Preparation

I feel Venus and Serena have the best preparation on the woman’s tour. As soon as Venus sees the ball coming to her backhand, you can see the racquet going back immediately. Well before the ball bounces she already has a great shoulder turn, and her racquet is moving back.

Look how much of the preparation already takes place in the first move. If you notice the first movement is the upper body. It starts to coil. At the same time the outside foot is also moving, and that’s essential. Venus has her body coiled and ready to strike. Everything she does is leading towards a positive stroke, and both she and Serena probably do this as well as anybody.

This is something her father, Richard Williams, understood. He’d be on the court with us and ask Venus “How many times does this guy have to tell you? Get your racquet back!”

Why the straight backswing? She and I talked this through early on, when she was 10 or 11. Venus felt more natural turning and putting the racquet back low.

Other players I've worked with liked to make a loop. I think both are effective as long as your point of contact is consistently in front of your body.

But I personally would prefer that players just take it straight back on the backhand. I think it's going to help you more on short balls, on high balls, and on return of serve, where you need a simpler backswing. This way you don’t have to learn a couple of different strokes.

Still, I've had many players that take the racquet back with their shoulders and then do a little loop. A lot of times, especially with younger players with the two hands, they don't have a rhythm. So they feel they need a loop to kind of create a rhythm with the speed of the ball as it comes off the court.

The key thing with me is I want to make sure that their contact point is always in front of them. And if players can do that with a loop, I probably won’t try to change them. I weigh the pluses and minuses.

Ideally though, nothing takes the place of turning your shoulders and getting your racquet back early. It's just less complicated. I think the game should be simple, especially for the club player.

Almost everyone loops on the forehand. But people don’t realize that there is a fundamental difference when you try to develop a loop on the backhand.

The difference is time. The ball gets to you much quicker on your backhand. Why? The hitting shoulder on the backhand is the front shoulder. This means it’s closer to the ball.

On the forehand, the hitting shoulder is the rear shoulder, which is further away. With an open stance forehand, you can let the ball get even further back toward the hitting shoulder, so there is more time.

Because your hitting shoulder on the backhand is closer to the net, you've got to be quicker. Whether you have a one-handed or a two-handed backhand, you have to make the loop faster than on the forehand. It’s true at the pro level and even more so at the club level. Simpler is better.

Open Stance

When Venus moves East/West on the baseline, she hits most of her backhands with an open stance. It’s interesting because Venus started doing this naturally on her own, dating back to when I worked with her in 1991.

With other players, this was something you usually saw only in running or emergency situations. Up to that time, I didn't really emphasize the open stance on the backhand. If you had enough time, you tried to step in. That’s what I believed.

But with Venus this shot felt good. Right from the start, she told me it felt comfortable. And as time went on, I saw that with the open stance, there was a big advantage, particularly when she hit it down the line. There was so much disguise.

I can remember having agents, other coaches, and many people who know a lot about tennis, all tell me how many things they saw wrong with her backhand. I told them, I’m not so sure what you're seeing is wrong. All I see is an 11-year old that's hit 7 out of 10 balls in the corner with pace and you can't read it.

What you see as a problem or technically flawed according to the old school, I see as a weapon, as a potential world-class shot. And they didn't know where I was coming from.

Venus' father did. He liked the fact that it was different, and he liked the result. He just wanted to make sure the basics of the split step, the turning of the shoulder, and the racquet preparation, were all in intact, then Venus could have her own flair.

I saw that she was so athletic and had such shot making potential. I didn’t want to put handcuffs on her just because she didn’t hit the ball the way Rick Macci thought she should.

But like I said, almost no one else beside myself and Richard understood. If Venus hit one ball in the net or hit a ball out, people would look at the stroke technically and try to figure out why she missed. They’d say she's on the wrong foot, her shoulders are leaning the wrong way, etc, etc.

But sometimes, to understand what’s really going on, you’ve got to go deeper. When a student misses a shot, sure, I'll look at the technical part. But I’ll also look at the footwork part. And I’ll look at the mental part.

With Venus, even though she'd missed the shot, most of the time it wasn't technical. She was prepared, she was eager, she was hitting it early. What would happen is that she might go for too much. She might get too anxious. She might choke. It was more the mental things. There’s such a thing as a good miss. And sometimes the best coaching is not to say too much.

The fact is, with Venus’ backhand, the disguise is a major asset. You can’t read the shot. You have to be on the court to really experience this. She can paralyze you because the shot is almost impossible to read. She does this consistently against people who react well.

She paralyzes them and they don't even move. That’s special. She runs to the ball, hits off an open stance and the ball just comes off her hip, and the other players can't move.

With most players, you're going to get a cue. Players get these subtle tips and cues from the racquet and body movement. But with Venus, you can't tell. If you see Venus hit the ball from an open stance, the first thing you see is the shoulder start to open up, but the racquet is going to go down the line.

Her early preparation contributes to this as well. If you prepare early, you can hold the shot, you're not rushed at the last second so the preparation adds to the disguise.

And there’s another advantage, to the open stance. It helps her recovery. Look at her! I love the way Venus Williams recovers.

When you hit with the open stance, you hit it off the left foot, As you can see she's not taking a lot of extra steps. This is key especially when you're playing defense.

A lot of players would run over and cross their right leg in front of their left then they take a few extra steps.

If you notice Venus, there's hardly any extra movement afterwards. And since this is really a game of time, she saves as much as possible on this recovery. Watch when she hits the ball, very little movement afterwards. One step, boom and watch how quick she pushes back.

Cold Winners

When Venus hits an open stance backhand aggressively down the line, she either wins the point immediately with a clean winner, or she sets the table for the next ball by generating a weak reply.

But here's the key to how she does that, she hits through the ball. If you notice her racquet is vertical and you can see how the ball goes over the net. She's driving through the shot and anything that's hit in a straight line gets there quicker.

If she had been trained to hit the ball 6, 10, 12 feet over the net with a lot of topspin, you’d still have disguise but you wouldn't have the full package. When you're trying to hit a forcing shot or a winner, you want to take some of the spin off the ball and try to hit it clean so it gets there much sooner, so your opponent has less time to react.

Her mindset here is that she wants to knock you out. She’s taking as early as possible with, world-class disguise. It’s actually the same for Serena. This shot is so effective for both of them. It's the single most effective shot in women's tennis.

If you watch them hit it down the line, they hit more cold winners than anybody. Anybody. You have to have a mindset and that's developed usually at a young age that you're going to attack the ball. She has so much confidence in the backhand down the line and the way you get confidence in the backhand down the line is practicing it. It's very natural for her to do this because of one factor. She practiced at a young age.

If you notice the Williams sisters, both hit the ball down the line, they might make a few more errors but, they're not afraid to pull the trigger and if they execute, they'll usually win the point.

Want to read Rick Macci's evaluation of the Venus Williams Forehand? Check out this other original article in the TennisONE Lesson Library.

Rick Macci has coached some of the greatest players in the modern game during their critical, formative years. He is widely regarded as one the world's top developmental coaches. Rick and his staff have shaped the strokes of Jennifer Capriati, Venus and Serena Williams, and Andy Roddick, and dozens of other successful tour players. In the last 20 years, Macci students have won 98 USTA national junior championships, and have been awarded over 4 million dollars in college scholarships.

The Macci Tennis Academy is located in Pompano Beach, Florida at the beautiful Palm-Aire Resort. Macci Tennis offers a full time boarding academy, a non-boarding weekly academy, and a summer academy, all for juniors from beginning to the world class level.

For more information, click on www.RickMacci.com or email him at info@rickmacci.com.