A New Year's Serve

[stotty]

Where to place the poached volley...

Plan. Unveil new deal when am seventy-five. Acquire in the meantime all available knowledge on the subject which so far is sparse and not detailed enough. Eschew knee replacement. Can a player even poach after a knee replacement? Not with the kind of full poach I have in mind. Indisputable premise: Most doubles is sedentary, static and risk-free, ergo bores. Working quote from beginning of fifth chapter of Pat Blaskower's THE ART OF DOUBLES cannot be repeated enough:

"It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true." -- William James

Introduction: Body-Protected Backhand Volley Full Poach By Right-Handed Player from Deuce Court As Partner Serves.

1) Learn these terms: "half-poach" and "full-poach." The half-poach hits the ball from center of court to center of court to split the opponents

The full-poach, with different preparation, gets all the way to opponent's cross-court service return, which is apt to be wider than usual because of your half-poach intimidation

Most of the time u am i poacher will dance back to cover own court and alley. The good intimidation however will not occur and the ploy will weaken unless reinforced by full-poaches.

Greatest vulnerabilities of the full-poach. 1) Partner doesn't cover. 2) You go too soon. 3) You didn't go too soon sometimes. 4) Your partner is ill-humored. 5) Opponent drills you while your racket is pointed at rear fence. At least you can duck and block the ball with your shoulder. Your main defense however is good offense, viz., the good half-poaches you've already threatened or hit with your standard volley preparation.

What could the different mechanics be for the full-poach which move has become so important? There is no one answer. But we can work backward from the known target, which is a point in the alley between the net and service line. This aim point is far superior to trying to put the ball on the opposing netman's shoe tops, which probably, as Blaskower suggests, will put the ball instead on her/his sweet spot.

Working backward from the alley target, I will use, for now, the martial arts preparation of the great tennis teaching pro Shea Brown.

This involves facing my right palm toward my left ear.

From there I shall endeavor to roll the racket open while extending the arm.

Will arm be bent or straight at contact? Both. Depending on where ball is and where I am.

Where to hit your poach?

1) at the opposing net player's body; a favourite amongst less sophisticated poachers.

2) down the middle, between the two opposing players - a good, solid plan.

3) to the opposing net player's tramline; tricky, volley has to be faded, often requires intricacy and good hands

4) back into the returner's tramline

Number 4 is the best way to poach if your partner can deliver the right type of serve; a serve that pulls the returner away from the tramline and to towards the middle of the court. It's the least used "poaching spot" to place the ball and an certain killer if done well.

[bottle]

I've only seen 4) once or twice and was very impressed. Any tip on how to hit this shot since your weight would seem to be going away from the target?

[stotty]

Cut the ball off out in front...

I've only seen 4) once or twice and was very impressed. Any tip on how to hit this shot since your weight would seem to be going away from the target?

The contact must be well in front of the body to enable the ball to be cut back into the tramline. Few club player do this shot...it doesn't enter the head easily. It's only really seen in good standard doubles.

[bottle]

Thanks. And I won't club it.

[don_budge]

Tramline?

What is a tramline?

[bottle]

If I bend my knees more, I'm there, into the past.

[10splayer]

But WILL he " figure it out?"

Why? Does he think that figuring out is worthwhile? Where could he get that idea?

Only from an extraordinary teacher/mentor/parent/peer/somebody.

Has Ryan Harrison or Boris Karloff ("I shot up the rankings really fast") ever come up with anything original, or am I being unfair?

Maybe they did but I just don't know about it?

I guess I have made severe value judgment from what these and so many other tour players have revealed of themselves in public.

But will he "figure it out"? Yes, in most cases I think "they" do. If there is some degree of talent and athleticism. At least, in the context of what works best for them, AND provided they have a sound fundamental background. (which i believe is the principle job of an instructor)

I believe there are core commonalities amongst all good players. It's subtle, but there. Proper grips, basic swing shapes, sound biomechanics, etc. all are present in great players, even though they may look different on the surface. We all have a personalized style.

As I mentioned before, the real key, in terms of coaching, is determining personal style from flaw. (that will inhibit progress) And it can be a tricky proposition. Sometimes, it's difficult to "lay off" a stroke that is not perfectly pleasing to the eye. However, if it falls within a range of acceptability, and works for that person, it is generally "right" for them. At least, that's my approach.

And for the record, I agree with Billie Jean. Most of those tour players, really have no idea what they're doing, in a teaching sense.

[bottle]

Stiffel-Steiffel Open

Where to hit your poach?

1) at the opposing net player's body; a favourite amongst less sophisticated poachers.

2) down the middle, between the two opposing players - a good, solid plan.

3) to the opposing net player's tramline; tricky, volley has to be faded, often requires intricacy and good hands

4) back into the returner's tramline

Number 4 is the best way to poach if your partner can deliver the right type of serve; a serve that pulls the returner away from the tramline and to towards the middle of the court. It's the least used "poaching spot" to place the ball and an certain killer if done well.

My two year quest to poach the perfect egg may have reduced itself to two months, but if I could get that figure down to two weeks I'd be happier than a witch in a broom factory.

The reunion of the Stiffel-Steiffels, the ancestral relatives of my partner Hope, is fast upon us. They meet in Wheeling, West Virginia for doubles every ten years.

Hope's cousin Kristin was captain of Yale. Kristin's son, an Amherst freshman, was the number two junior in Ohio just one year ago. Two of Kristin's brothers are the first-ranked team in the family tournament. One of those brothers, Bob Larson flying from San Francisco, is married to Monika, and she's from the Czech Republic, so she must be good, too. Well, I beat their son in chess, but he will be older and smarter now.

Of the four poaching possibilities outlined by Stotty, I already have 1) and 2) .
And 4) has been coming along. It's 3) I'm most worried about.

Previously, I outlined two possibilities for the intricate mechanics that 3) will require: (See posts # 1592 and especially #1605 in which I suggested using martial arts preparation discovered for power volleying by the ubiquitous and kindly and great American teaching pro Shea Brown).

Instead of so much intricacy I'm settling on a John Alexander subdued bonk with level racket.

The Australian tour player John Alexander, asked the seminal question, "How do you hit a volley?" once sat at a table and gently straightened his arm. I'll never forget it. He was wearing a sport jacket and looked quite dapper. He was tennis-racketless. This in the Australian VCR series MASTER TENNIS.

So, radio viewers, will this innovation have occurred in time for me? Stay spavined.

[bottle]

Who was Roland Garros?

The New York Times had a trivial article today about whether Roland Garros should be called Roland Garros or The French Open. The article didn't go deeper than identifying Roland Garros as a French aviator. And wondering about the connection between early aviation and tennis since Roland Garros played rugby.

The connection, as far as I am concerned, has to do with courage. If you want to know what I mean, read the book WIND, SAND AND STARS by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. And look for the part where Roland Garros has crashed in the Andes and walks an incredible distance in frostbite producing temperatures and deep snow.

This is the best prose ever on the subject of taking one step in order to take a lot of steps.

[bottle]

Post Script, Who was Roland Garros?

The four majors are an unparalleled opportunity for the world to learn more about the country in which each event is held.

Sometimes the country itself, as in the Australian, is able to share some local significance. I refer specifically to the whimsical "I want to know" ad that TV Australia wisely brings back every year.

It isn't just the cream on the girl's vermillion and labium superius oris that inveigles but the mystery of a triangle involving three characters ("I want to know where you go when you're gone"). Most impressive are the high ribbon-like cliffs that run all along The Great Australian Bight for far, far more than three thousand miles when one considers all of their convolutions.

That ad is an incredible success, perhaps the best television ad ever created, but what is being advertised? Australia, I guess.

The French would never produce something like that. So we have to provide all the legwork ourselves, and American historians always did, telling us about the corner of a civic building in small town Massachusetts that had to be mushed in to allow for the turning radius of Lafayette's long carriage.

When I criticize for a decline in attention to detail the New York Times (supposedly "the American newspaper of record"), I'm going beyond its well-documented complicity in starting and maintaining the Iraq war.

Not just the Times but other hacks (yes, ever hackier and even the hackiest hacks) tried this week to link the name Roland Garros to the American Memorial Day since he was shot down by Germans in World War II.

As probably was his disappeared postal buddy Antoine de Saint-Exupery. They both of them carried the mails in Patagonia when aviation was young and post offices were admired.

I've had some real adventures out of Antoine de Saint-Exupery and not just as a long-term substitute teacher discussing WIND, SAND AND STARS with eighth graders in public school.

When I moved from North Carolina to Michigan to be with Hope, her 10-year-old granddaughter came up to me and thrust her face in my face and asked, "Have you read THE LITTLE PRINCE?"-- her first words to me.

There is a potent section of WIND, SAND AND STARS other than the Hungarian descended Roland Garros courage part, which certainly does relate to the game of tennis. (Nicholas Sarkozy was Hungaran descended too but politically was different?)

This other section involves dinner parties in the de Saint-Exupery home in southern France. A self-important and usually too jovial and bat-brained older guest would arrive. Silently, de Saint-Exupery and his siblings would each assign a number from one to ten. I believe that John Yandell had similar experiences at a family summer place in New Hampshire.

In my own family, after my father died much too young, my mother started to date again. One suitor, who owned a couple of ships, had a favorite expression, "Holy potato!"

But he didn't know any French, and so he couldn't follow my older sister when she suddenly said, "Sacre pomme du terre!" and we all fell off of our dining room chairs and rolled around on the floor.

It was too much for my mother. She never dated that fellow again.

[bottle]

Remember, it's time to give a little of your time to udders-- elegance is attitude. Longine. Image is everything. All for one and one for all. You go to the hospital when you're dead (Hungarian proverb).

[bottle]

Roland Garros? The French Open? How about The Courage Open? No, me neither. But that's what it is. Courage as imperative is the message that comes down to us from Roland Garros.

[bottle]

Higgs Boson Poached Egg

Where to hit your poach?

1) at the opposing net player's body; a favourite amongst less sophisticated poachers.

2) down the middle, between the two opposing players - a good, solid plan.

3) to the opposing net player's tramline; tricky, volley has to be faded, often requires intricacy and good hands

4) back into the returner's tramline

Number 4 is the best way to poach if your partner can deliver the right type of serve; a serve that pulls the returner away from the tramline and towards the middle of the court. It's the least used "poaching spot" to place the ball and an certain killer if done well.

MOO-- Method Of Operation for Solidifying Possibility 3)

Throw a ball in the adjacent court and take off after it. This won’t simulate sidespin-producing deflection of oncoming ball off of racket but will give one a chance of developing the exotic mechanics necessary to fade the ball at desired target—the real target—in the tramline.

Many methods will work. Push a U. Swing an L. Straighten arm from the elbow. Adopt stronger grip and raise upper arm to parallel with court while raising racket tip vertical and high above head so it has 90 degrees to fall to get parallel to court. And you-- you're looking like a submarine with a conning tower-- didn't you always want to?

That alternative methods will work however isn’t the point, which rather is to find the method that works again and again, i.e., repeatability.

What game is suggested? Chess with a lot of figuring out. With figuring out seen as a good thing. Wanted: more simplicity. No: more cleverness. How about both? Think of “the pro shot,” the buggy-whip short-angled forehand so much easier for some recreational players to learn than others. We’re talking about a very specific situation: Two shots have been hit, a serve and a return, and this will be the third. Exactly where is it in chess that terms like Caro-Kann and Najdorf Variation of Sicilian Defense or English Opening cease to have meaning? After a few moves with number of variations rising exponentially as the two players immerse themselves in the labyrinth of the middle game.

And labyrinth is a great equalizer, almost like a windy day. Anybody has an equal shot in performing some experiment there and finding a solution. In fact, the lower level players have more to gain and less to lose and so might—conceivably—create more.

National Tennis Academy

Credibility is always an issue with me. To bolster mine, I decided to check in with the accrediting organization that declared me a tennis teaching pro. My first attempt produced the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oH4mctQc2o

Nope. Wrong organization. I tried again and found the National Tennis Academy (NTA) in Dallas, Texas. Could this be my NTA, run by Joe Cockersham and formerly located in Waxahatchee, Texas, site of the would-be world’s greatest particle collider, whose tunnels now are all filled with dirt? Perhaps the time had come to seek my credibility elsewhere, in the Hadron collider on the border of Switzerland and France.

What is the composition of the universe? The Higgs Field, similar to molasses through which traveling particles (but not the slippery photons) accumulate varying degrees of mass? Could I get two protons accelerating fast enough around the Hadron collider’s 17-mile track in opposite direction for the big enough mental collision that I require? Already, I’d had trouble with too short a runway in trying to perfect the kickiness of my kick serve.

Well, despite its huge success, the Hadron won’t power up full until one-and-one-half year from now, according to my friend Paul, a particle physicist from Wayne State University who frequently goes to Geneva and used to go to Waxahatchee, too. (You never know who you’ll meet in dance class.) The thousands of people who worked from the ideas of Mr. Peter Higgs believed so strongly in them that they took significant cuts in their benefits to keep up the pursuit, which paid off July 4, 2012 with arguably the biggest scientific discovery of this age.

Well, I see scientific discovery at a personal level as well. When Richard P. Feynman had all of his friends start counting seconds without looking at a clock and then indeed look at a clock to see how far off they were, each one became, in fact, a research scientist as he learned to evaluate a set of different influences applied to his accuracy.

So I’m thinking, “Build from present (habituated) elbow level. Use the opposite of 'flying grip change' system. Keep tip at normal height and hold racket still with opposite hand while starting to crank hand over top of handle to a stronger grip?

“How strong? Does this matter? Use a free grip system. Let grip be determined solely by shot result. If buying a ball machine, get a billion-dollar one so sophisticated that it can raise ball in successive increments of one centimeter.

“A) Slowly crank hand to change grip. B) Slightly firm up hand and keep cranking in same direction so that whole racket twists backward as arm extends into ball.

“Sometimes there will be a pause between A) and B) to permit you time in which to run and sometimes not.

“Some of these elements will subtract speed (the racket carving behind and under the ball), some add speed or rather firmness (especially the gliding footwork toward your target in the tramline).

“But you’ll want spin and lots of it. The Higgs boson, 126 times the mass of any proton that collided in a laboratory to help re-produce it, apparently does not spin."

That would be a knuckleball in my book.

[stotty]

A one-post interval between intercepts...

I was looking on the internet for some intercepts...found nothing worthwhile yet but sooner or later I will.

By way of a brief interval, who are these guys in the clip. They're American players (I think) from the sixties. Do you know them? Were they ever up there in the rankings?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz3li_tUlok

[tennis_chiro]

I was looking on the internet for some intercepts...found nothing worthwhile yet but sooner or later I will.

By way of a brief interval, who are these guys in the clip. They're American players (I think) from the sixties. Do you know them? Were they ever up there in the rankings?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz3li_tUlok

One comment mentions Barry Mackay, but I didn't recognize him. Could be a young Clark Graebner in the singles ( unless it was Mackay). I thought I recognized the movement and shoulders of Marty Riessen in the doubles.

don

edit: I looked again. I think it is Mackay in the singles.