Grigor Dimitrov’s One Handed Backhand Technique

If you’re and avid tennis player looking to learn correct one-handed backhand technique, then this analysis of Grigor Dimitrov’s backhand will hopefully point you in the right direction.

This is the second video released in collaboration with Jason Frausto from TennisUnleashed.net who has graciously allowed me to use some of his videos for this kind of video analysis.

The unique way to look at Grigor’s backhand is again removing the racquet from the video which may help you get a new and a better perspective on how the stroke is properly executed.

As I mentioned before, I believe that the racquet often times distracts us from interpreting correctly what we see because we unconsciously start to follow the racquet’s movements with our hands.

And because racquet’s path is longer than the hand’s path, we may end up doing way too much than it’s actually needed.

So in this one handed backhand analysis I’ve pointed out three situations where you may interpret the stroke incorrectly.

1. The Preparation

In this side view of Dimitrov’s backhand we’ll focus on the preparation.

So again, you may focus on the racquet head a lot and then subconsciously and unknowingly follow its path with your hand.

So it’s important that you see clearly that while the racquet head is quite high in relation to Dimitrov’s body, in fact the tip of the racquet is above high head, his hand has barely lifted up from his ready position and it’s still at a very comfortable height just below his chest.

You can see that clearly in this image when you observe how little has the arm actually lifted from the initial position in the ready position to its maximum height from where Grigor starts his downward swing.

2. The Racquet Lag

In this front view of Grigor’s one-handed backhand, the position that you might misinterpret is when the racquet is behind his body but the hand is in front of his body.

If you focus too much on the racquet head, you may want to move your hand way too much behind you which will coil your body too much and make it difficult to time and control the ball well.

But if you focus on the hand too much and see that it’s in front of the body, you might not create enough lag of the racquet head as you’ll want to keep the racquet also in front of the body and therefore lose on power of the stroke.

3. Getting Under The Ball

In the back view perspective of Grigor Dimitrov’s one-handed backhand this side by side image shows the difference between how much under the ball the racquet is and how much the hand is.

You’ve heard many times the instruction of getting under the ball, swinging low to high or something similar but what I’d like you to note here is that it’s not the arm that swings under the ball but it’s only the racquet head that’s dropping.

Yes, Dimitrov is hitting a more aggressive backhand here but he is still dropping the racquet head under the ball quite significantly whereas his arm hasn’t gone much under the ball.

What you may often do incorrectly when you hear about getting under the ball is to actually move your arm way too much under the ball and then having to lift it quite artificially and forcefully up towards the ball and in the process losing on the power and simply creating too much lift and too much slow top spin.

So just something to keep in mind the next time you hear your coach tell you to get under the ball.

Yes, it’s more about relaxing your hand a little bit so that the racquet head drops rather than actually moving your hand and arm way below the ball.

So have you noticed anything new looking at Grigor Dimitrov’s one-handed backhand technique in this different way of analysis when the racquet is removed from the images?