A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Water Wheel

The water wheel image worked well in self-feed.
Will see if it works in competition tonight.
Much will depend on a good warmup hit with
another player if I can find him or her before the
round-robin begins.

The modern forehands I've examined mostly come
from square or beveled racket in the preparation.
This need not preclude coming to the ball with an
open face. But one does recall tennis writer John
M. Barnaby's prototypical description of someone
with many strokes most of which are in disrepair.

Before I eliminate something however I want to try
open face and closed face in the same set just for
the sake of expanding my knowledge. The initial hand
move for both is not much different. For open face the two
elbows rise to same level. For closed face the hitting
elbow rises higher than the other yet maintains constant
distance between both within same imaginary hoop.

It is one thing to react to what happens on a tennis court,
quite another to react or over or under react to some
conceptual image that may form some new and possibly
very exciting stroke design.

The higher elbow forms more fullness of water wheel,
it seems to me, with rounded fall on back of wheel along
with rounded rise that occurs on front of the wheel.

Such knowledge has immediate implication for essential
arm work on a one hand backhand as well.

[bottle]

Open Face One Hand Topspin Backhand

Well, it's open while behind the back. J. Donald Budge's worked that way.
So did Gene Mayer's. Ivan Lendl's did not.

As I watch or re-watch Doug King's many videos on one hand backhand
I realize I've been getting away from a certain sensory instruction and
plan now to return to it.

That is the idea of scraping inner edge of racket down the upper part
of one's opposite arm.

Then: Straightening of arm to separate hands and put racket out to
side with tip very low.

Then: Roll of arm to square racket as body squares too.

Then: Force both ends of racket with arm and handle right-angled
to rise as if on front of a water wheel.

One truly gets to feel the heel of the hand pulling on the butt rim
just before the squaring begins. That should help.

[bottle]

Oh What a Night

A lot came together, not least the acquisition of three different
first grade doubles partners. The tennis social was unexpectedly
small but with unexpectedly good participants all the way around.
Didn't lose and in the last round, against tiptop players in the
club prevailed 6-3 .

My partner, a research scientist at BASF injection molding, was
somebody I had never met. He served first, then asked me which
side I wanted to play. "Judging only from your serve," I said, "I
give you the backhand side."

Afterwards, during the social part of the tennis social, he offered
me a beer. And later, when I was about to go home, he came
by again and said "Amazing. Just amazing." These things happen,
I tell you, if you persist in your madness whatever it is.

Can't say the topspin backhand was what kept us in there, with me
having at least 30 years on the next oldest. But the forehands did
give our opponents trouble, both forehands and both opponents, and
so did my serve although it was nothing like my partner's.

When he served, I stood tight in to the net on the singles line. Didn't
want to get killed from behind.

Tennis is so much about whether one feels good. I hadn't felt that
good in a long, long time. Guess I'd better learn the dude's name.

[bottle]

Big Change on Serve

Brought over the distinctive toss from the Doug King service videos
but not ALL the rest of Doug's recommendations. Or maybe they
were there, at work, whether I knew it or not. As Doug himself says
in one of those videos, you cannot possibly nor should you try to
think of everything at once.

What I did do to prepare for my pay-off night (one in a thousand)
was arrive early in search of a good hitting partner. He wasn't
yet there and all the hard courts were occupied by USTA. So
went back to the clay courts where nobody could see me and
self-fed forehands, backhands and serves.

On serve, I went farther away from J. Donald Budge videos and
back to rocking like Don Brosseau with a maximum use of gravity.
Why though, I asked myself, do you have to lower both hands
together? Just keep left hand up and bring it around with hip
rotation while left arm is still bent. At same time the racket
can be going down and up. The toss with ice cream cone
hold can be with bent arm. The ball is just there when you
are there ready to paste it or scrape it or whatever. Drove
all six pretty good opponents thoroughly nuts.

Will I ever change again? I hope not.

[bottle]

To Explore: How Racket Should Best Fall from High
and Narrow Forehand Spot

A spot? Yes, a spot in the air. High? Yes, high through
early and stacked separation of bent arms. Narrow? Yes,
because classical big impact swing at ball from behind has
been eliminated.

If one can accept all that, one will be in position to ask how
racket should fall in this particular waterwheel-imaged forehand.

The question pertains to elbow position in the higher spot. Elbow
now points more inward.

So if one presses one's palm straight down like a basketball
dribble, elbow point won't affect this drop.

If the fall is a bit more passive than that, nothing but gravity will
take the racket down so that it spirals in and out.

Those are two alternatives leading to a third, which is a curved
path that stays parallel to side fence.

The third alternative creates an earlier waterwheel. All three
are apt to produce different effects on the ball.

[bottle]

Reading Between the Lines

I can tell that don_budge doesn't like the idea of delayed bod
in the forehand ground stroke. He is a kinetic chain constitutionalist
in that he wants to see hips turn starting in neutral step-out followed
by shoulders rotation followed by springing arm.

That model can lead to good forehands. But it's not the only possible
model. I first became aware of big bod delayed rotation in reading
Valerie Ziegenfuss's forehand section in the old book TENNIS FOR
WOMEN. There, the lace-wearing Valerie, now a Real Estate mogul
in San Diego, told about a tennis conversation she had in a Texas bar.

Some guy convinced her to give her forehand more place to go by delaying
her bod. She subsequently won the bronze doubles medal with Peaches Barkowicz
of Hamtramck, Michigan in Mexico City.

I see some of this design thought in the TennisOne/TennisPlayer lessons
of Doug King. Doug preaches short power. The racket kind of sneaks
up on the ball (very much from underneath) and then adds on to the
incipient spin a big bod push.

Ivan Lendl, a golfer-tennis player like Petr Korda or Ellsworth Vines, drew
distinction between full golf swing and full forehand-- in the book he co-wrote
with the late Eugene Scott.

Without going into the detail of what Ivan said, I just think that we as tennis
players should always be alive to forehand prescriptions that sort of
catch-and-sling the ball rather than crush it with control-draining huge
swatted impact.

Also, I think that kinetic chain may work best as a concentrate as in a
Muhammad Ali jab. Protracted kinetic chain may or may not work-- a
bit iffy in my case. But a faster kinetic chain does seem to work pretty
much all of the time, i.e., leads to more consistency.

[bottle]

1HBH: Zeroing in on Squaring up

1) tennisone.com

2) Doug King

3) Finding Zero-- Backhand

4) Zeroing in on Squaring up.

[bottle]

TSFH: Pursuing the Possible Aeronautical Banking
and Power Cord Difference

In aeronautical banking, the hitting shoulder sinks then
rises as one hits the ball to give the arm some added push.

In power pocket to power cord application, the middle of
the bod springs forward thus giving arm some added push.

Which method is going to leave a player in better balance?

Is there any reason, whatever it might be, that one method
is better than the other?

And how does each method co-exist with straightening of
whole body from foot up?

To me, if such straightening occurs, the two methods are
one and the same.

If body is lower and more loosey-goosey, however, the different
body parts may wag in opposite direction thus indicating an
area for further exploration.

[bottle]

Speed but not Force in the Way Racket Comes to the Ball

Explore this notion in groundies before applying it to the
other strokes.

[bottle]

Powerpocket

1) tennisone.com

2) Doug King: Keys to Modern Tennis Technique

3) Topspin Forehand

4) Slow Motion Analysis

Initial turn finds hands above rather than below elbows.

The body then continues back and rear shoulder dips
as racket falls.

Continuation of bod rotation creates the top of a wave
but then the wave goes down as arm goes down
independently too.

Moreover, the racket butt changed from orientation toward
rear fence to 45 degrees to right fence.

Racket is upward at crest of wave.

Racket disappears.

Hips shift out to ball in drop.

"Elbow tucked into the hips."

[bottle]

The Wish to be Different in Tennis

You want to be different when you write a resume for yourself, no?
Similarly, you'd like to sound original if you write an essay or anything
else. Because you are in competition. And if you do not stand out,
you will be buried. No one will want to read you. Your document
may lie at the bottom of a wastebasket, not even at the top. ("Write
your resume in moose blood," my late mentor Richard K. Irish used
to say. He was the author of the Anchor Book good seller GO HIRE
YOURSELF AN EMPLOYER.)

You are not going for presentation however when you hit a forehand,
which is more like doing the job. While I cannot imagine a forehand
much better looking than that of Doug King, a man who believes in
dance and twenty other spheres of knowledge when it comes to tennis
for himself and his successful students, Doug's forehand-- in every
minute detail or kata-- may not be exactly right for the arthritic me
at 76 (and 77 next month).

Edit, urges another guru, John M. Barnaby, tennis coach of Tim Gallway
and everybody else at Harvard University for fifty years.

If in other words you can subtract some kata from your forehand, do so.
How many moving parts do you want?

So, I've written here about forehands in which I try to employ most of
Doug's principles and imagery but won't come open-faced to the ball.
If I continue with the briefly open-faced route I may find superior result
in time, but at 77...?

Proposed forehand starts with the inverted hoop of the two hands stacked
one above the other. The hoop inverts from ready position to the stack.
The hands both don't stay on the racket but rather separate from volleyball
to small beachball width. The opposite hand turns body as if still on racket
or your dance partner's back by retaining severe bend at elbow and circling
sharply around. (Let's call this a controlled whirl.)

From its closed position even parallel to court, the racket drops rather close
to the bod. It may start slowly from gravity but then proceed with pressing
down. It may fall all the way in a straight line or curve-- either one. I have
eliminated my previously explored in and out falling options. Simple up and
down is enough to handle. The racket mondoes at bottom of the drop in
transition to both ends of the racket moving together.

Followed by wipe home.

A last question: Does originality translate into points? Answer: Surely by
confusing people especially cookie-cutter dullards.

[bottle]

Exciting Evolution (and I am up Early in the Morning)

Okay okay, reader, the evolution of my forehand is exciting
to me and not to you, but on the other hand we both want
good forehands, no?

I started out this time with three different forehands along with
my McEnrueful, and managed to exclude one of them yesterday,
the one where from high perch on a narrow wave I let the point
of my elbow determine the initial direction of a spiraling fall that
took the racket briefly out of the slot before returning to said slot
with accelerative vengeance preparatory to blocking movement
of both ends of my racket moving together followed by windshield
wipe home.

This sounds good on paper, is good on paper, is one of the essential
sequences outlined by Ray and Becky Brown back in the pre-TennisPlayer
days when John Yandell was editor of TennisOne just as he is again.

While the full stroke works well in self-feed, it doesn't work as well as
two others in actual competition at least for me.

And now I'm wondering if I can't eliminate one of the two others so that
my two big forehands, McEnrueful and Simple Curved Fall, both
characterized by Doug King's "dynamic wobble," will take sole possession
of any dynamic concentration left over in my 77-year-old soul.

The choice is between racket pressing straight down and racket curving
straight down roughly parallel to side fence in both cases.

Probably I will save straight down for return of very fast serves and other
emergencies, but would love to make curve down my default of all
forehands.

Evolution from breaking wave in the Pacific or Atlantic oceans to 19th century
Connecticut water wheel turning in opposite direction is its main characteristic.

The curved drop of arm, shockingly deep, is lengthened even more by hips
easing toward ball to lower hitting shoulder at the same time thus making
racket seem to disappear.

As the buckets on the front of the water wheel start to rise, relaxed
contact with the ball is made just as all major muscle groups chime in.

The McEnrueful on the other hand is saved for special events when sheer
speed with little spin is desired.

[bottle]

From Waterwheel Forehands to Refined 1HBH Racket Drop

Some of my discovered strokes have converted nicely to doubles
competition. And these waterwheel forehands are the smoothest
forehands I've ever hit in my life at least in self-feed. So will they
come across? I think so. May take a few weeks since we are about
to go on a possibly disrupting trip although I'll bring one racket.

Now, on backhand side, I'd like to look for similar improvement. First
experiment will be not to turn racket as it drops-- that would be logical
simplification. But logic often doesn't work in tennis-- we know that.
Sometimes however it does work and this again may be one of those
times.

I fully accept Doug King's teaching premise that racket should not rise
immediately-- better that it start out to the side first to keep various
athletic elements together as dancer's one.

So I want to feel hand out toward left fence to lead my forward travel
at least partially in that direction.

The hand can lead toward side fence, the racket tip doesn't have
to do it.

Grip change to the right-hander's left can therefore put a tail on itself
in which racket butt turns a bit toward side fence.

Now racket tip can slide into one's bod without turning so much.

[bottle]

What's your Best Shot? Would you Ever Consider Changing it?

I would. I'd need a reason-- perhaps the thought that the change would
make my whole game more cohesive.

Of course the notion that I could always reverse the change would stay
at the back of my mind, although going back is harder than getting some
new shot right in the first place.

But if I had Andy Roddick's serve-- perhaps the best example of teenaged
invention in world history-- I guess I wouldn't change it.

Dispassionately speaking, my best shot according to my opponents is my
backhand slice.

At least one version of this bag of shots consists of a double roll.

The change I made yesterday-- in self-feed-- was to put more time,
i.e., distance, between the first and second rolls, in a one hand topspin
backhand.

It seems to work. So should I apply it to backhand slice as well? Why not?
Isn't tennis supposed to be a game?

[bottle]

TAKING SPEED OFF THE BALL

We in rowing (crew) know there is more than one way to roll the forearm. I refer to the term "feather," which occurs at the beginning and end of every stroke.

Let's go for immediate application to tennis. In most volleys one takes speed off the ball, in a few adds speed to it.

The taking off involves two elements: 1) strings open, 2) tip goes back.

You can accomplish both objectives at once by rolling hand from pinkie edge.

This would be a disaster in crew. The oar would sky. When you brought it back down it would plunge. You would "catch a crab." Eight big guys plus the momentum of the boat would work against you. The handle would catch you in the gut and throw you into the water where most likely you would drown.

On a volley however rolling from edge of the hand can both open strings and take the racket tip slightly back.