A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

handbodhandbod! my brothers and my sisters-- a New Bent-Arm Backhand

"But bent-arm backhands aren't any good," you (my reader) say. "And without a loop your one-hander won't be first rate."

To which I reply, "Listen, your name may be Eliot Teltscher but mine is John Escher, and what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and if something works on the forehand it will work on the backhand."

"Whatever you say, boss."

"Every instructor decries a bent arm one-hander. But let us deconstruct their captious criticism. Did every instructor put a keylime pie in the middle of the design-- of course not. They never thought of it. Was beyond their range of familiarity."

"Stop speaking Swahili."

"Keeeeeeeee-YING. As in a bammy farm gate forehand."

"Lost me."

"People used to say that Vic Braden with his sit-and-hit would be the death of your tennis, but now I think Peter Burwash was the real villain with all of his early putting of weight on the front foot."

"Okay, you keep weight on rear foot for longer. What else."

"You fire flying grip change slightly to the outside. You bring the racket behind you with a combination of scapular adduction and warlock-like turning of your shoulders under your chin not to mention a tentative step-out at the same time."

"Tentative! How can that be good?"

"It keeps weight on rear foot longer. You just test the water with your toes and bring heel down late."

"Ahhhh get out of here."

"You key the bent arm around. To hit the ball you clench your shoulderblades together but does your arm stop? Of course not. And both arms go out at the same speed. But both stay bent. And only move a short distance. Like the pronounced but minimalist arm work in Braden's own backhand called very good by Vic Seixas who hated the rest of the for him in their one match defeatable Braden game. With thumb diagonally across the flat of the handle just like Braden. With a magic marker's cross on pad of the thumb. With that cross moving straight at the target as you sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers.' With any excess of energy arcing the racket up to form the roof of a tent."

"And then you wait for a lion to sniff the tent. You actually tried this?"

"Of course not. A dermatologist just took a pound of flesh from my right shoulder yoke. As the very sexy receptionist for the Northern Virginia Daily used to say, 'The playground is closed for repairs.'

"One other thing though. As you perform your scapular retraction you can also rise from front foot or not as you choose.

"Remember, Elyot, teaching pros are innocent persons. They don't understand that lifting of the head from the knees and body qualifies as moving the head. They just tell you to keep your head still. On the other hand, if you do extend the whole body you perform Alexander Technique.

"It's always good to be Alexander the Great. Who can argue against a libidinous full body erection early in the morn?"

[don_budge]

Sleepwalking…writing

You really are working on this stuff in your sleep…as rumoured in certain circles. Zzzzzz…

[bottle]

A Slower Backswing in the See See of Post # 2989 ?

The backswing is half as long as for a normal forehand hit for pace and depth.

Why then shouldn't the timing of this half-backswing be twice as long to keep everything consistent with the rest of your game?

Depends I suppose on whether in billiards you would be an elastic backswing or dead stick backswing devotee.

If deadstick you take the racket to side and stop it as if you are about to hit a volley.

Of course, after your first see see (let us postulate that it was successful) your perceptive opponent would know your intention and take off toward your target close to the net. But that might happen anyway since backswing for this shot is half as long.

For now I'll stay open to either backswing tactic.

[bottle]

Next Up with BAM forehand which used to be "Bam Bam" before the Two Bams Coalesced

Unlike in the previous post, this is drawing board stuff that might or not work.

For a see see eliminate backward shoulders turn-- that should buy time.

But do shift hands to right as usual. Now key the racket around to outer edge of ball before lifting the hand to desired followthrough of back of hand against one's neck.

I thought also of keying while shifting weight forward. But this would separate key and rip rather than keep them together as a single unit to provide enough topspin.

So one half-backswings while getting weight on front foot followed by the bam (!). "Rules were made to be broken by those who know them."

[bottle]

Good New Forehand Tested in Competition and Noted by Another Player

I stick to my view that any little tweak makes for an entirely new shot since any stroke is a cycle in which everything affects everything else.

There is more than one new tweak in this shot; first, the player becomes more still-headed and shifty-eyed.

Could one take hands to side in tandem with shift in the eyes? Probably. More likely though the eyes will shift at the speed they want.

The hands start the backswing, the shoulders turn next. This backswing sequence takes no more time than its opposite, (body-arm), which is the way most people are taught

The hand starts the foreswing (but how!?), the shoulders turn next.

Here's how the hand starts the foreswing. By keying (KEE-YING). That means elbow stays back as the forearm turns into its best pushing position.

Posture meanwhile is erect with weight on back foot. One saves this weight for one big push which will be a combination of pivot and throw of the elbow straight ahead and up and over the opposite shoulder. (This is a bent arm shot all the way.)

The backswing, despite any description here, is one smooth motion.

The foreswing, similarly, is smooth, fast and powerful.

Any step-out can happen late as part of the final pivot. But if foot already is down it can be with heel up. This keeps weight back for longer. Now the pivot drives the foot flat as one hits the ball.

Note: Elbow can move out from body as part of the first half of the backswing, in fact must do this to make this shot work right. Elbow placement away from body does not negatively affect the later keying move although it may take someone several decades to realize this.

[bottle]

handbodhandbod or handcorehandcore-- Vote for One

What, reader, you say you don't believe in either? I know what you mean. I have two shots that employ conventional notions of unit turn in that the body rotates from the outset. I like them both fine-- my McEnrueful, a forehand, and my slice, a backhand-- I never will change them.

But I'm working on other more shifty-eyed shots too. "Unit turn," it seems to me, clearly means that racket and feet and hips and shoulders and probably anything else you can think of rotate all at once.

In most of the models which are shown to us we see the hand being held still by opposite hand on racket throat. I'm glad to have already violated that principle in an effort to develop a "handsier" game like that of Dennis Ralston, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Tracy Austin and Chris Evert.

The proposed shots take things to a different level: Now the hand and shifty eyes and perhaps the outside foot will initiate the backswing. The hand again will initiate the foreswing.

Accept this or don't, reader-- I will respect you in either case. If you do buy the new design, though, then vote: handcorehandcore is closer to standard English but handbodhandbod is more in the frequently superior pre-verbal tennis bag. Inchoate noises jumping out at the camera is best during one's Bag Check.

In addition, handcore sounds like hardcore, handbod like handjob so take your pick.

[bottle]

Comfort, Slam and Moonball

At the DSO (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) Leonard Slatkin puts the violas here where the violins used to be and vice-versa.

"You're thinking too much, Maestro," a tennis player might say. "Soon there's going to be paralysis by analysis."

No, it's just that the different orchestration works better for this particular Brahms piece and the change even has historical precedent which Maestro Slatkin surely knows but doesn't want to tell the audience. Or maybe he did, yes I guess he did.

The word "orchestration" of course can apply to what instruments are on the stage as well as their placement.

Of the three forehands I've been working on, one is for comfort and a certain weight that causes certain players to overhit.

The Agassi-But-Me and Federfore cross is a spinnier shot with more clearance, Robert Lansdorp's "academic ball."

In the third shot, a ping-pong slam on which I'll work through self-feed today, there is keying of bent arm before a ripping hit and followthrough up over the opposite shoulder yoke.

What should the mondo for this shot be? About one third the size of that in the Agassi-Federfore, i.e., wrist will react back but the great forearm roll that takes racket tip from one side fence to the other will be gone.

The comfort shot I mentioned, my McEnrueful, employs no mondo whatsoever and is just a big body sweep in which aeronautically the hitting shoulder banks down and then up.

Can such a weird orchestration be tolerated by one's nerves, with torso turn start immediate (The Slanted McEnrueful) but fractionally delayed in the other two upright postured shots?

Only if all three shots are practiced as a unit. Then, the stark differences among them may facilitate assimilation until each individual shot emerges as a real man and marine just out of boot camp.

[bottle]

Down to Three Forehands Maybe Two

1) McEnrueful as a total body shot (although arm body arm body produces a potentially very good shot). The body shot, using banking, is what I've done for a long time. Its logic is body and arm first, then all body with pretty much fixed arm. Body like a golfer's is slanted toward ball from the hips rather than being upright.

2) Agassi-But-Me starts out with shifty eyes and two feelers probing toward right fence. The logic is arm, body, arm, body (see earlier posts for more explanation). The arm straightens as torso belatedly turns back. The straighened arm followed by big mondo creates similarity to a Federfore.

3) In this variation of 2) army backswing around upright body to start is the same but the hitting arm stays bent. Which offers distinct challenges for getting low and different possibilities for building racket head speed. Right now I see A) elbow leaving the station early taking upper and lower arms with it or B) keying with forearm before elbow leaves station.

If either 2) or 3) turns out better than the other and sufficiently different in the way ball behaves in competition I go with it. In the case of 3) being better, because of the two variations A) and B) I still would have three forehands.

[bottle]

Walk a Little Plainer, Daddy

If one edits out the vertical tip lift and subsequent turn down of palm here (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...nt2_250fps.mp4) by using same grip but with a slight rise of elbow one can achieve a same freeze frame as Federer but earlier in the stroke cycle and therefore with more simplicity.

Having done that (which I recommend for all players as flawed as myself), one can still do a dogpat followed by a huge mondo.

But let's run the filmstrip of ourselves backward so that the dog gets unpatted and the racket is once again at the same point where Federer had it immediately before his racket descent.

Where in 1-2 rhythm does the backswing end and the foreswing begin? At top or bottom?

At the top. That's where hand lingers or hurries. At this point we stop being a compliant low level player to become a self-empowered bull.

We're conceiving things differently now. So go back to wait position. We're all arm and no body till the new top of arm movement place, which is almost like Andre Agassi (two insect feelers going out toward side fence) except with more bent elbow.

And body turns backward now during the dogpat. Wait a minute! Didn't we state that foreswing began with racket up?

We did, but nobody said this was going to be simple. The foreswing for the arm begins at top of dogpat. The backswing for the body ends with its backward rotation in tandem with the downward dogpat thus imparting a bit of momentum to the racket head which helps form the big mondo.

Using the filmstrip shown here as model, the mondo will be huge, particularly in right to left dimension.

The racket tip in other words goes from way out toward right fence to way in toward left fence all in the space of Roger's very low mondo which we have decided to filch.

The mondoeing and wiping arm swing will now continue to the ball at which time the body will chime in.

[bottle]

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Played badly today partially because of sciatica but more from laboring with too many new ideas. If one doesn't have any new ideas, one needn't worry. But if one does have ideas, they'll need time for seating in the nerves. One always has to ask the price.

I'm looking now for a reduction in concept-- an adherence to Ralston principle because I love experiments and departures from common wisdom more than I hate playing poorly. I guess I know that where there are true experiments there always will be surprises, disaster and re-birth-- all three.

In his book TENNIS WORKBOOK one of the exercises Dennis Ralston proposes is standing on a tennis court with one's shoulders parallel to the net and shifting one's eyes back and forth to work on developing better peripheral vision.

In my first sport, competitive rowing, good peripheral vision also is important (and tremendous fun). The idea is to have shifty eyes not a shifty head.

And stillness of head is a huge emphasis in the teachings of Ralston, as one would expect from the coach of Chris Evert. She first got that instruction from her father but Ralston continued it.

When you add to it the radical idea of moving arms marginally ahead of starting your backward body rotation with both then happening at once, and then using the exact same sequence in forward part of the stroke, you suddenly are in a different tennis world.

Is this new tennis world better? Probably. I give it the benefit of the doubt for as long as I conduct the experiment (on all shots!).

This interest in Ralstonian instruction starts for me with this great TennisPlayer article (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ice_serve.html). One thing I long ago noticed in its repeating videos but now find reinforced is the notion of arm going around a still head and body until finally the head and hips do chime in-- in an extremely delayed way. I don't think the article fully expresses that but the book does, at least for me if reader response matters.

And in a forehand backswung according to this instruction-- no matter the nature of the forehand-- the shifty eyes might focus early on contact point and the delayed turning of the head then transfer same focus from one's dominant eye.

On backhand one might want to keep both eyes focused on ball throughout. FYI I'm right-handed and left eye dominant-- very common.

[bottle]

Elbow starts out from body both in the Agassi-But-Me (to the side on outer edge of slot) and the Djokovic-itch (more behind on inner edge of slot). In the former, contraction of the arm and the keying can fire in close succession to get the pointer aimed forward. Oh, mondo is in there too.

And so, in the Agassi-But-Me, combine arm contraction and keying and mondo without thinking of any sequence among the three. This at least held promise in today's self-feed session.

One of the many reasons I like Dennis Ralston as a preceptor of learning tennis is that like me he values self-feed (usually after a run to the oncoming ball, which you catch and then drop) and writing things down.

This writing of things down is not to remember the list but so as not to have to remember it. The writing down helps one get the information into one's unconscious where it belongs.

[bottle]

Forehand "Compassing"

In these explorations when in the self-feed stage I frequently find myself saying, "I've never hit this shot before." That is because one altered detail changes the whole stroke.

So I've never keyed from the insect feelers of an Agassi imitation or from the snake-like coil of my Djokovic-itch.

"Keying" is a term I had to make up simply because I didn't want to talk about the hinges on a farm gate every time I tried to describe the forearm dialing around from a bent elbow as if it were the pointer on a compass.

I'm still looking for a better word but until I find it have identified something I want to use.

First experiments in keying involved vertical upper arm held close to one's core, now I want more.

Elbow starts out from body both in the Agassi-But-Me (to the side on outer edge of slot) and the Djokovic-itch (more behind on inner edge of slot). In the former, contraction of the arm and the keying can fire in close succession to get the pointer aimed forward. Oh, mondo is in there too.

In the latter shot, we incorporate the mondo and racket-tip-bowling-under succession we see in films of Novak.

I have suggested, I know, that Novak plunges his elbow down and forward, but now I want to try holding the elbow back for keying as in any other shot only underhand this time.

This saves the elbow for push right on the ball during the essential wipe followed by decelerative followthrough.

[bottle]

Agassi-But-Me

I’m down now from ten forehands to three (I don’t count chips, lobs and dropshots—they are different animals):

1) McEnrueful settling down from toe of inside foot

2) Djokovic-itch

3) Agassi-But-Me in which arm contracts as it mondoes, and then keys, with elbow throw to complete the followthrough. Compared to the Djokovic-itch, there is no arm roll in this shot, just a swing of forearm then whole arm around the turning body. (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...tanceRear1.mov)

It is fun to hit a Ralston version of all three shots in which arm movement precedes main body turn which precedes arm movement which precedes main body turn.

In the McEnrueful then, the down of down and up backswing is arm. The up is body and arm. The down is from arm to start the foreswing. The body then chimes in.

In the Djokovic-itch, the racket gets cocked fast with the body having chimed in. Then the arm mondoes and bowls with body chiming in for arm roll and followthrough.

In the Agassi-but-me both arms go out and hitting arm settles (that’s the backswing) with body turn having chimed in. Then arm contracts and mondoes. Then body chimes in as forearm keys before elbow leaves the barn.

Other forms exist for all three shots, and that is important. The forms here however offer a unique opportunity for one to work on one’s peripheral vision. One just moves one’s eyes not one’s head as one starts the hand or hands. Then as hand approaches where it’s going the body and head do turn.

[lobndropshot]

Bottle I enjoyed reading this post and I am sure I will enjoy it again when I re-read it later today.

[bottle]

How Much Self-Authorization is Healthy in Tennis?

If one tries too many different things one might end up a lousy player like Hana Mandlikova, who, as everybody knows, only won the U.S. Open once.

Reading a full book written by a player who stresses the game's fundamentals over its gimmicks can be an amusing experience.

The book I'm thinking of is DENNIS RALSTON'S TENNIS WORKBOOK, 1987, which comes with a complete section of blank self-evaluation forms, the first question on which is "BALANCE (is it smooth as I hit the ball? Am I on balance after I hit the ball?")

WORKBOOK is full of down-to-earth stuff like this but also is deeply revealing of the biases and personal philosophy of its author-- the reason I bought it.

The bias of any accomplished tennis player (and this guy certainly served his apprenticeship at number one) probably starts with grip.

The rap is that Ralston learned everything he knew from Pancho Gonzalez and later from coaching Chris Evert Lloyd. He himself however is a continental grip player, great at the net. I just think this grip and that net proficiency inform the overall outlook, especially one point which he stresses over and over again, sometimes in an unconscious way.

Don't step out and put your weight on the front foot too soon (opposite from what Peter Burwash has always taught). Hold weight instead on rear or outside or "prop" foot to use the Tony Roche term. To keep weight back on a neutral stance shot Ralston even suggests putting the toes down first (mistakenly taken on popular level to indicate indecision) and then pivot hips from behind so that foot gets flat. In such a swing there can be hips rotation with both feet flat before the rear heel finally comes up. And the shoulders never separate ahead of the hips as in kinetic chain evangelism. Is there then a save step, a slight replacement step with rear foot as in one scenario outlined by Welby Van Horn? Saw it in one of the Ralston photos.

So much saving of weight on back foot is provocative philosophy to which we add very upright stance on all shots with no bowing forward and shoulders kept level. No "banking" as in Van Horn. No hunching forward as in a Gonzalez forehand. These observations are my own, are what I see as implicit. Ralston certainly would never disparage Van Horn and especially Gonzalez who mentored him and with whom he lived at an important time for both.

But his (Ralston's) game is different, and on some service returns he even advises one to get the arms going before the body. Let's react: HERESY! WHAT HAPPENED TO UNIT TURN, OUR ROCK OF AGES?

So even in a book on basics, especially in a book on basics, if the author is any good, there is provocation in spades, and the provocation is greater than when somebody consciously strives for it.

Everything is on the level of suggestion and thus very powerful. I'm not saying Dennis Ralston does the following on every shot: but here is an implicit thought to contemplate, something to aspire toward if you yourself are wild enough to want real adventure and don't always wish to hit the ball the same way.

Arm first on backswing with body chiming in. Arm first on foreswing with body chiming in.