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I got very confused after my lesson with Brad Langevad today. I am sure you know of him and his work. We were working on hitting my backhand with more of an open stance off my left foot. Having watched your archives slow motions, it seems that Roger F one handed backhand is off his right foot stepping in. Brad kept saying that it is better to hit open? I got all confused. I play club tennis and am a good retriever, and he thinks that an open stance especially on wide balls makes the recovery to the next shot easier. Have you got any views on this. I really love your site. Are the high speed videos the same as the slow motion videos?
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I think I understand what Brad is trying to accomplish. You might want to check out Ban Hansen's excellent article on the footwork on the backhand to further explain it:
It's true that top player most often step in and also across to hit the one-hander. And they have perfect form and alignment when they do this. That's the part that's tougher to get. If you learn to align, balance, and hit off an open stance, I personally think that is the foundation for learning to close the stance and use the legs more. Typically players that try it without learning how to set up on the back foot first end up off balance and with over rotation and poor timing. And yes, the open stance will probably facilitate faster recovery on some wide balls. You can see a couple of examples of this in the Federer running backhands in the Stroke Archives. In reality, to be a complete player you need to be able to hit off the full range of stances and still keep good form.
The Stroke Archives material by the way is shot at 30 frames a second. The high speed footage is much faster at 250 frames. Both can be viewed slow mo or frame by frame. There's just more information in the high speed.
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