A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Too bad.

[bottle]

Regarding Federfores

If you use maximum body rotations simultaneously combined with horizontal adduction and internal arm rotation especially from the shoulder you will get around on the ball in time.

You then can relax the backswing, which I regret once calling a flip past the head. The backswing can go close by the head but in fashion more relaxed, reader, than I'm pretty sure you ever imagined.

Here's the Federer clip which may be the closest thing we'll ever have as proper model (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1%20500fps.mp4). Just leave out Roger's manipulation of the racket before he starts his four-foot dogpat. You need it like a hole in the head. But be free enough in your demeanor to fiddle around until you find the grip that works.

One really important feature in this design is a complete and vigorous pointing across with opposite hand to help turn body to the max. You can use opposite hand to help bring the racket up toward your head (body is already turning) but from there you need bigtime to emphasize the arm pointing across.

Go Manny.

[bottle]

''Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything.'' ― Aldous Huxley

It's true. And search engines are good too. I think I put in "quotes on naming things" and picked the Oscar Wilde out of some list of 30 great ones. But there were other lists I didn't yet have time to explore some with 500 entries all on the value of naming things. Take Steve Navarro's "dogpat," one word without hyphen or separation and behind which is Steve's love of a dog.

[stotty]

Choosing the right words

''Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything.'' ― Aldous Huxley

[bottle]

On Finding Names for Tennis Phenomena

"It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for." — Oscar Wilde

[bottle]

One Coin on Edge, One on its Side-- Now Go Go Go

If we can't value simplicity, we can't be tennis players.

The coin on edge is the ATP3 backswing. The coin on its side is the ATP3 foreswing. With a 4-foot dogpat in between.

For more explanation or discussion read earlier posts in this thread or send me a private email.

But it's here, I tell you, all right here in # 2567 .

[klacr]

This is the topic I dream about most.

The one handed backhand is why I play tennis and why I love tennis, and I will consume all tips regarding the backhand especially the high flying ones. I like the idea of building tension with the off hand at the beginning of the stroke. I think I do this and I will have to ask BH next time I hit (which is hopefully during lunch). I just know that my racket feels like it goes through extremes during the shot. At first its very heavy then it feels like its made of nothing and at contact the ball feels like a marshmallow. After contact comes a moment of joy, time slows down and I breath out. The OHBH my one true high.

It really is, when struck well, the most beautiful shot in tennis. Great post!

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[lobndropshot]

This is the topic I dream about most.

The one handed backhand is why I play tennis and why I love tennis, and I will consume all tips regarding the backhand especially the high flying ones. I like the idea of building tension with the off hand at the beginning of the stroke. I think I do this and I will have to ask BH next time I hit (which is hopefully during lunch). I just know that my racket feels like it goes through extremes during the shot. At first it's very heavy then it feels like it's made of nothing and at contact the ball feels like a marshmallow. After contact comes a moment of joy, time slows down and I breath out. The OHBH my one true high.

[bottle]

Poor Man's Federfore

Count the squares if you have to-- the squares in the net-- just to understand the extent of Roger's separation at contact. Amount of separation, Vic Braden once opined, is an expression of confidence. Or, as Archimedes knew, with a long enough lever you can move the world (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1%20500fps.mp4).

Now slide back off from contact all the way to top of the dogpat or even a bit more to where the stroke changes from two hand to one hand.

My separation happens sooner but so what? Let's go with Roger rather than bottle here. (There could be good reasons to do so.) The most difficult part of the stroke-- or will it be difficult now that we can see it so well?-- happens here. Roger's racket transitions FROM:

Racket head next to human head with both heads facing the viewer as if Roger is something on the face of a playing card.

TO: Roger's racket closing through the agency of his right hand only-- closing while tilting so that racket tip though still high is farther from Roger's head.

Then and only then does dogpat begin.

If (note how often I use the word "if") the transition so clearly watched above does not immediately work for you, reader, you might consider slightly different arcs through the air and fiddle a bit with your grip too.

Suppose you find that transition identified by an emboldened FROM and equally emboldened TO lugubrious, intellectual, micro and generally gumming up of the works, why not go macro instead?

Put another way, if another way works, why would you use Roger's transition? And did Grigor Dimitrov use Roger's transition when he decided on imitation? Could that be the reason that Grigor is failing to reach the topmost echelon of tennis? More likely his failure has to do with his distracting sex life which maybe ought to be compared to that of Tiger Woods? But here is the point: As Roger himself has said, "There should only be one Roger Federer." And why would anybody do something simply because Roger does it-- unless it is spectacular in the way that it works (possible too).

So now we decide to go macro, following the broad outline of Roger's stroke without becoming mired in its detail.

To do this we envision two huge coins, one on edge (the backswing) and one on its side (the Federforian foreswing).

A four-foot deep dogpat also comes across (later our dogpat might degenerate to three feet or two feet but certainly would never expand to five feet).

And mondo too comes across. But the big mistake people are apt to make here is to spear for too long with the racket butt because of all of Nick Bollettieri's soundbit advice on TV to shine a flashlight at the ball.

Wipe starts immediately from the mondo, which produces a slight hook to the right hander's left just before the departing ball lands.

When that happens in golf you've hit the ball well if you want the ball to roll more for distance. In tennis it rolls too, i.e., is mostly topspin which brings it down better in the court.

[bottle]

Probably we've both said enough about forehands for now. Yes one must establish eye contact with the forehand early or forever be a rudesby. ("Rudesby"-- a word from Shakespeare.)

But on the subject of one hand backhands-- I now know that one person can give advice to another and have it make a big difference. That always has been a possibility but now I know it's true.

Like you, I was trying to imitate Stanislas Wawrinka. If one's last name is Swiss, and mine is, one will try to imitate both Federer and Wawrinka whenever possible. And if one in one's early twenties had a beautiful near Graz girlfriend half Italian and half Austrian one will even try to imitate Domenic Thiem although he comes from the north in Wiener Neustadt.

The result then of having had this Austrian girlfriend (the first of two from Graz if you consider Lassnitzhohe an hour-and-a-half bus ride away as Graz) is that one will experience many poaches in doubles in which one's backhand is picked off-- mercilessly-- at the net.

I had had enough of this. So I shortened the stroke and put more thumb behind the shaft. And started to build a mild tug-of-war between the hands since somebody told me that Roger does that.

The tug-of-war was not a bad idea but I was releasing my slingshot don't-you-know far too late. tennischiro almost offhandedly suggested that one can do an opposite directions hand tug to build extra strength in the arm right after a flying change from forehand grip to one's backhand grip.

I tried this and immediately wanted to lower the backswing (I mean let the flying grip change initiate a medium low and level takeback parallel to the court). All I can say is that a lot of other things must have been in place. To my amazement my swing didn't lose the added energy even though the racket head veered down and in behind the handle right after the two hands separated. Suddenly I was hitting the ball better than in decades or ever-- a nice story and true. This is the farthest (no, let's say highest) I've ever flown on a tennis tip.

[bottle]

Criss-crossing submissions. Love the part about dyslexia. Will answer more after doing some leaf-blowing.

[lobndropshot]

Good advice, I will tell my forehand that it is rude not to make eye contact at the beginning of the stroke.

Thanks Bottle

[bottle]

Count the squares if you have to-- the squares in the net-- just to understand the extent of Roger's separation at contact. Amount of separation, Vic Braden once opined, is an expression of confidence. Or, as Archimedes knew, with a long enough lever you can move the world (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1%20500fps.mp4).

Now back off from contact all the way to top of the dogpat or even a bit more to the transition point where the stroke changes from two hand to one hand.

My transition happens sooner but so what? Let's go with Roger rather than bottle here. (There could be good reasons to do so.) The most difficult part of the stroke-- or will it be difficult now that we can see it so well?-- happens here. Roger's racket transitions FROM:

Racket head next to human head with both heads facing the viewer as if Roger is something on the face of a playing card.

TO: Roger's racket closing through the agency of his right hand only-- closing while tilting so that racket tip though still high is farther from Roger's head.

Then and only then does dogpat begin.

[lobndropshot]

What color is your Forehand?

Thanks for posting. It really is a beautiful stroke.

My forehand has decided that it doesn't like Federer as a model. I have for many years pleaded with it and it says "NO!"

I say think of all the power and spin we will generate. To which my forehand says "shank off!"

I say just look at how relaxed and easy the stroke is doesn't it feel great? "How does the fence feel?" My forehand replies.

We have reached a compromise though if we can be at a 75-80 degree angle of racket tip at the start of the swing. we can have a stroke that feels more effortless and gets reasonable spin and power. The only thing I have to give up is; trying to be Federer.

My backhand on the other hand is protesting Wawrinka. BH seems to think it is much too flashy and I should "be more realistic." My backhand is right I but wouldn't it be sweet to hit the ball through the fence?

I guess what my strokes are telling me is that they just want to be themselves. And I should let them, my job is to help them be the best versions they can possible be.

Bottle, any advice on convincing my forehand to come around?

[bottle]

For lobndropshot

Here, with new technology, is a shot you indicated you were having trouble with, particularly in the early stages of the backswing (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1%20500fps.mp4).

It's great that I've received so many clicks in this thread (half of my reward, the other half being whatever has happened for me out on a tennis court).

But when it comes to the nitty-gritty of imparting intricacy of technique, I sometimes wonder if anything is happening at all. One thing to impart it, another to know that it is received and integrated in somebody's game. More often, one would think, it is simply misunderstood.

A teacher doesn't give up, right, even if he is only reaching one or two people?

In considering the Federfore or ATP3, I go with the thought that when these shots start going faster and higher and with more spin that keeps them in, along with a slight tailing off to the left for the right-handed player, well...you are not Roger Federer but you are getting somewhere.