A New Year's Serve

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Same Tack-- Higgs boson Continued

Forty years of theoretics, some would say "diuretics," were followed by the actual discovery.

If one simply watches YouTube videos associated with Higgs boson, one may be surprised to learn how many scientists were rooting against the discovery.

They were tired of thinking about dark matter or molasses or the Higgs field everywhere in space and longed for a different real explanation of the universe, preferring to "go back to the drawing board."

Nope, Higgs boson it is.

And so will be my shot, under possibility 3), which concerns a right-handed poacher playing doubles in tennis and stationed forward in the deuce court while entertaining the nefarious scheme of leaping into the ad court and bunting the oncoming ball into the far tramline.

The best way of doing this is my arcane subject, arcane because, as shot choice, it's the worst.

Best for our poacher when receiver won't close toward the center-- that would be for me, John Poacher-- is to firmly block the ball between my two opponents.

If the receiver closes the center, best is to cut the ball into the tramline behind oneself.

Hitting the ball down hard at the netman's feet-- a classic move-- is overly apt to put the ball on a good player's sweet spot.

That de-values the main subject here or specialty shot of all specialty shots in my view; but, on the other hand, "Develop Superior Poaching Skills," axiomatizes the very good tennis player and writer Pat Blaskower.

Hey, where should one's weight go? Lacking an answer from a smart person, I plan to answer my own question (but not definitively, no not today).

Think of the bunts that fail in baseball.

And the hitting coach who bellows, "The ball doesn't tell you what to do, you tell the ball what to do!"

Think now of the line of the service returner's ball and how well it is hit.

Anything down the center is your ball. Take responsibility! Anything out wide and hit well is your partner's ball. Anything out wide and bloopy, high and soft is YOUR ball requiring significant running followed by scientific discovery.

If the ball is bloopy, less deflection should be involved than from a line drive.

But just think of two converging lines-- oncoming ball and path of the moving poacher.

Does he run parallel to net and then take a sharp right turn? Or does he run on a beeline for the ball, certainly advisable for down the center or at netman's feet (shots), but how about for the other two choices?

For cutting ball to tramline behind one, one's weight needs to be traveling longitudinally, i.e., shifting perpendicular to net and rear fence.

To make the Higgs boson equivalent discovery, all one really can say is, "Depends on the oncoming shot."

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Rotorded Servers: Learn From Bad Servers Who AREN'T Rotorded

See how they completely bend the two halves of their arm together and then straighten it up to contact. But they don't use upper arm rotation in either direction. Which is why they're bad.

So watch them carefully. Imitate them. I suggest that the two halves of the arm should squeeze together while on the left side of a right-hander's bod.

Do the old Braden thing: Make the reversing shoulders form (passively) the desired palm down spaghetti-like arm work.

Our freeze-frame camera now shows that the two halves of the arm have naturally squeezed together.

But as you-- rotorded server-- throw your arm straight (perhaps primarily from transverse stomach muscles), add a bit of backward upper arm rotation to the mix.

That's all there is to it.

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Higgs boson Update

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/higgs-boson-discovered/

One can see, from this article, that there may be more than one kind of Higgs boson, which could be very confusing indeed. And me, I’m trying to add another, my personal version, which could open me to a charge of deliberate obfuscation, something I’ve been accused of before.

No, no, I’m only stealing the term Higgs boson in the context of “prolonged and difficult research but with a real pay-off.”

As Liv Ullman said, “Sex never hurt nobody,” and I see my attempt to find the best and most reliable way to poach a service return into the far tramline as fairly harmless.

Anyone who knows me or my tennis realizes that I have other special goals in the game common or not to most players: zippier slice that skids low from pace and trajectory as well as spin, a solution to rotordedness in serving, ATP Forehand that produces topspin more easily, continental forehand as well that’s a real sockdolager or penetrating flat drive.

The out wide poach however is all in a special category, not only because of natural difficulty for anyone hitting it, but because a sensible person will use it rarely if he or she knows the easier options.

HBP (Higgs Boson Personal), while certainly not explaining the composition of the universe, does provide focus by saying, at least to me, “Pursue this avenue and you’ll get an even more fizzy tonic than you did from spending so much time studying Rosewallian slice.”

So, today I’ll think of the total range of volleys I’m aware of, including those from more than one teaching pro asserting increased quickness through keeping shoulders parallel to net whatever the volley's nature.

I don’t buy this as best way to go, but I have seen such volleys work including when delivered by me.

My point is that great variations in setting of the shoulders line (that’s an imaginary line projected through both shoulder balls) can be effective when one volleys.

So, today on my backhand side poach I’ll aim my shoulders line not at my real target (an alley point approximately one half of the way from net to service line) but farther to the right to allow for deflection from oncoming ball. Think billiards with your racket the long cushion of a pool table.

Rotate hand backward over racket handle at the same time to effect a widely variable grip change while activating the brain impulse to carve.

I love my flying grip change for all backhand ground strokes and some volleys, but in this case, I’ll keep left hand firm to do the x change with hitting hand alone.

At same time I’ll wind the bent arm quite far back to raise the hitting elbow.

The idea will be to sum two different chopping actions: 1) twisting down of racket tip from upper arm, 2) lowering of elbow on a shallow forward slant.

Because this shot is manufactured behind one, it is important to keep the arm bent.

When a volley is contacted way out in front toward the net, a bent arm enables sharper crosscourts compared to the straightening alternative.

But when the contact is almost behind you, a bent arm also helps to preserve the shortness of angle that one desires to opposite edge of the court.

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How-to Seen as Different from Autobiography

Now, challenge the grip change hypothesis of # 1623 . A flying grip change will immediately set strings toward the target while preserving arm roll for actual thrusting out of the lower frame. And don't be overly doctrinaire about extension from the elbow. A small bit of this, quite short of full straightening, may or may not provide the most comfortable optimum.

My personal journey is not the subject here. How to lay the shot down on the target is.

Will the bloopy ball most likely be hit at its apex or after it has begun to fall? And will it have passed hand to strings or not?

Remember, using flying grip, you can adjust the pitch to any setting you want.

The best prospect for trial today would be flying grip change encrusted on normal volley preparation, with encrustation changing the aim.

Actual volley stroke: a blended combination of backward cranking and limited straightening of the arm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFL1bAhk0rE

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-bunt-a-baseball-like-a-pro?sourcelink=playlist#playlist-urlname=how-to-bunt-a-baseball-like-a-pro

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Twists and Turns Through Relentless Following Of MOO

My MOO is to stand at center of service box in deuce court and bloop a ball fairly high into adjacent service court and pursue it (following one feinting step with either foot straight toward the net).

One needs to wind bent arm around body to the limit, aiming the strings carefully.

I veer toward the tossed ball on a beeline which continued or projected through the ball on the other side would hit my target in the alley.

Others would probably call my MOO (my Method Of Operation) my "MO," but if we are going to permit acronyms in this world, there should be an exact correspondence between each letter and a reasonable word, and the whole expanded version should make good sense, unlike CERNA, the Center for Energy Research, Northeast Asia, when, clearly the jewel of CERNA, the LHC or Large Hadron Collider is located in Switzerland, Europe, not in northeast Asia.

If from the beginning the scientists of CERNA had made themselves clear on this point, the Higgs boson, providing accumulation of all mass in the universe, would have been lab-smacked after 30 rather than 40 years of research.

As for my MOO, it's leading to startling discovery as well, only at close to the speed of light. There is no reason for a grip change of any kind. Continental grip with big knuckle on 2 slat will do okay. For a forehand volley down the line, one might put knuckle on 2.5 pointy ridge, a good place for a continental forehand, too.

Running through a volley is the same as gliding through a bunt in baseball. Simultaneous with this power source, I'm twisting racket down to an approximately level position and very slightly extending arm from the elbow and slightly moving elbow itself along the target line, and if this MOO still doesn't provide enough heft I may clench shoulder-blades together a small amount or pivot body a bit but probably not do both together.

Scamper through the ball.

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Half a Dozen Points

1) All tennis instruction is overly detailed or not detailed enough.

2) How can one run an unconscionably long distance and then hit a precise target off of an oncoming ball if one can't do the same thing off of a ball with no momentum?

3) LHC or Large Hadron Collider, on the border of France and Switzerland, sounds much better than LWTCWITAFWD or Large Waxahatchee Texas Collider With Its Tunnels All Filled With Dirt.

4) Anyone can master the Higgs boson poach if they are relentless enough in working backward through logic from a specific target, allowing this target to focus complex possibility into a set piece or something repeatable in its simplicity.

5) The recent spate of pop books starting with Malcolm Gladwell's assertion that one needs ten years or 10,000 hours to master anything is ignorantly off-putting to ongoing invention and innovation-- particularly tragic in that aging persons and elders have a unique capacity for cleverness.

The story of the former ping-pong champion of Great Britain Matthew Syed failing in his attempts to return Michael Stich's serve in tennis is a compelling one, illuminating the phenomenon of "chunking" in sport or anything else.

If one gets lost in details, allowing oneself to become "too de-chunked," one won't, in fact, be able to return ANYONE'S serve much less hit a decent drop-shot.

6) Calvin Trillin of The New Yorker Magazine has written a mock-rueful piece, I think in The New York Times, on the subject of injecting a viral phrase into American society.

Using Tom Brokaw as an example and feigning jealousy, Trillin points to Brokaw's invention of the phrase "The Greatest Generation."

My father coined the phrase "The Brown Cinderella Crew" to help my eight-oared crew at Brown University establish rowing as a recognized sport.

He also used one hand to keep an Army Colonel from jumping out of his jeep as he (my father) drove over a small wooden bridge in Normandy while Germans shot at both of them. But if my father were still alive, I don't know whether he would approve of Brokaw's phrase "The Greatest Generation" or not.

Personally, I hate it for its smug sentimentality and anti-historical bias. Is any age or generation or country intrinsically better or worse than any other?

As far as "Higgs boson poach," I couldn't care less whether it enters somebody's lexicon so long as I can hit it again and again with assurance that I can keep it in the court.

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Movement on the Four Choices

For my "antecedent" as I say to Hope when I don't know what she's talking about, see earlier posts about doubles poaching from the deuce court.

For Higgs boson poach, for hit-at-netman's-feet-poach, for hit-between-opponents-poach, I run directly for my projected intersection with the ball, somewhat behind my left ear in the Higgs boson case.

For cut-ball-back-into-the-tramline-behind-one, however, I won't do that but rather will side step or side step with a carioca behind me so that I'm ready to shift weight perpendicular to the net and meet ball way out in front.

In this case I'll deep six (eschew) neutral movement straight toward the net that precedes the other three poaches. Because success depends on cutting the ball off early, as Stotty recommended.

For that purpose, my thinking on straightening or not straightening the arm may be about to evolve, as well.

Here's the previous thought:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/ph...on-discovered/

When a volley is contacted way out in front toward the net, a bent arm enables sharper crosscourts compared to the straightening alternative.

But when the contact is almost behind you, a bent arm also helps to preserve the shortness of angle that one desires to opposite edge of the court.

I still go with the second paragraph but perhaps not with the first. Because as I'm sitting at this old dining room table right now and straightening my right arm I can see my fist turn a bit more to the right if I get the arm straight.

How good a player is somebody? How fast? How nifty and quick? How fuzzy-brained?

A variety of angled volleys may work if one is sufficient in cutting the ball off.

Note: Very interesting, this question of how much a player should think once he's been taught the basics. A lot in my view. I'm an extremist here. One of the topics he ought to think about is how can American or any tennis improve. Through more post-basics thought or less? Or a combination of both? I am convinced that half of the shortcoming of American tennis players is that they haven't put in enough post-basics thought. In fact, one bleating, wheedling teaching pro whose voice could otherwise be described as capable of breaking glass-- during the basics phase-- probably turned their brain to mush in a single half-hour lesson which could even have occurred on an adjacent court.

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Whoops. I just remembered interesting advice from teaching pro Dave Smith on hitting a sharply angled volley in which ball departs from racket to travel across the body. Dave is a big believer in hitting this shot from side of the body rather than out front. So I'll have to try that on the "cut-ball-back-into-the-tramline-behind-one" option, too. If it works, one can cover more ground out to the side with one's arm as well as one's feet-- surely not a bad idea. To carry off the experiment, racket tip will need to be up. One might be able to put more strings on ball this way, i.e., achieve a more solid though still cutting contact. Perhaps one can compromise: Put racket partly out to side and partly out to the front. In either case the footwork should be the same-- sidestep with or without carioca additive followed by a hitting step straight toward the net. Stay solid but use oncoming speed of ball even more than usual. To keep racket focused on the target for this reflexive shot, one should straighten elbow more for the high variations, always with racket tip slanted somewhat to the outside? Higher versions will then be hit a bit farther away from core, too.

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Stifel-Steiffel Open in Wheeling, West Virginia

Me and any partner didn't win it all but performed well enough in the middle of the draw.

Received universal praise for my sliced backhand. I didn't tell anyone how newfound it was.

So thanks to Don and Stotty for their significant contributions-- not virtual at all-- to my development of my own version of Rosewallian slice.

I have always been fascinated by large families in which everyone is a good tennis player. I think the family teaching philosophy is, "Give them the strokes and let them go." Yes, I heard those exact words at the 100-plus Stifel-Steiffel family reunion this weekend.

I of course will never abandon my always tinker and re-invent theory-- anathema to accomplished tennistas and the 10,000 hours or ten-year approach.

But I believe that learning itself can be myelinated, don't you know.

Since natural results oriented encouragement is the big thing for me in tennis, I shall now apply the basics of my Rosewallian slice to one-handed flat and topspin, as Jim McLennan suggested was possible in his old Rosewallian slice article at TennisOne.

That article impressed me a lot back in the days when I was writing posts at TennisOne-- before John Yandell encouraged me instead to write them here at Tennis Player where he indicated correctly that I would have more fun.

Yes, there was and is huge freedom in this forum, and one can learn amazing things here as well as in the other sections of the TennisPlayer site.

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“Master the Modern Slice” by John Evert—a Review

This article, appearing in the Wimbledon 2013 issue of TENNIS Magazine, does not promulgate the Federerian chop so discussed and all but promulgated here in the Tennis Player forum as if we all must undo Nadalian topspin in every shot that comes our way.

Let’s quickly look at Federer:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Backhand/RF_BH_Slice&stroke=RF%20BHSlice%20Center%20Side5%20500fps.mp4

Is there a double roll in this shot? Definitely, but it’s mild both going backward and forward. That doesn’t mean the rolls aren’t vigorous or firm. There’s just not much of them.

Is there a double roll in the Evert-promulgated shot? Definitely and more extreme as in Rosewallian slice. How much does the player hit through the ball? Not as much as
Rosewall, in this next clip, but more than Federer does, at least if we’re considering racket work only (as opposed to weight shift, which will take racket through the ball in a different way):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7kvBGntW8

I figure rightly or wrongly that most readers of this forum probably subscribe to TENNIS, and so can see what I’m talking about, but if not, let me describe features of the Evert shot derived both from the article’s photography and its prose.

This slice is hit with an eastern grip and from close to the back of the head starting with a soon to straighten bent arm (and best to be straightened passively from the body while combined with backward roll). After unit turn, the arm bends an extra amount to bring racket head closer to human head. Sounds like a pure chop is in the works, but no, what with the eastern grip, contact will be far out front creating more flatness. “The point of contact on the slice tends to be farther out in front than on a topspin backhand,” a caption reads, but of course the brother used for the photography normally hits with a two-hander, we are told.

One also could note that the player has opposite hand all the way up on strings rather than around throat, but maybe that difference from Rosewall and Federer both is not that significant. Note too that Rosewall’s shot starts from farther back and with a vertical racket tip which I have to say I love for any one-handed shot since you get to balance the strings above your hand—a marvelous sensory cue for lightness of grip and repeatability.

But here’s where I’m going with this: Despite the outlined differences between the article’s proposal and Rosewallian slice as we can know it, the two shots are alike, with double roll incorporated into a basically level shot remaining the big similarity.

So why is a “model” approach better than something generic? Because Ken Rosewall is a person, and people are more interesting than things or even ideas.

NOTES: 1) Rosewall’s grip with big knuckle on second slat is more adaptable to extreme situations (and late contact), I’m sure, and also offers the opportunity to add an optional bit of wrist sting. 2) When hitting flat rolled slice, one hits very near the cusp of forward roll and no roll. Just as it’s better to be late rather than early in dancing, I have decided that if I have to make a mistake I don't want a block, i.e., a rock. I wanna roll.

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Trade-offs

If (my favorite word) you can straighten your arm while rolling it backward, as in Rosewallian slice, you can save the straightening for the forward roll if you want to.

But why would you want to? To create a balanced alternative. To form a slightly inside out swing, the most powerful swing possible in all sports. To reduce sidespin which may be breaking the ball in an undesired direction.

Well, why wouldn't you want to? Because the first choice is safe, having excluded the arm straightening variable from the contact zone.

Trade-off.

Seems simple.

But hips are a variable, as well.

Do I turn them here or here or there or both but not all? My vagueness is deliberate since one should find the answer on court.

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Discovery-Based Tennis

I'm still on a slicey perfecto jag. You'd think I'd be content with the backhand slice I have since it was found to be good by a jury of Stifels in West Virginia last weekend.

The Stifels came from Neuffen, Germany. Johannes Stifel, a couple of hundred years ago, walked from Baltimore to Wheeling, a pretty fur piece.

For decades but maybe for centuries, the Stifel brand logo included the stencil of a boot. Not because any of the Stifels who carried on the old man's business manufactured boots but rather to celebrate his original walk.

The Stifels went into textiles. People in Africa would turn the label inside out so that everybody could see that the printed calico in their hand carried the boot and therefore was the real thing-- Stifel.

Some of these Stifels became tennis players, a captain of the women's team at Yale, a top junior in Ohio, and two mean uncles who allowed their over-enjoyment to show when they beat the first two playing together one time in a game of doubles.

So, they liked my slice, patterned on Ken Rosewall. But it can easily get out of whack. Keep the elbow high, I would say. The double roll will happen more in an up and down direction then.

This kind of slice is new with me. Or should I say it recurred with enough force for me to call it discovery.

And every discovery in my case immediately spawns another maybe better or worse.

Elbow high relative to body, racket straight up. (We need a constant for the various slices-- perhaps this can be it.)

Arm stays bent as it keys the racket tip down. Now, clench the shoulder-blades together. The late arm straightening will be passive, caused by the vicious clenching and joined by a small amount of forward roll which is deliberate whether conscious or not.

With all racket motion to follow an inside out path. That means the shoulders were turned WAY AROUND.

So, the train has left the station and is coming into the next station at high enough speed to threaten to blow it away.

How to prolong the contact at the cusp of a direction change to the right? A bit of forward wrist sting combined with a bit of forward hips turn.

The pin-oak Steinway meanwhile remains in the Stifel Museum. The brown wood through the lacquer contains the most finely woven texture I've ever seen in a tree bole.

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Alma and Uma

The language "radial deviation" and "ulnar deviation" already is code. Kay Scarpetta, the medical examiner in Patricia Cornwell books (sold: one hundred million copies) might disagree. "Here's the radius," she would say, prying a bone from her bone box. "And here's an ulna. These are real parts of the human arm and those are their names."

Nope. By the time one has added the Latinate word "deviation," one has created code, the secret intention of which is never scientific consistency through elimination of too much suggestion but the exclusion of undesirable people from any chance of understanding what one is talking about.

So, if we're going to use code to create a new backhand slice variation, let's go all the way. We'll call ulnar deviation Uma after Uma Thurman since she's always chopping people in Quentin Tarantino films.

And from Uma we'll need an opposite: Alma for the radial cocking that leads to a relaxed ulnar chop.

Next, we'll time our Alma and Uma to the double roll present in the best backhand slice.

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Forehand for the Person with Less than 90-degree Federerian Wrist Layback

That would be me. My wrist goes back 45 degrees, opposite wrist to about 60 degrees—childhood ski accident, don’t you know. Broke radius in two places. Under the influence of truth serum, kept telling one of the nurses what I’d like to do to her. Was 13. The medical staff had a good sense of humor.

So, I should cock the racket up as part of the unit turn but keep the wrist straight? Or, reader, don’t you believe in tailormade instruction based on the individual’s physical, mental and moral deformity? Just the basics for you, right? How about when you try to adapt the ATP Style Forehand for yourself? Do you start wrist a-laying-back right away? That’s what Federer does. At least in the specific Tennis Player videos I studied. Takes some of the 90 degrees to begin with, the rest during the flip. Suppose you got 70 degrees to work with, reader, whacchugonna do? It’s your math problem. I’m glad it’s not mine.

Me, I got 45 degrees max to work with—where Fed is most of the time AT CONTACT. But I’ve been working on a second forehand, a 2.5 continental in which my contact is straight-wristed all the time. Will be no big difference to achieve straight-wristed short crosscourts with my 3.5 strong eastern. And 45-degree wrist long crosscourts like Fed. And 45-degree for down the line? Not as good as 90-degree but there’s always late contact.

So, I cock the racket up as part of the unit turn but keep the wrist straight. Emancipation Proclamation. Racket tip is raked toward the net and I’ll keep it that way as I fast-sweep the arm at this established level while turning body more by pointing across with opposite hand.

To reiterate, the elbow is fast-sweeping back while straightening back, too. Isn’t this simple? I think so. Because if I’m going to have maximum independence of arm going forward I’ll need more going backward first, at the end of which two things will simultaneously happen: 1) downward motion of heel of hand or “tapping the dog,” 2) body core reversing against arm, which lags because it’s trying to come forward but is forced backward instead, as part of the catchup pace system. The heel of hand taps relaxedly down as it is arm-wrestled a small bit to the inside.

The spin system overlaps in that tapping hand makes you wanna roll. Backward. But how much? More for more topspin. Less for flatter drive—huge information for me since I’ve always tried to maximize and quicken the backward arm roll. Big mistake. And if one decides that one is going to spear for one-and-one-half foot and that everything will happen during the spearing—the “flip” that everybody talks about—one may arrive at a different concept of this flip, not abrupt but prolonged through the spearing or aiming of a flashlight or pulling on the knot in a flexible rope or drawing a butt cap to keep the racket spear a-spearing straight. In other words, there’s some wiggle in this move.

The tapping hand makes you wanna roll. Moreover, it starts a roll. How much should you resist this? The more you resist, the slower the racket tip will wind down as you build up force for your wipe. Wrist can be easing backward too if that’s what you want.

Well, Jimmy Arias wouldn’t think that a player of my level should be doing any of this stuff but guess what I’d like to tell him. Same thing that Ivan Lendl told the guy in the crowd behind me in Rock Creek Park that time, the guy who was jeering him for his back problems.

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Re Stifel-Steiffel Family Reunion, Tennis Division

[QUOTE=bottle;22039]
The Stifels came from Neuffen, Germany. Johannes Stifel, a couple of hundred years ago, walked from Baltimore to Wheeling, a pretty fur piece.

For decades but maybe for centuries, the Stifel brand logo included the stencil of a boot. Not because any of the Stifels who carried on the old man's business manufactured boots but rather to celebrate his original walk.

The Stifels went into textiles. People in Africa would turn the label inside out so that everybody could see that the printed calico in their hand carried the boot and therefore was the real thing-- Stifel.

The Stifel family is not displeased with my explanation of the Stifel logo but does point out that "Stifel" means boot in German. (Pretty bad since I once worked on a German ship and also was chauffeur of the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the Bundesrepublik, i.e. West Germany, and therefore am supposed to know German. Oh well.)