A New Year's Serve

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"Lob the Mabel" and be Theatrical about it

A basic Australian strategy for all doubles. As a right-handed deuce court specialist, I think little u-i should set up the lob with topspin angles and backhand underspun sidespins to same spot as short as possible in diagonal alley. While at it, come in to net and send first volley to exact same spot.

Some Australians would like to see you lob the Mabel 80 per cent of the time. Others would advise doing so off of all second serves.

But, assuming you are not Australian, you must work out the best mix of short angles, deep returns and Mabel lobs for yourself.

Which will vary according to different opponents and partners.

To hit each Mabel, fake the short angle first. To hit the short angle, fake the Mabel first. When you have done both things a few times, don't fake anything but just hit the shot. Then go back to the fakes and feint but don't faint.

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Rise and Fall

Everything is second guess in evolution. If God got it right the first time there wouldn't be any need for further change. So add a bit of lift and fall to the previous iteration of imitation DBBH. That is what happens here. (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov)

Note however: The rise occurs as racket draws to the inside. There is no rise as racket starts to the outside. From inside position it then drops and swings forward coincident with the leg elements.

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Hammered One Hand Backhand: Maximize Force through Abbreviation at Both Ends

Flatten wrist on bent arm on backswing. This to explore the hammered backhand recently taught in free division of D-Con.

So, what did elbow do? Did it rise? If it did, the racket opened while it closed if that makes sense. And the opening versus the closing shortened the backswing. (Elbow rose twisting but otherwise stayed in one place, didn't go back but did go toward side fence for more scope.)

So that's the backswing. Now, to hit the ball, hammer sideways, but once arm is straight roll it in place once again to shorten something, the follow through in this case.

Suspected report: A lot of zing (topspin) and pace.

Body has got to be good through being fully adapted to this small kernel of racket work of course. Any shot that is all arm is not good.

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Budge Backhand Imitation Iterations Continued

Eliminate the "down" of arms at beginning of the stroke. Just go from outside to inside while straightening arm with both hands on the racket.

Two-handed beginning to stroke seen as crucial.

Left arm pulls right arm then right arm pushes left arm with all this still in the backswing.

Does left arm straighten then bend as part of this? It does.

Does either arm get fully straight in the backswing?

Depends on respective length of one's arms but probably not.

Hitting arm can get straighter in what happens next adding to its force.

The gradual straightening of hitting arm happens late in backswing and early in foreswing both.

Start forward swing and knee extension and step across all at the same time.

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Assumptions in the Don Budge Topspin Backhand Re-discovery Project

1) A type of topspin that is close to being flat and even slice

2) Open faced approach to ball

3) Rising rump as seen through a knothole by a college kid who hitchhiked to Detroit from Kalamazoo

4) Reversal of Vic Braden's attempt to mass-teach this backhand with a minimum of arm swing; reversal also from Vic's attempt to build a corresponding forehand that also carried a minimum of arm swing.

6) Substitution of big step across for internal hips rotation.

My friend Harry Constant, who played both against Vic and with Vic at Kalamazoo College when Harry was an alternate with the Hillsdale College tennis team, describes the bewilderment that he and his Hillsdale teammates felt when first encountering Vic's topspin. "Topspin?" Harry said. "What was that?"

An underappreciated aspect of the Budge brothers, in my view, is that they were gyros, inventors, crazy innovators just like Vic.

Don Budge's natural athleticism, his manners, his consistency, generosity and dapper elegance always gets the emphasis in the many accounts of him. But both brothers, Don and Lloyd, were inventors. And Don kept himself open to the invention of Tom Stow too.

The Hillsdale players weren't used to topspin. How used to topspin were players on the tour?

Nowadays we have multitudinous ways of producing topspin, in fact topspin is the norm.

So anyone who succeeds in producing a partial reconstruction of Don Budge's most famous shot is not going to use it to blow anyone away.

Still, in 2018, a Budge type backhand can be a solid and useful shot-- dapper and very elegant.

One can even hit it with a light if well balanced racket.

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Don Budge Throwback Backhand

Trying to hit this shot is fun. That one can do it somewhat tempts one away from one's hammered backhands, especially in doubles where the opportunity to hit full backhands of any type may be limited.

My idea is to streamline the DBBH and the hammered backhand at one and the same time. To sideways hammer, one can take racket mildly up to the inside and fashion a small loop consisting of two simultaneous elements only, 1) straightening of wrist and 2) slight raising of elbow. The little turtle shell loop thus produced is very much part of the backswing. It is not transition. The hammer motion is sudden.

Now there is no need-- most of the time-- for further cornering in this shot. The racket flies at ball on forearm hinged at the elbow. It continues to fly inside out from shoulder on the same line. Most cornering from the standpoint of desired aim took place when you flattened the wrist.

But suppose you want to go sharply crosscourt? How about hammering forearm farther to the side?! Such huge separation will get you used to the huge and confident separation needed for your DBBH.

The DBBH meanwhile with flat wrist all the way and early straightened arm loops to outside then only slightly back inside and down. The front leg fires to take you up in the air where not much force is necessary to pivot the bod. Needed force could come from a heavy racket swing-- a physically heavy old racket like Don Budge's or a light more modern racket which you fool into thinking it's heavy through a slow, deliberate, powerful arm swing.

If this shot works or even partially works, I see immediate implication for certain forehands.

Sure, kinetic chain is great, but how about saving hips for delayed effortless power in a more old fashioned way?

Driving up on front leg could unweight the bod.

Racket action-- outside inside and straight-- could turn the hips.

The idea of turning the unweighted bod with racket swing seems sound but a bit romantic too. To reinforce the romanticism with rebar I suggest a big step across (simultaneous) on both sides.

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Do I Repeat Myself?

I hope so. A repeating serve is the idea, no?

The tall body cartwheels. Torso twist happens second. They don't take place at the same time unless you want to hurt yourself.

The tall body catapults. One learns to launch off of rear foot. And to brake immediately with arm, leg and willpower, simultaneous.

The braking action is applied to the catapult, not to the torso twist. So imagine a steel bar across the mouth of the catapult? The arm of the catapult hits the bar. What the rock in the scoop doesn't kill the scoop does having broken off.

Jim McLennan's old idea that a ball machine with horizontal wheels squeezes the ball out is good if you understand that one wheel is ISR, the other torso twist, and they both happen after the catapult.

After "whip straight," i.e., passive arm extension too.

Is there internal bump of the bum back and shoulders forward to add to the force of the short range catapult as well? Yes if you understand this happens early and is small and the best catapults always had a bit of elasticity in their arm.

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Re 4528

I like the leftward lean with everything frozen for one reason: It feels good. An implicit suggestion, as least for me: The left arm, one's ta, swirls right then left then holds while tilting next thrusts a small amount into the court before it bends.

And this should be practiced as a single gesture.

With start of explosive serve occurring between the frozen lean and the slight thrust of tall arm into the court.

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Wolfe

Page 192, LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL, by Thomas Wolfe: "He would read wolfishly..."

The first big man to come out of North Carolina: Thomas Wolfe. The second: John Isner.

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New Serve's Use of Opposite Hand Probably Easier than Anything you have Done before

I never could figure out exactly what my left arm was supposed to do-- bend and clutch my middle for comfort and along the way magically retard torso rotation so that arm would accelerate?

I'm really happy to relegate such a vague, unproven idea to the past.

Now that serve is vertical in form, drawing stored energy from the long twirling stick of the human body, the means of braking that end-over-end bod twirl can be entirely different.

From either continuous or petrified forest serves, the front arm can not only stay up so as to win the love of Kirsten Dunce in the movie called WIMBLEDON, but can actually push forward into the court while maintaining its straightness before bending and retreating out to one's side.

As Roger Federer does.

I see it as braking a twirling object just as a figure skater does when thrusting both arms outward. The spin diminishes.

But now, in one's serve, the spin is vertical. Sticking out two limbs should have the same effect-- arm forward and either leg backward.

Recently, I authorized myself to alternate palm down with palm square any time I choose. Which has led at least for a while to more holds. I'm trying for the high brake in either case, but have a better chance with square palm to achieve something great.

For my palm down serves have the built in bad habit of lowering the left arm too soon.

One shouldn't try to be too perfect-- at least not all the time-- and this palm-down-to-start serve more or less is my serve.

The new one however gets ta up early and fast. And ta gets to hold its high position with everything frozen and tilting left. But one more tool remains in the box to "keep ta up." That is, give ta something to do. So ta won't get self-conscious and descend. ta got up through a long, circuitous but quick smooth path to right and then left. Then it holds. Then, staying high and straight it next can press forward, pretending it is Roger Federer. Which amuses it. And thus keeps it up one fraction of a second longer.

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Very Simple Poach for an Old Big Guy

You're old but you're big so you should be able to reach most of the likely possibilities in a single step.

The precise footwork for this one of many moves should be worked out while you are waiting for a bus.

1) Set feet on a slant toward middle of the court where you would like to hit the ball.

2) Gently rock back and forth.

3) If going for the poach turn front foot out on its heel and step across.

4) If protecting the alley, time your move to splay rear foot while replacing it while rocking backward. Step all the way across with leading foot but again toward the net.

5) If ball comes directly at you, improvise a backhand volley.

One wants to vary all such maneuvers so as to keep opponents from developing a groove.

But one likely goal ought to be shading one's original position toward the middle. That is why using two steps to reach the alley makes good sense-- you will skip farther. But one large step for a big guy like you to reach way out into the middle of the court seems like an even more terrific idea.

A good variation could be to replace inside foot as you splay it to go even farther into middle of the court.

I think I prefer these carefully choreographed one and two step moves to a wild, undisciplined run although I know at least two guys who can do that very well.

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Come One's Personal Ravolution, Everything will Flow Fast and be Expressed as a Sexual Peep

I refer of course to the fast part of one's serve up to the ball, not to the bending that came before.

I keep in mind George Plimpton's dictum in view of his careful cultivation of a literary sensibility that he couldn't follow tennis instruction because he took its words and terms too literally.

Thus we could easily confuse George even if we didn't intend to just with the expression "upward rotations to the ball."

The rotations are rotations, but do they all go upward? Hardly.

The sexual peep of sudden exhalation combined with a bit of vocal chord begins with racket tip moving through skunk tail if one is emulating Federer, begins with arm bent and frozen and trophied or atrophied for most other serves.

The journey from these two start points, as from Chicago and Port Huron in the Mackinac Island sailboat race, must be one of pure economy. Thus, there can be only ONE instance of ESR (external shoulder rotation) and it must happen synonymous with leg drive and beginning of the peep.

Then comes external rotation of the forearm.

And extension of the wrist.

These first three happen with racket working its way DOWN. The biggie In cleanup position is abduction/adduction which travels outward and upward and inward.

Everything from there is on the up and up.

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Senior Moments Can Save You

Under the pressure of play, it is easy to forget the most recent experiment you have in mind. In this way, you are able to escape it.

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Different Ways of Saying the Same Thing

A right-hander's basic forehand ending slightly closed to the left fence before proceeding to more follow through or not.

Strokes that follow the contour of the ball.

Strokes that don't swing too much before the ball but rather sneak up on it and give it a big push while rolling it forward.

Simulated forehand in which a right-handed boy presses his palm down on a ball on a table and rolls it forward and then leaves it with a slight flourish of his fingers.

These are flat forehands with mild top except for the "contour" numbers which could include slice, chop and drop-shots.

Wipered forehands are a separate class of shot neither better or worse but for different purpose.

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A Heavy Racket and External Hips Rotation to Emulate the Don Budge Backhand

Know thou that this final attempt like all the previous ones is doomed to fail. So sharpen up your hammered backhands at the same time-- you'll need them.

The odds are 600 to 1 against your acquisition of the usable Don Budge stroke.

But give yourself a chance. Was ist da zu verloren? All the greedy goofballs in history who've tried like you for the same thing most likely were hung up on the internal hips question.

They wanted too much to twist their hips, knowing that that works in other types of one hander.

No, the hips twist all right but you never "swing from the hips."

It is the heavy racket that twists the hips, not the opposite.

The shot is the weirdest dance step ever seen on Bald Mountain.

A bit of figure eight per Tomaz Mencinger: Racket following the perimeter of another racket laid down on the court.

But none of that is driven by the hips. It's done with the arm. At the same time you bound to the ball and leap. The heavy, swinging long-levered racket, once you are free of the ground, will pivot you and your hips around.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov).