A New Year's Serve

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Describing the Federfore

Cut-lines under photograph in New York Post or The Daily News or was it in neither close to headline CHIMP TEARS OFF WOMAN'S FACE BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LIKE HER NEW HAIR-DO:

"Michael Pernfors hits a Federfore in exhibition tennis match against Roger Federer in WTA production of HMS Pinafore."

Unfortunately, as any first-hand observer in the theatrical crowd will attest, Pernfors' Federfore was in the form of a broad circle without one corner bashed in and therefore wasn't properly stroked.

During intermission, this reporter detected five tennis players in the WTA theater foyer busily arguing among themselves.

"It's kinetic chain," one player said. "That's how Roger does it. He hits the ball like an inverted tornado."

"You must enjoy the National Science Museum castle," another said, "the red building on the mall in Washington, D.C. with all the nineteenth century inventions inside. It's full of moving conveyers and wheels, and things stopping and starting and trip wires connected to hesitating sprockets."

"Nah," the third player said. "That's a wrong description of what Roger does. His jette is smooth like Nureyev, Nijinski and Baryshnikov."

"But not in a perfect circle," the reporter thought to himself, afraid to speak. "No, Roger's body swings the racket in a broad circle. He then accelerates his hand down and up to a farther spot along the arc, and makes that hand rejoin the arc, and then of course the smooth circle loses its shape again on its back side."

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Jammer Backhand II

I may have been following the wrong track in trying to develop a specialty shot all of its own to deal with the situation of being jammed at the baseline. Since I'm having success and a lot of fun with the simplest Donald Budge type easy swing topspin backhand, why not build on it?

One can do the equivalent of choking up on a bat and getting the stroke off faster, maybe in four counts instead of five. I think I've said before in these discussions, patient listener, that one points arm in this shot by first taking
elbow back and then extending rest of the way. Well, just don't extend.
Try a bent arm backhand, preserving the same elbow separation from body as on the long-armed stroke.

However because of the grip all on panel one, with that separation, and arm
bent, the racket is going to get farther around toward the rear fence. Don't let it. Take arm more out to side, i.e., shorten the backswing, because you're aiming for a junior version of the other shot but a complete replica in all the important elements. Another way of thinking about this could be to draw an imaginary line from your body to the racket tip AFTER it has wound down. You could call that imaginary line a "spoke." So, with arm bent, but at same elbow separation, keep racket tip on the old spoke.

Then, hit the ball pretty much the same way. Swing the two shoulders, probably a bit faster, while rolling wrist straight and arm too (both upper and
lower) for desired pitch. You're coming up to contact more steeply and will leave the ball more steeply but the basic mechanics are the same. And if you change the timing just a little you can BAM! (really lift) the elbow upward with slight variations of direction as an option to a pocket-billiards shot. You're definitely going to get more topspin and less long leverage no matter what you do in this construction-- it's just a question of how much.

This isn't one of those shots where you twist racket around the outside of the
ball as you hit it-- at least as far as I'm concerned. No, if you're really going
to lift the elbow on relaxed shoulder as fast as you can, sometimes, you want that motion pure and untainted in every way.

P.S. I've seen book illustrations of topspin backhand service returns where the author wanted you to shorten the backward turn of the shoulders. I reject that. A big turn of shoulders both ways is essential to the mechanics of hitting the oncoming ball no matter what its velocity in both of these shots.

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Stiff-arm or Scissoring Arm-- Rejoin the Path in Either Case

One can hit a Federfore either way. Smartest, though, is not even to think about it, but to concentrate instead on finding the shortcut from one part of the curving trail to the next. The mountain hasn't gotten steep yet. You zap through the shortcut. Now you're back on the main trail.

Try hitting some Federfores without the shortcut. Just sweep the racket around in a wide circle. The shots don't have much upward spin but go pretty fast. The outside leg applies power before, not while you're hitting the ball.

If you want to get philosophical as you're doing this, reflect that your contact point is at least a foot wider than that of most people you play. Roger Federer is fast, it's true, but he also has to run a foot less to get where he wants to go.

When you add the bowl from first intersection in main trail to the second you accelerate, taking the swing ahead of the one you already started. This is the only time you need to do so. It's acceleration within a succinct distance followed by return to initial speed. Think about that now and when you do it and the next time you pass a car on the open highway.

Those tennis writers who have described the mondo without ever giving it a name-- a handful of pros here at TennisPlayer along with Vic Braden and Doug King-- should get credit for being among the first persons to discuss and answer questions about it at all.

Simultaneously, the wrist lays back and the forearm rolls down. But Roger's wrist laid back about half of the available distance near the beginning of the stroke, leaving him with only half of it to go-- so, experiment.

Doug King has spoken of mondo (yes, without giving it a name) as killing the racket head speed so that legs and body can take on the main task of springing up the back of the ball. Okay, but that's a different stroke. Roger fired his right leg earlier.

Braden, using Andre Agassi for model, speaks of mondo (true, without giving it a name) as creating spring in hand which releases on ball.

Enough theory. I hurt my arm and I hurt it bad, twisting every part of the arm violently one way and then the other with no rest in between. I was trying to simulate some slap shot technique in hockey that's better done with two arms slamming against ice.

As my arm slowly began to heal, I hit a few forehands, and the one that hurt the least is the one I'm still hitting now.

I see two changes of direction as you leave the main trail and then rejoin it. Racket rolls up fast on passive forearm as you re-enter the big circle. Is this accelerative roll-up of the racket tip automatic? Amazingly automatic. (But you need precision and lightness of touch to make it happen every time.)

So how does direction of this fanning rise compare with that in more muscular ways of doing this still for an eastern grip player? It produces a greater topspin to sidespin ratio.

The elbow twists up later.

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In Deflection of a Bean Ball

NABRUG, when one says "learn from the pros" (tennis) or "learn from the masters" (areas of life other than tennis), one sets up a teaching method separate from ground up.

Basics are essential for everyone in the beginning and optional thereafter. What happens when something goes wrong or when the player seeks innovation and departure from all that has gone before?

A player lacking enthusiasm for more than a return to basics is needlessly self-limited. But I have written more than three sentences, so, by your own assertion once in English and once in Dutch, you have fallen asleep.

However, I write here to instruct, not to delight, so how interesting you find the individual sentences and paragraphs is irrelevant.

The tennis experiments behind the language are all that is of importance-- presently in my case wide separation groundstrokes like Roger Federer's forehand or Donald Budge's backhand.

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Never Giving up on Cobra Version of Serve

GOAL: To apply wrist action from Budgian backhand to spin serve.

From post # 133: Immobilizing your forearm by pressing it down against a table, you can hold a pen with your wrist concave as if you're about to hit a one-arm backhand. If you simply then straighten the wrist you will do nothing to bring the tip of the pen around...If however you simultaneously wag the hand from radius to ulna, the pen will circle through 45 degrees of arc...

It's always interesting to take some feature of one's game and apply it to a different stroke. How best to do it, though, translates here into WHERE BEST TO DO IT. Let's try it somewhere along the route of arm extension, building carefully upon the individual service pattern already established. That way one can maybe progress faster and merely add a variation rather than replace something good.

1) As the two halves of the arm clench together, forearm turns out and elbow goes up with all of this single act the arm's passive answer to leg drive. The beginning of upper body rotation (vertical, horizontal or hybrid) then passively opens arm out to a right angle. This is how you (I) may routinely prepare for the serving fireworks to come.

2) One other thing happens, however. Returning to the arm on table analogy, the wrist becomes similarly concave while down behind your back. Reverse this. Make wrist convex instead, which should feel natural because of the forearm turning out at the same time.

3) The beginning of ubr can relax arm out toward a right angle no matter which way the wrist is humped, to get hand farther away from body.

4) The violent combined throw of elbow from shoulder and triceps extension seems a place where one can completely reverse the wrist, turning it inside out, and doing all three things at once.

5) High-five, but while permitting yourself the influence of the emboldened words above.

6) Return to question of WHERE BEST TO DO IT, i.e., where to complete all these late reversals of wrist (three of them, actually). Should the second of these transformations occur someplace near halfway through fast arm extension? The total is a lot of movement to squeeze in. Final wrist action seems the same as in one's normal serves. But there is a lot more "loosey-goosey" with the wrist all the way up in this version, which may or may not prove out to work as individual improvement.

7) Unfold wrist into the ball instead of "fold, turn inside out then close it to straightness and pronation" of 6). You have to try this since you are now in position to do so. Because of other evolutions in serve, perhaps this option will work for you (me) this time. This option has nothing to do with wrist movement in a Don Budge backhand but is a good example of the learning precept "bend the stick the other way."

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I tried these proposals. Experienced promise with 6) but not 7). How much was the apparent effectiveness individual or applicable to other people? And how will a good receiver respond? Don't know yet.

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Denial of the Other Person's Experience

This is what bad teachers do, in any field. They want to impose a full set of values and prefer students who don't talk back.

Personally, I think that tennis instruction is so subjective, so much a matter of opinion, that anyone who fails to challenge every idea short of "you hold the racket at this end" is denying himself his true potential.

That's the way Bill Tilden was, and he had it right. He despised the USTA and still would if he were alive along with all the other alphabet soups. No great tennis player is ever a sheeple.

So let's just pick a generally accepted idea and poke it. It supposedly comes from Bruce Elliott. Even people who know nothing about him love to quote it. His name "Bruce" reminds them of Bruce Wayne, who reminds them of Batman.
The idea is that the greatest source of power in the serve is internal rotation of the upper arm. The statement is wonderfully confusing-- the first requirement for a long-lasting tennis cliche. Not one person in a thousand knows exactly what it means, and I sure don't. Rotation (twist) as if the shoulder socket is a set of ball bearings and the upper arm is an axle? Movement of the elbow about the body and inward? Both of these things?

No matter what anyone's personal answer, the original statement is a lie anyway. The main source of power is big muscles in the core of the human body.

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Liquid Discovery on the Backhand Side

1) Flat with roll. Pendulum use of shoulders. They stop and long arm continues.

2) Flat (choked up) with roll. Pendulum use of shoulders. They stop and bent arm continues.

3) Topspin. Reverse order of 1), i.e., sit-and-hit from same wide preparation. Unlike a TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE backhand (Braden), however, one can step out first and sit second as concave wrist straightens and racket tip turns down and straight arm falls in two directions (both inward and forward). The cocked shoulders remain still throughout this. And the body folds down like an accordion.

The next step is to straighten whole body accordion-like as arm lifts powerfully but smoothly and more forward and to outside, feeling for the ball. It's the arm swing for sample 1), only sooner, which also establishes the normal arm-body separation out to the side of sample 1).

Finally, accelerate the racket in a very unusual way. You authorize two core body actions which normally occur before and after this section of tract.

Simultaneously or consecutively, you A) rotate shoulders at slow swing speed of 1) or even slower, and B) you smoothly clench shoulder blades together to add power to this short swing while stopping it with the left hand (all one action) so you don't fall over. You also can do either of these actions without the other-- I'm in the process of deciding for myself.

Many backhands (more "hammered," in current lingo) don't swing shoulders very much at all, although there has never been a backhand of any kind that didn't open up the body somewhat.

We (I again) haven't chosen to stop the shoulders before contact here but just the opposite (a design decision). The combination low speed swing-and-clench activates relaxed arm roll which passively rips up the outside of the ball to a balanced finish.

P.S. An accordionist-player may have many moves, e.g., he might extend his legs without straightening whole body.

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Swingeing from the Hips

I was close to a way of activating passive roll in the arm with yesterday's design, but a further improvement occurred during the night. I refer to post # 142, option three. And I've returned to the six videos of Donald Budge's backhand. I've said before, I think, that he does something different with his hips when he leaves the ground, but maybe I wasn't on top of that observation until right now. If you adopt full accordion-like extension while swinging or "bowling" arm to the outside, it's easy to leave the ground same as on a modern serve with similarly front airborne foot pivot coming next which is direct result of a heartily airborne hips pivot. When you add to that Donald Budge's observable tendency to pull back his shoulders and head (I call it "rowing") any time he's gotten himself too close to the ball, you can begin to see how he makes such a perfect two-point landing back toward the center of the court, "sticking it" every time and adding immediate, scampering side-steps. (Or one can simply run in the direction body has just turned.)

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHRear.mov

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Or Maybe

he doesn't have to bring arm in close to body at all, just swings from the shoulder as seen here (in last post's video). Two different arm looks are apparent: arm first then arm-and-body. The last idea worked well at court, but maybe this new one will be even better.

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Disentangling the Braden from the Budge

The pendulum backhand I'm so proud of, to which I always return when other strokes go wrong, was suggested by Vic Braden in the old video TENNIS OUR WAY, not by Don Budge, unless he had such a fluid stroke in mind when he told the general readership of his autobiography not to worry about sequence of elements in the easy swing he was advocating for them.

What can we infer from this about Braden and Budge? That people who think they have Braden pegged are always wrong, e.g., the backhand he teaches in TENNIS OUR WAY is different from that in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, where the emphasis is much more on vertical movement. That Donald Budge, whose backhand is a perfect amalgam of horizontal and vertical factors was, like any awe-inspiring jock, unwilling to probe the details which he left to his older brother Lloyd, a teaching and playing pro, his coach Tom Stow, and the tennis writers Talbert and Old.

What if he was correct, however, that sequence-- while essential to all tennis strokes-- is more interchangeable than most people suspect?

In all cases we want the most result from the least effort; so, if roundhouse pendulum is the persisting idea, it can come from the extended arm as well as from shoulders, hips, or hips-and-shoulders, with these latter categories saved to complete the whirling (twisting) arm acceleration.

A second big difference between Donald Budge's and Vic Braden's backhand (though he modeled it on Budge) is grip (eastern BH for Braden, continental for Budge), and also opening out of the racket during the preparation rather than closing it.

Nearly all modern one-hand backhand top-spinners go the early racket-closing route. I've heard the arguments for this but remember Ivan Lendl's respect for Gene Mayer's open preparation, which he expressed in the book he co-wrote with Gene Scott, IVAN LENDL'S POWER TENNIS, in which Lendl views the contrasting approaches as equal possibility.

In either case, not having to turn your entire body into an Austrian pretzel each time you want to hit your favored backhand is a distinct advantage.

As racket twists down on arm the knees can bend an extra amount. And front knee can slowly extend in tandem with the roundhouse pendulum of
wide arm swinging easily around as you straighten your wrist.

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Re/sume/, Backhands

1) Shoulders roundhouse pendulum and long arm
2) Shoulders roundhouse pendulum and short arm
3) Long arm roundhouse pendulum and hips
4) Short arm roundhouse pendulum and hips
5) Slice, short arm to long (A. Mush, active arm; B. Viciously side-spun, passive arm).

RECOVERY, grounded strokes: Along same footwork as step-out only in reverse.

RECOVERY, strokes that take body into air: Running or running with gravity step depending on width of feet. This recovery is preferred to Donald Budge's initial sidestep, fast as it is.

OPINION for longer wind-up, if one believes with Eliot Teltscher that big loop is essential for topspin backhand. I would work on "bowl" or double COD (two Changes of Direction same as in a Federfore). Why employ long backhands, however, when short ones work just as well?

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Waterfall Backhand

Once you've taught yourself to have ideas, they don't just stop one day when you say, "Okay, thanks, I've got what I want."

On all of these backhands the grip change carries the hand out left on bent arm on a line with the front of your body. Probably, you're running. You're glad your hand hasn't gone back yet. You keep it up front to help find the ball. The waterfall stroke starts at bounce.

1) Lift hand close to left ear.

2) Cock forearm to take racket tip slightly down to the inside. This shall be the entire loop for the waterfall shot.

3),4) Drop elbow down and lift it up in a side-ward direction toward one of the contact points you've discovered from the short, wide backhands. This two-count action shall be extremely relaxed. I've always thought of a coin on edge when considering video of Tony Roche's backhand (MASTER TENNIS, VHS 1). You're feeling for the ball; variable arm lengths are permitted. But the final lift corresponds to upper arm extension in other backhands on the followthrough. It's just happening in a different, earlier place.

5) Crank shoulders into shot activating passive roll of racket up the outside of ball while pinching it. Or, if there has been extensive leg drive already to take you into the air, crank with your hips instead.

Note: Continental on panel one is the preferred grip for all of these shots. It gets strings just as square as eastern backhand, which is more lifeless, stiff and mechanical.

For down the line topspin you can naturally straighten the wrist during the waterfall.

For cross-court topspin you can add a hand wag from radius to ulna, again during the gravity drop or waterfall, thus causing a 45-degree change in direction.

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Waterfall Sucked down too much Time

But such inside to out arm structure remained useful, I thought, and throwback to the medieval sword-and-scabbard of traditional tennis instruction. I tried it out at waist level and it worked, just not as well as the circular and wide (though short at the beginning) arm swing of Donald Budge seeming abruptly to change hand direction from body core.

"Seems" may be the word. In the Budge backhands the arm in front seems
briefly to cut across, and is just not as high at that point as it could be. This is visual imagery, something right brain and impressionistic to which one might not want to apply too much logic, or in this case too much sideways arm swing to the right.

But you (I) might not want to apply too little either. Taking the widely separated arm around for a free, late ride on the shoulders seems less desirable than two days ago. Arm may free-wheel somewhat throughout the whole stroke.

Best shot, best spin is the goal. Another is best recovery. One challenge is immediately to start running, even when feet don't lift off and pivot in mid-air.

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Budgian Backhand Back-swing for the Overly Schematic

A person who plots too much (most tennis players-- not just me), can, instead of fighting naturalness all the time, incorporate new knowledge from neuroscience in his next scheme.

So, instead of first taking the elbow back and then straightening it, I can do it all at once and let the right arm dominate, the left hand just ride along for some right brain guidance, and add a little inward turn of the arm in what's beginning to feel like something unified from boxing: This modified slow punch back-swing will hook the racket tip down a small bit to the inside.

And hooking the racket tip down to the inside remains an important timing device in all of these backhands, so I wouldn't want to do it too much just then, need to save some for the next step, i.e., count three, the timing DROP.

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Tremendously Important Chance for More Topspin on all Rotorded Serves

Using cobra wrist preparation, open it only to a point where ulnar bump still protrudes.

Furthermore, put all muscular arm efforts into four simultaneous and specific actions for a high-five: 1) hand slightly twisting open, 2) forearm twisting outward (pronation), 3) upper arm twisting outward ("ELLIOTT," named after sports scientist Bruce Elliott for declaring its importance), 4) shoulder and upper arm throwing elbow at ball and inward toward body median ("GORDON," named after sports scientist Brian Gordon for declaring its importance).

Some (Groppel) might argue that these four actions are perfectly in tandem with a fifth, arm extension, with a subgroup of tennis thinkers then arguing that the extension is propelled by the triceps muscle.

Not me. I argue that I have a safe serve with body centrifugating arm open to a right angle after which it simultaneously 1) fires triceps, 2) closes wrist (traditional), 3) pronates, 4) Elliotts, 5) Gordons, i.e., five roughly simultaneous actions to the relaxed high-five at contact; but, that all my fast serves centrifugate the arm straight in the most passive and noodle-like way possible during which the first four muscular actions outlined in paragraph two do occur, but occur only with hand above the head.