Hi guys Nick here from intuitive tennis. The Federer forehand is one of the most
admired shots in the history of tennis and players all over the world are
trying to copy this shot, but is this a good idea? Should you copy the Federer
forehand? Check out today's video and find out. How did Federer develop his
forehand technique? I believe that this forehand technique came to Federer
intuitively. He is a very elegant and stylish person on and off the court and
this style also transfers into his tennis game. All his strokes his serve,
his backhand, his volleys, even the way he does drop shots, are all very stylistic
and you can see that even as a young junior he had these same characteristics.
He was kind of a very relaxed and loose guy and he was very stylish in all his
strokes and I believe that this is something that you either have or don't
have and in Federer's case, this came to him intuitively.
The Federer forehand has been analyzed many times so I'm gonna take a little
bit different approach and just tell you which elements of Roger Federer's forehand
are conventional, meaning that the majority of high-level players execute
these technical elements the same way as Federer and which parts are unconventional
and are unique to Roger? So let's start off with the conventional parts of Roger
Federer's forehand and the first thing we're going to look at is Federer's
contact point. So Federer will make contact with his dominant shoulder in
front of the non-dominant shoulder and this is on the vast majority of Federer's
forehands he will have this contact point. However, when he's in emergency
situations such as a return of serve. He not might not be able to rotate all the
way and he will sometimes have the dominant shoulder behind the
non-dominant shoulder and then slightly push on the ball this way, or one of
Federer's unique shots is his approach shot, where he usually does the left left
hop. He will go on his left foot and then hop back onto his left foot. Then in this
case because he's usually in midair he will not be able to rotate as much as he
normally does and his shoulders will be kind of square in this moment. So there's
a couple of exceptions where Federer doesn't have his dominant shoulder in
front, but on the vast majority of Federer's forehands and when he's playing
extremely well, you will see this contact point.
Another conventional technical element of Federer's forehand is his swing path
after contact and this is something that you see on any modern ATP forehand,
where the tip of his racquet will go up across and back like this and it doesn't
involve wrist action. The wrist will be passive as Federer executes the swing
path and this is pretty much the same across the board for ATP players. Even in
the players that have a lot of topspin such as Nadal, the wrist will be passive.
So Federer's swing path is rather conventional in an across the
body up across and back type motion.
The rotation on the forehand is one of the most important things and all
high-level players have this upper body rotation and of course Roger Federer is
one of the best at executing this upper body rotation. So what will happen on the
vast majority of Federer's forehand is that he will lift the left leg a little
bit prior to his contact in the forward phase of the swing. And why does he do
that? Well he does it to be able to execute his upper body
rotation from any position, even from slightly defensive positions, where the
incoming ball has a lot of penetration. So Federer will lift the left leg like
this in the forward phase and now he will start to rotate and pull back
around like this and you can see that he usually ends up with the left leg behind
the right leg.
When Federer has a lot of time and maybe the ball is a little bit higher, Federer
will utilize this whole body to generate power and he will actually get airborne
and he will finish to the left side. It looks something like this, he will
load up on his right side usually and then become airborne and then finish
on his left side like this.
Federer will also utilize a lot of different finishes. This is something
that's very true when he plays a real matches. So Federer will very often
finish around the head like this and not quite as across the head like Rafa does
even though I've seen him do this a few times as well, but Federer will utilize
this reverse finish very often and even the classic around the shoulder
finish is something that Federer does from time to time, however his most used
finish is the around the elbow and the shoulder, somewhere in here. It is kind
of a low finish and we look at the footage of Federer as a young junior
even back then Federer prefers to finish at kind of low on his forehand.
Another technical element of Federer's forehand that's rather conventional is
his timing. While he has a aggressive court position, if this is the baseline
Federer likes to be as somewhat close to the
baseline and if he's playing aggressive of course he likes to even go inside the
baseline and play from there, his timing on the forehand is the same as any other
player and if you watch Federer you will see that he holds the racquet until the
ball has bounced and on the majority of forehands he actually holds the racquet
after the ball has bounced on his side. What that means is that Federer waits to
initiate his stroke. This is true for any high-level forehand. So Federer
will go into his unit turn once he observes where the ball is going. So when
he sees it going to his forehand, he will do this and now he will hold the
racquet and while he's holding the racquet he will start setting up his forehand
so he gets into the perfect position and Federer is one of the best at setting up
his strokes. His footwork is absolutely incredible. So once he set up
perfectly and he knows from where he's gonna strike the ball and now he waits
until the ball has bounced to initiate his stroke like this.
Now let's talk about some of the unconventional technical elements of the
Federer forehand and we'll start off with the grip. While the eastern grip is
used on the ATP Tour, it is still somewhat unconventional grip with
majority of the players using a semi-western grip and this grip is
important in the way Federer's forehand looks. There's a certain
look to the forehand and when someone executes it in a eastern grip. The hand
is more behind the racket and it just looks a little bit different.
So it's important to understand that Federer's forehead looks a certain way because of the way he holds the racquet.
The most unconventional part of Federer's
forehand is his racquet drop and consequently what happens right after he
drops the racquet down. So let's take a look first at the loop which is fairly
conventional. So Federer in a eastern forehand grip will have the strengths
pointing towards the side fence like this and right away we can see that
there's a quite a bit of wrist extension pretty extreme
it feels very uncomfortable to me in this grip. It's a little bit more natural
to have the strings to the side in a semi-western grip doesn't require quite
as much of wrist extension. So we go into an eastern grip we have the strings
pointing towards the side fence and now we straighten the arm and close the
strings down towards the ground and now this position requires the wrist to
straighten out a little bit, it's still somewhat extended and what's gonna
happen next is Federer will obviously not be able to hit the forehand like
this and he won't actually be able to lag the racquet either, if the strings
continued to point down towards the ground so now he's going to open up the
racquet face like this a little bit and then the wrist is gonna lag behind as he
initiates the forward phase of his forehand.
The series of movements that
Federer executes in this position from the loop into the racket drop and into
the lag are so complex and they're almost impossible to copy. This is why
you don't see a lot of Federer forehands on tour and the problem is that this is
in the acceleration phase of the swing and this all must flow
together and accelerate gradually. The only way you will be able to recreate
these complex movements, is by slowing them down and then your forehand would
look nothing like Federer's and it will look very robotic. You would have to be
conscious that these things are going on and you would have the strings pointing
like this and then you would drop the racket down close the strings and then
he would make the racket open up and problem is this all has to flow and
gradually accelerate.
Federer of course didn't learn any of these movements
these movements came to him intuitively and you can see in the clips of him
playing as a junior. The part where he's closing the racquet and
straightening the arm, it already looks very similar the way he plays his
forehand now. So this part of the forehand, the only way it can be
executed is if a player can perform it intuitively, without even knowing that
these things are happening in this phase the straightening on the arm, the closing
of the racquet face and then the flipping of the wrist into a lag. You must perform
this without being aware that you're doing these actions.
Another unconventional and often copied technical element of the Federer
forehand is keeping of the head down at contact on his forehand. So most other
players including the other top two of the big three, Djokovic and Nadal, do not
keep the head down a contact. Djokovic will have this head looking towards the
opponent when the ball meets the strings on his forehand. And Federer on the other
hand will have his head down after the ball has left the racquet.
This keeping of head down might work for Federer, but might not be so great for other players.
See Federer has incredible rotation on his forehand and keeping the head down
doesn't really inhibit Federer's rotation, but however if you're a
recreational player and you're going like this on the forehand, this might not
be that much of a benefit, if it's going to inhibit your upper body rotation. So
this keeping the head down perfectly matches Federer's stylistic game and you
know it just looks very cool when Federer hits a forehand and keeps his
head down like this as goes into his rotation, however be very
careful, because I've seen many recreational players not be able to come
out of the this position while they keep the head down and they might be better off
doing at the Djokovic forehand, where once you make contact your head kind of
follows the body looking more straight as you make contact with the ball.
The appearance of looseness is another unconventional technical element of the
Federer forehand and while he appears loose, and not only on his forehands on
most of his other shots, I'm going to argue that Federer is not as loose as he
looks and if you take a look at some of these still shots you can see that the
body is on the incredible tension when he executes these strokes and you just
simply cannot have your body flexed even have the forearm muscles flexed at the
same time be completely relaxed. Try it, try to be completely loose and
relaxed and at the same time tighten your muscles you won't be able to do it.
So the looseness just looks a certain way on Federer, because this
is the way he is. The way he walks, the way he plays all his shots, they just
kind of look relaxed, while if you watch Nadal and Djokovic play, they don't
look as relaxed.
Should recreational players copy the Roger Federer forehand?
Well the conventional parts of the Federer forehand you can definitely copy,
however the unconventional parts, especially Federer's racquet drop with the
eastern grip, the straightening of the racquet with the strings down towards
the ground and then into the wrist lag like this. These are complex series
of wrist movements that have to be performed intuitively in order to
look fluid. Any attempt to recreate these actions will make your forehead look
very robotic and nothing like Roger Federer.
Thank you guys for watching this
video, hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a comment in the section below, I'll be
happy to respond. Hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already.
I'll see you next time.