A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

THE DOUBLE-ENDERS VS. THE WIPER-GRIPERS

The wipers wipe the ball. And gripe because of unforced errors.

The Double-Enders wipe too, but only after the ball is gone. The thing they do is put a
big push on the ball using both ends of the racket plus kinetic chain and aeronautical
banking and variations of Alexandrian Technique (more upper bod less lower bod or vice-
versa, more staying on the ground, more leaping into the air without fully extending legs,
etc., etc.) with all of this whatever coming together at contact.

[bottle]

A Wonkish Question about Straight Up Ground Stroke Topspin

Extending body seems pretty longitudinal in effect. Body turns seem naturally to pull racket to inside similar to hacker's slice in golf. Until one learns to push hips in such a way as to create inside out path. Then one catches more of the ball.

This whole process could occur on outer edge instead of rear edge of ball. I theorize that one can then "pinch" the ball for more of everything while maintaining inside out stroke path ("stroke path" not "swing path"-- an important difference).

Would not straight up topspin be abetted by a slight lead of hand ahead of racket tip before double-ending takes over?

In evolutionary terms O so personal I now invoke that term "double-ending," something I once used in my ground strokes, then didn't, now do again.

I invoke the following images as well: A volleyball, a beach ball, a medicine ball, a 19th century waterwheel or 20th century Ferriss Wheel, a Tai Chi pose in which left hand encircles and activates the trunk while right hand rises high, inverting palm down.

"Volleyball" is the distance between the two hands while both are on racket (occurs in wait position only-- separation will be immediate).

"Beachball" is the distance between the two hands once they have separated and stacked themselves so that strings are parallel to surface of the court.

"Medicine ball" is the larger arc that now will be formed by arm lowering from shoulder combined with lowering of the shoulder itself.

But I am beginning to get bored with all of these visionary balls other than a tennis ball, so I shift image here to waterwheel or Ferriss Wheel or perhaps a circular pave-digger only seen at rare construction sites with cruel buckets cutting and scooping shards of pavement and dumping them overhead into a trailing bin.

The feel of a big and super-comfortable backward turning wheel is enabled only, in my view, by straight off adoption of the earlier described Tai Chi pose that inverted one's strings to form a roof.

Now the racket on the perimeter of the great wheel one has created can go down as smoothly as one would like.

Yes gravity is involved but racket descends on a curved path. This is a loop to beat all loops and a perfect example of speed without force.

The force comes late at contact where it belongs.

Pace and spin both depend on double-ending arm push combined with rotation and straightening of the bod.

[bottle]

Backhand on the Road

Easier to find someone to hit with than do self-feed since my basket of balls is back in Michigan.

Still I'd like to complete my backhand revelation, which I simply may not have taken far enough.

If one continues backward arm roll out to the side at end of one's flying grip change, one can find
oneself with thumb pointing down very soon in the overall stroke cycle.

This will reduce arc within the working cave one has established for oneself out to the side. For
timing purpose, to compensate, one may wish to have taken racket up higher.

These changes will drain racket momentum and help make racket "disappear" as rear shoulder and
arm both drop down.

The racket having twisted under won't have to twist under any more.

Will this imagined transformation prove as beneficial as completion of the waterwheel image was
on forehand side?

I can't know but am eager to find out.

[bottle]

Deck Stacked Against One Or Good Stacked Hands?

The 12-year-old I'm hitting with won't be off from school until next week.
I hope we can go up to our very fast bumpy court on top of a mountain a lot.
He: a natural athlete with mucho tennis lessons behind him, I: a basically
self-taught wonk continuously reworking strokes, playing Gallway's hated
"perfecto," something I really love despite what any best-selling author
might think.

This week, with me too preoccupied with other stuff to dig up another
hitting partner, I'm over-filling my hopper of self-invention, will ultimately
have far too much material in it for proper assimilation.

I don't care. My method is to plunge ahead. On serve I'm now about to
stack hands the way I do on the new forehand. The big difference will
be left hand higher than right rather than vice-versa.

A toss from such a high position ought to be interesting. And if this
doesn't work I'll return to something earlier.

[bottle]

Waterwheel Backhand

It had to come. This was inevitable. Besides, it is raining. Days have passed
since I made it to a tennis court.

The early plunging racket tip melds into a second plunge of arm, shoulder and
racket tip beneath left pocket toward the center of the earth.

Here begins one's waterwheel, a lower beginning place than image for one's
waterwheel forehand, but none of this should interfere with continuity.

As on the forehand, the backhand waterwheel is set on an axle that spins it
slightly to the outside.

One only then needs to zero in on all the various motions that square the racket
up. Double-ending will occur from the ball without conscious effort if one simply
adopts the hitting arm kata established in that exercise where you bend over clasping
opposite hips with whole body then to spring both hands up.

See where hitting arm comes to rest? Higher and closer than you thought-- no?

The arm meanwhile has rolled to create upward speed just before contact. The
wrist has straightened a smidge, too. That was one small factor in the squaring
up, no?

[Guest]

10splayers' Grammar

Many 10splayers have atrocious grammar. Others have very good grammar. A third group of 10splayers is distinctly careless in their use of grammar but perhaps can compensate with a German, Latvian or Uruguayan accent which animates their every utterance.

The subject is important since verbal transmission of ideas is the most potent means of tennis instruction there is. When you come right down to it, words combined with imagery are more potent than photos or videos taken alone. But first hand physical demonstration and verbal description are a wash-- pretty even in value in other words.

I saw a master class instructor for the New York City Ballet simultaneously perform both means for the same dance steps.

As an English teacher (and a suprising number of senior tennis players are or were English teachers, I have discovered), I am most interested in the third group of 10splayers, the ones who either intentionally or carelessly are careless.

They didn't grow up in ungrammatical homes. But they struggled in freshman English ending up with red ink all over their college essays.

But sometimes, just sometimes, all they need is some curmudgeon to scream at them and maybe only once.

When I was teaching community college extension building composition in Winston-Salem between visits to Davis Cup, I found that lack of a curmudgeon in some student's background was her greatest complaint.

Someone in fifth or eighth grade never bothered with sufficient vehemence to tell her or him what not to do.

If you are the teacher you have to have a high expectation and be strict. Same thing in tennis instruction, no? The student/player may thank you or kill you, but if they got better they were lucky one way or the other and will enjoy the next win.

An alternate might be to work for a small town newspaper that assigns by-lines the first day.

John Pekkanen, the reporter next to me, was throughly ungrammatical the first day, perfectly grammatical by the fourth day. Because he didn't want to be shamed by his front page stories as he walked through the streets of Middletown, Connecticut.

Later, for WASHINGTONIAN MAGAZINE and elsewhere, he won two National Journalism Awards, one for creating "Washington's best doctors," "Detroit's best doctors," etc.; the other for first hand description of all the medical efforts made to save Ronald Reagan's life after Reagan was shot.
John wrote from first-hand observation in the emergency room.

If this post is longer than anyone wants to read, I apologize. Recently however I criticized what I felt were three grammatical errors in five consecutive words written by the real tennis pro who calls himself 10splayer.

Two were inarguable mistakes. The third-- whether to put a closings quote mark outside a period or not-- is optional but with clear modern American custom the dictator.

Doesn't matter if 10splayer likes me, my tennis or my writing or not. (Not, he has expressly stipulated.)

That "not" is fine, but if 10splayer's grammar has recently improved (and it has) through change of an attitude that was the only thing wrong with it, he lucked out.

[10splayer]

And I am eternally grateful for your guidance.

[bottle]

And I am eternally grateful for your guidance.

Nice careful sentence. But you did it. Just like the incredible topspin angle you hit last week. I had nothing to do with either. Was you, all you.

[Guest]

Nice careful sentence. But you did it. Just like the incredible topspin angle you hit last week. I had nothing to do with either. Was you, all you.

You make me want to be a better man.

[don_budge]

And...which is more...

You make me want to be a better man.

You are a good man. You impress me with your control. We can all be better men. There's always room for improvement. Here...read this. I am sure you will agree with me.

If...Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:


If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And— which is more— you’'ll be a Man, my son!



Punctuation, pronunciation, grammar...mere words. Manliness...quite another thing.

[don_budge]

The Better Man...Pearl Jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbpUfWz-rlc

[bottle]

O WHAT A MAN, WHAT A MAN WHAT A VERY FINE MAN

I like the fact that cute little Freddie Bartholomew, stuck forever in the movie version of Rudyard Kipling's famous tale of becoming a man-- CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS-- does become a manly man as he pantomimes the size of a fish on the long drive from Gloucester, Massachusetts back to Manhattan, with his buddy poor Manuel, played by Spencer Tracy, having had the legs crushed out from under him by a falling mast. Freddie's rich parents listen with attention totally foreign to them, grateful for boyish enthusiasm that was never there in Freddie before. They listen but do they, can they even comprehend? Maybe 2 per cent. Freddie's father, played by Frederick March, is destined lifetime to remain a short attention rich guy with a silver spoon in his mouth just the way the infant Freddie was before. But, the long chauffeured limousine, relentless, continues to purr its way down the east coast back to Trump Tower.

[bottle]

My Argument Continues for Free-Wheeling Hoop

The subject here: Keeping form in a forehand. To me that means the two hands never get too far away from one another. I know there are forehands where left hand does get far around. Then the two hands come back toward one another like a lobster's pincer claws. Although these forehands may even be good there is no rule saying I have to like them. When it comes to tennis I'd rather be a dancer than a lobster although in fact I am neither.

I have been hitting with a 12-year-old who's had a lot of lessons. He comes from one of the great tennis families of Cleveland. The adults give the children the basics after which they are on their own.

They proceed to be the captain of a college team here, the number one player on a huge university recreational travel team there, the top playing counselor in a tennis camp, etc., etc.

Judging from my 12-year-old friend's game, his forehand came to him from his daddy, and all the counselors, coaches and college kids teaching tennis for the summer never mess with it.

Semi-western grip, immediately gets racket into a waist high table top next to his bod and not far back at all. A bit of hip waggle lowers the strings then and that's it. A good but not great forehand that he becomes too casual with on occasion. You can see a deadly nonchalance creep into his face. But give him an opening and he'll put the ball away almost every time.

I love the elegance of this shot just the way I love the stripped down forehands and backhands of gzhpcu (see the thread called "Teaching with the Eyecoach").

And will experiment to emulate.

While retaining my waterwheel forehand for more mercurial shots, i.e., exhilarating put-a-ways or complete misses.

The grip for this waterwheel has easternized a bit but not much. And the thumb has returned to a wrap. I've written or tried to write about the new double-ending that starts early and continues through contact in this shot.

I have supposed that the closed strings are opening a little as they push and lift the ball.

True but maybe too simple an overall description. Power pocket and hips going out may open the strings before they close to back of ball and fling it.

Note: I write for discovery not for advocacy.

[stotty]

bottle,

I very much like 10splayer's writing. He has a way of hitting the nail on the head despite a few errors here and there.

Where can I read good American journalism? Over here we have The Guardian. Can you recommend a newspaper equally as good over there?

Stotty

[bottle]

bottle,

I very much like 10splayer's writing. He has a way of hitting the nail on the head despite a few errors here and there.

Where can I read good American journalism? Over here we have The Guardian. Can you recommend a newspaper equally as good over there?

Stotty

The New York Times. Whoops. Sorry I said that. Everybody knows the Times is awful by now. The thing the critics miss, however, is the size of the thing. On a given day I'll find four things to detest and four to love. As I said, it's awful.

Recently, I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle. I encountered a phrase I've never seen before: "Make America white again." Pretty good. Pretty right to the point. So maybe that's a good paper though certainly not as good as The Guardian.

The Wall Street Journal is noted for its news writing, especially small stories such as rabid cop bites raccoon in barn. But is equally noted for mental retardation on its editorial page.

When we were in England, Hope's son-in-law from the Rhodesian diaspora got me The Telegraph every day while buying The London Times for himself. He never asked but did that every day. So I never did get to the Guardian, am more apt to see some of it online when I am over here which sadly is too much of the time.

Maybe the best course (no of course it is) is never to view anything or anybody as part of a monolith. Labels suck, in other words. But every statement deserves an exception. We all need to recognize fascists so we can stop them.