A New Year's Serve

[stotty]

The late Doris Lloyd (John Lloyd's mother) was the master (or should that be mistress, not sure) of the short angled ball in doubles. I actually thought she must have invented the shot. Out of the blue she would throw in a short, angled ball into the tramline, catching her opponents napping and taking them out of their rhythm. Later, when she became a tennis coach to all the midweek ladies at the club, she would teach the shot incessantly until one by one each became accomplished at executing the shot.

Her husband, Dennis Lloyd, was the inventor and master of the drag volley....but that's another story.

[bottle]

Hits

46,723 for A New Year's Serve. 1,612 for Short Angle. I'll be like Donald Trump, a man who over-attributes importance to ratings. In fact, 46,723 ought to be the number for Short Angle.

Or don't you think, reader, that short angle is an important shot that would give your game new dimension and which you would greatly enjoy?

[bottle]

A Tale of Two Sides of the Atlantic

That is a rather large title for what I will discuss here, a small adjustment to my forehand.

I don't care. Stotty and I agree that when one writes one shouldn't try so hard to impress. The writing should not neglect its reader, I would argue, but ought to grow primarily out of its subject.

"Some stupid little thing that might make a big difference" (Thank you, Aunt Frieda, 101) is what in tennis I am most about.

So 10-year-old Cate Cowper, my best hitting partner in the UK came back to America at 9, and I couldn't handle her ground strokes in any way, shape or form.

That feeling does not exist with the players I compete against in Detroit of whom there are many.

We were going to reciprocate by coming to Great Britain on Hope's old frequent flyer miles. I had to do something so I spent the next month shortening my stroke-- exactly what you are supposed to do when you are 75 years old according to a past tournament opponent now dead.

I've told this before but will tell it again. I started with Rick Macci's holding forth to a large group in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P52Ggata7qY) and of liking everything about the presentation except for one thing Rick did with his racket, a slight readjustment after his dogpat almost like a double-dribble.

A double-dribble? Not in my forehand! So I translated dogpat into keystone twist and reversed natural order of body turn and arm solo.

I just don't care that most players don't turn their shoulders enough. I do turn my shoulders enough. I just do it later or if not later, then in a different way.

I want my forehand to take exactly as much time, i.e, be of the same duration-- no more and no less than a good, representative ATP3 .

Arm twists racket down. Arm straightens on backward turn. Forward turn, immediate, is an adjustment device that determines weight on the ball. The racket tip looks bizarre, almost like one of Humphrey Bogart's improvised torpedoes on the overturned hull of THE AFRICAN QUEEN. A similar tennis image could be an ice pick that it is perpendicular to the net just before the mondo. This indeed is "a forward emphasis shot" to use WBC's much maligned phrase.

The forehand produced is so abbreviated that racket butt locates easily against the imaginary windshield common to anyone's wipe.

The racket butt does not have to pull a long way forward because it already is near the glass.

This gives more pure "sidewayness" to one's wipe just as in the case of an actual windshield wiper.

So did this new forehand obliterate the forehand taught to Cate and Anna Kournikova by Viktor Roubanov? Not at all but it kept up with it and offers me the chance for more improvement as it settles in.

[bottle]

Expansion of Possibility in Spun Serves

The danger, I think, is catching too much of the ball, i.e., failing to lead into it or up it with enough edge...So one works on every adjustment trick available including "pronation" without compromising the uninhibitedness of the internal arm roll (a whole arm roll from the humerus within its shoulder cave).

Yes, I said that. So I need to try it at all ends of any spectrum. The goal here is spinnier or spinniest serves.

1) Keep hip and shoulder more closed but use more adduction which is a fancy way of saying that one ought to send elbow further forward before the concluding arm throw with its EAR, its IAR and its other good features.

2) Whirl hip and shoulder more but keep elbow back, etc., etc.

3) Everything in between.

These ideas, reader, may to you as to me seem nothing new but it occurs to myself that I haven’t recently been paying enough attention to them.

Repetition sheathes the neuronal pathways but also makes one a dull boy (or girl).

[bottle]

What a great story even though like all real-life stories it won't come to an end for some time. You've got me rooting for this kid to become a good because unusually self-aware tennis player.

Also, as you say, "our collective intelligence is huge," a notion which one despite the temptations to do so should not push aside.

Since our collective intelligence and our collective foolishness both are huge, we all need to make a basic navigational choice.

[stotty]

An amazing revelation happened recently...

I found out something amazing today.

I have been coaching a boy of 16 for around a year now. I find him very miserable and negative. His body language is highly unusual. He never faces or looks at you when he speaks and in fact will stand sideways on when having a conversation with someone. His word choice and attitude in conversation is also odd.

I have never been able to reach this kid despite wracking my brains on how I might do so. About two months ago he quit tennis. I didn't fight to keep him. He was exhausting to teach.

Yesterday curiosity got the better of me and I sent a text to his mother asking if she thought he might at some point return to tennis. She was delighted I had contacted her and then told me the news her son had been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. I Googled Aspergers to find it fitted him like a glove. As it happens, he is a long way along the continuum and his Asperges is comorbid with other problems.

Today I gave him a lesson and found him much changed. Not because of medication but more down to knowledge he had finally been tagged. It's been beyond the everyday experience of those around him to be able to identify his problems or deal with someone like him. His parents have brought him up all these years believing his oddities were just his basic character. Being diagnosed has come as incredible relief both for him and his family.

It's incredible just how intelligent mankind is. Slowly but surely we unravel and get to the bottom of everything. It's a collective thing. Our collective intelligence is huge. One by one all these mental disorders and syndromes have been separated from each other, understood, then put in a box for even greater understanding. It's a highly intelligent and intuitive business when you sit down and think about. The first people to make headway with this kind of thing must have quite brilliant. I mean, where do you start in evaluating all these oddities in folk?

[bottle]

An Attack on Techno-Geeks

Hurry up and replace oil, you dawdling bastards. And while you're at it give us batteries we don't have to re-charge every day. And computers or computer programs for everybody that we can use to download high quality photographs.

[bottle]

Problem

Too big the images (too many bytes) for the crummy photo-editing programs we have.

[bottle]

Meeting in Epping Forest, UK

Stotty likes to write. He says tennis is all he knows so that is what he writes about. Actually he knows a lot of different things and can write or talk about any of them.

(https://www.google.com/search?q=eppi...FUkakgodA9IBfw)

Here are some photos, first Stotty and Bot, second our family we got to stay with in England including my partner Hope’s granddaughter Cate the Viktor Rebanov coached tennis player, third Cate at a St. Ives UK beach paddling ball in air with her father 480 times (or was that on another occasion?), fourth family on a deck at St. Ives.

[bottle]

Two Forehand Roll Images Instead of the Digweed Three

The first image can be a moving image (or film scene or device) from mondo to racket pointing at side fence. Right now I see this entire tract as accelerative although one could experiment with keeping the acceleration on only until racket tip was pointing to sky, I suppose.

To make this moving image more understandable, one could think of blackboard like Oscar or windshield like everybody else. Up and over equals image one.

Image two then is a simple Federer-like followthrough decelerating as it returns to body.

[bottle]

Stotty, Cate, Viktor Roubanov, Luke Digweed

The fish and chips were okay, but your comment on the shape of Cate's forehand is right on. Coincidentally, the day after we met, John Cowper, father of Cate, took us all (John, Hope, me-- Kristin was elsewhere) to witness Cate's 8 a.m. in Bradfield UK Indoor Tennis Facility with Luke Digweed, a teaching pro I can wholeheartedly endorse even though in the sixties (throughout) I held my breath.

Luke Digweed is a master of unstudied clarity. First item: shape of roll in Cate's or anybody's forehand. He mimed three freeze points. I would, more cumbersomely, identify them as 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.

It's all one uninhibited motion, of course, but all three visuals will be in my thought if I can get to a court after mowing a couple of overgrown Michigan lawns. The short review seemed to elicit even better forehands from Cate than the ones I experienced in a hit with her the night before.

I can't tell you how lucky I've been to hit with a real junior like Cate these past two weeks. Our whole trip to England was great but this was great, too. Cate just turned 10 and I am 75 . If she were 20 I don't think I'd reach a single ball.

Second item was net. Luke had Cate just creaming forehands deep down the line. Her opponent would then be so deep behind the baseline that if Cate volleyed into the court the point would be hers. So she didn't need to slug or swat the ball, just take speed off and deflect it, which Luke showed again with simple mime-- hand curling a little, I would say, through involvement of whole arm.

I liked your comment in answer to Hope's question, Stotty. You didn't say "plastics." You said "footwork." Right now the exquisitely balanced Cate takes six steps to my one and it's all rhythmic if you know what I mean. She'll run around her backhand any time of the day although her backhand is very good.

I wonder if Victor and Luke ever work on her two-hander-- the day I watched Luke left it alone.

Here Hopefully is a photo. Nope, Hope's sleeping off the delayed flights. Will put up a photo later.

[stotty]

Cate...Victor...the fish

I saw Cate shadow stroke one forehand in the beer garden. The shape looked good. I wish I had that kind of shape in my forehand. Victor just might have done a great job. One thing is for sure, a player simply must have a reliable forehand….and preferably a big forehand.

I would have sacrificed the rest of my game for a decent forehand.

Today, a boy of 14 played at the tournament I am running this week. All he had was a forehand and fast feet. He won….enough said. He may well win the whole event. I am waging a fiver he will.

Epping….what a wonderful place….what a wonderful thing to do.

I forgot to ask, how was the fish?

[bottle]

The Keystone Pipeline

St. Ives, Cornwall, UK. Reader, I am sure you would rather hear of a game score dispute and how it came about to almost sever the ligatures among the persons of three different nations.

I will simply report the final score when we had to give up our court-- 8-8 in a tiebreak-- and say that all's well that ends well (in Cornwall).

My new forehand, The Keystone Pipeline, is oozing forward pretty well.

For the record, I oppose the real Keystone Pipeline, which is designed for scummy and stupid people who prefer scum over all other forms of energy.

I despise The Keystone Pipeline so much that I have decided to co-opt its name and give it to my forehand.

The ATP3, you will recall, involves the rapid turn of one's shoulders followed by a distinct dogpat (video: 2013 Tennis Rick Macci Breaks Down the Forehand). Can you see the two timing units in that? Me too. I simply reverse them and transform the dogpat into a bent-arm keying down.

This leaves arm straightening to occur coincident with backward turning of the core.

Reversal of core then activates pull and roll.

Future of this shot may lie in a hip turn that keeps heel down for first half of itself exactly as in a David Leadbetter golf swing.

Only as you are about to hit the ball do you squish a bug.

[bottle]

Four Forehands All to Try at 1 p.m.

ST. IVES, UK. If now that she is 10 years old we can get my Roubanov coached faux-granddaughter to a tennis court, I will try-- some would say miserably-- four different forehands all at once.

She, the faux-granddaugher Cate Cowper, has worked with Victor Roubanov for four years, and like Anna Kournikova, a previous kid student of his, has one forehand that is very grooved and very good.

As I write, she is sitting next to me playing (and winning) games on a new touchscreen.

The first of the forehands I shall try, my version of an ATP3, contains a closing of the racket face as its dogpat goes out and down. Although I wrote a whole essay on this subject, such was the pressure of playing against great 9-year-olds that I only remembered to hit the shot one time in the session.

The second forehand, my "Keystone," as I call it, stood up well and may work exceptionally well on those occasions when I try to hit with two beats rather than three, perhaps for a short hopped half volley.

The third and fourth are versions in which the arm straightens early as the body turns back. That creates a space/beat for interesting deviations of the two hands away from each other before the final pull and roll.

The "Keystone," by the way, is so named for starting with a keying down motion that closes the racket in that special way and frees up the arm for simple, unfettered extension.

[bottle]

Soupcon of Scintilla of Sidespin Balanced by Completely Different Slice

ST. IVES, UK. There simply isn't time for compressed double-roll then a long straight-a-way, I found.

If one is to hit a tabletop double-roll like Ken Rosewall and is exactly of my ability, one ought to make contact on the second roll.

To make contact on long straight-a-way then one need only draw double-roll construction backward through tract of the whole shot.

If one has long experimented with skunk tail uprightness and then further over slantwise preparation, it is nothing to go a third step and lower racket tip right away as part of the backswing (and call this first roll now).

Hips can be associated with arm straightening and forward roll rather than arm straightening and backward roll.

That leaves plenty of time for a very long straight-a-way as if one is determined to follow the ball with one's racket forever.

Haven't tried this yet; it nevertheless has to work.