The tennis forehand

- When we hear TV commentators and expert tennis analysts talk about the evolution of the game and how much better players of today are and so on. We are often lead to believe that players from the past did great in the period they played and would not have a chance in any other era.

These assumptions and comments have always bothered me because in the last thirty some odd years I have seen some of the finest players of all time play the game, whether they were at their best at the Australian open, wimbledon, French open or Us open and that includes names such as, Rod Laver, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Pancho Gonzales, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg and I myself coached and trained some of the worlds best such as Jim Courier and Pete Sampras.

In many ways my conclusion is that there has been a massive increase in the amount of people playing the game, which is great, but not necessarily an increase in the quality of the tennis produced and all we have to mention is that the most dominant players of the last 20 years Pete Sampras and Roger Federer play retro tennis that was played in the sixties!

In many cases it is an impossibility to prove that in many aspects tennis technically has barely moved and in some strokes such has the backhand slice and the volleys and overheads it has gone many steps backwards. Yes, unfortunately the volleys and the backhand slice had taken back stage in many of today's coaches priorities towards their players developement.

As usual everything happens for a reason and Roger Federer came onto the tennis scene and proved to everyone, players and coaches alike that, neglecting the development of a slice backhand and volleys would be a costly mistake.

And since 2003 until 2007 Roger dominated tournament after tournament because he is a complete player, but in great part because players did not know what to do with those low backhand slices and all of its variations; floating, dinked short angles, penetrating attacks and so on...

It took a while for coaches and players alike to realize that the reason why they were getting hurt was that -darn- backhand slice, which much like the jab in boxing can drive your opponents to tears, or madness (like Evander Holyfield did to Mike Tyson who ended up biting Evander's ear off in complete frustration). On the lighter side, I would not be surprised if a few tennis players would not have liked to do the same to Federer.

As a consequence of the humiliating bashings, today we are starting to see more and more players attemting to learn and use the backhand slice as a weapon and that is healthy for the game.

Now going back to the forenhand, the video that follows demonstrates emphatically that in the end of the 1970's Bjorn Borg's tennis topspin forehand was as good if not better then Roger Federer's today and there is no great difference on their techniques.

Why do I write about this? Because we should never dismiss an opportunity to learn from a great player no matter when he played, take for example Ken Rosewall and his slice backhand there is not one professional player today that would not love to have it! The list is much more extensive but, I do not want to bore you with the past.

Modern day excellent forehands have many names and here are a few; andreev igor, Andrew Roddick, Carlos Moya, David Ferrer, Janko Tipsarevic, John Isner, Juan Martin Del Potro, Feliciano Lopez, Juan Monaco, Nicolas Kiefer, Filipo Volandri, Roger Federer, Nikolay Davydenko,Paul Capdeville, Radek Stepanek, Robin Haase, Scoville Jenkins, tommy haas and many others.

This is just a sample from the digital video Best Shots Gallery. For full access to improve your game by studying the -How to's- of ATP and WTA pros like; Maria Sharapova, Justine Hennin, Serena Williams, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal, Gayl Monfils, Andy Murray, Novak Dyokovic and others, you will need to be a registered member,improve your game Now, register it is for FREE!

Enjoy this side by side comparison of Bjorn Borg and Roger Federer.

Use these tennis video lessons as a model for your development, these are two great champions and masters of the game.

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The tennis forehand

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