Wide Forehand - Good Ball Placement 2

Assuming that Player B can consistently play the ball into Player A's wide forehand area, a number of favorable outcomes occur for Player B. These include:

• Player A now has an increased area of court to defend. This will reduce the amount of strokes that he can play without having to move significantly, and increase the number of times that he will have to take 1 or 2 steps to reach the ball. The more Player A has to move, the harder he will find it to keep up his power and consistency.
• Player B now has a number of targets to aim at. The playing elbow of Player A will remain a viable target, but now Player B also has the wide forehand area to aim at. In addition, since Player A has had to move to his right in order to help defend his wide forehand, he has now opened up a target laneway straight down the line on his backhand side, which he will find difficult to defend. Whenever Player B hits a ball to the extremes of these areas, he should be fairly likely to get a winner.
• Since Player B now has three targets to aim at, Player A also has three targets to defend. If Player A tries to guess at random where Player B is going to hit the ball, he is now likely to make the wrong decision two times out of three, increasing the odds in Player B's favor. Provided Player B can avoid playing in patterns, he should be able to stay on top in any attacking rally as long as he keeps placing the ball correctly.

Conclusion
This tactic is a very good example of how the addition of one simple stroke to your arsenal can greatly increase your firepower, if used correctly. A month of practicing curving the ball to your opponent's wide forehand and then mixing this shot in with aiming down the line and at the playing elbow should give immediate results. How many months of practicing would you have to do to increase your forehand power enough to achieve the same effect by brute force?