Have a Question for Me?

[grimmbomb]

We are hoping he is healthy so we can film him at Indian Wells this year. We have some footage but not enough yet. There is high speed footage of Marat on the Advanced Tennis DVDs. www.advancedtennis.com

Sounds good. And thanks for the quick reply.

[jkfisch1]

Teaching question

John

Can you expand a little on the quote I copied out of previous response from you concerning childrens forhand

"5. Can't say what the majority of teachers are doing--but I do know several high performance coaches who are personally shocked and saddened by the lack of extension and the size of the backswings of so many juniors--kind of ruined for life..."

I understand the extension gut could you expand on the "size of the back swing? Have 6 kids and when you say ruined for life on an aspect it grabbed my attention.

Joe Fischer

[johnyandell]

Joe,

Well that may be a little dramatic, hopfully nothing in tennis ruins anyone for life...but the backswing can permanently limit the potential of the forehand, or so it seems to me.

The backswing doesn't prepare the racket initially. So when players learn to start the motion with the backswing and move the hand too soon they tend to limit their turn and oftentimes end up with a huge loop.

Go check out Myth of the Backswing in Advanced Tennis--it's all laid out there.

John Yandell

[robertfirlus]

Federer's Grip on Ready Postion (Waiting serve)

John: You've may have noticed that Federer while waiting service twists his racket in a counter-clock-wise direction and then gets a grip just before his opponent serves. Do you have an idea of what grip he has when he is waiting serve. Is it sort of a neutral grip... or maybe continental....and then he goes to forehand grip or whatever. Robert Firlus

[robertfirlus]

Roger Federer's Hand Size

John: Roger Federer has a very large hand...long fingers, long palm. Do you have any idea of his hand size? ...measured from the tip of his ring finger to his midpalm crease. Altho his racket grip size is said to be L3 I think conventional tennis wisdom suggests his grip size should be several sizes bigger than it is. John McEnroe also had long fingers and palm compared to most. Do you think this might affect Federer's tennis style...large hand versus small grip? (Go to Google Images/Federer and you can find an image of Federer holding those long fingers/palms in the air. Robert Firlus

[johnyandell]

I don't know about his hand size. Looking at the picture of him holding the racket I guess it could also be a small grip but I'm not sure.

On the returns, he has what I call a modern eastern forehand grip. Pete's grip for the forehand drive. On his forehand groundstroke Roger shifts down that increment discussed in the articles.

[shootermcmarc0]

When can we expect Ljubicic clips? His 1hander is quite fluid.

[stroke]

His serve looks like it would be a good one for John to evaluate also.

[mdhubert]

racquet drop vs. trophy position

Hi John,

First I want to thank you because I think i've made a breakthrough in my serve motion thanks to you. I had an issue with my racquet drop, I couldn't find a proper one, and I followed your advice of adopting a classic motion like McEnroe and Philipoussis with the arm far away behind in the back swing. And I finally get the feeling I'm doing a decent racquet drop. I still have to shoot the movement to be sure but my motion is pretty fluid, especially on second serve, so I think the improvement is here. It's been a while I've been working on it and I think I (and some teaching pros who tried to help me) was too much focused on the "trophy position" that is highly advertised everywhere, and I think it is sometimes tough for beginners. I think you should focus on learning a movement that leads to the racquet drop first and then the trophy position will come later, when you have felt what shoulder rotation was like. If you look at Mac or Edberg serves, I think what is key is more the supination of the forearm in the backswing. Don't you think focusing too much on the trophy position can limit shoulder external rotation in certain cases ?

[johnyandell]

Shooter,

When can we "expect" clips??

I don't think you mean it quite the way it sounds. I think what you meant to say was "Is there a chance of... or do you plan to..." Expectation implies entitlement.

I'm sure this is just a semantic problem, but I won't be held to any "expectations" about players or content by subscribers--other than to keep the quality as high as possible of everything on the site.

We weren't able to film Ivan this year and I'm not sure when we will if ever--depends on circumstances.

However I think you can busy yourself with the other 20,000 clips on the site.

It's always interesting to look at new players. But one of the pitfalls is thinking "if I could just see so and so..." It's not like that.

[shootermcmarc0]

Yeah, thats what I meant, I didn't intend on putting any pressure on you to get footage of him or anything.

[johnyandell]

Great! You know we'll try. To be honest I do get a little defensive at times because I feel we have so much material available nowhere else. I bristle a bit when people ask for the (relatively few) players we don't have.

[shootermcmarc0]

Ever since I've been a subscriber, I've always been more than satisfied with each issue. The quality has always been high, I've never read any negative comments about this site. I'm always learning here.

[johnyandell]

Cool and thanks!

[jlkm2219]

Kiefer

Few months ago I asked for clips of Nikolas Kiefer. In my opinion, one of the best hitters in the tour.

Thank you.