JEFF COHEN: Hi, I am Jeff Cohen. In today's segment, we are going to talk about the forehand ground stroke. In today's game with advanced players and the touring professionals, the most common grip is a semi-western grip. For the beginner player, they are traditionally going to use what is called an eastern forehand grip, just to kind of help them help started. On grip pressure, one of the most common mistakes that I see in a club player is they grip the racket too tightly or too hard. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the tightest and 1 being the loosest, you really want to hold the racket at about a 3. That will help alleviate stress on your arm, wrist and elbow. It also will help you generate a lot more racket head speed, hence a lot more power in your shot. When it comes to the back swing, a couple of different rules of thought or schools of thought. Old school is straight back, straight through. In today's modern game, you have a tendency to see more of a loop, what I call a big C or a little C. And the length of your loop or the length of the back swing is determined by your style of play or how much time you have to hit the ball. One of the most important aspects of the forehand is setting up to the ball in preparation. I have a rule of thumb. It is immediately when the ball comes off my opponent's racket, I immediately try to get my shoulders turned or my racket back. The best way to get the racket back is with a unit turn. You want to get the racket back by turning your shoulders, so you kind of take it back in one piece. It is very, very important to try to make sure your goal is to hit the ball as often as possible in your strike zone. Your strike zone is somewhere right around the waist area. The more times that you hit the ball on the strike zone, the more times you can repeat the same swing. The more times you repeat the same swing, the more likely you are to be more consistent with that shot. On the followthrough, you want to finish out and up, out and up somewhere. The length of your followthrough determines the depth of your shot. If you are going to brush up on the ball, generally, the ball is going to land a little bit shorter. If you swing out and up a little bit more and you have more length on your followthrough, you will probably have more depth on your shot.
Member Comments