Nathan's forehands II

Here are Nathan's new forehands.

Last time we were on court we've made a lot of progress. I suddently realized that Nathan was hitting most all of his forehands with a neutral stance and was only using his opens stance very seldom or when he was forced to do that.

So all of these shots look very different from previous forehands.





I think the open stance is working really well for Nathan. He is getting low for the power position which means that now he is using his leg drive on his forehands.



Nathan is taking too much time to rotate the shoulders and at the end there is not enough shoulder turn in the power position. The shoulders should turn more than perpendicular to the net.

Sometimes the cause for that late preparation is footwork. Video number 1 is a example of that, with a late split step it is much more difficult to prepare in time.
Another reason why Nathan tends to prepare so late is because Nathan's swing is quite big. There is quite a big upward movement of the racket and left hand. Both racquet and left hand go higher than Nathan's head. We can see that in the side videos.





Another extremely important element on Nathan's forehands is the amount of extension he is having on his forehands. From the side view we can see how far in front from the body is the racquet hand going after contact. To calculate Nathan's extension we need to see the distance between Nathan's left hand at contact and his hand on the point where it was furthest in front.

In the next video, between contact point and the point where the hand was further in front of the body (second 17) there was only a gain of a few cm, maybe 5cm . The elbow remained very closed to the body which means that there wasn't much hand and racquet rotation on his followthrough which is extremely important to create topspin.





The last video is very interesting. Nathan is hitting his forehand much more in front of the body and his shot looks better. His left hand and elbow are more in front of the body on the followthrough. The reason why Nathan was able to hit more in front was because on this shot the ball was slower and it was hit on the way down while on the previous two videos the ball was hit on the rise. We can say on those shots Nathan was rushed to hit it and wasn't able to hit it more in front.

This is where Nathan is going to improve his forehands. He is going to prepare earlier so he can hit it in front (just like the last video) even on more challenging balls where Nathan has to hit it on the run and on the rise. For that he needs a good split step and to improve his footwork.

I'm sure there is so much more to see on Nathan's forehands. It is such an interesting shot. I'm happy to see someone really keen to improve his skills and
I think Nathan is on the right track.