Obstacles to Transitioning to Semiwestern

[travlerajm]

Fell a little bit back to earth today. Lost 6-2 to beast mode.
I held first two service games, then the 374sw started feeling heavy, and my serve wasn’t quite doing enough damage after that. My friend played better today, and he was just too good for me to steal any breaks today. My only break point, in the first game, was squandered when I was ahead in the point and choked a low short fh from the service line. I stripped off a gram from the tip. Will test later this week.

 

[ServeBot]

I think the crafty lefty is planning to set the start time so that I will have the sun in my eyes on one side, so I’ll likely be serving sidearm sidewinder drop shot serves to his backhand on the sun end.

You should be a big favorite. We haven't seen a net rusher vs him yet but I think that would do very well vs him.

 

[travlerajm]

You should be a big favorite. We haven't seen a net rusher vs him yet but I think that would do very well vs him.

The amount of cloud cover could have a big impact on how the match goes.

 

[travlerajm]

Update:

My semiwestern fh never made an appearance in my matchup vs GSG, as I built a new racquet with a hardcourt spec better designed for net play and slice and dice. I did go to my head heavy clay court spec that I’d been using for a few weeks at the end of that match, for the last 4 games. After winning the first game after the switch, GSG adjusted to the spinnier ball, and he gained confidence with the higher bounce going right into his slicer strike zone. I went down meekly in the last 3 games.

Since then, I’ve been in a slump. I played poorly in Seattle against my 4.5 friend I usually beat 95% of the time. I lost 3 sets in a row against him while I tested failed experimental setups. I finally reversed the loss streak with a solid set of tennis using my clay court spec, but forehand still shaky.

Then on a stopover in Miami, I played against a hard hitting TT 4.5 on green clay. I could not trust the fh, and relied extensively on my fh slice. The clay seemed to revive my confident 2hb though.

Then this week, I’ve been in slump. My regular Superman forehand guy has been destroying me. I lost by demoralizing a triple bagel on Tuesday with my strokes in the toilet and my opponent playing in god mode. My whole game has been out of whack - I’ve been testing out new racquet setups to find a better formula. I’m especially struggling to recreate the offense serve feel from my retired Warped! frame I used back in March.

I finally had a successful breakthrough yesterday. Found a spec that let me feel confident on the semi fh against my hard hitting opponent. I stopped our match yesterday down 0-3. I felt I was hitting my forehand much better than usual, so I asked to spend the rest of the hour drilling and training forehands to try to preserve more of the good muscle memory.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Three days ago I played a match with a semiwestern grip for the first time. The results surprisingly promising.

My usual fh grip is between eastern and semiwestern.
To recap my story, I never learned a decent forehand as a junior, but reached a high level of play, playing 5.0 level at times, and settling into a 4.5-5.0 level for most of my adult tennis life. My weak forehand was capping my level. However, I developed an excellent slice fh return that allowed me to compete and sometimes win matches against 5.0 players.

During the pandemic, I developed a fairly solid new fh technique that relies on a fixed wrist at contact. My baseline game level shot up a notch, and I started winning everything last year. But that was on hardcourt.

My fixed-wrist forehand is useless here on red clay in South America. So I am starting from scratch trying to learn a full lag forehand that makes it easier to adjust last instant to clay bounces, and easier to generate more racquet speed that helps for clay court tennis.

But it’s been a struggle, so I thought maybe I’ve got nothing to lose by trying a stronger grip?

On the plus side, I’ve found that when my semiwestern fh connects with the right timing, it generates a really heavy rally ball that gives my opponents problems. It helps that I’m using a slightly head heavy frame with 375sw that can really club it.

The number one obstacle is that I have tendency to meet the ball too late. My old fh has a contact point further back relative to my stance, and it’s difficult to adjust to a contact point further out in front. This becomes harder when I get tired. And my cardio system is working hard in these super hot conditions, so I’m often playing under extreme cardio stress.

The second obstacle is that my grip tends to drift back toward my old grip. So even if I meet the ball with the right contact point, the wrong grip will cause me to launch the fh into the fence.

The third issue is that as soon as the first two issues start to occur, I start to bail out to the trusty slice too often, passing up opportunities to create offense with the heavy topspin semi drive.

On Wednesday, I came within points of upsetting my nemesis for the first time, but I wore down at the end when my new semi grip fh broke down. Lost the set to her 7-5.

Then yesterday, I destroyed a 5.0 teaching pro who used to beat me most of the time. Again I started losing the fh feel though when heat exhaustion set in.

Any tips for reinforcing the right out-in-front contact point and ‘locking in’ the new stronger grip are welcome.

If you imagined your stroke from above how would your forearm-to-racket shaft angle compare to high level ATP forehands. Some camera views from higher than the player can give an indication of this angle although it is not as accurate as an overhead camera view.

For example, this Serena Williams forehand with Toly composite frames. You can see the forearm-to-racket angle is well above 90 d at impact. See impact around 7 seconds.

When you rotate the SW grip slightly and the racket shaft is near horizontal it tends to open or close the racket face. This seems simpler and more direct than an Eastern Forehand Grip because of the different forearm-to-racket angle.

You should also compare how closed your racket head is at impact and compare your angle to forehands on the Tennisspeed blog. See the forehand article #9 on Djokovic.

You should study the forearm-to-racket angles in use by the bent elbow or straight elbow forehand ATP players, WTA players and any model forehands that you use. I don't know the variety of angles in use, the statistics of angles in use. For example, see Serena's forearm-to-racket shaft angle at impact.
'
In other words, study some of the angles of your forehands and pro's forehands with high speed videos.

 

[Shankmeister-Chubs]

@travlerajm , With all your success playing against 4.5 and 5.0 players, have you considered playing at USTA sectionals /regionals events? It would be an interesting challenge for you, and I think a lot of us would be curious to hear the recaps. They seem like fun experiences to see the diverse range of playstyles that find success at these levels.

 

[Injured Again]

We know each other so I hope you take this in the way it is intended, which is as food for thought.

I know **NO ONE** who plays at 4.0 level and above who loses a stroke as often and as severely as you say you do, other than one person who developed a severe neurological disorder that crippled him soon thereafter.

Have you ever considered that maybe your stroke goes away because you believe that your racquet weighting has to be **PERFECT** in order for you to hit it? Your day to day physiological performance variation is orders of magnitude greater than a few grams here or there, or a couple of tenths of mgr/i. It seems if you just get away from believing that your racquet determines how you play, that you'll just play better naturally?

 

[AnyPUG]

If you imagined your stroke from above how would your forearm-to-racket shaft angle compare to high level ATP forehands. Some camera views from higher than the player can give an indication of this angle although it is not as accurate as an overhead camera view.

For example, this Serena Williams forehand with Toly composite frames. You can see the forearm-to-racket angle is well above 90 d at impact. See impact around 7 seconds.

When you rotate the SW grip slightly and the racket shaft is near horizontal it tends to open or close the racket face. This seems simpler and more direct than an Eastern Forehand Grip because of the different forearm-to-racket angle.

You should also compare how closed your racket head is at impact and compare your angle to forehands on the Tennisspeed blog. See the forehand article #9 on Djokovic.

You should study the forearm-to-racket angles in use by the bent elbow or straight elbow forehand ATP players, WTA players and any model forehands that you use. I don't know the variety of angles in use, the statistics of angles in use. For example, see Serena's forearm-to-racket shaft angle at impact.
'
In other words, study some of the angles of your forehands and pro's forehands with high speed videos.

I think the eyes just be fixated on her nipples and hips and not her forearm to racket shaft just focus on the amount of core rotation and firing of big muscles that powers the shot (rotates the trunk by more than 120 degrees in a violent fashion). The forearm-to-racket shaft is waaaaay down the list. If we are able to get even 20% of what she does in terms of core rotation, nothing else would matter.

 

[travlerajm]

We know each other so I hope you take this in the way it is intended, which is as food for thought.

I know **NO ONE** who plays at 4.0 level and above who loses a stroke as often and as severely as you say you do, other than one person who developed a severe neurological disorder that crippled him soon thereafter.

Have you ever considered that maybe your stroke goes away because you believe that your racquet weighting has to be **PERFECT** in order for you to hit it? Your day to day physiological performance variation is orders of magnitude greater than a few grams here or there, or a couple of tenths of mgr/i. It seems if you just get away from believing that your racquet determines how you play, that you'll just play better naturally?

When I take that approach, which I’ve done for stretches, the advantage is that I never lose to anyone worse than me. The disadvantage is that I also have no realistic chance to beat anyone who is a level better than me.

Since I enjoy the challenge of competing, I am not fully satisfying with playing at my same level every day and taking my lumps against someone who is better than me, but within reach of beating if I were to improve to the next level.

You of all people should fully grasp that my level does fluctuate quite a bit more than most due to my constant experimentation. As last year, I played at a 4.0 level against you the first time that year, and a 5.0 level against you a second time. I’d rate your level against me the second time significantly higher than your level against me the first time, as it seemed you were playing more regularly during the summer. But the scores were obviously different.

I settled into a similar the spec after that, from late summer thru the fall last year, and had consistently strong results during that time. I was forced back into experimentation mode in January at the start of the red clay season.

The racquet I played with against you last summer is described here:

Weaponized Extended BLX 6.1 95 18x20

I’ve been having excellent success in singles competition over the last couple of weeks using this as my primary racquet. BLX 6.1 95 18x20 Strung a long, long time ago with Evolution 17g mains, OG micro 18g crosses 54 lbs well-prestretched Now on verge of snapping Extended to 27-7/16” strung...

tt.tennis-warehouse.com

 

[travlerajm]

@travlerajm , With all your success playing against 4.5 and 5.0 players, have you considered playing at USTA sectionals /regionals events? It would be an interesting challenge for you, and I think a lot of us would be curious to hear the recaps. They seem like fun experiences to see the diverse range of playstyles that find success at these levels.

To be honest, I only became aware of adult individual sectional/nationals last year, when one of my league opponents told me that he was prepping to go to usta 4.5 singles nationals later that week.

My match against him is recapped here (I used std length frame for first set, and then 27-1/8” frame after that):

https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/was-i-in-the-wrong-here-or-justified.674059/#post-14443054