that looks so cool in slow motion i have nice technique
all the years of work have paid off let me see what the people have to say
guys joking aside it doesn't bother me at all when i see these comments about
my technique and let me tell you why so about three years ago when i started this
intuitive tennis journey on social media i was posting on youtube i was also posting on instagram
and early on on instagram i used to do swing path tracing i don't do this anymore i basically
trace the swing path of professional players strokes and i used some of the greatest players
of all time grand slam champions such as maria sharapova simona halep on the men's side i used
mcenroe becker ivanisevic and this is where i realized that i shouldn't take any offense
to negative comments about my technique online if you would have seen the amounts of negative
comments towards those players that i was posting on instagram you wouldn't believe
it for example someone like genie bouchard was absolutely getting destroyed on her technique
so was sharapova i'll never forget when i posted swing path tracing of bernard tomic
there was hundreds of comments bashing tomic's technique as amateur and what they were saying
was even worse than that i'm not gonna get into details but at that moment i realized
that if those elite level tennis players tennis players that we all know by name these are some
of the best players in the world are getting bashed because of their technique i shouldn't take
any offense if i get criticized for mine so the negative comments really don't bother me that much
i know my worth as a tennis player i've played in front of crowds when i played in the bundesliga
i've played prize money tournaments that i won and played in front of crowds throughout my playing
career i have received nothing but compliments and the only criticism i ever received about
the way i play was once i started going on social media so i understand what social media is all
about it's part of the deal so the comments don't really bother me that much but there's actually a
little bit of truth to the comments because yes my technique is unorthodox or if you want to call it
ugly it's not that aesthetically pleasing to look at but guys there's nobody in the world
that understands my technique better than myself i have studied my own game and it was the basis
for starting my methodology which is called intuitive tennis i have studied my own strokes
and compared them to the greatest player in the history of the game i also compare them
to players who are at a high level generally and i have all the fundamentals that you need in order
to be able to compete at the high level so there is in essence nothing wrong with the strokes but
yes they do look unorthodox and in today's video i'm going to explain to you why so let's start
off with my feel my volleys my drop shots my lobs my slices this is something that i was horrendous
at as a junior like many other juniors i didn't possess good feel so i didn't even attempt these
shots i never came to the net and generally my feel was not the greatest i always had the ability
to hit the ball very hard when it came to feel i wasn't very good at that part of tennis however
when i came to college and i started training with the great mel purcell i played a ton of doubles
mel forced me to come to the net more and all of a sudden my net game improved tremendously and
then when i started teaching my net game became even better because i was doing so many volleys
each day as a coach that ended up developing not only good volleys but great feel as well
all right the next shot we're gonna talk about is my serve so this is my
best shot by far my serve used to be even better as i'm getting older i'm gonna be 44 very soon my
athletic abilities are declining and i'm becoming a little bit less flexible on the
serve so my serve has gotten worse over the years but when we're talking about playing at the high
level my serve can actually hold up at a level that's even higher than that i have no problem
being able to hold serve against really good players now how do i know that because i was able
to play against some really highly ranked players for example i played andrei pavel at a prize money
tournament in germany on carpet yes it's a fast surface but i was able to hold serve comfortably
and this guy was in the top 20 of the atp rankings and i only got broken one once i lost seven six
six four so that goes to show me that my serve or my service game overall is at a very high level
all right on to the next shot which is my two-handed backhand no i don't have a one-handed
backhand but i do play with a one-handed backhand when i'm teaching lessons so some of you guys
might be confused i actually have a two-handed backhand. And my two handed backhand was one of my
better shots it was after the serve my next best shot it is very consistent i rarely miss it i can
go cross-court i can go down the line technically it's very sound and i don't see any problems when
it comes to my two-handed backhand even when we're talking about optics i think it looks like the
backhands that you see on tour today all right now we get to the shot that you've been waiting for
which is my forehand everyone on social media is bashing me on my forehand they're calling me a 4-0
they're calling me a 4-5 they're insulting me very badly and they're telling me that everything that
can possibly be wrong is wrong on my forehand they're even saying that i'm playing with an
unbelievable extreme grip that they've never seen before so everything you can do wrong on
the forehand i'm doing wrong in today's video i'm going to explain to you number one that there's
absolutely nothing fundamentally wrong with my forehand and number two i'm going to explain to
you why it looks unorthodox all right let's start off with the grip so i don't have an extreme grip
at all i play with a semi western forehand grip now it does look a little bit weird when you see
it in slow motion it looks like as if i had an extreme grip but it's not it's a semi-western
grip now the reason why it looks weird because it's happening in conjunction with the bent arm
and it's severely bent on my forehead so that's why it kind of looks like it's an extreme grip
but in reality it's a very common grip across all levels which happens to be a semi-western grip
all right guys now it's about to get weird because we're going to talk about how i take
my racket back and i have something called a high loop what is a high loop it's when the racket goes
above the level of the head before it starts dropping down now while this is an unorthodox
take back it's by no means a fundamentally wrong take back because one of the greatest
forehands in the history of the game also had a high loop and that is fernando gonzalez look him
up on youtube he's retired he doesn't play anymore he had an unbelievably huge forehand he also had
a high loop where the racket goes above the head before it starts to drop
all right on to the next phase on my forehand which is the continuation of my take back where
my racket goes fairly far back it goes to about right here again this is not something that's
fundamentally wrong there are even players in the top 100 today that have this type of take back yes
most commonly the modern forehand the take back is occurring a little bit more on the hitting
side of the body but by no means is it wrong to have the racket go a little bit further back
and now as my racket continues to drop i get to about this place
and my racket lags just like any other player so you will see the tip of my
racket going more towards the outside this is the characteristic of a lag forehand so
all you guys that are saying that i have no lag on my forehand that is absolutely
wrong every high level forehand has a lag it is absolutely impossible to hit a fundamentally
sound forehand without the wrist lagging behind this is an intuitive element of the forehand
which happens on its own at the high level the racket will actually not just lag this way will
actually whip backwards from the acceleration that is exactly what takes place on my forehand
and the racket face is slightly closed as i begin my forward phase and as i begin to approach the
ball now i make contact with my elbow close to the body and this is what a lot of people are
confused about they're saying nick you have a wta forehand how can you make contact like that
you are horrible at tennis because of this what happens in reality is that
the vast majority of professional players both female and male plays the forehand with a bent
arm so there's absolutely nothing wrong with playing the forehand with a bent arm structure
shortly after contact the tip of my racquet will most of the time
end up going through the ball before the racquet goes across my shoulder in this way
yes there's going to be some occasions where i put a little bit more spin on the ball where
the tip of my racket is going to be more towards the outside as i finish my forehand in this way
interestingly i will sometimes catch my racket on the finish like this and other times not
the reason why my forehand looks this way is based on my genetics when i was a junior i was
naturally very weak and very slow i've trained the hardest i could possibly train to maximize
my potential as an athlete and actually became a quite a good athlete but genetically naturally
i was never strong or fast therefore when we were talking about the high loop this
happened naturally nobody taught me this this is something that happened on its own
and think about it logically why did it happen because it gave me a little bit more power if i
would have taken my racket back at a lower level i would not have gotten as much swing momentum as i did
with the high loop now for the exact same reason my racquet also has a tendency to go a little bit
further back simply because it gives me more swing momentum and more power i don't get as much power
if i happen to drop my racquet more on the hitting side of the body and as we go into the contact we
see the same tendency i hit the ball very close to my body with a bent arm i do have a little bit of
space in between my elbow and my torso so it's not a wta uh contact okay it's still a more of an atp
characteristic there's players even in the top 100 today that have the same arm structure as i do so
this is absolutely nothing wrong with this type of arm structure but naturally the reason why i make
contact closer to the body because most players when they make contact closer to the body they
feel more strength this is the reason why pretty much all wta players make contact very close
to the body meaning that their elbow is almost touching their torso as they're striking the ball
so up to the point of contact everything's fine on my forehand but here's where some of the problems
start and this is the reason why my forehand is not at the very elite level it's definitely
not even at the top 100 level of the atp players that you see today there are some weaknesses in my
forehand and again they are based on my genetics so if you see the video where i was training with
my dad where i was i believe 11 years old you can see that i was hitting the forehand like this my
wrist was coming through after the contact my arm was simply so weak that it couldn't withstand the
acceleration of the stroke and my wrist would give in my dad noticed this and tried to correct it by
keeping a more stable wrist throughout the finish so naturally with the wrist bending shortly after
contact something needed to be done or i would have injured myself really badly and i did in
fact have a lot of wrist problems in my junior days simply because my wrist was so weak it had
to be stabilized so i did a lot of work on my fitness stabilizing the forearm i was doing a
lot of work to be able to control not only the contact but what happened shortly after contact
because again i wasn't doing this thing on purpose this was just naturally happening because again
genetically i was quite frankly not suited for tennis and the acceleration of the forehand would
simply take my wrist for a ride shortly after contact so when you're seeing my forehand yes it
does look stiff for a reason because i'm putting a lot of control in this area of the forehand it's
not something that i'm doing consciously because i did all the work in my junior days and it has
stabilized more and more over the years so it's not as long and fluid as the players you see on
tv it is a little bit more rigid and stiff as i'm finishing my stroke after the moment of contact
now why do i say that my forehead is not at the level of the atp top 100 because it's a flat
topspin forehand what you mostly see on the wta tour yes there are some atp players that have
this forehand but it's less than a handful of players the vast majority of atp players have
a more heavy topspin forehand where the tip of the racquet stays more towards the outside
as the racket is going across i don't do that i will have the tip of the racket most of the time
come through the ball as i'm finishing across the body so you're asking yourself nick are you doing
this consciously and not at all my forehand is more flat again because of my genetics when i
hit my forehand at full speed i don't have any control over what the racket is doing shortly
after contact this is naturally what is happening to my forehand when i try to give the maximum
amount of power because i'm naturally not a gifted athlete not very strong in order to give me a
little bit more pace my racket tip ends up coming through the ball instead of going over the ball
in this way this is just naturally what's happening it is also the reason why the vast
majority of wta forehands hit their forehands in the exact same way so to all the people that are
giving me forehand advice and giving me tips your advice is useless because my forehand is
fundamentally sound all the fundamentals are there i have proper timing i have proper torso rotation
i make proper contact with my dominant shoulder in front on 95 of my forehands and i'm able to
play the ball with high consistency that means i can get many many phones in a row and also have
the ability to hit winners at will so there's fundamentally nothing wrong with my forehand
so is my forehand as good as nadal djokovic and federer absolutely not it's far from it is it as
good as the guys you see on tv that are in the top 100 it's not even as good as that it is lacking
the fundamental part that most of those players have in common which is heavy topspin so what
happens when i hit the ball hard if i was tested at that elite level i will eventually
miss my forehand before they would because my forehand is more flat when the ball is more flat
the control is sacrificed because of it so for that reason my forehand is not quite at that highest
level so somebody once asked me hey nick are there any guys on tour that have ugly technique like you
do and the answer is yes there are guys on tour that have ugly technique just like i do i'm going
to give you a few examples i'm going to actually name them by name why not so obviously you saw
my video about medvedev we don't have to talk about that if you want to know in great detail
what i think about medvedev's technique check out my video that i posted a few weeks back other players
with ugly technique ivo karlovic maybe isner even though i do think he's got a beautiful game
and of course opelka now what are all these guys have in common they're all tall and
they're all lanky and i happen to be tall and lanky as well so most of the time when players
are tall i'm 6'5 you're going to give up on some agility and coordination i want to just add that
and those players that i just mentioned are way more agile and way better players than i
am but i'm just generally speaking of tall guys and not all there are some tall guys who are
incredibly agile like del potro for example but generally speaking you will find that tall guys
are a little bit less agile less coordinated and they're going to look more awkward on the
court as a result of it now let's finish up this video with the logical question that
you guys are going to ask and that is nick can't you improve your strokes and make him look pretty
absolutely not i have hit a million of balls at least it's probably been a billion of
balls i have no idea i've been someone who was trained like a maniac i used to train
three times a day i have definitely maximized my potential if you saw me playing tennis between
the age of 10 and 12 i was not at a very good level it was only through my incredibly hard work
i was able to get better and better and end up having a very solid tennis career i never ended
up playing futures but i had a very successful college career and i played at an extremely high
level and when i played professionally in germany so i definitely maximized my potential in fact my
technique now looks a lot better than it did when i played in college i've become an all-around
player just because i had more practice so thank god youtube wasn't around back in my college days