The Myth of the Wrap

by John Yandell

The whole strokes may look the same, but compare the critical path of the racquet through the contact zone.

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You can also see this relationship between extension, racquet head acceleration, and the wrap quite clearly in ProStrokes Gallery when you click through the forehands of the top players frame by frame.

Just watch how far the racquet head really travels with every click. You’ll see that during the wrap the racquet head travels the least distance compared with other parts of the swing, especially compared to the movement just before and after the hit.

The pros don’t wrap the racquet to generate racquet head speed. They wrap the racquet because they have racquet head speed. Good players wrap the finish because they have to, to decelerate the racquet and get ready for the next shot.

The irony is the wrap is not some new development that appeared recently in the high speed modern game. It’s an inevitable part of a high level forehand, regardless of grip structure.

The wrap has been a part of high level tennis since the beginning, as the amazing animation of Big Bill Tilden’s classic forehand (below) makes clear. Watch him hit through the line of the shot, then wrap the racquet over his shoulder, just like the so-called “modern” forehand.

And Tilden wasn’t an exception. It was the same for all the great champions who followed. Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzales, Rod Laver—they all wrapped. If you don’t believe me, just check out Ed Atkinson’s classic Kings of the Court video.

So how did this myth become so prevalent?

The wrap has been around as long as tennis as Big Bill’s classic eastern forehand shows.

With the move to more extreme forehand grips and the increased internal arm rotation in the swing patterns, the wraps naturally became more extreme as well. Since the racquet is moving slower at the wrap than at any part of the swing, this exaggerated motion is also much easier to observe than what is actually happening around the contact.

The problem is compounded by the fact that most coaches didn’t learn to hit their own strokes with the extreme grips their students are now using, and there is no established teaching methodology to help players learn the new patterns.

Virtually all the teaching systems, along with the tennis tips passed down over the generations from coaches to players, are based on classic grips.

So coaches looked at the new forehands, trying to figure them out. The easiest thing to identify was the more extreme wrapping motion, so they concluded that this was the revolutionary “new” technical element in the modern forehand.

The extreme wrap is obvious in the modern forehand, but not the technical key to developing it.

Unfortunately, the only thing that was really new was the idea of making the wrap a conscious, mechanical movement. By trying to force the wrap finish, junior players learned to reduce rather than increase their ability to accelerate the racquet through the hit. This is something the video clips make only too clear.

Here is an important qualification: I’m not necessarily arguing that the more extreme western grips that players like Hewitt and Guga use are the way to go for juniors, much less for the average club player. In fact, I still think Pete Sampras has the best grip and the best technical pattern to model, especially for lower level players.

Agassi looks almost classical by modern standards, and I can’t see why anyone would want a more extreme grip than his “mild” semi-western. But that’s just my opinion.

What I am saying is that we need a teaching methodology for the extreme grips because they are here to stay, no matter what I or what any other coach might think. And teaching the wrap is definitely the wrong approach.

What we need instead is a way to bring the swing patterns of our junior players more closely in line with the world’s top players who have the same grip styles.

Marat Safin demonstrates the characteristic extension and finish of a top modern forehand.

So if the wrap is a consequence rather than a cause of a good swing what should coaches teach instead? And how does the wrap relate to the rest of the technical swing pattern?

Let’s look in more detail at Kuerten, Safin, and Hewitt. As different as these players’ forehands may appear, when we study them in high speed video, there are three important commonalities when it comes to the extension and finish.

First, all three players extend the swing along the line of the shot for a distance of up to 2 or 3 feet after the contact.

Second, during this extension of the swing, the wrist position remains laid back, and literally unchanged (See the Myth of the Wrist). The wrist begins to release only as the player moves toward the end of the extension. As the wrist releases, the racquet begins to slow down. But as it decelerates, the racquet still continues to move upwards and outwards toward the target.

The third commonality is that as the racquet continues on this path upward and outward it reaches a characteristic finish or follow-through position.

This is the furthermost point before the racquet actually starts to move backwards. It signifies the technical end of the forward swing pattern and the start of the wrap.

The player’s hand typically reaches about eye level. The hand is also well forward, about two feet in front of the plane of the body and roughly in line with the left shoulder.

The challenge in teaching the modern forehand is distinguishing between cause and effect when it comes to the contact, the extension, and the wrap.

The player’s forearm is at about a 45 degree angle to the plane of the court with the elbow bent. The upper arm is parallel to the court.

Only after passing through this position do good players begin to wrap the finish. As we have noted, the wrap signals the final deceleration phase of the swing, and the beginning of the recovery for the next shot.

Let’s be clear: the problem here is not something for which the players and coaches should be blamed. The problem lies in the difficulty of observing and analyzing the game itself, and particularly the evolution in technique.

The motions simply happen too quickly for the human eye to register clearly. Research needs to uncover what the successful players are really doing, and teaching needs to help players produce the same result.

One of the biggest challenges remains separating out what is a cause from what is an effect in the various stroke patterns, especially the new forehands.

The fact that a particular movement is happening over the course of the stroke (i.e., the wrap) doesn’t necessarily mean that players should try to make that movement happen - even if it appears to be quite prominent and distinctive, as in the case with the modern forehand.

That’s why we need more high speed video, more quantitative analysis, and especially more discussion and give and take between coaches and players in determining what is positive, constructive information in teaching the modern game.

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