Tennis Forehand and Backhand: Groundstroke Technique

The two shots you hit the most, and the ones nobody teaches last

The serve happens once a point; the forehand and backhand happen on almost every shot after it. Between the two, most rallies are decided by groundstrokes — the flat or topspin shots hit off the bounce from the baseline or mid-court, as opposed to a volley taken out of the air. And yet groundstrokes are often the least explicitly coached part of a recreational player's game: a beginner gets shown a grip, told to "swing low to high," and left to reverse-engineer the rest by imitation. This guide covers the parts that imitation usually misses — stance, the take-back, weight transfer, contact point, and follow-through — plus where the one-handed and two-handed backhand genuinely diverge.

This piece assumes your grip is already sorted. Forehand grips (Eastern, Semi-Western, Western) and backhand grips (Eastern one-handed, the two-handed setup) are covered in full, bevel by bevel, in our tennis grip types guide — read that first if you're not confident finding your grip without looking, since nothing in this guide substitutes for having the right one underneath it. For the serve's own mechanics, see our tennis serve technique guide; for the legal requirements common to every shot, see our tennis rules guide.

Stance: closed, semi-open, or open — and why the modern game favors open

Turn sideways to the ball before you swing, whichever stance you use — a groundstroke hit while still facing the net has no rotation to draw power from. From there, three stances are all legitimate, and picking between them is mostly a question of how much time the ball gives you:

Closed stance. The back foot steps across, fully perpendicular to the net, body weight driving forward in a straight line into the shot. It generates real linear power, but it's the slowest stance to recover from — there's a reason it's fallen out of favor as the pace of the modern game has gone up.
Semi-open stance. The front foot turns partway toward the ball rather than stepping fully across. This is the contemporary default for a reason: it keeps rotational power available through the hips and torso while leaving the legs in a position to push off and recover toward center immediately after contact.
Open stance. The front foot barely turns at all — the body stays mostly facing the net, and all the rotational power comes from the hips and trunk winding up and releasing. It's the fastest stance to both load into and recover out of, which is exactly why it's become standard on fast, high-paced rallies and on balls that arrive with little time to set up.

None of the three is "correct" in isolation. A ball with time behind it (a short, sat-up return) can still be taken with a closed stance for extra pace; a ball rushing a player wide will force an open stance whether they planned it or not. The real skill is being able to load rotational power from an open stance on short notice, not defaulting to a closed stance because it's the one that was taught first.

The unit turn: preparation starts in the shoulders, not the arm

The unit turn is the shoulder-and-hip rotation away from the net that starts a groundstroke's backswing — turning the whole upper body as a unit, rather than just drawing the racquet back with the arm while the shoulders stay square. It should start the instant a player reads where the ball is going, well before the ball has bounced, because a late unit turn is the single most common reason a groundstroke ends up rushed and arm-only regardless of how good the rest of the technique is.

The non-dominant hand has a real job during the unit turn, not just decoration: it stays on the throat of the racquet (or extended out for balance on a one-handed backhand) through the early takeback, helping guide the racquet back on a consistent path and keeping the shoulders turned fully before the forward swing starts. Letting go of that job too early — dropping the off-hand and yanking the racquet back with the hitting arm alone — is a common shortcut that costs both timing and shoulder rotation.

A useful mental image several coaching sources use for the transition out of the backswing: let the racquet head drop into a relaxed, low position (sometimes called "lag") before driving forward and up into the ball, rather than pulling it straight back and straight forward on a flat plane. That drop-and-drive path is what lets the forward swing whip through contact instead of pushing through it.

Weight transfer and the kinetic chain

Like the serve, a groundstroke is a kinetic chain: legs and hips generate the rotational force first, the torso and shoulders transfer it, and the arm and racquet release it last — an arm swung hard with no weight transfer behind it produces a flat, unstable shot with a low power ceiling no matter how fast the arm itself moves. Weight loads onto the back foot during the unit turn, then drives forward — into the shot on a closed or semi-open stance, or rotationally through the hips on a fully open one — as the front foot (or, on an open stance, the outside foot) plants and the body uncoils.

Recovering out of the shot matters as much as loading into it: the split step and recovery footwork that gets a player back toward center after a groundstroke is genuinely shared across every racquet sport, not just tennis, and is covered in depth in our racquet sport footwork guide rather than repeated here.

Contact point: in front of the body, not beside it

Across both forehand and backhand, the single most repeated coaching point is the same: contact happens in front of the body, not level with it and never behind it. A right-handed forehand meets the ball out and slightly to the right side of the body; a right-handed backhand meets it out and slightly to the left. Contact that drifts back toward the body — usually the result of a late unit turn or a slow read on the ball — forces a cramped, arm-only swing with nowhere for the racquet head to accelerate through.

Height and racquet-face angle at contact do the actual aiming: as one official coaching resource puts it, wherever the strings are pointing at the instant of contact is where the ball is going, which is why racquet-face control, not swing force, is what beginners should prioritize before worrying about pace. A flatter face through contact keeps the shot low and penetrating; brushing up the back of the ball (from low to high, roughly a 6-o'clock-to-12-o'clock path) adds the topspin that brings a hard-hit ball down inside the lines instead of sailing long.

Follow-through: finish the circle

A groundstroke that stops dead at contact loses most of the pace and spin the swing just generated — the racquet needs to keep traveling well past the ball, finishing up and across the body, typically somewhere near the opposite shoulder on a full topspin swing. Picture the whole motion as one continuous circle rather than a stop-and-start punch: cutting the follow-through short is one of the most common ways an otherwise sound swing quietly caps its own power and depth.

One-handed vs. two-handed backhand: a real technical fork, not just preference

Where the forehand is essentially one swing pattern with grip variations layered on top, the backhand splits into two genuinely different techniques, and neither is objectively better:

Two-handed backhand. The dominant, more common choice today, especially below the professional level. The non-dominant (top) hand does most of the work — coaches commonly describe it as the "driver," with the dominant (bottom) hand acting as the "passenger" that stabilizes rather than swings. That extra hand adds stability and a wider timing window: contact slightly early or late still tends to stay controllable, which is exactly why it's the more forgiving grip for players still building consistency. The tradeoff is reach — two hands on the handle shorten how far a player can stretch for a wide ball compared to a one-hander — and a clean slice backhand is harder to disguise from a two-handed setup, since slicing wants the one-handed Continental grip a two-hander isn't built around.
One-handed backhand. Fewer players use it today, but it isn't a worse shot — it trades the two-hander's stability for extra reach on a wide ball and an easier, more natural transition into net play or a slice, since the racquet is already in one hand. The non-dominant hand still has a job on a one-hander: it helps stabilize the racquet through the early takeback before releasing fully as the hitting arm swings through, rather than sitting idle.

Both backhands share the same underlying fundamentals covered above — an early unit turn, weight transferring forward through contact, and a full follow-through — the difference is really in hand mechanics and reach, not in the shot's basic shape. A player switching from two hands to one (or vice versa) is relearning grip and balance more than relearning the swing itself.

Common mistakes that cap a groundstroke for years

Preparing late. A unit turn that starts after the ball has already bounced forces a rushed, compressed swing with no time to load weight properly — by most coaching accounts, the single most common flaw behind an inconsistent groundstroke, and one that has nothing to do with grip or swing path at all.

Contact too close to the body. Almost always downstream of late preparation. The fix is rarely "swing differently" — it's turning the shoulders sooner so the ball can be met further out in front.

An arm-only swing with no weight transfer. Muscling the racquet through the ball with the arm alone, while the feet stay flat and the weight never shifts forward or rotates through, is the groundstroke equivalent of an arm-only serve — it caps power hard regardless of how strong the arm is.

Stopping the follow-through at contact. Already covered above, but worth repeating: a short, defensive-looking finish is usually a symptom of tentativeness or poor balance, not a swing flaw on its own, and it costs real pace and depth either way.

Gripping too tight. A death-grip on the handle restricts the wrist and forearm's natural motion through contact and tires out a player over a long match; most coaching guidance points to a light-to-moderate hold, tightening only briefly around contact itself.

Building a reliable groundstroke

Roughly the order most coaching progressions use, one link of the chain at a time:

Groove the unit turn in isolation. Shadow-swing the shoulder-and-hip turn, no ball, no racquet swing — the goal is making an early turn automatic before adding anything else.
Add a slow, controlled swing focused only on contact point. Aim just for clean, in-front contact and a ball that lands in the court, not pace.
Layer in weight transfer and stance choice once contact is consistent — closed or semi-open first, since they're easier to time than a fully open stance.
Add full pace and topspin once the swing shape itself is repeatable without breaking down.
Practice the open stance specifically, since it's the one real players are forced into on fast, wide balls and the one most beginners never deliberately drill.

Where to go next

Grip is what this guide assumed was already in place — if it isn't, our tennis grip types guide covers every forehand and backhand grip bevel by bevel. Recovery footwork between shots is covered in the racquet sport footwork guide, and the serve itself — the one shot in tennis groundstroke technique doesn't touch — has its own tennis serve technique guide. Once contact and consistency are solid, our tennis singles strategy and tennis doubles strategy guides cover what to do with a rally your groundstrokes just won. The Court Scout maintains a verified directory of tennis courts, rebuilt from each venue's own primary sources rather than scraped listings — find one and put the swing to work.