series, I want to take a close look at what makes Roger's forehand so great and also talk

about some of the concepts that you can apply to your own forehand.

With his forehand, Roger can do just about anything he wants from anywhere on the court.

He can hit the ball with heavy topspin, he can hit the ball flat, he can create short

cross-court angles, and he can also block the ball if really fast balls are coming into

his forehand. Now this is in large part due to his great technique and it all starts with

Roger's forehand grip. Here you can see an image of Roger with his

forehand grip. This is taken just after a forehand shot where he's still has his forehand

grip in hand and hasn't changed the grip at all. Now Roger has a very conservative grip

with his index knuckle on bevel number 3 which often called an Eastern Forehand grip. Let's

take a look at a close-up here of Roger's forehand grip. The circle that you see here

is Roger's index knuckle and as we can see, it is positioned along the side of the racket

on bevel number 3. Here you see an image from my Tennis Grips

video where I showed the Eastern Forehand grip. Now on the right side, you can see the

index knuckle and the heel pad as reference points and bevel number 3 is on the outside

of the racket as you can see. If you haven't seen my Tennis Grips video, I highly recommend

you go ahead and watch that one. You can find it on the Youtube Channel.

The Eastern Forehand grip that Roger uses has a lot of advantages. It allows you to

effectively deal with low balls as well as high balls. You can hit flat shots and you

can also hit with heavy topspin. One other big advantage is the fact that from this grip,

the switch to your backhand grip goes a lot quicker because you have a shorter distance

to move your hand and this is a big advantage when you're under time pressure. Two common

examples where this comes into play are the return of serve and when you're dealing with

really fast balls especially on fast surfaces where you have to make quick switches from

forehand to backhand and the other way around. Now that we know about Roger's forehand grip,

let's take a look at the beginning of the swing which is the unit turn.

Here we saw Roger with his feet in the air just before coming back to the ground for

a split step. And here you can see the split step. Now this is the important part. From

here, Roger's going to start with the unit turn. Let's take a look at that in super slow

motion. As you can see, Roger initiates the backswing by turning his entire body as a

unit. He's turning shoulders and the hips until he gets into this fully coiled position.

Let's take a look at that a few more times so that you get a really good visual idea

of what the unit turn should look like. As we can see, Roger's really just turning the

body and his arms are doing almost nothing and that's a crucial aspect. Most players

make the mistake of initiating the backswing with the arm and not using the body enough.

One aspect that really helps with the unit turn is to keep the left hand on the throat

of the racket while you're turning. Let's take a closer look at that. As you can see,

Roger keeps his left hand on the throat of the racket all the way until right here. From

this position, he lets go of the racket with the left hand but continues to straighten

out that left arm and gets it all the way parallel to the baseline which you can see

right here. This is another crucial position and getting that arm parallel to the baseline

really assures that you properly turn your body. From here, Roger's going to let the

racket drop and start his forward swing which we'll talk about in the next video.

Okay, so much for Part 1 of this Roger Federer Forehand Video Analysis series. We talked

about Roger's conservative grip and the advantages that it brings with it. We also talked about

the unit turn and the importance of keeping your left hand on the throat of the racket

while you're turning as well as straightening out that left arm, and getting that parallel

to the baseline to ensure that you get a full upper body turn.

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