A New Year's Serve

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Three Factors Besides Grip Change Designation that Adjust Racket Face for a Backhand

1) Amount of lean into the shot.

2) Fit of right-hander's thumb on the racket. It it is extended straight up the handle you won't get around on the ball and will hit it weakly too far to the left. You would have to hit the ball too far in front to have success. There are players and probably coaches in the world who think you cannot hit the ball too far out front but that simply is untrue. Budge and Kramer wanted some non-extended thumb (some kind of a diagonal or compromise) behind the ball.

3) Where is opposite elbow at top of the backswing-- up, down or somewhere in between? If Guga and Justine start with an 8/8 grip but then roll elbow up to the extreme they obtain even more bevel than afforded by the 8/8 designation.

Axiom: Every little change in grip affects exponentially what happens next.

So-- try some 8/8's but lead the backswing with racket tip rather than elbow, then do more like Guga and Justine. Try some Simple Simons with a 1/1 and for them also make the change by turning the racket into the hitting hand. Try some Waltke-Popp variation of Rosewallian tabletop slice with a flying grip change because of planned forward roll and wrist release right on the ball.

Be entranced by the following illustration for some shots but not for others.

Sorry for using private names and terms but I have explained them before and too much explanation always always is a drag.

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The Following Illustration

Karate, good, bad? Break net post?

To bonk or not to bonk?

From the writings of John M. Barnaby.

Right-click and Rotate.

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Tennis Serve Taught from What Not to do

If you know how to do it wrong, do you know how to do it right?

Don't do it like this (http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/...s-invalid&tt=b). Where was full blown external shoulder rotation before the internal shoulder rotation?

Serve like this in tennis and you won't be going up enough, in fact go straight up and hit the bottom of the ball! ISR will have started too soon. Arm won't have straightened enough before the ISR kicks in. You will serve a decel and spin will probably go down.

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"Drawn and Quartered: What does this Expression Mean?

It means among other things that a tennis player wishing to improve his serve can decide to become less superstitious and more scientific in order to figure out where his body medians are and how many there are (two). In this effort, deciding to read some history, he may learn that the Welsh prince David ap Gruffud, in 1283, was drawn for treason, hanged for homicide, disemboweled for sacrilege, and beheaded and quartered for plotting the king's death.

Pretty complicated, I'd say. The unknown Russian Cossack who in 1849 split the 25-year-old Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi in half was straightdownward with his saber and didn't behead anyone-- if you want to think about lengthwise median. If you were six feet four inches tall and the Cossack decided to cut the other way, each half would measure three feet and two inches (crosswise median).

The terms "abduction" and "adduction" will suddenly become more clear. If the player can then bring himself to glossaries and common sense, he may decide that abduction means the unlawful carrying away of a woman for marriage or intercourse. (See The Sabine Women in Roman antiquity or the British novel THE COLLECTOR by John Fowles.)

Second meaning as far as I am concerned is lifting of a limb away from the body. The word "away" is key. Thompson and Floyd in MANUAL OF STRUCTURAL KINESIOLOGY offer these glossarial terms:

abduction: "Lateral movement away from the midline of the trunk, as in raising the arms or legs to the side horizontally"

adduction: "Movement medially toward the midline of the trunk, as in lowering the arm to the side or legs back to the anatomical position"

diagonal abduction: "Movement of a limb through a diagonal plane away from the midline of the body"

diagonal adduction: "Movement by a limb through a diagonal plane toward and across the median of the body"

diagonal plane: "A combination of more than one plane"

horizontal abduction: "Movement of the humerus in the horizontal plane away from the midline of the body"

horizontal adduction: "Movement of the humerus in the horizontal plane toward the midline of the body"

This video provided by Arturo Hernandez is an incredible example of a certain kind or combination of adduction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf5UPnQx9Rw). I don't know about you, reader, but I need to see something like this and even put a name on it before I am likely to try it and adapt it to the upwardness of a tennis serve.

NOTE: The most interesting aspect of Sandor Petofi's death was that the Hungarian people could not forgive his beautiful widow for remarrying within one year.

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Two Backhands

With the Simple Simon you can just massage the ball out into the opposite court.

With the pulchra backhand (the beautiful backhand) the racket face is going to be more closed.

Which means that the "sling" part unique to this stroke needs to occur on a slightly rising rather than level plane.

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From Septic Tank to Triceptic Excellence

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.-- Blaise Pascal (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...se_pascal.html)

Hello, folks. Bottle here. Leg hurts. Humerus won't twist backward-- not really. Nothing to do but invent a new serve unencumbered by court, net or racket. I do have a racket here but won't pick it up.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.-- Blaise Pascal

But there's another quote even more appropriate here: People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

We start with a pedestrian Caecus (Seek-us) with the exception that our arm has not squeezed together for full gnarliness but only assumed the right angle of inverted trophy position.

Instead then of immediately centrifuging the arm quite straight through external shoulder rotation (ESR), we maintain an ever so slow rotation of trophy through most of the serve.

Only on approach to the ball do we let the elbow and humped (flexed) wrist release. At the same time we loosen the fingers. Finally, unbeknownst to anybody, we have reserved just a bit of ESR to complete the final cocking on which we have already embarked.

Do it, do it all but don't forget to let the wrist passively transform from humped (flexed) to extended (bent backward from the forearm).

This is not the way I planned to serve. Any more than I ever thought I would accept the word "extended" to mean "bent."

I will only employ this serve when it works.

Muscular extension of the arm-- the last little bit of range left over-- now occurs simultaneous with a muscular yet blended snap of wrist and fingers to close fingers on the handle and straighten wrist for straight wrist contact after which wrist carves to a paveloader finish.

This serve has ESR and ESP ( extra-sensory perception but not the communications network) written all over it. It utilizes no ISR (internal shoulder rotation) whatsoever. Save that for regular serves.

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Topspin Backhand

Top of racket to near left ear, all done by left hand combining pull back with grip change.

Racket unfolds from there toward back fence and down and through shot.

It's all one acceleration-- everything.

Where did I get this?

Tennischiro on Faye's backhand.

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Mother-in-Law Serve

Beginning with the gnarled arm work of Caecus (Seek-us), we now add the horizontal adduction of this baseball pitcher albeit in an upward direction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf5UPnQx9Rw).

Once more upward ("I am not a good little boy, I am a bad little boy!") we shall be better served (sorry!) if we take to heart the bedrock intellectual separation between service actions that go from left to right with those that go from right to left.

It was Pancho Gonzalez who made that distinction in his TENNIS, a book that costs $6.42 on the internet.

Could one carve to a paveloader's finish like Jack Kramer (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ServeFront.mov) and still have employed ESP and ESR and ISR?-- most certainly.

Toss the ball farther to the right and use the new belly behind you to hit the right edge of the ball as you start to break at the hips.

Do everything you are supposed not to do. Will you be sorry as you kick out your butt so that both shoulders kick forward? Of course. That is the nature of Faustian bargain.

As you feel sorry for yourself however do not forget that you (I) may have been following the strict "spaghetti arm" imperative for some time.

ESR (external shoulder rotation) can start to centrifuge the arm straight. ISR (internal shoulder rotation) can complete this straightening of noodle arm but think about it!-- Because of the elbow adduction the ISR will now go toward LEFT rather than FAR fence. One carves from contact to the finish.

Toss, though to the right, should be farther forward to make extra space in which this all-- particularly the elbow adduction-- can happen. "For slice, half a foot farther to the right and half a foot farther forward," said Mr. Sterling Lord, who was Mario Puzo's literary agent. Lord was a generous left-hander able to transfer his ideas from one side of the body to the other.

Note: Try to hit this serve easy-peazey enough that you don't break off your arm. Hit normal serves with toss farther left over your head and from paused trophy position.

Note II: In Mother-in-Law Serve, put adduction on the ISR. If no control, put adduction on the ESR. If still no control hold the adduction (serve without it altogether). If still no control, add ESP (extra-sensory perception).

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Knee Replacement

All the ice in the beginning was primarily to deaden pain. The weeks of heat then were to increase range of motion. The ice throughout Spring is to reduce swelling after exercise, walks, self-feed, bike rides, etc.

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Federfore: Three Stupid Little Things That Might Make A Big Difference

If one imitates Roger to bring racket back in a straight line rather close to the body, one wants to make sure NOT to retrace this path in the forward swing.

Brief spearing at mondo may create the illusion of straightness of forward motion, but one will lose leverage and direction from the twisting body that way.

Backswing can be straight and over the top while low compared to some others on the tour.

Foreswing (I just seem to have to use that red-lined term) should rather be circular, i.e., out to the side.

Teaching pros when pointing to Roger's great separation are more apt to stress that he takes the ball far out front. Yes, far out front but also far out to the side (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...r%20500fps.mp4).

Second "stupid little thing..." is a characteristic 4-foot slow drop behind one (dog pat). This easy fall should conclude with racket tip pointed down at court.

Then and only then does mondo occur.

Third point: Characteristically, Roger closes his racket face an extra amount after he lifts it. Easier for the intermediate, I would submit, is to develop a full grip system that adjusts pitch once-- when one first grips or re-grips.

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The LaCoste Kiss

Anybody who has watched The LaCoste Kiss 180 times has the right to react to it.

The first thing to notice is that this ad has been edited. It used to be that the dishes of food and the drinks between the couple went flying but somebody edited that out.

This means that the ad has life beyond conception. And that being so, the girl can get up from her place at the table and walk to the nearest television set to watch the ad.

If she does that, she will notice that the young man has a big ass as he takes his plunge off the high building.

Returning to the table, she then will not kiss him but rather dodge him so that he flies over the table and lands on his face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu2ht9c-FFU

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Cleverness Can Be Bad In Art But Good In Tennis

My natural interest in different "games" in tennis was certainly helped along by a mother-daughter combination I witnessed for more than a decade in Virginia.

As a doubles team, they won the club championship. As singles players they separately won the club championship too although at very different times and I think they successfully avoided playing against each other at least in public.

Both were good athletes, but as the record showed, the mother was a better player because of a more complete game.

Mama Venable won the annual singles championship five times. Daughter Venable, who severely twisted her bent elbow on every forehand, won the singles crown with her powerful but unstable game a total of once.

I don't think the mother or any of the various club pros ever tried to correct the daughter's destablilizing elbow, although if somebody had done that, maybe even the girl herself, she would have developed into a far better player. I'll bet she still struggles with erraticism if she plays tennis at all.

Me, I started out with a wrenching elbow too. I'll bet a lot of self-taught players have in their quest for cheap power.

If one masters this flawed technique one becomes better at crosscourts than the other forehand strokes, because the strings go SIDEWAYS too soon rather than out to a target in the court.

No matter where one aims though except on a weird day once every couple of years one commits a plethora of ue's.

The situation is reversed however when one decides to utilize bent arm twist very early in a forehand to achieve the very sharpest of short angles.

I discovered this while making entries in my short angle thread in this forum. A liability in many strokes becomes a strength in this one through sublimating the easy power of twisting elbow through and up in easy control from the mildly rolling forearm.

Does the resultant topspin come from the forearm or the rising arm or both?

Twisting elbow happens before the contact, not during it. Racket then stays vertical at all times. This constant setting means that even some imperfect contact points will work.

So, were this extraordinary shot to surpass all expectations, would one apply it in different directions, perhaps with a more complete shoulders turn?

Of course.

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The Crocodile Kiss

Besides his tenacity, Rene LaCoste, the crocodile, was known for his powers of invention.

He must have suspected from personal experience that even a very good kiss repeated 8,094 times with no variation is not a good idea.

So his descendants, who include a modicum of advertising persons, should change the following ad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu2ht9c-FFU) in the following way.

I am sure that my friend the author and playwright Eve Ensler would agree. We met in the middle and after a forum on Nathaniel Hawthorne in a huge theater at the North Carolina School for the Arts.

Next time the ad plays, the young man should leave the glasses intact, preferring not to spill them. He should shoot under the table and kiss the young lady between her legs.

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Surprise in One Hand Backhand

A good flying grip change that flows immediately into a small tug-o-war between the two hands can be quite level and low, certainly a lot lower as backswing than that of Beatrix Bielik or Richard Gasquet.

The loop down and around with butt pointing at ball for a micro-instant can more easily carry out the idea of arm unfolding into the ball-- more easily than a deeper backswing. The smaller loop results in increased control.

This advice may or may not be good for a tour player but sure is good for me.

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Surprise in Rotorded Serve

A rotorded serve is one in which the server's humerus, because of physical limitation somewhere in the complicated shoulder mechanisms, can not twist axle-like in its socket very far au Sampras or P. Gonzalez.

As such a rotorded server, I have come to reject a still trophy position as something I should aspire to.

Instead I want to keep palm severely down while elbow rises up to shoulder level. The already significant bend in the arm can then increase until the two halves squeeze together. It is almost a death wish, a desire for self-decapitation. Precisely then however the fingers relax which makes the racket just miss.

Now hip turn begins as horizontal adduction also begins. This swings the falling racket to the right into hitting slot. Throughout this double turn to the right the two halves of the arm stay squeezed as humerus which was twisting backward continues to pre-load.

The surprise is that IR (Internal Rotation) of the humerus can snap noodle arm straight all the way from its full squeeze.

The heresy is that at the same time wrist can muscularly push straight, and if it is going to do that why not add the zippy feel of a fingers clench.

Will this zippy combination of fingers and wrist detract from the IR? No, it will add both zip and better direction to what wasn't going to be very good spin.

Source of wrist thought: The late Greg Papas reacting to measurement by Brian Gordon of wrist straightening to total racket head speed at contact-- a surprising large proportion.