A New Year's Serve

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Simplification

Evolving backswing won't get arm all the way straight before contracting it, just goes comfortably and rhythmically down and up to skewed position previously described.

(before court)

After court:

It is nice having a long arm 3.5 grip ATP Forehand III/Federfore that one doesn't plan to mess with right now. This affords more latitude to explore the egged 2.5 grip long arm continental as a well orchestrated complement.

FOUND, in self feed of this particular new shot, that ball went equally fast and spinnily whether I went to hips-to-load-and-propel or hips to load and shoulders to propel. Reader, do you see the difference?

I herewith renounce and subtract any conscious thought about shoulders in this shot other than maybe for radical steering of ball to some unlikely spot in the opposite court.

The working idea is that the complex hips motion-- forward rotation plus thrusting out-- provides structure for the whole stroke as I imagine it did for whole lifetime of the Ben Hogan golf swing.

If that means slowing down or speeding up the total hips action, sobeit.

Here's how arm action in the backswing is sorting out: Down together and up together in a quick but smooth and comfortable action that might involve a bit of arm extension and contraction at the elbow or not.

Body meanwhile turns (and completes turn) as left hand also goes down and up to point and hold a point across.

Elbow now stretches backward to counter beginning of forward hips change to create tension, i.e., develop load in the arm "to make it come alive" as a baseball player might say.

There is some sort of pause between backward and forward body rotations in all good ground strokes. So I'm advising, at least for myself, just to go comfortably down then up with the twisting racket and don't stretch the elbow back too soon.

The little pause, in this stroke, will be caused by the hips, which are naturally not in a panicky hurry to change direction.

Throwing arm then can load as part of the forward swing.

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Re # 2 Forehand in # 1790

"Scything" is the word. I think of "egging" or the "poptop" the Gullickson twins used to talk about. You get to swing the frame on edge for a long time including through contact. This is the shot I discovered when I got to court-- a little different from what I had just written although I used that outline as my departure point.

And even now I may be departing slightly from what I did on court. This is a dizzying process. I can't blame anyone for not wishing to follow it. He could do that however if he wanted.

The only goal is "best shot possible."

There still is a down-and-up rhythm but not with arm kept straight the whole way: Unit turn is fast and far with both arms straightening and left hand remaining on racket for longer than before.

Here's where hips supply their double-whammy as hitting arm contracts and elbow rises to cock the racket head rakishly to the inside-- a recurrence of teeter-totter but in the stroke where it best belongs.

Before, I wrote that hips could take straight arm very low. In fact the hips could take the racket overly low. The racket comes up even as it twists down-- a hallmark of the infamous teeter-totter.

A rakish angle with racket head slanted to the inside is produced by the contracting and twisting arm, or did I already say it. Should I repeat it a third time?

The racket frame is mostly on edge and pointed forward.

Surely someone throws a frisbee forehand this way.

The exact specifications are not as important as the fact that strings egg comfortably through the ball. One only seeks the twisted configuration which produces that.

Some wrist adjustment for last instant steering also is available in this shot.

Wrist is straight and ready to egg-- any wrist adjustment will therefore occur in the ulna-radius plane.

The egg is soft-boiled and supported in an egg cup perfectly sized to hold it snug while it loses its head to the executioner's knife.

Hips went one way, racket head the other to load the arm.

I hit these shots from the gut.

Still to try: Slowing down the hips so some hips still are left over to administer the blow instead of having the shoulders and arm do it as a hybrid whole.

Hips and arm then would form the hybrid whole, but who knows now which is best.

In either case the ball is struck with a passively straightened and relaxedly straight arm.

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Forehand Tweaks, Chirrup-Chirrup And Cheer Up

Closing Racket the Extra Amount Required in a 3.5 Grip Federfore

A lot has been written on this subject. The best solution may be simply to lift and nudge backward a little with the elbow at start of one’s unit turn.

One then can roll the racket tip up from bent elbow like Roger Federer.

How he himself achieves the same purpose is probably different and hard to generalize about since he does it in different ways and places in different videos.

An interesting feature at least in the videos I’ve studied is that Roger delays the raising just where I said—at beginning of his unit turn. He often keeps his arm still as he first turns.

This is a good space in which to do something simple that is going to work.

One possible drawback is that a senior player trying to learn this stuff may have been influenced earlier by the elliptical backswing of Ivan Lendl.

Once one starts leading with the elbow there is the temptation to keep the loop squashed and pencil thin.

It has always been my theory that Lendl then makes some consistent adjustment that his imitators were never able to identify and master.

Back-to-basics anti-modeling teaching pros might argue that Roger Federer also makes subtle adustments to find perfect pitch.

Okay. I’m ready to concede that. Which is why I’m proposing a solution for us unsubtle guys.

The thing to realize is that the necessary adjustment from natural contact pitch caused by a 3.5 grip is small. Because of the early elbow nudge, the backward traveling racket tip can now rise the same distance as before only produce strings that are slightly more closed at contact.

It also can produce a nice “tapping the dog” feel since the racket butt will be nicely angled down toward an imaginary dog’s head.

Oh, this sounds like a Type III ATP Forehand, doesn’t it? Well, it should. ATP Forehand and Federfore are exactly the same. The first, it is alleged, was arrived at through science with a smattering of art thrown in. The second, I’ll equally allege, was arrived at through art with a smattering of science thrown in.

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I never thought I’d write tennis instruction and certainly not that I would enjoy it more than most of the other kinds of writing I do what with the assortment of buffoons associated with that avocation and industry.

The foregoing passage on Federfore comes from hard knocks. The next passage here is vision, i.e., dream.

The second conscious choice I’ve made for a stripped down forehand to complement the first puts big knuckle on 2.5 and uses perfectly straight wrist in a grandfather clock backswing to produce a constellation of different shots.

Forward swing is composed 50-50 of shoulders turn from the gut (assuming membership in the Kinetic Snake cult) and bowl or spooning from the shoulder. On higher, wider balls, the forward movement is more about a connected swing that doesn't change the pitch so much. On lower balls close to the body one bowls more and the shoulders play a minor role and too much spooning is apt to occur. Better to use happy feet to get out of the way.

The variation I’m exploring in language before self-feed today uses no pitch adjustment of any kind during the down-and-up backswing.

Strings thus close naturally as they tick past the body.

Are hips turning backward at that moment? Yes if one has a good unit turn.

So what happens if hips now pause for a mental collection of wits (?!) and then start forward in two separate but simultaneous ways: They rotate forward while pushing out toward the target.

This lowers the straight arm a lot. It also opens the strings more than seems healthy: A good thing then that they just naturally closed. But the new opening of pitch will exceed the closing. And more opening is imminent. As strings tock ahead of the body you produce “spooning.” That has to happen.

Sounds like we’re about to hit a tall lob-- not the intention here.

The antidote to lob I propose is to close the racket an extra amount in unison with the complex hips movement, but without either depressing the wrist as in an ATP Forehand or flipping the strings forward the way one eventually does in all of the rolled forehands. Nope, I’m feathering the racket in one place like an oar while loading the arm, i.e., the hips are going one way and the elbow is twisting the opposite way while the strings close directly beneath their original apogee but slightly to the inside.

I once read a whole book on continental ground strokes. The author asserted that on continental forehands one uses hips more than shoulders although the hips will turn the shoulders.

And so at this point I’ll simply let the arm sling, knowing that if I hit out front the strings will have squared. But in a hybrid shot the shoulders will smoothly rotate from the gut at the same time.

After doing the backward pendulum of a grandfather clock, one can roll forward on ball or open on ball—it’s a choice.

In this particular variation, a smooth, scything swing should have been enabled in contrast with the abrupt acceleration of a Federfore.

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Trial: Choose A or B

A) Yes, many more aces became possible.

B) No, the center to left fulcrum change is more reliable since it produces more pace with arm flying in a better direction (down and forward rather than down and across).

These words were written before the trial.

Answer: There was no difference in pace or anything else immediately apparent. Both worked and they worked well. (Sebastien, who used to be a ranked junior hitting with Jo Wilfried-Tsonga in France, saw one of the shoulders first numbers on Friday night and spontaneously pronounced it good although he was teaching on another court.)

I choose A) however-- the fulcrum shift from right shoulder to left leg species-- because it gives me less to think about and makes for a more sensuous feel in the hitting arm. This serve worked best for me, today, when I used change of direction of the toss-- the moment when tossed ball most seems to hover-- as a green light to send the arm forward, having already relaxed bottom two fingers for a bit more racket tip lowness as part of the "up" in my down-and-up launching of the ball.

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A Wider Fulcrum Change In A Wild Slice Serve

The more one whips the arm around the body the more closed one can keep the shoulder-- for longer.

Experiments up till now have changed the right-hander's fulcrum from body center to left body edge during the serve.

The shoulders have turned, the hips have turned, the bent left leg has braced as foot flattened from toes to heel, accelerating the arm.

This has produced some very good serves but not enough of them in my case.

But is a greater percentage of these good serves on the way? If so I might be a fool to fiddle with basic design again.

Okay, I accept that, but things may be approaching an over-complication.

What if one simply gets the racket butt a-gliding from right side of body and then accelerates it from right hip and abruptly stops the hips from the left side of the body, i.e., with left leg?

This serve will have gone from fulcrum in the right shoulder to fulcrum in the left leg.

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Swinging from the Shoulder in a Stygian Backhand

In one of the Don Budge videos there appears minimal forward rotation of the shoulders before contact, in another, none.

I propose three successive stages for learning this shot, and a reversal of this sequence any time the player wants to return to basics:

1) Swing from the shoulder with any body rotation to happen after contact.

2) Put a little of this late body rotation on the ball.

3) Fly.

J. Donald Budge said to swing, not flail at the ball. For the most part he left the technical issues and fine points to his older brother Lloyd, but maybe not when he, Don, ran a tennis camp in Maryland.

Where at all times is the fulcrum of this shot? That seems a fair question to me.

Another I might ask of someone aspiring to this great shot: What is the quality of your "bonk-and-roll?" Is it smooth and effortless?

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Tweak-Tweak Chirp-Chirp

It is quite a transition from geezer tennis outdoors to young person tennis indoors.

Suddenly the ball comes three times as fast but I'm still a geezer.

Time, I say, for more commitment to my Stygian backhand, named after the River Styx, although if there were a hundred more videos available of Michael Stich's backhand I might copy IT.

No, my backhand is A Budgian Backhand.

But I'm bored with saying that and Stygian sounds like Budgian.

This will lead me into the very Stygian mists of code I decry. No help for it.

The thing I'm trying to get at is that when one steps out the palm down strings should still be going backward because of what you want to happen next.

And when you're a little rushed, i.e., if you possess a good flying grip change, you're apt to flip the racket around your body all at once-- a great time-saving device to teach somebody but do it exactly that way yourself? Now you're early which is worse than being late.

And on my Federfore, the teeter-totter after the unit turn is absolutely ridiculous. Just lift the elbow some other time and call it your nudge.

Which again sounds like Budge even though his forehand was very different.

Well, Federfore at least sounds better than ATP Forehand or Type Three Codicil Four under the Fifth Amendment.

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Re # 1782 On Baseball Pitch Tennis Serves

All of this service thought is new to me, reader, just as I imagine it-- due to the predominant tennis instruction of our time-- is new to you. How much I want to hit through the ball on out wide slice or topspin possibly breaking the other way I still need to determine. For a cannonball however there is no question, and a relief pitcher for the Detroit Tigers recently made a video to demonstrate "the towel exercise."

Using a knotted towel of the type familiar to learning tennis players, he shows how from a three-quarters arm pitching motion, one can hurl the knot across the body (bad) or out toward target (good) before it then comes round.

This reliever, successful on more than one team, says he does the towel trick twice a week to improve his "extension."

The TV crew who worked with him, however, says that Justin Verlander, the highest paid Detroit pitcher, is dismissive of the towel.

Verlander, however, has not pitched up to his usual standard this year.

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J.

J., the 4.5 player I was telling you about, reader, also was the narrator of "As the Sauce Burns," my favorite all-time play at the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem.

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Kinetic Chain Abuse

The overly logical modern mind is the culprit.

So, in the simplest of all rhythmic backswings adopted from the John McEnroe forehand, one says to oneself, "I'll keep the racket always on edge this time as if to balance a coin on the upper rim."

That part is all right-- not the only approach to contact available but it will suffice.

One is more apt to go wrong in what happens next. The arm falls like a paper cutter as the shoulders turn-- still okay.

The delayed hips finally release with purpose in mind of prolonging "dwell"-- not bad.

The rub is in the left brain concept that the shoulders move first, the hips second.

How about if the shoulders move first and the hips and shoulders move second to form a kinetic snake?

This prolonging i.e. slowing down of forward shoulders swing could work. Who knows until who has tried it?

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Center to Edge

A flowing change in fulcrum within some stroke process can happen among other places in 1) the Do Budge Don't Budge Don Budge Backhand and 2) the Dan Gazaway derived baseball pitch where the first modification is to put a tennis racket in the pitcher's hand.

1) The big one-hander I have developed is only enabled by smaller backhands. You can't put a Stradivarius in the hands of a beginning violinist and expect happy results. For me, this backhand should lurk, awaiting a moment of inspiration. It is not a shot I'll try every time.

But now the score is good. Although the ball is coming fast, the big backhand actually takes less time to get off than some others. Backswing was good. Palm faced down early and hand then dropped a little with palm still faced down to get the tent inflation going as fist smoothly bonks sideways with palm still faced down.

If you remember (for few great things can be learned in a single day), the shoulders are smoothly turning and the front leg is locked-- yes, locked by virtue of being pointed more toward side fence than the leg of Adriano Panatta or Gustavo Kuerten. Compare front foot in each of three videos to see what I mean. Sorry, Adriano, you weren't included.

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

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/pro_men/gustavo_kuerten/gustavo_kuerten_v1/gustavo_kuerten_v1.html?GKBHWideRear-0151810-0001-001.mov

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

A good question to ask of turning shoulders is, "Are you, shoulders, pulling the hips around or not?" Choose "not."

"Not" will keep the hips closed until desired release of them which will be late. Think dance. And classic tennis advice to keep head still. Which rotation keeps head stiller, rotation from gut (center fulcrum) or rotation from hips (body edge fulcrum)? Especially if you believe that the biggest contributor to effective hips rotation is drive from the outside leg. This shot is a dance step. Perfect balance is the goal.

2) Curveball or wide serve is, as Dennis Ralston says, "the hardest of the four placements to develop." Again I follow the center to edge fulcrum change rule. This most difficult of serves however can provide the foundation for a new variety of fastballs and topspin serves without compromising the neuronal pathways of one's previous serves-- especially if the older serves are very different.

The new plan: Using lots of gravity for repeatability (Brosseau), drop both hands and then take them up together. The racket however turns out as it starts up to bare its saber like front edge for slice. At top of backswing, just as ball begins to fall, the bottom two fingers of hitting hand relax to let the racket tip fall along the diagonal plane of the strings. The forefinger already was relaxed or off the racket. The handle pivots between the thumb and middle finger which are across from each other-- best if this grip is out in the fingers and not settled into the palm. I'd like to keep front heel up for first part of the forward swing which, starting immediately once the tossed ball has fallen a bit, goes fast, i.e., the shoulders crank but the hips stay closed and the head stays still. Now the hips do crank to flatten the foot which immediately locks and braces on bent knee and resists and brakes.

That accelerates the arm and both shoulders, i.e., there is a small jackknife which helps put the hand on the thigh just above the knee with 45-degrees open racket pointing at side fence.

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Attack the Serve

Transition from center to edge fulcrum works better if shoulders have built up steam by the time bent front leg and crossing opposite arm stop body to accelerate hitting arm and both shoulders.

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Trial

Okay, I've tried this now. If thumb points at left fence for slice followthrough, then strings will be about 45 degrees open as in the video of Pancho Gonzalez in the Ralston article:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/famouscoach/denn_ralston/developing_the_slice_serve/developing_the_slice_serve.html

Ralston himself has racket a bit more turned over so that strings are square, but he probably had them in a more open position as he cut the ball and hopefully with no kind of an arm roll going on just then.

The prescribed followthroughs are cues for desired performance, that's all. Other persons may have arrived at the same performance in different ways.

From each followthrough one can swing backward and forward in small increments of six inches, then from contact, then from six inches before contact, twelve inches before, etc., etc. and then back off and loosen up.

To put things most simply, one wants the strings not to roll in either direction from before contact to end of followthrough, it seems to me.

Is not this the way to administer a surgical incision? From a three-quarter pitching motion like that of Dan Gazaway combined with what the upper body does one can chop as with an ax using the frame to come down on a 45-degree path which will reinforce power along 45-degree angle of the strings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEq5xZvqGXc

The next logical experiments will be to grab handle as if it's a baseball, getting it out in fingers and adding some nifty loosening and tightening of bottom two fingers as natural adjunct to whatever wrist action there already is, and, finally, to work backward in small increments from the other two followthroughs.

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Good Wide Slice = Less Violence + More Finesse

Building on # 1778, I am ready to discard two elements: 1) separate rear leg load as in all the other serves or certain serves where it will remain and 2) the separate and early rear leg thrust which also will remain in all other serves or in certain serves.

The new service action could go from balance on rear foot to balance on front foot. One could maintain a bent front leg throughout, even during the toss; however, disguise that way would be compromised too soon.

And so, we sink into the front leg and heel like a pitcher in baseball as we bring our spearing, extending racket slowly around through the use of our shoulders alone. (Too late now for disguise but perhaps we can terrorize.)

But the shoulders slowly pull the hips around, too. If hips can pull shoulders, shoulders can pull hips.

Front leg without extending then stiffens on flat bracing foot to accelerate arm and shoulders more in a vertical way with human head finally moving down left a bit from the hit as countering rear leg swings round toward the net.

This system seems so much like my fantasy of a Big League baseball pitch that I'll have to try it with cannonballs and topspin serves as well.

Starting place will be the three followthroughs demonstrated by Dan Gazaway, who points to three different wrist positions as hand is down by left thigh just above the knee.

I'd like to declare each followthrough a seminal position, which, if one traces backward, can dictate contact position along with various earlier positions.

But, we want to take personal possession of Dan's great information, so how about a new formula meant to simplify and clarify?

Thumb pointing at left fence for slice.
Thumb pointing at rear fence for flat.
Thumb pointing at far fence for topspin.

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Changing Fulcrum From Center Of Body To Edge Of Body All In One Motion

Language is not something you learn to hate in English class, and a sentence or tennis stroke can always be revised-- more true than ever thanks to the editing function on the internet.

If some right-hander's short wide slice from deuce court is too dicey, he can simplify today, again tomorrow, and the day after, reducing the service cycle down to its essential elements to see if there is one or two he could discard.

Today, even though I'm scheduled to hit with somebody, I'll work from Dan Gazaway's novice curveball (#'s 1775, 6,7) without sticking to every single thing that Dan says since rules are made to be broken by those who know them.

In my case, with my rear-leg load putting much more energy into horizontal rotation than upward thrust, I'll try something very new taken from recent development in my ground strokes.

That will be a bit of forward shoulders swing before I initiate my kinetic snake.

(If you want to see a chain as in "kinetic chain," go to the Constitution Island Museum in the Hudson River-- big, clunky copper links that surely didn't move as fast as a striking snake as the colonial Americans strung them across the water to West Point to stop the British ships.)

I'll start by winding and compressing my arm until palm faces me all in rhythm with the toss.

Body alone will carry the racket spear toward the ball except for the smoothly extending arm while I load down on rear foot.

Then when I finally do fire the rear leg (from platform stance), I'll firmly brace against the movement with my bent left leg.

If this doesn't work as I hit with my partner Hope's son-in-law Greg, I'll try some topspin serves and a few fast balls.