A New Year's Serve

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Another thing that I have learned is one can never think too deeply about things. Explore the minutia and connect the dots... Evaluate each shot individually for a split second…then onwards.

So...should one mime shots in bed or stop that?

[don_budge]

Shots…generally speaking

So...should one mime shots in bed or stop that?

Ok…so what are we talking about here? Generally speaking though, all shots whether they are performed on the golf course, on the tennis court or in bed for that matter share some things in common. To be successful you must follow through. It is through repetition that some semblance of control is attained.

I would say that any shot on the golf course where one can find the ball is a "good" shot. In tennis, any shot in the court is a "good" shot. In bed what is the criteria for a "good" shot? Not falling out of bed?

Both tennis and golf are games entirely of energy and balance. Can we say the same of other "games"?

When in bed I am always thinking in terms of a man and a woman. Mixed doubles. But when it comes to boys and girls there is only one thing that is for certain. The battle of the sexes will never be won…there is too much fraternization with the "enemy".

Does this answer the question? Does it even address the question?

[bottle]

Ok…so what are we talking about here? Generally speaking though, all shots whether they are performed on the golf course, on the tennis court or in bed for that matter share some things in common. To be successful you must follow through. It is through repetition that some semblance of control is attained.

I would say that any shot on the golf course where one can find the ball is a "good" shot. In tennis, any shot in the court is a "good" shot. In bed what is the criteria for a "good" shot? Not falling out of bed?

Both tennis and golf are games entirely of energy and balance. Can we say the same of other "games"?

When in bed I am always thinking in terms of a man and a woman. Mixed doubles. But when it comes to boys and girls there is only one thing that is for certain. The battle of the sexes will never be won…there is too much fraternization with the "enemy".

Does this answer the question? Does it even address the question?

Maybe not but it's pretty good. Especially on the question of follow-through.

Think about this on the most elementary level without which no other level matters, and don't consciously think too deeply, to follow your earlier advice. If proper drilling of follow-through is essential, does one follow through enough when one mimes in bed or anyplace else? One wouldn't want to be miming (drilling?) decels.

This is a game where every answer is another question. You are right about that, too.

[bottle]

Nine-year-olds Tennis in Great Britain as I Know it

Maxine, with all of her other interests including theater is just at the stage in tennis where she hits the ball back, not a bad talent at all.

Maxine is a 12-year-old granddaughter of Hope, as American as they come, one of three sisters all of whom, as somebody pronounced yesterday at the huge high school graduation party of the eldest, are "terrifyingly beautiful."

Hope's fourth granddaughter Cate, 9, over for the big party, is fabulously attractive too, but it took Maxine and me about five minutes before we could return any of her ground strokes.

Cate, from Berkshire on the edge of London (pronounced Barkshire) has only produced two teams ever to make the nationals, and Cate's was the second. In the nationals, they lost a few, won a few (singles and doubles both) and finished fifth.

I'm telling you, Cate, though very small, has had a Russian coach and hits a ton of pace and topspin and keeps the ball deep and does everything she does very well. I could only get her with a slice serve out wide because of her size.

In the doubles tournament scheduled at the Pier Park for this afternoon, I have told myself that I must shorten my forehands, i.e., hit McEnruefuls.

But other matches already have been played. Cate and her mother Kristen played Maxine and her mother Melissa, and briefly fell behind, at which point there were tears in Cate's eyes and she started screaming at her mother or talking to her mother depending on who tells the story.

Actually, what Kristen told me was that Cate told her that she was not good enough to be at the net and to come back to the baseline. Having faced Melissa's forehand at the net, I could sympathize. On some days net is where I want to be against Melissa, on others not.

As small girls, both Kristen and Melissa had lessons from Ken Angell, the Detroit area teaching pro who was burnt up by his disturbed son along with the disturbed son (the whole family was burnt up) as Steve reported in this forum, exactly as in the famous crescendo in a Doors song. (One way or another Jim Morrison wrote about THEM.)

Well, Kristen retreated to the baseline, and she and Cate prevailed.

Later, in volleyball, some of the more regional Michiganders started mocking Cate's "accent." Is it voleyball they said or volleyball?

And Cate created a scandal when she said to a teammate, "Just let me serve so we can win this point."

I side with Cate on that one and think that voleyball is just fine and also think she was right in tennis to bring her mudder back.

Never before have I played serious tennis against somebody who does handstands and cartwheels between points.

[bottle]

Forehand: Back to the Drawing Board

Throwing the elbow works well for me. But with how much of a racket head lag? Much less than Jack Sock. And I prefer far less complex preparation than his.

Something far less complex than Roger Federer too. Roger after all gets racket tip up. Then he lowers it toward right fence to close it.

And he hasn't even extended his arm to tap a dog with his racket yet.

Me, I'm getting plenty old. And I've got to play against my faux granddaughter Cate again this summer when we go to England for her tenth birthday.

I want to be ready.

Ready in the sense of having racket poised in the pose of Federer when he just closed it but with less myelinated fuss to get there than his.

This course of action predicts and yet departs from the backswing of five-time U.S. Davis Cup captain Ed Faulkner, i.e., is close to the forehand backswing he taught in the book ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS.

One turns racket at its elevated level from ready position with both hands on the racket and a good unit turn.

Influenced by the spectacle of Evert, Austin and Connors however, I separate the hands early and complete the pivot (by time of bounce) through opposite hand pointing across. Both palms have turned down at the same time.

Call all of this two counts or one count, I don't care. Call the sequential inversion of elbow and mondo that comes next one count or half a count or Jeffrey Counts, I don't care.

This plan has created a very economical stroke involving torque of the bent arm at contact. Yes, the hips fire then too but both things happen at once and sum together in this view.

[bottle]

Unnecessary: Turning Opposite Palm Down

I only came up with that idea to try to subtract one 4000 from the 10,000 hours or repetitions of Malcolm Gladwell.

Just as Gladwell rebelled against his editor father and his novelist mother to become an ad-man for 10,000, Inc., we should rebel against Gladwell to become individuated tennis players rather than faddist determinists.

Turn both palms down to give the safe sign at the plate in baseball, I thought, a primordial move with physiological root.

If I were teaching tennis to an infant, I might go the double-palmway, but as a 75-year-old, I'd rather keep my pointed left hand still like a sail or twiddle my fingers in an effort to distract my 9-year-old faux granddaughter Cate from her next forehand.

I also like the idea of pulling handle to inside a little as I turn the hitting palm down but am not sure that I want to think about this any more.

The left hand becomes a shield, the right hand a snake head poised to strike.

[bottle]

Bent Arm and Straight Arm Forehands Both

One really wants never to change anything in tennis but if the ideas keep coming, one has to try them, no?

A snake's head may be perfectly still or slightly moving before it strikes but doesn't sloppily wave around in a fast and unnecessary loop-- take note, tennis players?

I saw two things yesterday that would have impressed anybody but a Zomblican.

The first was a tall kid hitting a million very good and utterly consistent straight arm forehands from straight down spiral preparation. Watching him, I had to question the virtue of my Double-Coin, my forehand that creates an overhead rainbow to put my hand in the exact same place as his.

Why bother with the rainbow? Why waste that energy? Did straight down placement of hand compromise the mondo that came immediately afterward as this kid, who looked to be a varsity college player, started to hit the ball with huge pace and topspin? Not that I could see.

The second thing that impressed me was my own decision to modify my upper register level bent arm backswing to pare it to bare minimum. My forehands during the senior men's carousel were better from that moment on.

First, kept opposite hand on racket just long enough to help start the unit turn and shot it at side fence to finish the job.

Bent hitting arm meanwhile led with the elbow, which is another way of saying that elbow twists up and hand turns strings down at any level one would like. Palm went from facing the net to facing the court, and this transformation was succinct and soon.

The idea that getting arm back too soon leads to awkwardness is overly prevalent in tennis, so maybe we should watch the shortstop Jose Iglesias just before he throws to first base.

Whatever he does, he doesn't use a sloppy and continuous and mono-speed loop.

And one can run-skip-move quite nicely with arm cocked close behind one. The shots were especially effective when I swooped forward to a short ball.

They were hit with added power as if the torqued bent arm was a torque wrench that added clicks through thrown elbow SIM with flip followed by torque the opposite way. (SSC-- "stretch-shorten" cycle-- may be useful as scientific terminology but as coded cue can never be good.) It's all a sidearm throw if you ask me. Arm remained bent slightly beyond contact but then utterly relaxed for long extension toward the net and a self-promise to re-read the Robert Lansdorp TP article entitled "The Three Forehand Finishes."

Note: I am ready to be humiliated by a 9-year-old at any time so long as she is good enough to earn that honor. Fifth among the 9-year-olds in Great Britain judging from Johanna Konta's upset of Garbine Muguruza on grass yesterday may now be sufficient.

[bottle]

The Jose Isglesias, The Drop-Down, and the McEnrueful Forehands

Too bad I'm only using them in doubles. I'll have to play some singles points just so I can hit more of them.

The Jose Iglesias (I've got to start getting the spelling right at some time) could be a forehand patterned on the way that any shortstop throws to first base. But Jose happens to be the flashiest. Some Detroit baseball fans go to Comerica Park during spells when the Tigers are showing themselves expert at snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory just to watch Jose field.

The Drop-Down spirals down to rear of the slot and is a straight arm shot from then through contact. Fortunately for me, having been impressed by video of a 5-year-old girl hitting from straight down preparations, I myself hit from them for a long time thus hopefully building up myelin sheathing for rapid synaptic transfer.

The difference between then and now is that I'll wait or move with wrist straight and only mondo during the horizontal coin-like stroke itself.

The similarity between The Jose and The Drop-Down is that both employ internal rotation of the humerus before, during and after contact.

The great difference between both of them and The McEnrueful (a brief stroke that is sad it is not a John McEnroe forehand) is that The McEnrueful employs passive hand in the contact area, a part of the stroke that is driven by core body alone.

I just now begin to explore orchestration of these three better aimed forehands. I say they are different. They are quiet because they are loopless.

At first blush, however, the Drop-Down looks best candidate for conscious use of Lansdorp's three forehand finishes.

The McEnrueful looks best for unconscious followthrough possibly with a wee bit of extra spillage toward side or rear fences but not much.

The Jose Iglesias offers the frightening prospect of wipe from all parts of the whole arm even internal elbow thus destroying it forever in one stroke.

Relaxed followthrough with huge extension that looks like Ben Hogan's is what I therefore prescribe.

Note: I have never heard enough tennis discussion over extension from the elbow vs. contraction of the elbow vs. fixed setting of elbow vs. roll of elbow vs. non-roll of elbow, etc., so I try to offer a little of it myself.

[bottle]

Real World Intrudes on the Progressions

There was wind.

And wind can teach you which of your strokes are more programmed and which not yet ready for primetime.

In my case The Dropdown demonstrated more myelin than the high potential Jose Iglesias (which is also good for high shots because of the high elbow) and so I used The Dropdown and saved The Jose Iglesias for a windless day.

[bottle]

Antic Forehands Can Work For You

Wow, Iglesias can throw 3/4, sidearm, underarm, hit, steal-- he can do anything. We sat behind home plate. Detroit was down four runs in the eighth. Then the great Chicago pitcher, working on a two-hitter, finally began to wilt and loaded the bases. He surpassed the 100-pitch danger level and hit a batter. Could it be that all baseball managers are morons? Then Victor Martinez hit a three-run double. Closer Soria was perfect. In the bottom of the ninth McMann the catcher (McMann can) came up to bat. "Hit a double," I said to our host. McMann pulled one into the left stands for the walk-off home run.

To get my Iglesias back on track today I'm thinking I'll take my time getting the elbow up. When you raise the elbow you slow down the hand and I want to slow it down even more. I want to be like this guy (https://video.search.yahoo.com/video...=yhs-fh_lsonsw).

The Iglesias for high and medium balls. The Drop Down celebrating drop down menus in computers for low and medium balls. The McEnrueful for emergencies.

[bottle]

Miniaturizing Iglesial Flow

This is what any great shortstop or second or third baseman learns to do in our national pastime.

Just like an old man playing his tennis he doesn't have time to spare and so he barehands the ball and wings it to first base.

This is a tale of three beautiful women Neli the Hungarian who if she had young interest in tennis would have fared better against Serena than her poor countryman Timea Babos Nome the Hepburn niece who knew how to skip rocks and Michelle the power shovel owner's wife who several times a week crosses the Canadian border into Detroit to transform tennis instruction into tennis wisdom.

To simplify since I may be trying to say too much here let's posit that I am constantly inspired by beautiful women of all ages and if you turn your bent elbow one way you can then turn it the other way to sling the racket head for peak acceleration just where you want it.

I see this working from the shoulder only for hard deep strokes and from added brush from the forearm for short angles.

But why does the elbow have to rise so high? The slingshot one creates depends on mounting tension within the shoulder.

If elbow is low then racket tip can be lower even than that at least until medical problems begin to appear at which time one raises elbow more again always looking for the healthiest yet most effective shot.

Personally speaking whatever the level I raise elbow a little during unit or modified unit turn and then a little more for timing of a transition.

[bottle]

Iglesial Throw To First

I don't know how to do this without missing the first baseman either, but it seems, as a forehand, even better if you don't make contact while the bent arm is twisting the racket head forward but rather when the arm is in the first inch or two of extension from the elbow.

Just because some teaching pro in golf noticed that Ben Hogan's right arm is still bent as he makes contact doesn't mean that Ben didn't already start his arm extension leading to a relaxed, balanced and ineffable followthrough.

To hit the shot, take it easy in raising the elbow in order for your hand to be stopped or slow like the head of a snake.

Start your throw to first now with elbow in the lead then racket strings in the lead. Compress this double-whammy to allow time for the early extension I just talked about.

Re-read the Robert Lansdorp article on the three forehand finishes (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/..._finishes.html).

P.S. If you decide to hit the ball this total Iglesial way, and you already own a good mondo, that mondo will occur during transition from the forward part when elbow leads. Add still more heft to the shot by concentrating on and exaggerating the body turns backward and forward.

[bottle]

What is Best Pattern for Largest Arm Rotation?

The Iglesian shots are proving to be good and fast and deep, but who knows exactly when mondo occurs. Perhaps it's better not to know. Maybe because this is reversion to earlier forehands in my middle age when I was probably trying to imitate Ivan Lendl and even Tom Okker, the pattern brings up earlier desire to carioca with right foot inside of left foot followed by big linear weight transfer into ball with a neutral hitting step the way Okker used to like to do.

Nothing wrong with that, but these shots can be hit open or semi-open as well, with angular rather than linear momentum being the big thing.

To answer the question posed in the title above, it seems that my present forehand choices include one that gets the arm straight soon, and this is better for a big crank finishing with racket head down around the legs.

[bottle]

More Forehands

I can't have enough. And so today I add to the McEnrueful-- the only one of my forehands that never seems to go away-- the Lendl Wishbone along with an ATP3 straight-wristed short angle.

All intelligence if intelligence there be begins with this video of a professorial Rick Macci holding forth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P52Ggata7qY). Do we need to judge his delivery or for that matter consider the ATP3 as PC (politically correct)? Do we ever need to play the PC card card or the race card card? Personally speaking, although I haven't looked into present internet flap, I am delighted that some hapless poster on Twitter has felt the wrath of Dumbledore for criticizing Serena Williams' physique once again. The author J.K. Rowlings lit into that person. That's all I need to know. I've heard far too many comments on Serena's muscularity for one lifetime.

Similarly, I have to ask, is the ATP3 really mainstream and something to rebel against? (Not in the senior men's tennis club of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.) This weekend, in the midst of Wimbledon, I utterly ruined a high school graduation party for a very good tennis player by miming one ATP3. The woman who was my captive audience never wanted to think-- first mantra of all good tennis players-- but think first, I urged, get crazy later. She was having none of it. So good for her. Just as Rick Macci suggests in the video but her forehand may never be as good as it could have been.

In the video, a lot of people are standing around a tennis court. What is their comprehension rate-- 20 or 40 per cent?

I ask that question since I thought I completely understood this video a long time ago but missed the part right after the dogpat where Rick twists his elbow a little to lower the racket tip a little before it zings around through the mondo.

I see that largely unexplained phenomenon now because I had to come up with it myself right in the midst of intensely competitive play to make my Lendl Wishbone work.

The Lendl Wishbone is a bent arm shot very good for medium and high balls. One leads with the elbow and at the last micro-second leads with the elbow a bit more.

For short angle forehand service return for right-hander in deuce court now, I think one ought to step with right foot and keep a straight wrist.

If one can, from Macci's demonstrated preparation, flatten out a forehand by dispensing with forearm roll-down (mustard) but keep late wrist lay-back (relish), one can do the opposite for pro shot short angle-- hold the relish but keep the mustard.

If keeping the mustard however, one should twist the elbow up just a little after straight-arming dogpat for fullest and best timed mondo to generate maximum racket head speed and contact WAY WAY out front.

[bottle]

One Design Leads to Another: The Nature of Reality

If the tennis player with a Federfore type grip and Tracycakes type early separation and Ivan Lendl type lead with the elbow attempts to adapt to the ATP3 these sound basics (some would call them idiosyncratic personal characteristics better not imitated by anybody), one can eliminate the awkward-seeming late counter-roll discussed in the previous post and demonstrated by Rick Macci in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P52Ggata7qY).

Leading with the elbow closes racket and points racket tip at net early. The temporizing built into this act makes left hand on the racket more comfortable while delaying racket tip from going back as soon.

The racket next goes backward/outward rather than downward/outward because of the different elbow setting.

The backward moving racket head thus carries a little momentum (from both internal arm movement and late backward body rotation) that gets sharply reversed as one begins one's pull and roll.

Note: These observations, preceding any kind of a trial, are a blueprint.

Note 2: Pointing across with left arm can turn shoulders just as fully as keeping left hand on racket forever. Rick in the video sees the pointing across as a stabilizing force to keep the player "in the shot"-- a different and more passive function than that in my view.

Note 3: Stabilizing left arm rather than activating with body and stabilizing left arm is a tremendously helpful part of hitting the ball the Gordon-Yandell-Macci way.

Note 4: I plan to oppose these separate methods to see which works best for me.