A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Sorry to See WBC Leave

I have every reason to feel sorry about this since WBC's talk about "backhand punch" led directly to my FNBH drive and slice described in post # 2085-- intriguing alternatives to other shots I have developed in following long tract self-direction.

I have to say, I was quite shocked this morning to read Kyle's serve and volley article thread which had grown into a long kite's tail since my last checking of it not long ago at all.

My naming of my two new shots as Fox Noise was not intended as commentary on the personal politics of WBC, John, Oscar or anyone else in the tennis world. I plead complete ignorance of the politics of all tennis players everywhere except in Front Royal, Virginia.

Where, in fact, tennis was the sole hope for connection with the political establishment during the decades I lived there. Mayor John Marlow, a former tackle at the University of Virginia, once tried to kill me with a tennis ball, as I recall, but my subsequent published revelation of his Real Estate dealings on High Knob Mountain (and a conflict of interest allegation regarding a ski slope) may have led to his not seeking re-election.

P.S. Perhaps WBC should feel honored if he has indeed been banned from this forum. I still feel honored by my lifetime banishment from the Tennis Warehouse threads. And by the Hungarian government's seizing of my computer.

[tennis_chiro]

... And by the Hungarian government's seizing of my computer.

Leaving us hanging just a bit there, Bottle

don

[GeoffWilliams]

He got banned for attacking without cause, or data, or justification.

[tennis_chiro]

He got banned for attacking without cause, or data, or justification.

Since when were any of those things required to attack from your computer?

don

[bottle]

Memoir of a Napa Valley Winery other than Montalena Chateau

Leaving us hanging just a bit there, Bottle

don

Only the Hungarian government knows the full story. Well, okay, my girlfriend, another boyfriend of hers (whom she subsequently married) and about seven computers, one of which was mine, arrived together at Ferigy 1 or 2 Airport. Once the Hungarian government had confiscated the seven computers, my girlfriend and her other boyfriend headed for her mother's apartment in Buda. Her mother and father's apartment is in Pest. Yes, I am better off in Detroit.

But why would the Hungarian customs people confiscate the computers? I guess they didn't believe my girlfriend when she told them that when her father wasn't making films, he liked to work on computers, and most of the computers were the ones he sent to her during the years when she first lived in the United States. While it's true that the same customs people thought I was a probable spy as I fled Budapest for Atlanta, and changed their opinion only when they found research in my suitcase about The Puzsta or great promised flatland in Eastern Hungary, all that occurred some weeks later.

At Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the poet in residence other than Maya Angelou, Jane, not knowing this full story, said I should be proud that the Hungarian government confiscated my computer. I have valued Jane's opinion every time I have ever heard it and I believe her.

Using any money left over from writing poems on a Guggenheim Fellowship at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Jane went to the Napa valley in California to take over the very vineyards where her father, messed up on prescription drugs, shot at her and her siblings.

The siblings wanted nothing more to do with the wine business. Only a poet in residence would be qualified to do that work.

Do you see now, Tennis-Chiro, why I write fiction so less complicated than life?

[bottle]

"Think I'll Try..."

Reader. Do you ever say to yourself, "Think I'll try," and then try something completely new? If not, why not? Too afraid of putting a green stroke into the red hot crucible of pressure play?

Such fear is justified. A possible solution however is always circling back to some version of a previous experiment. This occasionally exhausting philosophy requires that a person be creative for every minute of his life.

A number of smart players have always claimed Rosewallian slice as the model for their own backhand slice.

Such a player is Trey Waltke. Here is his article at Tennis Player. Anybody else seeking to make good with the R-model should look to this article with care and study every video and word of it.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/trey_waltke/the_slice_backhand/the_slice_backhand.html

One big difference, appearing over and over in the opening video, is that Waltke uses far less loop than Ken Rosewall does both in the photo-sequence that the article includes and in the videos we've discussed here in the forum a lot.

In fact the loop that Waltke does use is just a wrist loop, i.e., he brings the racket back around with the grip he wants, wrist cocked, then flattens that wrist a bit, then swings.

Does he roll the racket closed then, bow from the waist, sink down on his knees, rise from his knees, dig with his front shoulder, do anything else with the wrist? What other variations are there? There always are more variations.

Don't know about you, but I'm 74 and slowing down fast. So I need to pare my strokes as often as my nails.

Note: One of the photo sequences in the article shows contact with a cocked i.e. concave wrist. Some of Federer's BH slice contacts show that too. But in the R genre of backhand slices I feel that a flat wrist is the way to go, and flat wrist is what I'm seeing in these Waltke videos. Okay, if flat, when flat? The flattening as loop has to be interesting. So is a flat wrist before the stroke ever starts however-- that might lead to a double roll from the arm. One needs to play around with such options and understand that the playing around should never be over, in fact can keep one's tennis of perpetual interest.

[gzhpcu]

Bottle, why not show some of your strokes? Take a video, load it up on YouTube and post the link... So we all get to know each other...

[bottle]

Okay, I'll ask Hopie to do it since she's the one who's good with a camera. But I'll have to get her away from the half-dozen large gardens we're just starting on and away from all of her other work too. Don't think you'll give my back leg serve (of necessity) high marks!

[bottle]

Self-Feed Report

In slice experiments, straightening of wrist melding into backward roll melding into forward roll was not overly cumbersome.

Most of the self-feed session however went to Tennis_Chiro's mention of "shoulder extension" in describing a sequence of Stan Wawrinka's backhand drive that he, Tennis_Chiro, had just screen-recorded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wClhsprvFA

Could the expression "shoulder extension" refer to classic bridge arm form in billiards and to "scapular retraction" as opposed to "scapular adduction" (since backhands are what we are discussing and backhands always turn one's orientation around)?

And if so, could the most active incarnation of this be the "backhand punch" or rabbit punch outlawed in boxing? And could this knowledge apply to both slices and drives?

When wbc spoke of backhand punch, he seemed to refer to kinetic extension from elbow, and self-feed experiments followed by use of a bangboard discovered how this can work, with net parallel racket pulled close behind trailing hip.

The most salient feature of all this seemed acceptance of 1) the punch idea and 2) wbc's idea of getting strings approximately parallel to net and rear fence.

A punch is a punch wherever it comes from, and since there aren't many videos available of experts backhanding rabbits to kill them or of boxers killing and maiming one another the same way, I'm inclined to choose my own form of such an illicit punch.

Know the options, I think, then choose, but choose only one form of punch since a one-handed backhand is already complicated enough and is not designed to have more than one punch at a time embedded in a given stroke.

Parallelism of racket to rear fence, baseline and net occurs farther behind the body if one wants to make scapular retraction work the way Wawrinka apparently does.

Also, arm gets straighter earlier in the cycle than in a wbc illicit punch.

Note: It seems that two basic structures for acceleration are available in any ground stroke: 1) gradual acceleration and 2) sudden acceleration. Both wbc punch (or slingshot) and shoulder extension punch (or slingshot) fall in the "sudden" group.

[bottle]

"Best in the Business"

Here it is again, the "best in the business" video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wClhsprvFA

Is there anything else about it that we can see?

Well, I see that not getting the racket tip around is the factor that spoils the chance for similar greatness in the case of all one handers who aspire to this shot but never quite get there.

I am serious. I have had more than one good teaching pro look at my one hander and tell me it was good when it just wasn't, when it was lacking some little thing that would have brought the shot to a boil.

So how does Wawrinka, having gotten his racket parallel to the back fence (which is WAY AROUND!), put his strings so clearly on the outer edge of the ball? While I do see total extension of the shoulder as an extra accelerator in the stroke, I can't see how that leads to a sharper crosscourt angle, just the opposite, in fact.

Well, scapular slingshot keeps strings behind the ball for better dwell, but if you move fulcrum as something is coming around the fulcrum, you get the broad angle rather than acute one and may hit down the middle, the last place you wanted to go.

And yet I don't see much arm roll in this sequence. Am I wrong? So how and when does the racket head come round?

At the last instant. From the wrist. So I'm gonna try ulnar wrist snap right up to ball (with thumb along handle-- different from Waw, I gnaw) and scapular sling shot to leave ball as part of the followthrough.

In self-feed of course. That's the beginning of my accustomed ritual for developing any new shot or variation of an old one.

[bottle]

Get everything lower and more level and start from way back.

Way back but with racket parallel to rear fence is not, in one sense, "way back." Because the strings are turned like that, they're closer to you than they would be in some other scheme, are close enough for you to control lowering better with opposite hand.

Bending knees more always seems to create more room in which to bring the racket head around.

Everything, in the experiment, now goes to bringing racket head around. If in the physical mode/trance of self feed and standing somewhere near one's own backhand corner, hit deep to imagined opponent's backhand corner, put ball deep in alley, i.e., in the doubles backhand corner, don't feel as if you've done the job if you get ball to singles backhand corner. And hit some sharp angles into the alley next to the service line as well and don't cheat on this.

Getting racket parallel to back fence while reaching way back with arm to get around better is counter-intuitive. Something else sure to help is full endorsement of the scapular adduction- scapular retraction idea. A big turn puts back toward opponent. Scapular adduction adds to this taking of racket both around and toward back fence. From full scapular adduction to full scapular retraction takes racket farther (all on its own!) than a more neutral shoulder housing position does to full scapular retraction. Well, if you hold the scapular adduction until you've first swung the arm to the ball, you'll get around more.

And I've already said I want to chuck the firm wrist notion for ulnar snap. That would be wrist snap with the karate edge of the hand worth 45 extra degrees of "getting around."

From an education or learning perspective, it's just amazing how the technical concerns associated with one hand backhands find themselves stuck in the muck of not getting around enough year after year and decade after decade.

I've seen stroke designs where racket never points at more than a right-hander's left fence on a perpendicular. That's one attempt to address the problem. So is an anti-hammer or diagonal backhand grip with both first and second fingers spread out on the handle. So is keeping backswing to the side of one in the slot.

How many people suffer from hitting the ball too sharply crosscourt, which would be opposite tennis affliction? I do it once in a while, but undercooking a backhand is a much more frequent occurrence or has been up to now.

Body rotation bringing racket into a "more around" position obviously is another measure one can take, but the danger in perception, again, is that in a double rotation swing the racket DOES NOT GET AROUND, just the opposite because of moving fulcrum again.

This would seem an argument for sequence over simultaneity in this one particular case. And for keeping opposite hand on racket for more of the swing, viz., one may only be lowering racket with both hands a few inches, but core body swing can move the racket considerably around in that time, 90 degrees in fact so that racket goes from parallel to back fence to parallel to side fence.

Finally, there is rolling the racket-- that gets tip farther around but why do it when one doesn't have to?

[bottle]

One Hand Backhand as Macro

And I've already said I want to chuck the firm wrist notion for ulnar snap. That would be wrist snap with the karate edge of the hand worth 45 extra degrees of "getting around."

Medical routine, ever bigger as one grows old, has been cutting into my backhand experiment. Extensive gardening sucks away my discovery time as well. Backhand development, as John Boris pointed out to me, is a theme for most players that runs as long as their involvement in the game. Like me, John is a former champion oarsman, so I'm partial to believing him. Also, John, a very fine player, is Director of Tennis at the Indian Village tennis facility in Detroit.

Beyond backhand, memoir vs. fiction is a subject inveigling me as I approach the end of THE MEMOIR AND THE MEMOIRIST: READING & WRITING PERSONAL NARRATIVE, a book by Thomas Larson. While Larson has many great ideas, the writers whom he discusses have a big and horrible characteristic in common: Totally self-indulgent addiction to modern psycho-pop. And while contemplating Alice Sebold's contrasting treatment of imagined and real rape in novel and memoir she separately wrote is happy pastime, I'm more eager to seek elucidation in comparing Stephen Crane's THE WRECK OF THE COMMODORE (journalism) and THE OPEN BOAT, one of three contenders along with WAKEFIELD by Nathaniel Hawthorne and THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER by Ernest Hemingway as GOATASS, acronym for Greatest Of All Time American Short Story as opposed to some tennis player like Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Pancho Gonzalez, Rod Laver or Don Budge.

Specifically now since we finally have a distinct notion that we are closing in on essential backhand, we have to ask, "Do you not deeply regret, Escher or bottle, using the term 'ulnar snap' rather than ulnar deviation?" Do you not understand that you should inject deviates into American memoir, now considered American literature, whenever possible? Besides, do you not harbor doubt that the ulnar deviation is snap whatever one calls it?

Perhaps one should use opposite hand to swing rather than snap racket through the ulnar deviation enabled by thumb along eastern hammer backhand grip?

Perhaps one should then release arm as one brakes body while "keeping the shoulder in?"

Depends, reader, doesn't it, on whether we want to put the ulnar deviation close to contact or keep it away by placing it before arm release as in a computer macro or other recorded sequence of events.

Greater firmness of wrist at contact could then be assured, and thank you, reader, for being part of my specialized audience whose eyes will glaze over at many expressions but not "scapular slingshot."

I choose private over public audience, don't you know, valuing backhand development as I do over unearthing the prolific details of personal episode when I was three years old and my mother took me to bed in Bay Head, New Jersey.

My mother, Ma and little me, don't you know, spawned the future governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.

[bottle]

Crunch Teeth into the Apple

The plenteous films of Wawrinkan backhand make this great shot seem like an apple ripe for the picking.

Federfore earlier was that way. And Andy Roddick's serve. And Fred Perry's continental ping-pong slams that entranced (some have since said "infected") the entire nation if not empire of Great Britain.

Should a golfer imitate the swing of Jack Nicklaus? Tiger Woods? Ben Hogan? Ricky Fowler? Each is very different from the other. Perhaps when one has enough models to choose from, one will find one that is workable, i.e., that one can build on. Just to arrive at that point of decision however one may have to have achieved partial mastery of all of one's rejects.

Am sticking with Waw's backhand and enjoying it but have not yet reached the promised land.

Am all too aware of the glibbers rejecting the whole notion such as the New York Times reporter who denied all improvement of his golf game through study and reading forever.

"Go screw yourself!" was my reaction to that article. Not that I needed to say anything since the author had already done what I was urging him to do.

I believe, you see, in the golf magazines adorning the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists. Specifically, the more technical and stripped down some article, the more I believe it, and in any case, without those core articles the magazine would never have survived.

Where to go with WAW? I'm now going to title Wawrinka's backhand "WAW." This is a literary device called metonymy in which some part of a person or thing is meant to stand for the whole. Literary definition from web: "Metonymy is a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated." Thus Stanislas Wawrinka has a powerful serve and forehand but one chooses backhand-- in his case-- to stand for the rest.

So far, it seems, we've identified the different parts of WAW, many of which at this point are obvious, some less so, e.g., straightening the wrist during kinetic part of his stroke.

No need to do that, in my view, just start with a flat wrist. Now one can use WAW rhythm which is only visible in a few videos. (Again, I take those videos to stand for all the videos.) The net result is that one can better work on developing the special feel of throwing a Frisbee, yet not sling a real Frisbee but rather one's palm down fist, which one has called a Frisbee.

Let's go all "feel" now while largely if not completely adopting the anti-sequence view or bias possible in tennis.

So, even as we glide to the ball we are starting to sling the fist. (Might as well do this without a racket in one's hand.) The racket head is going back gradually as one sprints. I'd like to say the racket speed is "slow" but defer to saying "slow relative to what is about to happen," a fast key-like drop of the racket head that accelerates and continues around and through the ball and out and even reverses direction a second time.

Is this movement independent of the body? Does it go ahead of the body which is moving too? Yes.

Important: Keep arm moving ahead of body but never at same speed as body or delayed behind body. Every inch that the hips swing should move the racket head a corresponding inch. But if racket moves MORE than that inch, that's good.

We've been through the next part before, the braked hips and shoulders, accelerating the arm. Finally, as Bungalo Bill once said in this forum, we use scapular retraction to "squeeze the last drop of blood out of the stroke."

To suddenly go technical here, the arm springs from one fulcrum, the shoulder housing from another, and the combination produces less curve and more straightness or hitting through the ball.

[gzhpcu]

Nice to see your passion for the game bottle!

[bottle]

Art

Thanks Phil, maybe a combination of passion and chess player's cold detachment is the ticket, but I'm not where I want to go yet with my imitation WAW.

I'm ready for a return to the palm sandwich idea initially pilfered from Lausian hitting in baseball.

I went to an awful lot of trouble to arrive at the premise that good things might emerge from keeping left palm vertical like Ken Rosewall.

I'm still open to that possibility but also think, "Not necessarily."

The hammer grips of him and Stan Wawrinka whatever their other grip and stroke differences keep the strings close enough to one's body so that opposite hand can better guide while remaining secondary in the swing.

Well, in the WAW, since loop is now being better used to accelerate racket tip around, why not use both hands at once and get them doing the exact same thing at the same time during this baseballer's phase of the overall stroke.

One palm facing down then, one up. If the player wants to add ulnar deviation to hips rotation-- a lot or a little or in between or none of both-- he is free to do so.

The newfound freedom comes from getting palms opposite (after grip change) and then keeping them in the same whirling plane.