Imagery and Elite Players:
Justine Henin's Forehand

John Yandell

How have pro players--including Grand Slam winners--used video and stroke imagery in their technical development? This article and the two that follow explain how, working with their coaches, Justine Henin and Novak Djokovic made technical changes that were vital to the successes that followed.

This first article talks about Justin's forehand, followed by an article on her serve. The third article deals with Novak Djokovic's serve.

I first filmed Justine Henin in 2001 in March at Indian Wells. There was a buzz around her, and later that year she reached the semis of the French and the final of Wimbledon. Two years later she won the French and the U.S. Open.

That 2001 footage provides an amazing look at how much her game changed technically during her ascent to the top of women's tennis. Basically she remodeled her forehand on the model of Andre Agassi, and her serve on the model of Pete Sampras.

Those changes were the work of her coach Carlos Rodriquez. My contribution was to provide Carlos with the high speed imagery he used in working with Justine. This was groundbreaking high speed video we filmed of Agassi and Sampras--among many other top players--starting in 1997. (Click Here for The Tennisplayer interview with Carlos.)

It was the first live match play filming ever done with high frame rates of 250 or 500 frames per second. This work changed the paradigm for understanding pro technique allowing students of the game to look directly inside the invisible world of pro tennis. Carlos was one of the first to realize this and put it into practice.

So what did Justine's forehand look like in 2001 before the changes? The big difference was her backswing. As she began her body turn, she actually pushed her racket face slightly forward in front of her body with the face of the racket completely closed, facing down parallel to the court.

As she raised her hand to begin her take back, the racket face stayed initially closed. Then, as the face started to open she rotated her hand and arm backwards until the racket face and strings were almost facing the back fence.

Next as the racket began to drop from the top of her backswing, her hand moved to the inside, or closer to her body. Her motion was still relatively compact compared to other top women. But this inside move meant that on many balls her racket head ended up behind her body at the start of the forward swing.

Now let's compare that with Agassi's backswing. Years ago I did a detailed examination of the variations in pro backswings (Click Here). My conclusion was that Andre was the best backswing model among then current players.

This was because of its simplicity. It was also because the arm and racket stayed on his hitting side throughout the preparation and into the start of the forward swing. These are characteristics that Brian Gordon later discovered to be core components of the ATP forehand. (Click Here.)

As Andre began his unit turn, he set the of the racket face at a slight angle tilting downward toward the court. This angle, once established, stayed basically the same all the way to the top of the backswing. The motion was much simpler than Justine's--and is also simpler than most pro players today.

A huge key was what happened next. From the top of the backswing, the racket moved down staying on Andre's right or the hitting side of the body. There was no movement of the hand or racket back behind the body as in Justine's motion.

These elements were basic in one of the greatest forehand's of all time. I am certain Carlos agreed about the quality of the model, although neither one of us knew anything at the time about Brian's research, stretch shorten cycles, or how this outside backswing position on the right side turbo charged the shoulder muscles.

So how did Justine's backswing look after the reconstruction? It incorporated the key Agassi components.

She still started with the racket tip in front and the racket face closed and pointed down to the court. However the racket was pushed slightly less forward at the start of the motion.

The fundamental change was that from this position as she moved upward she reached a outside backswing position very similar to Andre's. At the top the racket face was tilted slightly downward toward the court, at about a 30 degree angle, essentially the same orientation as Andre. This meant she no longer rotated her arm and racket backward so the face was pointing toward the back fence.

This new motion saved Justine significant time. Compared to the old backswing motion, it took one or two tenths of a second less time to complete. That is a huge increment when the time between the hits off the ground in pro tennis is a second or a few fractions more.

But what happened next in her motion was as important or maybe more important. From the top of the backswing the hand arm and racket stayed to the outside.

Instead of coming back to the inside with the hand closer to the body and the racket moving behind, Justine moved her hand and racket directly downward from the top of the backswing. Her arm and racket now stayed entirely on the right side of her body at the start of the forward swing, a hallmark of the ATP forehand.

The result was a more compact, more powerful stroke and one that took Justine to the very top of the game. Where these changes key to her later success? I think Carlos believed the answer was yes. And that is my opinion as well.

Stay tuned to see how Carlos and Justine used the same process of working with high speed video imagery to change her serve, which in 2001 was considered a possible fatal liability.