Andy Murray and the Open Stance Forehand

[johnyandell]

Love to hear what people thought about "Andy Murray and the Open Stance Forehand"!

[GeneMayer]

I appreciated your article on the open stance forehand.

[stotty]

Andy's forehand

Love to hear what people thought about "Andy Murray and the Open Stance Forehand"!

Great article. I love articles where comparisons are made and the differences, advantages, disadvantages, etc. are clearly explained. I also liked the way the article finished with a Lesson For The Rest of Us. Always good to keep your feet on the ground with these things back at the club…

As to my own thoughts on Andy. Over the years he's had a few too many disappointing losses to lower ranked players… though less so these days. I have always put these losses down to his forehand. It's not a dominate shot in matches like Federer or Nadal's forehands are. He's not so effective in the mid court. Not having the big forehand makes it harder for him to beat lesser players when others things in his game aren't working. It's made him occasionally vulnerable to weaker players and has contributed to his passive mentality in matches. Not having a strong forehand can make you passive. My own forehand is a weak shot and it made me passive in rallies...it's obvious when you think about it. I'm not saying Andy's forehand is weak, only that it isn't dominant...and at top level that is costly.

But I feel his forehand has got better, certainly steadier, and he is becoming more offensive with it. I also think the best is yet to come with Andy. His potential to improve is greater than the other three.

[esaam123]

open stance forehand

i was recently taught, by a highly respected coach, that the more western your grip the more open the stance. this is in the context of a basic neutral rally ball hit down the middle of the court. my grip is western and this seemed to really help my forehand.
this theory would seem logical, that since the modern grip has gone more western that the stance would become more open.

[privas]

Murray the Counter-Puncher

John, this is a brilliant article. It would seem that, as Doug Eng might say, this forehand "associated technique" of Murray's is that of the counter-puncher, the posture of someone more obsessed with the recovery phase than the actual shot itself, perhaps an interface between "tactics" and "technique?" Surely Lendl is working on this. But your message for the club player is a valid and important one. To quote Gordon Forbes, I look forward to Murray "cracking it." Pedro

[johnyandell]

Thanks Pedro...not sure how technical Ivan is trying to be but I might ask.

[GeoffWilliams]

A large part of the reason why Murray's fh is not large is his equipment. He does not use the advertised frame, but a pt57a with a 16 x 19 drill pattern, a very flexible control oriented frame, and he uses alu power mains, crossed with vs team gut, which is the opposite of Joker and Fed set up. (Wilson premium is vs team in another manufacturer's package.) That set up accenuates control, not power, and he strings it at 62lbs, again, control over power, and he dropped his mass down from 364g to 347g, again, due to a wrist injury, but that robbed him of even more power. I would recommend he switch to gut mains, and increase his mass up to 365g in that frame. (I have 8 of them, so I know the frame.) I have also strung it both ways, and the power is more muted with alu as main, as the mains contribute 70% of the overall performance, and the crosses are just tensioners.

I put up a thread where he hit a 124mph fh, and it landed just past the service line inside out, so he can do it, with a huge coil and slap shot follow through.

[johnyandell]

Esaam,

That's correct in a fundamental way--or I might put it more like this. The more western the more difficult to hit with squarer stances. But if you look at Nadal you can see the same thing as with Fed and Novak--preference for about a 30 to 45 degree angle along the feet. I think without this having a full turn is difficult.

[avazpinto]

Great article John. I think I've improved my forehand lately because I've been hitting more fh with semi open stance. It was a flaw on my own forehand that I wasn't aware until I've studied one of your articles of Djokovic's Forehands. Thanks for that.

I often show my students videos from all of the pros hitting their forehands. But very seldom I've shown them Murray's FH. I think it has has much less common elements compared with Rafa, Roger, Djokovic, etc. It is just a different fh...
Murray doesn't stretch the left arm as much as the other players for the power position, and it seems there is a little bit of independent arm movement between the unit turn and full turn. It is quite hard to explain but in general it is not as compact as the other guys.

[10splayer]

Good article, and there just might be something to the whole open vs semi-open thing. Another factor is simply that Andy doesn't rotate his forearm and upper arm much in the backswing. It certainly doesn't seem as balistic as the big three.

[mwjones22]

Andy's forward motion

Great article that got me investigating. What I notice when looking at Andy's forehand from the side is how his body is not moving forward and in fact sometimes he is moving back slightly when hitting. I think this can be a direct result of the more open stance as well because he is not loading and driving off his back leg as much.

I also think that Andy is whipping more vs others which has been discussed in other articles. In general, his entire swing seems to be more up vs forward, more defensive vs aggressive.

I see this with Rafa a bit as he can get into a defensive posture with his strokes. However it seems like when Rafa is aggressive he really moves forward into his forehand vs Andy.

[florian80]

Lag Effect on Murray's forehand

I initially opened a thread for this comment but just now saw that you guys have already been discussing the Murray forehand so I am just copying it in here:

Hey John,

Really enjoyed your article on the Andy Murray forehand and the possible implications of the stances.

I definitely agree with you on the analysis that Murray does not make full use of the hip and shoulder turn and that he hits too much open stance. Nevertheless, I think another factor could be very important when we talk about the question why his forehand is not as fast and heavy on average as those of the other 3 top guys.

Andy does not get nearly the amount of lag or pre-stretch as some people call it with his wrist on average compared to the other top guys.

Attached are a few screenshots from your high speed archive. I couldn't figure out how to directly put them into the post. Of course these are just two shots but I looked at a lot of his forehands and on average he does not get nearly the angle between wrist and forearm that Fed, Nadal, and Djokovic get.

In order to maximize your racket head speed you obviously need to maximize the amount of energy created in all aspects of your stroke. I guess the difficult question now is what factor contributes how much to the lack of speed and spin in Murray's forehand. Is X-Factor/hip and shoulder rotation more of a factor or is it the amount of lag between wrist and forearm ? Tough to say obviously but my guess is that the lag effect contributes a little more.

The two reasons I believe that:
#1: experimenting with my own forehand and my students
#2: I've spend quite a bit of time studying the mechanics of the golf swing with my friend Oliver Heuler who is regarded as the leading golf instructor in Germany. He told me that in Golf the lag effect contributes quite a bit more towards racket head speed than X-Factor and is by far the number 1 aspect to look at when someone lacks distance with their golf swings.

Obviously there are differences between Golf and Tennis and answering this question is quite difficult but I am sure there is somebody out there with the equipment to exactly measure these contributions. Brian Gordon maybe ?

What are your thoughts ?

Regards,

Florian Meier

[johnyandell]

Interesting! Funny because I have been learning more about all this--just spent some time with Brian and we are working on forehand articles that may address this...

[florian80]

Sounds great. Like I told you previously I was working on an article for you to look at regarding this but have been too busy. Now I feel I need to get it done before Brian beats me to it

I'll try to finish it this coming week at least a version for you to look at

[vrc10s]

I agree with Florian80. Andy seems to have less of the stretch/shortening cycle in his forehand.

If you look and the third set of videos in the article, you will see that Andy straightens his wrist so that the racquet points straight back before his rotation starts the racquet forward. Novac's racquet is pointing more up and to the right when his rotation starts the racquet forward. From my understanding (listening to Brian Gordon) Novac's racquet position will give you more of the ssc (stretch/shortening cycle).


Mark