A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Review of the Forehand Troops

We have in our forehand army a combination of toughened veterans and wet-behind-the-ears neophytes. Either group is apt to turn tail and run. But we would prefer that they turn tail while hitting forehands-- the thing we pay them for.

We start with the Ellie-bam regiment. In this shot, so simple and pared down, smoothness equates with power. One fourth of the energy of the other regimental shots is required to get it off.

The second regiment, of Federfores, uses from initial turn a big breaststroke same as the third regiment's Agi-scissor. Left arm does more work than the right arm in the same breaststroke of both shots.

The main difference is Roger, our model, sets up farther to the side and keeps his arm straight once he's got it straight-- straight until returning to his left vaccination mark (if he was vaccinated).

Agi on the other hand bends her left arm in tandem with bending her right arm on her way to the ball while pivoting and transferring weight early. She does this for skater's effect, i.e., accelerative whirl. The third regiment uses her as its model of accuracy.

That leaves the fourth known as the "see-see regiment," administers of acute topspin angle good from deuce court only. The see-see soldiers have again been trained on the model of Agnieszka Radwanska, only do not transfer weight with their pivot of their butt. Instead, the see-sees transfer weight in tandem with bending arm swing only while hips are kept in rigid abeyance, square and parallel to the right fence. Only when weight is safely ensconced on front foot is the pivot permitted to release. Racket, still being pushed around by pressing elbow though in a new direction by now is permitted to close a bit to end of the follow through.

To battle-- excelsior!

[bottle]

Footwork

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PMAc0MRto0

[bottle]

Integrated or Separate Toss and Wind?

Today I try to think through separate toss and wind only. I'm careful to preserve the iterative quality of what I recently have been doing. There is a narrative from day to day and even from week to week.

Right arm goes up first. Second arm will go up second. Only when left arm is pointing at sky will hips rotate back. Followed in rapid sequence by shoulders rotating back, at which point total movement reverses direction.

There can and ought to be rhythm in the way the two arms go up in close sequence. Tomorrow in actual play I also will try a few of these serves without backward hips turn, just shoulders turn from the gut. A more turned around stance might help in this.

[bottle]

Staggered Arm Rise but Integrated with Coil this Time

Other people know better than you what you should write about. Maybe and maybe not.

Staggered arm rise is the big new development here. Right arm starts but isn't all the way up when left arm carrying the ball chimes in. The two arms might end by going up together for all I know. The bigger goal is rolling, roiling motion for itself.

If the previous experiment in separating toss from coil drained too much time from backward rotation of the shoulders, here is solution.

Start hips backward with staggered rise of the arms or with rise of tossing arm only.

That buys time for shoulders to do their thing.

[bottle]

Crime

Not looking for small items in the Ellsworth Vines forehand would be a crime. Bud Collins for instance had it (the Ellie-bam) confused with the Beasley-bam. Starting from there, one can see that all available information on Vines isn't very good.

And yet the shot is considered one of the most powerful in the history of tennis. And many people still want to hit flat at least a certain portion of their time. So why should this great shot be excluded from their consideration?

I see uniqueness in Vines' use of his left arm. It points neither straight toward the net or straight at the right fence but precisely in between. And his forearm remains parallel to where it just was. Am talking about two joints going from extension to contraction with late pivot of the bod carrying this transition out.

Thus one element usually associated with opposite hand movement has been eliminated-- the "smoothing of the waters" of Okker, Federer or Radwanska.

Is that subtraction "personal characteristic," the usual accusation of a tennis snob when a hacker tries to imitate a pro? I don't think so. It is removal of one unnecessary moving "part," i.e., sound engineering.

And creates an interesting X in the way that the two arms sequentially point.
__________________________________________________ ________________

Thus spaketh John Escher, which is my real name. But then again Bottle is my real name, too. (John Bottle, the captain of my eight-oared crew used to call me.) And then Bottle went out to play.

The slight change in left arm dynamics utterly removed a whole shot, one of my favorites, from my forehand repertoire at least for a whole morning. Was concept bad then? Was Vines' use of left hand bad for my use of left hand? Did I look at enough clips of Vines hitting forehands to discover variations-- if there are variations-- in Vines' use of his left hand? Is the new idea worth taking through a round or more of self-feed before trying it again in play? Probably. The thought of simplification of left hand tempts and compels.

But the real lesson here is that doing something different with one's left hand can break or make a whole stroke.

[bottle]

Self-feed Session-- Apply to One's own New Shots

Hit one basket of Ellie-bams. Hit one basket of Agi-scissors in opposite direction.

The Ellie-bam X that the two arms sequentially form is a tall X if that makes sense. Made the final transition from chop preparation (very good among other possibilities for a forehand drop shot) to a pencil-thin loop similar to what Ellsworth Vines uses in the old clips.

The Agi-scissor did not receive any changes today (not when it worked in actual play yesterday). But the see-see variation of it requires a different follow through than that used by Agi in all the TV and clip forehands of hers that I've seen especially in the present TennisPlayer Radwanska thread.

Also hit a few serves. Made one change after watching own shadow. Hitting arm starts up toward side fence, then tossing arm surpasses it. Racket does not reach apogee (high point) until somewhere in the middle of all the sideways travel across the back.

But, I am a rotorded server meaning namely that I suffer from restriction of humeral rotation in a backward direction. I therefore need more looseness of total motion in my serve and think the change of today may bring it.

Note: In the interest of focus have placed all Federfores on temporary hold. See my forehands as animals in need of slow training. And all, even if they were veteran shots before, are new shots now thanks to different movement of left or opposite hand in each case.

Am not yet ready for 1-to-1 alternation of Ellie-bams and Agi-scissors because of their different weight transfers. Am thinking of both self-feed and rallying with a very good hitting partner. The 1-to-1 alternation of the two different weight transfers is coming soon.

[bottle]

"Loop behind the back is insufficient."

Try this. It's different from anything heard anyplace else-- a clunk and then the loop or "teardrop."

"Touch the back with the racquet during the swing; during the loop, hold the racquet with the thumb and forefinger only."

From TENNIS: TECHNIQUE. TACTICS. TRAINING. PLAY TO WIN THE CZECH WAY. By Dr. Jindrich Holm, Prague 1982 .

Many other sources invoke the thumb and forefinger trick but not in this precise context.

Or am I just reading something in a certain way? Did Dr. Hohm mean, after translation by Peter Klavora in Toronto, for a rotorded server to use the thumb and forefinger trick to clunk the back? Or to employ the trick, as I think, AFTER the clunk?

Regardless of interpretation, any serious and seriously rotorded server should run both of these clunking experiments.

[bottle]

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

No one knows anything about the Ellie-bam other than that it was flat and that at its very best it ended the point every time that Ellsworth Vines hit it.

So there is the belief that fuels this present quest to fuse great accuracy, consistency and speed.

Proposal: Continue in today's self-feed to work with a pencil-thin loop.

But alter the loop away from verticality more toward platter-like horizontality ignoring the red line appearing under these words in one's computer.

Platter-like horizontality was the significant factor in the brief success of my Beasley-bam, a shot that never really failed other than that I no longer hit it.

The Ellie-bam, shorter, employs the same principles. Make sure that one of those principles has you setting up a bit farther from the ball, today.

Aim for inside of ball. Finish on outside of ball. Make clean contact on back of ball.

This all sounds like a strong catch or "pinch" to the outside, doesn't it?

And this is just one experiment. So don't get too excited or despondent over the result.

Note to self: Compare in video the separation points of Federer and Radwanska. By "separation point" I mean the point where the two hands diverge, the "smoothing of the waters" at the beginning of their topspin forehands.

Another note on Ellie-bam: The proposed alteration to pencil-thin loop puts emphasis on keeping racket tip above wrist. Also, at time this re-configured loop takes place, the bent left arm, which helped in body turn, is straightening and doing so faster than the hitting arm is straightening. In a sense then the right hand is starting an end run around the left hand while both are shifting in the same rough direction. One thinks, or at least I do, of a single wing formation play around the end in American football. I was, briefly, a defensive end against the single wing and survived-- that's why I think of this.

[bottle]

Does Bottle Think too Much about Strokes and not Enough about Footwork?

Probably. Sorry, but that's where my interest is.

If you go to post # 3692, however, and click on the video, you will see the footwork and other work of Suzanne Farrell. If you then hold on and watch the next video that comes up, it will probably be of a young Suzanne Farrell dancing with the young Mark Morris, a dancer whom Tim Mayotte specifically discusses in his current series on tennis footwork.

[bottle]

Are Marnee Morris and Mark Morris the same Morris?

They look a lot alike to me, but on the other hand the man dancing with Suzanne Farrell in Concerto Barocco-- 1966 appears farther on than 10-years-old, especially when he throws her above his head.

[bottle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqXjzTxrKME

There is very little in this interview that does not relate to tennis and everything else. But the part about Bottom the cat just relates to me.

[bottle]

Self-feeding the Way Dennis Ralston Teaches it

Your hitting partner hits from opposite side of the net. You catch the ball, then drop and hit. In this way you probably hit the ball as well as you will ever hit it.

You keep doing this. Gradually, you stop catching the ball, just hit it.

[bottle]

BLOCKO

I have, per JY suggestion, decided to block the person who thinks I am "a cancerous troll up his butt." Readers who read us for blood sport will have to go elsewhere.

I don't mind the cancer part or the allusion to Ibsenian characters under Norwegian bridges. It is the other part to which I say, UGHHH!

So, henceforth, don_budge is blocked on my computer and I won't be reading any of his posts. (Didn't like two thirds of them anyway.) If from now on there is any overlap of material between his posts and mine it is coincidence.

[bottle]

Left Hand in Federfore, Agi-scissor, Ellie-bam

Just because Jonas Bjorkman failed to crack the Federfore code does not mean that Holyhobo and Ayeesha in India will or Bottle in Detroit.

The Federfore is a beautiful shot. Not to want to own a toned down version of it is insane. Many people, not just the four I mentioned, have had a try at figuring it out. And why wouldn't they when they see it decade after decade more than any other forehand in the world?*

Owning a Federfore (an imitation Roger Federer forehand) is a higher pursuit than the endless drivel of tenniscelebdreck concerning who is better than whom. Why not wait until the big tournament to find out? Why waste precious energy trying to be a fortune-teller unless one is in the bookie business?

One would do much better to marshall everything that everyone has ever said about the Federfore and get out on a court and give it a try. Should we really atomize the part of Roger's backswing that happens right after his unit turn? Let's simply call it a breaststroke that calms the waters around the front of him and leave it at that.

But, let's notice where he separates his hands-- in front of his eyes-- and how this affects his forward stroke thus putting energy forward and to the right side.

Let's realize that unit turn followed by breaststroke is tennis convention not limited to Roger Federer, so when Agi Radwanska or anyone else does it, it is interesting then too.

And see the difference in where she performs the separation-- about 14 inches farther around her head.

This puts belly of the stroke more behind her than forward out to side. It is a wonder that she gets her strings to a place where she can direct the ball at all.

Well, she does that by gyrating her hips while scissoring her arm. And sinks down low thus consolidating weight in perfect balance at end of the stroke. She has added stroke behind her and subtracted stroke from in front of her-- that's all. The breaststroke she uses is exactly the same as that of Roger and thousands of other players. The only difference is where she puts it.

And then there is the Ellie-bam, a shot which uses entirely different structure of the left arm to go along with its extreme delay of the pivot-- a piston stroke in two parallel directions without any calming of the waters whatsoever.

The most fanciful part of my interpretation of the Ellie-bam is Ellsworth Vines' forehand grip. Everybody else who has ever considered the topic thinks it is eastern forehand. Not I. From reading Ellsworth Vines the author I think it is composite or Australian halfway between eastern forehand and continental.

In addition, the old clips of Ellsworth Vines don't show much wrist layback. So I go with straight wrist like John McEnroe in my own Ellie-bams.

*There is one exception to my intimation here that imitation of the Roger Federer forehand is high moral pursuit. That would be Grigor Dimitrov, a man who clearly lives in the world of tenniscelebdreck.

[bottle]

Are We Permitted to Have an Idea in Tennis?

No, no ideas. If you have an idea you are thinking too much.

I don't care if I am thinking too much. I am willing to pay the price. The idea I advance is that if you get your bent arm going then straighten it while it continues to go you will vastly multiply the speed of your racket.

It seems a good topic to bring up in connection with an Ellie-bam, which is my name for an imitation Ellsworth Vines forehand.

Because this is a stroke where, from the backswing you have chosen, you gradually straighten your arm all the way through contact to arm pointing at target. And then bend the arm back a little from elbow to finish the stroke off.

I see two possible interpretations of this, second better than first.

1) The swing is grooved, arm first then body pivot chiming in. If you have a nice controlled swing you can add speed by pushing as you straighten. The shot works but tends toward mediocrity. Racket head speed is a bit slow. Contact is out front so that more of the push vector goes into the ball.

2) Contact is farther back, out to side with racket separated a long way from bod. The principle is different. The gradual straightening of the arm creates the same situation in physics in which a satellite goes faster the farther out it gets pushed from the earth.