Podcasts — Alcaraz's Backhand — Zverev's Forehand

Alcaraz's backhand synthesis — signal in the shank — the one-inch punch forehand

Everything on my mind / things I’ve done since that final.

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I joined David Lipman and Xylon van Eyck on the 1% Better podcast to talk about the Sinner/Alcaraz French Open final, plus:

• how tennis equipment has changed the game

• how professionals train on tour

• what determines success in the pro game

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Gill Gross had me on Monday Match Analysis to answer Mailbag questions on everything pro technique:

Some topics include:

• The possibility of a Sinner/Alcaraz Wimbledon rematch (YouTube comments are a vibe)

• Mensik’s forehand

• Musetti and Tsitsipas’s backhand comparisons

• Iga and Alcaraz’s serve adjustments

• Alcaraz’s backhand changes

• Should juniors be pushed away from a one-handed backhand?

• What we look for when pros turn to the grass

• How important are big muscles to hitting big?

One of the popular comments revolved around Alcaraz’s new backhand in 2025.

What the Spaniard is wielding right now could be considered the synthesis of his old and newer swing.

Here’s Carlos’ old backhand from 2023 (Queen’s) for reference. Note how the left arm is more bent and the power position — where the racquet head gets above the hands — has the racquet tip very upright, with the hands also higher so that the racquet tops out just above head height.

In the back half of 2024 Alcaraz started abbreviating his backswing, straightening the arms, and lowering the racquet head. One of my 2025 predictions would be that this would be a net negative for his game. But during the clay season — perhaps due to the bounce — Alcaraz started using something of a synthesis between the two. Arms straighter and lower than the old 2023 backhand, but recovering some of the power position in the racquet head compared to Australia.

Observe the uber-abbreviated Australian Open 2025 backhand, versus what we saw at Roland Garros 2025:

So far on the grass, Alcaraz is swinging as he was on the clay, with the higher power position and slightly more bent left elbow, but the hands still lower, and I think this version is a happy medium between getting enough easy racquet speed (old swing) while still having a compact and low setup to handle the faster attacks of this era.

Weighing in on Zverev’s Forehand

We also discussed Zverev’s forehand. Andy Roddick (here) and Gill Gross (here) have recently given their takes on the Zverev forehand. I think(?) I’ve summarised them fairly here:

Roddick’s take was: his swing is too long to simply step in closer to the baseline and attack. He’s good at what he does from deeper positions, but it’s not natural for him to simply step in.

Gill’s was: Zverev doesn’t need to step in to do well with his style, but he needs to commit to the forehand more aggressively (like he has sometimes done) if he’s going to give up court position, like a Thiem/Nadal/Wawrinka.

My take is: It’s not the swing length, it’s the “noise” in the swing, given his wristy mechanics, so naturally he plays deeper to play balls as they drop, which makes timing easier, but I still think speed is more difficult for him to achieve relative to other swing styles.

One of the most fascinating training videos I have watched is from Court Level Tennis with Djokovic and Zverev at the 2024 Australian Open that you can watch in full here. In the first two minutes Zverev shanks — and I mean completely shanks, to the point Djokovic turns into a deep centre field — four forehands.¹

There’s signal in that. There’s no speed pressure or scoreboard pressure going on here. This is the first few minutes of a warm-up.

This is early 2024, when Zverev’s forehand was as compact as it’s ever been. It is longer again now.

I’m writing a new forehand piece (very, very slowly) and what was meant to be a footnote commenting on an Agassi / Zverev forehand comparison kind of spiralled, so I’m adding it here for a taste:

If there was a modern forerunner — and one of the best ever practitioners — to the “aggressive baseliner with compact outside swings” style that we are witnessing more frequently in today’s feverish era, it would be Andre Agassi.

Built like a powerlifter on pigeon-toed Nike’s and armed with a 107-square-inch wok of a Head Radical, Agassi punched well above his sub-six-foot stature. Ham-hocked arms and a mild semi-western forehand grip allowed him to drive flat lasers from inside the baseline.

That Agassi forehand position, with the racquet head setup so that it is pronounced on the outside of the hand, and with a large space between the hands and body — has become the model that many players today are using.² However, with more extreme grips and the proliferation of taller players I believe this can create issues.

Federer (05) and Alcaraz take the hitting hand farther back and lift the hand above the elbow, with the racquet head above the hand again and the strings facing the press gallery due to their extended wrist. They are creating a lot of leverage for the racquet head to drop into the backswing. Below is Agassi and Zverev, with setups that have the hands farther from the body, and the racquet head lowered and more outside the hands, with more muted wrist positions.

I want to expand on the idea that Zverev’s forehand issues aren’t due to swing length, but rather, a cocktail of technical details that I believe may exacerbate timing and contribute to his subsequent defensive court positions.

“The more you learn about the biomechanics of strokes, the more you realize how much the benefits or limitations of certain techniques are variable and contextual.”

— Duane Knudson, Biomechanical Principles of Tennis Technique

To do that I want to compare what differs in the Zverev and Agassi forehand, despite their very similar initial setup position.

The most obvious one is their body type. Andre is short, stocky, and explosive. Sascha is tall and slender with a penchant for endurance. This alone makes it a little harder for Zverev to time the ball, as longer levers amplify swing inconsistencies (compare a driver to your pitching wedge). But we’ve seen tall, long-limbed players with great forehands before (*del Potro enters the chat*), so it’s clear that body type doesn’t explain all of it.

Second is the grip. This is a tricky one, because Zverev has moved his grip over the years, first coming on tour with something like an extreme semi-western, and now using something bordering the SW/Eastern bevel with his index knuckle at times. Overall, though, I’d wager that Andre’s was more conservative. Tennisplayer.net marked Andre’s grip as ‘4/3’, meaning the index knuckle was on bevel 4, but the heel pad on bevel 3.

This is a screenshot from John Yandell’s tennisplayer.net. You can see that the grip is measured at two points: the index knuckle (or the palm side that corresponds with that) and the heel pad.

When your grip is more conservative — where some part of the palm is on Eastern/bevel 3 — more of the hand is behind the grip when the strings are oriented down the court, and this allows a player to “push” through the ball in a more linear fashion, as well as hit with less body rotation (angular momentum) making it easier to hit on the rise, when rushed and unable to load, and at lower contact points. You can also generate ball speed with less effort. This is why it is so conducive to flat hitting (and to receiving flat hitting). Think del Potro, Federer, Dimitrov, Blake, Sampras, and Agassi. From tennisplayer.net (it’s paywalled, but you can sign up for 30 days free):

Agassi is known as one the best ball strikers in tennis history, in particular for his ability to step in and hit the ball on the rise around the baseline. His forehand grip is the foundation that makes this possible…

…The grip separates him technically from the other semi-western players in two ways. First a "4 / 3 " grip* is ideally suited for making contact at the mid point between waist and shoulder level. This happens to be the height of most balls in tennis when they cross the baseline. The second difference with this grip is that it is compatible with a neutral or square stance. As we saw in our stance article on the stances, the players with more extreme grips have bigger shoulder or torso rotational patterns. This makes it awkward to step into the ball and hit on the rise, because the front foot actually blocks the body rotation. If Agassi's grip were any more extreme, he would not be able to play the way he plays.**

* A ‘4/3’ means the index knuckle was on bevel 4 and the heel pad on bevel 3. Typically, if the index knuckle is on bevel 4, the heel pad will also be on 4.

**I think Sinner’s semi-western grip and propensity to step into the ball is a counterexample to this.

Racquet properties are another subtle and often-ignored aspect that influences technique. In a post from a few years ago I mentioned a website called impactingtennis.com, written by Miha Flisek, an engineer who explains racquet properties mathematically. I am not an engineer, but I have tinkered with equipment a lot in the last ten years of coaching: different weights and weight distributions with silicon and lead tape, string tensions and materials, grip sizes, racquet head sizes, frame stiffness, balance points, string patterns, longer frames, shorter frames; you name it and I’ve probably experimented with it. Flisek came up with a parameter, MGR/I, to determine a racquet’s ceiling and ease of playability (I told you this would get nerdy and technical). The description certainly aligned with what I experienced when trying different setups, particularly the sensations of “pulling” versus “pushing” with respect to polarised and depolarised setups. A screenshot from the breakdown.

Source

It was interesting that he mentioned Zverev’s forehand in the low MGRI group (20.10. Values near 20 are considered low, and near 21 considered high), as the German reportedly does use lead at 12 with silicone in the handle. It also aligns with the notion of making shots better for spin, but a little harder to time the ball. Now I don’t mean to say high or low is better — much of this comes down to playstyles and setting up racquets with strengths in mind — but with respect to forehands in particular, I think it is easier to time outside “compact” setups with a high MGR/I. The reason for this is that low MGR/I is usually a more “polarised” racquet, where weight (in the form of lead tape in the hoop and, typically, silicone in the handle) is placed at the ends of the racquet. Think of the racquet as taking on the properties of a hammer, where the weight is distributed more toward the ends, as compared to a piece of two-by-four, with an even weight across its entire length. There’s less of a delay between your hand pulling through and the racquet responding when you have a depolarised set up because there is less weight in the tip resisting your pull. By contrast, online specs of Agassi’s frame appear quite depolarised; the weight was more evenly distributed throughout the frame length (MGR/I of 21.22).

To add another element of the equipment that can influence performance, note that Zverev is one of the players these days who opts to use a hybrid string job of polyester in the mains (Head Hawk) and gut in the crosses (Babolat VS natural gut) at a relatively loose tension (it was reportedly around 45 lbs for mains and 47 lbs for crosses at Vienna 2023). It’s become somewhat common for pro players seeking more power (and maybe something more arm friendly) to add gut to their setup, but it does come at the expense of that all-poly deadened control. After all, the whole reason poly strings took over the tour was because of how stiff they are; they allowed players to swing with reckless abandon. Agassi himself noted this in his autobiography (emphasis added):

“Coach Darren Cahill] puts the string [Luxilon] on one of my rackets… In a practice session I don't miss a ball for two hours. Then I don't miss a ball for the rest of the tournament. I've never won the Italian Open before, but I win it now, because of Darren and his miracle string.”

So far we’ve identified and described three variables that differ — body type, grip, and racquet/string properties — between the Zverev and Agassi forehands. None of these are particularly suboptimal in isolation, but combined, they may work as a pernicious cocktail as it relates to timing the ball. In all three of these variables, I contend that Agassi’s are more suited to compact outside setups and facilitate better timing: shorter levers, more conservative grips, and depolarised frames.

But beyond the screenshot of their similar forehand setups we now get a glimpse into perhaps the most important difference: the nature of their respective flips.

Let’s take a look at how compact and ‘quiet’ Andre’s forehand was. The one-inch punch of tennis:

Look how great Andre still leveraged the racquet head. He setup outside, but then would still lift the hand and racquet head prior to the forward swing. Also note how little lag there is in his swing. More conservative grips can get away with less of an in-to-out swing path because they can hit through the ball and generate flat strikes more easily. An incredibly quiet motion that generated great ball speed. Finally, look how he sets up with an extended wrist and bent elbow, and hits with the same form; the only arm joint with significant motion here is the internal rotation of the shoulder.

Many people talk of a shot having a higher “margin of safety” (height over the net) because it has more spin, but fail to recognise that it has usually come at the expense of a noisier swing; the swing has less margin for error in timing the ball.

Now let’s compare that to Sascha’s. This is older footage so his swing has changed but the phenomenon of interest is still relevant:

Here Sascha back ~2019 actually setups with a more upright racquet head, but note how he drops it out to the side prior to accelerating with the flip; the hands and racquet are more level. Her also achieves quite a good flip; the racquet head gets a good way inside the line of the ball, but there are a lot of moving pieces in the arm as this happens; the bent arm and more flexed wrist become a straight arm and extended wrist. When you couple all of that with what we’ve gone over already: the longer limbs with less explosivity (we can make that a word), the (sometimes) more extreme grip, the more polarised racquet setup with a gut hybrid…I think this all makes for an exceedingly more difficult shot to execute as it relates to ball control and timing.

Only with the camera slowing it down can we see how much more is going on with Sascha’s forehand, yet with less leverage in the racquet head. As I wrote in my preview of the Australian Open final against Sinner:

But to this day Zverev’s forehand is neither a powerful weapon or a trusty shield in big matches, and my thesis is that this is technically driven. He’s got more moving parts and less racquet speed than someone like Sinner. At the top end of the game, that’s like having a smaller engine with the screws half-out. At some point it’s going to break.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for the Zverev/Agassi footnote. More to come in Death of a Forehand Part IV, one of these days.

Hopefully back with a Queen’s recap from Sunday (not sure I can cover Halle with that camera angle).

1. There’s half a dozen others in the first 10 minutes.

2. Paul, Zverev, Hurkacz, Dimitrov, Musetti, Fearnley, de Minaur, Tiafoe, Khachanov.