A New Year's Serve

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Sense of Mystery

Straight back and mondoed forehand preparation opens up a whole new drop-down menu of shot choices, I'd say, although this list in my case is still being populated.

But is the word "mondoed" as used here even accurate? Perhaps not. Not if mondo (flip) can only occur in reactive fashion that counters forward elements in the stroke.

The early layback and turn-down of wrist and forearm can enable:

.Loop or feel in front of bod rather than behind it.

.More control in lobs. Just keep elbow of three-quarters length arm back while rolling forearm downward a bit (bowling) to start hand on a down-and-up path just before elbow starts to push upward.

.A flattened out shot where hand works horizontally around elbow thus closing strings. The elbow can then follow the strings as late body rotation also chimes in.

.Hand again can work horizontally around elbow only this time the thrust of elbow is upward rather than outward.

.No holding back of elbow at all. The elbow goes slowly level than quickly upward. This is a soft topspun shot.

.Another soft topspun shot in which forearm bowls straight down as arm straightens to relaxed full length thus abandoning the three-fourths setting of the other options presented here. That will close racket even more. And create the sensation of a bowled or topped shot hit way out in front. Since I haven't tried this shot I can't know yet whether it is any good.

Talking up one's drop-down menu like this seems important since language is thought. And without thought there are no discoveries.

Opinion: Traditional loop forehands lead to smaller drop-down menus which can be either good or awful.

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Try This No Crank Forehand

I tell myself to try it. I tell you, reader, to try it. What's the difference? The premise is that both you and I could be more imaginative. And won't want to hit this shot all the time-- of course not.

I propose starting the shot off without a lot of wasted arm motion but rather straight back and down preparation. The "down" is what used to be mondo or flip in more elaborate strokes. I've practiced mondo enough. So I can use mondo anywhere I want. In backswing this time, thank you, whether that makes it mondo still or not. Wrist laid back, forearm rolled down equals mondo, at least in one interpretation. Freeing me to do something simpler at beginning of the forward stroke.

1) Set racket tip down low, 2) Swing elbow horizontally a short distance toward net, 3) Lift elbow up back of the ball.

Did I need to close the racket a bit as I pushed elbow a short distance forward? Perhaps. Do it next time also then.

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When Feeling Oneself Aging, Go Back to One's First Forehand

It's just an idea. But one's first forehand was probably short. And without a loop unless one's father was Mike Agassi.

I recently figured that, with all my explanatory narratives of stroke technique, I was spending much energy both on and off the court in achieving a specific stroke configuration coming out of my mondo.

What if instead I went directly to that configuration (wrist laid back and forearm rolled down) on three-quarter arm length?

A bunch of new options would open up. I could tock or topple the racket tip under just as I have been doing in more elaborate preparations but now unencumbered by any mondo. Alternately, I could bring pointing down forearm around level as if it were a short-radius baseball swing, which would close one's strings an extra amount while dramatically altering the outgoing ball path about to occur.

And then I could crank whole arm while keeping rotating elbow at a constant level or crank arm while also lifting it to contact or simply lift arm to ball without cranking it at all.

Taken in different combination along with pushing elbow or not pushing elbow, these options would multiply one's choices. I haven't yet tried them in self-feed, only in doubles competition. Those forehands I tried this way did not deteriorate my game and in some instances were more accurate.

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Building a More Potent (and Dangerous) Forehand

Dangerous to opponents but dangerous to you too, reader. More risk but with more possible reward.

Three-quarter arm. Elbow back until one is ready to push through the stuck cellar door. Racket toppling under hand, which makes it open up too much creating the best lobs ever. These items are building blocks.

One must counter the opening racket face long before, immediately before, or during the contact.

I know-- you are unable to do anything deliberative in four thousandths of a second contact-- but you can be doing something interesting when contact occurs. Why won't the instructors tell you that?

Because, like Striker the bad aunt in JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, they want to keep you their malleable, unselfconfident slave.

I don't think I have the answer right now although I am close. Speculation is ever the way to go with changing (growing, one could say) tennis strokes.

Slow the elbow push to accentuate the cranked lift of the strings? The push is a lift too because of construction of the bod. Subdue force and distance of the crank to accentuate speed of this arm lift? Try to do both SIM yet in a thoroughly uninhibited way? Devise a topple-under to windshield wipe sequence that keeps elbow back until the moment the ball is being hit? Don't hold elbow back at all but send it past bod as if on a greased rod while both the mondo and the wipe take place?

The more one knows, the less one knows. This is good but only if one has the temperament to keep such matters open.

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Through dire computer problems I have kept on thinking about the PetraKordian backhand and the BAM! forehand. It has been my conceptualization that sudden arm lift from an extremely closed racket face was best path to produce the most uninhibited while still workable BAM.

Now I must question that idea. The thought of bowling racket tip under staying-back-elbow has at least been interesting in the way it offers subtle adjustment possibilities in a short space. I am not about to abandon that progress in thought.

The question here however has to do with what comes next. Once elbow releases it continues to change pitch toward openness though at a slower rate.

Previously, I knew from trial and error that forehands in which arm roll on the ball figured were workable. Think of all the instruction from Braden onward that urges the student to keep strings square and reduce the probability of error due to slight variations in contact point.

One still wants this insurance policy while linking it to uninhibited racket head speed.

Therefore: The player pushes lifting through a stuck cellar door (abduction) but at the same time cranks up to contact. These simultaneous actions along with body rotation determine the direction of the followthrough.

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To Wipe or Not to Wipe

Before so many deodorants one could recognize people by their different smells. In a forehand, one can be more uninhibited if one does not wipe (twist the arm) in the process of actually contacting the ball. One can rely on body-assisted abduction for one's topspin instead. One need only-- if one has a strong eastern grip-- have gotten any forward roll out of the way before one begins one's lift.

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Two Steps Back

Use the mondo that was using before.

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The Price: Persistence

This change is going to take longer than I am used to. The shots in self-feed can be terrific but not work at all once one starts to play. Either the new shot will prevail or I will have to go back to the drawing board.

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Core of the New Forehand: Bad Feather from Crew

Rowing is huge in Detroit. And the Detroit Boat Club, the nation's oldest, like all the rest of Detroit is being reconstructed right now.

Reconstruction took place in Pittsburgh-- that is a fact. The image of the city changed-- so with the image of Detroit once again. If you think this sentiment is PR puff, then explain please why a local patent office recently opened up if not unusual innovation? (http://www.reising.co/wp-content/upl..._Fall_2012.pdf)

And I have a special ticket to the DBC (Detroit Boat Club) to chat with the head coach there Dick Bell. He won't make me coach. He won't make me row.

In the meantime I've brought across bad feather from the rowing sport to tennis. Bad feather is the feather that skies the oar. The oar is then apt to come down as a "crab" that can kill you. The oar handle sweeps toward you at the speed of a tsunami. It catches you in the belly and catapults you out of the boat. Shortly thereafter you drown.

But bad feather is advantage for tennis forehands. Using three-quarter length arm you can scale the racket tip around as if your arm were right-angled which would be one-half length.

This brings the racket around quicker from same organic device-- twisting upper arm-- but closes strings at the same time. Hand travel to achieve most acute angle of departing shot: about 14 inches with arm at half length. Hand travel with arm at three-quarter length: about 4 inches.

Then and only then does elbow release to form a BAM! forehand.

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The New Mondo Symphony

One will, of course, memorize the new position the racket now takes after a mondo that retains wrist flop while eliminating the forearm-turn-down that for so long poisoned the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The other condition-- self-feed and more specifically those self-fed forehands that effortlessly loft the ball with great zing to the opposite baseline-- will also serve to teach one exactly where the mondoed strings ought to be.

Farther out to the right, I would say.

Now how can one best measure one's progress on a humid Monday night when the entire cardio tennis establishment is out in force running their Masonic drills that normally occur only in the secret cave of the Eastside Detroit Tennis Facility.

To the right, women's doubles. Adjacent though the fence men's doubles played by young Turks you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley late at night.

"Who's that next singles-victim for you?" says one member of this quartet to another. "It's John."

In silence, I accept the compliment while knowing in my heart that singles is something I no longer play.

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A Different Mondo

When one is trying to be a crank who wipes, one tries for a mondo in which the wrist lays back and forearm winds down.

In the new forehands I have been exploring however windshield wipe remains an option but no longer is central, with abduction (rise of arm away from bod) having taken its place.

I see the sidearm throw one uses to scale a rock along the surface of a pond as basic premise here.

Racket closes during a short backswing (the 1 of 1-2 rhythm). Racket closes more in first part of the hit-- before contact. Relaxed wrist can lay back then too. But forearm need not try to pre-load, an opening of racket that is difficult to deal with anyway.

The all of it-- a) mondo, b) release of elbow, and c) followthrough-- is one move comprising the 2 of 1-2 rhythm.

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Swing, don't Wrench like an Auto Mechanic

That's a possible cue for the new forehand in explanation here.

But maybe "sweep" is a better kinetic verb even than "swing."

One wants the racket head to accelerate, and yet the most effortless way to do this may be to rely on smoothness permitting natural lengthening of arm from shoulder to produce the satellite speed of something being pushed farther out in space.

I now revise my earlier instruction/self-instruction to take an extra inch of backward body turn as transition between the two halves of 1-2 rhythm. There can be a slight transition but just the hint of a pause that one never thinks about.

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An Anti-Cliche Diatribe

No more "at the end of the day." We English teachers have gotten together and invented a hand-held electronic device that changes the last word of every cliche, in this case the word "day." Now the expression "at the end of the day" becomes "at the end of the world." That ought to shake things up a bit.

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Is Higher Speed Tennis Harder or Easier?

Depends who you are. In my case, mediocre volleys become good ones. Service returns become simpler (a turn and step in most cases).

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In Praise of "Temporized Level Backswing" on the Forehand Side

My partner Ron and I won 6-0, 6-3 early this morning against good opposition. Consistency helped us prevail.

Observations: 1) If as a senior seniors player you win in straight sets, get out of there rather than play a third, 2) I could be in better shape, 3) It makes sense in more than one way as you become advanced in age to shorten and simplify your strokes. The invention required is good for your neuronal pathways not to mention your brain.