A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Yup, that's a good one. He must have read Lloyd Budge to have moved his elbow that far out that early. Quite a roll to contact! This must have been before he fathered Lindsay Davenport-- oh, sorry, I made that port up.

[stotty]

Number 2000 reply..

I like this one:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/jackkramer/jackkramer_sa.html?JKBHSide.mov

[bottle]

To Cream the Ball

Swing down a little in a wide arc. You can see it here in Wawrinka.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_armaction/sw_bh_armaction.html?SWBHWideArmActionCourtLevelFront3.mov

You can see it in old representations of J. Donald Budge too, especially in the line drawing in the different books by Talbert and Old where Budge is supposedly imitating the baseball swing of Ted Williams. To run the experiment, set up far from the ball and swing down a little before you swing "up."

Or is "up" the right word? Actually the swing is more around with a slight bit of elevation.

The "up" stroke is a different shot altogether whose steepness keeps the path closer to your bod both down and up.

For a short soft topspin, 'cutely angled, roll while on the ball.

Note: In the first two shots described here, employ no fiddling with wrist and shun manipulation during the swing. Fiddle followed grip change and happened up top-- think of the easy motion at top of a golf swing. Get any fiddle done with and out of the way so that you can be an uninhibited son of a bitch.

[bottle]

Staying Away from the Ball

Since much of our discussion has been about being late to the ball, I link this video simply to show great separation. Wider swings with ball hit far from body get the strings around to outer edge of ball in a contact point NOT TOO FAR OUT FRONT where things, according to Ivan, tend to get willowy and weak.

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

[bottle]

Another

Here's another where one can see where wrist straightens. This has to be a favorite just because of the way he watches the ball.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_armaction/sw_bh_armaction.html?SWBHWideArmActionCourtLevelFront3.mov

[bottle]

Still Another Way of Closing the Racket

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_armaction/sw_bh_armaction.html?SWBHCenterArmActionSide2.mov

Notice four simultaneous things in this video: 1) the foot going out, 2) the shoulders rotating backward an extra amount 3) the arm straightening from the elbow, 4) the wrist straightening.

Straightening wrist at that moment further closes the strings and alters the loop just about to happen.

[bottle]

WD40 for the Tin Woodman

Where is HAND at all times in this video?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_armaction/sw_bh_armaction.html?SWBHShortHittingArmRear.mp4

At level of the ball and behind it at racket tip's low point.

Above level of the ball and to right of it at contact.

Farther to the right of it at yardarm position when arm and racket are pretty much parallel to the court.

Higher and over the top and farther to the right and finally reversing in the followthrough.

So how much roll of the arm is there in this extreme angle shot? Not much.

One might conclude that there is indeed backward roll but little forward roll and also observe that fear of paralysis by analysis is often the harebrained excuse not to think at all.

[bottle]

Progression, 1htsbh Grip

Using a grant from the National Science Foundation, I conducted an exhaustive experiment in grip change, transplanting the feather that an oarsman uses just before every catch to a backhand service return from ad court in superseniors doubles.

Although the miss-hit flew sharply upward and off of the court, it did so at least in a crosscourt direction away from the netman, which might have inspired further efforts along the same line.

I didn't like the feebleness of the hand to wrist connection however and reverted immediately to my personal version of Rosewallian slice.

The next backhand grip change I shall attempt (there was only the one for all of Tuesday) shall involve immediate finger twiddle in opposite hand only: A flying change combined with spreading out of index and middle finger on the handle thanks to Chris Lewit's recent TennisPlayer article and confident placement of a bit more hand turned over on the racket stalk.

Armed with such a grip and the following video, one can see that Stanislas does not loop his stick horizontal behind his back, well, not this time and many other times too:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_armaction/sw_bh_armaction.html?SWBHShortHittingArmRear.mp4

Still, I don't like the Kuerten-like way he splays his stride, preferring the closed stride of LAU'S LAWS ON HITTING and Virginia Wade.

Face it, a Big League batter is apt to lift his front leg right off the ground while twisting his knee inward. His replacement of front foot is then going to trigger the balancing dancer's mechanism of forward hips rotation that Mercer Beasley so admired.

And Beasley's star pupil, Ellsworth Vines, was surely telling us in TENNIS: MYTH AND METHOD that no more hip turn than that or even no forward hip turn at all is required unless, pulled wide, one steps across in an extremely closed stance.

[bottle]

Sliding Capsules all over the Place

Wow! Well, isn't a tennis player supposed to react to what's going on? I love the sliding capsules, which to my mind are a big change here in this website. You grab the capsule with your hand control, back it up, push forward. You won't be counting clicks, I think. You'll be more like a painter or musician and less like a lawyer. To describe where something happens in a video you may even use words instead of numbers although I note that there is a counter for handy reference.

[bottle]

Question, Anybody

In a serve, how can internal rotation of the arm ever be as powerful and therefore effective as it is cracked up to be, if there isn't a right angle from the hand? I'm just asking.

[bottle]

On Building from One's Strength

While I was interviewing Carmella Goree, who as freshman number one player on her team led Grosse Pointe South to the Division 1 high school championship of Michigan, she told her mother about the experience of playing doubles with instead of against me: "They kept talking about his slice!"

Well, it's my best shot, and as my close readers know, it is nothing but imitation of Rosewallian double roll in the YouTube video "1954 Davis Cup."

To get from that shot to Wawrinkle backhand drive could be a large order; but, I have to ask, "Why does my backhand slice work better than any other shot?"

Could it be that there isn't a flying grip change involved? I love flying grip changes, but maybe they're mechanical and therefore disrupt. I'll have to put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and investigate further.

I was thinking: If I were to combine a middle finger over thumb twiddle with slight straightening of the wrist, there would derive an almost deceptive closeness between my slice and drive preparations. There wouldn't be the humpback wrist of Ashe or McEnroe and yet the strings would have closed 80 or 90 degrees all in my initial move.

As for Carmella, her team-mates her freshman year gave her "The Young But Mighty Award." Her sophomore year they gave her "The Queen Sass Award."

[bottle]

Reckoning

Had a very productive half-hour hit before the tennis social with Richard (Ricardo) of Lima, Peru, a self-confessed baseliner unused to severe winters and doing a Detroit residency in pediatrics. By the end of our session he was asking for volley advice which I gave, and I felt looser than usual from all the nice groundies.

During the hit I generated a lot of backhand topspin but still was not happy enough-- too elaborate!-- to use it in actual play. For which I had exceptionally fine partners, one a USPTA pro, second a promising junior, third a victim we'd been beating up on. I was glad I still could win with her thanks to her improved play and my backhand slice.

"Nasty," the pro called one of those slices.

I had so much fun with those slices that I never wanted to hit anything else. And I KNOW I was producing more underspin sizzle than anybody at the social including the pro-- great player and great teacher.

Why, unlike some of my stroke progressions, has my backhand slice continued to gel? Because it has become more grooved and unconscious. And more myelinated. And more assuredly part of a single grip system (Australian) since on the other side I have a John McEnroe imitation that draws one third as much energy as my ATP3 Federfore, and though a bit high-risk, is probably more accurate.

Okay, here's where I'm going with this. If a person discovers some stroke that is better than any other he has ever had, why would he not build on it?

In my case, this idea dictates further revision on my backhand side.

I'll do it in my office. Many players only believe in on-court discovery. No, sorry, I have traffic, civil and criminal courts in my office, and I want a topspin backhand more similar to my Rosewallian slice.

But I've been here before. I'm circling back to a previous subject. Should I call this a "circum-iteration?"

Doesn't matter what I call it if I do it successfully. I contemplate a more complex flying grip change which initially and immediately and once and for all gets the major brunt of fiddling with the wrist out of the way.

Goal: Immediate skunk tail with wrist almost straight and big knuckle or heel of hand or both on slat # 8 (fluid grip philosophy-- work out precise details later or never work them out). I do think the skunk tail will occur a bit deeper behind one because of the straightened wrist.

Consider the enormity of challenge to readjust grip over three entire slats from 3.5 Federer forehand. I see some twisting with lefty hand against the detached right hand twisting oppositely. If both of one's hands twist against each other one can produce bigger yet still easy change. At the same time however you are pulling with opposite hand-- the action that gives "flying grip change" its name.

From skunk tail I want as close a facsimile of my Rosewallian slice as possible, with racket coming level to the ball or slightly from beneath, the wrist to firm up naturally at contact and then relax into a last bit of straightening in the followthrough.

[bottle]

Lift an Imaginary Button

Tennis instruction is over-detailed. In TOO SOON TO PANIC, Gordon Forbes of South Africa, memoirist member of a tennis family if ever there was one, speaks tangentially of his father's "range of broad spectrum instructions"-- what works best, I would submit, to teach people tennis.

Ellsworth Vines seems to understand this point. At the end of his book TENNIS: MYTH AND METHOD he advises, essentially, that his reader forget all the tips he imparted for just two of them-- hit forehands by the shoulder and hit backhands by the shoulder.

Useful but not good enough for someone as cantankerous as I: Where is the shoulder? Does "by the shoulder" mean "bei" as in German, i.e., in the neighborhood of? Or is the arrangement Vines is attempting to communicate more geometric involving parallelism within the grid provided by baseline and net?

Since I don't believe in answers in tennis technique, only in progressions or iterations, I pick up where I left off in post # 1989 . I'm proposing a 1hbh I may get to hit now at a weekly tennis social for the very first time (tonight, a Friday) .

I wish to add only three points to my disquisition before I've actually tried the presently cerebral shot: 1) Grip can be the grip that works and 2) Amount of initial wrist straightening can be the minimal amount that works and 3) An effective cue for relaxing wrist even straighter after it has firmed up can involve the slight lifting of an imaginary button at hand end of two tendons that run down underside of forearm and are about a centimeter apart.

[bottle]

Gradual Straightening of Wrist in Followthrough

A famous teaching pro who was neither of my former correspondents Oscar Wegner or Vic Braden once told me, in a private email, that he likes to feel that he gradually straightens his wrist during the followthrough of his backhand. His backhand as a matter of fact is famous too.

This never made sense because I figured that he cocks up his wrist just the opposite of John McEnroe or the late Arthur Ashe and therefore would be weakening rather than strengthening his swing.

In the present evolution of my perfect backhand, however, such a weakening could make perfect sense.

First the wrist muscularly straightens as arm also muscularly finishes its last little bit of straightening at the elbow. The total effect, when combined with pressure on knob, is that of "pulling on a rope" or "pulling the knob straight at the ball" rather much to the outside in present case.

Then hand and wrist naturally firms up during contact.

Then wrist achieves a last little bit of ease-off straightening in followthrough.

Relaxing wrist this way may relax the rest of the body as well.

[bottle]

Joint Invoice and Check

2/6/2014
John Escher, Hoboken, MI 41394
Pay to the order of Norbert Escher of Zurich and Lugano, Switzerland
ninety dollars and no/hundreds
$90 & 00/100's
CHASE OF AMERICA
To beat Maria Bueno. For lesson on putting more air under long diagonal backhand: $10 discount for common blood.
Bottle Escher