A New Year's Serve

[don_budge]

Nine holes...Hoganesque

Here's another video that's pretty good. Try turning the music off halfway through and at the start of any viewings after that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URhivvlomCM

One of my favorite clips of all time. Hogan on the most important part of the golf swing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_6M_xZvq0

Pretty good? Gene Sarazan said of Hogan's round against Sam Snead on Shell's Wonderful World of Golf that it was the best round he had ever witnessed.

I played last Wednesday for the first time in three years with my American buddy...The Ugly American. It was flawless from tee to green and if I could putt and chip it would have been sub par.

There was only room for one swing thought all the way around the 9 holes that I played. It worked but I cannot remember what exactly it was.

[bottle]

Johnny Mac and Ben Hogan Go Inside Out

Sorry, I can't figure where the McEnrovian heel of hand is no matter how many videos I watch.

I know where John's base knuckle is because he told me in his autobiography.

So I'll just make up the heel part, i.e., do what I want. The McEnrueful is a forehand peculiar to me anyway, so why should I worry any more about what other forehands it resembles? The big question is, "does it work, i.e., did I just hit a winner?" and bigger, "Is John McEnroe a heel?" Of course not.

This little stroke of mine-- The McEnrueful-- has undergone a big change just in the last 24 hours.

Out of all of Steve Navarro's readers, only five dared to give an opinion on whether there is flip in the John McEnroe forehand.

That result was inconclusive enough to leave Steve's laudably insistent question hanging in the wind.

So here finally is my personal answer with no ands, ifs or buts.

No flip. No whipping forward with racket barrel like a flashlight coming toward Mrs. Bollettieri in the wee hours.

That happens in my Federfore, not in my McEnrueful, the ticket for which is the following video viewed more than 2 million times.

Reader, you may ask why I post this video over and over again. Simply because it is the greatest swing video-- in any sport-- that I know.

Just put the name 'Ben Hogan' in a search engine and you will find yourself poring through reams of newsprint and video none of which comes close to the quality of this here video, where less is more and the plainspoken man holds forth himself immediately after winning a major.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_6M_xZvq0

The shoulders and arms follow the hips, Ben Hogan says.

So don't be a dummy, reader, just do it.

You can thread a golf club behind your neck to see how solid connection works but leave the exotic experiments there.

A golf club. A golf pin from the sixth green. Or a tennis racket. Threaded from hand to hand behind your neck.

Perhaps through some grievous mistake you had been staying too close to body and bowling hand toward the ball confident in the knowledge that arm roll sending racket through and up the ball in 50-50 proportion would find a decent and workable pitch at contact. You can rest assured that now, although the same principle will still apply, you need less roll.

That is what happens when solid arm and body connection makes you feel that your hand is trailing behind you even as you hit the ball out to the side and in front.

The racket achieved separation behind you through the McEnrovian pendulum backswing.

The separation, preserved, rotated to the side.

As spinning hips glided out to the target like a skittle on the march.

Here's another video that's pretty good. Try turning the music off halfway through and at the start of any viewings after that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URhivvlomCM

[bottle]

For Good McEnruefuls, Line Up Tennis Ball With Third Eyeball On Opposite Arm

One may as well switch off numbers one, two, four and five.

The opposite arm of course glides "from the gitgo" toward the side fence. "From the gitgo" is an expression favored by salesmen.

Reader, if you want to call opposite arm the flying wing in a jetplane that only has one wing feel free to do so.

In a Federfore hit from high left waiting position you would use left hand on racket to follow the baseline and thereby turn the shoulders.

You then would point across with left arm to turn the shoulders more as you patted a dog with hitting arm. As you did so you would site the oncoming tennis ball with imaginary eyeball one or with imaginary eyeballs one and two if you were trying for depth of vision.

Not in the McEnrueful where you want to be more single-minded and therefore only use imaginary eyeball number three.

Here the crossing arm accomplishes all of the shoulders turn, in fact provides as little or as much of that as you want.

Imaginary eyeball in the center of your flying wing can light up the night and prepare a new racket trajectory to the outside as you change direction from backswing to foreswing using a perfect replica of the hip action in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_6M_xZvq0

If we view our own and all tennis strokes from high above with Jovian detachment, we may reach this conclusion:

In both the McEnrueful and the John McEnroe forehand there is more solidity between body and arm than in the typical Federfore. (To whom do I owe this information?)

[bottle]

Thanks so very much, Kyle. I may have needed this. Everybody needs this.

Dépêche-toi et va mettre un manteau.
You'd better run and get a coat.
•
•
Dépêche-toi, je dois faire vite.
I've got to be gone by four.
•
•
Senpai, Depeche toi!. (Hey, the short angle and flat ball marks fell off.)
Senpai, hurry up!
•
•
Dépêche-toi, Scout!
Hurry up, Scout.
•
•
Dépêche-toi!
Quick, come on!
•
•
Dépêche-toi!
Come on, man!
•
•

[klacr]

"Is simplicity best? Or simply the easiest?..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3phAqQeMMcc

Speaking of Depeche Mode, This date in Music history...26 years ago Depeche Mode sold out the Pasadena Rose Bowl for their Music For The Masses Tour. Wish I could have been there, but I was 6 years old. June 18th, 1988.

Bottle,

I like your thread. The learning process can be a treacherous one. It can also be greatly rewarding. The funny thing about experience is that you only get it just after you actually needed it.

Sometimes learning a new stroke or enhancing an existing one is more about the process than the actual result.

There is no right or wrong way to hit a shot, however, there are better, more economical and efficient ways to do it. As long as specific technical checkpoints are met, your stroke can be effective. Try to copy my strokes and we may end up looking completely different. Avoid copying my strokes and we may look more similar than you had hoped.

Keep doing your thing bottle. I enjoy the thread, your exploration and your discoveries. The rabbit hole goes deep my friend.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[bottle]

Popular Views of the John McEnroe Forehand

Hey, I've got a personal investment in making my McEnrueful work. In one match almost nobody was able to hit one back. In another I sprayed all over the place.

While reading a million views of John McEnroe’s forehand, I was struck by how far off the mark they usually were. I felt that most of these online comments were written by people who had never tried to hit the John McEnroe forehand or adapt it like me—not once.

Why would they make that effort when they had been told that the JM forehand is a lousy forehand, which it isn’t. These people appeared thoroughly brainwashed in other words.

Just one example of a view that wasn’t “spot-on” (in my view) although that was exactly what another person's crackbrained opinion called it:

The view was that John McEnroe hits his forehand close to the body when actually there is good separation.

Watch this video carefully.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_forehand/mac_forehand.html?MacFHCenterCourtLevelRear4.mov

He takes racket back like a pendulum close to his body.

He swings racket forward slightly away from his body.

He does not take racket forward on same trajectory he used to take it back.

To repeat:

Elbow close to body going back.

Elbow slightly away from body going forward.

Compare with Ben Hogan's golf swing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_6M_xZvq0

Ben's elbow comes up to plane of body.

But he isn’t Sam Snead, he’s Ben Hogan, so the beginning of his forward swing is less precipitous, i.e. not steep and upright.

For a golf swing Ben is hitting the ball pretty flat, one might say, with a bit of a baseball swing in there.

The first transition is just at the beginning of his forward hips turn which is the lynchpin of his great swing (hips revolving while they go out).

You can see hands go away from body not stay close to it.

Just as John McEnroe’s hand goes away from body rather than stays perfectly close to it.

[bottle]

Toward an Integrated One Hand Backhand System: Point with Arm not Racket

Most learning in tennis occurs through sensory cues-- from something that looks or tastes good to something that pulls a hamstring or is too loud or stinks.

Just within the visual realm, natural science illustration can get into places where photography can't, imagery within language into places where neither can.

Most people of course had at least one English teacher the guts of whom they detested. In my case the number is over ten. We former students are apt to be overly dismissive of language, and everybody-- increasingly-- sees dry, stupid, glib verbiage being used to make specious pronouncements.

Well, where were we?

We were pointing with our forearm at a spot somewhere along the side fence so that after our step-out turned the shoulders an extra amount the forearm would be parallel to the sidelines.

This was for a flat backhand derived from the seminal book ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS in which Ed and his co-author Fred stayed purposefully vague about height of cheated over racket in waiting position for a ground stroke.

They probably knew that if they used the terms "racket tip" or even "racket head" they would lose the attention of their language-hating reader once and for all.

So they posited instead "racket at level of shoulder." And then after forward hip turn straightened arm at the elbow, "racket at level of waist." From which I inferred "racket parallel to court."

So that is flat with a nice slow arm swing upcoming to get the racket tip around to the ball and up and out.

In topspin and slice shots I want to use one formula with its horrid implication for tennis that logic can somehow apply (an attempt by me at sarcasm has just occurred).

On initial turn whether or not accomplished over several running steps get forearm perpendicular to rear fence so that it will turn farther with one's diagonal step out.

For cut the wire topspin early flattening of the wrist during this process will point the racket tip where-- who cares?

For backhand slice, early winding open of the racket will point the racket tip where-- who cares?

In both cases one can point with the forearm to the same place.

[bottle]

Cut the Wire One Hand Backhands

The baseball coach/writer Charley Lau Jr. wants tug (pulling) of the knob straight at the oncoming ball to come from the lead arm.

And I am right with him on that. Well, you can't push with the guide hand and create a tug-o-war, can you?

I don't pretend to understand a professional baseball swing, specifically where and how the hands separate. Sometimes they don't separate at all. Sometimes the hands part before contact, at contact, slightly after contact.

I therefore am only thinking tennis when I talk about "tug-o-war" and envision a backhand where straight arm starts its solo a moderate distance before contact.

If the separation started later one would be talking about two-hand one-hand structure like early Bjorn Borg.

[bottle]

Step-out Central Backhands

Like Comedy Central, I choose step-out central one hand backhands. The non step-out variety is for hot dogs of sound body and mind.

Since the step-outs per Arthur Ashe's conviction are 45 degrees to the net they always turn the body a constant amount.

For a flat backhand, the shoulders can turn the racket not more than pointed at side fence. The step-out can finish the job by turning the racket toward the rear fence.

That's solid connection, baby. Remember, the racket started at shoulder level cheated over left for a right-hander.

For more topspin the paradigm shall be different. A little simultaneous arm movement added to shoulders turn will point the racket at rear fence as in classic instruction.

Step-out next will turn the racket more. Try this for slice, too.

[bottle]

Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!

Who said that-- Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau or both? Say it yourself reader and you'll know who said it unless you can't remember what you said.

Along the same line in a one hand topspin backhand I think you should decide once and for all whether to come at the ball open or closed. I'm saving the third possibility, square, for my one hand flat backhand.

In the closed category three simple words can easily change everything you think: "Cut the wire!"

So-- take the racket farther around behind thee. And back deeper. With wrist flattening as it goes there.

Since the arm now is adjusted early the way you want it with only a smidgeon of arm bend left for you to straighten, you can glom on two simple goal motions simultaneous with forward hips turn:

1) Spear with the racket as though you are shipping a long log through the mouth of a Danish wood stove.

2) Build pressure (start a tug-o-war) between your two hands at the same time.

Then: Cut the Wire.

[bottle]

If he Feeds with Topspin, You’ve Got Him, He’s Toast

Asking the internet where Roger Federer and John McEnroe place heel of hand on racket in their respective forehands, I received the following answers.

http://tpatennis.net/how-john-mcenroe-developed-the-best-hands-in-tennis/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXcsblS3Jl4

Tom Allsopp’s very provocative and convincing essay on feel doesn’t happen to answer my specific question despite what the internet thinks, but who really should care about exactly where McEnroe’s heel is other than John McEnroe himself?

Unless such information would help some inquiring player come up with a better version of his McEnrueful to balance his Federfore (ATP3).

I’m thinking today that I’ll start my McEnrueful with heel and base knuckle both on 2.5 and then let racket butt slip up as I start my final racket work up.

Another way of putting this is that while base knuckle will stay in one place the heel of the hand will slip to 3.0 for a greater proportion of topspin in the topspin/sidespin arm-rolling-during-contact mix.

As for body motion I want neutral step-out with Ben Hogan’s exact hip action wedded to John McEnroe’s uniquely delineated top of a backswing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_6M_xZvq0

If the grip flop proves deleterious I’ll revert to the firm Australian I’ve maintained up till now and started with in this specific description.

[bottle]

Backing Off from One's Extreme Backhand

Sprained ankle though healed enough for self-feed wasn't ready for gimpy geezer doubles play.

It is fine to have many imaginings when one is out of service ("We need you back on the circuit," my friend Ron kindly said).

In fact, I believe that many imaginings are good when it comes to tennis although I know that many coaches and players will always disagree.

They want a still mind. Not me. I want a still but active one.

But the self-feed session all on its own led to immediate conclusions.

1) Stick for now with thumb at diagonal and index finger's middle knuckle even with that thumb enabling a nice minimalist flat backhand with racket always on edge.

2) The flat backhand contains no spearing in it, and I have come to equate spearing with either forward or backward roll that for most players is going to impair consistency. Double rolls are easier to maintain in slice backhands than in flat and topspin backhands.

3) For more topspin, try same minimalist structure (from racket shoulder high and cheated over backswinging in connected fashion so that step out puts it after forward hips turn parallel to both sideline and court).

Spear (pull) with knob during hips turn the same as a good hitting baseball player. Flatten the wrist to over-close the racket at same time. Build pressure between the two hands at the same time. Then "cut the wire" to catapult the tugging front arm. The speed of this delayed punch assures same clean contact as in the minimalist flat backhand but with more topspin.

Note: First idea here to hit this shot off exact same preparation as flat seems sound but requires some extra turn in of racket head behind hand-- necessary if one kept racket vertical.

Instead, do keep racket vertical but pull it a bit farther around the body so that you can spear straight at the slightly outside ball.

This orchestration will create contrast in backswings of topspin to flat (body connected backswing for flat, arm and body backswing for topspin) but more similarity between slice and topspin preparations with both behind neck or opposite shoulder-- about the same amount around.

4) For slice, straight off, get the racket head parallel to court or almost. Spear then declaring that spearing is backward roll. Close on ball with or without last instant flattening of the wrist.

[bottle]

Corresponding Oppositeness for Forehand

Has to be. Goose and gander. Where is the index base knuckle? Where is the heel? We're probably more aware of index base knuckle, i.e., are aware of where.

So where, in an ordinary Federfore, is heel of hand? Would more consciousness of this subject produce muffed or better forehands?

It is my contention that people who are steeped in William Faulkner, James Joyce and Herman Melville (just to mention three novelists, living though dead, who happen to be male) know more about the unconscious than those who aren't.

Specifically, they know more about the transition either way between the conscious and the unconscious than people in a mental ward who have been subsumed by the unconscious, who altogether have been too overtaken by it.

Real life: Psychology class walks through a mental hospital. One student asks, "What's that card game you're playing?" Answer: "Why, Crazy Eights, of course!"

So, are the card players great tennis players, too? Just my friend Jane if she's still alive, but she learned her game previously outside the walls of the state mental institution where she ended up.

I think the proper learning sequence in tennis should be conscious first, unconscious later. Even then, however, "unconscious" should more precisely remain "semi-conscious."

Where is heel of hand in a Federfore? In a McEnrueful?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/avancedtennis/john_yandell/pro_returns/part_1_compact_classical/index.html

From the article:

As we have seen, on Roger's forehand groundstroke he uses a modified eastern, with the hand shifted down just slightly toward a semi-western. But on the return, the hand is further toward the top of the handle with both the heel pad and the index knuckle on the third bevel down from the top.

To persist in our question, now not for a service return but for a regular forehand:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_Court_Level_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=FH%20InsideOut%20ArmAction%20CourtLevelRear1%20500fps.mp4

To my unpracticed eye, base knuckle is on 3.5, heel on 3.0, but the real question is not my accuracy of observation but what I myself am going to do.

Fool around is what.

Thumb and forefinger appear at about the same gradation if the handle had upon it the markings of a ruler.

In at least one of these great full screen videos of Roger Federer a person can clearly see where first knuckle of thumb is (7.5), which might help the person understand heel placement (2.5?) or higher on racket and less behind it than the person thought.

Now for one McEnrueful:

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

The grip is too hard to see. But from McEnroe’s autobiography we know that he would like to place index knuckle on 2.5 if he were a right-hander. That leaves heel placement to be figured out, assuming the same straight wrist and an identical hand in every way to that of the figure outer, which seems doubtful.

Think I’ll try putting thumb up the handle a little for a short cross-court in both cases-- Federfore (ATP3) and McEnrueful.

[bottle]

Reader, Get a Grip on Your Grip

Like a crippled dog with a bone I won't let go of my new revelations about improved grip.

In what sense though are they new? Do thousands of other people already know them? Is this just the latest instance of me having a daydream non-existent talk with my ex-wife, who during the 20 years when we were together was higher rated as a tennis player than me although I could always beat her in singles. (Well, 90 per cent of the time.)

I would explain to her one of my better tennis inventions. "Oh yeah," she would say. "I think that's what I've always done."

I guess that if the book ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS could wonderfully and clearly illuminate thumb along vs. thumb at slant in a one-hand backhand grip, then I can't claim the misty bouquet of ideas proceeding from this fountainhead as original or my own.

The teaching pro Doug King in fact has very wisely suggested that all tennis ideas live in a grab-bag with no one claiming ownership of anything.

Some think that when I talk about The Tower of Babel I am getting religious or something in a tennis discussion. No, I am pointing at the true difficulty of effective communication in this very secular world inhabited, reader, by you and me.

To lift this thought one step higher, I am talking about The Tower of Bottle.

My opinion is that Ed Faulkner was able to illuminate a great essential of holding a tennis racket that I have never seen explained even in feeble attempt by other teaching pros or tennis-playing grandfathers.

The fact that it took me as long a period of time as my marriage to understand it may or may not be relevant but certainly ought to announce that more than routine thought is required here.

The principle is that the hand is like a piece of molding plastic or clay that can readily change shape. My criticism of all the other tennis writers and teaching pros I've ever encountered is that they implicitly think that the human hand is a bronze claw.

All the talk is about which plane or ridge the big knuckle sits upon and which the heel of the hand sits upon.

Well, that's half of a good tennis grip.

The other half concerns how far up or down the handle the thumb is.

And how far up or down the first two fingers are on the opposite side of the racket.

With same one hand backhand swing, contact will be farther around on the ball the more the thumb is down.

Or the more the forefinger (the index finger) is up.

Thumb can be down while forefinger is up-- that will mold whole hand.

Reverse this idea for less angle to a shot-- why not?

Send thumb farther up or down with forefinger in one spot. Send forefinger up or down with thumb in one spot.

These experiments should finally get anybody the contact point (and possible clean hits) that he or she wants.

And no, I'm not advocating that one makes the adjustment while hitting the ball. One has to be ready in time with the right grip. But to me, there now is much more choice in that than there ever was before.

[bottle]

Pictures are Better than Your Words: a Chauvinistic Disease

The cure: Use images more. Put more imagery in your words.

Then get out your paints and see if you can beat this without becoming grotesque:

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, -
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

-- E. Dickinson