A New Year's Serve

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Real Time

Detroit batter flails at Chicago pitcher and takes a strike.

Rand Paul, named after Ayn Rand whose first name, as she said herself, "rhymes with swine," shares his father's sensible ideas about war but applies Ein Schwein's batty ideas on selfishness to the domestic scene.

Finally carve an ace out wide from the deuce court. Where has this serve and the information needed to support it been hiding all these years?

[bottle]

Mental Talent Is Invisible

(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."

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Incredible film. And post. I'll take EVERY DETAIL into account.

[don_budge]

Pickle ball, the Tango and Keeping your Head still...

Brad Gilbert, in his Rogers Cup coverage, suggested that anyone over 70 start playing with foam balls on a reduced court. Tomorrow, I may ask the 40 members of the senior seniors group with whom I play three times a week just what they think about that. I expect a vote of 40-0 against.

Frieda was extremely complimentary about Maxine's promise but less so about mine. "Why does he keep hitting the ball so high?" she griped to Hope.

(To keep it deep and encourage Maxine to do the same. To make sure Maxine got a lot of balls to hit. To get Maxine used to high-bouncing balls since the best kids tend to hit a lot of topspin these days.)


"Keep your head down," Frieda told Maxine. Which means to keep one's head still-- Jimmy Evert's advice-- I later explained to Maxine. But if your body comes up as you hit do you REALLY keep your head still? Your head would get pretty droopy.

Frieda herself gave up tennis at 70. She and her husband went to big motorcycles which they drove conspicuously around Michigan from 70 to 82. Her hundredth is on Jan 4 and there will be a big party.

Maxine, meanwhile, reported to her parents that she LOVES to hit with me.

A sweet girl, that, and somebody who is way beyond foam balls and reduced courts, I'd say, as I think I am, too, although I may be heading that way.

I love the "memoir" feel of this post. Clearly the exercise of a literary person that means everything to him and tiny glimpse to anyone else that is paying the least bit attention.

So what is there to say...and that is a question that I ask myself every time I read you. My answer usually is...not much. It is what it is. It is the goings on in somebody's mind...and thank you for sharing by the way. It's always interesting.

But funny enough...this time I just would like to say that you might just look into a game called pickle ball. My father is playing three times a week at 84 years old. He was a fantastic athlete and took up tennis at the age of 37. I could never beat him until I went to the Don Budge Tennis Camp at the age of 18. If you go to the tennis courts at The Dearborn Inn I think that if you listen closely you can still here me screaming as "Hammerin' Hank", as he was known when he was playing for the Toledo Mud Hens, routinely wore out my patience. Playing the continental gripped game with a Bancroft Player's Special.

Keeping the head still...or more importantly keeping the chest on the ball. An interesting tip given to me by a golfing buddy here in Sweden...Sten. I shot 68 with this tip in my head on the last day to win the trophy at 53 in a 35 and over league. Oldest player in the tourney. My claim to fame in "The Kingdom of Golf". I can play tennis with just this thought in my noodle. Pass this little pearl onto the dear little Maxine...she will always remember you for it. Via don_budge, via Sten, via tennisplayer.net.

High balls? Nah...give it to her in her comfort zone. Just let her feel the good shots over and over. In a couple of years you can torture her, but for now...just feel good balls. You will teach her the love of the game. The good times.

The Tango? The temptation is to try to dance with your life partner but try not to take it too seriously. It is the kiss of death when it comes to relationships. You see...it is too close of a metaphor for life. The man must lead and the woman must follow. His job in leading is to make her appear beautiful, elegant and graceful. Her job is to make him look competent...firm yet gentle. This sort of philosophy will wreak any household in the year 2013.

Google "El Flete"- Juan D'arienzo. Try one of the youtube picks on for size. What a dance! Look at that footwork. The melancholy music. Aye yie yie. Dance bottle dance. I used to be johnny_tango in a former life.

What the hell...try this one on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Rx1JXg80g

Good Luck!

[bottle]

Not Ready Yet, Brad

Brad Gilbert, in his Rogers Cup coverage, suggested that anyone over 70 start playing with foam balls on a reduced court. Tomorrow, I may ask the senior seniors group with whom I play three times a week just what they think about that. I expect a vote of 40-0 against.

But aging tennis players, even the ones who have ceased to play, are an interesting phenomenon. On Saturday my partner Hope and her 99-year-old aunt by first marriage, Aunt Frieda, came to watch me, 73, and Hope's granddaughter Maxine, 10, have a hit.

Frieda was extremely complimentary about Maxine's promise but less so about mine. "Why does he keep hitting the ball so high?" she griped to Hope.

(To keep it deep and encourage Maxine to do the same. To make sure Maxine got a lot of balls to hit. To get Maxine used to high-bouncing balls since the best kids tend to hit a lot of topspin these days.)

Never mind. Was like taking Frieda to a dance class where she criticized my timing. "It's one two-three, one two-three! It's simple! Can't you master that?"

No, actually it was one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight since we were doing the tango.

The instructor, who looks and dances like Fred Astaire, then asked Frieda for a waltz. "He's a terrible dancer," she said afterward.

"Keep your head down," Frieda told Maxine. Which means to keep one's head still-- Jimmy Evert's advice-- I later explained to Maxine. But if your body comes up as you hit do you REALLY keep your head still? Your head would get pretty droopy.

At the senior seniors annual summer picnic by the edge of a golf course, I ate a lot of hot dogs and drank some wine and went through four scrapbooks of my 88-year-old friend Wally's life and that of his eight kids with him, along with his experiences as a tank commander in the World War II Pacific.

At some point the president of the club asked the members who no longer played to stand up for photos (four persons). Then eighty or older but still playing. About 10. Then 70's and older. Maybe 15. And 55 to 70.

Some of the 70-year-olds looked as young as the 55 to 70 group. I especially knew the ones who hit the ball well. Until then I had not been as much aware of anyone's age as of individual styles except for the really old ones.

Frieda herself gave up tennis at 70. She and her husband went to big motorcycles which they drove conspicuously around Michigan from 70 to 82. Her hundredth is on Jan 4 and there will be a big party.

Maxine, meanwhile, reported to her parents that she LOVES to hit with me.

A sweet girl, that, and somebody who is way beyond foam balls and reduced courts, I'd say, as I think I am, too, although I may be heading that way.

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Disappointment

So how did the new serve work in actual doubles play? Not as well as I planned. The day before, I had hit three beauties in a row to complete my practice. Today, in two hours of play I hit maybe one.

Something basic is wrong. Maybe when one goes the "complete detail" route, one gets in trouble if a single little detail is wrong?

My first guess is that I'm trying to be too sequential about the horizontal and vertical body rotations. That delineation will remain, but not with links to something specific done by the arm.

Think I'll try to push out to the ball with both upper body and extending arm which will establish body and wrist carve from body vertical, i.e., from a hurling and ephemerally straight up and down position.

But Maxine, 10, fresh from her tournament successes, is coming over tonight to visit her grandmother and wants to hit. Hitting with Maxine and talking with her about her theater would restore anyone's spirits.

Note: Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. Actually, after a slow start, I played pretty well. (Such judgments are important, reader, don't you think?) Besides, with Scherzer on the mound, the Detroit Tigers just won 11 games in a row as Chicago and Cleveland went down.

[bottle]

Could a Serve Become More Effective as it Falls into Dis-use?

Found, this morning, with this unique or old-fashioned or both serve, that bound went higher and farther when the coiling elbow helicoptered to point directly at the ball. But if I wanted the lower bound I previously declared as my goal, I needed to helicopter the elbow a bit PAST the ball.

I also found good utility in one or the other of the old saws to hit the ball on the chin or in the seat of its pants, depending on when one feels more cerebral or more visceral.

The Washington, D.C. Beltway Bandit head-hunter who first taught me to ghostwrite resumes, Richard K. Irish, urged everybody to write them "in moose blood."

Similarly, a serve which is slightly different from everybody else's (including one's own other serves) may at least earn one an interview whether its mechanics are old-fashioned or not.

[bottle]

Back Foot Carve

Use normal serving grip and preparation but cock the wrist with none of the usual "ulna to radius deviation" stuff. Just open wrist toward the sky the way Vic Braden told Richie Ley not to do in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE.

Page 77 of LIFETIME TREASURY OF TESTED TENNIS TIPS by Bill Murphy and Chet Murphy: "Don't Carve Your Serve."

Page 70 of RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS by John M. Barnaby: "Carve Your Service."

My synthesis: Don't ever carve your serve except for the trick shot under development here.

The wrist: Goes from completely bent in one direction to completely bent in the other. Prolonged use of wrist in this way creates desired spin and the "pave-loaded" finish. As an exercise, start from finish and swish this total wrist action in both directions. Take racket up a little at a time, swishing all the while, until final swish is prolonged the whole way from imagined contact to pave-loader finish. The idea is that if the pave-loader's bucket behind you were loaded, the dirt wouldn't fall out.

Sink onto heel of front foot. The rear-footed body whirl is a lesser version of more powerful, shot-put-like serves in which the front foot kicks back. Because of minimized whirl, you don't get hurt even though your foot gets locked flat. For more powerful shot-putter variations, make the front foot go airborne or incur serious injury!

If you believe, reader, in learning through opposites, this experiment will help you know what not to do on most of your serves.

In my basic serving pattern of the moment the palm down racket arm closes most of the way toward its physical limit on the toss-- to a far more squeezed together position than traditional right angle trophy.

I then squeeze a bit more toward needled elbow as I simultaneously coil on rear foot. That won't change in the new shot, but I'll helicopter the needling elbow forward and open wrist toward the sky at the same time also SIM with the leg coil-- a lot to remember at first but easy to do after a few repetitions.

Notes: 1) In a court session, best serves occurred when I pressed out with the arm while pressing down with the shoulders. Was wrist lagged then before the carve began? Yes. The basic concept in all Barnabian elocutions is that nature of spin is determined by which edge of the racket leads off of the ball.

2) Knowledge becomes scary when you feel yourself departing from a set of dependable principles like those of Dennis Ralston for producing slice. Essentially, he wants the body to stay still while the arm does its work. Then around the time of contact, the body chimes in. The serve described here does not work that way. The body whirls and then pulls down. The unique racket work pushes out toward the net before it gets pulled down. And what is the main feature of this motion from the arm? Old-fashioned and slow wrist closure from one extreme position to the other.

3) In modern day serving the wrist cocks (ulna to radius deviation) around the bottom of the drop. In this oldie but goodie the wrist cocks before the two halves of the arm press completely together. And the major emphasis in all of these special rear-footers is in hips pivoting to passively squeeze the arm into closure and pre-load-- that more than a great rise of the body up into the air.

4) The way for arm to press out toward the net, as required for ball to clear the net in this special out wide carved slice version, is full extension from fully coiled arm.

5) Fingers can relax and close to add to the facility of the old-fashioned wrist action about to occur.

6) What happens if, after all this thought and fooling around, one starts hitting a different kind of cannonball and not soft wide slice? Go with it, I would say. The new serve certainly won't behave the same as your others. Satchel Paige had lots of pitches. What's wrong with that?

7) I think that the Ralston model of arm first, body second, is reversed here. I see body rotation being cut short by front leg straightening as it settles down on its heel.

8) In fact, the body whirls as the arm sends racket head straight toward the ball. The body then stops whirling horizontally as the arm, carving, accelerates. The body, however, does continue to whirl, but vertically, adding weight to the ball.

9) Take it easy in getting strings to the ball even though your hips loaded up your shoulder to transform it into a slingshot.

10) Toss ball, arcing, way out front.

11) Just because a very advanced player may generously have taken you to the side one time and told you to keep your elbow back while serving doesn't mean you should have listened to him-- except when you are delivering an elbow-lined-up-with-both-shoulderballs serve.

[bottle]

Simplification

"Simplify, simplify, simplify," said the best American philosopher. That would be Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Some tennis players seem to believe that such advice means "Don't think."

Too simple.

Few tennis players however, whether they admire John McEnroe's forehand or not, would deny that it's stripped down to essentials.

The simplest aspect of it, as far as I am concerned, is that the arm can drop like a paper cutter and just as racket reaches the bottom of its edged fall, the hips fire to transform the shoulder into a slingshot.

This knowledge only slightly modified can then apply to the ATP Style Forehand and other shots.

The best illustration I know of the power inherent in this system is two properly warmed up guys ever so easily throwing a baseball from one end of a football field to the other.

[bottle]

Re # 1720

Hit the pyramid (very close to the net) after two and a half baskets, then went promptly home. Would like to think that these eastern grip serves helped the spin in my other serves. Got closer and closer to the target before I hit it and this encouraged me. The most controlled serves were those in which the arm needled on the toss, and then, as elbow came round toward ball a bit more, the arm opened easily to about a right angle and the rest of the hit proceeded from there.

No, a day later I don't think so. The needled arm came around and the whole serve proceeded from there. Well, the truth was one or the other.

[bottle]

What a nice fresh look for me into the arts scene in another country. Here in the United States, I've always thought that the wrong people invariably receive the NEA grants. I've never known what the E stands for, so I'll call these things National Edification in the Arts awards. And as Mark Ravenhill correctly points out, edification can stultify-- a correctly grim view.

On the other hand my friend Heather, a wonderful poet, pool player and comedienne, suddenly received half a million dollars one day from the MacArthur Genius Awards and without having to fill out forms or do anything other than be Heather. I was greatly encouraged by that, and encouragement is really important, and I thank you for yours.

[stotty]

Austerity and truth

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23557033

[bottle]

A Narrative Of Preparation

Still haven't had time to get to a tennis court, so let's say that the captain of the Rice tennis team five years from now has huge topspin and pace on all of his serves and typically makes 12 clean aces in a two out of three set singles match.

His second serve paralyzes his opponents, especially his short kick in the ad court since he is right-handed.

His best serve is hard slice veering off from deep in the deuce far court.

But he started dreaming of soft, wide, low-bouncing slice, also from deuce to deuce court, during the long third recovery from meniscus repair in his left knee.

That was the time when he first started development of his rear leg serve.

His red-haired Greek girlfriend Julie, a dancer at Rice, advised him never in his life to think of knee replacement and always to play through pain.

Well, today is the day when he will turn his hand clockwise from his normal grip and try with no internal arm rotation other than what he needs to help take strings up to backside of the ball for a slow carve coming down that ends in the pave-loader finish he witnessed in two photographs in an old tennis book.

He has no idea how this experiment will pan out or what serving rhythm it will require and how its rhythm and special mechanics will resemble his other serves or contrast with them.

[bottle]

In actual doubles, this didn't work, despite the promising self-feed solitaire the day before. I may have won a few points with it, but not to my satisfaction, and mostly relied on other serves. Next to try: Reversion away from continental grip back to eastern, the idea being to put the strings flat on the ball without so much twist to do it.

Doing this-- using an eastern grip to serve with occasionally-- is an idea that I'll bet most players never try. I know I almost forgot it. But Charlie Pasarell advocated it in MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES as a temporary measure to restore spin when you return to your accustomed serving grip (probably continental or mild eastern backhand).

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Short Slice Wide

Kick slice wide would be good, too, but I'd love to master the very soft version-- so spectacular but more important, effective. Watch baseball and then tell me that an off-speed pitch mixed with the hard stuff doesn't work.

My old friend Ochi, who grew and maintains a grass court near Princeton, New Jersey, always has people there (I think) of all levels of tennis expertise at play. Ochi has pointed out how few young hotshots have ever bothered to learn wide, soft slice, and even suggests that they don't usually locate their serves particularly well, either.

Why would that be? Not because the soft wide serve is a lousy serve-- it isn't. It's just very hard to learn so well that one can produce it under pressure.

Such mastery of this shot, I believe, would have the same relaxing effect on one's whole game that good dropshots have, i.e., if you're hitting good dropshots, you derive both psychological and physiological benefit.

Okay, soft-wide-low is a great shot, but how does one learn it? 1) Eliminate knee bend and thrust, just get knees comfortably bent and keep them there? 2) Keep head very, very still throughout the coming to the ball stage of the serve. 3) Discover all the other complexities and then over-think them.

Over-thinking technique obtained for me the very best features of my present game, so why shouldn't I continue on the same path? Over-thinking if not overdone of course enables one not to think later.