Hi Arvin,
The bad: You have serious flaws in you forehand, no wonder you struggle with it.
The good: You are young and athletic, and obviously eager to improve. Therefore, if you do it right you have the potential to have a great forehand and totally transform your game. But it takes time and effort. You have acquired bad habits that take a while to change.
First, what you do well:
- You turn sideways as a unit together with your racquet, and take your left arm until is parallel to the court end line.
- You use a semi-open stance that is an acceptable choice to hit.
- You bend your knees.
- You take your racquet high to low during the motion, even though you could improve in that score.
- You have a decent angle between your arm and the racquet.
Now, what need to change:
- Your body isn’t straight. You lean sideways and backwards when hitting. From waist up, you should stay very straight from the beginning to the end. Just look at Nadal, Federer or Djokovic hit and how their upper body stays straight all the way. When you lean, you lose consistency since your contact point changes every time, so sometimes you hit the sweet spot but most of the times you don’t, and I bet you sometimes even hit with the racket frame. You need to force yourself to hit straight, I suggest you do shadows in front of a big mirror every day for at least 10 minutes, and keep videotaping yourself to make sure you make a change.
- Not only you lean back, you also stay there instead of totally transferring forward your body weight to hit the ball. You lose a lot of power by not doing it.
- Your elbow is way to close to your body. That creates two problems: your consistency suffers and you have much less power. You need to separate your elbow from your body (too much separation is also wrong). I suggest you watch Djokovic, Wawrinka or any other pro hit forehands slow motion (except Nadal, Federer, Dimitrov or Verdasco, since they hit a different kind or forehand from the rest, and it would confuse you)
- See the ball. You hardly see it. You have to see it all the way to your racquet and keep looking at the blur of your racquet for an extra instant after you hit. The best in this is Federer, watch his eyes slow motion, he keeps looking at the racquet after hitting. Nadal is second best at this.
- Make your movement more fluid. Slow at the beginning and accelerating right before contact.
Now, a misunderstanding. Racquet lag doesn’t actually exist, no matter what many tennis instructors say. It’s been proven by several scholars that have deeply analyzed the shot. It’s the flip, that is, your forearm turning the racquet from right to left (the so-called windshield wiper), and together with a short racquet-arm angle what creates the wrongly labeled “lag effect”. The angle between the racquet and your arm doesn’t change once you begin the final movement. You do have a decent angle and also you do the flip motion, so that’s not the problem in your case.
You have potential to have a powerful forehand, but you need to change these things. Don’t try to change them at the same time, it won’t work. Try just one first (I suggest you start hitting straight and then separating the elbow from your body), and after a while and it’s settled in your subconscious, go for the next.
I hope this helps.
Miguel
