The Osmosis Forehand

John Yandell

On Tennisplayer, one of our main goals is to bring you the newest, cutting edge research and information. This work can push the coaching envelope and be complex and challenging.

But at the same time we also try to go in the opposite direction, toward simplicity. By that I mean we try to try to boil down what we have discovered to more succinct, practical information you can implement on court.

This was one of the goals of the Osmosis Clinic we did at Indian Wells. When you watch pro players what should you focus on, and how does it apply to your game?

We had an incredible experience sharing this information--developed through our high speed video analysis--with Tennisplayer subscribers last month in Indian Wells. And now in this new series of articles we'll share that same infor with you.

One of the biggest issues in teaching is the extent to which players at the club level, or lower level competitive players, or younger junior players, should tyr to copy the pros. It's a huge and often heated topic of discussion in coaching. So in this new series of Osmosis articles, we'll try to boil it down to a few simple points, starting with the forehand. We'll look at some of the things that are universal from the highest level on down in pro forehands. Then we'll progress to the other strokes.

Why do we call it the Osmosis Clinic? Because learning tennis is a visual and kinesthetic experience. And watching the pros with a few simple ideas in mind can have a huge positive impact. The dictionary defines osmosis in this sense as "an unconscious process of assimilation." I think this describes exactly how it works.

In 1964 I was 12 years old and my brother was 11, and we were both starting to play tournaments in the Missouri Valley section of the USTA. One Sunday afternoon that summer we were sitting in front of our old black and white TV in the living room of my parents' house, watching Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall play a match.

It was probably the first time I ever saw the best players in the world hit tennis balls. I can't remember who won but I do remember this. Afterwards my brother and I took our Spaulding Pancho Gonzales wood rackets and walked over to the junior high school courts near our house and played the best tennis either of us had ever played to that point in our young tennis lives. And it was that experience probably more than anything else that convinced me that I wanted to really become a tennis player, and that I could.

So in this article, I want to outline some points that will allow you to create this same kind of experience for yourself, but in a more systematic way. I'm excited because this article is in a new and different format, combining my verbal commentary and analysis with the actual footage we used during the clinic in Indian Wells. Just click on the pciture below to get it started. It's almost as good as being at the Osmosis Clinic yourself. Well, not really if you read the report (Click Here), but still, pretty powerful.

So that's it for the forehand. Let's us know what you think about the concept and the key elements in the Forum, and we'll go on to the backhands next!