A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

A Message to the Owner

How about removing the elementary school stars evaluation system from the forum altogether since you're only using yellow stars for yourself and for me, at least if today's message board is any indication?

[bottle]

And Now His Slice

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

Similar enough that one can perhaps understand, for the first time, how Budge himself could confuse the one with the other (slice with drive) as he says he once did in a famous story from his autobiography. He was in England.

A few of a thousand things to notice: Weight going into the court as evidenced by the small pogo hop. The ball already hit before the body comes up. Hips turn, smaller, again is delayed. The first of the two arm rolls is accomplished during the backswing.

What about Budge's grip? Same as for his drive? That would be with his thumb on a diagonal across the back of the racket for added support, no?

Think I'll stay with thumb-tucked continental Rosewallian skunk tail as a first choice while maintaining curiosity about any delay of the hips.

Easy Budgian slice:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHSliceFront1.mov

Again. You can see where his thumb is on the racket handle in this one. And note the slight repositioning of front foot as a result of the delayed hips turn no matter how small:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHSliceFront2.mov

Again. Front foot stays put, but notice all the stuff the back foot is doing and relate it to a slightly bigger hips turn. Also, the Budgian body is rising before contact this time, it seems to me. Note: I have a huge screen to go with my old computer. Hence at least part of my enthusiasm at being blown away by the new Tennis Player screen formats.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHSliceFront3.mov

To abandon one's wonkish or nerdy or engineer-like or almost autistic preoccupation with stroke technique for a moment in favor of being human: The late J. Donald Budge is obviously someone important to a lot of us tennis players. To see him in the new size (and even color!) is to feel that one almost knows/knew him. And yes, Don_Budge the big sensibility forum contributor with whom we all have interacted did work for him and know him pretty well, and that helps, too.

[bottle]

Dbbh

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

Arm presses against body as body and racket work in precisely opposite directions. Now the hips rotate the newly barred arm. Does it simultaneously spear with the racket butt?-- yes-- or does arm remain glued to body (don't think so-- have a full screen look for yourself).

The roll of arm is therefore fast, an abrupt change of direction just before the unrolled, long arm swing as body rises from the court.

The front foot slowly twirls in midair-- at set-down it's ready to run toward the net. The slowness of this foot twirl implies an equally slow (continued) twirl of the hips. So the delayed hips went fast then slower up in the air.

What caused the levitation? Do not answer too soon. Did legs fully straighten before the feet flew, and does this matter? We know from other strokes that bent-legged flight can be good. Did rear foot twirl in unison with front foot?

Within this meditation I must surmise that "spearing" racket is only a function of independently "swinging" arm and that sudden roll then retards that swing. Non-roll then accelerates it again with all of this taken together producing a smooth, even, non-accelerative swing.

My vote for cause of levitation from slightly bent legs: transverse stomach muscles chiming into power system of the whole swing/mysterious thing.

[bottle]

Works and Feels Great

It works and feels great enough, Don, that I don't care whether the number of stars next to this thread is reduced from 4 to 3 or 2 or 1 or 0 .

I remember some 3.5 level tournament matches in Winchester, Virginia where Bill Mathias, the former 65 and older U.S. national champion of grass and clay wanted to play mixed doubles.

Several facts about Bill: He had the best drop-shot I've personally witnessed even at Tour events. He once played an exhibition match with Fred Perry in South America. He called himself a 3.5 because he was old with physical problems, e.g., horrible ankles. His partner in mixed doubles, always, was extremely pretty although she frequently did not know how to serve.

So Bill-- I'm quite sure-- either told her before their first match to hit the highest lob serve imaginable or else they went out on some court and practiced that serve.

As you reminded me, the taller the serve, the higher the bounce. The spin is what brings it down, but the height of the trajectory is what determines the height of the bounce, and a difference of one foot can make a huge difference in somebody's ability or inability to return it.

I only tried a few from farther back in today's practice but saw immediately that this ploy will work. And I will try interspersing these serves with harder, flatter ones tomorrow. If my old guys DON'T have trouble with their high service returns from a foot higher than the highest they are used to I will let you know.

And thanks.

[tennis_chiro]

1) Skunk Tail Slice
2) One Hand Topspin
3) Federfore

...

On Court Results: Federfore continued to work well. Didn't mess with skunk tail slice. Hit some topspin serves from a couple of feet behind the baseline to heighten trajectory and therefore achieve a higher bounce (this from Don Brosseau's criticism of and suggestion for Azarenka and Jankovic after their recent joint display of pathetic serving and inability to jump back quick enough when pressed by a deep groundie an instant after the serve).

....

Bottle, so how did that high bouncing serve work/feel?

don

[bottle]

Pushing the Palm Down

1) Skunk Tail Slice
2) One Hand Topspin
3) Federfore

I'm not going to fool around much with the skunk tail slice, since, as of yesterday, it was my best weapon against the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's in carousel tennis.

Today however I expect that in self feed my Federfore will exceed the skunk tail in efficiency because of the new idea of pushing the palm down as elbow retracts (nudges) to get itself out of the way while keeping the racket head lined up behind the ball with all this melding into straightening the arm down.

In skunk tail, however, one also pushes palm down (to the inside) but just from the top as part of the unified forward swing. Another way of saying this is that the rotating hips pull the racket butt away from the racket head to level off the racket length.

It would be a shame to mess around with the smoothness of this stroke in any way, and as for topspin backhand, I'd like to skunk tail it as well for good orchestration, and in fact have a nice easy double roll from skunk tail for merely keeping ball in court or setting up a student or hitting partner at waist height.

Today though in self feed I'll roll the racket head inside from skunk tail about half of available range even before the forward swing and call that "pushing the palm down." It sounds awful as I write it but might correspond in timing terms to the old sit-and-hit of Vic Braden. (It didn't. I found myself still rolling and straightening backward in conjunction with beginning of the forward hips action.)

When I'm out on the court, if I don't immediately discover great feel I'll revert to the unification of skunk tail slice only as a topspin drive in this case-- the mildly paced teaching stroke I already described in which one still is rolling as one hits the ball. Reason for the experiment/departure from this is to try and incorporate Arthur Ashe's dictum to "sling the racket at the ball." If, by starting racket tip drop a little early I could get the feel of forward hips turn and forward arm roll easily multiplying each other and melding into non-rolling full arm swing inside out before contact, I probably would keep the shot.

All very self-absorbed of me but so what? Is this tennis or is it a morality play?

On Court Results: Federfore continued to work well. Didn't mess with skunk tail slice. Hit some topspin serves from a couple of feet behind the baseline to heighten trajectory and therefore achieve a higher bounce (this from Don Brosseau's criticism of and suggestion for Azarenka and Jankovic after their recent joint display of pathetic serving and inability to jump back quick enough when pressed by a deep groundie an instant after the serve).

The bulk of the session, however, went to Budgian genre backhand drives which like J. Donald Budge's contained a double roll before transforming into the non-rolling swing of a big league baseball player no matter what Mr. Budge never said.

Just where should the transition from roll to non-roll occur? After contact? At contact? Before contact with racket head by inner thigh? Before that, with racket head even with whatever it is that you have between your legs?

Psychologically, that would be very good.

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

NEW TECHNICAL FEATURES AT TENNIS PLAYER

omigod. Everything goes full screen now. This already was a great website but now is twice as good.

Note: If one leaves the court like J. Donald Budge here, one needn't splay the toe toward the net as in a ground bound shot to achieve the extra split-second of dwell on the ball. In full screen version one can better see that there is forward body momentum into the ball and front foot is slowly turning before it lands.

Also apparent is that J. Donald went directly to turned in position at rear of backswing. Who would need the lost time and added deception of skunk tail preparation if one were going to hit the ball this well?

omigod again. This is some day. The one thing I missed in the Tennis Player innovation was the ability to stop a shot anywhere in its cycle. But if you put your cursor anywhere near the moving capsule as it zips across the screen, you immediately stop it and suck it to the cursor. This preserves the old stop-frame feature and offers more! Now all you have to do is keep finger down and pull the capsule in either direction to see what happens. For better or worse, you are (I am) going to notice a lot of new things.

The next new thing I notice in this famous clip is that J. Donald does not use hip rotation to straighten or "bar" his arm. But leg travel does bar it. Note the vectors. The body and the racket are moving in precisely opposite directions.

Hips rotation, saved, occurs now with arm fully barred and ready to roll, which it does but rather late.

[bottle]

As the Sauce Burns, the Wormy Bone Turns

Tennis is full of things and devices and exercise programs all frequently competing with each other.

Even the images by which teaching pros describe the basic stroke patterns are vying for attention, as if saying, "Adopt me. Consider nothing else. I'm the best. You'll achieve your goal the quickest if you go with me, for I am the greatest of all tennis tips."

In the rather poetic image of an inverted boot in the following clip, do you, reader, truly see what's going on?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionRear2_250fps.mp4

Does Roger's racket tip, rising because of stationary upper arm twist, trace the sole of a tilted L.L. Bean boot with its toe pointed at the bottom of the net?

Does the racket tip at its highest point brush over the heel of the boot?

Does the racket tip then descend the longest line in any boot, which would be its backside away from the toe?

Maybe, but the poet Robert Frost said there is a point where every metaphor breaks down, i.e., you can't push too far or it ceases to be beautiful, illuminating, useful or whatever.

Maybe we'd do better just to say the strings wind up (you can see Roger's elbow barely turn. Yes, it twists. Just watch the muscles and bone. Not much of a movement but it's there).

And now they (the strings) press down. They start on their long descent toward the court. Again, I submit, one should watch the bone in Roger's elbow-- it twists.

Yes, it twists the racket head down toward the court before his arm extends the racket head farther down toward the court.

Many athletes-- the naturals especially-- would die before they ever would make such a distinction.

But are they ever sufficiently dissatisfied with the strokes they have to try some new stuff?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHCenterArmActionSide_250fps.mp4

[bottle]

Innovation in Detroit

CAROUSEL is a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical based on a Ferenc Molnar play and transplanting its setting from Budapest, Hungary to the coast of Maine.

A carousel is also a merry-go-round, "a tournament or exhibition in which horsemen execute evolutions," and a circular conveyance on which objects are placed say in an airport.

The last definition is the one that intrigues me right now. I had heard about the carousel format in doubles tennis before and figured it was common to every part of the United States.

That may or may not be true. I don't really care. Maybe an innovation is best when connected to a specific region or place.

The guys I play with, in their fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties are proud of the history of their physical carousel and brought its prototype to one of our two hour three-day-a-week sessions.

This carousel is a series of varnished wooden boxes set in a perfect circle and with a movable pointer that revolves from the center like a clock hand.

Each box is just large enough to hold a racket butt. So a bunch of tennis rackets set in this contraption bristle upward to form a display.

One might think of old naval exercises in which sailors detach their oars and hold them vertical to perform a salute. Or of a late nineteenth century rowing novel in which the author, Oliver Optic, had a crew north of Boston detach their oars for such a parallel pointing at the sky at which time their boat tipped over.

The place here being Detroit or Grosse Pointe which though in Detroit I guess is slightly different, there soon was an engineer among the tennis players with access to a plastics manufacturing facility, and he updated the carousel to the svelte version which the guys now use; i.e., the holes for the racket butts are round not square.

It's easy to see who plays next-- the person who belongs to the racket nearest to the pointer.

If there are six substitutes, four guys open a new court.

"Player on six!" comes the cry.

You run out to court six and serve one game. Then you shift over to ad court on same side for one game. And then to opposite deuce court for one game. And then to opposite ad court for one game. And then go back to the benches and stick your racket in the carousel.

Tennis this way feels very different from conventional sets. The rest intervals are different. There's a new player in the group every game. The flow is excellent, and for some reason-- and this is my point in writing this post-- the whole format is a wonderful learning environment.

The evidence is one player, a former restaurant Maitre d' who with his partner just won the seniors doubles championship of Grosse Pointe. Upon retiring from restaurant work, he took up tennis and was the weakest player in the group.

But it's maybe five years later, don't you see.

[bottle]

Full Screen Study to Put Strings on Ball at Just the Right Time

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHShortArmActionSide_250fps.mp4

Note how the racket head winds up during the unit turn. If you DON'T do this, the racket head will have too far to go as you swing forward.

But won't this open the strings too much? Won't you (I) hit the ball up to the moon?

This is where nudge comes in-- the nudge with elbow as you point across with your opposite hand.

We've been told that Federer closes his racket an extra amount during his backswing, and I'm sure that's true most of the time. But one can put the pitch anywhere one wants simply by playing with the race between elbow and racket tip.

The racket tip winding up during unit turn just went farther than the elbow.
The elbow could now go farther than the racket tip creating a serpentine effect.

Sounds complicated but really isn't. You just did two similar things. All I know is that control increased during self feed, and I think my old guys (fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties) are not going to like this newly tweaked forehand tomorrow.

[bottle]

Hips Fire, Shoulders Fire

You've decided when Roger's hips move (at bottom of dog). So when do his shoulders move? Also at bottom of dog?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionRear2_250fps.mp4

To put this another way, how soon do his shoulders get parallel to the net?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionRear1_500fps.mp4

To re-phrase (again), hips fire, shoulders fire, arm fires.

Note the new technology that makes such observations more possible. In the following clip make sure to click the icon to the right that fills the screen.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHShortArmActionSide_250fps.mp4

[bottle]

Lucky Enough to be Challenged

Skunk-tailed slice is a very fine slice, and mine was really zinging for a period of three weeks this summer.

The skunk tail is a special constellation within The Rosewall Galaxy.

It takes its name from what a skunk does just before it sprays-- lifts its tail.

We lived between four and five of a nine-hole golf course with the three front door columns open to a brace of har-tru tennis courts.

We had a golden retriever who one day had to start sleeping outside of the house which had been an abandoned hotel, The Riversea Inn at the mouth of the Connecticut.

The skunk who skunked him, I'm sure, lifted his tail first just the way the best players out on the courts lifted their racket straight up to unleash a flat shot that carried a modicum of slice for control.

Half a century later, in Michigan, I find myself trying to get back to those three weeks of zing and may do it today.

What happened in between?

Well, I started turning over the racket more on the backswing to produce the extreme and muscular spin of good double-rolled dinks and drop-shots, then couldn't get back to the easy pace.

[bottle]

Don't Carve Your Serve

"I saw you out on the court, working on your serve!" a tennis-playing friend of mine said to me.

"I was developing a serve that I never ever plan to use," I said.

That would be the carved serve with pave-loader finish I've recently written so much about. When I combine it with my back foot load, I don't get a high enough percentage of great serves and do get an unacceptable number of double-faults.

So I'll use kick slice for anything short and out wide from deuce to deuce court. What is it that Chris Lewit says about that in his Tennis Player articles on kick? Arm going into court on a 60-degree angle for kick slice, I believe, on a 45-degree angle for a topspin serve, on a 30-degree angle for true kick which abruptly veers out from the bounce.

[bottle]

Two One-Handers with Double-Rolls that are Different

1) Roll through the ball but with as much of an inside out racket head trajectory as possible. The topspin may sometimes be mixed with something unwanted but this shot is exceptionally easy to hit and keep in the court.

2) Finish the second i.e. forward roll above or in the vicinity of inner edge of the right thigh and from there swing whole arm out and forward before up. Contact: 12 inches in front of front leg with foot splayed to permit knee travel. The last part of inside out racket trajectory is achieved with racket on edge (yes, it stopped rolling). The elbow finally goes. It just swings. Racket stays on edge.

Most of the world's one-handers fail to transmit accumulated energy through the hand. Here's a chance to do that right.

Grip: Eastern backhand.

Hips: You can make your hips in this shot turn forward in the space of the entire double roll. And continue toward the net without pivoting any more thanks to the splayed foot. To describe then the total hips movement that gives structure to the shot, one could say, "Hips rotate next go out toward the net."

[bottle]

Thanks.

[stotty]

(From page 27 of RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS by John M. Barnaby)

"When a teacher starts out a group who have played little or not at all, these players are unable to reveal themselves except in a physical way. Those who are glib physically will look the best at first and will out-perform the others. One tends to make unjustified long range predictions based on these early impressions. Such tendencies should be resisted because they often lead to error. After some years when all these people have acquired a considerable technique so they can put into execution the thoughts that come to them, then and only then can an intelligent estimate be made of the total ability: physical, mental and moral (the ability to take pressure).

"One often hears of 'made players.' This is usually a person endowed with unusually good mental and moral qualities but with physical shortcomings that could only be overcome with a lot of work. Other more 'natural' athletes look better at first but may be surpassed by this player in the long run. The 'natural' athlete has immediately visible talent. This 'made' athlete has obvious shortcomings and his talents are hard to perceive. It does not always pay to leap to the conclusion that the 'natural' is better."

I like this excerpt a lot.