A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Yes I did and I enjoyed the Times article and the detail of the Stanimal's chair refusing to fold.

[julian1]

A Swiss chocolate thread

But sometimes I don't and sometimes I do.

Did you read a Swiss chocolate thread?

[bottle]

"You can do anything you want-- if you have the talent."-- Jim Kacian

But sometimes I don't and sometimes I do.

[bottle]

Backhand Ziegenfuss (Goat's Foot)

A Ziegenfuss, named after the suffragette tennis player Valerie Ziegenfuss, early activist compatriot of Peaches Bartkowicz and Billie Jean King, is a forehand like Valerie's in which the arm goes first, the body second.

While miming in my stocking feet against a varnished wood floor both Lau type (lots of hips) and Wawrinkle (lots of shoulders) 1htsbh's, I noticed that if one swings arm alone in the desired pattern of either category, the arm naturally pulls the shoulders around which in turn pull the hips and feet around for perfect recovery in any direction.

One could see this as development of sequence opposite to kinetic chain-- good sedition in other words.

A lot of delayed angular weight seems to go onto the ball, but have I tried this quiet, miminalist shot yet? Nope, haven't had time or court time.

[bottle]

Knob-Pulling that is a Simultaneous Feeling for the 1htsbh Ball

If you swing roundhouse at the ball you ain't feeling for it.

If you feel for it by bowling the knob down and up-- on a straight line-- you ain't swinging at it.

If you swing at it while doing nothing else but veering hand slightly in toward your body you arrive at a compromise.

To ensure the necessity for this veer only, you can set up with ball to the outside.

All this relies on perfect batting launch position from baseball, i.e., the racket length is set at 45 degrees in two different dimensions.

As you step and untwist your hips, your feel/swing (half-feel, half-swing) levels your hitting palm with no added backward twist of the arm by you.

As you brake hips from your front foot, energy runs up your front leg and stiffens your entire body so that all of your recent hip-work is transmitted directly into the arm and racket.

Among other likely pitfalls, this shot will never work if the shoulder is not completely relaxed during this essential transmission of stored energy.

[bottle]

Melbourne

We Eschers von Glas of Snob Hill, Zurich, join the rest of Switzerland in applauding both of our lads, Roger and the Stanimal.

We wish them all the best in their future endeavors, and I, as third generation American branch, just wish to say that, despite all the doilies and fingerbowls we Eschers use when we take tea up on Snob Hill, at heart we are regular guys and gals.

In fact, I, Bottle Escher, don't know exactly what transpired with Fafa this morning at 3:30 a.m. other than that Roger came to the net.

As I watch that match during daylight, I shall wish-- even desperately-- that no one tell me the result.

[bottle]

Report

Guess what: These backhands work, although they raise for me the somewhat uncomfortable thought that the top batting coaches in baseball explain ground strokes in tennis better than the top mechanics in tennis itself.

But how much am I supposed to care? Am I really out to reform tennis instruction like World's Best Coach? Am I that generous? No, I want a good backhand. And if everybody was smart whom would there be left for me to destroy as I feel very, very good about myself, as I did early Tuesday morning when I was the only person on the winner's court three times.

Not that I have found Eldorado or the Fountain of Youth or even my best backhand. I most certainly am on track however and that alone may provide the biggest high or "rush" as we romantics of the sixties were apt to say even if we were among the straighter members of that club.

Still to be determined: A) Should closed front foot stay flat in a single position (simple) or pivot a bit on heel (complex)? And B) Since feel of my backhand is now more like a baseball swing in which all elements of transition are built into the dynamic action of forwardness, should I save a bit of forward arm straightening for then, too?*

Finally, I reserve Wawrinkle rollover for the future, reveling for the time being in a flat hand single piece swing with racket trailing directly behind my hand until long after contact.

*Answer: No. Get arm straight (barred) while it is high, as you (I) stride out.

[bottle]

Goosey-Gander, B-Hand, F-Hand

I haven't even had the chance to try swinging at side fence for a flat hand backhand, yet already I want to swing sideways in my forehand once again.

The principle of pulling knob at ball as hips explode long has got to work but ought to start sooner on my forehand.

So there I am with racket high with thumb under twiddle having occurred and wrist laid up. What comes next? Patting the dog, right?

Real force in the arm work has started from bottom of the pat, right? No more.

The pull can start at the top same as on a backhand where guide hand is first above hitting hand and then behind it with that transformation entirely natural.

And similar to backhand I'll take a little more bend out of arm also at the top.

If you live by motto you know that love means you never have to say you're sorry and extension never means the same thing twice.

But if I'm going to lengthen at back I'll shorten at front. Besides, my wrist lays back half as much as that of Roger Federer. I'm going to scissor to pull across. I used to try that a lot. This time it ought to send the strings right through the ball.

It's when you roll over AND scissor-- both at once-- that you limit extension. You can also limit extension this way without a scissor. Roll over has a time and place but it's well after the hit if you're trying to go through the ball more. The whole idea of Lau's laws in baseball is to have flat hand swings, i.e., the lead hand stays palm down. And the lead hand does the work even in a two handed swing in which top hand never leaves the bat. But most Lau batters do get rid of that top hand at a convenient place for more extension. Converted to a two-hander in tennis, this philosophy completely reverses the prevailing motto that a two-hander for a right hander is a left hand forehand. (Forgive the five "hands" in one sentence.) If this baseball wisdom could prevail in tennis, it would mark the revenge of the one-hander, establishing that a basic two-handed swing should really be a one-hander! For now that seems an axiom in baseball, that the best swings at the plate are one-handers, and the other hand is just on there for a while as guidance.

[bottle]

Boppety-Bop

You may be too far out front with your plans, Bottle.

That could be true. Besides, I hit myself in the head.

It was at the weekly tennis social at Eastside, a gentle time of good food and conviviality.

Me in my seventies and my partner in his fifties were up 2-0 over a pair of big hitters in their early twenties.

Then we made the mistake of dropping a game. My partner (partner for the first and perhaps only time) lost all confidence not in himself but in me. He could see the writing on the wall.

So he started to take my shots for me. I had noticed in the hits and warmups of previous weeks that he was an extremely consistent player, so I gave him the ad court, second mistake. Now he came charging over into my deuce court screaming "Mine!" as I was preparing a backhand.

Well, I could see the logic of this even though I like to hit my backhand a lot. Let ad player take anything down the middle if it's on his forehand. So I sprang out of the way.

Next time, however, I was serving from ad court and was relaxed, setting up for a short forehand. I hear that word "Mine!"-- a land mine. He is 18 inches away. Hit ball? Hit him? "Him!" my friends say.

No, I hit the ball. With a squashed loop that was pure invention. I made the shot for a winner but the frame flew up and hit me just over the left eye.

There were a lot of medical types milling around saying stuff like, "It's a boxer's cut over bone. They stop the fight for that."

Everybody agreed I should drive myself to the ER since there was a lot of blood on the court. This happened just before dinner.

The PA who examined me said "the lack" wasn't too deep.

"You have three choices," he said. "A couple of stitches, glue, or do nothing in which case it will take longer to heal. I recommend the glue."

I'm glad I'm old enough to have good insurance.

At one of the parties that Hope and I always attend, somebody looked at the neat caterpillar of purple super glue over my left eye and said, "How cool is that!"

[bottle]

Swing Strings, Not Hand, at the Target

Swing hand and knob at Speaker Boehner standing to right of net post and by right fence next to you and then behind. (He's standing in all of those places.)

By sending knob round about like this you can maintain a flat hand swing without racket changing pitch. Not if you first sufficiently used hands but not shoulders to pull knob at ball as hips fully whirled (in a 1hfbh).

I see no reason not to direct all the energy of those whirling hips-- through slamming on the front leg brake-- at side fence.

Racket head will then fly with good extension and a lot more speed at the target.

[bottle]

And a Third

3) For same aim you can pull handle more to right for the flat shot. And pull it less to the right for topspin since the arm is to roll over.

[bottle]

Two Points

1) You wanna hit it hard-- don't brush. You wanna hit more topspin slow down the hand and roll the racket head forward instead (1htsbh). You get the same amount of extension either way if you have a loose definition of same.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=lau%27s+laws+on+hitting&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=18381128347&ref=pd_sl_2cnidk6cbc_e

2) Look how close the kid's bat is to his right shoulder-- almost touching it!

[bottle]

Agonized Reappraisal

[QUOTE=bottle;24686]
A while ago I came to believe that forward body rotation of any kind is wasting itself if used to straighten the arm-- better to help cock upper body through straightening arm as you step out-- if you step out-- and my personal preference is to tock racket head down an eighth of a turn at the same time.

Did I really mean this? I'd be inclined evenly to spread out straightening of the arm from launch position and step-out to end of spear if I could play tennis today.

I'd like to crunch some backhands as a week ago from a great palm sandwich. I'd like to hit some fat grip home run underspin per Charley Lau Jr.'s cited batters, than just slightly alter these swings until there is almost no spin of any kind and then alter again for mild topspin and then again for heavy topspin.

Last night, thanks to all the recently received information on Wawrinka's backhand, I had to try and hit that way-- that's just the way I am. The backhands worked and were marginally effective but all in all I'd have to say were mediocre. No surprise considering all the emphasis I'd been putting on bigger hips turn prior to the sudden re-assertion of Wawrinka.

To be abandoned: shoulders maximized/hips minimized backhands great for Wawrinka. To be added: different level backswings for different balls. To be noticed: Wawrinka's "extension" if extension in his case means his racket tip rolled over toward the net even though his arm is far from being fully extended and only so extends in followthrough phase morphing into racket flying up over his right shoulder toward the fence behind him.

[bottle]

Ambiguity in the Term "Great Extension"

People speak of great extension whenever someone hits a solid ground stroke.

The trouble with this is that "great extension" seldom means the same thing twice.

If Stan Wawrinka's extension was THE GREATEST, his fully revolved shoulders would line up with his straight arm on a beeline with the departing ball.

Such is not the case.

The line between his shoulder balls is ahead of the line formed by his arm as the ball departs. To see this, just click in the slot through which the button runs from left to right. The button will come to your cursor. Then pull the button back and forth manually until you see what is described in the first sentence of this paragraph. This will be educational, I promise!

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterOpenStanceSide3.mp4

Then comes a followthrough formed both from loose motion at the shoulder and a clenching together of the shoulderblades.

This followthrough takes the racket first after the departing ball and then across that line until the racket points backward at the rear fence.

Note: If there is added brush up the ball (added beyond brush provided naturally by uppercut in the racket trajectory), this happens before the just defined followthrough begins. The baseball guys would say however that any such rollover diminishes extension and would be right.

[bottle]

Pull Hitting Off Back Foot With Delayed Shoulders As Lead Arm Pulls Knob At Ball

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterOpenStanceSide1.mp4