Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. Today I want to talk about the forehand
grip. So it turns out there are five forehand grips you can choose from. Which one is the best let's find out?
So let's start off with the grips. So we
have eight bevels on the racquet here. I numbered them from one one through eight
and we're gonna start off with the continental forehand grip. Okay this is a
very popular grip back in the day and players like Stefan Edberg, John McEnroe
used the continental grip on the forehand and it's basically your base knuckle
right here goes on bevel number two and you put your hand in like the handshake
position and you end up with basically a forehand continental grip.
So another way hit the forehand is with the eastern grip. Players like Federer and Del
Potro use this grip and from back in the day you have Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi
and many others use the eastern forehand grip and the third bevel and
I'm gonna put the index knuckle there. It looks something like this.
So the most popular grip worldwide is a semi-western grip and it's very easy to find this
grip. It's in the fourth bevel here basically you put your hands straight
down onto the racquet and with the strings flat to the ground and you end
up pretty much in a semi-western grip. This grip is used almost exclusively on
a WTA tour. Almost all the girls play with this grip on the men's tour some of
the greatest forehands of all time you use this grip Fernando Gonzalez and
know for one of the fastest forehands of all time, he used a semi-western. We have
Rafa he uses a semi-western and then Andy Murray and many others.
So the next grip the Western grip, basically is the fifth bevel and we put our base knuckle
on the fifth bevel and it looks something like this.
This grip is actually used by Djokovic and many other players so you got
Nishikori, Nick Kyrgios, Jack Sock etc. From
back in the day there were players using this grip as well.
You have Jim Courier and many others.
And lastly we have the Hawaiian grip. I'm not
sure that the official name I guess it's west of western that's why
it's called Hawaiian and basically it's at the sixth level and you put your base
knuckle on the sixth bevel and it almost looks like a like a
continental backhand grip and basically like this. It's a Hawaiian grip.
So let's talk about the continental grip first. This is a grip from the past and I
don't think it's gonna come back and if we look at in a continental grip the
contact point going to be further behind almost next to the body like this
and the further in front I go the more difficult it becomes to close the racket
face. So this is something that's not gonna come back to the modern tennis. As
far as the hawaiian grip. This is a grip that is way too extreme. There's only one
player in history that I can remember that used this grip and that's Alberto
Berasategui who was in the final of the French Open and was number seven in the
world and you can see the contact point, there's a very big amount of wrist flexion
here and it's just a big danger for a wrist injury this way. You can see you
actually use the same side of the racquet for the forehand and for the backhand. So
this grip we can also scratch off the table. What are the differences between
eastern grip and a semi-western and a western? Well if you just look at the
hand position, so in an eastern grip because the hand is behind the
racket so obviously going up like this it's not impossible, but it's not as easy
as if we take a semi-western, you can see the hand is more underneath the racquet
and it's a lot easier to go up when the hand is underneath the racquet, or if you
go even further to a full western grip, you can see the hand is completely
underneath the racquet and now it's going to be difficult to go this way, we're
almost gonna have to go up and so with this grip, with the full western grip,
it's probably a little bit more difficult to hit the ball straight
horizontal like this, not impossible, and with the eastern grip, it's probably
going to be a little bit more difficult to go up straight like that, not
impossible, you see Federer does it many other players do it, and so with the
semi-western grip I feel like it's kind of a trade-off between the two and
you can go up very easily or you can go kind of straight across like this and
you can see that in the women's tour. The majority of the WTA players use a
semi-western grip and most of them hit the ball very straight and you can
look at somebody like a Nadal, who uses also semi-western grip and he has
probably the most topspin of all time, so it's possible that the
semi-western grip is the most versatile grip out there. Thank you so much guys
for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you next time.