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If you watch the top players they mostly do something slightly different with their non-playing arm on the forehand. What they have in common though is that they all use it to help them balance.

As you swing on the forehand there is a lot of force and momentum rotating around your body and through the line of the ball. We can counter this force by using our non-playing arm to balance us.

A good way to look at it to start with is to roughly point to the ball with your arm as it is arriving into the hitting zone. This will aid your shoulder turn and help keep you balanced.

As you swing it will need to rotate out of the way to let your racket travel through the line you want the ball to follow on. This helps clear your left side out of the way again aiding extension through the line of the ball. Some playuers will have an exaggerated movement here and others more subtle, but the left arm is aleways used to balance on the way in and through the shot, and it needs to clear the non-racket side out of the way to allow full extension.

When at full stretch you’ll find the non-playing arm used much more as balance and it moves less. It acts much in the same way as a cat’s or dog’s tail aiding balance when you are inherently not in an ideal position to balance. This is usually done by it acting as a counter balance at full stretch in the opposite direction to your playing arm.