A New Year's Serve

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Love without Love

I love doubles sets that go 0-1, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 5-2, 6-2 . They really show that you and your partner have figured some stuff out.

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Why Do It?

Why mess with grip change so much? Because the goal is the fluid, tension-free swing of Charley Lau Sr. and Charley Lau Jr., two top baseball coaches in succeeding generations.

Batting coaches may or may not provide instruction superior to any I've ever read on the 1htsbh in tennis, but I have decided to go with this father-son combination, and I don't much care about the small differences between them.

By getting all changes of racket pitch out of the way early, a fluid, one-piece swing becomes a distinct possibility.

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Seixas or Bollettieri BNP Paribas Tug-o-War Team?

Watchers of the TV series MADMEN are aware of the iconic BNP Paribas ad that ran for years. Politically speaking, Paribas sponsors tennis tournaments and who would wish to cavil about that, but I point here to a more human aspect of backhand existence.

Bathed in soft pre-dawn light rising over the warehouses and Fin-de-Siecle cupolas of The City, the leggy worldwide employes of BNP Paribas, especially one that everybody male or female wants to take home, pull on the same rope to make the world a better place.

And the thrust on that rope is linear, not circular. Everyone-- oblivious of the fish-hooks embedded in their mouths to use D.H. Lawrence's expression-- is pulling in the same direction. This is the final triumph of unfettered capitalism. And everyone is HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY looking forward to the cocktail party at the yacht club down by the East River that will follow the shoot.

In another place and time Vic Seixas wrote a boastful autobiography a bit too soon in his long life. It is not my favorite tennis book except for two items: 1) his gleeful rendition of destroying Vic Braden in a singles tennis match while praising the other Vic's backhand and 2) his autobiographical conclusion, that, in hitting a one hand backhand, one ought to bring the racket tip all the way around from pulled back position in a measured and even way.

Everybody knows that Vic Seixas had no backhand. Could the above stated philosophy be the reason? Here is the way this no backhand statement usually is worded: "Vic Seixas is the last player to win the Wimbledon singles championship without a backhand."

Me, I get my "pull the rope" jollies any time I hit Rosewallian slider-slice out wide in the opponents' deuce court alley. When I hit my slice crosscourt, however, I'm not sure whether I pull any rope or not-- could be that the two rolls of the shot are more closely linked. My immediate ignorance of what I do once something works relates to my theory of Seixas-Wawrinka backhand drive.

Similar to the Emily Dickinson poem about how the loser in a contest is the one who understands victory, the one who doesn't have a great backhand could be the one who best understands it.

As I overhaul my backhand drive (but not my backhand slice), I wish now to incorporate the Vic Seixas idea. I shall pull knob straight toward the ball simultaneous with forward hips rotation as in a Charley Lau Jr. baseball swing but this front arm extension shall be inside track circular rather than linear.

Using a Maypole as working image, I shall recognize that some ribbons stretch out farther from the pole than others. At the outer extremity is a J. Donald Budge backhand. Closer in to the pole with 90-degree hammer grip is a Stan Wawrinkle backhand. If this picture is too feminine, we'll send Vic Seixas on a left side halfback plunge between tackle and guard.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterOpenStanceFront1.mov

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More Thought to Grip Change

No, everything has not been invented before. People have always sought out the nearest rut-- the one that will mercifully deaden all sensibility and need to question and invent.

But there are a few inventions in every age and I'd like one or two of them. If I am wrong in my cynicism, then let's call my discoveries personal discoveries and leave it at that and what's the difference?-- unless we're in a contest of ostentation to exhibit our sophistication and knowledge of history.

Since I like Rick Macci's admonition to servers to "get their house in order" with a right angled trophy position either frozen or almost paused, I think I'll call that sensible position a skunk's tail and apply it to my backhands as well.

And chide the weenies jealous of Rick Macci's ability to hold a crowd as "jordans," which is Olde English for piss-pots. Jordan was also the chairman of an English Department in which I worked (and where I had help in verbal acquisitions from a great Shakespeare scholar, Professor Smith). John Casey, a National Book Award winner, moved to the University of Virginia, and although I could come back to teach for another year I stayed in Eastport, Maine.

Skunk tail in a one hand backhand is certainly not the only type of initial backswing available but is a sensible one, a "get the house in order" one.

As one achieves this verticalness one can, if one started with big knuckle of hitting hand on 2.5, use thumb and fingers on throat to twiddle the racket so that its handle ROLLS down into the web between the hitting hand's index finger and thumb. The hitting wrist can comfortably straighten at the same time.

I put the word "ROLLS" in caps since the grip changes we were taught tend toward a relaxing off of the handle altogether. One will still need to relax hand but can keep contact with handle throughout the roll.

Additionally, one may feel a need to then relax throat thumb away from racket to create a flat launching pad with throat fingers.

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Me, I'm a word guy. But I sure would like to see the backspin from that pitching wedge draw the ball into the hole as the flickering alligators gnashed their teeth.

[tntenniswhiz]

Any possibility of making this a video blog?

[don_budge]

Alligators and iguanas...Shades of Puerta Vallarta

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA.

You heard me right, my esteemed reader, Think Tennis and Tennessee.

Some years ago I went to Puerta Vallarta but I didn't take my tennis racquet either. It was hot then too. I took my golf clubs though...lucky for me. I had my only hole in one ever there on a golf course that had alligators but I am not certain about iguanas. Those were some big lizards though. Pitching wedge on a downhill 115 yard par three. It spun back into the hole. That must have been 15 years ago but I still remember it coming back to the hole...baby! I had a double eagle once...I didn't see the ball go in but my friend Blase Sparma did. Second shot was a 4-wood from 215 yards. Blase was the son of Joe "Blase" Sparma former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. Speaking of baseball. Speaking of golf.

Welcome home...-9 in Detroit? It's like +40 here in Sweden. Strange weather this year. Warming winter this year but last year was freezing. That is a cold reception. Man...that is like a three dog night as they say in Australia.

Excuse me...didn't mean to interrupt.

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90-Degree Difference

Nope. For me, the temperature went from 82 in Puerto Vallarte to -9 in Detroit, a 91-degree difference.

So fail better with a straightened wrist. And never underestimate the ice of developing some new stroke on an actual tennis court.

I'd like to say that my 1htsbh is "one stupid little thing" away from becoming a great shot. That however has been the truth for decades. Now that I can win by doing what a favorite tennis writer, Pat Blaskower, advised from the start, viz., play doubles exclusively with slice from the backhand side, I feel free and without pressure to continue my offcourt research toward a stupendous topspin dolager identical for my playing level with that of Stanislas Wawrinka.

But I've got to change something, Stan, and hope you don't mind. You know how you straighten your wrist just after adoption of your skunk tail? I'm doing away with that. I still plan to straighten wrist like you; otherwise, I'm stuck with too much grip change and too much locked wrist throughout producing unclean hits that loft too high in the center of the court-- not where I want to go with that particular doubles backhand service return.

Proposal: Using knowledge filched from crew, accomplish all wrist straightening during adoption of the skunk tail (erect tail, racket, penis-- whatever you want to call it).

Since as an oarsman and crew coach I learned the sculls as well as the sweeps I can feather with either hand. So I'm all for opposing two feathers.

Hope you don't find this distasteful offensive featherfora, Stan.

This will be tough if I'm staying Swiss-Germanic and waiting with big knuckle on 3.5 to hit a Federfore. So I'll wait all the time at 2.5, the position that sets up both my backhand slice and my imitation John McEnroe pendulous forehand. To change from that to the Federfore in the forehand direction whenever I wish is a cinch.

The guiding principle here is based on two tenets: 1) There are no bad students, just bad teachers, but good students are teachers of themselves and therefore lousy too 2) Straightening wrist like Wawrinka or me, though not as extreme as curling the wrist like Ashe or McEnroe still helps close the strings and minimize the amount of needed grip change.

Counterarguments: 1) One gives up Wawrinka's siting tool, the right edge of his racket 2) One telegraphs the upcoming shot 3) Both hands and sets of fingers twist in the same direction although the "feathers" are technically in opposite direction. This combined action is achievable though bizarre tour-de-force.

But when miming this new backhand for the first time-- with racket in hand-- one immediately realizes that one is now better equipped to carry out former Detroit catcher Lau's "absolute": Use a Fluid, Tension-free Swing (his son Charley Lau Jr.'s Lau's Law No. 8). Never mind for the moment WARDLAW'S IMPERATIVES which would only distract.

Note: The "Follow Your Dream" philosophy of Joseph Campbell and Sarah Lawrence College leads easily to "Follow your interest wherever it may take you."

With some trepidation I have plunged into the world of LAU'S LAWS OF HITTING since that baseball book is all about hitting with underspin. But enough of it applies to Wawrinkle topspin backhand to make the effort worthwhile. Stan Wawrinka does not turn his wrist over in the hitting area very often.

As in tennis technique, the contentious opposing viewpoints in baseball are legion. Of considerable interest to me are lovers of Lau Sr. accusing Lau Jr. of taking credit for his father's ideas and of mucking them up with extraneous stuff.

Lau Jr. did not bat nearly .300 for Detroit as Lau Sr. did as far as I can tell from first internet research.

And I am only surmising that Lau Jr. is a better writer than his pop since I have not yet gotten to the father's written work.

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Plot Plus High Expectation Leads to Disappointment-- or Does it?

Today seems the one and only time to announce my new plot. The tennis social tonight and all minutes thereafter will be too late.

The plot: Go, reader, to some country you have never visited. Do not take a tennis racket. Make no attempt to learn the native language other than the word tranquilo.

Absorb the sights and sounds, meet the late Elizabeth Taylor's adopted Mexican son, drink Margaritas on the beach, but through each of the ten days allotted for this special project, reserve hunks of time for tennis thought, even while observing the live cat sleeping in the hole beneath the statue of John Huston, director of the great film version of Tennessee Williams' great play NIGHT OF THE IGUANA.

You heard me right, my esteemed reader, Think Tennis and Tennessee.

Return to the United States with a perfect backhand.

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Forehands, Backhands and Overheads Reviewed

Your forehands, reader, are very different from mine unless you have the ATP3 known by another name as "a Federfore," which would mean that your forehands are-- roughly-- like 50 per cent of mine.

The other half of my forehands-- roughly since in any game I'm apt to throw in a few chips and chops-- are something I pretty much invented on my own when I was 16 years old-- pretty late in someone's tennis development.

When, decades later, I took lessons, I was so sheepish about those shots that I suppressed them.

Now they are back. Although I used to hit them with an eastern grip, I now have big knuckle on the 2.5 pointy ridge. For the model of this shot, which is really nothing more than a tic-toc with flat wrist, see the TennisPlayer videos of John McEnroe's forehand characterized by a forward arm roll overlapping contact that sends energy roughly 50-50 forward and up.

In backhands one-handed like mine, there is an interesting discussion currently going on at TennisPlayer in which people who have never succeeded in talking with each other come close to doing so.

A present topic is how far away from the player and how far in front of him should he make contact with the ball.

Ellsworth Vines, who greatly admired Don Budge, thought the separation ought to be great. Don Budge in surviving drawings and videos takes the ball pretty much to the side:

(This computer isn't bringing up the Don Budge backhands today, so just go to Stroke Archive yourself and find them.)

None of this discussion should matter much at the academic level. The ideas do matter when one sets out to work on one's own shot.

The latest progression I've followed in this thread has me using a different grip change intended to arrive at a skunk tail position like Stan Wawrinka's every time.

From there I change to launch position like Stan's and in my case filched from LAU'S LAWS ON HITTING, a baseball book.

From "launch position" I shall swing down (I'm in Mexico, a burro without a racket).

Listen here: A swing that goes low brings racket closer to body. It makes the racket feel more like a golf club. It takes the racket butt on a straighter path to the ball. It approximates the "pull on a rope" metaphor that a lot of different instructors trying to be clever have used. So, reader, if you just swing down a little you can forget all of that other stuff.

From there I wish to bring the racket tip around in a hurry. To do this I plan to swing my hand to the right rather than to roll the arm and racket over in the contact area.

Can such a swing produce the inside out racket head trajectory I desire? Yes, I think so if the whole arm hand and racket apparatus is sharply rising to make space for this action at the same time.

Old man overhead: Gets missed more than young man's version since shuffling feet under the shot are not as quick and deft.

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Should One Learn a Hand or Brain Move?

Nobody who is serious about this game, whatever their playing level, paints by numbers any more.

Myelination, which used to be called muscle memory, plays a huge part in developing someone's personal style.

What have you always done? Are you sure you want to change?

I am. Because I distrust EVERYONE'S theories on the relationship between learning and performance. Every good dancer witnessed by me, no matter their proficiency, learns new steps all the time. Jack Nicklaus told Cliff Drysdale that he changes his strokes every day of his life.

So the pop writers who talk about Malcolm Gladwell all the time and 10 years or 10,000 hours of drill can just go screw themselves unless they're talking about drilling HOW TO LEARN.

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Relationship of Internal Arm Rotation and Extension from the Elbow in a Good Serve

Is there a graduate thesis on this subject somewhere? Not that I've seen. And yet, any illuminating discussion would affect the world's store of aspiring servers and might even help them.

Should the internal rotation occur near beginning of the forward action or later in it close to contact or both or afterward?

Should the extension at the elbow be a passive snap or triceptic cream sauce very smooth, or, a triceptic snap sudden and sharp through a clever anaesthetizing of the oppositional muscles?

Should we just call the interplay between these two actions a definition of the word "throw" and leave it at that?

What if more range of one exists than of the other? What then? How then should "throw" adapt?

This is a crucially essential subject, in my view, but I have never seen it discussed very much, and yes, esteemed reader, J'accuse.

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Ellsworth Vines' Grip on Tennis

Ellsworth Vines, as a writer, is an exotic mix of golf and tennis champion (unconventional) and a student of tennis with normal concern about who among his contemporaries was best better or worst one though ten.

He placed J. Donald Budge at top of the list-- best-- if I recall correctly from my copy of TENNIS: MYTH AND METHOD back in the states.

Vines as one might expect of a lanky athlete tops in two technical sports cared more about grips than the other tennis writers I have read and was eager to discuss nuances of hand position if not how to arrive at one of the good ones.

As a doubles player with arthritis going one direction and stroke technique the opposite, I pretty much would like to hit a winner off of every ball that comes to me, and any evolution at this point is toward a multiple even seamless grip system in which the usual markers and ready made ideas need not apply.

This is one reason I am so attracted to the characteristic thinking of Vines along with that of Martina Navratilova, who broadcasts such sentiments as, "So you hit the last shot into the net. Change the grip a little but use the exact same swing. Now the ball goes over. Get out of your comfort zone."

Sound a little like Beckett? I hope so.

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From the Bottom up

Sierra Madre, Mexico

Since open front buildings afford no place to hide, you sit close to the beach where all the walking tourists can clearly see the hundreds of fish in vats nibble the dead skin off of your feet.

Next you bluejay across the walkway to the giant statue of Lorena Ochoa's followthrough in golf.

To one side is a tennis ball machine of a sort never seen any other place.

No wires, batteries or dials and not an on-off switch and certainly doesn't run on gas.

All you have to do is cerebrate trajectory, height and pace of the oncoming ball, and there it is, waist high on your backhand side.

Ten days of racketless tennis in Mexico will leave plenty of time to think and maybe hallucinate so long as one doesn't let any other details of one's present existence compete such as the learning of Spanish.

New tentative grip change goes into effect now. Thumb and middle of left hand twiddle the racket as index and middle of opposite hand spread up the handle and re-grip with all of these simultaneous actions concluded by skunk tail thanks to a combination of teaching pro Chris Lewit's written influence and my own thought.

The big question: As vertical racket head topples into the 45-degree launch position filched from baseball, should the wrist straighten slightly the way Stan Wawrinka's does?

Answer: No. Not after reading Ellsworth Vines on Pancho Gonzalez's backhand grip and how Jack Kramer exploited it day after day on their national tour until Pancho changed from Australian with big knuckle on 2.5 to an eastern probably with big knuckle on top, but kept the 2.5 for service returns.

Historically, was Kramer's success in that self-promoted tour due more to exploitation of technique or encouragement of Gonzalez to overeat?

Let us go with the Vines interpretation.

Pancho apparently made the change because, like most people when it came time to hit a one-hand drive, he pushed it instead of hit it. Exceptions to the syndrome: John McEnroe, Arthur Ashe, Stan Wawrinka, possibly Rod Laver whom many people know more about than I. My thesis here is that most people, sad to say, when it comes to unlocking their wrist weaken everything in their arm. My personal idea is that if you could close your racket face without creating weakness in your arm structure you would be better off.

But I've gone down that road, and one's mistakes are a big part of possibly coming up with some stupid little thing that is going to make a big difference.

A wrist firmly locked throughout for me then if that is humanly possible, i.e., will prove effective in the extreme. The grip from above looks concave.

This is how I want to hit a body bag in boxing with mimed backhands at least in initial experiments. I seek big leverage from the bonking edge of my fist but not with a hammer grip (see previous paragraph about Chris Lewit's advice on this point).

Now we use a free swing from the shoulder combining nicely with whatever gross body movement we previously mustered and developed.

And swing pretty far out from the body to make sure that outer edge of the ball gets contacted as the tennis announcers often prattle about.

But there is Wawrinkle LIFT. So one should not exclusively think "bonk with karate edge only?"

One bonks while lifting the entire apparatus. Is this the rise of a flying saucer? The throw of a Frisbee? Never been good at that.

The most important thing before undertaking any backhand is to have hundreds of tiny minnows remove the dead skin from your feet.

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A Stupid Little Thing that Makes a Big Difference?

Is there a grip change for the Stanimalious-imalian backhand?

Yes. You can see it here. It happens early, before the skunk tail. The racket twists in the hand, not the hand over the racket. For me, grip change and production of skunk tail have been simultaneous, "a flying grip change" very good for buying time.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_armaction/sw_bh_armaction.html?SWBHWideArmActionCourtLevelFront1.mov

Would an adoption of what Stan does here instead be worth the trouble? Would twiddled racket before skunk tail make basic sense? Is racket twiddle a time of siting the ball?

Stan's grip change compared to a flying grip change looks slow, right? Yet Stan has so much time he can run with his tail erect.

He was shaded to backhand side, don't you know, and from that position to skunk's tail is a short distance.

The new consideration however is straightening the wrist as racket topples over from erect to launch position. And, I need to ask, in three or four days of experiment did transition from flying grip change to wrist straightening feel good? Or were these actions too clustered?

While deciding to keep old grip change or adopt a new one, I can mentally alternate with Rosewallian slice in which there is no grip change or closing of the wrist except for possible sting right on the ball.

Also, I can take 11 days to think while in Mexico with dancing shoes and bathing suit but no computer or racket and no daily entry at TennisPlayer.

"Good!" as Bungalo Bill used to say, "We won't miss you!" But no one has ever had to read my stuff which gives me a more reliable reward anyway through leading to better tennis at least for me-- the scores show it.