Your Strokes:
Will Campbell Forehand

Analyzed by John Yandell

This month we have the privilege of taking a look at the forehand of our first junior player in Your Strokes, Will Campbell, a tournament player from Arkansas. Before I share my thoughts, though, I want to say the same thing I say to parents and junior coaches when I film competitive players myself. I am not Will's developmental coach, and I've never seen him play. It's not my call what he should do and where he should go technically is his game. All I can do is share some thoughts about the stroke pattern on the video and leave it to Will and his coach and family to decide what if anything to do with the input.

Grip

The first thing is that I like his intensity a lot! He has also worked hard to develop a technically sophisticated forehand swing path. It's hard to tell exactly without a better close up, but his forehand grip looks quite extreme. It's at least what I'd call an extreme semi-western, like Hewitt. But probably it's even more extreme and closer to a full western. It looks to me like his heel pad is all the way or almost all the way under the handle. It's a common grip in the juniors and one used by a lot of very successful and highly ranked kids. But no top pro players are using it because of the limitations.

The question to consider is what the impact of this grip is for his long term development. In general I have to agree with Robert Lansdorp that the grip is more effective at the lower levels with younger players because of the ability to generate topspin and hit high bouncing balls and play tenacious rally points. (Click Here.) As the players get older and hit the balls harder, the size and complexity of the motion can become a liability. A more prosaic question is whether this swing pattern will work when he is 50 years old and still wants to play--just in case Will doesn't make it to number one on the Tour. The grip also makes the transition to the volley grip at the net more awkward--and the compact volley motions feel radically different. You just don't see natural looking all court players with ultra extreme forehand grips.

Having said that, Will has some great technical elements. His turn is fantastic. Look at that beautiful unit turn and how he gets his shoulders around while keeping both hands on the racket. His balance and posture look really good and he stretches that opposite arm beautifully across his body. Watch how he also coils the back leg, with a good knee bend and great use of left toes for balance.

But I also have a question about the backswing. This is about the size. Right now Will's backswing is at the outer limits of the size of the top pros. The largest loop we've filmed is probably Hewitt. At the top his hand is well over his head at the top. Will matches this almost perfectly. His loop is every bit as large.

The same hand height as Lleyton but is that a good thing?

But is it too large for him at this stage? I would tend to say yes. In high performance junior development, a concept that is gaining acceptance is "age appropriate bio-mechanics." We're going to have articles on this in the upcoming year, and there is something to the concept for sure. You might say "Hey if my forehand looks like Hewitt that's great! He's an elite Grand Slam Champion--what could be wrong with that?"

Well, we don't have any footage of Lleyton at age 12. And maybe he had that exact loop. But I doubt it. If we look the small bits of footage that are available of players like Pete Sampras or Andy Roddick or Tommy Haas, we see much more compact motions when they were Will's age and size--or in Haas's case much older. Watch the highest point of the hands in the animations and compare to Will. It's worth noting that none of these players used a loop as large as Will's in their pro careers. Even though he is very consistent and precise in his preparation and backswing, I found myself wondering if Will was swinging the racket, or whether the racket at times was swinging him.

The issue of the grip and the size of the swing is also apparent when we look at the contact and the body rotation. I noted that in the 10 or so forehands Will sent in on video, he missed several balls, and these were all being fed from a basket to him. It's easier to put the ball way up in the air with this grip--but much harder to drive it flatter on a consistent basis, as Will tried to do for the camera. He has to put every ounce of energy into the stroke and it doesn't take a lot to throw it off.

Most players with grips as extreme (or even less extreme) than Will's continue the body rotation after contact. They finish with the front shoulder pointing partially, or all the way toward the net. Will doesn't. We can compare this to Hewitt. Watch where his front shoulder ends up. I suspect that would just be too much extra motion for Will to control. Paradoxically, at other times Will overrotates at contact, and his front shoulder actually comes around too far too soon. Again, I think it's just too much motion to control and sometimes Will loses control of the sequence of the rotation trying to get the racket through.

But back to the plus side! Will's extension through the forward swing is quite good! A lot of young players cut off the extension of the swing and go to the wrap too early. Will's looks pretty good--although he could probably work to increase this as he gets taller and stronger. Hewitt is definitely a great model there.

On balance I would have these suggestions--as experiments. Experiment with a less extreme grip. Experiment with a more compact backswing--maybe tagging the elbow into the side for a while to keep the hand lower. The result is going to be less topspin--and probably less maximum velocity--compared to when things go exactly perfectly right with the more extreme style.

Will extends through contact better than many juniors, approaching the pro model.

Experiment with a little more extension before the wrap. A big factor though is deciding what type of player Will wants to be. If he wants to be an ultimate grinder and break people mentally with topspin and tenacity, he can keep going with the pattern he has. If he wants to begin to penetrate the court with more velocity and flatter shots, then shifting toward a more compact style might pay off.