Junior coaches are handing out wrist injuries with the extreme grip

A full western forehand wins under-fourteen matches and quietly loads a joint that was never built to take the strain.

The full western forehand grip is a wonderful thing if you are strong, flexible, and playing on a high-bouncing court. The racket face closes naturally, the swing path goes steeply upward, and you can generate enormous spin without doing anything clever. It's also the fastest route to a competitive junior forehand, which is why it spreads through academies like a rumour.

And it puts the wrist in ulnar deviation under load, thousands of times a week, in a child whose growth plates haven't closed.

The specific casualty is usually the triangular fibrocartilage complex on the little-finger side of the wrist, a small structure that stabilises the joint and absorbs compressive load. Extreme grips plus violent forearm pronation through contact plus a heavy modern polyester string bed transmitting shock is close to an ideal recipe for irritating it. Once irritated it heals slowly, and there's no clean way to keep playing tennis without loading it.

I want to be fair to the grip. It isn't inherently dangerous. What's dangerous is the combination that comes with it: an eleven-year-old with a full western grip, a racket strung too tight because his coach strings everything the same, and a schedule of four sessions and a tournament every week with no off season. Any one of those in isolation is survivable. Together they're a wrist problem waiting for a date.

The other cost is tactical and it shows up years later. A western grip has a narrow comfortable contact window, high and out in front. Give that player a low skidding slice on a fast court and he's in real trouble, because getting under the ball with a closed face means dropping the racket head so far that he loses all his structure. You see it constantly when clay-raised juniors first play on grass. Their forehand, the best shot they own, becomes a liability for a fortnight.

None of this argues for going back to continental. Semi-western is a perfectly good compromise, it handles a much wider range of ball heights, and it still generates plenty of spin for anyone who isn't playing a tour final.

If you coach kids, my ask is simple. Check what tension you're stringing their rackets at, don't let them play polyester before they're physically mature, and if a twelve-year-old is complaining about the outside of his wrist, that isn't soreness. Stop the tournament.