A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Bottle's FETF Foreswing as Closer Imitation of his FETF Backswing

FETF: forward emphasis topspin forehand

FETF backswing: elbow in until the little squeeze and straighten has propelled (sequentially) the elbow outward.

FETF foreswing: Keep elbow out and still to propel rod (forearm) inward-forward. But don't waste internal rotation of upper arm on moving hand into the forward inward position. Free range rotation of the upper arm is needed for the wipe, i.e., should be delayed.

Mondo (flip): Save flip for the straighten part of "little squeeze and straighten." In other words, put flip close to wipe.

"Little squeeze and straighten" in either direction: The squeeze lessens right angle in arm, i.e., makes it acute. The straighten restores the right angle. The total motion creates useful energy and firmness unavailable to people like me who didn't previously think of this. On the foreswing there also will be inside-out vector, viz., out after in. Then comes the wipe.

[don_budge]

Thanks for your thoughts…One a Day

Maybe I should react to that. And maybe 4000 posts is the reason I held serve every time in this morning's three sets of doubles.

I do think the discovered backswing "little squeeze" of # 2898 helped make forehand volleys, serves and certain forehand ground strokes-- all three-- more organic today.

And more organic by definition is less mechanical and less studied too if that is possible.

Amusing to contemplate since I obviously study my strokes. A dancer too studies her or his moves, I would say. Can one study some move to make it more organic, and is that not worthy goal?

I think so.

You'll never be a natural but so what? And remember: a lot of "naturals" burn out.

Hmmm…that's a bit over one a day since you became a member of the website. One a day keeps the doctor away. It's great therapy isn't it John? It was great to meet you in person and we are going to have that hit someday real soon. So be ready. Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts about tennis and tennis strokes.

My father got as big a kick out of meeting you as I did. He couldn't get over that we knew each other on the forum and that we had a chance to meet at Gracie See's on their last day in business.

[bottle]

Cliff Drysdale Slows Down Johanna Konta's Forehand Backswing

For most viewers, I would guess, Cliff Drysdale's slow motion footage with explanation spliced into running commentary on the Johanna Konta-Zhang Shuai Australian Open quarterfinal match was amusing interlude and a nice little furbelow.

For any technician or regular designer of tennis strokes it was or should have been much more than that.

"Keeping her elbow in shortens the backswing," Cliff said.

Yes and the elbow then goes out to a more traditional position.

If you combine this with Nick Wheatfield's unifed 1-2 rhythm you create the "air cushion" I've been talking about with option then to hit a long arm or short arm windshield wiper forehand whichever you prefer.

In doubles yesterday morning before I saw the Konta match I just hit the straight arm version and why wouldn't I since I've hit straight arm for more than a decade. And my good opponents feasted on it whenever I hit it once again.

Short arm is going to be more effective as soon as it's ready.

Why (among other reasons)? Because it's early in getting the rod (one's forearm) pointing at the net.

From there one can give a body shove to the ball while wiping it at the same time.

I've got this shot working in self-feed. And it worked after a bit of adjustment in a long hit with my friend Ken Hunt.

But it is not working in clay court doubles where I get severely jerked around and where I want it primarily as a service return.

Besides, I was a teenager and not a 76-year-old. I hit plenty of my McEnrueful, a shot that takes the racket back in the easy bowler's way. I was hellbent on winning and I didn't even try one short arm FETF, the concentrated energy backswing forward emphasis topspin forehand I've been working on.

This is about to change, I believe, a matter of sticking with some new shot before it is ready to be unveiled.

[bottle]

Hmm, 4000 Posts

Maybe I should react to that. And maybe 4000 posts is the reason I held serve every time in this morning's three sets of doubles.

I do think the discovered backswing "little squeeze" of # 2898 helped make forehand volleys, serves and certain forehand ground strokes-- all three-- more organic today.

And more organic by definition is less mechanical and less studied too if that is possible.

Amusing to contemplate since I obviously study my strokes. A dancer too studies her or his moves, I would say. Can one study some move to make it more organic, and is that not worthy goal?

I think so.

You'll never be a natural but so what? And remember: a lot of "naturals" burn out.

[bottle]

And Now the Other Way?

Reader, try the same trick in forward part of a few strokes. The experiment won't kill you, I promise.

[bottle]

A Stupid Little Thing to Apply to Forehands, Forehand Volleys and Serves

We are tennis players. So we know that too much idea will destroy next Thursday. A small idea though, a stupid little thing, may destroy or may create. And if we no longer like it we can retract it (after we have lost a set or two).

Well-- there's the word-- "retraction."

The best advice a teaching pro ever gave me was not to imitate but to invent.

The challenge comes from low wait position cheated way over toward backhand. How specifically does John McEnroe get from there so quickly to his forehand volley? But does it matter how John McEnroe does it? Not unless figuring that out helps me John Escher do the same thing. I'm thinking, "Arm is at right angle. So squeeze it to less than a right angle. Then straighten it back to a right angle. And do all this fast to project tight albow up and away from the body."

Same thing for forehand ground stroke only behind one (yet in the slot). And incorporated into the easy up, down and up of a gravity assisted serve.

Pete Sampras never fully straightened his arm in his service backswing, right? But he was Pete Sampras, which is supposed to mean that an ordinary person can't do this, especially one who is restricted in twist capacity within the rotor cuff (a "rotorded" person). The restriction most likely isn't in the rotor cuff itself but in shortness in one or more of the strings that spin the humerus like a skittle.

Well, maybe such a person shouldn't try bent arm in backswing at home or maybe he should. Frankly, I don't think the experts have studied the subject enough to know.

In forehand volley, forehand and serve the racket now is propelled to an "air cushion," i.e., to a finesse or natural timing plateau in all three cases.

[bottle]

The guy was never a favorite writer of mine although I knew he may have been better than anybody at writing about a character or characters over time and always was super-aware of how somebody changes or doesn't change often in many decades. As I re-read him a bit now however (and thanks!) I realize that without being moralistic-- at all-- his writing is extremely close to the life decisions faced by any one of his good readers.

The world or milieu of his fiction might be off-putting to someone who only plays video games, but what does that matter? There's wisdom there-- wisdom about people over time-- and I'm glad that Bill Murray was one of the people to get this.

As a man and not as a writer Mr. W. Somerset Maugham must have been pretty interesting too. A fellow juror on a mountain in Virginia who was so appalled by my divorce that she died (well, that sounds almost self-serving but news of the divorce sure didn't help keep her alive) had given me a book to keep, a publisher's knock-off called ENCOUNTERS.

It was about real life encounters between innocent people and famous men. I'll try and re-find it. (It got lost along with my skiis and my truck in the divorce.)

The famous man who was absolutely the worst and meanest and most awful was W. Somerset Maugham. But that was just in one encounter. In another, by another person, Maugham was the most pleasant-- i.e., with sunniest disposition-- in the world. So maybe Robert Louis Stevenson wrote W. Somerset Maugham.

[don_budge]

W. Somerset Maugham…Of Human Bondage

Read two short stories by Somerset Maugham, the first THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER, in which the grasshopper succeeds in driving the ant mad.

In the second, THE THREE FAT WOMEN OF ANTIBES, there is this sentence about tennis:

“They drank their waters together, had their baths at the same hour, they took their strenuous walks together, pounded about the tennis court with a professional to make them run, and ate at the same table their sparse and regulated meals.”

By the end of the story the three protagonist bridge players have undergone a transformation but perhaps not what one might think.

I just finished reading "Of Human Bondage" for the second time…there were a couple of references to tennis in it as well. It always amazes me how reading these great novels over is like reading them for the first time. It was if I had never read it before. Not even an inkling of "deja vu". Of course it had been some years.

He chose to settle down by the sea instead of casting himself out into it. Philip did…the main character. He answered to himself the riddle of the Persian rug that his friend had given him in Paris.

[bottle]

To Try on FETF (Forward Emphasis Topspin Forehand)

The arm starts bent and cheated over for backhand. The arm slightly squeezes and re-straightens to right angle during the keyed backswing. This adds a bit of swashbuckling momentum to what turning body and turning key can sum with the result that arm and racket and elbow float up into position as if on a cushion that is way back though still in the slot.

The idea of tilting shoulders during the backswing is herewith rejected. Downward banking of right shoulder is needed as part of the sidearm throw, not as part of the backswing. That works best.

What is the need for me to make this change? Precisely this. In one occurrence yesterday the score was 0-3 . I changed then from FETF to McEnrueful and my partner and I won the set 6-3 . And yet I had been hitting my FETF well just a few days before in a one-on-one hit with my friend Ken Hunt.

Conclusion: The change I made was bad. I need to retrack and with no boo-hoo. Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Craig B. Melo: "You're always wrong or you're partially right." I want to be partially right when I walk out on the court, i.e., close enough to perfection to be good.

Gosh, is this inspirational writing? I hate inspirational writing. Might work for me though.

[bottle]

The Beauty of Revisionism: One Dares to Dream

A Sunday golfer constantly moans. Despite his intensive study of every golf magazine ever printed, he remains a hacker. So he places his brains in a cremation urn and gives it to a teaching pro. This improves his game but only somewhat.

What possibly could be wrong? Well, Jack Nicklaus has changed his strokes every day of his life whereas the Sunday golfer only changes his strokes on Sunday.

The poor hacker reads a book called THE TALENT CODE. Now he won't try anything he hasn't practiced for ten years. Where is he going? Down!

We all wish for the natural backhand of J. Donald Budge. But we can't have it. So we study, study. Soon we have studied strokes. But guess what? Same thing as the administrators of the Flint, Michigan water supply. Nobody studies enough.

I'll go Trump/rogue/Beowulf here. Reader, does anyone call you "King of the Slice?" It has happened to me. Whatever the rest of my game is like, I attribute this success to reducing my backhand slice from galaxy to constellation, from infinity to nine or ten shots.

[bottle]

FETF: Forward Emphasis Topspin Forehand

First sentence, written before the act: I thought I would wait until after the three sets of doubles this morning before I reported on them in a way similar to that of lobndropshot at the Australian Open, i.e., don't try to cover everything but follow your nose.

Second sentence, a question, written after returning home: Why aren't I bubbling over with enthusiasm right now?

Because I only hit the new forehand three times (but all for winners). Doubles is arrhythmic, not the same as endlessly trading shots with a good hitting partner. But the shot should become great over time, and if not, I'll invent something else to go with my right now more reliable McEnrueful.

My FETF is "forward emphasis" because the arm's rod or forearm is pointing roughly forward, not sideways, during the wipe.

Connecting dots is what this shot is about. The latest revelation is that cranking the right-angled arm could be called internal arm rotation. The cranking is from the upper arm and smoothly continues to form the ideal wipe I want from right fence to left fence.

The useful image here is a swamp buggy boring through the Everglades. The fan on my particular buggy spins counterclockwise and is set at front rather than rear of the boat.

The forehand thus produced is effective when I am relaxed and comfortable and in good position except when it chops up Burmese pythons hanging from the tops of low-lying bushes.

[bottle]

Zen and the Art of Left Arm Raise

Lower shoulder in second half of backswing.

We adopted the early separation of hands genre of forehand backswing of recent long ago (Austin, Connors, Evert, McEnroe). And we heard someplace that we should keep our point arm high. Now we have a reason to do that other than that we heard it was a good idea.

The reason is to lower the hitting shoulder just as its bent arm rises with the net result that racket stays level for a ball that sits waist high saying "Hit me" due to a stupid court surface and possible deficit of opponent spin.

We keep the pointer arm slightly bent for extra relaxation and feel. Watching for this in another player could tell us whether that player is relaxed or tense. If tense, be glad. If relaxed, copy-- maybe the relaxation is transferable.

So, hitting arm keys level, then rises. But rises when? During rise of left shoulder. But what do tilting shoulders do to the eyes in your head? Lower them? They needn't. Not if you are determined to keep your head still.

Levelness of total backswing now has been achieved-- a formy thing based on a stupid waist high bounce as default situation.

So, hitting arm goes up as hitting shoulder goes down with net result that the racket stays level.

What a simplification this is for our nefarious purpose of pre-loading a sidearm throw.

The muscles that twist the upper arm are already activated to decelerate the racket frame while loading it up with ergs.

One wants to drive the blood in one's arm through one's fingertips out into the air but not until the actual double-roll throw.

I may or may not be dreaming here but combining mondo with vigorous keying of forearm down toward body center gets rod out toward net without destroying pitch and is a huge change to everything.

[bottle]

Drill

New self-feed drill for doubles: one ball in one alley, next in opposite alley. Vary the depth of these shots.

[bottle]

New Species of Self-Feed

Throw ball up and hit it before it bounces. Especially good if court is covered with snow. But might work if court were dry, too. With hitting partner run for ball, catch it, throw, hit before any bounce.

We know this method works for volleys as Dennis Ralston demonstrates in one of his TennisPlayer articles. But if it doesn't work for ground strokes, perhaps the total racket head trajectory is too long.

[bottle]

New Idea to Try

Lower shoulder in second half of backswing.