A New Year's Serve

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A Backhand I've Never Tried

Composite grip but with bent thumb on pointy ridge. Body only backswing in which you make your body small and try to look like John McEnroe (impossible but worth a try).

Something extra happens as the shoulder rotates down and around. It might be Victoria's Secret.

The hands perform a slight tug 'o war the one against the other.

Now you can "cut the wire," much like Cageman as he opens this website with the waterfall species of one hand backhand.

If Cageman can drop racket tip to inside before effectively rolling it to outside even as his racket falls a thousand feet, you can do the same thing but not in mist.

This means, unlike Ivan Lendl, early withdrawal of guide hand from racket.

Try keeping shoulder low and use this unified double roll for sloppy slappy contact. Then back off a little so that there is no slap. Continue to smooth out the conglomeration and play ball.

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Feet Under One

The best athlete I've ever seen was Chris Paul at Wake Forest University before he was in the NBA, a point guard who always keeps his feet under his shoulders. Similarly, John McEnroe is a very good point guard when he plays basketball. Keeping one's feet beneath one, the way Mac does, is the key to skipping, running or skating through a volley.

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Are the Two Snakes in the Caduceus Symbol Having Sex?

Intriguing shot that FV of McEnroe's. His upper arm is often wedged a little closer to the body than other players. Sometimes he almost sticks it to his side and uses it as a post to deflect or steer the volley. One such example is in the archive somewhere...wait a minute, it's here: http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...evelFront2.mov

I have never seen any other player do this as McEnroe does. It's a deft trick...

Yes. And my title question seems a fair one to ask too (http://www.avatarpoint.com/caduceus.html). My primal experience is of watching two milk snakes intertwined and stretched out on a mountaintop in Garrison, New York. I posed the question years ago during the infancy of the internet and received unsatisfactory answers.

Similarly, one can pose many questions about tennis and only sometime receive a satisfactory answer or a satisfactory other question among the hits. Very often-- surprisingly often with all the information so readily available nowadays-- one will be left to rely on one's own experience if one truly seeks the best answer. I'm not complaining, just trying to tell it like it is.

Is there intrinsic advantage to forehand volley preparation that is longer than normal and starts from low (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...evelRear.mov)?

How could this work? How be fast enough? Questions, questions.

Also, what are the odds that one's distinctive stapler, older than one's 35-year-old son and which he remembers, would only run out of staples on December thirty-first? Or that the huge damp and gnarled log in the fireplace would burn all the way down to ash? It did.

Stotty found the above example of John McEnroe planing a forehand volley with his elbow in. I should like to now suggest that McEnroe does this more often than not and only uses more traditional forward use of the arm when he has to stretch for the ball which happens more and more but not too much as he grows older.

And that if McEnroe's default FV does involve such "planing" of the forearm perhaps he does the same thing on the "backswing," i.e., fires the racket head past the bent elbow.

[stotty]

Similarly, one can pose many questions about tennis and only sometime receive a satisfactory answer or a satisfactory other question among the hits. Very often-- surprisingly often with all the information so readily available nowadays-- one will be left to rely on one's own experience if one truly seeks the best answer. I'm not complaining, just trying to tell it like it is.

Yes, this is how it is - and with all the extraordinary nuances that come with a single tennis stroke, it's how it should be. It's an endlessly intriguing game for the likes of you and me.

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Amen. And Happy New Year.

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FV's Where Upper Arm Acts as a Post

Tried some of these posted volleys in self-feed where I threw ball up and hit it out of the air-- very promising if one declares a 10 to 1 ratio between FV flip-out and FV forward hit.

Let's follow Oscar Wegner's joke recommendation to have a one inch long volley (yes Oscar does tell jokes).

That would be 10 inches of racket head travel to side followed by one inch forward.

When I try this with a racket the distances actually are more like 20 inches and two inches.

The bent arm makes some twisting backward from forearm to send (better sand) bottom edge forward during the two inches very confidently and firmly.

Compare this ratio to that of a conventional volley where waiting position points the racket on a perpendicular to the net. BV is then one to one as is FV.

In the new system one could call BV one to one but FV ten to one. How many days would a person need to get used to that?

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Honing Volleys in a New System

Like Luke Digweed in the UK, the American teaching pro who is working with me has a special feeder stroke for improving any student's volley.

He tosses the ball quite high, which gives him time to take his racket quite far back. Then he whollops the ball straight at the student.

FV, BV, FV, BV-- that's the way it's going in splendidly regular percussive rhythm with variety and more distant contacts to happen later.

The new volley design is perfect for the new year and my new age, 76 .

For the BV I need do practically nothing-- just lift the racket a little to go DTL, maybe dip the shoulder a little-- and lift racket less-- to go cc .

The 10 to 1 ratio for FV is working well so long as I think of catching the ball with a butterfly net. I don't do that of course but rather fire the racket a couple inches ahead of still elbow while turning the strings slightly under, a powerful because controlling move.

These volleys are temptation free since wrist is already straight. When wrist is already straight who's going to flip it forward?

Note: The American teaching pro working with me is fictional. Sorry about that.

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More Respect for Cageman

Cageman's racket doesn't really fall a thousand feet as I suggested in an earlier post about his one hand backhand. In fact, his racket fall is quite modest, especially when compared to that of Richard Gasquet or Bea Bielik.

Also, one can see, since Cageman is transparent, that his racket head never goes farther around his body than his hips, an indicator of modesty again.

The composite grip drive backhand I have been working on uses a John McEnroe solid body backswing but then keeps hitting shoulder lowered through the hit.

A timed double roll is the essence of this shot, requiring less grunt and physical exertion than the very great topspin drive backhand of John McEnroe.

My proposal (or self-proposal): Lift arm just a little as shoulder winds down and around to allow a bit more space for easy double roll the way Cageman does it.

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McEnrueful Service Returns

The arm work in the McEnroe spin-off forehands I have come up with is almost irrelevant. Kinetic lowering and raising of the hitting shoulder (the aeronautical term "banking") is the important part. The hips rotate beneath one with both feet held flat. As this happens your right wing (if you are a small plane) drops down. Lastly, the continuing hips cause the rear heel to spiral up as the wings return to level or a bit more.

The blended nature of horizontal body rotation and banking shoulders contains some promise of magic.

So arm setting doesn't affect technique.

Obviously arm would be set farther forward for a see see (crosscourt topspin angle).

For returning a fast serve, independence of arm work can be almost nonexistent, i.e., very short and in some cases steep.

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When (or When Not) to Add a New Backhand Slice

A person can know that Ken Rosewall could produce infinity (a "galaxy") of backhand slices but that doesn't mean anybody knows what they are.

Me, I've got drive slice with a little drop built into it, cross slice, double roll chop, single roll chop backward where lower rim sands around bottom hemisphere of ball and others I may temporarily have forgotten.

That backward roll chop hit with late, muscular straightening of the arm suggests an unimagined drive slice with similar roll.

But suppose we do want to invent that? Will we straighten arm during forward swing or straighten it first? Ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists say man-made contribution of greenhouse gases is significant to the global problem, which reinforces my romantic belief since I like winter sports that a towering wall of ice ought to appear any day above the treetops as in the Thornton Wilder play THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH but something has gone wrong.

I'm sure the 97 per cent, were they all tennis players, would say to straighten arm from hips rotation before the swing. So that's the possibility I'll explore first-- I don't want to waste time.

Can't hurt, might be significant. If not I'll back off. Just backswing with racket face more square than usual. This points elbow down. So arm straightening can take hand down better but one can leave strings up for reasons of strong wrist and turn strings backward during contact to slide under bottom of ball.

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Point Elbow then Fingers at the Ball

A while ago I decided that this was a bad idea, but, self-contradiction is what the best scientists do. (Richard P. Feynman, certainly the funniest, probably rejected his first Nobel Prize in winning his second.)

When one has opposite hand off of racket for one's overhead the way John McEnroe does, pointing elbow then fingers at the ball becomes easier than ever and closely related to what the other arm is doing at the same time.

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The Heretical Words of Ivan Lendl

How much substance existed in these long ago issued words of Ivan Lendl which were noticed by only a few tennistas?

"Note that my hips only move as a product of my entire upper body movement. In a sense the hips only follow the action of my arms, legs, and upper body. Unlike golf, the hips do not play a major part in producing power-- the idea being that if every part of your body explodes forward like the swing in baseball or golf, power may be gained but control is forever lost." Page 37, IVAN LENDL'S POWER TENNIS AS TOLD TO EUGENE L. SCOTT.

Could this clearly anti-kinetic-chain-theory viewpoint be applied to a spin-off forehand patterned on watching John McEnroe, clearly not Ivan Lendl's favorite person at least when both were young?

I don't see why not. Despite Lendl's own warning I would add to this formula mix the wise advice of the old Scotch golf teaching pro Percy Boomer: You take the amount of backswing that will permit you to accelerate two feet past the ball. This could in the case of a banking dependent stroke be a very small backswing indeed.

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A See See for the Ages?

This shot shall be based on an old literary saw: "Into the destructive element immerse." Well, what is destructive? What you (I) most hate? Or rather what you have slowly convinced yourself that you do not like?

I've progressed toward early separation of the hands within forehand design which I've found can work quite well. Now I reverse the iterations for the new see see (topspin angle) I have in mind.

Left hand stays on the racket as body turns it not backward but toward the side fence. The left hand starting low stays close to the body. If it changes this relationship at all it pulls even closer into the bending body.

This is a subtle variation of down-and-up principle. You can barely notice the racket go down but go down it does as your head leads you in some direction.

Now comes the "up" as the hands finally separate and the hand presses steeply upward on a perpendicular to the net. How much? From one to six inches. This closes the racket face to the pitch you want.

In the quest for best see see through a hundred designs, one constant prevails-- racket must be closed or the ball won't stay inside of the target line.

How best to close the racket face-- whatever one's grip-- then becomes important feature. There are more ways of doing this than one may have thought possible. I propose here bending body from the hips like Ellsworth Vines and do this while low racket presses into body cave thus formed.

Then hand can close racket more by moving straight toward net while remaining in good natural position for bank down and up again.

Feet stay flat during bank down. Rear or right heel for the right-hander then spirals up in tandem with solid shoulder banking up.

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Completion of the See See Plot

So now while playing deuce side in doubles we have hit a good see see into the alley but we announced our intention by bending upper body from the hips.

This announcement incurs a breathless charge from the keen-brained but flawed far opponent who should have and would have S&V'd if he had any real sense.

Still, his late charge prevents the cc from becoming a clean winner, the worst outcome for all involved. Sure it would be nice to have the point but we on our side need rather to think long range and run the other guys until they drag their sorry asses.

But are we ready with low wait position cheated over for a backhand to volley to exact same spot? All we need do is slightly lift the arm. But do we also turn it as we lift it to insure a closed racket face? Possibly. What however if we didn't approach close enough to the net and the ball comes fast in front of us? The answer is a short arm volley from posted elbow directed to the exact same alley spot with slight backward roll from the forearm to take speed off and provide the necessary control.

(Thank you, Luke Jensen, for your more generalized speech to the ladies of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club on this exact same subject.)

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A Good Backswing-- I mean Sideswing-- for Maximized McEnrueful

Was just at the park doing self-feed since I won't play doubles till Thursday.

At the park, I've noticed, although I self-feed satisfactory McEnruefuls all day long, when I use them in actual play as service returns some are spongy and not decisive enough.

The other day, against Leon, a pretty good server, I decided to shorten my backswing. "Where did that come from," he immediately said as the ball whizzed by him.

"Aha," I thought, "here's the way to go," viz., an editing of John McEnroe's bowl down and bowl up along a single vector.

My McEnrueful, more Welby Van Horne than John McEnroe, resembles the basic instructional forehand in SECRETS OF A TRUE TENNIS MASTER by Edward Weiss.

But the backswing retains the down-and-up characteristic. Now, say I, keep left hand on racket and let body rotation push the racket sideways. Then let the hitting arm go backward (and up). With all motions very small except for body rotation which continues with firm point across.

The racket doesn't care that it just went in two different directions. And forward emphasis has been achieved, i.e., the mechanics of the stroke are now situated farther forward.

As I've already asserted, this backswing is smart. But whether smart is better is yet to be determined. As Jim Courier said, "Don't expect to find logic in top level tennis." I won't but if I somehow find it at any level I'll be happy as a clam.