A New Year's Serve

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Adding Design to a Serve that already Possesses a Lot of Design

We start with a Don Budge serve here (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...DB1stSRear.mov). Don Budge was known to have the most natural backhand in the world said to derive from his early interest in baseball. He wasn't hurt by having a much older brother Lloyd with reputation of being a great tennis teaching pro.

Lloyd introduced Don to all of the strokes judging from Don's introduction to Lloyd's book TENNIS MADE EASY.

Another famous teaching pro, Tom Stow, worked with Don Budge on his other strokes, i.e., strokes other than his famous backhand which Tom studiously left alone. Tom and Don studied Don's serve along with practicing it. They concluded that during the serve, weight should not transfer until the tossed ball started coming down.

It is fun to speculate on exactly which part of weight transfer they were writing about since, clearly in the films, shoulders topple somewhat forward right from inception of the toss.

None of Don's studied strokes were as good as the natural one, according to tennis person and writer Ed Weiss. And yet Don Budge was the first person to win a Grand Slam, so none of his strokes could have been too bad.

In copying his service motion, I notice straightening of elbow melding into plying of straight arm melding into solid connection with the two shoulder balls which then rotate backward as a single unit if only for a brief moment until the arm bends to throw.

I should like now to combine the above described motions into a single vector going down. That's going to raise front shoulder at an earlier time than ever before.

Will more body tilt be enabled by this decision? Possibly. Maybe hip jutting toward net was only achieving middling tilt. And amount of tilt is crucial to anyone who doesn't possess the inner flexibility of a Roddick or Sampras.

One will need a mirror-- in my case a lucky reflection occurred in an outside window next to the driveway pavement where I first tried this new design.

One wants to see-- in window or mirror-- the tossing arm and the two shoulderballs and the hitting arm all in a straight line.

Or at least the tossing arm and the two shoulderballs and the upper half of the hitting arm all in a straight line.

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What Happened to Tennis Pro who Used Snake too much as Metaphor for Hitting the Ball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--KOE08bvxM

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Controlled Arm vs. All Arm Uncontrolled Topspin Backhands

Am still thinking about the PetraKordian Backhand, of course (https://video.search.yahoo.com/video...&hsimp=yhs-002).

Narrative of this stroke: A lot of arm, some arm but mostly bod, some bod but mostly arm (the followthrough).

Now for "uncontrolled arm." That would not be Federer, Wawrinka or Thiem-- they control their arm very well. They use it to the max. They whirl it twisting it around like a dervish, but they've figured out how to integrate this with their bod. And Carla Suarez-Navarro-- she's careful, so she can do it too.

The uncontrolled ones are the unwashed multitudes trying to imitate. They'd be better off with arm first, then twisting elongating bod, next more arm, but this could take a while to learn.

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On Forehand, Can One Really Roll the Forearm and Elbow in Opposite Direction?

Yes. It's like stirring to get a stew just right.

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Use Figure Eights and Perfect Mime to Groove the New Ground Strokes

Do this with and without a racket. Feel the subtle adjustment with elbow held back. Feel the small lift of the delayed elbow after which you finally get to roll or wipe, the element you have purged from your actual BAM! Forehand.

You will still need roll, e.g., to pluck a quick descending ball out of the air. The descending path plus the rising racket for your rolling arm will provide added topspin for the reversed direction of the shot.

For a normal forehand taken on the bounce however the lifting or pushing elbow will provide the spin. I advise four figure eights with a lift followed by a final one with full push and followthrough over the shoulder yoke.

Mime similarly but without the figure eight the PetraKordian over and over, feeling how the arm extending roll melds immediately into the circular and thrusting body hit (circle and thrust SIM).

If you were a skier you would be Jean Claude Killy of France staying over his feet, not some Austrian or Vic Braden doing tricks of angulation to thrust out his hips. If rear foot is to slide, it slides right then.

Roll arm and hit, roll arm and hit, keeping elbow in for the roll and flying it toward side fence for the immediately separated hit.

The smoothly decelerating followthrough to opposite side of the bod is just icing on the cake.

QUESTION: Do you keep head still while using a PetraKordian to hit the ball? One certainly keeps eyes fixed on the ball but has to be honest. The head moves up as part of the straightening while turning bod. Vic Braden did this too. So keeping head still in this genre of shot is pure myth. But don't feel bad. Elaphe Vulpinus moves his head too but still is pretty accurate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XryKA3z_uWk).

NOTE: It has taken years, even decades for me to develop any kind of an effective PetraKordian. Reader, if any of these accounts have helped to shorten learning curve for you I am glad to have been of service.

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Response to Play

So one does better if one doesn't roll the racket over the ball when hitting it. Not rolling may be harder but could be a higher level of the game. Certainly I am not the only player or coach ever to recommend this.

Once one has eliminated all likely exceptions in circumstance to this rule, one could pretty much draw thought down to the basics of this forehand I have chosen, the BAM!

And with the onset of these basics comes new considerations. Does one want never to alter the contact point for this shot, i.e., no matter the situation one will always meet the ball the same distance in front of one?

Although one can't always succeed in such an ideal the constancy of the effort could be good.

Similarly, one could add a smidge of forward roll to one's mondo for more adjustment or wiggle room to that ephemeral point where one finally pushes the elbow.

An exceedingly light grip seems integral to this emerging shot.

Integral again is the understanding that one will make one's adjustments first so that one can have more uninhibited fun when one flies the elbow.

Note: "Adding a smidge of forward roll to the mondo" could seem inimical to any mondo in that the mondo consists of 1) flapping wrist back, 2) rolling forearm down, 3) rolling elbow down too in some cases.

If one doesn't roll elbow down one can roll it up a little at the same time one rolls forearm down.

I persist in thinking that a player should get off some of these BAM's with no extra roll to adjust anywhere in them-- lobs or moonballs I should think-- but much depends on one's contact point and grip.

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One Inch of Solid Sideways Travel

Tennis is the game of willfulness (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willful). What you want to do is equally important with your capability. On a good day the two will come together.

My friend Ron Carloni has been studying tennis recently with my friend Sebastien Foka, the Wayne State star and teaching pro from France who grew up hitting with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

The other day Sebastien told Ron, "You're just going to revert to what you've always done anyway."

"Recidivism!" I said when Ron told me that. We prison teachers used to consider recidivism rates as essential part of our line of work. And Tom Okker in the forehand section of MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES used the same word to disparage the majority of persons who take tennis lessons.

Fortunately for me I never thought the baseline of whatever I initially acquired was particularly good so have always felt entirely free to torpedo it.

My subject today is total commitment to BAM! forehands since I am about to go to the neighborhood courts where I shall compete.

Today's cues for that stroke: 1) one inch to the inside of solid sideways travel of racket and bod as a single unit before commencement of the forward swish, 2) FEEL for the ball, for the correct pitch, for the proper aim setting while holding elbow back, 3) push through a stuck cellar door with arm imagined so strong that it moves equally much with all of the other body parts, 4) meld preceding actions into smooth followthrough over the shoulder yoke.

Too much to think about. Right. So spread out the acquisition of this instruction over the next ten years. We are athletic, read psychotic out on the court. But this is written form in a forum where things are different sometime.

Note: There are two kinds of BAM! forehand as far as I am concerned: 1) conservative and 2) passionate. In the conservative version one slightly rolls racket as elbow pushes to keep one's strings square. In the passionate version one simply lets the elbow rip the ball, having relied on one's perfect contact point and other perfect decisions to achieve one's perfect consistency.

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Assembling One's PetraKordian, Step by Step

Each time I watch the 16 casual PetraKordians in this video I see something new (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA).

Yesterday it was inside out elbow travel right after the arm-extending roll.

Face the fact that contact does not occur much space after that roll.

So the heft of the stroke happens right then between the roll and a little past contact.

After that the minimalist stroke shifts its racket action just barely over to opposite side of bod.

A nice overall shape, that, indicating along with more horizontal footwork already installed a heavy reliance on angular not linear momentum to provide the power in this shot.

One could think of a champion frisbee or Jai Alai player. He cranks.

The transition between self-feed and competitive play will remain as always the hardest part but also the best test of one's concept. Does the new thing work? That is what matters.

Addendum: Behold the beauty of Petr's backhand followthrough. Then think of the Korda and Lendl family connections to golf. How can Petr's followthrough be so strangely effortless and easy? Well, first, it is mostly arm. There may be a bit of residual body weight involved but, basically, the ball is gone having already been hit.

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Clarabell Deep-Sixed

Good forehands today, mediocre ones tomorrow-- so what's new. The time may have come to jettison the Clarabell or bullshit forehand once and for all and just go with the BAM!

Howdy Doody-- Paul Ryan?-- Clarabell the honking clown himself-- Buffalo Bob and Princess Summerfallwinterspring are more recent history than John Smith and Pocohontas, but oh my how Howdy prefigures 2016 trying to reenact the 1950's:

It's Howdy Doody Time
It's Howdy Doody Time
Bob Smith and Howdy too
Say howdy do to you

Isolationism, McCarthyism, a new cold war, witch hunts all over the place, thanks but no thanks. America wasn't great in the 1950's and it won't be great in the 2010's if it doesn't shape up fast.

And neither is my Clarabell any good. While I love hitting figure eights with it because of the good swish they make, I think the future for me lies in the forward shoulder-yoke finishing sweep of the BAM! both with forward roll of whole arm happening during contact and not.

With McEnruefuls as back-up.

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Forehands: Use What Parts of the Arm and How?

The question is retort to the common ideas "feel for the ball" and "hit the ball with full extension."

The body firsters don't even want to talk about arm although racket work clearly is the key to tennis. If racket is correct at contact, the body can be doing all kind of crazy things and still make the shot (although that may not be recommended)... Braden.

Feel through extending from the elbow? No, I think. Feel through rolling a fixed elbow.

Extend from the elbow? No, extend from the shoulder right while you are hitting the ball.

A related question: Loop or don't loop? I've argued against loop in the past. The loop I argued against however was an extra loop besides the loop one forms when one mondoes then wipes up outside back of the ball.

So now I argue for twisting upper arm, twisting lower arm loop for total of about 180 degrees and that this loop be formed in that sequence.

Most of the subsequent wipe from right fence to left I classify as followthrough.

The trickiest part of this new iteration is feeling for the ball through rolling the elbow-- the usual means of destabilizing (and frequently but not always ruining) a stroke.

Of necessity, the racket action cause by this full arm roll will keep the racket tip lower than the base of the thumb.

I want to try this with both BAM! forehands and Clarabells.

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Who Said It?

Somebody on TV. Use ball to generate the spin for a see see. Closed racket face then?

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Compression of Time

The BAM! and Clarabell forehands employed together present a unique learning challenge in that one contains more working parts than the other.

One wants to feel roughly the same rhythm in getting off either one of them. This could mean bloating one or squeezing the other into the same small envelope. So there's the choice: Squeeze or bloat with squeeze looking more rational, but with compromise from the two different ends also a strong possibility.

Tom Okker once made two devastating criticisms of the recreational player: 1) recidivism and 2) not taking long enough to hit one's shot.

Focusing on numero two since I'll never go back to prison (famous last words but remember I only taught there, wasn't yet thinking of becoming an inmate) I consciously determine to "spread the lift out." This should not be hard since one starts with the BAM! already being a uniquely smooth shot. One twists up the elbow behind one but not too high, somewhere around waist level. One keeps elbow back then while mondoeing racket forward. The term "bloat" now becomes unfortunate since the movement in this stroke is better described as smooth. Hand bowls under before elbow lifts. And the smoothness can be lengthened despite the quickness of the rip.

The other end of the compromise to make these two shots feel more the same could require decades of repetition but who has that time?

I feel the same way about the A&P3. A loop (wastes time) and then a dogpat (wastes time) and then a flip too before the wipe that starts before one hits the ball?

I even think that Roger Federer's forehand is overly complicated with racket tip first rising then racket closing-- but all that is fast for him from a million repetitions.

Whether one likes the overall look of Nick Kyrgios, one might like the way he twists up his elbow immediately, wasting no time.

The BAM! does that. So does the Clarabell. Both shots can remain exactly the same through the mondo.

The difference though is that the Clarabell now slams the racket head forward while still keeping the elbow back. So mondo and slam will need to be consciously drilled as a unified sidearm throw to avoid any extra decades of practice for which one hasn't time.

And if one is really good, the "slam" may turn into something else, a smoothing forward while closing the racket head before it will open out to maybe get square at contact.

Have the two shots yet started to feel the same? I hope so. The mental grouping of mondo and slam in the one shot can be the equivalent of just mondo in the other.

The Clarabell can conclude with pushing forearm roll and shorter lower followthrough to substitute for the BAM's smooth pushing lift and return of knuckles to ear.

And with so much lowness of racket tip at the end of a Clarabell, one may just as well form a figure eight to return racket to ready position (1) or (2) hit six Clarabells in a row without ever touching racket with opposite hand. (2) here is a bit fanciful but could be a good way to groove the stroke just as one can help groove one's serve by practicing continuous figure eights.

Can one hit such figure-eighted Clarabells in which everything is smooth and liquid except for a brief part of the tract where the racket whistles? Yes one can.

And the figure eights begin to conduct their own class. They teach you to smooth out the sidearm throw rather than make it abrupt. They change the word "slam" to "squeeze" so that racket gets out ahead of hand in the smoothest possible way. Finally, they preach early unhurried forward preparation for a contact way out front.

However you've prepared before you now prepare earlier. When the ball arrives at your racket you're already wiping with your forearm from right fence toward left.

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One can't have everything.

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I was hoping to be a rotorted server.

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Absolutely. I declare you a retorted server.