A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Tennis Social Report

We won our three sets, whoever my partner and I were. That was lucky. "How are you hitting them?" a stranger then asked.

"Okay," I said, "but the new shots were pretty bad as new shots always are."

"New shots?" he said.

End of conversation.

In fact, the never tried serve wasn't bad, so I hit it far more than just one time for three seconds. Need to work on it to integrate the ISR (internal shoulder rotation) better with all the new moves. ISR is definitely better in my old serves, but those old serves don't and won't carry as much pace.

As for the new backhand, that was self-fulfilling prophecy. The moment I asked "Will the new stroke by introducing confusion of intent ruin these backhands for tonight?" I was cooked.

Tried the sucker only once for a mishit. I played all evening with backhand slice. It doesn't take long for strangers to go to my forehand-- a good opportunity for me to explore new and old forehands both.

Doubles is an imperfect field for the development of new personalized stroke technology. Singles offers many more reps. Old age however, sciatica, stiffness, knee replacement dictate doubles which I'm more than happy to have.

[bottle]

In the New Backhand

Challenge every assumption. That's what I learned. So I'll challenge my own assumption that elbow movement to the outside combined with shoulderblades clench to the inside is best dynamic way to make strings go straight after keying around in this newly discovered bent-arm shot.

"Bend the stick the other way," said tennis writer and 50-year Harvard coach John M. Barnaby. Without taking that advice too literally this one time, I play, i.e., fool around with reversing previous concept while keeping its goal of balanced straightness.

We stay with the keying (THE KEEEYING) but instruct the subsequent shoulderblades clench to take strings to the outside. We meanwhile instruct elbow to release to the inside. Will shoulders have to be more turned backward for this new design to work? Yes. Will the new stroke, by introducing confusion of intent, ruin these backhands for tonight? Probably.

Very theoretical of us, reader, wouldn't you say, to have achieved dynamic balance in opposite ways?

All that will remain to us-- decide which shot we like better. Or maybe situation will decide the one we use.

But will strings go truly straight? Given the curve of batting move in every batting sport, wouldn't we be closer to the truth if we spoke of pinching the ball's outer edge?

[bottle]

The Serve: Pure Confidence and Exhalation

One could take ten big breaths the way one does before the start of a crew race.

One could, but two or three deep intakes on the front foot should be enough.

We seek paralysis neither by analysis nor from holding our breath, so we shall affect Donald Trump's nozzle and start letting air out of our inflated toy as we slowly shift weight to the back foot while still holding our arms moderately high in original position.

No one has ever had the interest to measure the duration of my serve so I shall do so right now and report back. Yup, two seconds, for which I had to slow the backward shift a little but succeeded. A slight hiss coming out of the nozzle keeps this move deliberate and loose despite being extremely slow.

Now we start forward, turning the shoulders backward against flat feet. It is important to ask, probably while sleeping, which of two entities in the serve is driving the other at any point along the way. The entities are shoulders and hips. The honest answer will be one then the other then the other then the one and finally the other.

We toss very soon in this arrangement-- to two feet in front of the baseline.

Can I serve this way tonight at the tennis social without 10,000 miles, hours and reps put in first?

Not only can but will.

P.S. I almost forgot. One second to shift weight to starting position on the rear foot. Two seconds for the serve. A total of three seconds then out of an evening of tennis and food.

[bottle]

Watching the Video

Weight never goes back, does it? Because weight was back to begin. And toss goes to two feet in front of the baseline.

[don_budge]

Classic Don Budge...

(http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...DB1stSRear.mov)

Favorite service drawings ever…outstanding stuff. Really classic stuff. Just the way he taught it too.

[bottle]

Where Serve is Today

Thanks.

I won my serve at love once this morning but overall didn't do well. Can blame partners' volleying skills a bit but need to take my share of the blame. Have been working on serve after all, had down time with nothing to do but overthink. Wasn't match tough after the lay-off. Besides, the other guys are younger and that is a fact. Unlike a lot of players, though, I think it better to think than not to think.

The Sampras rotations are too complex for a 1938 serve; still, 1938 comes before 2020 and we can modify those body turns for old, young and middle age.

What we want is quick, solid arm work about the body reinforced by body at key points in the two seconds of the serve, especially at the one twentieth of duration from pro drop to contact, i.e., .1 second.

We all should have a sense of serving in which no words go through the skull.

However, I think I want the two hands to fall down naturally followed by a big shoulders turn followed by a heel-raising hip turn to catch up followed by heel-flattening forward hip turn followed by hip turn to take racket tip from first drop to pro drop with both feet flat! Then comes the big shoulders surge (70 degrees in .1 second) to reinforce ISR (internal shoulder rotation) to the ball.

The right heel rotates up on toes against flat braced foot. Foot only walks when ISR has finished taking racket head out to right. The video and the still photos of drawings are a bit different on heel questions.

(http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...DB1stSRear.mov)

[stotty]

3000th reply...not bad.

[bottle]

Signing the New Backhand

Reader, you might tell me not to sign the thing for all I know. "Bottle, your new shot will sink from the added weight of a signature engraved on every one of your racket throats."

Naw I'm going to sign not with words but with gesture. Tennis strokes are gesture. This will be just a little gesture at the end of the effective gesture and who knows might even improve balance.

Remember, this is a shot that has never been tried in the company of other human beings. But it works in self-feed. So it should work immediately when I play tomorrow just the way its twin on the forehand side did.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYmiffPMUho)

All right, into the narrative. We've brought the racket tip around with more leverage than twisting arm would if it were straight. Simple physics is the reason. The lever from elbow to racket tip in bent arm construction is longer than the lever from hand to racket tip in straight arm construction. Well, that's true if one wants to talk about twisting the upper arm. On backhand or forehand one can have a straight arm and twist it late to close strings in the contact area thus bringing joker factor in.

Arm rolling is good, I would say, adds racket head speed, but why not use it early to get it out of the way? Closed racket face can be opening when it hits the ball-- more controllable.

The gesture at end of the gesture now: Elbow goes out as scapulae rip to squeeze the strings straight. But arm is still bent. So straighten it. Then bend it again. This will feel comfortable. Behind, do a similar thing with the other arm. Or just go around with racket to standard Don Budge comfortable finish although you will have not had his straight arm before he bent it. Or maybe make a roof parallel to the sky (but that might be too mannered unless it works well). Haven't made a choice since haven't been to the park yet today.

But maybe you want to cut off followthrough for quick recovery. Again, keep the spreading arms bent. Up to you.

[bottle]

Shoulder Yoke Recovered So Back to Self-Feed

Real forehand still works. Imaginary backhand works, too. I always thought that about the imagination, but in tennis stroke design you need either to know what you are doing or have incredible luck.

[bottle]

A Filled Auditorium in Michigan

It's volleyball, just like tennis. The score is 20 to 13, with West Middle School the team behind.

My friend Maxine, who the week before missed both of her service attempts-- game difference-- is at the line.

She serves. 20-14, 20-15, 20-16, 20-17, 20-18, 20-19 at which point her grandmother, Hope, with whom I am having a fight, yells "Go, Maxine!"

So Maxine misses.

"You shouldn't have said that," I say.

"He blames me!" Hope says to her daughter.

I do.

[bottle]

Splish Splash I Was Taking A Bath...

Naw, I take showers. That's when I get any ideas I don't get when I am supposedly asleep.

Janet Leigh got murdered by Anthony Perkins while taking a shower at The Bates Motel. Menelaus got murdered by Clytemnestra while taking a bath. Likewise Marat by Charlotte Corday.

Baths, showers and bed-- where things really happen. For full enjoyment of design phase keep things liquid.

And so, if I said to keep elbow out, keep it in. But to whom do I speak? To myself of course. You, me, him, her, it-- what's the difference?

The shot here is a mystery backhand never struck by anybody. So how the hell can people generalize and judge it? If it's no good one can return to previous backhand, the shower over, the air cleared, the mist disappearing from one's mirror.

Arm is bent. Chickenwing, I know. But only if one leads with the elbow in order to be unsuccessful on purpose through not letting the racket do one's work.

We more ambitious persons, members of the handbodhandbod Army Division, key the racket head around.

Now, to bring off just one element of simultaneity here, we let the elbow go. But in what direction? Out. Toward net or side fence or both? Depends what the other elements do since goal is to make the racket travel straight. Can elbow going toward left fence balance off one's shoulderblades clench toward right fence to make the strings pinch straight? What if we add arm-straightening to the mix? Maybe yes maybe no but another possibility.

When for any reason one cannot play much less use a ball machine or self-feed one should keep things splishy, splashy, squishy and liquid.

[bottle]

Seasoning of a Mental Shot

Another day of not being able to try out a new shot companion to one that most definitely has been vetted and does work.

Time then not to change the subject. Better to think more about both of these shots. We'll give them plainer names than usual: "the good shot" and "the maybe shot."

Where did the good shot come from? Would knowing its genesis strengthen the argument for it over all other known forehands for all genders and abilities and ages?

Clearly, it's designed for older players who can't move well, get tired soon, make more mistakes as a match wears on.

These truths lead either to retirement or more economy. But if one has come up with some shot that produces one's best result only with less effort, younger persons should try it too.

The good shot like any good shot is both new and not new. It probably is known to the desperate or commonsensical breed of service returners who have given themselves a hundred choices.

I was playing against the mayor of the town where we lived and two of his henchmen. All three were as politically conservative as I am progressive. Who made these pairings? Not I. I only know that if the words "good shot" got used, they were applied to one of the other three guys.

The mayor, a former starting tackle on the University of Virginia football team, served. He was mean as a snake. I remembered the time when I hadn't played for long and he drilled me at the net. And he had a very fast serve.

Just then the club champion walked past-- 6' 7", 220 lbs., 130 mph-- and shouted, "Nice shot, John Escher."

What had I done? Flopped racket down to my right and took one step. And that was all the shoulders turn there was in that shot, no unit turn followed by intricate arm work-- very simple arm work and then the step-out was the body turn.

If that kind of service return can work, why not apply some of its principles to one's larger ground game?

One needn't abandon one's mondo if one has a mondo, that is for sure. The arm placement then can be even more simple than on that day against the mayor. A limited push of racket to the right. Compare that to body first followed by the full swan dive of Juan Del Potro.

handbodhandbod. I am a shortstop keying my hand around. Elbow then takes off (the BAM!) of the shot. Back of hand finishes against left cheek.

[bottle]

Coxswain and Teaching Pro Patter

handbodhandbod, handbodhandbod, 1-2, 1-2 . Backhand, forehand, backhand forehand but recover! None of it good if you don't recover! Bam, bam-- like this. That's it. Balance! Now some farther away. handbod is the sequence. Hey, how far you have to push your hands to the side for the forehand? That's right. Not much if you then get the good turn. But there's a range.

Your patter, my fellow teaching pros, is not the same as mine or anyone else's, one would hope. We ought to value individuality, we really should, even when we have an Orca whale affecting individualism running for president.

An Orca whale of course-- it has been well documented-- would as lief bite any human being in two as not. Reader, you can nominate him if you want. We persons on the other side will thank you when we therefore regain the Senate and the House.

In the meantime we will use our own exhortatory skills so similar to those of a coxswain in some eight-oared crew.

When I was the head rowing coach at Skidmore College and before that West Virginia University, I used to spend three times as much effort in recruiting a good coxswain as any huge hulk of an oarsman or oarswoman.

A coxswain is one's surrogate coach but along for the Nantucket sleigh ride that is any crew race.

Our own coxswain-- Richard MacKenzie nicknamed "Mouse"-- was unbelievably good as diagnostician and remedialist. But when I, in the middle of the boat at # 4 for all four years of college, was tired and goofing off, Mouse would cry, "Bottle, your puddle is purple!"

In Herman Melville, specifically the novel MOBY DICK, there are three main coxswains, the one for whom a coffee chain is named, along with Stubb, Flask, and then when the contest is really tough, the one-legged Captain Ahab himself, with his specially picked harpoonist, Fedallah, in the bow.

Melville goes to great lengths to explain and present the differences in patter among these coxswains, while saying less about Ahab's style, which one can imagine is quiet yet effective.

My point is that any one of the four could be a great teaching pro in our sport, well aware that the timing of some remark is just as important as its content.

And as Bill Stowe explains in ALL TOGETHER, his memoir of the 1964 U.S. Olympic Gold Medal Crew, the coxswain, Bob Zimonyi, was Hungarian.

This had great value for a crew that was able to win the biggest race ever held, that one in every four years 1964 in Tokyo.

Zimonyi was considerably older than the next most seasoned member of that crew. His calmness and maturity (in fact, my Hungarian girlfriend Neli once told me, all Hungarian men, because of the grim weight of Hungarian history, seem more sapient than they frequently are) took the crew straight to the top.

But, as Stowe explains, the better the crew the less it needs its coxswain except to steer. The crew, in other words, exactly like whomever is number one tennis player in the world, becomes nidifugous.

A great advantage that the excitable gadfly Bob Zimonyi had was that in the heart of a race he was apt to scream only in Magyarul.

Nobody else in the boat knew Hungarian. So they didn't understand a word. They just won.

[bottle]

Imaginary Backhand, Cont'd

Doctor: No play a few more days. Instead of saying "I can hit a golf ball 275 feet-- the polls are all in my favor" say "Does it matter if the new backhand is soft when I first take it out on the court? I have a pretty good one-hander after all. It has a loop and waterfall built in, an early straight arm and late roll-over-- could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright himself."

It's just a bit willowy. So I doubt that, characteristically, I hit the ball perfectly clean. Who needs the real or the imaginary really-- not if the game is doubles and one can slice. My long arm one hander is apt to be picked off in a way that the slice never is.

And so, within handbodhandbod prescription, we key the racket tip around on bent arm held out. How far around? Just far enough so that when the elbow releases combined with shoulderblades clench the strings go perfectly straight.

Which edge of the ball did you hit? I repeat, the strings go straight. The upper arm roll is over by the time one hits the ball with a BAM!

Is contact clean? Fire the flying grip change in subtly different directions until it is.

[bottle]

Bam Forehand, Bam Backhand

handbodhandbod, handbodhandbod, 1-2, 1-2 . Backhand, forehand, backhand forehand but recover! None of it good if you don't recover! Bam, bam-- like this. That's it. Balance! Now some farther away. handbod is the sequence. Hey, how far do you have to push your hands to the side for the forehand? That's right. Not much if you then get the good turn. But there's a range.