A New Year's Serve

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Chunking a First Serve Another Way

Two different I's might lead to wholesale change: Idealism and Injury.

But all change after a while is cyclical return to something one did before.

The idea of learning something right the first time when one is a kid is a hoot designed to make very doctrinaire people feel good.

I mean, if the kid got everything right at the outset, it could only be due to the extreme brilliance of his coach or grandpop-- right? And this can be the story for the kid's entire tennis life: Grandpop's old-fashioned design. Or did the kid just have darling genes? In any case, the best kids are for the most part and for whatever reason destined to a tennis lifetime of tinkering with their serve.

It's no big deal then to adjust to physical change or new idea. Been doing that all along. Besides, old men shouldn't jump up in the air. Replace the yump and twanging bow with a couple of screw jacks-- get more out of the gut. And slowly screw the body over instead of violently contracting every muscle along the front edge.

Source for new/old concept: eight sequential drawings of J. Donald Budge serving in THE GAME OF SINGLES IN TENNIS by Talbert and Old.

Not the greatest of serves but not the worst either. And what I want for a first serve in doubles right now. My second serve is bouncing too slowly and getting clobbered on typical hard courts that are "more abrasive" in the words of the other don_budge, who used to work for the first Don Budge.

Scanner's as busted as my legs or you'd see the drawings. Of course by telling it instead I get to choose my own emphasis.

Feet start flat. Racket gravity-drops and flies up. Front heel goes up only to come down again as part of minimal forward rotation of the hips. "left foot pivots only slightly throughout."

The toss is TWO FEET in front of the baseline! (Exclamation point from chess notation.) The shoulders wind back as the hips screw forward (flattening the foot as I already said).

Okay, there's one screw. But I always want another screw. So, as shoulders and scapula (slingshot) release, the head will be slightly screwing or slow-cartwheeling straight ahead toward the net, and this will add weight to the shot. Why wouldn't it when the cart is heavy and oaken and drawn by mules.

As front heel went slowly down the back heel started to rise. Isn't that always the way?

But the big old slow cartwheel is just going to keep the back heel rising-- up, up even though front foot has been flat for some time. Stationed front foot imparts more elastic energy to the gut.

Toss is not only forward but out to right. Although contact then obviously is out to right as well, the racket's going to whip even farther to the right of that, and then return level and parallel to court around to left side.

"The left arm serves as a good counterbalance. Snap wrist forward, pointing the racket head toward the receiving court, shifting your weight to the left foot, which pivots only slightly throughout. Thereupon the right foot is pulled naturally forward, bringing the body back to anticipatory position."

Re not aggravating sproinged front leg: You absolutely will not lower front heel with destructive or any kind of substantial force. The front heel comes easily down to start the mule or oxen driven "big wheel." Front foot stays solid to fully activate the gut. Minimal extension of legs should have been sufficient to stretch the scapula a little bit more.

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Plan

Indoor tennis begins tonight. Intermediate tango began last night. Deadheading roses occurred earlier in the day. My gimpy left leg and sciaticized right leg both plan to survive these indignities and more.

So how does this specific evening look? Well, I hope to arrive early and find the Asian kid with the big forehand. Think I'll call him Formosan for now until I finally retain his name and get informed better.

Then when the social doubles begins, I'll tend to my own needs and not criticize my partner no matter how bad or good. One querulous lady who hasn't smiled since 1980 has the loot to purchase an endless string of lessons but has yet to turn her shoulders for any stroke. Another, more corpulent, is much higher ranked because she hits the crap out of the ball. She doesn't move any better than I do-- now-- and she never heard of spin in her life. A hit-or-miss miss. (Well, I didn't use the more appropriate word "bitch.") It's her arrogance that most offends, but just shut up, bottle, your instructional days are over. Shut up and avoid politics of every kind and play-- the chips and chops will fall where they may.

Also, don't eat too much. And forget most of the new ideas unless you discover out there that some of them have worked down into the nerves. Except for the new forehand idea since I've got to have fun! With such a low expectation I probably will.

The new forehand idea (# 1280): build scapular retention in more forward position for the subsequent slingshot. Hit more Federfores than Ferrerfores.

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One Unit with Tension Building on Still Arm

I like to pursue and marshal any design ideas before I take them to court, always keeping the pun in "court."

Then I try whatever I've proposed for better or worse. If relaxed, extending arm wins out over ghost arm wrestle (with both described in # 1279) I'll apply a totally new idea, viz., that, in a Federfore, any time one relaxes too much in solid middle portion of the stroke, the shoulder housing is going to retreat/retract in response to the shoulders whirling forward.

This could be good if more arm speed through the ball were the goal since the arm would try to catch up. But could be bad if outfront contact point with perfect friction on the ball is the goal.

One wants to do something (anything!) to enhance the scapular adduction (slingshot) so intimately related to string speed upward.

One can apply enough forward pressure to arm (that's scapular adduction too but can build before release) so that straight arm doesn't move independently in any direction but remains fixed on the imaginary line through both shoulders during middle portion of the stroke.

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Not Too Much Scapular Retraction

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Inside_In&stroke=RFFHInsideInRear6_500fps.mp4

But yes, there is scapular adduction (slingshot) right after late flip just before contact.

Extreme scapular retraction would load slingshot, that's true, but the man knows how to accomplish all necessary loading in a more forward arm position.

Is there pre-loading then? When the two hands draw apart, the right from the left?

Is there arm wrestle in the right arm-- a ghost arm trying to spring forward even as the real arm draws back? Or is everything relaxed with no tension at all? Careful here. Reader, are you sure?

I'd put the pin from the sixth green at Lochmoor Country Club here in Detroit across his back just so that everybody (but especially I) could see how his shoulders line and his straight arm are the same line in the middle portion of the forward stroke.

I've never been to Lochmoor but don_budge is rumored to have taught tennis there before he moved to Sweden and married a Swede and lived way out in the woods and helped breed horses and taught both tennis and golf.

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I agree, and I have a friend who partnered with him (when M was 15) and speaks extremely well of him. My belief is that he's much kinder to amateurs every day than he was to referees, has respect for anybody who is serious about his or her tennis. And I'm sure he has great perceptions that would help any of us. That's a good point about him not repeating himself-- I just hadn't thought about it, but come to think of it...it's remarkable.

It's definitely true that right from the beginning he's been a thousand times better than Dick Enberg, who at one time had become a duck-billed platitude but has improved with age.

I just think that M experiences more air time than is good for anybody. True criticism starts, I think, with the critic loving or liking something. Which provides the touchstone for his remarks even if the touchstone itself never gets expressed. And I've heard M be very incisive, which makes me very aware how he can do it. More simply, he shouldn't be wasted for limitless hours of filling time.

He's extremely funny-- like Luke Jensen-- but brevity is the soul of wit. I'd just like to see him at his very best perceptive and funny self all the time-- an impossible wish, perhaps. The thing we don't want to do is turn a great resource like him into a disc jockey, a guy just spinning the matches. Don't get me wrong-- he's good company. I think the producers need to marshal his intensity a little better, though.

[stotty]

Mac

Think John McEnroe as a tennis announcer. He's very good but suffers from overexposure. Remember how so many of us, including John McEnroe, came to resent Dick Enberg although we think he's fine by now? We simply heard and watched too much Dick Enberg over a period of years, maybe decades.

The great thing about McEnroe is he doesn't repeat himself. His commentaries are always original. He really is an expert and can fill up airtime with observations he's never made before. I don't think you can easily get fed up with McEnroe. He is as good a commentator as he was a tennis player.

I really like McEnroe. He's intelligent and has evolved significantly since his brat years...unlike Borg who remains the same man he was when he was 22. Some of us evolve and some of us remain eternally the same...or so it seems.

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Tadalafil Dad

The same Grosse Pointe physician who tipped me off that the tennis personality Luke Jensen was in town sent me once an unsolicited e-mail that was out of the blue and on a subject we never discussed.

With no announcement or pre-amble, this stalwart seniors player presented me with a supposedly Canadian pharmaceutical check list complete with electronic shopping cart.

The well-organized items, with price, included Cialis, Viagra and Levitra.

The physician and seniors enthusiast, with no evidence, seemed to understand something about me-- something that was correct.

When I tried to order, however, the electronic shopping cart didn't work.

So I tried to go to my own physician, a very nice woman, and asked her assistant for a prescription which the doctor was glad to write out.

They wired the prescription to my druggist, another gentle and very nice human being, who came out of the back room where he works most and asked whether I realized how exorbitantly expensive the little container was going to be.

"How much?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Go ahead."

"About $800 ."

Canceling the order, I went online and began to learn about the corrupt "dysfunction" trade in America, so much more extensive and central to our society than young persons in their physical prime can even imagine.

This term "dysfunction" was among the many things that disgusted me.

What is unnatural about reduced blood flow when you get old?

Mark Twain of the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, clearly waiting for the discovery of tadalafil, railed against an old age in which women are sexually fine but men aren't. And Michel de Montaigne in the sixteenth century felt exactly the same.

Embarrassment of course is what keeps people from discussing this topic. The same embarrassment enables a flourishing and utterly corrupt trade in which placebos or maybe rat poison are easier to order than the real thing. If I had my way, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would be forced to give their best proposal for correcting this blight.

Again I went online and began to read all the horror stories of people cheated when seeking reasonable price on the three mentioned drugs and very many others.

People reviled Canada, India, the Caribbean, and any place other than the United States that would send out the little pills. You wouldn't know what you got, they asserted.

Finally, I took the plunge into an electronic shopping cart that worked-- this time.

The business may have been in Canada. The very polite reply to my e-mail warned that my package might be delayed in Customs.

The thirty 10 mg pills were a bit over $3 apiece.

Postage had been criminally high, about $45 .

In the meantime I'd visited my physician and talked to her personally this time, telling her how I went online and printed out a free trial coupon for a couple of 20 mg pills of Cialis.

The same pharmacist wouldn't give me more pills of smaller potency since 20 mg was what my lady doctor prescribed. And the first one worked almost too well but gave me a dangerous headache. About 5 mg was perfect, but I had to learn this by experiment because of no transparency anywhere.

My doctor explained to me that to save money her other patients cut a pill into little bits.

My pills arrived from FLORIDA!!!

They weren't Cialis at all but rather tadalafil, its ingredient, and work fine. I bisect each one with a pill cutter.

That comes to about $1.60 per pill not counting "postage." I thank the tadalafil dad in Grosse Pointe and everyone else who helped.

Note: On the back of each container of 10 pills, in print too small to read except with special magnification and even then the reading is dicey, are the apparent words: "Industrial State, Gujarat, BARODA." Further magnification of the fine print revealed the word "hadad," which I took as "ha dad." Anyone who would disparage the quality of honesty in India should consider the number of people in that place.

[bottle]

Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot

Suppose that a tennis player decided to read every Agatha Christie mystery about the fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

I'm not about to do this despite all the tennis in those novels. I don't even watch very often on TV the BBC version that stars David Suchet, the British actor who is so excellent with or without a mustache.

All the episodes are good but just too many were made, I guess.

Think John McEnroe as a tennis announcer. He's very good but suffers from overexposure. Remember how so many of us, including John McEnroe, came to resent Dick Enberg although we think he's fine by now? We simply heard and watched too much Dick Enberg over a period of years, maybe decades.

Just once in a while I like to read some Agatha Christie-- anything by Agatha Christie-- simply to experience her vision of pure evil and extreme human nastiness.

I haven't met many tennis players that bad. One kid went to jail for jewel theft but that was the extent of it. I could beat him indoors but not outdoors, where he brought along a hooting gang to watch our unchaperoned singles match in the city/town tennis championships.

I guess this was karmic reprise of the time in chess when I was playing the behind-the-walls school superintendent at Massachusetts Correctional Institute, Norfolk, and a bunch of triple-lifers gathered around the board and started chanting, "N-O-R-F-O-L-K, Norfolk!"

Bad, good or in between, whatever a person is, detective work is required for him to figure out his best tennis strokes.

Mystery novels then have more true relevance to tennis than we thought.

Face it, the bad person is a detective, too. Had to figure how not to be caught, right?

In this sense he represents an early draft of the complete crime and its ultimate solution.

The tennis players I best know are stuck on the first draft. And I would be a worse player (some would say an "even worse" player) if I hadn't decided to include both scapular adduction and scapular retraction in the forward hips portion of my one-handed topspin backhand.

[bottle]

No Need to Stop and Bail Out

I'm not ready to bail out on learning progressions that have taken my serve this far. But what does the nutty expression "bail out" really mean? A small pram but not a baby carriage with a foot of water in the bottom. Momentum has ceased. One sprang a leak sometime back. Either that or water washed in over a gunwale, the transom or the bow. A plastic milk carton with a good handle and the bottom cut off usually will save your life.

For people with gimpy legs and a lot of others, too: Keep your feet flat, knees bent. Develop gravity drop and figure eights. Use opposite hand to hold your hitting elbow stationary in front of you and whip the racket back and forth, full cycle six or seven times.

Time to serve. Take racket back with knees. Keep er going with shoulders. You could send front hip toward net now but don't. Save that to help with a great drop.

One can see improved drop using a weighted racket and watching oneself in a big mirror.

To repeat: Start racket back with knees. Keep er going with shoulders from gut. After weight reverses for the toss, send hips toward net as they rotate forward! (The exclamation point is from chess notation.)

As hips rotate slightly forward while bending toward net, you keep er going.

"Keep er going" refers to shoulders still winding back.

[bottle]

Putting Posts # 1257 and 1271 Together

Because Federer can lay his wrist back farther than most people who want to swing somewhat like him, they must take different measures to strike best edge or facet of ball-- which is available to anyone.

Re-adjustment of racket setting in middle of the backswing is the way to go. Do we all agree on what "backswing" is however? And do we all agree that this often delayed move is characterized by its smoothness and singleness even though it's broken into two parts: A) lift of the racket head but not the racket handle and B) extension of the arm from bent to straight in a direction dictated by the elbow hinge.

In the most practical YouTube video ever on short angle, post # 1257, "Applying Tom Avery Spin Lesson to One's Full Federfore," I found an ingredient which for good reason Tom does not discuss although he certainly demonstrates it--straight bowl from the shoulder ball opening up the racket. Tom has to do that so that he won't egg the ball and add sidespin virus and lose control. There is good sidespin, it turns out, and there is bad. The bad is the tennis cousin of smothered slice in golf. (The drive may go thirty yards or cross three fairways.)

Tom succeeds in finding proper edge of ball since the swing and grip he uses closes racket face at the outset. And when an eastern grip player watches a lot of Federer videos he's likely to be surprised at how much Federer does, while using a 3.5 eastern, still manage to get his racket closed.

So this novice with eastern grip racks his brain to close his racket more in some equally effective way (he hopes) when maybe he ought to open the strings a bit.

To do this, how about fiddling more with setting halfway through the backswing? I find that if I topple the racket tip over an inch or two more I get the basic result I want.

That is a solid core action that feels like swinging a bamboo pole threaded behind you or in front of you.

Solid swing in the middle characterizes a Roger Federer forehand, and solid swing in the middle characterizes a Federfore, too.

Solid swing goes right to and through the final scapular adduction or slingshot that helps take the loosely held with light medium pressure racket so effectively UP the ball.

[bottle]

If You, If You (Volleys)

You heard me correctly. One word is worth a thousand pictures. If you choke up on the handle, you'll hit better volleys. If you open the strings during contact the volleys may improve.

Depends on the way you open. By twisting the racket? Or by sending it ahead from your shoulder? Or either at different times? Which method is better for you on this 15-30 point right now?

Am I trying to mess with your volley? Of course. I enjoy being a troublemaker.

If you send the racket ahead of you while it's going down, the strings will open. If you send the racket ahead of you while it's going up you'll open them even more, probably too much. How then to compensate?

Well, on a backhand volley, one could be straightening one's arm at the same time. Straightening the arm always closes the racket face. And if it's opening and closing at the same time perhaps one will arrive at the perfect amount.

Same thing on a forehand volley but done a different way. Suppose that the racket is going away from you and up at the same time, but you prefer always to volley with a bent arm on forehand side if you can.

What else could diminish the opening at contact? There's more than one answer. Think I'll go with rotating the shoulder through contact. If I call the shoulder "body," then the racket isn't going away from the body quite as much.

But everybody knows, you argue, that the racket is supposed to descend slightly on every volley. But everybody doesn't know that, it turns out, e.g., Billie Jean King, one of the best volleyers ever to live, advised the readers of one of her books to keep their volleys level.

Peter Burwash, the Canadian, would start out beginner volleying students in Peter Burwash International with butterfly nets.

Just think about how that emphasizes the catching aspect of a volley. What will taking one's oldest racket and replacing the hitting strings with some kind of netting lead to? High to low volleys? Well, maybe sometimes but...

I distinctly heard Luke Jensen tell the women of Grosse Pointe, Michigan to make their volley stroke go upward. And when he himself did the difficult exercise that he ordered (a chip service return in the alley followed by a killer volley to the exact same place), I assume that his volley stroke went upward. And when he and his twin brother Murph won the French Open Championship, I assume that their volley strokes went up.

Just to forget you for an instant, esteemed reader, will these strange volley notions help my net game? Probably not. I'll probably be better off volleying the way I always do whatever that is and will revert to it as soon as possible.

But how do I know I won't be better off the other way? And what's so bad about opening up new possibilities? How can an honest person ever predict a sure non-result?

[bottle]

I think you're right. I can't see any either.

But a recreational player sure could change pitch and direction in a last instant hurry by adding a little.

[bottle]

Fall in a Federfore?

Is there any fall in a Federfore (Featherfore in English and Featherfoot in Barnyard)?

This seems a simple question in a world in which all questions are said to be good.

If one posed it at the annual meeting of cutting edge teaching professionals held at Flushing Meadows, however, one might get flushed right out of the room.

"What are your credentials for such a question, John?" one of the friendly peers might ask.

Your name might be Ebenezer or Gertrude or Mark Papas but the response could be the same.

Suppose however there were an Einstein in the group, a Szilard or Nils Bohr, known to have come to the rescue of the young Richard P. Feynman in the Center for Advanced Studies at Princeton? And he quickly taught the others through example to view your question with respect?

First there would be a defining of terms. "Just what is a Federfore?" "An imitation Roger Federer forehand." "And what do you mean by fall?" "Well, not Autumn." "He's talking about gravity then." "Yes, gravity that occurs right after an early flip and before one's scapular adduction-- maybe only one inch!"

At that point a twenty minute discussion of adduction, addiction, abduction and seduction would begin.

Let's pull up any forehand by Roger Federer and decide for ourselves.

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

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

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_wide/rf_fh_wide.html?RFFHWideOpenStanceRear2.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_wide/rf_fh_wide.html?RFFHWideOpenStanceCourtLevelRear1.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideOutArmActionSide1_500fps.mp4

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionFront_250fps.mp4

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]

Results for # 1267

. Maximum hop of the ball came with knees and hips initiating the backward turn. Tried but rejected backward shoulders-hips sequence.

. Backward hips to shoulders ratio: 20--80 per cent.

. Decided not to initiate forward turn with hips. The forward hips and shoulders turns should be simultaneous as far as I'm concerned, as of this morning. (Note: I'll change this idea by afternoon in this same post. The rotations will be simultaneous but in opposite directions at least in one sense).

. Move head toward net as part of the forward action but do it slowly. Imagine that this small tract of cartwheel is activated by and is in tandem with "horizontal" rotation of the shoulders. Thus one speed determines the other and is exactly the same-- an idea from drive belts and equal size drive pulleys in car mechanics. Swing both elbows in sync with this weird, altering arc of the shoulders. One of the Brian Gordon animations shows a colored barrel rotating first horizontally then more vertically. This experiment here may or may not challenge that sequence or any sequence. But chest is open to sky even as head slides toward net.

. The head stays still, i.e., is the hub of the swing but not in a fixed and slavish way. The head rather moves forward as already indicated. The shoulders rotate around the head until they finally take the head with them.

. Archer's bow has been restored. The hips go out at the most natural feeling part of backward body turn. Release of bow is not a twang but a dream release in slow motion. Abruptness is saved for the simultaneous slingshots of gut and scapula.

. Chest remains open to the sky through brush of the ball.

NOTE from another John Escher voice later in the same day: "Sounds like two different speeds of forward rotation to me." So why can't hips keep fighting the gut as both turn slowly forward? Another way of saying this is that shoulders don't just wind back during the backswing but keep winding during the 20 per cent forward hips turn even though this contradicts my third bullet point up above. Added bonus: It's easier to drop racket into a scabbard parallel with right edge of the body when that edge is winding TOWARD the drop.

[bottle]

Quick Start Applied to One Hander Topspin Backhands

We all know the wonderful advantages of the Quick Start tennis program in the United States.

Softer balls that a dog can pull through the walls of a tennis basket, softer kids and parents who are softer in the head, nurturing mentors of the type that get the kids hopping around on one foot pretending to be a flamingo.

It's all great but hasn't produced instant results the way it's supposed to. The 2012 U.S. Open finalists were a Brit and a Serb.

So let's rush ahead and steal Quick Start for our one hander topspin backhands while we wait for the American finalists to appear.

Apply both scapular adduction and scapular retraction to the hips turn part of the forward stroke.

New questions immediately emerge.

Does scapular retraction then continue through the rest of the stroke? Along with shoulder ball rotation of the extending or extended (barred) arm? Very possible.

For years, in web posts such as this one, although I have repeatedly posed the question of when one should best apply scapular retraction, I have received no reply from the same persons who will answer any other question.

Perhaps I have my answer? We'll see.