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I don't think most players bring their backswing back straight arm, even the top Chinese players. Like I said it is a topic that I would like to discuss but it has a lot of nuance and being a lower level player, I am only saying what I see and may miss a lot of nuance. And I will state a lot of things that make people sound stupid even though I know no one is and I am probably not giving enough credit.I think Boll is the most extreme and obvious example. I'd still say forearm snap is a fundamental part of the loop for most Europeans and Chinese even if Boll doesn't do a ton of it in general. He definitely could be leaving something on the table but it works for him.
Bringing the backswing and hand back "straight arm" definitely has a time and place and it is optimal certain times, no doubt. But I think that perpetuating the idea that it is the only right way gives people the idea they need to do it on every shot to be playing optimally, and that is definitely not the case. There are a lot of situations where you want a shorter backswing. But I could still be missing the point of the discussion since I haven't thought too much into this until now.
The main feature that I see as important is upper arm/elbow control. You need a tight backswing to avoid the upper arm drifting by itself relative to the body rotation.
What the Europeans seemed to notice is that if you backswing along the path of the swing, it is hard to retain tight control of the backswing if your arm is too straight. Often your upper arm will end up going behind your body when you need to hit a really powerful shot. To restrain this, they encourage bent arm strokes to make you line up with the ball. While Kreanga has a straighter arm than most Europeans, he backswings in a similar fashion.
When I look at the Chinese their solution when they want to fix this is to backswing very close to the body with a straight or bent arm to keep the elbow tight. Then they can adapt the size of the stroke on the forward swing as they choose to suit their body usage, footwork and leverage.
This is what I see on their practice loops as everyone wants to hit straight balls in practice as they want to hit multiple shots and not tax their practice partners too much. In matches it can be different.
Okay, since I have entered the Hornets nest, tell me why I am wrong.