A New Year's Serve

[stotty]

Jimmy Arias pointed out from the Plowshares phenomenon the other day that McEnroe only requires a fraction of the energy used by other tour and former tour players to get a forehand off.

Interesting... Great post...absolutely wonderful.

For me the most fascinating thing in all this is McEnroe's incredibly subtle and sometimes imperceptible use of his hands. People often get confused between wrists and hands. With McEnroe we get no wrist and just use of the hand, making us realise just how subtle that element can be. The slighter the hand, the more deceptive the trickery. McEnroe and Mecir were utterly gifted in this regard, perhaps even peerless.

[bottle]

McEnrueful Forehands

McEnroeful forehands are full out rolled forehands that are often passing shots that are so deceptive and fast that nobody else on the court or planet can quite believe them.

Is this a low percentage shot? How about medium percentage shot? With the potential for becoming medium-high percentage shot?

This shot is hit with a perfectly straight wrist and grip that is barely milder than eastern forehand, i.e., a right hander puts big knuckle on 2.5 pointy ridge to form the "Australian" grip in the terminology used by Ellsworth Vines.

When this shot goes wrong, and it will go awry, the mistake is spectacular-- the ball can fly 40 feet above the baseline or crash into bottom of the net.

Shouldn't one just ignore the humiliation of hitting a "McEnroefool" and continue?

Of course, in conventional teaching, no one is supposed to attempt these shots. Eastern forehands though-- they're okay. And most Americans other than the late number one player Vines have never even considered speaking the term "Australian grip" much less using one.

They simply prefer to say that John McEnroe has a continental grip the better to dismiss him as useful model.

But the Australian grip is not a continental grip. It lies halfway between continental and eastern forehand.

People including John McEnroe often compare his style with Rod Laver but there are differences. I don't think that Laver's wrist is straight like McEnroe's on a forehand.

A true forehand commonality between them however is that Laver will roll. Here are two of Laver's forehands, one in which he rolls and one in which he does not roll.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/rodlaver/rodlaver_sa.html?RLFHShortCourtLevelFront.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/rodlaver/rodlaver_sa.html?RLFHCourtLevelFront.mov

When conventional teachers praise Laver or McEnroe they always seem to include the caveat "Don't try this at home."

This is not only stupid but unfair. The best teachers retain a bit of skepticism about their power of student assessment, always keeping open the possibility of hidden potential that they somehow missed.

P.S. In an earlier post I suggested that in hitting these shots, one can roll to contact but stop rolling from contact.

That is true, but I am now ready to completely refute the advisability of that course. One should roll all the way through the shot, uninhibited.

Note: See here how the shoulders get well turned, but not by opposite hand on throat of the racket. You could say, reader, that the shoulders get turned by the man's brain, or by his opposite hand pointing across, if you wanted. The backswing, as loose and relaxed as you ever will see, is one of the best features of this shot. Jimmy Arias pointed out from the Plowshares phenomenon the other day that McEnroe only requires a fraction of the energy used by other tour and former tour players to get a forehand off.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_forehand/mac_forehand.html?MacFHRunningCourtLevelFront2.mov

[bottle]

Yah, I still haven't made my way to the bangboard but really like the idea of getting some essential stuff out of the way at the outset of a 1htsbh.

For me, that's flattening the wrist. I've seen mid-stroke flattening of the wrist in videos of Wawrinka and in at least one sequence of Thiem.

Why do that? What is the advantage? A person should always be looking for something to cut. Why not have the wrist already straight? Unless you're hitting Federerian backhand slice or a drop-shot. But why should concave wrist ever be the default? The default ought to be the wrist setting you use the most.

The second thing I like about straight bend straight formula (am talking about drives again) is that with a full eastern backhand grip and a flat wrist and thumb along back slat the forearm and the thumb go SIDEWAYS behind one's back.

We know that "keying," a very symmetrical circle loop, occurs in these shots.

So-- which of the following choices to immediately precede the keying would best facilitate an easy circle, 1) downward motion, 2) no motion, 3) sideways motion?

Exactly.

Also, because of the new transition supplied by the slightly bending arm, one can initially use more of a conventional flying grip change from any other resting grip.

That would be simple pull back with opposite hand while relaxing fingers of the hitting hand.

[bottle]

Straight Bend Straight

Very promising. Sorry Dominic for my flagrant theft. But I need the structure of this. It will serve me well.

At the bangboard (after the rain stops): 1htsbh's with forward stride, 1htsbh's with backward stride, 1htsbh's with no stride.

In each case, grip change and bend of the arm will be a single though sequential move to form a circle.

After that, one might as well be Stanislas Wawrinka.

When to stride, when not to stride? Just as arm goes from straight to bent.

This course of action will provide limited (i.e., relative) happiness for you, for me, for The Knight of the Rueful Countenance.

[bottle]

Maximum Commitment to Invention

"The shot you practiced is the shot you play with."-- Stan Smith

The truth in this statement applies to sensible persons. Last week I found myself hitting nothing but one hand backhands against a bangboard in preparation for this morning's doubles.

These shots involved a bent arm going back during coiling movement to the ball and final hitting stride as well.

Then, while re-watching the Tennis Player video of Dominic Thiem's one-hander, I noticed that Thiem does something different: He straightens his arm, next he bends it, next he straightens it again.

The logic of this seemed to overwhelm perhaps because I come from a golfing family. A right-handed golfer is taught to keep his left arm straight, in fact nothing else works.

On the other hand, logic and tennis players frequently go in different directions. Jim Courier has been quick to point this out during the player conversations associated with the Plowshares senior tour.

Another consideration is that I may not be a sensible person, committed as I am to finding new invention whenever possible in any stroke mechanics I plan to use soon. Since half the pleasure I take in tennis comes from my invention and I would rather invent than win or paper-publish, Stan Smith's sage advice may not apply to me.

With no preamble or self-feed or bangboard or ball machine or "hits" of any kind I started this morning to play doubles with the new concept immediately and found that for about two sets the new backhand pattern held together nicely.

Why then in a third set did it fray?

Just not grooved and integrated enough and therefore a bit slow-- as fatigue set in-- to get off.

For a mildly intellectual player however the Thiem pattern-- straight arm bent arm straight arm-- may hold promise.

Initial straightening of the arm is an excellent time for grip change combined with flattening of the wrist. This also is an excellent time for sliding thumb along the handle-- not what Thiem himself does but what Don Budge advised in a movie, and it is my contention that people still ought to listen to him.

Subsequent bending of the arm relaxes the whole player. And gives the supposedly intellectual player something very specific to do while striding out-- slightly bend the arm, thus providing a small transition between backswing and foreswing.

So I didn't play as well as I could have this morning-- sorry, doubles partners-- but the new investment I mean invention should pay great dividends.

[bottle]

After Trial

After taking #2101 to the bangboard, I'm ready to dispense with double ulnar deviation although I'm still planning on single ulnar deviation since I am, no doubt, a deviate.

Most other features of #2101 will survive at least through morning doubles in the last session of our indoor league in which I bring the tennis balls and therefore serve first.

How important is left hand on the racket during the actual hitting part of a good one hand topspin backhand? Put another way, how long should hand stay at the throat if throat is where the fingers are? Where in the stroke cycle does that trailing hand best come off?

[bottle]

Science

Well, in the WAW, since loop is now being better used to accelerate racket tip around, why not use both hands at once and get them doing the exact same thing at the same time during this baseballer's phase of the overall stroke.

"You're either wrong or you're partially right." -- Craig B. Mello

There is no way that both hands can do the exact same thing at the same time in the pursuit of AWEWAW.

But one could establish palm sandwich (with racket handle the filling) at bottom of the accelerative loop if one were willing to undergo a second grip change, this one with opposite hand.

At that point-- precisely at the bottom of the non-pause loop-- the two palms would be parallel to each other and slanted upward slightly toward side fence.

Here's how the mojo of this would work.

1) Modified flying grip change to flat-wristed eastern backhand with thumb along back plane parallel to the strings. In a normal flying grip change one just pulls back with opposite hand while relaxing fingers of the hitting hand. In this version however the hitting hand takes a more active role in turning over top of the racket. Why? Because more turning of that hand is about to happen so let's combine to make everything more seamless.

2) We just loosened hitting hand for readjustment while opposite hand held steady. Now we reverse the roles! The hitting hand keeps firm connection with the turning racket as opposite hand readjusts. Important: The hitting hand whirls the racket through talking to the beginning of hips rotation. I don't know how to say that without turning to jazz where the different instruments speak to one another. If anything becomes too deliberate or conscious or "intellectual" at this point the scheme won't work any more than jazz will.

3) Opposite or passive or "guide" hand just loosened its grip, almost released it in fact. The big question-- and I haven't tried this yet or probably I wouldn't be writing this since I bore myself easily-- is whether my left hand can rejoin the racket in a meaningful way to help ship the racket head forward with both hands employing ulnar deviation at the same time. Also, at the same time, the arm is straightening its last little bit for the same purpose. Seemingly, the two arms and hands are doing the exact same thing, but there is a caveat, a flaw in that conceptual ointment (4).

4) The two elbows are pointing in different directions. While front elbow is pointing in a direction that will aid the roundabout swing, the rear elbow is not but is pointing down. So for guide hand to hang with the swing there must be scapular adduction, i.e., extension from rear shoulder house.

Point 5) here is reflection on 4). The scapular adduction of rear shoulder can correspond to the scapular adduction of front shoulder either happening or being maintained just then. Some might say these two adductions add up to a single term, "HUSKING." And that the two scapular retractions about to happen add up to the term, "RIPPING SOMETHING APART" or, more clinically, "CLENCHING THE TWO SHOULDERBLADES TOGETHER."

6) Stride, if there is a stride, is with foot closed unlike Stanislas Wawrinka and just like one of the Lau hitters in baseball and followed seamlessly by a huge hip rotation. By "huge" I mean huge. Major sin in Lau type hitting is "squishing the bug." Which means one didn't rotate one's back heel up high enough. Such a full hips turn, to make heel come up that high, flows into braking with the front leg. One can recall how Ivan Lendl, when he was younger, almost used to thread his left knee through his right. In any case, the rear leg turns a lot to preserve balance against extreme action from the hips. And the racket tip whirls down (keys down) and immediately catches up and passes body to transfer this energy into roundabout swing.

7) Well, WHAT is swinging around? I used to think it was just the hips. And then just the arm. Ellsworth Vines after all writes that one doesn't necessarily have to use the hips at all-- not if one is stepping straight toward the net. For WAWAWE though I believe perfect set-up is always going to put contact slightly to outside and one will have stepped, if one did step, slightly across as well as toward the net. So what is swinging around? Ulnar wrist motion is swinging racket tip around. Extending front arm, simultaneously, is swinging racket tip around. The rear arm is extending too, but it is scapular adduction from the rear shoulder housing that is keeping that arm connected to the swing.

8) Delayed arm springs. Simultaneously, the two shoulderblades clench together. Since this total package involves two different fulcrums, there is more dwell than usual. One fulcrum instead of two would take strings off of the ball faster-- BAD.

9) How zany is all this? How over-elaborate? After all, I was hitting nice backhands yesterday against the city bangboard (and nope, nobody else was there). Well, a scientist and even a baseball player tries to cover all the bases.

[bottle]

Art

Thanks Phil, maybe a combination of passion and chess player's cold detachment is the ticket, but I'm not where I want to go yet with my imitation WAW.

I'm ready for a return to the palm sandwich idea initially pilfered from Lausian hitting in baseball.

I went to an awful lot of trouble to arrive at the premise that good things might emerge from keeping left palm vertical like Ken Rosewall.

I'm still open to that possibility but also think, "Not necessarily."

The hammer grips of him and Stan Wawrinka whatever their other grip and stroke differences keep the strings close enough to one's body so that opposite hand can better guide while remaining secondary in the swing.

Well, in the WAW, since loop is now being better used to accelerate racket tip around, why not use both hands at once and get them doing the exact same thing at the same time during this baseballer's phase of the overall stroke.

One palm facing down then, one up. If the player wants to add ulnar deviation to hips rotation-- a lot or a little or in between or none of both-- he is free to do so.

The newfound freedom comes from getting palms opposite (after grip change) and then keeping them in the same whirling plane.

[gzhpcu]

Nice to see your passion for the game bottle!

[bottle]

Crunch Teeth into the Apple

The plenteous films of Wawrinkan backhand make this great shot seem like an apple ripe for the picking.

Federfore earlier was that way. And Andy Roddick's serve. And Fred Perry's continental ping-pong slams that entranced (some have since said "infected") the entire nation if not empire of Great Britain.

Should a golfer imitate the swing of Jack Nicklaus? Tiger Woods? Ben Hogan? Ricky Fowler? Each is very different from the other. Perhaps when one has enough models to choose from, one will find one that is workable, i.e., that one can build on. Just to arrive at that point of decision however one may have to have achieved partial mastery of all of one's rejects.

Am sticking with Waw's backhand and enjoying it but have not yet reached the promised land.

Am all too aware of the glibbers rejecting the whole notion such as the New York Times reporter who denied all improvement of his golf game through study and reading forever.

"Go screw yourself!" was my reaction to that article. Not that I needed to say anything since the author had already done what I was urging him to do.

I believe, you see, in the golf magazines adorning the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists. Specifically, the more technical and stripped down some article, the more I believe it, and in any case, without those core articles the magazine would never have survived.

Where to go with WAW? I'm now going to title Wawrinka's backhand "WAW." This is a literary device called metonymy in which some part of a person or thing is meant to stand for the whole. Literary definition from web: "Metonymy is a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated." Thus Stanislas Wawrinka has a powerful serve and forehand but one chooses backhand-- in his case-- to stand for the rest.

So far, it seems, we've identified the different parts of WAW, many of which at this point are obvious, some less so, e.g., straightening the wrist during kinetic part of his stroke.

No need to do that, in my view, just start with a flat wrist. Now one can use WAW rhythm which is only visible in a few videos. (Again, I take those videos to stand for all the videos.) The net result is that one can better work on developing the special feel of throwing a Frisbee, yet not sling a real Frisbee but rather one's palm down fist, which one has called a Frisbee.

Let's go all "feel" now while largely if not completely adopting the anti-sequence view or bias possible in tennis.

So, even as we glide to the ball we are starting to sling the fist. (Might as well do this without a racket in one's hand.) The racket head is going back gradually as one sprints. I'd like to say the racket speed is "slow" but defer to saying "slow relative to what is about to happen," a fast key-like drop of the racket head that accelerates and continues around and through the ball and out and even reverses direction a second time.

Is this movement independent of the body? Does it go ahead of the body which is moving too? Yes.

Important: Keep arm moving ahead of body but never at same speed as body or delayed behind body. Every inch that the hips swing should move the racket head a corresponding inch. But if racket moves MORE than that inch, that's good.

We've been through the next part before, the braked hips and shoulders, accelerating the arm. Finally, as Bungalo Bill once said in this forum, we use scapular retraction to "squeeze the last drop of blood out of the stroke."

To suddenly go technical here, the arm springs from one fulcrum, the shoulder housing from another, and the combination produces less curve and more straightness or hitting through the ball.

[bottle]

One Hand Backhand as Macro

And I've already said I want to chuck the firm wrist notion for ulnar snap. That would be wrist snap with the karate edge of the hand worth 45 extra degrees of "getting around."

Medical routine, ever bigger as one grows old, has been cutting into my backhand experiment. Extensive gardening sucks away my discovery time as well. Backhand development, as John Boris pointed out to me, is a theme for most players that runs as long as their involvement in the game. Like me, John is a former champion oarsman, so I'm partial to believing him. Also, John, a very fine player, is Director of Tennis at the Indian Village tennis facility in Detroit.

Beyond backhand, memoir vs. fiction is a subject inveigling me as I approach the end of THE MEMOIR AND THE MEMOIRIST: READING & WRITING PERSONAL NARRATIVE, a book by Thomas Larson. While Larson has many great ideas, the writers whom he discusses have a big and horrible characteristic in common: Totally self-indulgent addiction to modern psycho-pop. And while contemplating Alice Sebold's contrasting treatment of imagined and real rape in novel and memoir she separately wrote is happy pastime, I'm more eager to seek elucidation in comparing Stephen Crane's THE WRECK OF THE COMMODORE (journalism) and THE OPEN BOAT, one of three contenders along with WAKEFIELD by Nathaniel Hawthorne and THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER by Ernest Hemingway as GOATASS, acronym for Greatest Of All Time American Short Story as opposed to some tennis player like Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Pancho Gonzalez, Rod Laver or Don Budge.

Specifically now since we finally have a distinct notion that we are closing in on essential backhand, we have to ask, "Do you not deeply regret, Escher or bottle, using the term 'ulnar snap' rather than ulnar deviation?" Do you not understand that you should inject deviates into American memoir, now considered American literature, whenever possible? Besides, do you not harbor doubt that the ulnar deviation is snap whatever one calls it?

Perhaps one should use opposite hand to swing rather than snap racket through the ulnar deviation enabled by thumb along eastern hammer backhand grip?

Perhaps one should then release arm as one brakes body while "keeping the shoulder in?"

Depends, reader, doesn't it, on whether we want to put the ulnar deviation close to contact or keep it away by placing it before arm release as in a computer macro or other recorded sequence of events.

Greater firmness of wrist at contact could then be assured, and thank you, reader, for being part of my specialized audience whose eyes will glaze over at many expressions but not "scapular slingshot."

I choose private over public audience, don't you know, valuing backhand development as I do over unearthing the prolific details of personal episode when I was three years old and my mother took me to bed in Bay Head, New Jersey.

My mother, Ma and little me, don't you know, spawned the future governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.

[bottle]

Get everything lower and more level and start from way back.

Way back but with racket parallel to rear fence is not, in one sense, "way back." Because the strings are turned like that, they're closer to you than they would be in some other scheme, are close enough for you to control lowering better with opposite hand.

Bending knees more always seems to create more room in which to bring the racket head around.

Everything, in the experiment, now goes to bringing racket head around. If in the physical mode/trance of self feed and standing somewhere near one's own backhand corner, hit deep to imagined opponent's backhand corner, put ball deep in alley, i.e., in the doubles backhand corner, don't feel as if you've done the job if you get ball to singles backhand corner. And hit some sharp angles into the alley next to the service line as well and don't cheat on this.

Getting racket parallel to back fence while reaching way back with arm to get around better is counter-intuitive. Something else sure to help is full endorsement of the scapular adduction- scapular retraction idea. A big turn puts back toward opponent. Scapular adduction adds to this taking of racket both around and toward back fence. From full scapular adduction to full scapular retraction takes racket farther (all on its own!) than a more neutral shoulder housing position does to full scapular retraction. Well, if you hold the scapular adduction until you've first swung the arm to the ball, you'll get around more.

And I've already said I want to chuck the firm wrist notion for ulnar snap. That would be wrist snap with the karate edge of the hand worth 45 extra degrees of "getting around."

From an education or learning perspective, it's just amazing how the technical concerns associated with one hand backhands find themselves stuck in the muck of not getting around enough year after year and decade after decade.

I've seen stroke designs where racket never points at more than a right-hander's left fence on a perpendicular. That's one attempt to address the problem. So is an anti-hammer or diagonal backhand grip with both first and second fingers spread out on the handle. So is keeping backswing to the side of one in the slot.

How many people suffer from hitting the ball too sharply crosscourt, which would be opposite tennis affliction? I do it once in a while, but undercooking a backhand is a much more frequent occurrence or has been up to now.

Body rotation bringing racket into a "more around" position obviously is another measure one can take, but the danger in perception, again, is that in a double rotation swing the racket DOES NOT GET AROUND, just the opposite because of moving fulcrum again.

This would seem an argument for sequence over simultaneity in this one particular case. And for keeping opposite hand on racket for more of the swing, viz., one may only be lowering racket with both hands a few inches, but core body swing can move the racket considerably around in that time, 90 degrees in fact so that racket goes from parallel to back fence to parallel to side fence.

Finally, there is rolling the racket-- that gets tip farther around but why do it when one doesn't have to?

[bottle]

"Best in the Business"

Here it is again, the "best in the business" video.

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

Is there anything else about it that we can see?

Well, I see that not getting the racket tip around is the factor that spoils the chance for similar greatness in the case of all one handers who aspire to this shot but never quite get there.

I am serious. I have had more than one good teaching pro look at my one hander and tell me it was good when it just wasn't, when it was lacking some little thing that would have brought the shot to a boil.

So how does Wawrinka, having gotten his racket parallel to the back fence (which is WAY AROUND!), put his strings so clearly on the outer edge of the ball? While I do see total extension of the shoulder as an extra accelerator in the stroke, I can't see how that leads to a sharper crosscourt angle, just the opposite, in fact.

Well, scapular slingshot keeps strings behind the ball for better dwell, but if you move fulcrum as something is coming around the fulcrum, you get the broad angle rather than acute one and may hit down the middle, the last place you wanted to go.

And yet I don't see much arm roll in this sequence. Am I wrong? So how and when does the racket head come round?

At the last instant. From the wrist. So I'm gonna try ulnar wrist snap right up to ball (with thumb along handle-- different from Waw, I gnaw) and scapular sling shot to leave ball as part of the followthrough.

In self-feed of course. That's the beginning of my accustomed ritual for developing any new shot or variation of an old one.

[bottle]

Self-Feed Report

In slice experiments, straightening of wrist melding into backward roll melding into forward roll was not overly cumbersome.

Most of the self-feed session however went to Tennis_Chiro's mention of "shoulder extension" in describing a sequence of Stan Wawrinka's backhand drive that he, Tennis_Chiro, had just screen-recorded.

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

Could the expression "shoulder extension" refer to classic bridge arm form in billiards and to "scapular retraction" as opposed to "scapular adduction" (since backhands are what we are discussing and backhands always turn one's orientation around)?

And if so, could the most active incarnation of this be the "backhand punch" or rabbit punch outlawed in boxing? And could this knowledge apply to both slices and drives?

When wbc spoke of backhand punch, he seemed to refer to kinetic extension from elbow, and self-feed experiments followed by use of a bangboard discovered how this can work, with net parallel racket pulled close behind trailing hip.

The most salient feature of all this seemed acceptance of 1) the punch idea and 2) wbc's idea of getting strings approximately parallel to net and rear fence.

A punch is a punch wherever it comes from, and since there aren't many videos available of experts backhanding rabbits to kill them or of boxers killing and maiming one another the same way, I'm inclined to choose my own form of such an illicit punch.

Know the options, I think, then choose, but choose only one form of punch since a one-handed backhand is already complicated enough and is not designed to have more than one punch at a time embedded in a given stroke.

Parallelism of racket to rear fence, baseline and net occurs farther behind the body if one wants to make scapular retraction work the way Wawrinka apparently does.

Also, arm gets straighter earlier in the cycle than in a wbc illicit punch.

Note: It seems that two basic structures for acceleration are available in any ground stroke: 1) gradual acceleration and 2) sudden acceleration. Both wbc punch (or slingshot) and shoulder extension punch (or slingshot) fall in the "sudden" group.

[bottle]

Okay, I'll ask Hopie to do it since she's the one who's good with a camera. But I'll have to get her away from the half-dozen large gardens we're just starting on and away from all of her other work too. Don't think you'll give my back leg serve (of necessity) high marks!