hey guys i received a really good question from one of my followers on instagram
and here it is nick thanks for your tips i have a question i have a female player 12 years old with
a western grip a little bit long backswing should i try to change her grip so she can hit the ball
more flat she hits with a lot of top spin now this is a really good question and you know why because
often people have this negative connotation towards a western grip when in fact there's a
lot of high level players that use a western grip and in today's video i want to explain to you why
the western grip on the forehand is not as bad as you think it is so here's the thing with the grips
guys and a lot of it depends on muscle memory so let's just say you're a rec player with an eastern
grip okay do an eastern forehand grip all right so you play your forehand for many years with
an eastern forehand grip all right so now your wrist is used to a certain angle at the moment of
contact let's say you go over to semi-western now the racket face is closed and you have a hard time
getting the ball deep you probably still get over the net but let's just say you go over to western
you go over to that fifth bevel right it says one two three four five fifth bevel over and now same
wrist position as let me check it again here's the eastern grip let me go over to the fifth one
take a look at how the racket is positioned you have absolutely no chance to get the
ball of the net all your forehands are going to go into the ground actually before
they go over the net so this is why there's a horrible negative connotation to a western grip
and all it is is just muscle memory and a lot of times it's older players who maybe even play
with continental grip or eastern grip and they know from the feel when they try it themselves
that they absolutely can't play with a western grip but here's the thing there's many players at
the high level there's many players in the juniors who have absolutely no problem whatsoever playing
with a western grip they can handle low balls they can play on slow surfaces five fast surfaces they
have advantages on the high ball and how is that possible well the simple explanation for that is
that they use the western grip from day one and they have the correct muscle memory so to go back
to the question whether this girl should change her grip because her forehead has too much topspin
problems on the forehand are unlikely to stem from the grip believe it or not there's probably other
technical flaws on the forehand that are making this forehand sub-optimal so when it comes to the
grip the process in which you would change your grip is a very painful process and this is true
even if you had a western grip and you let's say you want to switch to a semi-western or eastern
or the other way around they will take you a long time i tell my students that if they're willing
to invest a year of practice that's how long it's going to take maybe players who are more talented
can do it in six months that's how long it's going to take to retrain your wrists to retrain your arm
so that you can get used to the new grip whether that's worth it because again i'm going to repeat
it there's absolutely nothing wrong with a western grip there's nothing wrong with an eastern grip
and of course the best grip to use is a semi-western grip it is most of the time not worth
it to put all that effort into changing the grip where the results are going to be questionable
let's face it this girl that we're talking about here might not get that many advantages
from switching to a semi-western group actually she might find some disadvantages and have a
difficult time keeping the ball in play now one thing that's important to understand is that even
someone with a hawaiian grip when we're talking about muscle memory has absolutely no no problem with
this type of forehand when we're talking about injuries that's another topic i'm going to get
to that so the hawaiian grip is actually one past the western grip so this is the western grip it's
the fifth bevel hawaiian grip is the sixth bevel so it's basically a continental grip it's the
same way you hold the racquet on your volleys and you serve and i just imagine hitting a forehead
like this now you're going to be surprised that i actually played some players who had a
hawaiian grip there's a player called cici bellis there's a player called alberto beresategui who
were able to play on fast surfaces they were able to handle low balls they were able to play high
balls they actually had no problems on their forehand in fact it was the forehand that was
their strongest shot but here's the one exception that i make when it comes to forehand grips
i don't like the hawaiian grip because it does put a lot of pressure on the wrist and both of
those players especially cici bellis had wrist injuries so this is something that's dangerous so
i'm not okay with hawaiian grip but i'm perfectly fine with the western grip and why is that well
let's go into the deep technical analysis of what happens actually when we make contact take a look
at my wrist you see how comfortable this position of the wrist is this is why so many juniors switch
to this grip naturally nobody teaches the western grip coaches are not telling kids hey go ahead
and grab the racket here most coaches are actually against this grip but yet a lot of junior players
find this grip on their own why because look when i get a high ball you see how natural my wrist
is now take a look at an eastern grip and in a high ball you see how bent my wrist is and how
uncomfortable it is so when kids are young they're usually small a lot of moonballing going on
they'll off they hit the ball high and naturally they gravitate more towards the western grip and
now they're going to hit millions of forehands the muscle memory is gonna be so deeply ingrained and
in my opinion there's absolutely no problem with playing with a western grip if you've been playing
with it from day one now another interesting part of that question was is there such a thing as
too much spin and yes there is it's actually a big problem and i see it at the recreational level as
well and it's often the case when players are executing spin the wrong way
so when they're just kind of rolling the racket around like this with the wrist or the forearm
or if the racket face is too closed players will get too much spin so it looks something like this
the players will have a hard time getting the ball very deep the ball is very spinny but penetration
and depth are lacking so in order to correct these technical flaws one must always finish with the
entire body and not use the arm in isolation and also there's a big myth and you can check out
my video about forehand topspin myths that you don't create topspin by closing the racket face
your racket face can be completely neutral you can still get a heavy topspin forehand so
when there's a player who is kind of active with the wrist in the contact zone and the racket is
often kind of closing like this this will create too much spin and take away from the power and
penetration of the ball guys take a look at this thing i'm in florida and we have these things that
are so cool they are iguanas see how big that thing is kind of cool but uh back to the topic
of grips and grips often get a bad rap for the reasons explained in this video
and let's talk about the recreational level at the junior level western grips are very common for the
reasons that i explained but what about the rec level so what i see from the vast majority of my
students who are older men probably between the age of 30 and 70 i would say the vast
majority of those players plays the forehand with either an eastern forehand grip or a semi-western
forehand grip and that is perfectly fine to use i don't have any problems with an eastern grip or
a semi-western grip i do have a problem with a forehand struck with a continental grip
and a hawaiian grip but i also have a problem when players come to me and they blame the grip
they think their forehand is bad because the grip and that is often not the case there are often
fundamental flaws in the forehand and the grip is not one of them now does this mean that i never
change grips on my players no i do change forehand grips from time to time and even with anna after
about a year once she started developing some problems with her arm i did change her
to a semi-western forehand grip so it doesn't mean that i never change grips but i have one factor
that's dependent on whether i'm going to make a suggestion to a player to change the grip or not
and that one factor is muscle memory so if i have someone that comes to me that's been playing
tennis for 20 years and they want to switch from an eastern grip to a semi-western grip i'm going
to advise them that it's going to take a long time there's going to be a lot of effort required
there's going to be tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of balls required to build a new
muscle memory and it might not be worth the effort because your forehand might not even improve that
much on the other hand if i have a beginner or somebody that's been playing tennis for a year or
two years now there is not that much muscle memory stored and now we can talk about about possibly
changing the grip maybe from an eastern forehand grip to a semi-western grip or if somebody is for
whatever the reason is i don't really see this that often goes all the way to western then i
would suggest that they use a semi-western grip but here are the facts the semi-western grip is
the best grip to use there's absolutely no doubt about that if you compare the semi-western grip
to the western grip and eastern grip it's the best one because you have the most options you
can flatten the ball out you can go up on the ball and you're still quite comfortable when it comes
to high balls but you're a lot more comfortable when it comes to the low balls because with the
western grip on the low balls you do need to turn your wrist over a little bit more so out of all
the grips by far the best one is semi-western but as i explained this video it depends on the most
important factor in tennis and that is muscle memory so i'm advising you to be very careful
on when to switch the grip guys i got to be really quiet iguana i wanna i wanna i wanna shoot it
close up to be very quiet you guys take a look see that thing how cool is that isn't that cool
looks like a mini dinosaur let me try to get a little bit closer there it goes gone
away anyways greetings from florida and be careful when switching your forehand grips