If you are a club level player with the typical "closed stance" on your ground strokes and you do not seem to be advancing your game, try this. Try opening your stance slightly on your ground strokes. These are a few of the advantages:
# Immediate recovery.
# It forces your back hip to turn to into the ball allowing you to hit with your legs.
# It minimizes how far you can take your racket back.
# It is easier to change direction after hitting the ball.
# It is easier to return balls hit near or at you, for example, serves hit into your body.
It will naturally shorten you backswing, which is the #1 Cause of mis-hits, tennis elbow and loss of control.
It saves time on your recovery. When you finish hitting the ball, you can immediately go forward (a big help in advancing your doubles game).
It makes it much easier to hit when your opponent hits the ball behind you (where you are coming from).
It forces you to use your legs more than your arms. In the long run it is better for you.
The nature of the game is forcing players to set up faster, recover faster and be able to handle faster balls. The open stance is the way to go.
(from an article on TheTennisServer)
"Opening up your hips during the stroke, while keeping your elbow close to your side generates the most force on the ball. "
"I mostly see people with open stance just endlessly wacking the ball up and down the middle of the court with virtually no foot movement or direcitonal intent. This is parttly due to difficultly of changing ball direction( making angles) from a centre hit ball with open stance, its easier to just hit it back where it came from than change direction.
As a result, Pro's often hit with square stance in the centre of the court ( if they have preparing time), to allow more direcitonal control.
The main benefit of open stance isn't power, but as said the less prepartion time[for balls hit near you, but more timeif on the run], and most of all moving your weight back into court after a shot out wide , versus square or closed where weight is moving forward out of the court.
The main drawback of open stance is when having to hit ball on the RUN. To move side-to-side quickly you must turn sideways (closed stance) and run!....and if you are only just getitng to the ball, you will have to hit closed stanced. "
"Well, if you taught an open stance by having your players just take a half step back with their right foot, and load up weight, and with a SHORT backswing with elbows tucked into their side simply do a small turn and swing through the ball with complete finish, then I would say that this is a VERY controlled stroke format. Nice thing about this stroke, which I use exclusively for return of serve, is that you can do a lot with powerful shots against you, and it keeps you from overhitting, since most of your power is coming from legs and not arm - in other words, you use a nice, compact, easy stroke that keeps mis hits to a minimum. The key to NOT hooking is to load up weight on the back leg, and only keep your stance partially open.
The bonus of getting back to ready position easily further enhances the idea of a "controlled" game - very little point in hitting a controlled forehand and not being able to get turned and moving in time for an incoming backhand. This is probably the BEST part of an open or semi opened stance."
"The stance has a lot to do with the grip. It is far easier to hit with an open stance with a semi or full western grip - a play using a continental or full eastern is going to have to spend more time practicing and getting the timing down."
http://tennis.about.com/
In two recent studies Bahamonde and Knudson (1998a, 1998b) analyzed the kinematics and kinetics of the two types of hitting stances during the forehand stroke. Results showed that the joint actions used to generate the forward swing were similar in both stances. However, both group of players, teaching professionals and intermediate players, generated larger joint torques at the shoulder and elbow and greater angular velocity of the trunk when using the closed stance, which resulted in greater racket velocities at impact. What stance should a player use to hit explosive forehand and two-handed backhands? From the literature available (Groppel, 1992; Bahamonde and Knudson, 1998a, 1998b) and from the biomechanical perspective, the closed stance seems to be better because it utilizes the linear and angular momentum generated by the players more effectively. Why are so many players using the open stance? Groppel (1992) explained that most players use the open stance not because it is more effective, but because it is faster to execute or because they are too lazy to prepare for the closed stance.