Have you ever received a soft, floating ball that landed around the 3/4 court area. You know the one. It makes your eyes pop open as you aim to take advantage of the situation, either by hitting a big winner or putting your opponent under serious pressure.
But as the ball leaves your racquet, it doesn’t quite have the pace you want. And it’s got too much topspin (and shape to it) or maybe it doesn’t have enough pace. Whatever the case may be, your opponent now has more time to track down that ball with ease, completely neutralizing your attacking position.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a forehand that could take care of these balls with regularity? By either putting that ball away or forcing an error from your opponent? In this post, I’m going to show you how to do that by mastering the drive forehand.
Let’s dive in.
What’s a Drive Forehand?
There are different types of ‘situational’ forehands that players need to master. One in which I think isn’t practiced enough is the 3/4 court drive forehand.
For those of you who’ve never heard of the drive forehand, it can be characterized as a ball that we ‘level out’. In other words, we hit the shot with less shape and a more direct flight path (see example video below), compared to a typical rally ball.
This ball can be hit both off of the bounce or out of the air. Popularized by Andre Agassi in the early 90s, hitting this ball out of the air is often called a ‘drive’ or ‘swing’ volley.
On top of hitting this type of FH with a more direct flight path, players usually add additional pace to this shot (more than a regular type of shot). Because of these characteristics, it’s a ball used primarily during attacking scenarios.
Having said that, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an ‘all-out’ attack. We can also use it as a ‘building’ ball to set ourselves up for an attack on the next shot.
Needless to say, it’s an important shot to master if you’re tired of missing out on attacking opportunities.
Before we get into the ‘how to train’ part of this post, let’s review a few additional features that make up this lethal shot.