A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

A New Forehand!

How exciting! And just when I thought I'd done it all. Here from THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE by Chris Lewit are the words on forehand that lured me.

"Having the elbow in (double bend structure-- the note and parentheses here are mine) will make the swing more compact and moderately reduce racquet speed potential. This style is often appropriate for very physically strong, explosive players who can generate a lot of racquet speed with a modest backswing. Less naturally powerful players will benefit more from our style: the straight arm."

The straight arm! After all the debate we've heard here at Tennis Player! And didn't the double-benders win the majority of skirmishes not only since they were more numerous but because they were nastier except for the one straight-arming Carrera Kent (Carrera and not Clark Kent). I hope that everybody will catch my allusion to a broken field halfback in American football.

When a debate is that spirited, there is only one thing to do: Start dropping and hitting balls oneself, then contrast and compare.

This is a good time in life for me to conduct such experiment, a time when I have a probably permanent gimp for a left leg and no wish to replace the knee, and no major tournaments scheduled whether for 72-year-olds or not.

In tennis evolution, a process different from natural anabolism and catabolism, I am probably near the end of my career yet simultaneously am moving toward quicker and more complete unit turns on both sides. One thinks of Vic Braden's old admonition to have the racket back before the oncoming ball crosses the net. Braden put a subsequent pre-loop hold position there. So did Oscar Wegner. So does Chris Lewit. Where the hands are will vary from player to player and isn't worth quibbling about since one must decide for oneself anyway. But I'm tired of unit turn and then a further pointing of left arm toward right fence—that did create big shoulders pivot and smooth sequence but turned out to eat the micro-seconds. It's time to recombine unit turn and pointing with left arm into one all-embracing act that includes tucking left shoulder under one's chin. Wherever hands are, the racket still will connect them. Wherever they are, they're quiet and measuring the oncoming ball and establishing close hand-to-eye during crablike motion of the feet.

This will affect all three of my emergency forehands, not just the proposed addition. These three forehands all are double-bend with elbow staying low and pivoting at one fixed point in the air to form a loop: 1) forward action consisting of body first and then arm, 2) arm first and then body and 3) a reverse action in which forearm never points to more than a perpendicular to the right fence on the backswing, but then whips back and forth to catch up with the forward whirling body somewhat as in a throw or serve.

Here are some of the Lewit-schooled forehands stored here at Tennis Player:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/chris_lewit/building_the_spanish_forehand_exercises/index.html

I’d like particularly to draw attention to Parabola Exercise in which Lia Kiam starts with a high straight arm per the basic forehand model espoused in Lewit’s book. Why am I so interested in this peculiar video over the others shown in the four Tennis Player articles on Lewit forehand? Not just because it’s the main course in Lewit’s book but because in previous experiments in Federfore or imitation Roger Federer forehand I may have developed the neuronal pathway and slightly different musculature needed for a straight arm shot. (A tour technician, Ben Ford, emailed that the musculature was slightly different and I take his word for it.)

So I’m eager to try this, primarily a very quick unit turn combined with a straightening of both arms and dramatic lifting of both elbows. Initial turn takes both elbows way out and tucks shoulder under the chin.

What’s going to happen next, say after you’ve made additional steps toward the ball maintaining your hold position? One possibility is that the elbow could rise higher than the shoulder and then go down in a half moon loop with bottom roughly parallel to court for a flat, driving shot. Another is that the same loop once started could devolve into a big waterfall bringing racket way in toward body so that the tip points down at the court—for heavy topspin drive or moonball or topspin lob or Tom Okker look alike shot only without his continental grip. Inside out swing is the way to go in Lewit’s book. The racket goes way out to right past hitting the ball before returning to the player’s left shoulder, left upper arm or left hip. Lastly, one has the option of scissoring the arm to create added topspin on the left to right upward rise which taken as a whole could amount to as much as 80 degrees.

In any case, looping with a straight arm has to be a huge departure even from what Federer does. The idea is brevity and simplicity, e.g., there won’t be any backward shoulders turn in your delayed loop since you accomplished that already. And there won’t be any change in the arm length—not yet. And the big fall on a topspin forehand definitely adds racket speed the easy way. It’s fun, it’s experiment, it’s the reason some of us play tennis.

Here are the other three TP articles on Lewit or “Spanish” forehand:

http://www.onlinetennisinstruction.com/

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/chris_lewit/building_the_spanish_forehand_racket_speed/index.html

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/chris_lewit/the_spanish_forehand/index.html

[bottle]

Mensch Maier-- Myer or Maier or Mayer, etc.

Sorry if I confused the Florian Maier in the forum here with the Florian Mayer playing Del Potro. From the following ad, the cat on the book cover does not appear to be the same guy:

http://www.onlinetennisinstruction.com/

[bottle]

Rooting Out an Unproductive Idea

Somewhere along the line-- quite early actually-- I formed a mental image that divided toss into two parts: 1) arm up to release and 2) arm up from release. I then hung all kinds of body load on the 2) phase of arm up from release. I allowed the major build-up of double-wind body tension to occur right then.

Better to unify and forget this division. Release of ball then becomes a minor event along the way to the top. Toss can amount to early and smooth establishment of a strong pole of arm pointed up at the sky.

An image jump now from left arm as pole to left hand as pivot point for a WHAM-O sling-shot could help. This is not much of a mental leap since firmness of the pole already was important-- we knew that.

It's time to freeze this action, however, not only for the purpose of keeping left arm up for longer to improve the serve, but to sharpen our discussion of internal rotation vs. external rotation of the body-- confusing since so many people apply the same terminology to motions of the ARM. No, we're talking GROSS BODY MOTION here. And the term "external rotation" applies to a right-hander's clockwise rotation of his hips and shoulders, i.e., to alteration of the frame of the shot. This being the case, why not make most of the backward wind-up a given at set-up before the serve even begins, dialing the hips and shoulders, i.e., the frame, to pretty much where you want them early. There may still be a little external torque required for comfort of throw but why not minimize it especially on a kick serve where we want maximum cocking of a WHAM-O sling-shot (as useful notion) to become paramount.

We're talking rubber band here, not the kind of centrifugating sling-shot that David used on Goliath. But there is still some circular element at work. Does this topic have to be confusing? I don't think so.

One has the suspicion that the more one whirls the frame, the less of a good internal rotation will tend to happen-- remediable through the application of willpower on heavy flat and slice serves maybe.

On Tennis Channel last night, I noted a lot of such internal rotation or scapular retraction slowly taking place in the serve of Juan Del Potro as he played our Florian Mayer, participant in this forum.

The Bollettieri people, to express the idea of such scapular retraction, give us the easy expression, "spread your wings" in their Sonic Serve video. But they neglect to say that the left wingtip is caught in a carnivorous plant on top of a tepui in Guyana or Brazil. Seriously, how is a person supposed to know what to do before this complex idea ever gets expressed to him? Rotation is backward from the pole of the left arm-- that's my point. Then firing legs chime in a last bit of spread to complete the dynamic loading of the sling-shot. The theory of kinetic chain, which refers only to rotations around the body median, becomes increasingly irrelevant at least to a second serve. To tell the novice to keep a firm left arm and a firm left side is good advice but simply doesn't explain enough.

On first serves the frame rotates clockwise and counter-clockwise, too, most often, but on a kicker I can't-- right now-- see a good reason to do this.

[bottle]

The Budapest Open: And You Think American Tennis Has Problems

The most boring match of the year was between E. Vesnina of Russia and M. Erakovic of New Zealand.

This occurred in the semifinals of The Budapest Open, which was held in the Romai Tennis Academy on the Pest bank of the Danube River.

How do I know questions of location without having lived in Budapest very often? Well, the Domai Academy is near Temesvari and Kossuth Streets, and that means Pest.

Temesvari was a good tennis player. Kossuth was a great politician, diplomat and speech-maker. The word "Romai" can distantly allude to the time that Hungary was the eastern end of the Roman Empire-- the reason there are Roman artifacts out in the hills.

The courts throughout Hungary are most often locally dug red clay, which after preparation is extremely abrasive as was demonstrated when Vesnina fell on her left knee.

"Fortune favors the brave, and we've certainly seen that today," the lone Tennis Channel announcer intoned, but all the excitement was manufactured by him, as the two women traded deep groundies and seldom if ever came to net. The bigger problem was that The Academy seats were almost empty, so there was little applause for anything.

So strange-- this phenomenon of tennis "interest" and how it varies from country to country. In the road to the French Open tournaments, attendance in Estoril, Portugal and other places not automatically thought of as tennis strongholds has been very good.

Poor Budapest. It's a huge and extremely beautiful city offering thousands of things to do. Unfortunately, going to a tennis match does not now seem to be one of them.

When I lived there 14 years ago, I wandered out to the red clay courts on Margaret Island and was fascinated by them. Here was the place where Budapest held its international competition and yet there was one groundskeeper only and the clay almost looked as if weeds (or maybe flowers) were about to grow in it or maybe already had.

The whole island is a garden spot, so it's too bad the tournament had to move to The Tennis Academy. Perhaps tennis interest is cyclical everywhere and after a while returns.

[bottle]

Sampras and "Christine" in PHANTOM in Grosse Pointe, Michigan

Millions of tennis fans cannot forget the following incident and another out on the court both of which demonstrated Pete Sampras' courage, humanness, sensitivity, toughness and resilience.

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

Something similar and equally amazing occurred last night during the extravagant final performance of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in Grosse Pointe, a community which pooled its resources to build one great theater for two big high schools.

South High School's PHANTOM created a huge buzz with people in the lobby stating afterwards that what they'd just seen was five times better than the professional productions they also had seen.

Sometimes a deeper theater speaks through us all. Christine, the opera singer at the center of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, was down in the Stygian mists beneath the opera house singing her penultimate duet with the phantom when she threw up.

Hope, my partner, immediately whispered that the throwing up was real. She had to tell me because the incident was so appropriate to the action that I couldn't tell the difference between theater and life as we know it.

Christine was conflicted between love for her vapid fiance and love for the autocratic "angel of music." Why not puke? It was the perfect response. And the actress, I won't name her, missed three or four notes but then sang her way-- beautifully which was no small feat-- right to the end and the bows and final acclaim.

[bottle]

Okay. But I like the fallback method that Lewit offers. It seems generous to the vast number of tennis players in the world. Me, I'll do the one that works best, which might be different on different days. And as for beauty, I'll seek it in women. (Just kidding. Lewit as a matter of fact considers himself an artist and is the constant champion of the most beautiful shot being the most effective one.)

I do remember from my rowing days however that the most beautiful crew wasn't always the fastest one, as on the day we beat Cornell.

[stotty]

The drop shot

Like any tennis player, I thought I knew everything about everything, but then I read Chris Lewit's exposition on the drop-shot in his book THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE.

This is not information in requirement of three-year matriculation into one's nerves, but rather is something one can take to a match just an hour after the read. I did this and hit far more drop-shot winners than usual.

"Hit the back of the ball and then the bottom of the ball." This is the principle I learned and then almost suffered with for the rest of my life.

"Keep the racquet face angle on backswing, forward swing, contact, and finish very similar," Lewit writes of both forehand and backhand drop-shots, "to avoid excessive wrist movement."

He adds, "I remember Agassi's drop shot: very funky and wristy technique. But he almost always hit it effectively, especially off the backhand side. Does that mean we should copy his style? Of course not. Should we then conclude that technique doesn't matter at all? Of course not. Less gifted players need the advantage of having good, clean fundamentals."

If constant pitch drop-shots are superior for me, as I now have demonstrated to myself, how about constant pitch full backhand slice?

I spent a lot of time studying the backhand slice of Ken Rosewall and Steffi Graf, deciding that there is a lot of tumbling roll in Steffi and some arm roll in Ken despite the vast difference in overall structure.

Eventually, I chose the Steffi model as easier for me. The most difficult part is remembering to drop the front shoulder on the backswing.

This shot can really sizzle and therefore is extremely seductive. The new drop-shot information however could be a wake-up call to try full backhand slice with constant pitch the same way-- at least to check it out.

Not keen on Lewit's method for a drop shot...too mechanical and ugly for me. It's the way the talentless do it. I prefer those players with the ability to feel and caress the ball, those who "get maximum connection by prolonged contact".

So few players have a beautiful forehand drop shot...Nastase and McEnroe spring to mind who did it exceptionally well. It's much harder to weight the ball with underspin off the forehand side...far easier on the backhand.

[bottle]

Maximum Connection Tennis

Whoops, I just took a shower. That means a new idea. The last one-- trying constant pitch full backhand slice-- was a good one. If that sounds self-serving to someone, I demur. Everybody has ideas all the time. They're a dime a dozen as my friend the late novelist Nancy Hale used to say. But everybody should ask, especially American tennis players, "Is my flow of new ideas sufficient to my needs? Am I being creative enough?"

The thing is, even a lousy idea can lead to another one that is better. If one starts with Lewit-type drop-shots which are constant pitch, and moves from that to constant pitch full backhand slice, the next question may be, "Should I swing a bent arm and straighten it from triceps just before contact without interrupting the overall arm motion?" Or "Should I let forward hips turn straighten the arm passively first and then swing it?"

The ball will not behave the same in the two cases, I believe, although I haven't run the experiment yet.

By "maximum connection tennis" I don't mean prolonged contact, certainly a good idea in itself, but rather maximum mental connection often from one kind of stroke to another.

[bottle]

Constant Pitch Drop-shots and Tumble-down Slice

Like any tennis player, I thought I knew everything about everything, but then I read Chris Lewit's exposition on the drop-shot in his book THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE.

This is not information in requirement of three-year matriculation into one's nerves, but rather is something one can take to a match just an hour after the read. I did this and hit far more drop-shot winners than usual.

"Hit the back of the ball and then the bottom of the ball." This is the principle I learned and then almost suffered with for the rest of my life.

"Keep the racquet face angle on backswing, forward swing, contact, and finish very similar," Lewit writes of both forehand and backhand drop-shots, "to avoid excessive wrist movement."

He adds, "I remember Agassi's drop shot: very funky and wristy technique. But he almost always hit it effectively, especially off the backhand side. Does that mean we should copy his style? Of course not. Should we then conclude that technique doesn't matter at all? Of course not. Less gifted players need the advantage of having good, clean fundamentals."

If constant pitch drop-shots are superior for me, as I now have demonstrated to myself, how about constant pitch full backhand slice?

I spent a lot of time studying the backhand slice of Ken Rosewall and Steffi Graf, deciding that there is a lot of tumbling roll in Steffi and some arm roll in Ken despite the vast difference in overall structure.

Eventually, I chose the Steffi model as easier for me. The most difficult part is remembering to drop the front shoulder on the backswing.

This shot can really sizzle and therefore is extremely seductive. The new drop-shot information however could be a wake-up call to try full backhand slice with constant pitch the same way-- at least to check it out.

[bottle]

Extremely Imaginative Work in High Backhand and Long Throw

I give a link to where this is happening:

http://tpatennis.net/

Although, in time, the content of the link will change, the new content will be equally good.

[bottle]

The Tennis Serve and Public Speaking: A Comparison

You wouldn't want to be over-prepared, right? Or under-prepared?

Anyway, here once again is the best service video ever made. Its only flaw is that it calls itself a spoof. (Please note that the word "Its" in the previous sentence does not contain an apostrophe, which will come as a shock to most tennis players.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is53xJBJlYA

Believe me-- and I can't repeat this enough-- this video is no spoof. I can certify that the portrayed incident occurred to me at a public park in Winston-Salem NC.

The stranger who urged me to hit a grackle with my toss soon after underwent a series of tennis injuries, and, observing his pain, I failed to be my usual sympathetic self.

Soon afterward I incurred tennis injury of my own, so beware, respected reader, of drawing too much moral from this or any story.

[bottle]

To "Bottle" as a Verb

One thinks of vineyards and soft drink plants, or in my case The Apple House just off of Route 66 in Linden, Virginia, where Mitch, a tennis player, would add carbonation to cider. There was a show room/gift shop and outlying shacks and vats and pipes and heating coils and trademark fragrant smells and trucks for distribution and a restaurant where a Hungarian woman would come in sometime to help put my marriage into even worse shape.

http://www.theapplehouse.net/

This was all complicated-- many would later say unnecessarily so. And out on the doubles court Mitch would drive the ball at his opponents' feet, his preferred target. This would never change. Nor would his strokes. Or in real life his marriage and relationship to his kids, I would presume.

Mitch was an advanced intermediate who could beat the ancient warrior Bill Mathias of Winchester in singles half of the time, the other half being when Bill's drop-shot from behind the baseline was in tune. This shot won the national 65 and older championships for Bill on both grass and clay, and made him the singles champion of Guyana many decades before Jim Jones brought his Koolaid to that country. Bill's reward was an exhibition match with the world's number one player Fred Perry visiting South America just then. The contest wasn't exactly enjoyable since Fred Perry was perry, perry good.

It sounds as if I'm name-dropping here: Correct. I'm getting around to meeting Pete Seeger this past Saturday as a small incident at Risi Saunder's funeral in St. Philips Highland Church and on Saunders' farm in Garrison, New York. Before I get to that, however, I wish to reassert my central belief about tennis, viz., that tennis technique is NOT peripheral to the game, that of course it's just a part of it, but that a clever person like Fred Perry can become world champion if yes he gets himself in shape and has the best attitude, rituals, game psychology and strings and Marlene Dietrich for his girlfriend and a good night's sleep and all the other stuff that tennis people write and think about too much.

I can read Allen Fox or Jim Loehr on the subject of mental and emotional preparation for tennis all day long and never get one tenth as intrigued as when Allen Fox illuminates some fine point of tennis technique or Pancho Segura's personality.

So-- I free-associate from Pancho Segura to Pete Seeger because Montaigne says, that, when writing an essay, one can start anywhere since all things are related to each other. In Detroit, the kids are apt not to know Pete Seeger, only Bob Seger. But there, in Garrison, was Pete Seeger standing in front of me next to a beaver pond on lawn where he and my oldest friend Sandy Saunders, son of the wonderful and beautiful Risi (don't let me talk about the time I danced with her when I was seven years old), started the original fundraising for the Clearwater, the "educational" Dutch sloop that tacks up and down the Hudson River.

https://www.google.com/images?q=The%20Clearwater&biw=1920&bih=1111&sei=8PCfT-fMOIiG8QS3qpWVAQ

I don't really want to mention all the times I've mowed that lawn of Risi Saunders either but do want to mention Pete Seeger's back since he allowed that he recently slipped a disc. Fortunately, the pain had more than 90 per cent dissipated since he started drinking lots of water.

I have frequent discussions about sciatica with the people here in Michigan but no one has ever advised drinking more water. That solution would be simple thanks to the proximity of the Great Lakes.

I think that the world champion in table tennis could become the world champion in outdoor tennis if he could just figure out how to apply one to the other. (That would be Fred Perry.) Bill Mathias could become the 65's U.S. champion on both clay and grass if he figured out how to put his drop-shot in perfect tune exactly when desired. These men, as I've suggested, knew one another and cared about technique. They knew the virtue of perfect focus.

Much like the Pete Seeger song, "Bring 'em home, bring 'em home."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4-w2FYIJbw

The Bruce Springsteen version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yApAg0hl490

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxjqM4y5f4

[bottle]

Victoria is Free But Her Forehand is Not

Vica is entirely free to resume her winning ways, unencumbered by the recent ugly capture of her forehand by an international consortium of electronic ne'er-do-wells.

Understand this, reader: Victoria has her forehand even though I have it too. The experiments I shall conduct in my suite of underground laboratories will in no way affect Victoria's play. I shall not take responsibility for her record on the Women's Tour. Nor do I seek vica-rious credit for her future success.

My first step shall be to subject the captured forehand to 2000 grams of calcium chloride mixed with three liters of catch basin rain water.

Next, I'll hit a bunch of lobs. Why should I close my racket on the backswing by lifting my elbow any more just because Vic Braden taught that method long ago when playing here in Michigan for Kalamazoo?

Chris Lewit wants us to close the racket face late rather than early, and I usually tend to side with Chris even though I don't like the title of his book (THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE, VOLUME ONE).

So, if I'm going to close the racket late, then I'm going to open it early as I perform the "bip bip bip" of Post # 1118 successively hitting towering lobs.

But, are these lobs rising high enough? Power train may be strengthened through the addition of a new flourish to all methods previously discussed -- extend arm somewhat during the loop and then clench it somewhat during or perhaps even after hippy phase ("scissoring," one cynical tennis wag termed this phenomenon).

It's a pretty big order-- all this melding of mondo and late elbow turning up-- but when was tennis technique ever an easy subject?

We certainly don't want to kill Victoria's forehand with too much calcium chloride, and we trust the discipline of "bip bip bip" to keep us from doing that.

No pain, no gain, and so we plunge ahead with this more liberated version of something known already to be good.

[bottle]

The Body Straightening in # 1118

Try straightening the legs without changing body angle. See how much the racket rises.

Try straightening the upper body without using the legs. How much does the racket rise?

Try the forearm wave. How much?

The elbow push-lift. How much?

Add them all together for maximum topspin. Subtract something, possibly the wave, for slightly less spin but more penetration.

Etc.

Note: Once you've been an oarsman or an oarswoman, you know a rowing stroke when you see it.

[bottle]

Lassooing Azarenka's Forehand

And bringing it over here where I can look at it better and use it.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin/showthread.php?t=2062

I'm thinking of three elbow freeze points blended (chunked) into a single progression. During the learning, one can simply say (or THINK if one is quieter than Azarenka, "Bip bip bip.")

First bip is raising the elbow. Second bip is bringing the elbow back. Third bip is lowering the elbow. The three bips, soon to be forgotten, are to be taken together right now to form an easy, relaxed loop even though the beginning of it has been delayed on purpose to allow time for a distinct, post unit turn measuring of the ball.

Note how Victoria keeps her hips away from the ball. That will lower hand a bit. And how, the loop completed, the hips

1) drive the hand while legs and upper body straighten.

2) mondo the racket, which applies reverse action and produces lower positioning of strings without ruining alignment of hand.

As hip drive completes, the shoulders and arm take over, i.e., Victoria creams the ball by simultaneously

1) Firing the transverse stomach muscles.

2) Pushing open a cellar door with her elbow. One could shrink wrap arm a little or leave it in its precisely established bent position: Result in either case: It pushes up as well as forward.

3) Adds a hand wave from the forearm to magnify the upwardness of this scrape. One can hit shots both with and without this wave, which people like to call a wiper. The trick when waving is to lift the frame vertically without pushing it out of whack through turning the elbow.

P.S. If you do need to turn the elbow-- to close the strings some special amount-- do this before, during Victoria's hippy stage. The lateness of this will preserve disguise (idea from Chris Lewit).