A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Modified McEnroe in a One-hander

Hit some great shots imitating that man but not enough of them to my mind, and so am carrying Ed Faulkner's idea of leading back-swing with racket tip to a dive-bombing extreme.

This simply means more opening of the racket during the take-back instead of performing the same action later as part of the hit the way John McEnroe does.

Why? Because simplification is good in tennis except when it isn't. Now, in my count five I'll simply have to roll wrist straight as body swings and have a non-rolling section as body brings racket around to complete that swing. Body is to stop as I roll arm mightily (upper and lower both) as wrist becomes concave again.

Four elements will have been reduced to three.

This allows more time for stiffening of core muscles perfectly to create deceleration-acceleration every time. Watch this stiffening process in the same McEnroe sequence I showed before:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHShortRear.mov

Look for the mid-stroke body moment where McEnroe sets himself. He looks
casual overall. That particular moment, by contrast, is dramatic and assertive.

Among the many elements I'll retain is the slight segmenting of body (count four) to bring the racket, open now, part way down before I do anything with my wrist.

Divide forward upper body swing fifty-fifty between rolling wrist straight and keeping it straight. Then try different combinations, e.g., one-third/two-thirds, two thirds/one-third in a search for what works best.

[bottle]

Your Back in One-Hander: Slanted or Upright

Easy. This is your hypnotist speaking. Keep hand in one place vis-a-vis the upper body all the way until after the hit. Easy, easy. Now, what will happen if instead of segmenting for straightness of upper body, you lean it with same timing toward the sideline?

You will A), if racket is directly behind you, lose the slight racket lowering you achieved from body segmentation alone, and you will close the strings a bit,
B) regain lowness closer to contact as upper body swings, C) raise racket if you've made the mistake of taking it farther around, D) lower racket if you've kept it out in slot, maybe even pointing it on a perpendicular to sideline before you step out, so it will come around even lower.

Listen, dear reader, there are two ways to bring the shoulders around when your spine is on a slant: 1) like a Bucyrus-Erie power shovel or 2) like a golfer whose rear shoulder swings down as his front shoulder swings up.

Electing 2), we have a real sense of shoulders pressing back hand down before it draws back. And we have thought an awful lot and would like to continue on the subject of abrupt stoppage of the hitting shoulder. Why not perform this stop exactly when shoulders become level?

Generally speaking, who should slant their upper body, who keep it upright? Tall people like me (6 ft. 4), short people like McEnroe (5 ft. 11).

[bottle]

Applying Lessons from Budge and McEnroe to Federer-type One Hander

Why should this be necessary? Well, I don't think I ever properly understood Roger's backhand, and I wonder, dear reader, did you? Did you know or ever read a single word anywhere to the effect that you must roll your cocked wrist straight if you want to hit like Roger?

"Oh, I do that naturally," a right brain romanticist might say whether true or not. I believe, however, in both lobes of the brain working evenly together.

Hip turn starts when racket head is slightly above left shoulder. Hip turn is directly linked to shoulders leveling out. Hip turn decelerates as arm straightens to second check place for left hand (and wrist rolls straight).

First check place for left hand is on racket throat. Second check place is with handle still spearing to left of oncoming ball and with hand free but near middle of upper rim of racket head.

Wrist roll to arm roll unfurls the strings with this sequence possibly becoming entirely passive. Rabbit punch/clench applies weight and racket does not turn any more (it makes a long straight path to end of followthrough!).

There is no section in the roll where wrist is straight. The wrist goes directly from becoming straight to becoming concave. Wrist can, however, close when strings assume second position relative to left hand, thus simplifying the subsequent arm roll for more passivity.

The hand gets quite close to the ball. The strings then hit the ball quite
close to where the hand was. Why? Because arm twists more than it moves to get to contact.

The wrist closes then opens as the arm rolls! Rabbit punch is from contact onward.

There is NO leveling of shoulders before hips turn. To repeat, hip turn and shoulders leveling are simultaneous.

The wrist and shoulders corrections should streamline the stroke considerably.

Stopping the hips as racket assumes its second position relative to left hand should put more passive snap into racket roll than ever before. The stoppage comes from A)front leg straightening B)left leg moving toward inside of right leg C)left hand moving back six inches to a foot. The arm gets mostly straight at the same time, it seems to me.

The left leg can fly left near end of stroke just as in the most desperate running backhand ever; but, try not to let it proceed past the front foot. It can set down directly behind the front foot, in other words, and off you go to the right in a very good, spare recovery.

[bottle]

Kinesthesia (Making Something More Right Brain)

Post # 198 offered an outline. This one wants to flesh it out and describe how loading up the crucial section could feel.

A person gets to built torsion in the arm as hips turn forward, shoulders get level. He continues to build it in stopping phase as arm straightens, wrist rolls straight, hand moves out in slot, racket head re-locates so middle of top of rim is next to free left hand if left arm stays bent like Roger Federer's. All this simultaneous action includes stopping maneuvers of the body. What image expresses all that? One lung filling with air thanks to the power pedal on the end of your right leg?

Arthur Ashe spoke of stringing a bow, Billie Jean King of throwing a frisbie. Cocked racket then, strings still by body but lower now, the handle to outside as in a Don Budge backhand-- all of it feels weird, like a coiled spring, which helps explain what happens next.

Rewind. Since extending leg is pressing leveled shoulder forward and up as part of the stop, make racket tip press down and back while keeping hand pretty much in one place.

[bottle]

Three Eyes

In a sense, with these recent posts, I've been coming closer to and yet moving away from what I want both at the same time.

While playing short court tennis with my student, I kept one eye on her body, one on what she was doing, and the third on all the sidespin in my own backhand.

She'll be out of town since her publisher is paying for her to fly to Europe and read from her book on social security in front of the Swiss Parliament, so this is a good chance for me to transform my sideward spin into something more straight up.

The statements I'll work from are Billie Jean King: "It's like throwing a frisbie,"
John McEnroe: "Keep your elbow in. Its hard to learn but worth doing." And Arthur Ashe: "Think about turning the corner."

To court now and report back: Achieved goal with the first ball dropped and hit. There may always be sidespin. Today, it came in a much better mix.

The solution: Roll wrist, then roll arm, then open wrist during rabbit punch, which starts an inch to a foot before contact.

However, I never learned to throw a frisbie as well as my brothers, so I don't know what Billie Jean was talking about unless she meant passive, tight and deceleration-acceleration driven arm roll followed by clenching the shoulderblades together.

And I've never figured out what McEnroe meant by "Keep the elbow in." At the beginning? In the middle? Nowhere? Everywhere? These questions don't matter any more. The racket whirl can be tight-- that keeps elbow from flying out. Rabbit punch also keeps elbow from swinging out as far as it would go if you were also swinging from the shoulder. And this in turn, combined with wrist returning to concave channels the strings in a more upward path.

The sequence of fast, tight, passive roll followed by muscular extension of both arms from center of one's back seems healthy and productive. And I'm happy to retain my new ideas about deceleration-acceleration albeit in modified form, e.g., print tennis instruction most frequently thinks of left hand as device to keep racket on ball-- only part of the story. I really see, I'm afraid, left hand going back twice (but in one motion).

Nothing in life or tennis is or ever should be automatic; however, within this rough stroke design there lurks a cluster of magical backhands hanging like upside-down bats in some internal cave.

[bottle]

Orchestrating Forehand and One Hander

Count for Federfore: 1234 before you even BOWL, which is the beginning of deceleration-acceleration. One hander count: 1234 before you SWING, with 4 vigorous from the leg same as in the Federfore.

SWING replaces BOWL, although both actions are performed from the shoulder. When you BOWL, it's straight from one intersection on horizontal arc to the next. When you SWING, it's along a horizontal arc. That's the difference.

I'm willing now to allot (which may or may not sound crazy) two counts to take the racket up, two to take it down to perfect very wide hitting position (hand out far enough to allow space for a water wing), and two (2) separate instances of deceleration-acceleration during the final count five, very similar to a Federfore.

Deceleration-acceleration 1): tension built between front shoulder and racket tip during count four, but you're swinging now. You release this tension not with twist-- which I tried-- but with arm swing. Yes, you let the swing or bonk go,
but stop it immediately for deceleration-acceleration 2) which is twist. The twist is so fast that you still can start a rabbit punch before contact.

Such gyros in tennis as Vic Braden, John O. Barnaby, Ed Faulkner and Lloyd Budge are left brain, which is why the right brain racists (left brain themselves) tend to hate them.

I want to steal once again from Mr. Barnaby (whom I'll take over his 1960's Harvard captain Timothy Gallwey any time), specifically, Coach Barnaby's book photograph of himself bonking a net post with the heel of his hand.

I want to incorporate the net post in my one hander. But if I hit it too hard
I'll injure myself, so I wouldn't want to do that. If I went for smoothness on my forehands I'll go for abruptness here. I bonk into an imaginary net post to twist my straight wrist in a very fast snap. Sounds passive but is a combination once again. The sudden stop lends to speed but so do fast twitch muscles in the shoulder and the forearm. Intentional abruptness results in overall smoothness.

[ochi]

Bottle, do you have a copy of "Technical Tennis," by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey? The section on "Spin and the Serve" is interesting, particularly the part about how Sampras put so much spin on his serves -- by tossing so high and striking the ball as it descended.

There's a whole lot of other stuff, too, about racquets, strings, "18 Different Ways to Hit the Ball," and so on.

[bottle]

Unwanted Shear in One Hander

I'll find that book. Thanks very much.

Very few tennis pros, in print articles or electronic commentary, have addressed unwanted sidespin in the one hander. Among those who have, the ones with macho tendencies have attributed this fault to imagined physical weakness in all tennis students resulting in "shear."

However, it happened to Bea Bielik, the national women's college champion some years ago in a U.S. Open third round match against Justine Henin. And it happened to me in a match I won yesterday, although my topspin was much more straight up when I dropped and hit baskets of balls the day before that.

It happens with "a racket face that has not squared up" combined "with a slight crossing swing." (I took that from "Talk Tennis.") My attempted solution today was, building on the immediately preceding posts here and subtracting nothing, to add a second BONK, this one with the pinky knuckle rather than heel of the hand and during the rabbit punch for added sidewardness, a greater rather than "slight crossing swing" that slings the racket head around outside of the ball.

To me, the big question right now is how far out to hit the ball-- that comes from experiments within the experiment toward end of the practice today. I'm almost ready to send ALL energy sideways toward left fence with only a little
bit of follow-through coming back toward right fence.

I realize I live in alternate reality, but truly, when someone says to hit regular ground strokes farther in front, I almost always think that the better truth is more out to the side.

After the next regular match tomorrow (it usually confirms or dispels the latest theory), I want to get my student back from Switzerland so we can play more short court, i.e., mini-tennis, which will be the proof that my correction of
unwanted sidespin is due to timing and technique rather than increased expenditure of physical strength accompanied by loud grunts.

[ochi]

You can get a copy through www.RacquetTech.com, the site of the U.S. Racquet Stringers Association. They offer numerous other interesting sounding books, too.

[bottle]

Don't Fail to Understand What You've Got

The experts (ha-ha, as if there are any) sometimes will tell you to swing to the outside, but unless they use the word "myelinization" in the same breath their prescription may prove useless.

You set up a series of micro-actions, it seems to me. No, pull that-- sounds too much like Microsoft. You set up a macro. Changing any step will slow the process but you'll end up with something better.

When you've got all your tiny steps lined up in a row (think of Zorba's scaffolds running up a stony mountain to the monks' forest at top in Crete) you practice the whole action as a single shebang. You practice and practice but don't drill-- save drills for other aspects of tennis, e.g., slap the net with your racket, go back for the overhead, run forward and slap the net, back for another overhead.

No, this stroke development thing is more fragile and peculiar. Before the first sign of boredom you may want to exchange steps four and five, or 13 and 11, to keep it of interest. DON'T RUN IT INTO THE GROUND.

Since we're discussing one hander here, and we may share the experience of
pursuit of the elusive Federfore, shouldn't we try to build on that experience?

Everything to the outside then and don't be stingy. Send EVERYTHING to the outside: loading, spearing, arm stoppage and twist, simultaneous rabbit punch and bonking sideways with the pinky knuckle.

All this to the outside. Sounds improbable. That's good!

What happens is that the simultaneous rabbit punch and bonk back to right, if used to send strings around the ball to the left also send strings through the ball reminiscent of body whirl in the Federfore.

Rabbit punch and body whirl are totally different concepts; both nevertheless are core body movement.

With practice, all the little steps blend together into a single action you can fire at will. People used to call this "muscle memory." Myelinization is MUCH SEXIER.

Because sticky goop actually wraps itself around the neuronal pathway, insulating it, so that the synaptic transfers get faster and faster.

The faster the total transfer gets-- one message really-- the more you can compress your files on one side of your body.

Hope this isn't too fancy. It's been fun.

[bottle]

Choice

One of the print magazines asked recently why anyone aspiring to a good one hander would use anybody other than Roger Federer as their model.

Because my John McEnroe modeled one hander generates better spin for me and is slightly quicker to get off.

I don't get as much pace (but all I want and need), and I have hit far less of them in my total tennis experience. But I was using it the day I beat my regular partner, a good player, 6-0, 6-0, an-only-once-every-two-year occurrence. Then, disappointed with my winning performance against the same opponent the next time out, I began to fiddle with my one hander once again.

I like the rhythm of the longer Federer modeled shot very much, but for some reason which I don't need to figure out, that one isn't as promising and accurate for me.

[bottle]

Going for Sims

"Sims" is abbreviation for simultaneities. Since analysis tends to break down tennis strokes into too many parts, but we think the parts we've discovered through long work have to exist, let's put the emphasis on synthesis or getting those parts to work together.

Not everyone will agree, but feeling for the ball and only putting on power from the ball onward is a great and extremely useful basic in tennis ground-strokes. Proceeding from that conviction, how would we prefer to feel for the ball? Slow spear? Slow roll? Slow swing? These are real possibilities that no one should take lightly (unless they insist); but, admit please, dear reader, they are very different from one another.

Today I'd like to bring to my one hander quest a combination of slow roll and slow level swing with a still more specific triple purpose of A) putting strings on outside of ball, B) whittling maximum exertion part of stroke down to only a rabbit punch for good contact and succinct follow-through and C) hitting the ball farther out front.

Does it work? Yes. The hand, which is what you use to find the ball, moves a minimal amount back and forth. As it goes forward the strings swish all
around it-- some might say percolate-- from twist of shoulder rotors, twist of forearm, straightening of wrist, easy horizontal swing with all simultaneous.

You could perhaps think of a cowboy (though we should all hate cowboys by now-- just think what they did to the space program alone) spinning his lariat up to contact. And rabbit punch, as we've already suggested, comes after this small but intricate swing. So what comes immediately before? Spearing in the form of arm straightening in place (rename it racket butt "siting?") and forearm simultaneously coiling (pronation familiar from serving?) with this one motion a flowing continuation of upper body raising/tilting back started immediately before with or without leg extension.

This becomes an exciting stroke for its instant promise more than instant effectiveness: some balls started hopping in a way I haven't seen for a while and I got a very nice compliment from an advanced seniors player working out his two varsity-looking sons on the adjacent court, somebody I hadn't met before who wanted to know if I-- me-- had played on a college team.

If there's validity here and a drop and hit common to some great baseball swings, the learning wheels count might go: one and two back three step out four drop and half-swing to ball, five full-out rabbit punch.

[ochi]

Bottle, regarding the last 'graph of your last post: Have you read Ted Williams' "The Art of Hitting"? It seems to me that some, or a lot, of it pertains to the forehand. Of course, he was talking closed stance. Still...

[bottle]

Ted William's Book

I own it and have always thought it a great book. Without
digging it out, I'll invoke the key phrase, "hips rotate marginally
ahead of shoulders." Although I've done that in a lot of different
experiments (some lasting five years or more), I don't think I'm
doing it right now with the Federfore since I'm on a kick where I think
energy runs out the arm to right while the body, smooth as could be
and not really accelerating applies desired weight to ball. On the other
hand Williams talks a lot about extending from arms/arm as you hit the ball. That certainly ought to apply.

[bottle]

Re-affirmation-- One Hander

You almost touch the ball with your hand but hit it with your racket.

And you can be dropping racket head and anti-twisting it and swinging it and rolling it and twisting it all over the place so long as you're not moving your hand too much.

When you lead back-swing with racket tip you're not using hand as much as you would if you didn't do that.

When body drops the racket you're not moving hand (don't be a lawyer about this). When you pronate racket tip down as you straighten arm you're not moving hand very much.

And when you straighten wrist while rolling arm from two different places all of these things add up and reduce the amount of hand swing you need to get strings on outside of the ball.

The time may soon come when you should use three counts to get arm parallel to sideline, one count to step out, and a fifth count to drop racket and hit the ball.