A New Year's Serve

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Haruspex

One practically has to be a haruspex if he wants to make sense of the entrails of a typical forehand.

Phony terms like "kinetic chain" pretend to explain what's going on but romanticize the subject instead. The science of "kinetic chain" may be good but the communication value of it sucks.

Why? Because human beings are going to be human beings. And if you are going to use the word "chain" in any sentence, you must understand that the person reading that sentence is going to see something, a snow chain if he drives a car in Labrador, an anchor chain if he's a ship builder, a winch if he just pulled the engine from a car, a necklace if he just gave an expensive present to his fiancee.

In these cases and others the links are even; i.e., one link is the same size as every other. That's where the analogy breaks down in regard to tennis.

The theory of kinetic chain is inextricable from acceleration-deceleration supposedly. As one segment slows down the next accelerates in one explanation; as one segment accelerates the previous segment decelerates in another. The subject quickly approaches the verge of confusion and plunges down onto the rocks of de-chunked experience so that the aspirant champion is reduced once again to complete beginner.

Now I'm going to push down with one leg, most likely from the outside leg. If I do everything perfectly, rotation may then occur from 1) the feet to the knees, 2) from the knees to the hips (including the hips), 3) the upper body, and 4) the arm and the racket.

But I'm going to cut off 4) the arm and racket, just stick with 1), 2), and 3).

And 4) now is going to have everything to do with stopping this building momentum of 1), 2), and 3).

In fact, I can now think in two units rather than four. "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" said Emerson (Ralph Waldo). He could just have said, "Simplify."

I'm not going to stop there, however. I'm going to take the term "acceleration-deceleration," which I find overly abstract, and invert it to "deceleration-acceleration." I'm going to utterly stop something that was moving fast (the upper body) so that the arm and racket accelerates really fast.

But what's going to take off: The hand or the racket tip? Have you ever heard ANYONE pose that question? And do you think people will answer it? I don't expect them to. So I'll conduct my own experiments.

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Ingredients are Correct But in What Relative Amounts?

Rosewall backhand slice is an exercise in perfect balance; Steffi-slice in perfect imbalance.

Once one gets the ingredients for Steffi-slice down and embraces them with maritime imagery, one can say to oneself, "You know, this is a Teutonic shot, so achtung achtung! Alles muss in Ordnung sein!"

The maritime imagery: One or two dolphins sliding along the ocean surface. Up and down they go. Or a surfer skimming down the front of a large Hawaiian wave.

The racket tip gets back and up at the top of a fully formed wave. Now to tumble down.

Moves we've previously identified are: A teeter-totter from the hand followed immediately by an overhand sweep from the elbow followed by a jackknifing of the trunk.

In culinary terms let teeter-totter and overhand sweep be "pinches," the jackknife a dollop. Here's where the imbalance comes in. You'd fall on your face if arm and racket didn't pull the outside leg forward for a gymnast's landing.

Perhaps we should make this landing the focal point. The amount and timing of jackknife determines the weight, depth and pace of this spinny shot (spinny no matter what and it will stay low).

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Delayed Reaction

Geoff is very helpful once again, advising in # 1036 that wrist can stay locked all the way to end of an extreme followthrough "supinated off to the rear." The significance of this thought, which builds on previous discussion, only hit me after a couple of days. Yes, we all know what pronation is. And that supination is the opposite. And that an eastern backhand grip with maintained locked wrist can form a wipering action then to be combined with all other elements of the stroke.

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The Best Tennis Book

The best tennis book isn't a book at all. It's a movie, GROUNDHOG DAY, about doing something over and over until you get it right.

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Book Review

I put up a review yesterday of THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides, http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Plot-...DateDescending
The review, entitled "Students of John Hawkes Unite," is under my formal name John Escher. The main character of this novel about college love affairs, Madeline, whose name is taken from the old kid's picture book MADELINE by Ludwig Bemelmans is a pretty good tennis player.

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And coming out of the compressed rip, make sure that racket is at the low point that you want, I would add.

[GeoffWilliams]

On one hand backhand, I recently learned, with Geoff Williams' help, not to mess with locked wrist as racket accelerates through a small C-loop U-turn (and with body driving this compressed rip, I would add).

That's it in a nutshell. Wrist stays locked, compressed rip, even with Gasquet type extreme follow through, supinated off to the rear, still wind shield wiper locked wrist, as was commented recently on by an english female commentator: "My what an extreme follow through he has."

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I've had it.

[stotty]

The best coaches, according to the coach article, seldom talk about themselves.

This is a golden rule, an imperative...unless you are a Lendl or a Tony Roche, of course.

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One Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures (Again)

The arguments never cease with one choice here supposedly better than the others: visual, verbal, kinesthetic, rational, visceral. The one that makes sense however comes from Friends, i.e., Quakers: "Truth from any source."

In the mail, I receive copies of two stapled articles, one that seems to suggest that any conscious idea is worthless since the unconscious does everything, the other a physician's tale about the benefits of good coaching AT EVERY LEVEL in every specialization-- from public school teacher to tennis player to surgeon in operating room.

It's all true, I'm sure, except for the part about conscious ideas being worthless. Clearly we want a hyperlink between conscious and unconscious thought.

Well, I got me a loop within a loop on the backhand side, and it's so nifty why wouldn't I want something comparable on the forehand side?

The best coaches, according to the coach article, seldom talk about themselves. That leaves me out, I guess, unless I'm two persons-- both coach and coachee.

The coachee, he big talk. The coach, he quiet injun.

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Note

When you twist from the hand-- properly-- the racket head closes but stays in same relation to hand. When you twist from the elbow, the motion is similar, but the racket head can easily deflect to the inside, something I wish to use.

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Long Arm Shots

Those would be the one hand backhand and the Federfore. The two principles of hand direction remain the same (twist from hand to go down the line; twist from elbow to go crosscourt).

On one hand backhand, I recently learned, with Geoff Williams' help, not to mess with locked wrist as racket accelerates through a small C-loop U-turn (and with body driving this compressed rip, I would add).

On any topspin version forehand, whether long arm or short arm, if one has now found a better place to close racket, one needn't do it at top of the backward loop like Roger-- one less inhibiting and tipping off thing to distract. Follow this advice and you may always be ready to hit a lob as an added benefit.

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Hand to Control Direction

Sounds simple but isn't. For authority on this question I turn to a present teaching pro, Chris Lewit, and a past teaching pro, John M. Barnaby. Lewit, in his writing, wants us to swing pretty much the same whether we're going down the line or crosscourt. Barnaby, in his various books, likes to pair shots mentally in the exact same fashion.

Reader, please work out your down the center shot all by yourself.

As for me, I follow my frequent method of summarizing someone's idea, but in the summary, distorting or personalizing information to make it my own. "Embroidery," one critic said, a charge which I cannot accept. I shut up unless the first idea gives me a second idea, and I urge other people to do the same.

For a DTL bent arm FH topspin, 3.5-3 grip, with mondo, in the new ground stroke system unfurling here, the racket backswings over the top but not perfectly over the top. Included is a slight component of roundaboutness. That's saying a lot in the context of maximum shoulders turn, but we may need to bring all truths to bear at once to achieve our clearcut goal of returning to an older time, of concealing the racket, of betting on more deception than that used by Roger Federer or any other player who keeps his racket out in the slot where the opponent can see it.

Deceleration-acceleration is the key, and we need sufficient space in which to rip our squnched racket through the top and bottom of a compressed forehand loop. Is this compressed loop a loop within a loop? Depends on how you see things. In any case the wrist regresses while twisting the racket head down. That's half of a loop. The other half occurs in rapid succession as the whole arm twists the racket closed.

Okay, so we apply kinetic chain to make the shoulders fast and furious but smooth. But we take our cue from the poet Robert Frost, who unlike lesser explainers knew where any metaphor breaks down. So we cut off the kinetic chain at the arm. Stop the shoulders utterly and let the just twisted forward arm fly.

For down the line, during the first forward body rotation, twist arm from the hand. For crosscourt twist arm from the elbow but maintain same contact point. In both cases fully extend the bent arm construction (i.e., stay bent) to the outside after contact before returning racket to bod.

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Choreography

Hiding the racket behind the body, endorsed by Chris Lewit in one of the various Tennis Bibles out on the Market, may be an old idea but it is a very good idea. Is there a more graceful way to turn the back on the opponent however than that outlined in # 1028, which took left hand way back before it diverged to point at right fence?

How about starting both hands (connected) toward right fence upon recognition that this will be a forehand. Then, diverging left hand early, keep body rotating backward, which will push said left hand farther toward right fence. Finally, use left hand as the active agent pointing at right fence to pull the shoulders even farther around.

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Cardio and Innovation in Shot Technique

How amusing it is to think of people with unchanging technique. They may play better than little u-i but will never come close to realizing their potential. But we practically had to muzzle the two theoreticians on my eight-oared crew if we wanted to continue to win races. We wanted everybody A) to shut up and B) keep their eyes in the boat. In my case, since I was one of the two with complicating ideas, I was fortunate as the lightest member of the crew to be relatively frail. The first ten strokes of every practice therefore knocked the stuffing out of me along with my fancy notions, so that I rowed through the next couple of hours more or less the way I'd been taught. Of course this was in the full-pressure-every-stroke days before the Kiel-Ratzeburg crew of Germany brought interval training to worldwide competitive rowing once and for all. Along with a plethora of new developments came the alternation of soft and hard strokes throughout every practice (e.g. 20 hard-20 soft-20, 20, 20 all through an hour and a half, my favorite practice after I eventually became a crew coach).

What's the correlation in tennis? Proper self-management of time and attention between points? Perfect recovery to the center of possibilities so that the player never is rushed? A better appreciation of the many opposites that characterize the sport? Identify the opposites in tennis-- that's what we all should do.

In this time of cardio tennis I wonder how much conscious thought if any today's players devote to their technique. Cardio tennis, designed to dissolve overthinking, inevitably brings out some fine adjustment right in the middle of some exercise out on the court. What about rough adjustment however? What allowance does current American tennis make for a brainstorm?

This is why I think bars, restaurants, this forum, daydreams, nightdreams, showers, restless sleep, visualization and cerebration are so important.

Tennis is "clever" with extraordinary room for innovative thought if we only permit it to flourish.

One is very apt to feel insufficient in the art of tennis change in the beginning. Eventually though, if one persists, the new ideas will build on the old and actually work.

One's forehand could suddenly become more potent through adopting something one was exposed to decades before-- the old idea, say, of concealing the racket behind one's body rather than keeping it in the slot.

And this idea might combine with the notion of more inside out extension-- viz., that a ground stroke continues to the outside after contact before crossing to opposite side of the body.

Many teaching pros espouse full extension but offer differences in precise direction in which this should occur-- a little to the outside, say, compared to dead center or a little to the inside.

Today, on the forehand, I'll try A) keeping hands baseballed closer together in waiting position, B) pushing shoulders around farther therefore with guide hand as part of the initial turn, C) lifting racket higher over the top with elbow kept down similar to a Federfore even though this will be a bent arm shot, D) closing of racket face at top of backward racket arc as in a Federfore but doing this a surprisingly small bit, E) straightening at elbow to desired bent arm position as guide hand points at side fence (while also straightening) to complete extreme turn of the shoulders, F) using both shoulders and arm completely to conceal racket from opponent, G) refusing to close racket extremely much from a 3.5-3 grip during the backswing to tip off extra topspin. Such exaggerated closing, which won't happen at all on a flat shot, to be relegated to forward swing. But where in forward swing? Well, there are two pre-contact parts-- body then arm. During the kinetic chain characterized body turn then.

To me, the most harmful terms in advanced tennis instruction are "kinetic chain" and "windshield wiper." While both methods of hitting the ball may exist, they lead most players to misunderstanding. An ordinary person never understands that kinetic chain should be as fast as Muhammad Ali's jab. An ordinary person never understands that windshield wiper can happen long before or long after contact but not during the contact-- not if one is pursuing with a single focus the deceleration-acceleration theory of best racket head propulsion in modern ground strokes.