A New Year's Serve

[stotty]

Squash

Right. Not exactly teaching pro orthodoxy, is it? And then there was Tilden with his backhand self-invented over a winter in an indoor court in Providence, R.I. still in existence. "Look, ma, no opposite hand!"

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTBHSide2.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...unningSide.mov

Squash shot!

Interesting clip this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERBDJ9yvvKs

[bottle]

Right. Not exactly teaching pro orthodoxy, is it? And then there was Tilden with his backhand self-invented over a winter in an indoor court in Providence, R.I. still in existence. "Look, ma, no opposite hand!"

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTBHSide2.mov

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

[stotty]

Laver rivals anyone...

Almost no good players take opposite hand off of the racket as soon as Radek or John McEnroe does (he of the 2.5 grip).

Laver...who often never put the opposite hand on at all.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/rodlaver/rodlaver_sa.html?RLFHShortCourtLevelFront.mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiSakiF4jzk

[bottle]

Forehand Departure From Radek, Cont'd

First we pick Radek Stepanek over a bunch of other players and then we depart from him. Makes perfect sense.

Almost no good players take opposite hand off of the racket as soon as Radek or John McEnroe does (he of the 2.5 grip).

But they nevertheless get their shoulders around with a good point across. When I try this like Radek, my departing ball goes higher and feels quite firm. This doesn't mean however that I ought to copy this feature. No, I'll do what I'm used to-- take shoulders partway with opposite hand and then keep them going with good point across.

That will be the first difference from Radek. The second: Advanced feather from rowing to begin once the hand separation is accomplished.

One doesn't have to know anything about rowing to try this. Racket can go slightly up from wrist and close slightly from forearm which simultaneous process is helped somewhat by twist action from the little finger.

Why do this? To spread the repositioning out. If pinky finger closes racket a little, the hand wrist and forearm can work less.

[bottle]

In Any Sport, Who Is A Great Coach?

I am probably the last person in the rowing world to learn that the U.S. Olympic sculler of 1960 and Harvard crew coach and classically educated person Harry Parker died from a blood disease on June 25th after an undefeated season in which his varsity beat Yale by six lengths two weeks before his death.

In the three years I attended in Cincinnati, the winner of the annual National Championship Race was Washington, Harvard and Brown. The year Harvard won I was doing a feature article on Brown for the Brown Alumni Magazine and the Brown coach Steve Gladstone was keeping me away from the Brown oarsmen for fear of distracting them.

But I was standing on a dock on Harsha Lake when Harry Parker asked if I would like to come along in his launch for Harvard's last practice-- possibly because he wanted to distract the Harvard oarsmen and lighten them up and relax them through the presence of a guest. That night at the regatta's banquet, he said of me to the other coaches, "He knows how slow we go."

Another time on the Charles River a couple of decades earlier, I took a racing start in a single scull (one person with two oars, i.e., sculls). Suddenly there was the Harvard launch next to me with Harry Parker in it watching me with interest.

It didn't matter who you were and whether you were a beginner or an expert. The fact is, Harry Parker's antennae were always out and he kept track of every muskrat on the Charles River and probably on the edge of every other estuary in the world.

That is what I would say about the best teaching pros I have encountered in tennis, as well. They are generous and supportive and they notice anything both in front of them and six courts away.

[bottle]

Radek's Racket Plus A Flying Feather

It's not that I'm promoting U.S. Open and Davis Cup doubles champion Radek Stepanek but rather that I'm stealing from his forehand something I find interesting and then taking off with it.

If one has a flying grip change for backhands, perhaps one should have a flying feather in one's forehand-- an idea I'd like to push beyond rational limits and then back off from a little.

We're all advised to hold the racket like a bird's nest. But if one overdoes such looseness, one may end up with a miss-hit and a lawsuit depending on the grace of one's doubles partner.

If one does that in crew-- in single oar sweep rowing-- one may fly through the air and end up unconscious in the water.

In both tennis and rowing however, looseness of grip is far preferable to its opposite. In crew one's fingers are hooks with space behind them.

Every one of the dozen good authors in rowing including Homer, Vergil, the current best-selling Daniel James Brown, the more overlooked but excellent Craig Lambert (a serious tennis player too), Stephen Kiesling (very metaphysical), Silky Laumann, David Halberstam and the late Thomas B. Mendenhall (a former president of Smith College) always write about crabs and how to catch one and end up in the water.

In ten years of collegiate and club rowing I ended up in the water-- from a crab-- only once and that was in a pair (two people with one oar apiece-- the most difficult shell of all).

Crabs get good discussion in Brown's THE BOYS IN THE BOAT but I haven't come to a really dramatic description of one crab yet.

People outside of the sport need to understand that although you may have caught a crab you didn't necessarily end up in the water. No, you may have wrestled with it and caught it and this could have been very painful and not just in your hands, wrists and forearms. Because of your personal mistake, your crew (all nine persons), may have lost the race.

I am so happy this never happened to me, but it sure did to several of the 200 persons I coached in two years.

The half crab can happen if you don't create a proper vacuum behind the blade to pop it free with your outside hand. The water bites your oar and rows YOU, only YOU are on the end of a speed lever-- this is Archimedes in reverse.

The handle comes hurtling toward you and there is no place to go.

I'm not aware of anybody's forearms ever snapping but that seems a possibility.

More often the oar handle flattens the person on their back. The handle, bouncing, may strike in succession shins, knees, stomach, shoulders and forehead before it goes outside of the gunwale with the blade a sea anchor now dragging and spouting a plume and bringing everybody to a dead stop.

A full crab, happening from the catch, is a hundred times worse.

This is right up there with with the innermost fears of any crew coach along with hypothermia for which I carried super-sized garbage bags in the bow of the coach's launch so that I could wrap up a person to enclose his or her body heat.

The blade in a full crab hasn't gotten square, is tilted up as in an unplanned lob.

It dives deep down into the water. There is less than a micro-second in which to wrestle it out. It's you and the other seven oarsmen and the boat's momentum and speed all against you.

Our 6-5 200-pound seven man-- Marsh Bassick-- did this in practice one day. The oar grabbed him (I don't know where). He flew five feet up in the air. From my position in the middle of the boat I had a good view. There he was, far away, his head bobbing like a small buoy in our wake.

He was tough. And conscious. And swimming well to help us pick him up.

Sometimes though the person gets knocked out.

How did this accident happen?

Well, Marsh (a.k.a. Marshmallow Basketball) was experimenting with mostly feathering with the pinky of his inside hand. He didn't turn the oar over quite far enough on that particular stroke.

Using the pinky a little more as part of a unified feathering motion in a Radek Stepanek type forehand is what I'm trying right now.

So-- I have a misshit and lose the point. Big deal.

[bottle]

Don't Fix Radek But Do Modify Him

"Look at all his girlfriends-- and you want to mess with Radek's racket?"

Well, in his foreplay, I mean his forehand, he, Radek Stepanek ("Hello darling. I'll be home soon!") bends his wrist back at least somewhat and then closes his racket.

You don't have to be an oarsman with a beginner's feather to know that the sequence in this is unnecessary and you could do the two acts together and gradually and all at once.

Take the long view for a minute of the big forehand discussion always going on here at Tennis Player.

The ATP Style Forehand possesses a pat, a mondo, a spear and a wipe.

In the olden days before Brian Gordon's 15-year science project, people merely spoke of a "windshield wiper" and left the curious player to figure out the the rest by himself.

To this day, many of the best teaching pros, concentrating on basics, delay the teaching of a wiper or never teach it at all.

On television one day the announcer and former top junior and substantially high level tour player and chronic victim of Ivan Lendl, Jimmy Arias, known for his heavy topspin, advised that he wouldn't teach the wiper to any player at a 4.5 level or below.

He never has repeated this assertion through many broadcasting opportunities-- maybe because I wasn't the only tennis player who was enraged.

By now however I'm glad he said that.

And the articles here by Scott Murphy on the back to basics ground strokes of Karsten Popp opened up a whole new avenue for anyone willing to tweak.

I ask now, "What about a version of mondo or flip less harsh than that of Roger Federer?"

Even Roger bends his wrist back some before he bends it more (in his mondo).

The more one bends wrist in the takeback (and the less one closes with forearm, I would add), the less one will use those body parts during the mondo.

Today, just for fun, I shall try advanced feather from crew since I already know that beginner's feather works.

To slow blend of wrist and diagonal forearm I'll add a little prying in both directions from thumb and bottom finger.

This could put some more spice and direction variety in my shot or not and will be a safe experiment since I have a nice plateau for myself to return to.

A great irony I find in all of this is that one closes racket to open it and then close it again.

So that if one doesn't close it very much, one doesn't need to open it very much-- and contact could be cleaner than usual thanks to lack of a big shenanigan.

[bottle]

EDITING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, Reviewed

No tennis player can do without this fabulous book written by the great Morris Moose.

Moose started as a midget with gleaming, beautiful antlers. He combined forces with another moose of huge body but puny antlers and rode on his head. Who knew that both mooses would forsake their undefeated record in forest jousts and become tennis authors.

Another sports book, in an altogether different realm, is THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown. As a graduate of Brown rowing, I'll disqualify myself from reviewing this one other than to say that it more than deserves its present place at number eleven on the New York Times non-fictive best seller list.

BOYS is, first, a re-telling of the Jesse Owens and Don Budge/Gottfried von Cramm stories, which is another way of saying that no sports contest can ever really sing for us until Adolf Hitler is busy at work behind the scenes trying to cook the result.

I'm only now reading BOYS-- with a deliberateness slow beyond belief-- and therefore haven't gotten to Hitler yet, only to the first section about Joseph Goebbels.

The main character's freshman crew coach at the University of Washington in Seattle, Tom Bolles, is the same fellow who witnessed the first dual race between Brown and Harvard on the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He indicated to us that we maybe could have beaten Harvard in that tight race if we hadn't reached so far out at the catch that we were squeezing the gunwales of our shell together instead of contributing extra boat speed.

But back to Morris the Midget Moose's tennis book.

Just as the Brown Cinderella Crew in 1959 lifted its shoulders before it pressed down its legs (described in the words of Brown's first women's coach Peter Amram as "hit the catch and don't run into anything"), so all the tennis players around the 2000 millennium who wanted something hot started copying the evolution-in-technique apparent in Roger Federer's forehand.

Before Roger there was Ivan the Flying Elbow. But Roger now kept elbow down so that the racket head went up instead. Then Roger Featherer feathered. Then he patted the dog. Then he harsh-mondoed. Then he wipered the dog.

Roger's editing of Ivan the Tebl was huge progress, but with so much in the stroke still happening it would be nothing for Radek Stepanek to step along and condense more.

Radek ("Hello, darling, I'll be home soon!") was an interesting departure from Roger. First, his on court cell-phoned darling-- Hingis, Vladisova, Kvitova-- was never the same person. Second, Roger always defeated him. But Radek had technical things going for him (just ask those women). And something different from Roger.

Just as Roger excised Ivan's elbow, so Radek now kept HAND down or level if you like. It was his wrist and forearm that gave his forehand loop its distinctive shape just before he patted the dog and mild-mondoed and wiped, with everything of potential major interest to the not yet perceptive tennis world.

Similarly, by the time we of the Brown Cinderella Crew raced Harvard on a Saturday in the cold early Spring of 1961, we no longer raised our shoulders to sting the catch before we drove down our legs. That was our beginning way, the way the 1936 gold medal crew with Brown's protagonist Joe Rantz in it rowed-- I'm pretty sure-- in Berlin.

No, we exploded with legs, back and arms all at once. Which formed natural sequence since legs overpowered back which overpowered arms.

Too late. The Navy lightweight coach had meddled with us for the 1960 Olympic Trials while our regular coach Whitey Helander, a Rhode Island School of Design student we picked up in a bar had to do his National Guard duty.

So that, as Rantz's first coach Tom Bolles pointed out, we learned to press our gunwales inward.

[bottle]

Thanks so much. I will. Right after I put up a book review.

[tennis_chiro]

Little finger vs Internal rotation at the shoulder

If one arranges some part of thumb in a firm position on large plane of the racket handle having declared this as one of the two pivot points one will use in a baseball pitcher’s serve, one can then begin to figure out the other.

I’m placing the opposite pivot point at second joint counting down from tip of the middle finger.

A very strange thing will happen if one uses such a weakly bizarre grip with loads of empty space behind the fingers. Before I talk farther, I wish to advise that less or no air between fingers and handle will work better for certain persons thanks to more stability.

In the wilder option presented here however, the racket edges, rolled by that same middle finger prying out, will slightly close strings as handle settles down deep in the yoke of forefinger and thumb.

Does one want this? There is only one way to know.

My link here is to page 67 of RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS by John M.
Barnaby, who is pictured in the two photos.

Best power in these baseball pitching serves lies in hips springing horizontally off rear foot but with you immediately (but not simultaneously!) braking with front leg so that exceedingly loose but blood-filled arm “scoots.”

Vic Braden has written a lot about accelerating the arm. He suggested that one does the braking with leg, does it with crossing arm, and does it with head by which he may have meant brain but one can’t be sure.

Federerian serve prefers extension off of front leg and push through contact with the hitting shoulder rather than Justin Verlander's bracing with BENT front leg and all that entails, i.e., all in the tail of that.

To be a baseballer and therefore frowned upon by Oscar Wegner among others one can lay both pinky and forefinger on the handle but then naturally remove both in middle of the serve. Or one can use the cuckold’s sign all the way through the serve. Or one can start and end with cuckold’s sign but halfway through give an extra thrust with all three fingers (pinky, middle and index) to clear the index finger’s fleshy base.

That's right: the question is whether you would rather hit the ball with the strength of the flexion of your little finger (and maybe your ring finger as well) or with the power of the internal rotation of the upper arm at your shoulder. Please check my post today for Robert Meakin's serve, Bottle. The sequence suggested there very much applies.

BTW, it's metacarpal-phalangeal joints and then proximal and distal interphalangeal joints (MP's, PIP's and DIP's).

don

[bottle]

Stealing from a Contrarian (one takes what one wants!): The Cuckold’s Serve

If one arranges some part of thumb in a firm position on large plane of the racket handle having declared this as one of the two pivot points one will use in a baseball pitcher’s serve, one can then begin to figure out the other.

I’m placing the opposite pivot point at second joint counting down from tip of the middle finger.

A very strange thing will happen if one uses such a weakly bizarre grip with loads of empty space behind the fingers. Before I talk farther, I wish to advise that less or no air between fingers and handle will work better for certain persons thanks to more stability.

In the wilder option presented here however, the racket edges, rolled by that same middle finger prying out, will slightly close strings as handle settles down deep in the yoke of forefinger and thumb.

Does one want this? There is only one way to know.

My link here is to page 67 of RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS by John M.
Barnaby, who is pictured in the two photos.

Best power in these baseball pitching serves lies in hips springing horizontally off rear foot but with you immediately (but not simultaneously!) braking with front leg so that exceedingly loose but blood-filled arm “scoots.”

Vic Braden has written a lot about accelerating the arm. He suggested that one does the braking with leg, does it with crossing arm, and does it with head by which he may have meant brain but one can’t be sure.

Federerian serve prefers extension off of front leg and push through contact with the hitting shoulder rather than Justin Verlander's bracing with BENT front leg and all that entails, i.e., all in the tail of that.

To be a baseballer and therefore frowned upon by Oscar Wegner among others one can lay both pinky and forefinger on the handle but then naturally remove both in middle of the serve. Or one can use the cuckold’s sign all the way through the serve. Or one can start and end with cuckold’s sign but halfway through give an extra thrust with all three fingers (pinky, middle and index) to clear the index finger’s fleshy base.

[bottle]

Stygian Backhand: More Attention To Detail or Less?

Here are the two best models once again with our personal lifetime effort to learn from them and other surviving materials or wisdom in an interesting place.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHRear.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHCourtlevelSide.mov

Two squatting carpenters, side by side, hammer down nails. The one, a beginner, uses five blows per nail, the other, a cabinet maker, needs only a single effortless whack to force the lid of the nail to lie flush with the overall deck.

Before, I fretted about which hand would carry more load at some arbitrarily chosen freeze point in the upcoming cycle of my next backhand.

Obviously, a right-hander's left hand does the work in a flying grip change. Precise racket position at that achieved moment however may be more important than the mechanics which put the strings there.

After that, a slight lift with both arms and step out with front knee to crumple more to get body even lower and upper body turning backward all the while to unleash its natural rabbit punch.

(The reporters Richard Woodley and John Pekkanen and I used to sit on rolling chairs in the city room of the Middletown Press (Connecticut), each with a freshly printed newspaper in his hands. "Look at the lead!" someone would cry. "There isn't any verb!")

Right. No verb. Just the shoulders turning back as the foot goes out and the two arms lift a small amount.

[bottle]

A Harvest Of Unexpected Points

I've got to keep going with my rotorded serves. That is my best opportunity to reap a Fall harvest of unexpected points for me and my doubles partner whoever that might be.

The unexpectation is apt to come from that doubles partner and our two opponents, particularly if they have experienced my serves from ten years earlier and therefore think they know all about this subject.

What folly not to recognize the evolution around them-- creationists all.

My latest tweak or total revaluation is in the fingers. Progress started there when I chose nifty over nitroglycerine. I (you) could take one or two fingers off the rim. Or no fingers off the rim but rather relax the bottom two so that they naturally will pry out. But if one were truly rotorded (and I am), one might want to manufacture more clever wrist-and-fingers feel and racket tip lowness at the TOP of the hand, i.e., at the base of the index finger. Why let the fleshy pad there provide support when one can use the web between forefinger and thumb?

At Wimbledon, the extremely flexible Charles Pasarell served with his index finger off of the handle so why should a rotorded server not do the same in 2013? The rotorded server should not only get his pointing finger off of the racket but the fleshy pad at its base so that only thumb and middle finger provide one's control.

In addition, he should bunch the thumb and middle finger to keep them from providing an all-contact ring. Two points not twenty will turn the racket.

Note: These finger tricks within the Michael Jordan vertical thrust predominant millennial serve do not work as well as in a three-quarters baseball style pitch closer along the ground.

I discovered this in non-juried but nevertheless clinical trials.

[bottle]

Stepanek's Forehand And The Release and Feather In Crew

Perhaps I'm writing today only for the oarsman jbill or any tennis player with extensive rowing experience-- or not.

I am emboldened by an upper New York State visit with my brother-in-law Allie Malavase, a former pitcher near the top of the Oriole's farm system, who, in his late seventies after two knee replacements is a machine for winning golf tournaments and hitting home runs in national seniors softball.

He put one of his new bats in my hands. I couldn't believe that the shaft was as slender as a golf club. He mimed a swing to show that baseball and golf are basically the same.

This is the cross-sport view. That's what I'm talking about, and in rowing one quickly learns that if one doesn't extract one's blade cleanly out of the water one ends up watching the departing shell hoping that the other guys or somebody will stop to pick you up before you die from hypothermia or drown.

Clean extraction happens when you squeeze hard right to the end of the stroke to create a vacuum to allow the blade naturally to pop out still square.

In that split-instant you've transformed your medium from water to air and now it's time to alter the pitch of your strings. (Sorry about that but once your instrument is in the air what's the difference between an oar and a racket or a bat, club, paddle or anything else?)

We learned, jbill, to make a vee between our hands which were only three fingers apart. The sport since then has evolved. Now the hands are much farther apart in almost all top crews, so that in "feathering," people learn to use their outside two fingers more right from the beginning, but a bit of wrist will always figure in the equation both slightly before catch (the catch will be so fast that it's invisible so you don't want to be feathering just then) and after the release.

In any case, an angled hand doesn't depress or straighten the wrist as much.

After examining videos of Stepanek, I feel that he depresses or rather "lays back" the wrist quite early, probably before closing the racket. But I go with that other Czech Martina Navratilova in advising simultaneity whenever possible to offer less to go wrong. And a lower, wider, shallower takeback like Stepanek's creates the hand angle I want, so that I can use my beginner's feather in crew. The wrist lays gradually and slightly back and the forearm closes strings gradually and slightly (comfortably, one might say) and I've now eliminated a pair of undesirable things from my tennis forehand once and for all-- too much sequence and too much extreme in cocking forearm and wrist.

But I myself am in my seventies, by which time any tennis player still on the courts should have long ago edited his backswing, for which Stepanek seems a good model (although he developed an extremely economical forehand while he still was a young man).

The hand can really not change level very much. The turtle shell backward trajectory of the racket head can be almost entirely due to this new (or old) unified feathering mode.

From there it's patting the dog and flip.

The flip is less harsh because of the earlier taking of some wrist layback and some racket closure during the running backswing.

Less is more.

[bottle]

Stepping Back With Steppenwolf

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/radek_stepanek/rs_forehand/rs_fh_arm_action/rs_fh_arm_action.html?RSFHMovesBackArmActionFront_Tennisplayer440.mov

RS closes opens closes (the strings). And look at his left arm, leaving the racket and going down before it points across to abet his late shoulders turn.

Recommendation to perennial tweakers married to a flip:

Flip has two components, which are laying back the wrist and rolling the forearm back (which slightly opens strings from whatever pitch you achieved).

Instead of eliminating one of these components at fliptime-- in a quest for less harshness-- why not keep them both by taking some of their combined action gradually during the backswing? Why not minimize them in this way just to see what will happen?