A New Year's Serve

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Backhand

YOU know better than to fiddle with YOURS. I'm not only going to fiddle with MINE, I'm going to fiddle with the FIDDLING.

On the theory that Algebra helps English and Basket-Weaving helps Algebra, I'll start with Swimming and Canoe Paddling, but not Kyaking or Rowing. Three Dad Vail championships and two IRA's (Intercollegiate Rowing Association regatta) and two Eastern Sprints and one Olympic Trial plus fifty zillion reunions, commemorations and alumni rows and one plaque on the Hunter Marston boat house (I personally made initial contact with Mr. Marston as a matter of fact), a lot of Sports Information Aggression and two years of coaching say I've done enough Rowing/crew for a while.

In swimming, I'll will the front crawl stroke I want to go out and then back. Recovery and re-entry to be led by the thumb. The best live swimmer I've seen so far short-arms and splashes at the catch. Don't want that. Release to be led by the pinky. On the drive, described distressingly as "adduction" in one electronic document, the hand first goes slower than the body. If it's going sideways (out), of course it will go slower. I'll supinate, goddammit. I'll slowly scissor arm in the long middle sections when hand pries the body forward, everything at one speed. I'll pronate to lead with pinky on the release. And press inward at the same time since if I pressed outward at the beginning I'll do the opposite at the end. And do everything like Ginger Rogers with the left hand, too. Hand speed to exceed body speed at the end. Reps to build automatically, not like tennis where one has to find a drone player, a ball machine or a wall.

In one-hand backhand, flying grip change is the key to overall, significant change. Straighten elbow a bit more on this change. Now hips can counter scapular adduction a bit better. And racket tip will therefore get around faster, i.e., turn farther.

Residual arm straightening and scapular adduction and scapular retraction all will have occurred during the fast hips turn. Isn't economy, some would say elegance, others brute force when it all may be the same, the goal?

[bottle]

To Try on Serve

Address Position: Bent legs with rear knee lower than front knee.

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Rotorded Serving with Leading Hip Thrust Out

Flat feet (B) get racket tip just as low as (A) the flat front foot, rear heel up on toes model we often see.

(A) places more weight on front leg soon.

The (B) option may not look as appetizing to rotorded servers (servers with limited, axle-like twist available to them in their shoulder rotors) whose two legs enjoy equal health, but every avenue should be explored.

[bottle]

Flashlight

I was watching the Tennis Channel spot again where Nick Bollettieri emphasizes "flashlight" in ground strokes. It's good stuff, but Robert Frost emphasized, that, in English expression, there's always a point where metaphor will break down.

The video shows something that maybe the words don't: Butt cap ought to keep moving toward the opponent but it's going to turn a minimal amount, too. In other words, the flashlight will not perfectly illuminate the puss of one's opponent at every single micro-instant.

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Progression Parades

1) The silly backhand just described: Not so silly? Not to be dismissed without sufficient trial? Dropping balls only, I produced easy flat backhand without much spin. For bigger spin did hips then clench (level part of stroke) then lifted the arm all before contact. But kept the circular path that produces coincision. Surprising how quickly the added step of shoulder ball arm swing still brought the racket tip around since it was lifting hard at the same time.

One avenue of possibility here, again taking into account the scapular-shoulder ball sequence: Play with "bird," i.e., that moment when arms go up like wings. Nobody ever said or should have said this had to occur precisely at contact or one and one-half foot before or any other set place.

If one is scapulating from leading edge of back before the arms go up to complete the shoulderblades clench, would not the flying arms then slow the whole body for more shoulder ball acceleration?

2) Short angle. In World Team Tennis broadcast: Luke Jensen after Venus Williams hit an amazingly acute short angle: "Here's a point that a lot of people don't seem to understand. Great players have great shot selection."

Tom Avery in the following video urges us to never remember any more than
two items out on the court. No, just remember the one. Get back knee lower than front knee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_Rch1MOUQ

Get back knee lower than front knee. Oh, sorry, did Tom or I or somebody else already say that? Get back knee lower than front knee.

There, it's been said three times. You're supposed to remember it now. Me, too.

[bottle]

Re-Drawing the Engine Room of a One-Hander Topspin Backhand

What spoils a one-hander topspin backhand is the elbow moving out from the front edge of the body too soon.

One can do "cling" backhands as an exercise to fight this. 1) Straighten arm from hips. 2) While keeping elbow touching front edge of body, clench the shoulderblades together. 3) Swing from shoulder ball to finish stroke. You have to since your clench is all used up.

Now, staying in an office environment, move the racket and arm away from the body a few inches. Don't even think of a swing yet. You're shifting the whole apparatus directly toward side fence. The cling is gone but now you're a Klingon with more leverage, i.e., more radius.

Why couldn't you backswing to this new position? Why couldn't your flying grip change set your elbow there (a few inches out) rather than close to or touching the body?

But I don't want to eliminate the option of an in-close backswing in which the racket then moves out during hips turn and arm straightening to preserve flashlight-- unless this robs time. Will have to find out.

Now that I've started making the distinction between clench swing and shoulder ball swing, I can't see how I ever lived without it.

Either stroke-- cling swing or Klingon swing will work, but the second one should be wider, stronger, looser, funner? Will have to find out.

And the Klingon swing starting position, farther out, opens racket more, which means you have to roll it shut before contact.

Contact point for these extremes of shot is on the same line moving out from body roughly toward the left fence post for a crosscourt shot.

Basic pattern doesn't vary-- inside out. The swing is an arc that briefly coincides with your target line. Coincides with but never crosses it in either direction.

Hips phase of this shot is "arm straightening phase" is "flashlight" phase. Clench phase is the "get the strings around to outer edge of ball phase."

Does this essential alteration-- of keeping elbow back for longer-- bring contact point back, too?

Unquestionably. But, as Ivan Lendl suggested long ago, if contact is too much out front you lose everything-- well, you lose power he said in the book IVAN LENDL'S POWER TENNIS As Told to Eugene Scott.

The revelation here is that shoulder ball swing and scapular swing both produce arcs, but the scapular arc veers more sharply right for a right-handed player.

I hope I don't have to correct this post. In some ways I've been through these ideas a thousand times before; in others, it's all new.

[bottle]

Good points. Such a fast action seems awfully tempting, doesn't it? When you watch Dogopolov serving in slow motion you can almost feel the weight gathering on the feet and the total focus of his action.

I'll bet there are servers who could benefit from going slower and others by going a bit faster without going as fast as Dolgopolov.

I'll bet there are servers caught up too much in every little detail of a protracted serve and quick servers who will never pay enough attention to any detail.

Then there is the Matthew Syed thinking about ten-year "chunking" of an action through repetition so it can get faster and more unified in a very natural way deeply affecting one's nerves and physiology. One would hope that a server going in that direction got the details right at the outset-- but to me that seems doubtful. No one ever gets the details entirely right at the outset or even halfway through their tennis career-- just part of life.

It was interesting to hear Dogopolov after he won Washington (how Querrey and Haas must have hated it) say that he's a total risk-taker and that's how he lives his life and plays his tennis.

Wow, an Evil Knievel! What a high when it works though.

Someone willing to forego neutral shots and consistency? A teaching pro's (his father's?) worst nightmare? Or did the old man contribute to the madness and the two became distant from one another for other reasons?

[stotty]

Dolgopolov

Interesting serve.

EVERYTHING has to be right when executing a serve like this. There is no allowance (or very little) for micro adjustments to be made as with a serve with a higher ball toss. If the timing is out you're in trouble.

Roscoe Tanner is the ultimate exponent of this type of serve...did it perfectly. He had pinpoint timing...the action so quick there was no allowance for micro adjustments in the lead up to the strike.

It must be hard for the returner to pick where the serve is going when playing a big server with a very low toss...easy to get caught out...when one is used to reading servers with higher ball tosses...the brain gets duped into thinking it has a split second longer than it actually has.

[bottle]

Dolgopolov

Accent on second syllable-- no? If I'm wrong please correct me, somebody, since I don't want to call my brother-in-law, the professor of Russian and Czech linguistics just now since he is preparing for classes.

But is the accent different for the Ukraine? I don't think so. Listening to the Washington announcers struggle pathetically with Dolgy's name, putting the accent on third syllable ("po") seems very po indeed.

I asked my brother-in-law once about "Sharapova" and he told me in no uncertain terms that her name is ShaRAPova, accent on the second syllable, and her father is ShaRAP, accent on the second syllable.

But I guess the announcers are hoping to create another viral (and stupid)
if softer name like SharaPOVa. If she changed back now I guess she'd lose her sponsors.

But I'm with Kuznetsova (accent on second syllable) on this one. She asked (quite public it was too) why Americans insist on being so stupid about foreign names. It was the best shot she ever made.

Well, because we insist on being stupid about everything. It's why Mitt and Paul or Mutt and Jeff if they run have a good chance of becoming president and vice-president.

Not that we're the only bad-asses. Think what the Brits did to "Don Quixote," changing what sounds like an h to what sounds like an x.

DO YOUR PART FOR WORLD INTELLIGENCE AND PUT THE ACCENT ON THE SECOND SYLLABLE in Russian (and Ukranian names, too, I guess).

But if she's Hungarian, accent on first syllable would be all right, I guess.

Dolgopolov: Fastest action in the West or East or anywhere.

Down then hip out
Then straight up (no forward element yet!)
Then split

Rear heel up all the time.

Hits ball at peak of toss. It doesn't get to drop. (Well, maybe an inch sometimes.)

Front leg rearranges (all of foot) to put weight on rear foot for an instant.

Knees don't bend until racket is almost all the way up.

The front leg rearranged so knees were pointing in the same direction LONG BEFORE THAT.

Anything else I should or shouldn't notice?

[bottle]

Get them together. Why not?

[bottle]

Georges and Dogopolov Just for Fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6cWqWlj-Jc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8jbOMHZNPE

[bottle]

Language

Suppose you want to change something? If you're at all like me, you always do.

Then language is the best tool a lot of us have, especially if we're feeling light in the wallet and don't want to schedule a learning appointment with somebody a few of whose opinions we suspect anyway.

I like the expression "ue" (ew, gak, as Bridget Jones might say although those words don't correspond exactly to the letters). "ue" seems more visceral to me than "unforced error." And I like Pam Shriver's "decels." She comes from a time when people spoke more about Billie Jean's ideas, foremost of which is that decelerating as you come off of the ball is a fatal error that tennis servers at any level are apt to make.

Are you hitting decels, i.e., decelerating serves? Are you short-arming them? However you serve, the acceleration must climax as your racket leaves the ball.

Coming up with a better kinesthetic cue could be the best thing a coach ever does (other than applying his eyesight to a specific problem).

[bottle]

Neggie Experiment

"Hast broke my head acrost and hast given Sir Toby a bloody coxcomb too."

The previous instruction didn't work, in other words, so abandon the inside out wrist flip-- that's my advice, reader, to you.

[bottle]

Yo, Duckies, Keep Your Duct Tape in Your Pocket

Abduction, seduction, scapular retraction, scapular adduction, scapular reduction, scapulation, revolution-- all these terms belong in the tennis lexicon except for revolution since we all need to belong to the USTA (United States Tennis Association).

Bill Tilden didn't like the USTA but that doesn't mean we can't. And the USTA will be good for getting us tickets to the U.S. Open.

I was in a play at URI (the University of Rhode Island) once-- theater of cruelty called MARAT-SADE, a history play in the time of the nobleman Marat getting murdered in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday in the era of the guillotine.

Just imagine common people coming to take Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, Marie Antoinette, all Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds and every other exceptionalist they could rightly or wrongly identify off in tumbrels-- big haywagons, actually-- off to the guillotine.

The common people in this case however were escapees from an insane asylum and I was one of them. "Marat, we're poor," we sang, "and the poor stay poor. Marat, we don't want to be poor any more. We want the world, and we want it now-- we want our revolution now, NOW, NOW! "

Chanting softly, then gradually louder, finally shouting "REVOLUTION, COPULATION, REVOLUTION, COPULATION!" we would plunge into the audience.

I would go for one young lady identified early, somebody I'd been working on by staring into her eyes for the whole play.

When I was one inch from grabbing her, a prison guard who was a real guard from the URI football team would hit me sideways, knocking me down to end the play.

If this is self-serving in the sense of "I been everywhere, man, I done everything, seen the rising sun, man," even been in plays, I apologize.

The sixteenth century classicist Michel de Montaigne, intellectual forebear of Ralph Waldo Emerson and inventor of the essay, unlike what the example of Emerson may suggest, says that it's perfectly okay to write about yourself so long as you don't do it in a superficial way.

So listen, reader, if scapular retraction combined with inside out wrist flip works on a kick serve, then maybe one should save scapular adduction for one's hardest serves and employ scapular reduction on soft slice out wide.

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Avoiding Scapular Retraction in a BH One-Hander

In most cases, to achieve an effective, inside out swing (see attached drawings), one needs to place arm fulcrum in shoulder ball rather than middle of one's back.

To better understand this, stand up, don't use a racket, just wave a straight arm. See how arm goes in two different directions according to the two different fulcrums? Scapular retraction takes the right-hander's arm more sharply right.

Implications: Swing easy to put shoulder ball to work? To swing hard from same court position, hold scapula in (consciously at first?) To hit a sharp, powerful backhand from way out wide, do use scapular retraction the way you might on a backhand slam? Use shoulder ball when stepping straight toward net?

The straight lines are toward the target. The X indicates crossing of the ball, which might be good on some slices but not on this driven shot.