Tennis Strategy: How To Play Against A Big Forehand

If you want to learn how to play against an opponent with a big forehand, you’re in for a treat. Today, you will discover more than one tennis strategy to beat this type of player.

Playing against someone who has a big forehand can be stressful. In fact, each wrong move from your side of the net can hurt you, big time. Players who love hitting their forehands like to run around balls, and rip an inside out forehand from the backhand corner.

Let’s get started and go over each tennis strategy in greater detail.

Strategy 1: Hit An Angled Backhand Shot

The first tennis strategy involves hitting a softer rally ball with your backhand that lands shorter inside the court with more angle. Your goal is to get the ball over to your opponent’s backhand by using this short angle rally ball. Hence, you’ll force your opponent to beat you with their weaker shot.

When you angle a ball with a crosscourt backhand, it’s almost impossible for your opponent to run around it to hit a forehand. Thus, you are effectively taking their forehand out of play, which is exactly what you want. Keep the ball angled crosscourt until you see the opportunity to change direction and hit the ball down the line.

If you want to keep the ball away from your opponent’s forehand, avoid hitting the ball down the middle. This will prevent your opponent from attacking you with the tennis forehand.

Strategy 2: Play High To The Backhand

Playing high balls to your opponent’s backhand will frustrate the big forehand players as well. Consequently. focus on playing the ball high and deep crosscourt. For instance, if you can hit a deep, high ball that lands close to the baseline, your opponent won’t be able to run around their backhand.

Your goal is to starve the forehand as much as possible and be patient. Then, you can hit the ball down the line with your tennis backhand once you’re balanced. Besides, you can play your own inside in forehand.

When using this tennis strategy, there’s a good chance your opponent might lose patience and go for too much. Remember that hitting the high ball gets out of your opponent’s strike zone. This makes it more difficult to hit the ball with as much power, even if they can run around their backhand to hit a forehand. Simply, force your opponent to go for an aggressive down the line.

Strategy 3: Serve To The Backhand

Here’s another tennis strategy to use against a big forehand player. Focus on serving to the backhand, not allowing your opponent to hit the forehands. Essentially, you want as many balls as possible to the weaker backhand, when you know their tennis forehand can hurt you. Force your opponent to beat you with the backhand by serving most balls to the backhand.

Afterwards, continue to attack there until you have an opening to rush their strength, the forehand. When you use this strategy, where most balls are hit to the backhand side, an occasional shot to the forehand can be a big surprise. It’s quite simple, don’t let the big forehand player beat you with forehands.

Use these three valuable tennis strategies to beat a player with a big forehand. You want to put pressure on your opponent’s backhand, and force him to beat you with his weaker shot. Remember to direct more balls towards the backhand side with height and angle. Take time away by rushing the forehand, and serve to the backhand side more often.

By Jeff Salzenstein, Founder Tennis Evolution

Jeff is a former top 100 ATP player and USTA high performance coach committed to helping players and coaches all over the world improve.

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