Interactive Forum: Donald Young Forehand

[EricMatuszewski]

As Donald Jr. took the first set off Feliciano Lopez in Armstrong Stadium, the crowd exploded. Like myself, the other close to ten thousand people there on that sunny Saturday afternoon had been waiting for this kid, born in the windy city and tempered in Atlanta's sweltering heat, to live up to the promise of his junior record and the announcement of turning pro at 14.

Despite not being able to hang on to the lead, Donald had got people excited about his chances again.

His forehand has interested me for a while. Despite being an American, It looks more like what I would expect from a South American or Spaniard raised on clay.

Last year while his son practiced his loopy, spin machine of a forehand, Donald Sr and I talked about the evolution of the grip while Jimmy Connors practiced with Andy Roddick a few courts away.

Watching Connors hit forehands in the same field of view next to Donald Jr. was a powerful visual and testament to the evolution of the stroke.

Donald Sr said laughingly "where will the grip go next?".

This month, Tennisplayer has provided some nice slow motions of Donald at last years Sap Open.

What elements of Donald's Forehand get your attention?

Look at his grip, his forearm and wrist movements , and the way he sets up the racket above his head before accelerating it.
Front 1



Front 2




Rear

[EricMatuszewski]

Quick Times: Donald Young Forehand

Front 1



Front 2




Rear

[jayfro]

I don't particularly like the takeback height on his forehand, to me it makes him primarily a defensive player simply looking at the size of his backswing. It will present problems against players with big pace as well as force him further behind the baseline to have the time to get through the stroke. His hitting hand is 12-18 inches above his hitting shoulder, I'm shocked nobody has said anything to the kid or maybe it's just fallen on deaf ears.

He definitely stepped it up at the US Open, but it would be nice to see him shorten it up like Roddick did in his first few years as a pro. Everything else on it looks great.

Edit. The swing didn't appear much shorter at the Pilot Pen against Davydenko but I didn't look too closely when he played Lopez either.

[pratteps]

Sparring partner for Federer

Surprised to even think this, but seeing Young has finally gained some strength makes me think his forehand is the closest thing to Nadal's that Federer could get to practice against during the clay court season.

While he is not as strong as Nadal nor as relentless, he can crank it up and hit some Nadal like heavy spinning shots and he is lefty.

Other than Puerto, I can't think of anyone on tour who could simulate the look and feel of Nadal as much. Federer obviously needs to get used to Nadal's topper to his backhand and returning serve in ad court.

[jeffreycounts]

Surprised to even think this, but seeing Young has finally gained some strength makes me think his forehand is the closest thing to Nadal's that Federer could get to practice against during the clay court season.

While he is not as strong as Nadal nor as relentless, he can crank it up and hit some Nadal like heavy spinning shots and he is lefty.

Other than Puerto, I can't think of anyone on tour who could simulate the look and feel of Nadal as much. Federer obviously needs to get used to Nadal's topper to his backhand and returning serve in ad court.

I totally agree with you pratteps. Young even incorporates the extra wrist motion on a lot of forehands like Nadal. You can see it in the "front" clip. In the rear clip, he doesn't use that wrist motion and keeps the double bend pretty solid with great rotation into the ball.

The spin he gets on his forehand is great. I sometimes wonder if he is able to drive through the ball enough, but the spin he creates must be pretty hard for people to deal with, epecially being a lefty.

[mordredsjt]

I have seen multiple juniors at the facility that I moved to in June doing an incredibly similar preparation with the racquet. They go up above their heads with the racquet face pointing almost straight up and make an extremely loopy motion. They also tend to have a lot of wrist action going on in addition to the large amounts of arm rotation that they use.

I'm wondering if this isn't an evolution of the "modern" technique being taught to some of these kids. I know that the pros teaching the juniors I am referring to are very into teaching modern techniques with an emphasis on creating topspin. However, they see backswings like these as flaws. I think it might just be the players taking what they are initially taught to the next level and finding more spin (to the detriment of easy pace and court penetration). After all, where did modern technique come from? It came from the modern players who were taught classical techniques, but somehow found a way that worked better under the conditions they were playing in.

Young might just be part of the next generation of modern technique...or his stroke might be flawed. Time will tell.

[0403]

ey, you may be right

the modern technic is the the technic that is right now, you gotta train yourself to have a good background and then devolop it to your on stroke. Bjorn Borg the first man with a good 2-handed he had not been told to have to hands on the backhand, He put his own character to the stroke and that was succes so never say never about a 15-16 year olds stroke, it can be revolutionary

[johnyandell]

I agree--his backswing appears to be bigger than anyone's yet proportionately, even larger than Hewitt's.

[johnyandell]

BUT check out frame 41 in the QT Rear View and tell me what you guys think it means-if anything.

Compare it for example to frame 25 in the Quick Time of the Wide Novak Djokovic fh here:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin/showthread.php?t=889

[0403]

the modern technic is the the technic that is right now, you gotta train yourself to have a good background and then devolop it to your on stroke. Bjorn Borg the first man with a good 2-handed he had not been told to have to hands on the backhand, He put his own character to the stroke and that was succes so never say never about a 15-16 year olds stroke, it can be revolutionary

srry for my spelling.

[jmhtennis]

Looks like in the video shot from behind he is driving his shoulder through the shot more that the other shots. The first 2 scenes the left shoulder stays a bit quieter and he gets more spin. He obviously had a lot of sucess in the juniors because of his speed and heavy ball. Plus he's a lefty. In the pros he will need to learn how to flatten the ball out more often (obviosly he knows how to technically hit a flatter shot). If he can learn how to slide he could be very dangerous on red clay with his huge spin. Plus he needs to get much fitter.
J

[jlkm2219]

I could see Donald Youg playing Carlos Berlocq (from Argentina) at the Nasdaq 100 Open (Sony Ericsson Open since 2007) and he was crushed by Berlocq 6/0 6/0*. It was 1 1/2 years ago but seemed to me that Young was too weak to play in the major league. His forehand had plenty of topspin but no pace. As a junior he was a great player. No doubt. But, in my opinion, now he needs to be stronger.

Watching these videos it's obvious that his forehand lacks of extension. It produces, as happened against Berlocq, several short balls, and he can't do this in the pro circuit.

* Two days later Blake beat Berlocq 6/0 6/0.

[EricMatuszewski]

Nice discussion guys,

I especially like the idea of Donald marketing himself as a Rafa like sparring partner for Roger.

As for Donald's "over the head" height forehand set up...

I doubt that it adds a significant amount of racket speed near contact.

This might seem to be counter intuitive, after all, it gives him a greater distance to accelerate the racket right? So his racket speed at contact should be greater right?

Not necessarily so.

If Donald applied force over that extra distance, in the direction that he eventually wanted the racket to go, then yes, it might contribute something.

But players in general, Donald included, don't start applying the force that pulls the racket thru contact untill the racket is at a much lower place.

How can we know this?

Here's an experiment you can do using some footage from the stroke archives ... It's not the most quantitative experiment, but it's pretty good.

Step 1)
Using a forehand clip, estimate the distance the racket moves between frames from the start of the stroke. This gives an idea of velocities of the racket at various stages. For instance...
Small distances between mouse clicks = lower speeds
Large distances between clicks =higher speeds


Step 2)
Consider when does the racket accelerate (speed up) more, and when is it not accelerating?

This experiment will at least show you that the speed of the racket from the over the head position to a more conventional lower position is pretty slow and that the overwhelming amount of acceleration happens much later.

As for timing...
Longer strokes are harder to time. That being said, were talking about players that practice twice a day and have been for at least 10 years from an early age, so it's understandable that they can take longer strokes while being late infrequently. It would be interesting to see a statistic on how often Donald is late on that side and compare that to someone with a lower set up like James Blake for instance. Would there be any correlation?

A better experiment might be done with a ball machine. And would go something like this..

Each player hits a set number (over a hundred) of forehands off a ball machine where the machine changes the speed and spin in a replicatable sequence while the player aims for targets. The number of errors (shots landing greater than a certain distance from a target would be counted, and considered in light of the players backswing style.

This experiment could provide evidence to support the idea that more elaborate "set ups" cause timing errors or it could show us that no such correlation exists and that timing errors come from some less obvious source.

I'd like to see the results.


Next month we'll be looking at Djokovic's Backhand. Stay tuned.

Eric Matuszewski

[tennisplayer]

I think a certain minimum backswing is required for power, accuracy, good feel, getting the kinetic chain going, etc. Beyond that, it's probably just an idiosyncracy... IMO. Certainly Donald Young's backswing looks way too long.

[johnyandell]

Eric,

That is a very astute analysis. The other thing to consider-again purely qualitative-is that the player considered to have the best forehand-Roger-has one of the most compact backswings. Compare that to Hewit's for example. On the other hand there is Gonzales, but I think the frame by frame advance doesn't really lie.

We can get more insight on this when we start to get 3D data from Brian on the forehands.

John