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VOLUME 1: THE FOREHAND

Part 3: Hitting Through & Hitting Up:
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Hitting Through
Roll over the first 3 buttons and a fully-turned Ivan Lendl unfolds. In frames 4 thru 6 I have blurred the top half of the images because I want you to concentrate on his feet, noting in particular how his weight shifts forward, from the back foot to the front.
Lendl has engineered a forward contact in 1 thru 3, which makes this weight-shift possible. In this particular stroke, Ivan Lendl has met the ball as it rises to waist height (rather than on its way back down from the peak of the bounce).

Frames 7 thru 9 provide a variation on this weight-forward theme, this time on a higher-bouncing ball. Again, I've chopped some frames off the Pete Sampras forehand wind-up, to simplify forehand technique for those of you who are wearing tennis 'L' plates.
In 7 Pete Sampras is fully sideways to the net and he is also a good racket's length-plus away from the line the ball is traveling along, keeping the ball away from his body.
For beginners who want to copy this simple take-back and swing method of hitting (and it is really only relevant for beginners), note that Pete's racket butt is pointing at the ball and the racket tip is pointing towards me and my camera, at the rear of the court.
In 8 the racket head has been swung through to meet the ball forward of his body, and in 9 we see the forward shifting body weight, as Pete's racket head/face powers the ball back over the net to his opponent.
Now run your mouse over buttons 7 thru 10 and you will get an even clearer picture of the short, sharp stroke.
So what's the main difference between this and the previous 3 frames of Ivan Lendl?
The depth and height of the ball.
In this sequence, Pete is faced with a deep, high-bouncing ball. But he still wants the added umph of getting his body weight into the shot. So, he sets up for the forward contact, which will enable this weight shift, then he kind of leans in on the higher contact.
When faced with a similarly deep ball, it is preferable for beginners to put in extra leg work and back off, letting the ball fall to a more manageable height, not least because it promotes a willingness to move, which dispels laziness early on in a player's development. There are other benefits, but developing a contact point at roughly the same height every time you hit the ball is the main one, and it is far better to master one height than many.

As I have pointed out (and will continue to at every opportunity), by backing off behind the deep ball, giving it time and space to fall to a more manageable height, the aspiring player puts in far more leg work: in tennis, leg work is good.
Professional players sustain a kind of perpetual motion and lazy legwork doesn't exist at the highest level. That is an unavoidable fact which should have lazy asses running for their chess boards.
Taking the ball early and hitting on the rise can be developed at a later stage, in proportion to a player’s ability and the amount of time they have to get on court and practise.

Hitting Up
We've seen two examples of players hitting with their weight shifting forward. Now we are going to take a first look at 2 players hitting with their weight on the back foot.
The three frames of a young-and-pretty Kathy Rinaldi at the French Open (1987?), are three of the oldest sequence images I have, and they were the first to give a clear picture of the nature of topspin.
To be fair, this is not the perfect topspin groundstroke, but it does complement the simple, sawn-off, straight take-back forehand that I've been trying to impress upon the minds of beginners and club players.
From a low backswing, Kathy swings steeply up and through to a forward contact, with her racket face edge-ways to the ground. For those who don't know, this is topspin. By ripping the strings up the back of the ball as you swing through, you put a forward rolling spin on the ball, which makes the ball dip. The more topspin you put on the ball, the greater the dip.
Assuming you get the ball over the net, topspin groundstrokes take much of the risk out of baseline play: hit your topspin groundstroke high enough over the net with a lot of topspin dip, and you can't fail to get it in the court.
Kathy gives us a good example of this low-to-high hitting, as you can see when you run your mouse over 11 thru 13.
This low-to-high hit is the basic shape of a topspin forehand.
But why hasn't Kathy shifted her weight through, like Pete Sampras and Lendl in the previous frames?
The next 3 frames provide something of an answer.

Frontfooting and Backfooting
Mats Wilander is similarly positioned on the court to Ivan Lendl and both are behind the baseline. Wilander's forehand, however, is different.
In the initial 3 frames on this page, Lendl's intention is to power a topspin drive over the net to his opponent. Fundamentally, it's a power forehand, with topspin added to harness the power to planet earth.
Wilander's intentions are different to Lendl’s.
But what are they, exactly?
Roll your rodent over the buttons once more and compare the legs and feet of the two players.
How do they differ?
As you'll see, Lendl's weight has been shunted aggressively through and it ends up on the front foot. Wilander's weight doesn’t shift through, but stays on the back foot throughout the entire stroke.
Any ideas why?
I'll explain:
Ivan Lendl's intention is to hit an aggressive power forehand and it is to this end that he engineers a forward contact, into which he can shift much of his body weight, adding some mass to the forward swinging racket head.
Mats Wilander's intention is to whip up some heavy, high, loopy topspin and he too sets himself up for a forward contact. But take note of 3 visible differences in Mats' stroke:
1, for topspin, Mats primarily wants to hit up the back of the ball. But to direct the force up, he doesn't need his weight coming all the way through and onto the front foot. So, Wilander sits his body weight on the back foot and it stays there. You can see him pushing up off the back foot, helping to direct the racket head upwards for his excessive topspin.
But there is no shifting through of his body weight.
2, because he's hitting up, rather than through, Mats' contact point doesn't need to be as far out in front of the body as Lendl's.
3, as Mats is primarily hitting up (rather than through), there's no real weight transfer onto a 'front' foot. Therefore Mats only needs to be turned above the waist to generate racket head speed. This is a first look at an open stance forehand, although to be precise, Mats is only 'open' below the waist and his shoulders are fully turned.
If you now go back to the Kathy Rinaldi sequence, you'll see a similar intention to hit up the back of the ball. But Kathy was never a heavy topspin merchant, which is why her version of 'back-footing' for topspin is not as refined as Wilander's, who’s back foot intentions are well-practised, and have been perfectly planned and executed.
There are various mixes of power and topspin and I don't want you thinking of them as separate strokes. Each player in these images is putting together their own cocktail of power and spin. In Wilander's case there's more topspin than power, and in the Sampras forehand there's more power than topspin.
In this final sequence, of Yevgeny Kafelnikov, I've tried to provide a clear picture of a player hitting with both power and topspin. Yevgeny hits both through onto the front foot, and also directs much of his racket head speed up the back of the ball.