Do Hitting Arm Positions Matter?
Jannik Sinner Forehand

John Yandell

The straight arm forehand. Roger, Rafa, Alcaraz, they all have it. According to the great Brian Gordon it's one of the forehand gold standards. And I believe him, although he himself makes the caveat that very few players are capable of achieving it fully.

I have never read anything about developing a straight arm either with Rafa or Alcaraz either. Correct me though if you have found something about it somewhere that I missed.

So maybe the straight arm is the gold standard. But then we have the new Australian champion Jannik Sinner. Great forehand--obviously. Brad Gilbert nicknamed it the "Fearhand."

Guess what? Jannik has a double bend hitting arm structure. Check out all the Sinner forehands in the High Speed Archives. (Click Here.)

What does double bend mean precisely? That at the start of the forward swing, the elbow is bent, tucked in toward the torso. And the second bend is the laid back wrist.

This structure is maintained at contact and out into the followthrough. The release of the wrist only happens well after the ball is long off the strings.

Look at the sequence of Sinner. At the bottom of the backswing the wrist is laid back approaching almost 90 degrees. At contact, depending on the ball, it can still be about roughly the same angle.

Then after contact the wrist release starts, reaching a neutral position as the swing reaches about shoulder level. The elbow bend continues and then increases as the swing reaches the extension point, or the point where the hand and racket are closest to the net and the opponent.

So to ask a related, debated question: is that a wrist snap or a partial wrist snap? Again I defer to Brian Gordon.

What his research showed was rather than "snapping" players are actually inhibiting the forward flex of the wrist to varying degrees. Why? To align the racket head with the shot line.

So this explains why the wrist is more laid back at contact on inside out balls and less laid back when players are hitting crosscourt especially from wider or shorter positions.

You can see the double bend in the forehand of another great player with a great forehand—Novak Djokovic. And you see it throughout the history of the modern game.

When we first started doing high speed filming that actually showed the arm action on the forehand clearly in 1996, we found the double bend in the forehands of the two greatest forehands of the 1990s—Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.

In fact, the double bend was so pervasive that I was puzzled when I saw the film of Mark Philippoussis, puzzled by the anomaly of his straight arm. Subsequently I found that Rod Laver had a straight arm and I am sure if we had film we would find it sprinkled throughout the history of tennis.

And now today we see how many great players have the same. But not Sinner, or other big forehands like Novak Djokovic, Nick Kyrios and others.

So what does that mean for you at your level? Recently I got some messages from a junior player who said he was trying to convert to a straight arm forehand.

He sent me some video which was not exactly Tennisplayer quality, but I could see a few things. Like his shoulder turn and left arm stretch were incomplete, and he had a big, complicated backswing. And his extension was short and also incomplete.

I wrote back and told him all this, politely. I told him a straight arm—which he didn't have in the video either—wouldn't solve these more fundamental problems. Never heard back from him.

That's not totally surprising. On the world's largest tennis message board, you frequently hear the same thing. I need a straight arm and that would make all my forehand problems go away.

Don't believe it. The fact is at the top levels, regardless of hitting arm position or grip, the top players have other fundamentals that are far more important.

Two in particular. The full turn in the preparation. And the extension on the forward swing. I outline these two commonalities for Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic in an Ultimate Fundamentals article. (Click Here.)

But we can see them in Sinner's forehand too—as well as virtually every top player. First the turn.

The left arm stretches across the body, basically parallel to the baseline and perpendicular to the sideline. The shoulders are turned more than 90 degrees to the net.

Then the extension. The wrist is about at eye level. The hand is about even with the left shoulder. And there is 1 and a half or 2 feet of spacing between the hand and the torso.

Then there is the double bend hitting arm structure as the video shows above.

So what does that mean for you? That the key positions of turn and extension are more fundamental than the hitting arm and will work with either the straight arm or the double bend. That's why virtually all great players share these commonalities.

But which hitting arm position should you develop? I think guys that have straight arms just find it naturally.

I just finished reading Chris Clarey's biography of Federer. It's great and I am going to review it next month. He spends a lot of time talking to the people who were around Roger from a very early age. They talk about his natural explosiveness and the famous sideways head position. But no mention in 400 pages of the straight arm.

I have a neighbor who plays on my court. He is in his early 30s and had been a really good high school player. The first time I filmed him there it was—a straight hitting arm.

But he didn't even know he had that. For some the straight or straighter arm might just evolve by feel. So if you are obsessed with the straight arm you can definitely try it. Video will show whether you actually can do it or not, and what it might add to your forehand—or subtract.

Still I believe most players will be far more comfortable and consistent with the double bend. Especially beginners. But also the vast majority of recreational players.

So if you have a double bend relax--there is nothing to feel inferior about. Sinner is proof of that. And so are a lot of Slam champions before him.