.O.A.T.
I don't have a cramped swing though. Thinking about this a little deeper, it's an issue with shot tolerance...and with the other thing we are discussing: seeing the ball.
This over-running of the ball happens "all the time" only because I play the same guy 95% of the time. He's 29, a 6'3" beast, probably a 5.5, can punish small mistakes from both wings.
On the rare occasion I play someone else, it's my Dad, who's a 3.0-3.5 right now and whose only weapons are first serve and FH. When I play against him there are no issues, I can move around and hit the ball in what feels like slow-mo. Against the faster, stronger guy, the stress level is so much higher and I'm always 'scrambling'. Mentally, visually, and so physically.
There is a little clock in my head that tells me exactly when to hit once I lock the ball and it all works well most of the time, but sometimes the clock is a little off and then things start to fall apart a little. Luckily it doesn't happen during actual matches. I tried to find some way around to compensate, but in reality nothing has consistently worked, the problem tends to resolve on it's own after 10-15 minutes. It happens when I hit with a coach and if I hit in the same way 3-4 times in a row, we switch to backhand that for whatever reason doesn't have any timing-related issues, or just play a few points.
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
My friend yells “Tomahawk!” He hates those too.
S&V-not_dead_yet
Talk Tennis Guru
You must hate Daylight Savings.
Cindysphinx
G.O.A.T.
Will do.
This is going to be interesting. All four of my USTA teams disbanded because Covid.
That frees up budget for weekly private lessons. I plan to devote these lessons from now until March on FH. I will also play social marches 2-3 times a month, but I will only work on other things in lesson if something else goes sideways. And I will not crash the net but will park on the baseline and try to hit proper FHs.
I hope this works.
OnTheLine
Hall of Fame
All teams disbanded?? Wow. Locally our Fall leagues start this week. More teams at both the 3.5 and 4.0 levels and each team is bigger than I have seen in the past couple years.
Having a pause from league play is a great time to really work on a particular skill or two. I definitely took advantage of March - June and ended up with a few skill upgrades. It is hard to do it with matches-that-count in between.
Enjoy the process!
Cindysphinx
G.O.A.T.
Regarding teams disbanding . . . it looks like captains polled their players about whether they were willing to play (1) indoors, and (2) wearing masks. Only our 7.5 ladies combo team had enough people agree to play to field a team. Alas, no other 7.5 ladies combo team registered, even though there are normally maybe six teams in the flight. So that means no league tennis for me for the remainder of 2020. There are some outdoor leagues in other counties, but that doesn't work for me because of the distance.
As I said, I still have seasonal time, a mixed group on Saturdays and a ladies group on Sundays. I played indoor doubles for the first time since the lockdown on Saturdays -- wearing a cotton mask. The others on our court also wore their masks.
It was . . . survivable but unpleasant. On long points, it was definitely hard to recover afterward. And there were lots of times I had to pull the mask away and gulp some air, or leave it affixed such that there wasn't much filtration happening, with all the air coming in through the sides.
Trouble is, the facility was not enforcing the mask rule (which is a state or county requirement, not a facility rule). So on the court next to us on both sides were foursomes not wearing masks at all or wearing them under the chin.
I don't consider myself especially conservative or cautious or militant per Covid. I just follow the rules, avoid high-risk indoor encounters, and live my life. But if I'm wearing a mask, I'm protecting others, protecting myself, and following the law or ordinance or whatever it is. But these other people were not willing to inconvenience themselves and protect me. It was annoying enough to wear a mask I would prefer not to wear, but to be near others who were blowing off the rules . . . it was kind of mentally unpleasant.
I'm not sure what to do about this.
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
The rules here in Phase 2 are that masks need to be worn at all times in the Indoor facility, except when playing tennis. You need to put your mask back on when walking out behind the curtains.
8.0 mixed season in full swing. But some teams are using outdoor courts as home - normally all usta leagues are indoor.
Lol. Well, this is the closest analogy I could find. I have no idea why it's happening, probably there is number of reasons, but if have 3 mishits in a row, to me it means that the clock needs resetting, and it it resets during point play. By now I know hat persisting with trying to hit a FH once it happens is a waste of time I pay for, this time is better spent doing something else. Maybe with a coach I am focusing too much on the actual move, on what my feet are doing, and my focus on the ball is probably not as strong, I just wait for balls to arrive so eventually my focus slips. In active play I am actually tracking it and moving according to its trajectory.
Ask the indoor facility to adopt UVC light equipment for cleaning the air in the HVAC system. That is what casinos are doing.
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Fxanimator1
Hall of Fame
Without actually seeing your forehand and based on what you’ve stated and the bolded above, I would imagine that you don’t rotate your shoulders enough going into contact.
I see adult women playing locally here and what I noticed, on basically every one of them, is that they sort of rotate (all-be-it, late) to set up, but never uncoil their torso and shoulders into the shot. So they basically use their hitting shoulder like a hinge and try and derive all of their power from the shoulder instead of using their whole body to deliver the power. They stay sideways and in turn hit the ball at their side and late, rather than in front, which in turn gives them weak flicky kind of forehands with no penetration into the court. They aren’t driving the ball...heck they can’t, because it’s making contact to the side, which is really an unstable and weak place to make contact.
I hope that all made sense, but in a nutshell, by not rotating the shoulders into the shot, you sort of have to hit to the side of you, because that's as far as your arm will travel, this tends to look like that sort of "Hugging" motion you see everywhere, which is a weak position for contact and will give you no depth.
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i don't think it's a question of *switching* to open stance, as it is about *adding* open stance (semi or full), to your toolbox of footwork patterns.
i think open applies to fh & bh side
going beyond open vs. closed stance, check out bailey footwork patterns... we would all benefit from learning them for different scenarios
open stance is fantastic for:
* handling penetrating shots (ie. don't need to move back, to step into the ball)
* adding more topspin (easier to swing low to high) - eg. for rally shots from behind the baseline
* going cc (hips open/turn easier)
but note as good for
* flattening out the shots
* approach shots (since weight is moving forward)
* short balls where you're late
* etc... (i'm sure i'm missing some)
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
I played a guy this week who had the same issue as you - he hit a very spinny shot that was so lacking in penetration that he made many errors into the net. What I noticed is that he stood upright with his weight on his back foot and hit a very vertical swing with no weight transfer at all to the front - he didn’t bend his front knee on closed stance shots and he didn’t tilt his chest forward on open stance shots. The lack of forward weight transfer meant that his weight was leaning backwards while he hit a vertical swing path and so, there was very little forward penetration or depth to his shots. Sometimes, if he mistimed the ball, he would shank and hit the fence. I wonder if that describes your issue and if so, the correction is to work diligently on transferring weight forward during your swing.
Cindysphinx
G.O.A.T.
Um.
Yeah. That describes me perfectly. And it is a real bear to fix. I am not giving up on this. I have to figure it out.
S&V-not_dead_yet
Talk Tennis Guru
Try throwing a medicine ball against a wall: you have to transfer your weight to get any kind of distance.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
If weight transfer is indeed the issue, then you now know what to fix. Maybe you are a little reluctant to do it because of your previous knee surgeries. But, unless you start bending that front knee to transfer weight forward, your spinny ball will lack forward penetration. Check out what I wrote earlier in post#16 - all the best. Once you diagnose the problem correctly, the solution should not be too complicated to implement.
Cindysphinx
G.O.A.T.
Omg. I did it.
I had (yet another) lesson yesterday, and it felt a lot better. But hitting ok off of feeds is one thing. What would happen in a match?
I played doubles today, and I decided I would focus on one thing: weight to the front knee. Huge improvement! I hit drives to the baseline with minimal effort. The ball didnt sky. I couldn’t miss. Everything else fell into place once I wasn’t hitting off of my back foot.
This is a big step forward. I think the rest of my shots are 4.0 level, but my FH was holding me back. Man, I hope I can really master this ‘cause I’m gonna hurt some people.
I had (yet another) lesson yesterday, and it felt a lot better. But hitting ok off of feeds is one thing. What would happen in a match?
I played doubles today, and I decided I would focus on one thing: weight to the front knee. Huge improvement! I hit drives to the baseline with minimal effort. The ball didnt sky. I couldn’t miss. Everything else fell into place once I wasn’t hitting off of my back foot.
This is a big step forward. I think the rest of my shots are 4.0 level, but my FH was holding me back. Man, I hope I can really master this ‘cause I’m gonna hurt some people.
CosmosMpower
Hall of Fame
You’re over thinking it, trust your pro or get a new one.
PURETENNISsense
Professional
This all depends on:
1) What type of ball you are getting from opponent
2) What you want to do with the ball
3) Your location within the court
4) your abilities on the forehand wing
There could be an entire essay written on which stance for which shot in which position because there are 100s of variations.
Bottom line is this:
If you want to hit balls on the run or out of reach for a closed/stepping in forehand then open stance is the key. When doing so, be sure to get a full shoulder/unit turn and allow your racket to accelerate forward and the tip of the racket to your target. This also depends on how fast your racket head speed is and what grip you use. But generally, this is the main idea.
Lastly, a wide, stable and loaded base will ensure all of the above falls into place for a clean forehand. Then finally..... practice it a few hundred times to make it second nature.
1) What type of ball you are getting from opponent
2) What you want to do with the ball
3) Your location within the court
4) your abilities on the forehand wing
There could be an entire essay written on which stance for which shot in which position because there are 100s of variations.
Bottom line is this:
If you want to hit balls on the run or out of reach for a closed/stepping in forehand then open stance is the key. When doing so, be sure to get a full shoulder/unit turn and allow your racket to accelerate forward and the tip of the racket to your target. This also depends on how fast your racket head speed is and what grip you use. But generally, this is the main idea.
Lastly, a wide, stable and loaded base will ensure all of the above falls into place for a clean forehand. Then finally..... practice it a few hundred times to make it second nature.
