A New Year's Serve

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Reiteration for Hitting More Sharply Angled 1htsbh's

Put thumb along back plane of racket handle but never play tennis this way. We put the thumb here for one reason only: To reach a more perfect understanding of how the whole hand reassembles itself as we place the thumb in different positions.

Next comes the first of our three hitting grips. Thumb slants across back of the racket. Thumb is even with middle knuckle of the index finger on opposite side of the handle.

Now we wrap thumb against middle finger. Index finger is farther up the racket.

Finally, we go one notch more by placing thumb under the middle finger which locks it there. On other side, index finger is even farther up the racket in relation to this.

Play, reader, with all three hitting grips. That would be bold but you can do it.

Remember, I had some sort of a connection with Katharine Hepburn, and that is precisely the sort of thing she would say, in fact she is documented as having said those exact words.

"You can do it!"

Note 1): As thumb gets internally placed farther down the handle you may want to choke up a little, i.e., replace whole hand a bit farther up toward the strings.

Note 2): Sit on a chair next to a bed. Place a book on the bed (in my case ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS). Using the spine of the book as reference, touch the spine with racket head.

Now try all four grips described in this post to see how their progression produces ever more acutely angled shots.

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In Search of a New Name

A great new grip deserves a great new name, but I used up my powers of imagination to invent the new grip.

Just as Annie, member of the garden crew that employs us both can't handle the name "Bot," I can't quite handle Interloch, Interlaken or Goofball Grip, the first auto-suggestions that came to mind.

Annie, a former Dodge as in the Detroit Auto Show, tried on Bob, Bart and Bad Bot before settling on Bat.

The mother of four, Annie is a good gardener. Anyone can see that as we plant plat after plat of magenta New Guinea Impatiens, the only Impatiens that won't immediately die from The Impatiens Plague.

But Annie says, "Bat, I get hyper sometimes and pretty soon I'm going to start ordering you around!"

Perhaps she has noticed that that is what our mutual boss does, who goes by the name of Hope.

"Bat!" Annie cries, "Go home and go to bed. If you don't rest that leg it's never going to heal!"

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Less Care to Grips

You might get lucky and find a good grip or two that way.

On the other hand, such romanticism (or careless negligence) could be what is wrong with American tennis and American politics...and America.

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A Bit of Choking Up on the Racket?

Re # 2133, to create a new pressure point with the second joint of the thumb calculating down from the thumb's tip:

Ivan Lendl is a player who successfully choked up on the racket for his huge backhand.

The heel is a half-inch or so up from the butt knob.

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Making the Choice

Of the various grips discovered in my previous post, I really like the one where the thumb is tucked against the ring finger with the middle finger locked over top.

See this as somewhat similar to an interlocking grip in golf although there two hands are involved with right pinkie intertwined with left index finger. That is the grip my father, a very good golfer, used and not the overlapping grip taught to me by a Ben Hogan protege teaching professional in Lakeville, Connecticut when I was 16 years old.

As I look down on my new tennis grip, right side of right forearm is not set at 80 degrees to strings or 45 or 35 but at no degrees-- there finally is a straight line.

This grip won't require more than an hour to feel natural and comfortable.

I expect to unleash topspin backhands at sharper angles than ever before.

But I am so ungenerous that I hope no one else will be able to benefit from this idea.

In fact, tennistas always tell you that hands and wrists come in different shapes and sizes that deeply affect (or should more intimately affect) one's tennis grips. Another wild card: thinness or thickness of racket handle.

For the record I broke my wrist in two places while skiing down an Indian Burial Mound in Granville, Ohio when I was 13 .

So-- but who knows-- am I writing here just for myself once again?

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Carry Experiment to its Logical End

Assume a backhand grip with heel of hand on 8.5, thumb stretched parallel with strings (you will have to hit TOO FAR out front although most tennis instructors do not think that possible). Ivan Lendl is a player who warned about loss of power when hitting a one-hander too far out front.

Now place thumb on a diagonal across the back plane of the handle (plane 7). Now tuck thumb around racket and against middle finger. Now tuck thumb between middle and ring fingers with middle finger locked over the top. Now tuck thumb against pinkie with ring and middle fingers locked over the top. Now tuck thumb under the pinkie.

Reader, this knowledge won't hurt you, especially if you are relaxed and aware of speed of the oncoming ball and are determined not to sprain your thumb.

I assume you will begin with self-feed, experimenting with sharp angles.

Obviously, some of these grips are "stronger" and more comfortable in that they offer more support against impact.

But don't be confused by the adjective "strong" so loosely hung by everybody on the noun "grip."

"Strong," reader, can have many meanings.

Martina Navratilova has suggested that when a player has just hit the ball into the net, he can change his grip and use the same swing to clear the net the next time.

Similarly, when the player has just failed to hit an angle as sharp as he wants, he can try the next notch of grip outlined in this post.

He should experiment with different stretches of forefinger and middle finger on front side of the racket as well. See how far forefinger is past thumb in old photos of Pancho Gonzalez' backhand grip provided by Phil Picuri.

The principle here is that thumb and fingers affect the internal set of the hand as if it is a piece of pliable rubber or plastic. The various appearances, while not dramatically different from one another, are significant when translated to where the racket head will naturally fly at contact.

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The Only Player Capable of Changing His Ideas about Grips

His name is Hockey Scout, and he has self-declared that he knows nothing about tennis grips.

The other participants invited to the 2015 GRIPS Conference to be held in the mountains of western Antarctica-- motto: "Get a Grip"-- have mostly returned initial questionnaires in which they reveal an average play time of 45 years in the game.

Furthermore, these same participants-- admittedly not the whole gene pool eventually expected to show up in the craggy black mountains being denuded of their white clothing every day-- have readily declared that they have never ever changed their forehand or backhand grip.

In serves the story is different. The average there is four changes per 45 years.

The Conference Committee, because of Hockey Scout's declared ignorance, has issued a proclamation of hope that someone somewhere will at least consider a new one hand topspin backhand grip.

To this end the Conference Committee Sub-Committee for Investigation has dispatched an emissary to the Ukraine to see first if he can locate Hockey Scout.

Second, he will find out whether Hockey Scout has a two hand or one hand backhand.

If two hand, the emissary will leave the Ukraine.

If one hand, the emissary will spend 15 minutes in which he asks Hockey Scout to place the heel of his right hand on the left side of top panel of his racket.

The understanding will be that Hockey Scout, after the emissary has left, will reverse the new instruction since Hockey Scout is from Canada and therefore left-handed.

The idea is that by the time Hockey Scout shows up in Antarctica just next year he will have fully adapted his new grip to match play.

The first feature of this grip however is not heel of hand on left side of top panel or even on pointy ridge to left of that or on first plateau to the left of that.

Rather-- and here is the hard part-- the GRIPS Conference emissary will ask Hockey Scout to extend his thumb along the back panel and then withdraw it to a 45-degree angle across back panel and even with forefinger second knuckle on opposite side and then further withdraw it until it is fully tucked against or over second finger (or third finger if counting in from pinkie).

The object of this exercise will not be to impose something on Hockey Scout that he won't want but rather to show him how, throughout, the entire shape of the hand keeps stretching and re-arranging.

So that, with thumb fully parallel with racket, for instance, the racket will form a 90-degree angle with the arm.

About which the late Ed Faulkner, seven-time captain of the American Davis Cup Team, declared, "THUMB STRAIGHT UP left vertical panel tilts racket face forward, puts forearm at 90 degree angle to racket, destroys timing and control."

Pulling back the thumb to slantwise cross should produce a 45-degree angle of racket to arm.

Further pulling back of thumb to full tuck provides about a 35-degree angle.

In addition to Hockey Scout, our Conference emissary seeks interviews with Victoria Azarenka and Xandr Dolgopolov.

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1HTSBH: The Roll You Can See vs. The Roll You Can't See

Maybe one moved slightly in the direction of this distinction when television carried a spot of Justine Henin with ball and racket in hand.

"I turn de racket over de ball like dis," Justine said.

There was a roll in this case that one could see, however, Justine was performing a demonstration.

Did her racket actually roll over like that in the great matches she played or even in the videos of instruction starring her? With wrist constantly seeming to alter its shape?

Maybe, maybe not. "Don't look for logic at the top of tennis."-- Jim Courier. The wording is approximate but the report of Jim's sentiment is accurate.

I and maybe you, reader, want vertical strings at contact.

But I have to be interested when Chris Lewit recommends 10 degrees of forward roll before contact. That's not much. Some would say it's a little. And this idea pertains to a very certain kind of 1htsbh not to all of them.

And I'm still wondering about what my partner Hope's son-in-law told me he gleaned from a tennis lesson near Rochester Hills, Michigan.

The pro quoted Roger Federer as having said that "the most important thing" (I always laugh when I hear that phrase) is to "cut the wire" by suddenness of separating the hands.

I don't laugh at the phrase "cut the wire," I just get interested.

But I ask: If having already developed a tension-free 1htsbh you then try for variation by going the tension-full route through starting a tug-o-war between your two hands, can you incorporate forward roll into the twangy release?

I think not at least for today. Better to flatten the wrist as part of building the tension. You build tension that way but also close racket face to more closed than you will want it at contact.

The release then is Babolat Pure-Drive.

Sorry I said that since I don't even have a Babolat racket any more. I ruined it by filling it with modeling clay. (Manufacturers-- please send me a new one.)

The pure idea here anyway is that through spearing and straightening and build-up of tension between the two hands, the "cutting of the wire" or sudden release will punch the strings into the ball while opening naturally to square.

A very pure drive, in other words.

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Too Big Backlog of Stroke Ideas

There is nothing like a tennis lay-off to accelerate one's stroke surmisings if one is a person who uses stroke surmising as one of his weapons.

(Clearly, most people don't.)

A call comes from a distant city. Can we watch two kids while their parents attend a 25th reunion at Yale?

The boy is nine, the girl barely eight, and both play tennis. The last time I interacted with them-- three years ago-- the boy was advertised as a half-Czech chess prodigy but I pinned his queen.

This time his sister came around to see how our game was going, and he told her that he was ahead. That was too much. I was considering throwing the game, but after I heard what he said I checkmated him with a lot of pieces still on the board. At least he didn't cry this time and took the loss with grace.

On the flight home, Gary Kasparov took revenge on me ten straight times whenever I wasn't using my jetplane passenger's screen to check on altitude. (My sinuses helped instruct me on when to insert special earplugs.)

While I was there, those two kids were in the middle of huge group lessons which I closely observed. How much concerned technique? Almost nothing. The "lessons" were chaos, but I guess this is how people acquire their tennis nowadays, and I guess that works to an extent.

Where I-- a 74-year-old 6-year-old-- now am: The mind is quicker than the installation of some new tennis stroke. Once one starts brainstorming with oneself ("empowers" oneself), one may come up with new idea after new idea. Oh well, better to have too many ideas than too few.

Backhand: Once calf and ankle enclosed in a pressure stocking right now are healed, will try my new waiting position cheated to left.

Federfore or ATP-3 Forehand: Interesting difference to explore because of greater waiting height. Have always cared about the forehand convention that shoulders turn, get still, and turn again. Why not in an ATP-3 have shoulders become still only during the spearing of racket butt forward? And why not let arm pull the shoulders to extend the followthrough?

McEnroeful Harry Hopkinsian grip forehand: Hit from neutral stance when possible. Get front hip thrust out and add lengthwise element similar to serve but watch out for awkward footwork on finish followed by opponent's lob.

Backhand futures: 1) Edge on basic as default drive. Get this shot going and THEN add double rolls as occasional enhancement if must. Faulkner seems to suggest that double rolls are easier for most people in backhand slice than backhand drive. If you're rolling it's harder to get the drive contact perfect every time. 2) Double roll off of the basic. 3) Double roll off of the basic in which backward roll is defined a different way, as Mrs. Bollettieri's middle of the night "flashlight." Or as Charley Lau Jr.'s instruction to baseball players to pull knob toward ball during forward hips turn. For, if one keeps racket or bat straight, one is, in a sense, creating backward roll. 4) Slices in which backward roll is defined in the same minimalist way. 5) Thiem-like drive in which, simultaneously, the racket turns over and the arm straightens in the first instant of backswing. One difference from Thiem is that the racket will not rise again: It will start in high position and loop down. 6) Cut-the-wire cue backhands in every possible configuration including closed racket preparation like young Lendl, Federer and Wawrinka. Does "cut the wire" release of built up tension work with forward roll as well as pure arm swing? Can closed racket preparation do away with forward roll altogether?

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Changing Grips

I've seen very little tennis instruction that contained a long section on changing grips and gave this crucial subject the attention it deserves.

I'm now returning to ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS: How to Play it, How to Teach it, with introduction by Arthur Ashe and a credit to Frederick Weymuller.

In my earlier approach and mid-term returns, I simply wasn't old and grown-up enough to properly absorb the information in this well-bound book.

If it is a collector's item, there still must be copies floating around simply because of the better than usual paper binding. My feeling also is that a lot of copies were made. It's easier to find than the books of John M. Barnaby although that remains a good possibility as well for anyone who enjoys good tennis writing.

While Faulkner enumerates and explores different grip change possibilities and even postulates that one should use the system with which one feels most comfortable, he makes known his provocative personal preference while seeming a most intelligent and reasonable man.

This preference: Racket cheated over at shoulder height with eastern backhand grip as previously described (post # 2127). This is in line with a golf article I just read in which some bozo (or maybe not) says that the less independence of arm motion in his backswing the more energy he stores and the more solid power he derives.

But suppose one was caught in a more accustomed waiting position with racket tip lower at body median. One could use elbow bend alone to raise the racket while perhaps changing grip and glomming into solid preference number one.

Further preference smoked out with effort: Learn enough versatility of grip change so that you can wait with the grip of the last shot you hit once a rally has begun.

In earlier of my tennis incarnations I think I became disenchanted with having racket high all the time. But such position is consistent with economical generation of a Federfore aka ATP-3 forehand-- especially if one performs the change to 3.5 grip through twiddling and adjusting with thumb and middle finger of both hands-- something that is easy and quick.

And my McEnrueful, sad only because it isn't a McEnroeful, can most likely begin with an easy racket and arm cascade followed by rhythmic grip change at top of the bowl-back.

And for Rosewallian slice, what would a person have to do? Well, for a drop-shot or dink I'll sometimes roll racket open for a second time but that should never be the default. I want to see two rolls only-- backward and forward-- so arm can go up a little from Faulkner's first preferred waiting position and grip can change from eastern backhand with diagonal thumb to Australian thumb-wrapped or "uni-grip" (base knuckle most likely on 2.5 pointy ridge), and one can feel the beginning of one's backward roll in the initial arm lift.

As an old guy I want evolving economy to counter body deterioration (but isn't economy in most cases essential at any age)? Time again to realize that. There therefore shall be no roll in my basic backhand drive which will keep racket on edge from beginning to end.

The shoulders alone will wind back the racket which then will drop comfortably to the level of my waist. Start at shoulders, drop to waist.

I'll of course continue my experiment on building tension between the two hands during the drop to waist, but will install the comfort consideration into every equation.

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A Stupid Little Thing That Might Make A Big Difference?

A golf magazine I was reading in a professional's office today quoted Jack Nicklaus' tennis instructor as saying, "The past is history, the future is mystery."

ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS: How to Play it, How to Teach it has more do's and don'ts in it than any book of ethics.

Foremost among the one hand backhand do's (and I am absolutely serious when I declare that this fine point receives more emphasis than any other concerning all the strokes in Faulkner's tall green book):

"Place heel of hand near left-hand edge on top of handle. Put thumb diagonally across left vertical panel. Fingers should be spread at an angle to handle and index finger should be as far up as thumb."

Prominent among the don'ts most pertinent to myself also re 1htsbh and appearing as a photo caption (but I'm pretty sure that figuring out the following sentence with a racket in one's hand is a better course than staring at any photo):

"THUMB STRAIGHT UP left vertical panel tilts racket face forward, puts forearm at 90 degree angle to racket, destroys timing and control."

Reader, you'll have to go to some trouble to realize what the 90-degree angle is that Ed is talking about. But I defer to him on these two ethical points. I've been wrong concerning them in recent posts.

On the other hand, these were the posts that led me back to ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS.

In fact, adjusting from thumb straight along to diagonally across back panel produces the result I tried for in post # 2126 only more so: Contact farther around on the ball.

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Worldliness of Grip 101

Once one has traded in one's primal American innocence (or imagined American innocence is one is a 2014 Republican)-- for more sophistication in tennis grips-- one may make some bizarre choice such as what follows.

The tennis writer Ed Faulkner taught an eastern backhand grip with heel of hand on left edge of panel one or maybe partially on panel eight. This heel placement was intended to help the average player to get sufficiently around on his one-hander-- a chronic problem in Faulkner's view.

I took this advice very much to heart because, like Arthur Ashe, I thought that Ed Faulkner was an especially good coach, and I still do.

http://articles.philly.com/1987-01-13/news/26189341_1_joan-weesner-tennis-players-tennis-coach

But now I'm wondering (though I hate to speak ill of the dead in any way): If I take Don Budge's filmed advice to put more thumb behind the racket (a view which has never been sufficiently discredited) and then shift heel squarely to middle of panel one, will not my contact be most naturally farther around on the ball?

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Next Level of McEnrueful Forehand Studies: a Narrative

Watch John McEnroe's feet, how he always lands in perfect balance. Note that even when he inchworms his inside foot out front, he still drives hips from back foot and does this during the contact. This late hips rotation often rearranges both feet. They twist individually but together too. The usual crap about a kinetic chain sequence therefore does not apply, i.e., isn't very productive or useful.

Look for variations. Suppose JM settles weight a bit more on front foot. Then back foot comes up in a small save step.

Suppose he's pulled way wide. If he feels cool and unrushed and just wants to hit a nothing ball deep, he can swing while he's still moving. In one such video the hips don't rotate at all, which means that he's swinging his shoulders from his stomach.

Hips driven from back or outside foot however happen most often. The inside foot may land where it started (though pivoted) or pull in a bit, which we could then call a gravity step.

Both takeoff and landing are in perfect balance-- that is the common denominator.

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Never have any words I've written so damaged my tennis game as the foregoing. The reason must be my early invention as a teenager of sprawling off-balance neutral stance and self-taught straight-armed roll and save step.

Now, at 74, when I've re-invoked this shot-- as close as I will ever get to a "primal shot" since I started tennis late and was otherwise preoccupied with the sport of CREW-- I find myself doing best with conventional step-out (some would call this "closed forehand" but that is when one steps across). And an excess of weight transfer that requires a galumphing save step. And John McEnroe imitation grip-- for me that's with big knuckle on 2.5 whereas when I was 18 or 19 big knuckle was on 3.0, the conventional "palm, slide, close, trigger."

The answer for me, I have decided (and I can only hope this is of interest to some human beings other than myself) is "step pushing hips toward net and crank them and arm for all they are worth."

Such an extreme design, while not achieving the cool balance of a John McEnroe-like pocket-billiards player, seems my best bet on the grounds of what the ball does next (goes fast and low with a sharp break to the left)-- pretty good in doubles.

This is a slam of a shot with imbalance integral to the middle.

To make it consistently work for me, I see the need for its lumbering save step to meld sensibly into a split-step that restores control while optionally continuing the forward momentum to use the remaining imbalance on purpose.

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Cut the Wire Backhand Service Return

1) Wait like a baseball player squared to bunt. Maybe you will bunt.

2) Change grip with racket and shoulders still parallel to net. Guess early if you want to.

3) Start building tension in the "the wire" as body finally and rapidly turns. The wire can be the part of the handle between the two hands. As tension builds, i.e., the hands try to pull apart, the hitting arm will start to straighten. Let it, but with the understanding that you need an excess of tension beyond what it took to accomplish that task.

4) Finish this building of tension through forward rotation of the hips. But experiment with clenching shoulderblades too. One or the other just then but not both. This late addition of force may coincide with racket tip lowering or keying down. Gradually build tension between the two hands throughout.

5) Cut the wire.

Have I tried this serious service return? No, but I want to. I have a list of alternatives including some with flying grip change. "Cut the wire" improved the quality of my full 1htsbh, so I don't see why applying this principle and making it predominant in this Kohlschreiber-influenced service return should not work.

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Backhand Service Returns and Publishing

The wisest prose on service returns I've ever read was written by the longtime coach and tennis writer John M. Barnaby.

Jack Barnaby certainly is a fan of variety in tennis but no doubt could appreciate the opposite viewpoint, when appropriate, as expressed by his rival Vic Braden: "Just hit the same old boring shot."

I don't think that Barnaby and Braden ever made a conscious decision to become rivals, but major publishers decided to pit them against each other when American tennis was building its base and taking off.

A bunch of books came out in that era. Two of them-- TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE and THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS/INNER TENNIS became best sellers, maybe the only best sellers among tennis books ever.

But I remember from my MacDowell Artist Colony days, a very accomplished writer saying, "If I write a best seller I'll know I did something wrong."

Similar to the "rivalry" between Barnaby and Braden was another between Braden and Scott Murphy's father, the longtime coach and tennis writer Chet Murphy.

Moral of the story: Some great technique ideas come from Braden but from less public and more obscure characters too.

Oh, service returns-- Barnaby's idea was that these shots should contain more variety than the other categories. Have a bunch of service returns available so that you can find the one that works.