A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

An Attack on Techno-Geeks

Hurry up and replace oil, you dawdling bastards. And while you're at it give us batteries we don't have to re-charge every day. And computers or computer programs for everybody that we can use to download high quality photographs.

[stotty]

An amazing revelation happened recently...

I found out something amazing today.

I have been coaching a boy of 16 for around a year now. I find him very miserable and negative. His body language is highly unusual. He never faces or looks at you when he speaks and in fact will stand sideways on when having a conversation with someone. His word choice and attitude in conversation is also odd.

I have never been able to reach this kid despite wracking my brains on how I might do so. About two months ago he quit tennis. I didn't fight to keep him. He was exhausting to teach.

Yesterday curiosity got the better of me and I sent a text to his mother asking if she thought he might at some point return to tennis. She was delighted I had contacted her and then told me the news her son had been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. I Googled Aspergers to find it fitted him like a glove. As it happens, he is a long way along the continuum and his Asperges is comorbid with other problems.

Today I gave him a lesson and found him much changed. Not because of medication but more down to knowledge he had finally been tagged. It's been beyond the everyday experience of those around him to be able to identify his problems or deal with someone like him. His parents have brought him up all these years believing his oddities were just his basic character. Being diagnosed has come as incredible relief both for him and his family.

It's incredible just how intelligent mankind is. Slowly but surely we unravel and get to the bottom of everything. It's a collective thing. Our collective intelligence is huge. One by one all these mental disorders and syndromes have been separated from each other, understood, then put in a box for even greater understanding. It's a highly intelligent and intuitive business when you sit down and think about. The first people to make headway with this kind of thing must have quite brilliant. I mean, where do you start in evaluating all these oddities in folk?

[bottle]

What a great story even though like all real-life stories it won't come to an end for some time. You've got me rooting for this kid to become a good because unusually self-aware tennis player.

Also, as you say, "our collective intelligence is huge," a notion which one despite the temptations to do so should not push aside.

Since our collective intelligence and our collective foolishness both are huge, we all need to make a basic navigational choice.

[bottle]

Expansion of Possibility in Spun Serves

The danger, I think, is catching too much of the ball, i.e., failing to lead into it or up it with enough edge...So one works on every adjustment trick available including "pronation" without compromising the uninhibitedness of the internal arm roll (a whole arm roll from the humerus within its shoulder cave).

Yes, I said that. So I need to try it at all ends of any spectrum. The goal here is spinnier or spinniest serves.

1) Keep hip and shoulder more closed but use more adduction which is a fancy way of saying that one ought to send elbow further forward before the concluding arm throw with its EAR, its IAR and its other good features.

2) Whirl hip and shoulder more but keep elbow back, etc., etc.

3) Everything in between.

These ideas, reader, may to you as to me seem nothing new but it occurs to myself that I haven’t recently been paying enough attention to them.

Repetition sheathes the neuronal pathways but also makes one a dull boy (or girl).

[bottle]

A Tale of Two Sides of the Atlantic

That is a rather large title for what I will discuss here, a small adjustment to my forehand.

I don't care. Stotty and I agree that when one writes one shouldn't try so hard to impress. The writing should not neglect its reader, I would argue, but ought to grow primarily out of its subject.

"Some stupid little thing that might make a big difference" (Thank you, Aunt Frieda, 101) is what in tennis I am most about.

So 10-year-old Cate Cowper, my best hitting partner in the UK came back to America at 9, and I couldn't handle her ground strokes in any way, shape or form.

That feeling does not exist with the players I compete against in Detroit of whom there are many.

We were going to reciprocate by coming to Great Britain on Hope's old frequent flyer miles. I had to do something so I spent the next month shortening my stroke-- exactly what you are supposed to do when you are 75 years old according to a past tournament opponent now dead.

I've told this before but will tell it again. I started with Rick Macci's holding forth to a large group in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P52Ggata7qY) and of liking everything about the presentation except for one thing Rick did with his racket, a slight readjustment after his dogpat almost like a double-dribble.

A double-dribble? Not in my forehand! So I translated dogpat into keystone twist and reversed natural order of body turn and arm solo.

I just don't care that most players don't turn their shoulders enough. I do turn my shoulders enough. I just do it later or if not later, then in a different way.

I want my forehand to take exactly as much time, i.e, be of the same duration-- no more and no less than a good, representative ATP3 .

Arm twists racket down. Arm straightens on backward turn. Forward turn, immediate, is an adjustment device that determines weight on the ball. The racket tip looks bizarre, almost like one of Humphrey Bogart's improvised torpedoes on the overturned hull of THE AFRICAN QUEEN. A similar tennis image could be an ice pick that it is perpendicular to the net just before the mondo. This indeed is "a forward emphasis shot" to use WBC's much maligned phrase.

The forehand produced is so abbreviated that racket butt locates easily against the imaginary windshield common to anyone's wipe.

The racket butt does not have to pull a long way forward because it already is near the glass.

This gives more pure "sidewayness" to one's wipe just as in the case of an actual windshield wiper.

So did this new forehand obliterate the forehand taught to Cate and Anna Kournikova by Viktor Roubanov? Not at all but it kept up with it and offers me the chance for more improvement as it settles in.

[bottle]

Hits

46,723 for A New Year's Serve. 1,612 for Short Angle. I'll be like Donald Trump, a man who over-attributes importance to ratings. In fact, 46,723 ought to be the number for Short Angle.

Or don't you think, reader, that short angle is an important shot that would give your game new dimension and which you would greatly enjoy?

[stotty]

The late Doris Lloyd (John Lloyd's mother) was the master (or should that be mistress, not sure) of the short angled ball in doubles. I actually thought she must have invented the shot. Out of the blue she would throw in a short, angled ball into the tramline, catching her opponents napping and taking them out of their rhythm. Later, when she became a tennis coach to all the midweek ladies at the club, she would teach the shot incessantly until one by one each became accomplished at executing the shot.

Her husband, Dennis Lloyd, was the inventor and master of the drag volley....but that's another story.

[bottle]

And there's nothing new under the sun. And I'm glad. Credit for invention of the great short angled ball in doubles would have been a personal burden too heavy for me to bear.

[bottle]

Remember: Windshields Come in Different Shapes

So I'll go with the oldest (https://www.google.com/search?q=mode...FQVIkgodPfEAKg). There aren't any wrap-arounds here, but already in some of these images the windshields are raked backward.

Ignore these. Go with a vertical pane of glass. Then go with the three checkpoints of Luke Digweed, one of the good looking teaching pros at Bradfield UK Indoor Tennis Facility: 1) mondo or flip, 2) racket tip pointing at sky, 3) racket tip pointing at side fence. Only then does racket come back toward body in a Federer-like finish.

A current Tennis Channel ad, playing repeatedly, shows this well in the case of a James Blake forehand.

James gets his inverting hand right up against the vertical glass before he proceeds to the other two checkpoints.

Does he think about checkpoints? Of course not. But since James is a great athlete, we are justified in asking, would James do this if it weren't a good idea?

I'll never forget one incident in the last match of a Davis Cup tie. James was beating Richard Gasquet in a match that meant nothing. So when the ball went into the stands and a fan wanted to throw it back, James pointed to a spot in the air and said, "Put it right here."

He then grabbed his racket by the two sides of its rim.

The ball drifted to the assigned spot.

James made contact with the handle to smash a home run into the rafters of the huge Coliseum in Winston-Salem, the place where Tim Duncan and Chris Paul played their basketball for Wake Forest.

So using the vertical glass pane image seems a good idea. Get hand right up against the bottom of the glass. For a short angle steer the Model T slightly to the left without letting that aim vision impinge in any way mechanics of the stroke.

P.S. Yeah, yeah, I know. The axle of the windshield wiper was at the TOP of the glass. And the wiper was operated by one's fingers. Do not use that information to annoy me!

[bottle]

Keystone Pipeline: A Better Use of the Paid Adman's Princely Words

The immediate drop in this forehand utilizes gravity. Because of one's cheated over waiting position, to key the racket tip straight down is more a matter of self-relaxation than anything else.

This move is the "keystone" of this shot, seeming to cause a delay but it doesn't. But if one still thinks that it does, there is a remedy. Simply start the keystone the way Philip Kohlschreiber "the cabbage clerk" (tr) performs any kind of grip change in his tennis-- do it before the stroke begins. One can entirely reject Philip's methodology while stealing from it.

I prefer-- I refrained here from saying "I much prefer"-- this keystone as the means of closing the racket an extra amount in the case of a relatively mild established forehand grip.

Next step, "the pipeline," consists of straightening the arm while turning the body backward.

Taken together, this Keystone Pipeline is a thing of beauty superior to the adman's fevered dream of black gold seeping through crushed shale.

What a bastard that person was to come up with noxious propaganda on the level of Peggy Noonan's "thousand points of light," the prime American fin de siecle example of poetry corrupted and gone bad.

Next step is Luke Digweed's three checkpoints, i.e., inversion and roll up and across the vertical windowpane of a Model T Ford.

I surmise, as always, but the surmising produces some good shots. Whether open or neutral, right leg for the right-hander is the big driver here.

This stroke, as designed, is all Ted Williams, i.e., two linked hip turns with nothing in between.

Intellectually however one can-- if one must-- divide the forward component half and half: Half with heel down to implement a smooth and motion dependent mondo (1) and final heel rise to start before contact and complete the stroke (2).

[bottle]

Experiments in Geezerdom: James Blake Forehand

"Why Roger Federer?" Bungalo Bill wrote. "Why not James Blake...?"

The discussion was about which of all possible forehands would be best model for one individual, viz., me.

James (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...tLevelSide.mov) uses more grip than I ever will, but I certainly am in the ballpark for lifting elbow early the way he does, getting arm straight early, lowering straight arm from whole body action early, bending arm early as part of the mondo followed by Model T windshield wipe.

I continue to experiment for my wipe with the image of a perfectly vertical pane of glass.

[bottle]

Geezer Report: Tried Shot in Competition Before Self-Feed

This is a hit the hell out of the ball kind of a shot. Any geezer adopting it as his main forehand would be destined for sorrow.

But if he learned it (and it doesn't seem overly complicated), he might do well if he interspersed it with smaller shots such as short angle and The Keystone Pipeline-- or their equivalent-- shots that aim for consistency over maximum power.

[bottle]

Deflection Not Reflection Always In Tennis

Reader, will this motto improve your game? Probably will cut it in half.

Me, I want to reflect on the James Blake forehand as a useful genre to accept when I want.

I realize though that strokes not continuously reinforced tend to fall into disrepair.

I don't wish to become mired in detail and I see benefit in viewing the thing as a whole once having connected it to existing framework.

The keying down of The Keystone Pipeline is the same thing that happens when James or Ivan Lendl starts a forehand, i.e., the elbow lifts, just in a different way.

In Pipeline however the elbow stays where it is for modern wipe on a Model T Ford windshield. Use same wipe when imitating James.

The difference: Yank elbow immediately back as if to gouge some imagined enemy behind you. Declare this shot two parts instead of three.

The three parts of Keystone Pipeline: key (1), turn backward (2), turn forward (3).

Blake Imitation: Yank elbow back and up (1), hit ball and follow through (2).

Okay, but we can focus more on (2) just as we did in a previous post on (3) in the Keystone shot.

The important design decision is what we put with what, i.e., how we "chunk" experience.

End backswing with sharp elbow pointing backward, I say. Put arm straightening with forward swing and make the move kinetic to add to rear foot driving down (which wells ground force up from the court).

Next straight arm descends a bit but only because of what the core is doing.

Next arm slightly bends as you mondo (flip).

You do the Model T wipe then and finish and recover most likely toward center of the court.

The idea here is that James Blake adds speed to the shot by straightening and then bending arm with both occurring before the wipe.

I see this idea as slightly fanciful in that arm and body are working together, and I've never thought of minor arm motions capable of adding to major body motion but maybe they are.

[bottle]

Chunk the Shot still more Aggressively

Cliff, I've changed my strokes every day of my life.-- Jack Nicklaus

Yesterday I did self-feed. Today I play. Reader, if you've been keeping up with me you know the context here.

Reader I tell you when most dumbasses think imitation they think slavish imitation, i.e., even cloning James Blake's scoliosis.

No there is mystery in all great shots and if you want to get at the mystery you will have to figure things out on your own, i.e., be just as creative as if you were inventing the new shot from the ground up.

You play with the shot you practiced.--Stan Smith

No today I'm too old for that.

The last time I played I DID NOT self-feed and I won points when I hit the new shot and only hit the ball up into the sky once.

"I guess that was just waiting to happen," I said out loud. The geezers listened.

So today I'll do something new again. Big unit turn like James. Only lift the elbow from there, affording the opportunity for more compact elbow lift. Will chunk the elbow lift now with the forward swing. Elbow lift and arm straightening will all be propulsive as will arm shrinkage before wipe if I still include it. All of this propulsive, none finesse. The only finesse will be initial unit turn and movement to the ball. Everything else will propel.

So would you call this a finesse shot, reader? Me neither. I'll save my finesse shots as my butter and bread or should I say scones with jam and clotted cream since becoming a Cornwallphile or with clotted cream and jam since I became a Devonphile (and I'm sure I have the order in which you put the two things on the scone reversed).

[bottle]

Chunk the Shot Less Aggressively

Original plan to prolong backswing to end it with sharp elbow pointing backward was fine.

This puts KEY DOWN of Keystone and The Blake much closer together so that they feel more the same.

The difference is that the elbow travels around the body while racket tip keys down in The Blake.

Elbow stays where it is to start The Keystone.

This better orchestration should, in The Keystone, include commitment to straighten arm with total assurance as belated shoulders turn back. One tends to forget the assurance if one does not make a mental note. Another device to increase assurance is firm pre-knowledge of the exact amount of arm bend one will employ during the Model T wipe.

This commitment to arm bend-- just a little-- then leads to something more dynamic in The Blake.

Arm straightens backward and re-compresses to start The Blake's forward swing.

One sees this re-compression or "slight arm shrinkage" in some but not all of the TP videos of James Blake's forehand.

Me, I'll give myself a physiological break by programming myself to do the re-compression all the time including on fast version of short angle (gets the window pane angled-- horizontally-- with precision) and even on hardest forehands down the line.