The Wide Angle Forehand

The WIde Angle FOrehand

Hello and welcome to another edition of Scott Nagle’s Tennis Tips. I am Scott Nagle, bringing you a tennis tip from Dubin, Ireland, at a public tennis facility. Today’s tip will cover when to use and how to hit a short angle forehand.

The technique for this forehand is used for several other forehands shots that can also be seen in some of my other videos.

The short angle forehand is great for singles as well as doubles.

Obviously, this shot is designed to place the ball and your opponent very wide off the court, so let’s consider some of the best opportunities to use this shot:

Attacking a weak second serve or returning a wide serve or any wide ball off of the forehand side.
It is very effective as a singles or doubles passing shot, and for opening up one side of the court by forcing your opponent to cover a very wide shot on the opposite side..For right handed players, a wide angle forehand to a right hander's wide forehand would open up the backhand side of the court.

Now that we have some ideas of when to utilize the wide-angle forehand, let’s examine how to create a wide angle with your forehand. I will demonstrate this for RIGHT handed players.

Set up your targets near the singles sideline between the net and the service line. Today we will use just a pyramid of tennis balls as a target.
Begin at the service line: Start in the doubles alley next to the service line. Place your feet with the right foot (same foot as your hitting arm), forward towards the net. This will allow your hips and torso to rotate easily in the direction of the targets you set up. You can use a variety of footwork positions, but this one is a good one to start with.
Drop a ball or have someone toss a ball to you well in front of your body. Also, having the ball come towards you from the same area as your target will help you get the best angle and hit the ball in the proper location.
If you have a clay court you can diagram on the court with a line where you want the angle of the racket to be at contact with ball. (On a hard court we can use chalk or a stick).
Now that your stance and ball feed is situated, it is time to strike a few balls toward the target area. First, just aim in the direction of your target before attempting to keep the ball inside the court.
Be sure to keep your wrist back during the forward swing path.If your racket angle matches the line you have created on the court, and your wrist is in a right angle, your shot should be on target.
Keeping the ball inside the court is the next challenge. You will need a lot of topspin and it will help to modify your follow-though in order to control the depth of the shot. Finishing too high over your shoulder can create more trajectory than needed for the reduced court distance. The court length 78’ from baseline to baseline and 42 feet from service line to service line. The angle of the singles sideline to the cross-court opposite side is 49.93 Feet. A follow-through designed for 72 feet will likely go beyond your target. Additionally, a high follow-through will limit the potential for power since it will likely force the ball well beyond the target.Modified Follow-Through
Use the abbreviated or modified follow-thorough to create racket speed and lift, but limit the trajectory of your shot. Imagine a horse shoe, or lower-case “n” as the stroke shape. The stroke shape is similar to the shape of the ball and you can use an object to swing over or around an create the right swing path.
Radial Deviation. It is important to add quite a bit of spin to your shot and this can be created by using radial deviation (see my tip on radial deviation for more information), but the idea is that the arm rotates as if you are turning off a faucet nozzle as your arm swings up towards contact, through the contact, and rounds out through the horseshoe shaped swing path to the modified finish.Move back a few yards at a time and experiment with various widths to find your comfort zone.

Eventually, you will be able to create this shot from several places in the court and you will be able to vary the speed, spin, angle and placement of the angle based on your needs. I covered just a few of the options for when to use this shot and some of the basic techniques to create the right angle and depth. The more you utilize this shot, the better it will become. Practicing the sharp forehand angle as a warm up for doubles partners and for warm-up with short or mini tennis. Good luck and see you next time.