Will Hamilton: A grip is how you hold the tennis racquet in your hand, and it's the foundation for every single shot you hit in tennis. Now the grips really, really important, but unfortunately a lot of players just go to the court. They pick up the tennis racquet and they don't really think about what kind of grip that you are using. They just grab a racquet, whatever they end up with, is what they play with. Now the grips are really important, let me explain why?
How you hold the racquet influences how you swing up to the tennis ball. How you swing up to the tennis ball can influence the type of ball you hit. For example, some grips make it easy to swing through the ball and when I swing straight through the ball, I produce a ball that's relatively flat, in other words, I hit hard, but it doesn't have much topspin. There are some other grips that allow you to swing up on the ball more, when you swing up on the ball, you don't get as much pace, but you get more topspin, and that's really important when you trying to figure out what style of game you're going to play. Attacking players for example, tend to have more conservative grips that allow you just swing through the ball because the ball is flatter, they can press the opponent more and they can shorten the points. However, because you swinging through the ball, you don't get as much topspin, so players would like to grid it out and extend points, tend to have more extreme grips that way you swing up on the ball more generate more topspin and then most balls get pulled down in the court, you're more consistent. So, again the grip has a heavy influence on the style of play because of how it would effects, how you swing up to the tennis ball.
We're going to talk some more about how your grip could influence your style of play in a moment, but for now let's focus on the technical definition of a grip. How do I find a grip? How is it defined? And to start, we're going to look at a tennis racquet handle, which we've got right here. The handle is divided into eight sides, which are also called bevels. Starting on the top bevel, that's bevel number one and if go clockwise around the handle, we get the bevel number two, three, four, we've got five on the bottom all the way around to bevel number eight. Now, the bevel doesn't just apply to the butt cap, it actually extends the entire length of the handle. So, if we look from a slightly different perspective, let's go back to bevel number one at the top and then we get bevel number two again, three and so on again all the way around the handle. Now let's look at the hand. There are two parts of the hand that we want to identify. The heal pad and the index knuckle, which is the first knuckle of your index finger.
Your grip is determined by which bevel on the tennis racquet handle, the heal pad and the index knuckle rest on. So, if we go back to the tennis racquet handle, again the grip is determined by where you position your heal pad and index knuckle along the handle, which bevel it rests on. So for example, the continental grip, which many pros used to serve is where the heal pad and the index knuckle rest on the second bevel of the handle. So, here we have a short of me holding the racquet with a continental grip and you can see from this vantage point that my heal pad is squarely on the second bevel of the tennis racquet handle. From my different perspective, now we've got the index knuckle also resting on that second bevel again, this is the continental grip. Let's get back to how your grip influences your style of play. Now you may have setter on the clubhouse and heard someone say, well, X grip is better than Y grip, so you should go with X grip.
Well, that's simply not the case, one grip is not better than the other. What you want to do, when you're trying to select a grip is think about how that grip works into the larger framework of your game. Let me give you an example of how that works. Roger Federer is an awkward player, he is an aggressive player, and he is an attacking player. Attacking players typically use more conservative grips because that makes it easier to swing through the ball and that makes it easier to hit the ball hard and keep point short and really dictate play. On the other hand, you've got Rafael Nadal, he has a more extreme grip and that makes it easier from him to swing up on the ball. And because you swing up on the ball, he gets more topspin and that makes him really consistent and that's what has allowed him to grind people under the ground on clay and when it turn a french opens.
So, the grip should work into the larger framework of the game you're trying to build. You should think about right now, okay, was my grip allowing me to play my style of game and if it's not, you should consider a change. So that's the key to the grip. Does it allow you to play your style of game? Are you an attacking player or you a more consistent player and your grip should work into that larger framework of how you approach and how you play the game.
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