A New Year's Serve

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New Name for Inside Out Stroke

The Clarabell. Honks a lot while saying nothing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarabell_the_Clown). A horn as clear as a bell. Oh well, hate to waste such a good name on a mere tennis stroke but naming something is always helpful.

Now, if one doesn't hit a forehand with full extension, one is a bad person. On the other hand, if one just hit a successful see see (short angle) one is a bad person who won the point.

So alternate Clarabells with see sees, BAM! forehands and McEnruefuls. Oh, sorry, I'm talking about myself or rather who I'd like to be.

For a see see or reverse see see the wrist will need to be laid back. But elbow can stay home.

Why lay the wrist (hand) back even though one desires acuteness of crosscourt angle? Because straight wrist closes the racket face when rolling any part or parts of the arm.

Twisting laid back wrist (I would say "depressed wrist" but don't want to create psychological problems) can lift the racket face.

For the best see see I now want to combine the three-quarter arm length and underhand topple of the BAM! forehand with the rolling arm or wipe of the Clarabell albeit in this case the wipe will come from the forearm alone.

"Underhand topple" is surely an interesting phenomenon. I've tried to identify it as a subtle meter built into certain forehands. The combination of three-quarter arm length and elbow staying back alters the racket pitch in dramatic fashion before one strikes the ball.

Can one control such a small movement as it produces huge changes in where and how the ball will fly? There is a trade-off for sure but one produces more variation this way with less time and effort.

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Why?

All of a sudden my PetraKordian wouldn't work. Because I forgot to quickly put my elbow in a single place and leave it there for the first part of the stroke?

People emphasize one's athleticism, shrewdness and numerous other qualities necessary to becoming a champion.

Simple memory, however, may be one of the most commonly underestimated if one is developing some new stroke. Alzheimer's Disease may strike at any age.

A young and persistent kid lucky enough to be introduced to good strokes early won't need to think about things as much.

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=petr+korda+hitting+with+his+son&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002

http://www.newsday.com/sports/golf/us-open/tennis-player-petr-korda-is-caddy-dad-at-women-s-open-1.5584315

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=petr+korda+hitting+with+his+son&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002

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Report

I figure that one self-feed session equals one terrific shot in the new way in actual play the first time out.

If one is lucky in persisting with one's new design the percentage of success (at the highest level of self-imposed standard) goes up after that.

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Inside Out

So I'll go with this adaptive new stroke when I play in two hours. Did try it out in self-feed yesterday. The shot may not be good for low balls-- depends how much I can bend my knees. But the BAM! forehand and McEnrueful both are excellent in picking up low balls.

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Elbow Schmelbow

Martina Navratilova, on TV, is good at criticizing forehands that have too much wibble-wobble in them.

Let's substitute the verb "mock" for "criticize" in order to generate more clout. But especially in my case I want to use better elbow awareness to complete the third unit of my three-forehand orchestration. Also, I once played Elbow, the dumb cop in Shakespeare's MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

In my McEnrueful, elbow stays pretty much in the same relation to rest of the bod until the very end, where it solos to relieve pressure on the shoulder.

In my BAM! forehand, the elbow turns under while scraping the ball but only as part of a forward arc so long and gradual that racket pitch remains controllable.

For an inside out wiped forehand I have decided today on a right-angled arm to get the thing going.

I am frequently the oldest guy on the court so I want to have interesting but more importantly effective strokes to compensate for any deficiency in movement or nerve.

The McEnrueful and the Bam! both have some dead stick in them which is-- provocatively I hope-- anti-loop.

To be consistent let's use dead stick at end of the backswing in third member of the trio as well.

Grip now is the only thing that closes the racket. One's right-angled arm is a bit shorter than the arm used for the BAM! if I want to think that way. The elbow can tuck into the side of the body for reassurance as well as geometric purpose. The hand leads the backswing although body starts turning at the same time. Will be good if we can do this without taking a leadership class. The tip is quickly back and ready to turn a smidge more as body turns just a bit more than most people turn it and where.

From here the arm keys vigorously forward mondoeing however it wants but keeping hand on a level path toward top edge of the ball.

How much to key? Dunno. Could be just a little. Then the elbow takes over.

Elbow elbow-- got to think about elbow. Send it straight toward the net as in the BAM! and the racket tip won't get around. Send it straight toward the right fence and elbow will close the racket too much, i.e., create great instability.

So one compromises. Send elbow with vigor equal to the BAM! but on a level path toward right fence post while starting one's wipe.

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Self-Fed No-Followthrough Fore-Hands

I don't want to be distracted by how far or fast the ball goes or whether it looks like what.

No banking either.

I'll save aeronautical banking for my McEnrueful. No lift from the shoulder either. I'll save that for my BAM! Forehand including topspin lobs aimed at an imaginary clothesline coinciding with the net top but one mile high.

And now for the positives: Still hand with gyroscopic as well as stable placement. The head does not bounce around. It does not tilt in any direction either. It stays still. (I'm speaking of the human head.)

Still hand. Still hand? What are you talking about? The hand establishes itself at level of top edge of anticipated ball. (You never know when someone might hit a tennis ball near you.)

handbod 1: code for elbow and body establishing hand in a still position relative to the body which turns it a bit more.

handbod 2: The hand sidearms at top of ball before elbow chimes in. The elbow chiming in signifies a greater involvement of the whole body while including a bit of wipe. Stop the stroke there.

A bit of wipe? Are you crazy? You want a lot of wipe.

Yes, but most of it comes after the racket and ball collision, which is where I'm stopping this stroke right now. In fact, after collision, the racket will wipe toward left fence before returning to left shoulder, but not right now.

So over and over I go "handbodhandbod"-- knowing that establishing that inner voice is important to me if not to anyone else.

I make a partial stroke that ends with racket pointing at the right fence. I can't care less what the ball does after I hit it. Or what some stupid bystander thinks or says-- a person who doesn't know when to leave somebody alone.

(Driving ranges for golf in South Korea and the United States-- the one place in these countries where introspection still is permitted to go on.)

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Mondo in Direction of the Shot

The context here is forehand progression/development along a line of emerging discovery, which sentence may sound too much like a word salad but really isn't.

One slowly finds a path through dense creepers out in a forest somewhere. And as one does this, one makes new discoveries-- simple as that.

I don't think too many people today are aware of the BAM forehand. The "BAM" of it is not some acronym such as "Bottle's Annoying Mess" but rather a cartoon word from the days of Joe Palooka or Captain Marvel.

BAM! would appear in a white balloon as Captain Marvel delivered an uppercut or Joe Palooka received one on his chin. Small stars or asterisks would fly through the air like projectiles of perspiration and emblems of the closed head injury underway.

I saw some of these forehands in the late twentieth century but never developed one for myself until now when I am 76 years old. A simple shot which I have lately been describing (and hitting) over and over.

The hand keys ahead as the elbow stays back. The elbow then flies forward up and maybe even back. Whichever the case, the knuckles brush one's own ear: a Captain Marvel uppercut.

This is a no wipe shot. It has a subtle or rather dramatic height adjustment meter built in.

A middling degree of arm bend figures into this. The arm is neither straight or right-angled. The keying action from stationary elbow therefore leads the forward action with one's hand down and forward as if one is about to push through a stuck cellar door with right palm turned back and down.

The blow is delivered straight ahead: Terms like "outside-in" or "inside-out" are irrelevant. It's an interesting if usually not great shot but becomes fabulous as a topspin lob, with only difference from a moonball being a very slight degree more of keying under before the delayed elbow release.

Flattening out this shot from same mondo produces a passable if somewhat mediocre shot since the different vectors don't quite line up.

Better to mondo as part of a roundabout swing with elbow still to delay. Roundabout swing (call this a different forehand now) equals roundabout mondo equals inside out swing. The hand stays at level of ball or even above it. The racket tip is what flips down then wipes up.

Wipe in a forehand, it seems to me, ought to be inside-out with the outside-in part of it from right fence to left fence only occurring after contact.

A slow motion sequence of Muguruza's forehand yesterday during French Open coverage showed no wipe until post-contact. Stanley Plagenhoef might say she was merely using wipe to relieve pressure on her shoulder.

In contrast, I remember similar slow-mo video of Roger where the wipe always begins well before the contact.

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Geriatrics Tennis

My friend Ron has been calling me up a lot so as to keep me playing seniors tennis. You see, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, there are two groups: seniors tennis and geriatrics tennis. Ron knows how much I enjoy geriatrics tennis with its carousel of erect rackets to determine who will play four games next. Being a good doubles partner, he suspects I may go out to pasture.

"Player on court six!" comes the command.

Phil in his nineties comes shuffling and limping out.

"Aha," you say to yourself, "I'm going to hit to Phil."

Wrong. Hit to Phil and you will be sorry. Hit away from Phil.

The truth is that so long as my partial knee replacement and other things hold up I can play seniors tennis, geriatrics tennis or any tennis. There's no need to cut anything out other than singles. One can enjoy it all.

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Aesthetics Raise Their Ugly Head Once Again

We learned in rowing that a crew must be beautiful but not too beautiful to go very fast.

In serving, one need not start turning shoulders backward halfway along arm travel to rear fence even though Don Budge appears in video to do exactly that.

One can use left hand repeatedly to flex right arm as one gets ready to serve.

Then at time to go, left arm can straighten over and down for its toss as right arm also straightens, in fact both arms can move just at the elbow. In other words the two forearms are what moves.

Next, the arm can continue to fence during upward part of the toss. Another way of thinking about this is that the two arms move from their shoulders.

So first the forearms move and then the whole arms move thus lengthening a moving lever.

Now the same moving lever lengthens again as one's backward turning body takes over and the serve continues from there.

This lengthening of a moving lever seems beautiful to me but not too beautiful, i.e., is functional, and one may notice a difference in one's serve.

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Flattening out a Big Forehand

If you're not going to be unhealthy sometime, reader, how are you ever going to build up your immune system?

I've got the BAM-- all elbow throw and no wipe. I've got the McEnrueful too-- a big slow body sweep that keeps racket linear to stay on the ball. And I've got the kickshawe as good as any man in Illyria.

Why not stop there? Well, there's all the investment I put into wipe.

But I would like not to depart much from backswing I've currently got going.

So my new mondo in which elbow stays back becomes a keeper.

But now, instead of throwing elbow straight so knuckles reverse and flow back to brush ear, I swing the elbow more round-about for inside out path and finish by shoulder.

At the same time I start the wipe. Once you've mondoed, it seems to me, you either wipe or not.

At the same time you fire both hips and shoulders in equal measure.

But let's back up, particularly on the subject of the hips.

Either of two things are likely already to have happened, neither of which should be confused with the other: 1) you (I) did a little foot patter of four steps-- "outside-inside-outside-inside." On the fourth step (with inside foot) the heel went up on toes. You are ready to hit the ball. There should be no further step-out. The forward hips turn flattens the foot but continues with it flat then continues as you go up on your toes. I'm proposing hips turn solo followed by hips turn and shoulders turn in equal measure since I believe that "kinetic chain" has never had any cue value whatsoever.

or

2) You got shoulders completely around as you turned up elbow, so that you should eschew (leave out) any farther shoulders turn. You've saved a step-- made three in fact instead of four. So you won't do the questionable thing of stepping out on your toes. Forward hips turn will start early now, driving the step-out which will land on a flat foot. Hips turn will continue through the flatness and subsequent rising from the toes.

All of this sounds to me like prolonged hips turn compared to the extremely fast and very rough hips turn that so many people adore.

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An Even Bigger Forehand

You've got to get it off fast although it has four parts.

So do that but make it a heavier shot too through using a Dennis Ralston trick.

There are two parts going backward: 1) Body turn and placement/turning up of the elbow. 2) More body turn with hand kept still.

There are two parts going forward: 1) Elbow stays back while hand mondoes down. 2) Push through a stuck cellar door.

In 2) going backward, no matter to where you are getting the left foot make sure it's up on its TOES (Ralston).

In 2) going forward use hips to drive down the heel as you push the elbow from your super relaxed shoulder.

Finally, set up away from the ball so that the two forward parts go inside out.

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Keep Knuckles Going toward the Target: A Miserable Cue Unless...

Unless you have a roll of coins clenched in your knuckles and you mean the ball to go in the direction the coin roll points.

One therefore may as well edit the cue to "Keep your pinkie knuckle going toward your target," as the Hollywood teaching pro Al Secunda used to advise.

Of course the pinky has three different knuckles. Which did Al mean? Doesn't matter. Any will do.

A spot marked on the thumb can also work well. We're speaking of a certain generation of one-handers in which elbow roll occurs early if it occurs at all-- the antithesis of Stanlislas Wawrinka and Domenic Thiem.

It is interesting to re-read Vic Braden and Bill Bruns on this subject.

Vic at some place in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE tells his reader to follow his directions strictly and never diverge from a single detail.

But on aiming a one-hand backhand he is quite different, suggesting that the reader may need to put in major time to experiment and figure this out.

Be very free in figuring out my best aim cue, is how I take this.

Since I haven't self-fed for several days, I think I'll try open racket like Petr Korda but not as far around as his. Vic Braden would hate this but Petr and I know how to get the racket hooded fast.

Vic Braden: "If your racket is perfect...you can do a lot of crazy things with your body and still make the shot."

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Three Rooms in The Asspiration Suite of Trump Tower

Each room is a topspin backhand. And my lover insisted that I only use one hand. She has her preferences. What's a fellow going to do.

I thought we'd just follow Pascual's advice to stay in one room but found myself using all three.

The PetraKordian is an especially roomy room overlooking a fountain in the Roman garden just below.

We get in our bathing suits and go down there every day and lie on our sides, eating grapes.

It's not a bad life. As I said, the PetraKordian is a spacious stroke. The hips, the stomach, the legs, the rolling then not rolling arm-- all of it seems to happen slowly and at once, and Alexander (as my honey calls a certain part of my anatomy) becomes great.

The Vic Braden Redux is an accordion too. It's just that when Vic imitated the Don Budge backhand, he got the thumb right but left out the best part. That would be the open backswing followed by rolling straightening arm. Both I and my lover-- let's call her Mimi after the man who lent his name to this tower-- find ourselves asking ourselves over and over, "What did Stan Smith mean when he said the weight is where the racket is?"

We try to talk everything out-- one reason our relationship is so good although Mimi has permanently forbidden me any use of that word in her presence.

We both agree that Stan didn't want us to do a Saint Vitus Dance as one's arm rolls straight.

Reader, do you follow? As you roll your arm straight the racket tip comes around in a pretty quick way. So does that mean your weight shifts pretty fast too? I don't think so. You have to give Stan's words a loose interpretation. Weight doesn't really start its shift until the racket has rolled.

That leaves the Stanley Plagenhoef Basic-- very good for beginners or more advanced intermediates who are feeling like a beginner on a certain day.

One can do one of two things: 1) Go down to the garden and eat more grapes; 2) Immediately following the quick roll, employ slow roll like Stanley to keep the racket square at all times.

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When Exactly did Vic Braden Invent his Topspin Backhand?

This piece of historical trivia has become important to me just as I couldn't care less when Vic Braden invented his topspin forehand although both inventions probably happened at about the same time before college or even when Vic Braden was a freshman at Kalamazoo.

That seems pretty late, I must admit, but we suspect that Vic Braden still was developing his backhand at the overhaul level when he hitch-hiked into Detroit to watch Don Budge play Bobby Riggs.

Kalamazoo is a considerable hike to the west of Detroit. And Vic would have brought his index cards with different sized holes in them through which to peer at the Don Budge backhand.

We know about the holes from TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, but whether Vic was hitch-hiking from Kalamazoo College is not nailed down as historical fact.

I do know from my friend Harry Constant of Grosse Pointe that Vic had heavy topspin off of both sides and that Harry and his team-mates at Hillsdale College were flummoxed. "We didn't even know what topspin was."

But I join Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith in laughing at Vic's forehand. That's what Arthur and Stan did in TENNIS OUR WAY, the cassette video made by all three. There is a scene of Vic hitting a forehand. Arthur and Stan watch. They laugh as Vic sits and hits.

Interestingly, there is no corresponding view of Vic's backhand. I'll tell you why. Vic Braden's backhand was a very good one.

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Frame the Shot: Ask how Wide or Narrow is the Window

Am still talking about the VBRBH. Width or narrowness of the window is going to make a big difference to pace-spin ratio. For most spin with least weight squeeze the whole shot into a narrow frame.

The narrowest frames are created by pressing already rolled hand forward more which gets it lower for a longer steeper lift.

The end of the lift will be higher. Very low to very high equals very narrow frame, but with contact point farther toward left fence too, i.e., more separation.