Interactive Forum: Novak Djokovic Forehand

[EricMatuszewski]

Last month, Novak Djokovic showed he was a contender at the top of the pro game, winning the Sony Erickson in Miam and raising his ranking to a career high #7 in the world.

The Serbian sensation was he youngest Miami champion at 19yrs and 10 months and went thru the entire tournament without dropping a set, the first player to do that since Ivan Lendl.

So what's so superb about this Serb? We published the first video of him available anywhere in our Umag clay court footage. You can go there and see the rest of his strokes as well.

Now we are adding hardcourt footage of his forehand mechanics.

Take a look at the animations, and also study his forehand frame by frame in the Quick Time movies.

What are your thoughts? Is there anything that makes his forehand different or unique? Is there something he could actually do better?

Forehand Center



Forehand Inside In



Forehand Wide

[EricMatuszewski]

Novak Djokovic Forehand QuickTime Movies


Forehand Center



Forehand Inside In



Forehand Wide

[forehand]

I like the results he gets with his forehand.

But I think he could hit a more penetrating shot if he stayed with the ball a little longer, better extension through the line of the shot if you will. In the clips it looks like he pulls off the shot a bit early.

I actually think he gets away with it because of his great timing.

Another thing to envy is the way he goes for it with authority when he's under pressure.

Maybe for his grip his contact is a bit close to his body. Still wish I hit my forehand half as well.

-Fred

[lukman41985]

But I think he could hit a more penetrating shot if he stayed with the ball a little longer, better extension through the line of the shot if you will. In the clips it looks like he pulls off the shot a bit early.

Are you nuts? For his grip, the extension is incredible. Somewhere, Jeff Counts is smiling. Jeff, I hope you chime in!

How about the bounce in his step. The footwork is active and he's authoritative.

I talked to Djokovic at Indian Wells--a nice kid and clearly possesive of all the tools needed to be the next great champion.

Nole!

[forehand]

[QUOTE=lukman41985]Are you nuts? For his grip, the extension is incredible. Somewhere, Jeff Counts is smiling. Jeff, I hope you chime in!

How about the bounce in his step. The footwork is active and he's authoritative.

QUOTE]

No, nowhere near nuts, but I'm working on it.

Let's hope we hear from Jeff, I think Nole could extend more through the shot. It would be interesting to compare side by side with e.g. Nadal or Gonzales. I haven't done so yet, so I may have to eat my words, but I think both of them have better extension.

Novak's footwork is incredible, and I fully agree that we are watching a champion in the making. I've been exited by him since last years FO, and he is growing faster than I hoped.

[forehand]

A thing to note about Novak is that it's his forehand side that's suceptible to break down. I have yet to see him have problems with his backhand even when he's a bit off his game.

[stroke]

It looks like to me he really pulls into his forehand contact point with his elbow. I agree with Luckman about his comments about Jeff. I'm sure Jeff will chime in here. It appears that Novak hits the very essence of Jeff's windshield wiper double bend forehand with great extension. I would also respectfully disagree with the poster that said Novak's FH was susceptible to break down. I have seen him play several times and have not seen any indication of that. His final at Key Biscayne, and his thorough win vs an in form Canas, a brutal grinder, showed exactly what kind of game he had off both sides. I think his FH is his more dangerous side.

[forehand]

For examples of when he was struggling on his forehand, see his AO match against Federer and the 1st set against Nadal at Indian Wells.

He hits great shots off the forehand side, no doubt about that. But his results off that side are IMO in large part due to the fact that he has excellent timing and gets a lot of his body into the shot at the right time. Looking at the clips, I don't see that he pushes the raquet face through the line of shot.

IMO he has the best two-handed BH after Safin and Nalbandian. He was incredible off that wing in Miami. But I guess the forehand is the topic of the day.

[airforce1]

Clearly timing will be a significant issue for someone who just attacks the ball on his forehand like it's a first serve. I was comparing these forehands with the new video of Marcos B and was amazed at the difference in the way they go after the ball.
I would expect that the extension thru the ball is somewhat shortened when the stroke is this aggressive or his arm might end up in the net somewhere.


I expect the tour will make some adjustments for him like they did Roddick and will make sure he doesn't see so many balls up in his strike zone, especially when they are trying to hold serve.
C

[jeffreycounts]

It looks like to me he really pulls into his forehand contact point with his elbow. I agree with Luckman about his comments about Jeff. I'm sure Jeff will chime in here. It appears that Novak hits the very essence of Jeff's windshield wiper double bend forehand with great extension. I would also respectfully disagree with the poster that said Novak's FH was susceptible to break down. I have seen him play several times and have not seen any indication of that. His final at Key Biscayne, and his thorough win vs an in form Canas, a brutal grinder, showed exactly what kind of game he had of both sides. I think his FH is his more dangerous side.

Stroke and Lukman - thanks for the comments! I agree with you both completely! I am trying to upload a picture to make some points about Novak's forehand, but I keep getting an error...

[pratteps]

Novak's forehand

His forehand looks like somewhere between RF's and RN's on one hand and Ivan's on the other hand. It looks to me like it has some of the Edberg pull of the top edge through first. Sort of like many ping pong champs hit.

Now it is considerably better than (nowhere as flawed as) Ivan's or Edberg's, but it does look like it requires considerably more body and timing than Federer's stroke. Both Roger's and Rafael's hand is more behind the racket at point of contact. I can see from these clips that Novak's strokes are not just manufactured--they are more athletic. At first glance, he seems like a robot someone built in Eastern Europe out of our sight.

So, I guess I agree with Forehand's first comment.

And I am pretty sure that if a stroke goes off, it is his forehand. Recently little has gone off, but even against Canas he had a couple of games when he made a couple of unexpected forehand errors yet rarely missed on the backhand side (from memory, not statistics). Now Federer has spells when he makes quite a few forehand errors (even in his wins, not just the losses to Canas), but he always looks like he will get it together. When someone like Ivan makes a forehand error, you almost grimace because you can see the flaws, not just timing mistakes that every player makes at times.

Thanks for continuing to keep us informed about all the great strokes.

[forehand]

Stroke and Lukman - thanks for the comments! I agree with you both completely! I am trying to upload a picture to make some points about Novak's forehand, but I keep getting an error...

Jeffrey, I am eagerly awaiting your illustrated response.

I'm kind of curious to what will come out of this discussion in the end. So far, my (presumably) erroneous comment about his extension is the only negative thing that has been brought up regarding Novaks FH.

Surely, there has to be something he can improve? We're not seeing the perfect forehand here, are we?

I will stand by this, though: He relies a lot on his timing being on. When it is, it's a great shot.

His racquet seems to be driven forward by his entire body rotation as much as by his shoulder. Would you say he is rotated further at contact compared to other top players? Looks like his upper body is past parallel to the baseline at contact, but dificult to tell from the videos.

Wouldn't it be great to have a few videos shot directly from above?

[forehand]

Aus Open Stats

FWIW I went through some statistics from Novaks loss to Federer at the Aus open this year. I tried to find other stats as well to no avail.

The point tracker data is still available on the official site. I went through the match point by point, and here's what I found:

UE broken down by set, set score in brackets.

1st set, FH: 7, BH: 6 (6-2)
2nd set, FH: 3, BH 6 (7-5)
3rd set, FH: 8, BH 1 (6-3)

That's 18 FH errors vs. 13 on the BH side. There was 1 UE that was undisclosed in the point tracker.

As for winners, Novak hit 3 FH winners and 10 BH winners. He also hit 7 aces and 2 double faults.

They also list the forced errors. Novak made 15 forced errors on the FH side and 7 on the BH side.

He was playing Federer, so it's probably fair to assume that he was under a lot of pressure on the forehand side. From memory, though, and as indicated by the scoreline, he played his best tennis in the second set.

[stroke]

Stroke and Lukman - thanks for the comments! I agree with you both completely! I am trying to upload a picture to make some points about Novak's forehand, but I keep getting an error...

Jeff,

I am looking forward to your thoughts/points about Novak's forehand. Poster forehand raised an interesting question about the role of the shoulder in Novak's FH. He said it looked like to him that Novak's FH was driven by his entire body rotation as much as his shoulder. I think this is a good point. It appears to me that players hitting this modern windshild wiper FH really keep a strong, shoulders back, upright posture when they are in their optimal hitting position. I think this encourages getting their torso, or center, behind the FH, rather than a just shoulder driven action. This modern FH hitting posture is something that is not often talked about.

[lukman41985]

I think these images may help...

Click the following links. From full turn, to bottom of backswing, to hitting arm position, to contact, up and through contact (extension), and a wiper finish:









And here's another video of Novak, from the Umag archive: