Photo Tour of the Forehand Grips for Tennis

The Semi-Western grip places your palm on the lower right slant bevel, the plane 45 degrees clockwise (for a righty) from the plane of the strings. To counteract the resulting natural downward tilt of the racquet face, you must meet the ball slightly farther forward (at a given height) than you would with an Eastern grip, and while it's possible to hit flat, you will generally need to swing upward more sharply, which encourages you to hit topspin. The average grip among the pros now is Semi-Western, primarily because of the importance of topspin in the modern, advanced game. The Semi-Western grip does well both at generating topspin and handling the high bounces from the opponent's topspin. It is not well suited to hitting slice, and it's less comforable on low than on high balls.