A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Tony Trabert with a Twiddle

One can start this shot with a flying grip change to get the racket parallel to the court and on its way.

Model once again comes from DAVIS CUP 1954, the Krosero video, but near its end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7kvBGntW8

What is the grip? Whatever you would like.

In an eastern backhand grip you can twiddle the racket head open to give yourself some rhythmic possibility for subsequent roll of racket head past your hand.

You can twiddle by pressing thumb down against the middle finger and see the strings roll low. That will do it. What do you want? Simplicity, right? And ease.

The arm straightens, too, but didn't have much to go, right? Well, wouldn't you like to strip your one hander down to its irreducible elements? And wasn't Tony Trabert a clever fellow?

Perhaps the opportunity for roll as racket head sweeps toward the ball just isn't great enough for you.

In that case you can add a little more racket opening to prepare at end of the backswing. You would do this by introducing some backward forearm roll to the mix.

But maybe you would like less total arm roll? Eliminate the twiddle and just use the forearm as arm rhythmically straightens too. Or just keep racket frame square through the whole cycle?

These are options, all of which seem an editing of the Don Budge backhand.

Further progress requires some doing by you. I mean by me. Have I tried this yet? Of course not.

[bottle]

Essay

Yes, I'll continue to go with this idea, which is, essentially, that, to become proficient in any field of human specialism, one needs to plunge as off the end of a diving board.

One can't be overly critical at least at the outset and probably not for the duration of one's obsession.

Consider the girl who falls in love with horses at the age of nine. She quickly learns what a fescue is and is apt to talk about curry combs for the rest of her life. Her passion extends beyond riders and horses and tack and a certain steeplechase jump to every minor detail in her sport.

This is healthy and good. Enthusiasm is positive. We naturally like to talk about the things we love.

But, "figuring things out," say in tennis, will take a person's game just so far.

One may become more knowledgeable than certain other players-- poor compensation if they are habitually more victorious than oneself.

But what is the choice if one is not so young and so promising that backers or associations will find the Slovenian expert who will tailormake a specialty serve as for Boris Becker and Steffi Graf? (He produced rather opposite looking serves in those two cases.)

This aspect of tennis boggles-- or should boggle-- the mind. "The better the player, the less he or she knows what she is doing," said Billie Jean King.

Well, does that mean that at the most developmental and pliable stage of the player's tennis career, she handed over her brains to another individual?

Probably.

But whom are we talking about here? One in a thousand? To be a member of this select group certainly would be relief from one's daily doubts about technique. One could concentrate solely on training, psychology, sleep habits, diet, strategy and tactics, etc.

Stroke technique would be a given.

That technique came from somewhere though. A grandmother? A drunken coach in a bar?

Sadly (or happily perhaps) most of us need to think for ourselves, especially when local coaches are increasingly committed to "cardio" and other programs which de-emphasize technique.

[bottle]

A Little More Body in Top of the Loop

I refer specifically to any design for backhand slice that draws on the model provided by the 19-year-old Ken Rosewall in this clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7kvBGntW8

By "body" I don't mean that somebody should lurch more into the shot.

The term "body," as I intend it, alludes to Ken Rosewall's racket work immediately after he has attained skunk tail position.

The racket turns easily to the inside as his arm easily extends a small amount at the elbow.

I should like to compare this small move to drop of club head at top of a really great golf swing-- all finesse in a word.

The great Scotch golf teacher Percy Boomer did not believe a person should apply major energy even then but a bit later.

Given the time constraint in tennis, however, I tend to say "Yeah-- right then."

Ideally, the finesse I'm talking about should take place just as the player "props" on rear foot for a final hitting step, to use a favorite verb of Tony Roche.

Reality is usually different from any ideal however. Which is why good speculation always leads to further tests.

Note: At the Christmas dinner of Grosse Pointe Seniors Men Tennis Club members, most of the wives were tennis players, too.

One of them asked me, "With all of your reading and studying videos and email exchanges and brainstorming with other members of Tennisplayer, can you tell me if your tennis has improved?"

"Yes," I said, and everyone at the table seemed to accept that.

But her question was a great one. Does "study" in tennis improve one's game or just make one into "a student of the game?"

Both, I would submit, depending on how big a plunge one is willing to make. As tour technician Ben Ford once asserted after paying good attention to the frequently acrimonious exchanges between Bungalo Bill and me, "Both of you are just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous."

I'm sure he was right.

The challenge then is to plunge into the unknowns of tennis technique even more, so that something that sounds automatic but isn't will nevertheless happen, viz., TENNIS WILL COME TO YOU.

[bottle]

Except for me, of course. I'm the worst in the group, just as everybody thought.

[bottle]

Words Themselves Don't Destroy One's Best Stroke

Overworking it might though. Mr. Toohey, a Canadian figure skater who mastered a move that no other figure skater in the world could, told me that he lost it by flogging it too much.

I wouldn't say exactly that I lost my double-roll backhand slice, the shot which for eight months garnered all kinds of compliments and invitations for a lesson. For it sizzled well on hard court two days ago.

Yesterday however it went sour on clay. Just didn't carry enough venom. The very shrewd senior who actually has been the most impressed person, told me, after our early morning doubles session, that this best shot of mine for which I sometimes will run around a forehand just wasn't there.

What to do about it? Resort to memory. What was the difference in feel when the shot cooked last summer?

The primary feel was in the backswing that lifted the racket into a skunk tail combined with determination to swing the racket head level to the ball.

Since then I got too conceptual precisely with this backswing.

First I made it too fast, whipping it up as part of a flying grip change.

Then I divided it into two parts, flying grip change first and lift of the arm second.

The answer may be to unify flying grip change and arm lift, and to make sure that everything goes in one direction, but also make sure that none of this is rushed (the feet can be moving like mad).

These are exploratory words.

P.S. Last night was the Christmas party of the Senior Men's Tennis Club of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, average age for which is 75, a coat and tie affair. Coincidentally, those who danced and boogied the latest with their wives and girlfriends were the best tennis players in the group.

[bottle]

And Then There Is The Problem Of Talking About A Change

Clearly, I do that in these posts and just did. Does this keep the climate fluid enough for improvement? Depends on whether one thinks that words freeze athletic movement (superstition). The right words as exploration take one closer to better athletic movement (the truth).

Ah, the truth! You see that I know the truth. Just kidding.

But at least there's a chance I know something. When I coached, my people won. Why?

Then one has a bad serving day (happened this morning). The serves all went in but failed to paralyze my opponents enough.

Better to bow the wrist and twiddle the fingers (a quick one-two) along with loading the upper arm and scapula in opposition to the smoother body movement, using these two unusual videos as models for said smoothness and philosophy of whipping arm around or over body or both.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionKickRear.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionSliceRear.mov

The entire head bob (down and up) has occurred before there is ANY upward throw from the arm.

[bottle]

Correctly Assessing the Price of One's Invention

The price will differ from invention to invention. Sometimes the price will be so low that one may as well call that particular invention both smart and "free."

My current example of an invention-- and it is a big one-- is adding a bit of inchworm or finger roll or finger twiddle to almost every stroke I've got.

My decision to roll the racket handle between thumb and middle finger was an arbitrary one.

In crew, one uses the fourth and fifth fingers to help the wrist and forearm with all the feathers in both direction (two for every stroke).

Using thumb and forefinger might work. Me, I decided on thumb and middle after watching a videotaped demonstration of curve pitch in baseball. And have continued to go with this.

The ground stroke possibilities are great, especially if one still is able NOT to use the inchworm sometimes. Everything is about making the new element more unconscious.

A present area of uncertainty is volleys (in which I pretty much always use the continental grip). Volley could be the shot that hates change the most. I'm thinking, "No change for backhand volleys" (stronger of the two sides for me). And no change for forehand volleys crosscourt or down the middle. For forehand volley down the line, though, I'm surmising that a bit of finger roll to mitigate amount of wrist layback I need could work out great but I don't know that yet.

And then there is the question of overhead. Finger roll can greatly improve someone's serve-- especially if he was losing edge, i.e., was hitting the ball too flat, which can sometimes happen even to the best players in the game. Charlie Pasarell once wrote that to remedy this situation he would serve with a forehand grip for a while.

After trying various options of where to introduce the finger roll into my serve I decided (in bed one morning) first to hump the wrist as weight settled on rear foot and then to roll middle finger forward in first half of upward throw.

A great idea. Works fine if one is saving upper arm rotation for second half of upward throw. But, in geezer doubles, I started missing overheads I always made before.

Should one keep to the non finger rolled overheads that were successful? Logic says yes but does one have an actual choice if serve affects overhead more than one realized?

This is what I mean by correct assessment of the price of some change.

[bottle]

More on BACKHAND LIBERTANGO

One might think I'm criticizing BACKHAND LIBERTANGO, which in fact I love. But who were the coaches who taught these women their beautiful backhands? And were there men among them? And among those men were there any with cold, reptilian eyes capable of chilling the player to the bone? Yes, was there "zero at the bone" as Emily Dickinson wrote?

And always, I think, it is important to realize when something has been sanitized, in this case the line "home with anyone he wants." The politically correct but inferior substitution: "home with anyone who wants." That misses the whole point about the overwhelming power of this Oberon-like shaman or pimp-- the very quality that makes him so scary. One might as well abolish Halloween (or dilute or sugar it to death).

Having Vic Braden apologize for Pancho Gonzalez' social transgressions was perhaps Jack Kramer's way of keeping Pancho scary but I doubt it.

Anyway, a tango is all male: That is what our dance instructor said to Hope and me as he played LIBERTANGO on his boombox. The basic step: Slow-Slow (four beats), tango or quick-quick (two beats), close (two beats).

One could travel the length of a football field this way, always keeping the butts low and speeding in the direction the macho male was looking with his reptilian eyes.

If however he wants to get to the goal posts really fast, he can transform the basic into a swooping promenade with striding long steps interpersed with quick-quicks that may preserve the basic 8-count structure or not but always keep to the music with the woman going backward to the end, i.e., to the rhythmic "tango close," i.e., to sex.

[bottle]

How to be More Selfish

Or do I mean how to become more self-interested?

Instead of buying Christmas presents for others (or "for udders" as Andre Agassi would say) watch the entire page of music videos at Tennisplayer. This will take several hours and will give you such an experience that you will never be the same depending on how facile you have allowed yourself to become in tennis thought over the years.

A kid new to tennis would probably miss 99 per cent, but any geezer will immediately recognize the delayed arm bend in Pete Sampras' backhand that aficionados of the game have eternally discussed.

And will have added to his store of indelible tennis images for later return.

I want to dwell now however on one video, BACKHAND LIBERTANGO.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/music_videos/backhand_libertango/backhand_libertango_large.html

My sort of friend in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, CLARE FADER, sings this song even better than the chanteuse in the video, first because her French is better and second because her elocution is better and third because her voice is better and fourth because of the way Clare plays with the clearest moment concerning the womanizer/ladykiller/pimp, the words for which are "eyes that chill me to the bone."

My eyes were never able to chill Clare to the bone, but Clare is the author of countless wonderful songs, the most famous of which is ISLE OF SUMMER, the best song ever written about Montreal.

It wasn't just my shortcomings as a pimp that alienated lovely Clare but the fact that she knew that I knew just how good a song writer, band leader and performer she was. She couldn't bear it! There is a certain percentage of people in the world who cannot stand success.

So before we even could have a date, she moved to Goteborg, Sweden with an executive at Volvo, Inc. and started another band in Sweden this time.

Next they married. And returned to Winston-Salem. Where they went into Real Estate.

"Going into Real Estate" is what my first tennis teacher the famous haiku editor Jim Kacian used to say about journeymen, whom he would call "beautiful animals" on the tour.

As one of them, though self-taught, this former doubles partner (alphabetically) of McEnroe and Navratilova said that on a certain day some little thing would go wrong in journeyman tennis technique.

And because the journeymen couldn't afford a coach, they would quit professional tennis and go into Real Estate.

[bottle]

Whirligig vs. Coiling Snake

A whirligig, according to my dictionary, is a child's toy having a whirling motion.

That's something I think of when watching the films of Bill Tilden's serve.

It's hard to identify just where the mechanics end and the organics begin.

Today I hit a basket of serves with the weather at 20 degrees, then crossed a large parking lot to a place in which to caffeinate.

When I returned to my car parked next to the best backboard in this Michigan city, I remembered the section of Kyle LaCroix's current TP article about his practice of serve and volley into a wall.

After half an hour or more of this, I found myself coiling on back leg a bit later than previously-- now just as wrist humped like Tilden's.

That led to improvement in rhythm for all of my serves.

[bottle]

The Physiological Benefit of Skunk Tail Preparation on a One Hand Backhand

I noticed that John Evert used this idea in a recent TENNIS MAGAZINE article on backhand slice.

The article was mostly photographs, not words, but those photographs depicted a nice skunk tail-- racket head straight up over hand.

The grip being promulgated was eastern backhand, which would mean contact farther out front for same racket pitch by someone using a continental.

Correspondingly, the skunk tail was farther forward in relation to the body.

If you've been listening, reader, to my recent assertions about thumb and middle finger as whole new grip adjustment device (the silence is deafening), you may be curious as to whether you too could hit a flat-wristed drive that just isn't the same without the inchworm adjustment.

I believe that my belated bringing across of finger additive from my rowing experience has added a whole new dimension to my tennis-- perhaps unfortunate occurrence at 73-4 in a finite life.

But, in the abstract, how can more fingers be bad for any tennis player if this doesn't compromise his or her essential looseness of grip?

Small adjustment of fingers does not mess with strength of arm-racket connection or with a conditioned stroke pattern as much as over-adjustment of wrist would.

Anyway, I'm big on transient skunk tail, a great pose that is athletic and balanced and right out of Tai Chi.

[bottle]

Three things stand out when I view Tilden's serve.

1. He hits the ball before it reaches the apex.

2. His quick and minimal knee-bend.

3. His throwing arm never fully extends.

Did he ever hit a 150 mph serve? Certainly there would be no chance of Bill doing that with modern balls. Back in the day, balls were supposedly much quicker (and had a plug in them according to Frank Deford), so who knows.

Maybe the plug came out and the ball got jet-propelled.

[bottle]

Bigger Orchestra Until More Is Less

"Same swing, different grip gets the ball over the net." -- Martina Navratilova

Equals experiments for the sentient among us. Have you (I) ever tried a Federfore (some would say an ATP3) with a continental grip? Report back.

Have you (I) ever tried a down-and-up forehand au John McEnroe but with a 3.5 grip? Report back.

Lieutenant Escher reporting back. The results of these two experiments, surprising me, led to others. Reader, do you have any strokes that you have not yet tried-- keeping pattern identical-- with a different grip? I can wait until tomorrow. But if you haven't done this by then you simply are not curious enough.

[stotty]

The time has definitely come for a reconsideration of the Tennis Player trove of Bill Tilden serves.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServe.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeSideTight.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionKickRear.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionSliceRear.mov

Three things stand out when I view Tilden's serve.

1. He hits the ball before it reaches the apex.

2. His quick and minimal knee-bend.

3. His throwing arm never fully extends.

Did he ever hit a 150 mph serve? Certainly there would be no chance of Bill doing that with modern balls. Back in the day, balls were supposedly much quicker (and had a plug in them according to Frank Deford), so who knows.

[bottle]

Getting the Racket Back Fast vs. Smoothness of Backswing

Well, if you can get the racket back too slow, you can get it back too fast. You wouldn't want to forget everything you learned about smoothness of backswing in golf if tennis is golf on wheels, right?

I like the way the great players seem to have a couple of different speeds happening at the same time as they rush to get to a far ball.

This ground stroke footwork is fast and economical, but the arm is not in a rush even when the player is.

I figure that slow beginners have conditioned their teachers since beginners do need to get fast. Intermediates, however, might need to get faster or slower. As for experts, who knows other than what we see? Disengagement of speed of feet from arm.

The key point here is not being overly influenced by teachers who have become too schoolmarmalady. The principle is not my pal. The principal is my ple.

Initial turn of course is as immediate as one can make it.