A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Where From, Mediocrity?

My theory as to the mediocrity of tennis players has less to do with insufficient training methods and more with their refusal to experiment with stroke design.

In my bam forehand, e.g., I was so sure that keying downward before throwing elbow forward and upward was the way to go.

In actual play however I hit the ball short, and this stroke lacked the clean zing that occurred at the outset of this series of forehand experiments, when I hardly moved both hands sideways-- just a bit-- to initiate a late backward body turn.

So today, even though I had already played (one win, one loss, one tie), I drove to the park for unplanned self-feed.

What I found was that if I westernized the grip then started the forward key from low, the key would take the strings upward before the elbow left the stable also to go upward on the same angle.

This shot like any of my self-fed shots at the park was successful, but the only true test ever is actual play.

[bottle]

Old-fashioned Serve

now moves to a second stage. The address, so laboriously discovered and practiced on the front foot now gets transferred in toto to the rear foot. I believe I can start a two-second serve from there with no loss of mojo.

[bottle]

Steam Shovel or Haul from a Different Fulcrum?

I was going to start off Post # 3018 with the words "Four Forehand Orchestration" but then forgot what the fourth forehand was supposed to be.

Remembered at the park. It is a McEnrueful in which body fulcrum has changed from center to edge.

Visualizing a big steam or gas powered shovel (Bucyrus-Erie maybe) should help one think of butt acting as a counterweight to body swing.

But in semiopen forehands it is not hard to shift fulcrum from spine or body center to outside leg.

Suddenly one has a new shot. And can do a similar shift of fulcrum in the other two forehands or more to explore different ball effects.

[bottle]

Grand Slam Speech

I couldn't have won this Grand Slam if it weren't for you ballboys and ballgirls. In fact, if it weren't for you, there would be no Grand Slams, and the world would go dark from the simultaneous onset of nuclear winter and greenhouse cook-out not to mention the solar eclipse happening just then. Worse, we would have to pick up our own balls. So thank you so much, thank you again.

The Voice of God coming down through the retractable roof: "No, don't thank them. Eat them. It'll teach them not to be such munchkins. Lunch on them. Munch them."

[bottle]

Three Forehand Orchestration through 100 Hits

All will be struck from a pendulum backswing. Mix them up-- fine.

Backswing: Eighty of them will involve keying within a handbod structure. "handbod" however does not mean replacement by bod of hand. It simply means that hand starts slightly before bod and that enough backward bod momentum therefore remains to load hand for what transpires next.

handbodhandbod: These 80 shots include keying in both directions.

Contact: These 80 shots involve late chiming in of angular body momentum simultaneous with elbow throw up and out and back to take hand to ear. (All of this can be described with the single cartoon word "BAM!")

McEnruefuls (10): Best thought of as a body shot in both directions to create feel and comfort. Very good for low balls but works for most of the levels of bounce I see. Banking of the shoulder is essential to the secret, along with no mondo or flip at all, i.e., you keep a straight wrist.

Federfores (10): The feature that most distinguishes these shots from the BAM! shots is the size of the mondo. The BAM! mondo is a single reactive laying back of wrist. The Federfore adds arm straightening and forearm circling of racket tip from outside to inside for subsequent wipe through great extension with racket returning around opposite shoulder.

These 100 strokes will be a onetime good self-feed. After that, one can renew the orchestration on a base of ten: 8 bam forehands, 1 McEnrueful, 1 Federfore. But for a match there needn't be any rule. One could hit all McEnruefuls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj73yYe3AY8

[bottle]

Essential historical knowledge and much better than Clocky the rolling alarm clock. We own one but never use it. Hope refused to accept it as a present.

[stotty]

Don and Frew

Which is better for a recreational player: A serve modeled on Roger Federer (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ar2_500fps.mp4) or a serve modeled on Don Budge (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1stSRear.mov)?

I would Don Budge. Interesting the way Budge lowers his tossing arm so little before then ascending upwards to the release point.

Frew Macmillan did much the same and kind of "pushes" the ball up with his tossing arm bent. You can just make all this out at 1:13 on this clip.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJhthAV8-4

I imported Frew's serve into Analzyr Pro where you can watch it frame by frame...fascinating serve. You can only use a bent arm to toss the ball if you use Frew's tossing technique.

My question of this article is who knocks up the knocker-uppers:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35840393

[bottle]

An Honest Question

Which is better for a recreational player: A serve modeled on Roger Federer (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ar2_500fps.mp4) or a serve modeled on Don Budge (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1stSRear.mov)?

[bottle]

Tennis Exposed

The best tennis is played in tennis socials. Tournament tennis is one big mistake factory.

[bottle]

Or, in Bent Arm 1htsbh: Fire Power Structures Early

Then let elbow go as arm straightens with both to make racket form a long straight line.

Try anything that might cause improvement. Wouldn't be the first or last time.

[bottle]

In 1htsbh: Clench Shoulders to Inside while Elbow Clenches to Inside

Challenge every assumption. That's what I learned.

Ray Brown, the neuroscientist, seems to know a lot of physics too. At his and his wife Becky's tennis website he once put up a drawing that argued that a spinning wheel on the perimeter of another spinning wheel produces a straight line good for dwell.

[bottle]

Fun

What's most fun in serving right now-- for me-- is a lower rise of racket within the ancient down together up together formula.

That leaves faster and longer action to take racket up and around and round again to pro drop position where racket comes into alignment with the ball just as it begins to fall.

One perhaps gets the serve off a smidge sooner than some unwitting stranger may expect.

[bottle]

Or, Clench Shoulders to the Inside while Elbow Clenches to Inside

Ray Brown, the neuroscientist, seemed to know a lot of physics, too. At his and his wife Becky's tennis website one time he put up a drawing that purported to show dwell increasing or rather the creation of straightness when center of one rotating wheel was on the perimeter of another rotating wheel.

[bottle]

Bent Arm Backhand: Clench Shoulders to the Outside while Elbow Clenches to Inside

These shots-- in self-feed-- seemed more solid than opposite arrangement where shoulders clench to the inside while elbow flies to the outside.

The reason we think about this subject at all is our love for the keystone or keychain function of any ground stroke that starts off with forearm pivoting around on elbow before said elbow takes off.

Our conclusion certainly is an argument for Arthur Ashe's stepping on a 45 degree rather than the 90 degree angle toward the net that most tennis instructors preach.

Our conclusion also is an argument for preparing with elbow out rather than in, so that it will have someplace to fly with the strength to gouge someone. I opine here, reader, that you are mean so ask would you rather gouge to the outside or to the inside? Remember, Lloyd Budge, J. Donald's brother, advised backhand preparation with elbow out.

And 45 degrees of stepping across (or less) helps turn the shoulders more for assured scapular rip to the outside. Does this discussion confuse? I hope not. The terms inside and outside, in golf and tennis both, are relative to a straight line drawn at the target.

[bottle]

Connecting the Dots: A Very Exciting New Idea to me

I've been playing with the idea, gleaned from reading Dennis Ralston, that hand should lead one's backward body turn in ground strokes.

In my most reliable forehand of the past year, my McEnrueful, I've developed early separation of the hands but have continued somehow to think of the whole procedure as a unit turn.

No, the hand is quicker than the butt. The early separation accomplishes what Ralston is talking about. The unit turn though no longer preceding independent arm motion, still can come very soon and not be as delayed as I have been making it with a strong eastern grip for poptop (the McEnrueful being a differently gripped shot).

Also, the arm work can be slightly longer than I have been making it. Instead of a mere slight push of hands to right one can slightly swing one's elbow down (barely down!) as if one's arm is the 100-foot pendulum in a science museum. Of course, the arm is bent. And when arm is bent, for purpose of economy, one should try to key the forearm whenever possible (that potential is there!). And why can't one do this at the same time one does the pendulum thing through a very small arc?

Suddenly the racket tip is farther back. It certainly is in the slot but without going so far that it is pointing at rear fence.

So one keys and shallowly bowls rearward with backward core chiming in to initiate the shot. In this one respect the McEnrueful and one's basic poptop of a sizzling flat forehand are now closer together despite other differences in production and behavior of the ball once it lands.

Now one keys hand forward while keeping the elbow back. Because of the new elbow position the strings go slightly down. The elbow releases forward and upward toward full extension through a longer path. Contact point may have been drawn slightly back. The followthrough will be with back of hand to neck or left ear same as before.

One will feel, in this new shot, that one is letting the racket head do more of the work.