A New Year's Serve

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Banking in a Roger Federer Forehand

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_Court_Level_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Inside_Out&stroke=FH%20InsideOut%20CourtLevelFront5%20500fps.mp4

Observe the banking at 0:09 of this clip. Simply stop the capsule at 0:09 to see how one shoulder is higher than the other. Then run the whole clip to see when the hitting shoulder lowers and how far it spirals up (to level here) while blended with Alexander's ragtime extension. If you have more concern about this, reader, simply grasp the capsule under the imagery with your cursor and gently slide the imagery back and forth.

"Banking" is an aeronautical term used by Welby Van Horn in the Ed Weiss book SECRETS OF A TRUE TENNIS MASTER. I don't believe that banking normally gets discussed in connection with Roger Federer's forehand but should.

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Learning through Self-Contradiction

This is a club. The people who are always right need not apply.

I say I want to drop elbow from the shoulder to initiate a forehand swing. That desire, once identified, gives me something to build on even if through self-contradiction.

Loose motion of the arm by itself? Loose motion of the arm abetted by full body dropping of the rear shoulder? Full body dropping of the rear shoulder by itself?

I always listen to my 100-year-old friend Frieda, who lives by herself in her own house and has one bathroom on the second floor and never takes a pill of any kind. "You look for some stupid little thing that might make a big difference."

Full body dropping of the rear shoulder by itself starts to work on open McEnruefuls. Then why not on neutral McEnruefuls? Because the extra step away from adjustment foot needs to be followed by immediate hips rotation and there isn't time for anything else?

But I don't want two different swings for open and neutral shots if I can have one.

Resolved therefore: Speed up the whole apparatus. Minimize the rear shoulder drop-- easy to do with the McEnrueful down and up backswing. Fiddle around but keep the same basic shot. And do not confuse it in any way with a Federfore except for keeping opposite hand on racket for longer followed by dog pat to produce one's sharpest of short angles.

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Right. He never winced nor cried aloud because he was tougher than normal people. And he wrote the poem and died before he even could hear Frank Sinatra sing. But-- HE DID IT HIS WAY.

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Other Strokes Hit in Self-Feed Today, Diarists and INVICTUS the Horrible Poem

Forehand volley patterned on John McEnroe: there is double propulsion from shoulders turn and arm coming into body. This gets racket butt pointing at left hip at contact. Turning racket open as it comes into body seems a good idea. The head stays still. That means no pivot around opposite shoulder. The pivot is around the body core as exemplified by the still head. The big determinant always however is footwork and weight coming through.

I've noticed from the McEnroe videos that all of his basic volleys are pretty much
hit with racket parallel to the court. That is different philosophy from Welby Van Horn's advanced backhand volley where racket tip is considerably above hand. I'm not saying one is better than the other, am just trying to figure what's what.

In serves I'm finding that how much I take racket back on weight shift from front to rear foot at this point doesn't matter much. So I'm for using different amounts even in a match to look for an advantage and maybe confuse an opponent. I've always wondered if a rotorded server like me should have more motion and at different times and places in the overall tract than an unrotorded server. Since repetition is both the boon and the bane of tennis, I'm all for this new variety. Of course if I'm holding serve I might keep doing what got me there. Note: the tract that takes racket back and up into arm bend is always the same no matter what percentage of it is up together.

Backhands today were a little different from when I played Friday night. A very good teaching pro once told me to keep my front shoulder down but I was trying to examine that. John McEnroe first tilts his shoulders down but then levels them as part of the stroke. And sometimes his front shoulder even goes up.

I don't know why I self-fed backhands in this session when they have been fine. Everything changes, I guess-- especially one's ideas.

On diary, my least favorite literary form: One can say I'm a autodidact or didactic, i.e., inclined to teach or pound something home. That is what I mostly do in this thread, which is basically how-to. And I try not to type something just because it happened. But I just read an English professor's book claiming that memoir is the cat's pajama. Me, I think it horrible like the following poem which I was forced to memorize at the Hotchkiss School. Wonder if I'll get the capitalization and punctuation right. This poem has correctly been called the worst in the English language, perhaps because it tries to be good, setting the level high but is mawkish at the core (oh, sorry to use the word "core" twice in one post):

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody yet unbowed.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll.
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.

I'm glad I'm not that person. I've winced and bitched plenty of times.

The author of this self-pitiful tripe, William Henley Fool or whatever his name is, should be rocketed to the Andromeda Galaxy along with all the war loving Republicans and Democrats in this land though the time and place frames aren't right. Along with the diarists and memoirists too. And definitely the professor who thinks that memoir is the form for our age. Doesn't he know the repetition that occurs when one starts to recount one's actual life? Better to be a liar writing about one woman than three or thirty. Better to combine the best and worst traits of all in one.

Well, we can't set the people we don't like in an open boat in Hudson's Bay since a bunch of 1 per centers in a stinkpot would come along and include everybody in a cocktail party. One of the mutineers who set Henry Hudson adrift was later disembowled by Indians so one can only imagine what happened to Henry himself.

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These two shots, neutral and open, are perfect in self-feed. The only trick left is to translate them into actual play.

Note: One may not have to roll strings closed during the backswing, but if I ever decide to do that I will know when in the backswing to do it-- early.

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McEnrueful Going Crazy

How can one take a neutral step, then push out the front hip, then rotate the hips? It all takes too long.

So one had better lower rear shoulder early to bank it properly during the forward swing which will become even more upward if one simultaneously plays a riff in Alexander’s Ragtime Band.

Now my shoulders are not level as I run or otherwise move around the court. Is life worth living?

What are the possible solutions? 1) Sit and hit, dropping rear shoulder, 2) Hit the McEnrueful from open stance like a John McEnroe forehand. 3) Hit a neutral stance shot but with rear shoulder dropped early.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_forehand/mac_forehand.html?MacFHWideSide2.mov

But has John lowered back shoulder the way he does on his topspin backhand?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHCenterCourtLevelFront2.mov

Surprise. He has.

Well, I think I like the hitting drop from relaxed shoulder I’ve developed in the past months. Baseball players do it and I can do it. I haven’t overintellectualized the exact time when I step out—I just let it happen—but the hips turn immediately after the step out does not appear damaged by the slight hitting drop.

So I want to keep that drop.

Racket goes down two times in a McEnrueful or even a John McEnroe forehand, right?

So I’ll send the shoulder down the first time but not the second, okay?

If I can’t run around with front shoulder up in the air to bulge front hip forward, I might as well hit a Federfore but maybe I can. As in The Can-Can. Yes I can.

Note: This run with a bulge stuff would be for a neutral stance (square step toward the net with toes pointing at 1 on Welby Van Horn's ground clock). If I choose to hit open instead, then the Beep-Beep post just before this one has the information that best will apply. ("Beep-Beep" is an indication of new iteration which perhaps will occur again after I return from self-feed at the court.)

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Beep-Beep

Backswing goes down and up while it goes out and in. So why not simply close the racket face during the up and in.

Then throw down the elbow (the slap) to start the sweep.

(Later.) But throw it down with shoulder to prepare for upward banking.

Logically, one can do that. Or spread closing of strings throughout the down and up of the backswing.

With less logic but more feel, one can just close during the down, i.e., the drop from semi-high waiting position slightly off-center to left.

That is an option created by early separation as used by Evert, Connors, Austin and McEnroe.

The arm can close racket face more organically and less mechanically than with two hands on racket.

Now the up to inside of slot-- arm motion only-- becomes in a sense a rehearsal of the short slap down about to occur.

And that slap down can come exclusively or primarily from tilting the shoulders if you want to play in Alexander's ragtime band.

Here's a next question: Since The Alexander System always predicts extension from snout to foot or foot to snout or rotating hips sending energy both up and down or it all is a lightning strike with the lightning going one way the electrons the other, i.e., is spread through a lot of body parts and muscles, how little leg extension could there effectively be if you chose to stay low?

An inch? A quarter-inch?

In self-feed first, reduce the amount of leg extension this way to feel the upward banking of the hitting shoulder more as you administer topspin.

Second question. Will there still be any arm roll during the forward stroke?

Possible, but a lot less of it and sometimes none.

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New Iteration for McEnrueful Beep Beep

Backswing goes down and up while it goes out and in. So why not simply close the racket face during the up and in.

Then throw down the elbow (the slap) to start the sweep.

(Later.) But throw it down with shoulder to prepare for upward banking.

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Unwanted Adjustment

No. Wrong title. Slap and Sweep

On McEnruefuls: Replace rolling slap of slap-shot with rolling slap that keeps elbow farther toward rear fence until it's time to sweep.

There is no excuse whatsoever-- not even a dearth of competitive tennis for a month-- for hitting the ball up into the rafters (and I don't mean Pat and his family-- he's not watching from up there) with this stroke.

But hit the shot long on purpose to find its range. And look for a new correspondence between self-feed and actual play.

Correct McEnruefuls in self-feed should fly into the bottom of the net. When you take them into a match they then will land perfectly in the court.

But perhaps this scheme does not return process far enough back toward its origin. Self-feed is not enough. One wants to roll racket in an armchair. The elbow stays on one arm of the chair or only slides slightly off of it while the McEnrueful rolls strings ahead of hand-- the new slap of slap and sweep.

Sort of like our gardening company Hope and Help aka Hope and Helpless.

Fortunately my Federfore was better than fair at the Friday night tennis fair.

But I forgot to try the McEnrueful short angle I worked on all week-- onset of dementia no doubt.

Have been beating myself up blaming racket work for the sky full of McEnruefuls. But perhaps it was the mid-shot aeronautical banking of the two shoulders combined with the Alexander ragtime I have been teaching myself-- unresearched medication. Should one take these pills at the same time or spread them out?

"You are a writer?" said my doubles partner the electrical engineer Dusan of Serbia. "Then you've been thinking too much. Words go slow. The body is fast."

Well, HIS body is fast.

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For Tennis Social Tonight

Keep body quite upright.

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Welby Van Horn's "Third Motion"

Successfully absorbing new information into one's tennis game is a very unique kind of pleasure. Most tennis players, I say cynically, don't believe in this route at all, and writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Matthew Syed-- inadvertently perhaps but ultimately-- encourage the rank stupidity of non-inventiveness.

Well, who wants to bother inventing something that will only be ready in ten years?

"The third motion" in SECRETS OF A TRUE TENNIS MASTER by Ed Weiss applies to both forehands and beginner's serve. On page 58 there are two photos next to each other (and no I don't have a scanner). A player has just sent his forehand hitting step along a line. Both sets of toes are roughly two inches from the line. The front tennis shoe points at 1 on Welby Van Horn's "ground clock." A racket bisected lengthwise by the painted line lies on the court.

In the second photo the player's rear foot, "the adjustment foot," is lifted up on its toes which are touching middle of the strings.

"The racket helps teach the student to accomplish the third movement by slightly lifting the foot off the ground and then placing it on the racket-- if the student incorrectly attempts to accomplish the movement by dragging the foot on the ground, the student will hit the racket frame and push the racket away from him."

To me, first movement is a neutral stance hitting step. Second movement is body rotation with motionless front foot staying flat. Third movement then is replacement of rear foot a couple inches to the right with rear heel already up.

I need to be absolutely confident of this. An irony for us at (or rather in) Tennis Player, is that Welby's article on serving includes a repeating video of beginning serve in which the woman's adjustment foot slides just the way Welby and Ed communicate that it should not on a FOREHAND.

Should beginner's serve be different from forehand then concerning this fine point? I am perfectly content either to hear someone's answer or work out the answer for myself.

The way I work out a self-arrived answer is to bludgeon it into submission. I train whatever it is I have decided until I have complete confidence.

If I appear to be unnecessarily beating up on myself, let me add that when I was 15-- very late to be discovering one's forehand-- I had a huge save step off to the right.

The first time a teaching pro witnessed this, he groaned and explained how I was slowing recovery to the center.

But, was my instinct wrong? Here is the same thing only two inches rather than two feet.

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Better than Normal Tweak Possibility in Ravine Serve

The process here is not about being smart but rather exceeding one's natural non-intelligence like the Bill Murray character in GROUNDHOG DAY through repetition that builds upon what came immediately before.

So the "down" of this down and up serve puts racket deep into a ravine as weight shifts from front foot to back.

Horizontal body rotation at the same time takes opposite arm sideways into tossing position.

My question is how far the racket should have gone down and back at this time.

Improving one's throw is not total overhaul of Tiger Woods' golf swing but rather a series of small tweaks such as a baseball pitcher and Jack Nicklaus (and Tiger Woods too) go through every day.

The farther back the racket goes the higher it rises thereby shortening its subsequent more vertical lift as part of the "up together" body tilt.

The pattern of this serve is firmly in place. A shorter or longer lift of the hitting arm should therefore amount to a rather large tweak.

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Toward a More Rudderly Temperament, Cont'd

To repeat, this is math not tennis. Unless one thinks that tennis is big enough to include some math.

I see that I advised an open or semi-open stance for this special short angle rasped with a composite grip. To build on that by rejecting it, I see now I don't want to do anything that will restrict long run possibility.

And I can go farther in extreme need with a traditional (neutral) or even closed hitting step (across).

The trick will be to make contact WAY OUT FRONT but to my right side.

The inside to outside but 50-50 arm roll I previously detailed (# 2363), producing contact in which racket is pointed at net post before followthrough as if net post is a lighthouse holds no matter which foot leads.

The angle of the racket length to the net post (0, 5, 15 degrees?) determines where the ball goes, not the setting of the feet.

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Inverted Loop (IL): A Great Energy Saver

I've written enough about inverted loop (IL). So shouldn't I leave it alone? Not my way. But I admit that IL flies too much in the face of convention to change the Indian head on a paradime. Although Margaret Mead wrote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, this is the only thing that ever has," the best I can hope for, in static tennis climate, is to open the minds of a few people to forehand backswing along the lines of Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, Tracy Austin and John McEnroe.

Or, failing even to achieve that influence, I can simply take my McEnrueful out on the court and play with it and after this hopefully not talk too much about it.

In Cocoa Beach, Florida, there used to be and maybe still is a bar called The Tic-Toc. The clocks went tic-toc. The pool cues went tic-toc. It was the most boring bar in the world.

Routine however saves energy. And the tic of John McEnroe's backswing goes slightly down and up. So he doesn't have to lift his arm and racket into a big loop like everybody else. The energy saved adds up in a bunch of sets, which leaves him open to the horrible accusation of possessing common sense.

My buying into this design doesn't mean I'll never use overhand loop. On the contrary my overhand loop will be more effective and not just due to surprise.

The tic backswing tells me exactly where to stop or slow the racket before my slap-shot consisting of a 45-degree "slap" combined with forward roll puts racket head in front of hand, followed by a long smooth sweep like that of Evert or Connors through the ball.

Then, if I want, I can use any huge loop of my choosing so long as it ends in the same place as my "tic" backswing.

In self-feed, overhand/overhead version of the same shot (OL) could result in a faster ball. "Now that is a good forehand," an unknown woman playing doubles on the adjacent court said yesterday. I didn't thank her or even acknowledge her and wasn't sure she was even talking about me until I figured out she was, through process of deduction. I truly believe however in such oblique comments in and around a tennis court. They are so spontaneous that they often must be believed. And I took the comment as reinforcement that one of my forehands was more dangerous than the other to both opponent and myself.

While one must compare the OL and IL versions of my McEnrueful for consistency, accuracy and power in match play, the most immediate consideration is that the IL, by establishing best "transition point" removes from OL the usual mystery of where active forward swing should begin.

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Toward a More Rudderly Temperament

What does that mean? Reader, I am so glad you asked.

A rudder goes to the left and you go to the left, goes to the right and you...etc.

Perhaps you noticed (in youth in my case) that when you were most extended to the left, the volley you hit was sharpest, i.e., best went along the net close on your opponent's side of the court.

In that case your racket went left to make the ball go to the right. So let's shift our focus from rudder to tiller. You pull the tiller left and the boat goes to the right.

But reader, you are a tennis player and therefore despise mental gymnastics.

Just don't get too close to the ball. And swing or whatever you do to the OUTSIDE. My best self-feed exercises in short angle groundies, whether sliced or topspun, are all about a navigation that seems very nautical to me.

What if, for all short angles, you discipline yourself into a contact with the racket pointed at the outside net post.

This predicts a contact in which the racket head is higher than the wrist for either sliced or topspun shots.

The discipline of this, almost as if some shrill-voiced command style teaching pro is screaming out what you must do, means that, in order to commit yourself to sufficient spin, you must put much more swing before the contact than in a normal ground stroke hit for depth. There, it is best to condense body turn though not the amount of it through exclusive pointing while keeping racket in the slot.

Try for contact then, slice or topspin with elevated racket tip pointing at net post. But let's exclusively consider the forehand topspin version most difficult to explain (and which therefore is most difficult to perform).

Arbitrarily, I've advocated open or semi-open stance and do not abandon that notion now. I simply think that if your inside foot is later of the two to move, you are blocked for anything but a lob or drive down the line.

But closed or neutral stance helps one turn the shoulders and is a boost which discipline now has taken away.

So one must do everything else in one's power to turn the shoulders an extra amount which is sure at first to seem unnatural:

1) One keeps bent left arm on the racket throughout a maximized unit turn.

2) One keeps the shoulders turn going by pointing across at right fence with hitting hand simultaneously dog-patting behind you so that racket gets around edge of the slot and slants a bit back toward LEFT fence.

Although I am using a composite grip, my arm is as straight as if I am hitting my Federfore.

My wrist is not flipped and laid back, in fact is extremely straight.

The straight arm is best for performing precise yet vigorous arm roll.

Is there "flashlight" in this shot, i.e., a pulling of the racket butt toward the ball and net post?

I say not since racket butt to begin is turned around even more than that.

There is only time, after such extreme conniptions, for arm roll and nothing but arm roll to point the racket at net post for the contact.

In any Federfore, with 3/3 grip, the arm roll is pure, relegating forward propulsion to one's body.

In a McEnrueful, rolled early or late (late this time), the composite grip is 2/2.5 in which heel measurement-- 2-- is listed first. Furthermore, the arm roll is impure, a 50-50 mix in which frame energy is split half between going up and half toward the target.

The solution for this shot seems more like a blockbuster final exam problem in math or geometry than anything conceivably athletic.

Precisely. This is a shot for someone aging ungracefully who wishes to remain competitive vs. younger persons beyond discretion or good sense.

This is a shot in which, quite simply, the player has taken the torturous time required to figure a knotty problem out.

To repeat, this is math not tennis. Unless one thinks that tennis is big enough to include some math.