A New Year's Serve

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Never Discussed Contradiction Detected

"Keep your ass away from the ball" is an axiom of tennis. "Be upright and keep your shoulders over your hips" is another. "Look like a martinet the way John McEnroe does" another.

So which is it? A bit of tilt from the hips with a straight spine or no tilt at all?

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A 1.5-Second Delay

Miming tennis strokes is what I found myself doing last night much to my surprise.

We were in the Detroit wasteland of abandoned automotive buildings, a courtyard the size of Versailles and so huge that we were immediately lost with no clue as to our destination on a third floor somewhere.

The total working space of the structure or structures, I would guess, had been converted in a ratio of 2 to 5 from abandoned auto factory to active artist studios.

We talked to people, found a sign, entered a yawning elevator capable of carrying three cars.

I had been offered the operation of this elevator-- during a period of six hours-- but my partner Hope said no on the phone on the grounds that I have sciatica.

So I got to attend, unencumbered, the studio opening of my friend Jason, a glassblower with a passion for light.

I have mixed feelings about this. To be Charon rowing people across the river Styx for six hours might have done me good after attending the funeral earlier before the Open women's final of a young man with leukemia who in his back yard shot himself in the head.

But I talked to the brother actually pulling on canvas straps, asked him if there was a learning curve in this job. Yes it took him two hours to finally get the knack of operating that huge elevator while carrying on meaningful conversation with every guest rising up to Jason.

As we entered Jason's studio I saw that there were boom cameras all over the place. In the main installation, I saw myself as a looming dark shade near girders constantly dissolving into ectoplasm and decided to make an effort to stand up straight.

Then Jason himself took a quick turn around the whole room. As he came by the dissolving girders he still was on the far wall in huge color.

So I went over there and lifted my arm. In about two seconds my arm went up.

That is where I spent most of the evening, with breaks for grapes, cheese, wine, shrimp, conversation with Jason and everybody else.

The people who weren't tennis players thought I was dancing. (I did a bit of that to the technopop too.)

As I went through forehands, backhands, volleys, serves-- the whole lot-- I realized I might want to abandon my recent decision to juggle my hand directly beneath the racket at outset of my see wow wow.

No, keep hand closer to head and counter-cock forearm with elbow stable and pointed down even then. I have the option of doing that or simply opening arm out to right angle as part of the initial move-- whichever will produce the best mondo, racket head speed, and unified stroke.

Backhand drive looked good except I needed to keep head down, was lifting too much.

Serve showed that teaching pro Sebastien Foka was right and I still need to get elbow high and far back SOONER.

Jason wasn't put off by any of this. He opined that most people aren't aware of the extent that they affect some space when they walk into it.

Other people felt the interaction works best if the someone entering the space has a purpose.

What I ultimately think is that if there are lots of installations available like this I won't need to have conversations with anybody about cameras and in tennis as in most else there is a great role for instant, barely delayed feedback.

It's like a mirror that doesn't invert and it's better-- I tell you that-- and the camera was behind me so I felt that both in the flesh and in the moving image which immediately followed I was hitting through the wall. In other words I got a good look at what I just had done.

Really, a person can't do and observe at the same time, not at least while he's still learning the thing.

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Contrast and Compare: Forehand Volley, McEnrueful and The Concorde

All three become part of the Barnabian return package, a list of 100 choices for dealing with a seemingly impossible serve.

A volley? How can a volley become a service return? Easy. Stretch definition of volley beyond a shot that one hits before its bounce to a post-bounce shot hit with volley mechanics.

All three of these basic shots can start with a slight rise of the elbow.

FHVSR then can be a straight-wristed chop that lands short in the cc alley, a see see wow wow, my favorite shot in all of the game of tennis.

Similarly, one can try a McEnrueful although that one as fast doubles service return will most likely land deep in the alley. The McEnrueful should be hit as a long shot with a long face.

Again, it starts with a short chop, but this time the chop is forceless and blends into a shoulder swing up around a tilted axis. Reader, does that sound to you like a flat or topspun shot? It's both. Think of easing down to and then shoving a medicine ball.

Then there is The Concorde, which I admit hasn't yet been given its shakedown cruise.

The Concorde can always be discontinued just like the French plane.

But it can start from slightly higher than in the prototype I offered.

One can keep racket at its original level or go higher. Either.

Remember if attempting this shot to blend the double arm fall (elbow comes down as it opens to no more than a right angle) into a full mondo that lays back wrist while cocking forearm for immediate upward brush from downward pointing elbow.

That is elaborate description of something very simple that feels like scaling a rock.

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Introducing The Concorde

Concorde was the French jetliner with the bent beak. The word also denotes "harmony."

I present here a newly minted forehand for hitting a short angle CC or crosscourt or see see-- good in singles but great in doubles if one can hit it into the alley close to the net and follow up with a crisp volley to the exact same spot.

The shot's bent beak derives from a full mondo beneath one's right angled arm. The overall stroke is much more cohesive than any verbal description could ever be other than perhaps the two words "sidearm throw." Cohesive and simple and smooth.

One keeps one's shoulders parallel to the net while moving arm level and sideways from assumed high neutral position cheated toward backhand.

The trick in this simple and deliberate move is juggle to keep elbow directly beneath the racket. One could lead with the racket or particularly with the elbow to try to achieve a short-term gain in sharpness of ball's angle to the target but don't. Long-range, one will be better off if elbow stays directly under the racket and hand.

But what then if the ball goes too high? The answer may lie in adoption of the J. Donald Budge advice to put diagonal thumb behind the racket for a drive backhand.

I think of this advice as the beginning of thumb awareness. And I extend it to most though not all of my other tennis strokes. The thumb is part way up the handle even in a forehand now. This has not deteriorated any forehand of mine from the time when I did not do this. Furthermore, using bent thumb like a pointer on a dial breaks the code that instructors and tennis writers use to describe the various grips. The thumb always knows the pitch of the strings.

Adoption of the Budgian bridge from dry conceptualization to more feel for the strings immediately opens up new possibilities for a multi-grip game, i.e., one becomes empowered to play with more variety.

Okay, there is a counter-argument. Play with less variety. I am good with that and even try it sometimes.

In the see see ("Wow-- look at that skill shot. Where the hell did that come from!"), one freely turns the pointer thumb to the place that eliminates unnecessary adjustment, i.e., to where one can keep elbow directly beneath the racket and hand.

Now one is near the ball and can begin a hitting drop. To do so one wants no different parts. To learn it, one needs to understand the parts: a drop of elbow into the side, an opening of arm to a right angle, rotation of upper arm to bring the racket tip round on its perfectly vertical pin of the upper arm, laying back of hand and twisting down of racket from forearm with elbow held steady with this whole motion (see see mondo) a fluid continuation of the double arm drop that preceded it.

A wise tennis instructor tells his student to think of no more than one or two items at a time-- I obviously present more information here than that.

Tennis like life however consists of much detail, and the people most successful at either are able to put things in perspective, i.e., to focus.

So focus, reader, on melding the double arm drop, braked to form a right angle, into the two items of any full mondo.

Racket tip now is below the hand while one cranks the forearm. Racket tip is still below the hand while one brushes the ball. Elbow then relaxes to slightly straighten the arm in an easy followthrough.

To this description I add one more consideration. Arm work has taken hand to ball. As one brushes upward one puts a small amount of weight on the shot through minimal body twist.

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Lobs by the Book vs. Improvised Lobs

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, viz., that knowledgeable lobbers do a better job than those who merely wing it. The trick is that, despite being overly conscious at first, one repeats a more knowledgeable use of lobs until the lobs become imbued with instinct.

The two main pieces of knowledge are 1) When lobbing from behind the baseline, put apogee directly over the net, and 2) When lobbing from in front of the baseline, put the apogee of your lob directly over the head of the person you are trying to lob.

1) happens more often than 2) so give more thought to 1), i.e., remember the net guide and never forget it and hit these lobs very very high.

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You Wouldn't Want An Airplane Take-Off The Way I Serve

Were you to have that experience however you would notice that the small markers that guide the plane to the main runway were flashing past your window at an unhealthy speed.

That is because I accelerate through the curves. Why shouldn't I if my shoulder isn't flexible enough to point my racket tip completely down while I keep upper arm parallel to the court?

Is a short straight runway any kind of advantage in a tennis serve? Hardly. A long straight runway is good. The racket tip is delayed before it goes down, and it certainly does not stay down, but it does get down, and one measures runway from that ephemeral downward position parallel to the body.

Well, that is how one measures STRAIGHT RUNWAY. Me., I use CURVED RUNWAY. If I were a plane I would tip over, but I'm not, I'm bottle, more like a race car.

This method is not as good as paused or slowed trophy position at start of a huge straight runway but it is better than trying to take off in ten feet.

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New Thought on the Federer Forehand

As recently as last year John McEnroe predicted that the Rogerhorn would soon wear down, an interesting if so far inaccurate idea.

The Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia, e.g., once were 45,000 feet tall and everyone knows this even if they fall in the 2000-4000 feet range right now.

And in Switzerland there are horns all over the place-- a Lauberhorn named after Lauber while yoked to the smaller Escherhorn named after Alfred Escher, engineer of the nineteenth century tunnel through the bottom of The Jungfrau.

Whether the Swiss eventually re-name one of their mountains the Rogerhorn, the Federhorn, the Federerhorn or something else, Roger's forehand will figure intimately in the honor.

So how does Roger's forehand compare with the officially edited version of it, which appears in the first of the three wireframe videos on the front page that currently opens this website?

More awkward really. The same closing of the racket face at top of the loop is more pronounced because of the way that he (Roger) and Hingis both lift up the racket tip near beginning of their windup.

The wireframe animation here based on 3D data of actual students of Brian Gordon represents a successful editing or simplification of what Roger does.

And one good simplification deserves another. So why not, reader, just turn your elbow up as part of your backswing?

You will have eliminated one entire step to close your racket face and that is huge.

Oh, you say you need a timing pause at top of your loop? Then use that time to float your strings upward or downward or leave them where they are.

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Chunk the Shot Less Aggressively

Original plan to prolong backswing to end it with sharp elbow pointing backward was fine.

This puts KEY DOWN of Keystone and The Blake much closer together so that they feel more the same.

The difference is that the elbow travels around the body while racket tip keys down in The Blake.

Elbow stays where it is to start The Keystone.

This better orchestration should, in The Keystone, include commitment to straighten arm with total assurance as belated shoulders turn back. One tends to forget the assurance if one does not make a mental note. Another device to increase assurance is firm pre-knowledge of the exact amount of arm bend one will employ during the Model T wipe.

This commitment to arm bend-- just a little-- then leads to something more dynamic in The Blake.

Arm straightens backward and re-compresses to start The Blake's forward swing.

One sees this re-compression or "slight arm shrinkage" in some but not all of the TP videos of James Blake's forehand.

Me, I'll give myself a physiological break by programming myself to do the re-compression all the time including on fast version of short angle (gets the window pane angled-- horizontally-- with precision) and even on hardest forehands down the line.

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Chunk the Shot still more Aggressively

Cliff, I've changed my strokes every day of my life.-- Jack Nicklaus

Yesterday I did self-feed. Today I play. Reader, if you've been keeping up with me you know the context here.

Reader I tell you when most dumbasses think imitation they think slavish imitation, i.e., even cloning James Blake's scoliosis.

No there is mystery in all great shots and if you want to get at the mystery you will have to figure things out on your own, i.e., be just as creative as if you were inventing the new shot from the ground up.

You play with the shot you practiced.--Stan Smith

No today I'm too old for that.

The last time I played I DID NOT self-feed and I won points when I hit the new shot and only hit the ball up into the sky once.

"I guess that was just waiting to happen," I said out loud. The geezers listened.

So today I'll do something new again. Big unit turn like James. Only lift the elbow from there, affording the opportunity for more compact elbow lift. Will chunk the elbow lift now with the forward swing. Elbow lift and arm straightening will all be propulsive as will arm shrinkage before wipe if I still include it. All of this propulsive, none finesse. The only finesse will be initial unit turn and movement to the ball. Everything else will propel.

So would you call this a finesse shot, reader? Me neither. I'll save my finesse shots as my butter and bread or should I say scones with jam and clotted cream since becoming a Cornwallphile or with clotted cream and jam since I became a Devonphile (and I'm sure I have the order in which you put the two things on the scone reversed).

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Deflection Not Reflection Always In Tennis

Reader, will this motto improve your game? Probably will cut it in half.

Me, I want to reflect on the James Blake forehand as a useful genre to accept when I want.

I realize though that strokes not continuously reinforced tend to fall into disrepair.

I don't wish to become mired in detail and I see benefit in viewing the thing as a whole once having connected it to existing framework.

The keying down of The Keystone Pipeline is the same thing that happens when James or Ivan Lendl starts a forehand, i.e., the elbow lifts, just in a different way.

In Pipeline however the elbow stays where it is for modern wipe on a Model T Ford windshield. Use same wipe when imitating James.

The difference: Yank elbow immediately back as if to gouge some imagined enemy behind you. Declare this shot two parts instead of three.

The three parts of Keystone Pipeline: key (1), turn backward (2), turn forward (3).

Blake Imitation: Yank elbow back and up (1), hit ball and follow through (2).

Okay, but we can focus more on (2) just as we did in a previous post on (3) in the Keystone shot.

The important design decision is what we put with what, i.e., how we "chunk" experience.

End backswing with sharp elbow pointing backward, I say. Put arm straightening with forward swing and make the move kinetic to add to rear foot driving down (which wells ground force up from the court).

Next straight arm descends a bit but only because of what the core is doing.

Next arm slightly bends as you mondo (flip).

You do the Model T wipe then and finish and recover most likely toward center of the court.

The idea here is that James Blake adds speed to the shot by straightening and then bending arm with both occurring before the wipe.

I see this idea as slightly fanciful in that arm and body are working together, and I've never thought of minor arm motions capable of adding to major body motion but maybe they are.

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Geezer Report: Tried Shot in Competition Before Self-Feed

This is a hit the hell out of the ball kind of a shot. Any geezer adopting it as his main forehand would be destined for sorrow.

But if he learned it (and it doesn't seem overly complicated), he might do well if he interspersed it with smaller shots such as short angle and The Keystone Pipeline-- or their equivalent-- shots that aim for consistency over maximum power.

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Experiments in Geezerdom: James Blake Forehand

"Why Roger Federer?" Bungalo Bill wrote. "Why not James Blake...?"

The discussion was about which of all possible forehands would be best model for one individual, viz., me.

James (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...tLevelSide.mov) uses more grip than I ever will, but I certainly am in the ballpark for lifting elbow early the way he does, getting arm straight early, lowering straight arm from whole body action early, bending arm early as part of the mondo followed by Model T windshield wipe.

I continue to experiment for my wipe with the image of a perfectly vertical pane of glass.

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Keystone Pipeline: A Better Use of the Paid Adman's Princely Words

The immediate drop in this forehand utilizes gravity. Because of one's cheated over waiting position, to key the racket tip straight down is more a matter of self-relaxation than anything else.

This move is the "keystone" of this shot, seeming to cause a delay but it doesn't. But if one still thinks that it does, there is a remedy. Simply start the keystone the way Philip Kohlschreiber "the cabbage clerk" (tr) performs any kind of grip change in his tennis-- do it before the stroke begins. One can entirely reject Philip's methodology while stealing from it.

I prefer-- I refrained here from saying "I much prefer"-- this keystone as the means of closing the racket an extra amount in the case of a relatively mild established forehand grip.

Next step, "the pipeline," consists of straightening the arm while turning the body backward.

Taken together, this Keystone Pipeline is a thing of beauty superior to the adman's fevered dream of black gold seeping through crushed shale.

What a bastard that person was to come up with noxious propaganda on the level of Peggy Noonan's "thousand points of light," the prime American fin de siecle example of poetry corrupted and gone bad.

Next step is Luke Digweed's three checkpoints, i.e., inversion and roll up and across the vertical windowpane of a Model T Ford.

I surmise, as always, but the surmising produces some good shots. Whether open or neutral, right leg for the right-hander is the big driver here.

This stroke, as designed, is all Ted Williams, i.e., two linked hip turns with nothing in between.

Intellectually however one can-- if one must-- divide the forward component half and half: Half with heel down to implement a smooth and motion dependent mondo (1) and final heel rise to start before contact and complete the stroke (2).

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Remember: Windshields Come in Different Shapes

So I'll go with the oldest (https://www.google.com/search?q=mode...FQVIkgodPfEAKg). There aren't any wrap-arounds here, but already in some of these images the windshields are raked backward.

Ignore these. Go with a vertical pane of glass. Then go with the three checkpoints of Luke Digweed, one of the good looking teaching pros at Bradfield UK Indoor Tennis Facility: 1) mondo or flip, 2) racket tip pointing at sky, 3) racket tip pointing at side fence. Only then does racket come back toward body in a Federer-like finish.

A current Tennis Channel ad, playing repeatedly, shows this well in the case of a James Blake forehand.

James gets his inverting hand right up against the vertical glass before he proceeds to the other two checkpoints.

Does he think about checkpoints? Of course not. But since James is a great athlete, we are justified in asking, would James do this if it weren't a good idea?

I'll never forget one incident in the last match of a Davis Cup tie. James was beating Richard Gasquet in a match that meant nothing. So when the ball went into the stands and a fan wanted to throw it back, James pointed to a spot in the air and said, "Put it right here."

He then grabbed his racket by the two sides of its rim.

The ball drifted to the assigned spot.

James made contact with the handle to smash a home run into the rafters of the huge Coliseum in Winston-Salem, the place where Tim Duncan and Chris Paul played their basketball for Wake Forest.

So using the vertical glass pane image seems a good idea. Get hand right up against the bottom of the glass. For a short angle steer the Model T slightly to the left without letting that aim vision impinge in any way mechanics of the stroke.

P.S. Yeah, yeah, I know. The axle of the windshield wiper was at the TOP of the glass. And the wiper was operated by one's fingers. Do not use that information to annoy me!

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And there's nothing new under the sun. And I'm glad. Credit for invention of the great short angled ball in doubles would have been a personal burden too heavy for me to bear.