A New Year's Serve

[don_budge]

I think you have to be careful here. You might be coming across just as a middle schooler or "a tough guy from Detroit" (in your own words) when you need to be more than that.

Please just go back to you mental masturbation. Don't ever mention me again. Not ever. Just go on and on and on with your self indulgence. Your anger. It is none of my business. But I'm not taking any crap from you...I don't need your advice. Keep disrespecting our President. It is your choice. I won't tell you that you need to be more than that...because you don't. You can do anything you fucking well please. ANYTHING!

[bottle]

Right. Hi, Steve. Hi, don_budge. I liked the part about me being able to do anything I please. Sounds like a slogan in a Detroit charter school.

[bottle]

How Much Independence of Hand Movement is there in a Budge-bam?

None so far as backward and forward travel is concerned. All that action is accomplished by turning hips and shoulders (unit turn), by turning shoulders (point across phase), by returning shoulders to ball, by turning hips from ball to target.

That is why one's loop requires conscious figuring out. One wants the loop and skip-a-rock semi-mondo to better hit the ball but without compromising the priority of having body turn accomplish all backward and forward hand travel.

That predicts initial attention to detail while acquiring this shot.

Okay, and here's what I've come up with in a first brainstorm or trial balloon.

The spate of hot forehands that helped produce the 6-0, 3-0 score (partners then switched) was predicated on mirroring the slightly U-shaped path that worked so well to take the strings down to the ball.

And I no doubt will revert to this mimicry some time when things aren't going so well.

I was using a very free-form loop in other words.

By end of the evening however the forehand had lost some lustre.

So I want something a bit clunky and repeatable if less apt to produce mercurial shots.

Connected hands can lift together during the unit turn. Think of initial move in the windup of most pitchers in baseball. Now upper level has been attained. Now the hand separation during point across phase is perfectly level. And now hand gets in same place most of the time for best skipping of a stone.

[bottle]

Heavy Topspin Variation

Love of mystery is essential to positive exploration. A neurotic person can't stand uncertainty and therefore won't be able to participate in trial balloons.

The Federfores and Grigorfores I've dabbled with utilize early hips movement to turn body inside out and then pour energy into a continuing balletic turn of that whole bod.

I thought for a while I could have different forehands with both early and late hips but now suspect I bit off more than I could chew.

Thus a return to past fascination with the forehand of Tiny Tom Okker.

As a pioneer of heavy topspin, he was a player who hit it from shoulders first and hips second.

Why can't this work just as well as the opposite sequence?

The shot will look like a Budge-bam through its early phases but then will add full mondo and wipe.

[bottle]

First Times

The first time I played with my spondee forehand (Budge on the backswing and bam on the foreswing), the score was 6-0, 3-0 when we quit for new partners.

One reason for that score was that I only hit the one forehand and forewent all others.

[bottle]

Hoppy Topspin with Spent Shoulders and Little Hips

I'm back to my favorite tennis book ever, MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, which was missing for five years but turned up in my latest move. I have penned in its title on the fresh white adhesive tape that runs down its spine. This book is clotted with my own notes written in both pencil and pen and even black magic marker over many decades.

The topspin forehand to which I refer occurs on page 76. There are other topspin forehands in the book including one on page 50 that include a big hips pivot at the end.

But since delayed pivot is by now a regular feature of my go-to forehand (flat but with sufficient topspin), I now want to relegate my topspin forehand as a specialty shot that does something different.

Dr. Samel Johnson and his biographer James Boswell agree that writers who write about themselves enjoy less reputation.

That may be true, but when I write about my tennis strokes, I feel I am writing about a different person.

And if shoulders are spent with hips about to exert themselves very little, all that can be left is arm lift (independent) combined with some degree of wipe.

Maybe this is, at last, the deceleration-acceleration that Vic Braden spoke so much about. I look forward to hitting this shot for the first time in my life.

[bottle]

Or maybe Tom Okker keeps his bent knees pressing toward the net in this one photo-sequence of his famous topspin forehand, so different from all other famous photo-sequences of this special Okkerish item emceed e.g. by Jack Kramer.

In MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, Okker writes, "When you're stroking well, your forward knee remains bent during the entire shot. I often see club players stiffen that forward leg at impact and then kind of jump back on their heels. That's the hacker's finish.

"A good follow-through carries you into the court another step as a natural consequence of your having shifted your weight into the shot and having kept the racket following the ball along its line of flight for as long as possible.

"Many players would be surprised at the amount of effortless power they generate on forehands if they learned to extend the finish along the line of flight."

[bottle]

A Tweak for Budge-bams and Ocelots

A Budge-bam is my name for my imitation of a J. Donald Budge forehand, more specifically the easiest one to hit of all filmed Budge forehands that still are extant.

And I know the name is good since don_budge doesn't like it.

The tweak or twick I'm going to propose can also apply to an Ocelot. That would be any imitation of a Tom Okker forehand.

The trick is simply this. From wait position lift both hands straight up from the shoulders. Do this over and over until you're sure the move is memorized. Do it more till grooved. And more till myelinized.

You'll do this during your unit turn so as not to go too directly to pointing on a 45-degree angle at the net.

The combination of unit turn and perfectly vertical lift takes racket to the desired spot, i.e., a 45-degree angle to the net.

And if you're smart, reader, you will try taller and shorter amounts of this lift.

One positive advantage of this twark is that it enables the second phase of one's loop-- the point-across-extra-shoulders-turn-- to be perfectly level and solid and brief, thus positing hand in a known place every time.

The player could simply have a high wait position as advised by former Davis Cup captain Ed Faulkner and hundreds of his imitators instead.

This player won't do that. He prefers lower wait for reasons of backhand efficiency.

Also, I see more adjustability in different amounts of lift.

[bottle]

The Turn-Tail Laugh

People still laugh when a short lob goes up and they see me run for another court.

USPTR pro Walt Malinowski taught me that-- his first words and instruction to me as a matter of fact.

I've done it ever since and never regretted it.

Another player-- we all were in Front Royal, Virginia-- had a different approach. He would turn his back and duck down his head. His name was Eric Adamson. He was a Front Royal lawyer and excellent gymnast back in college.

But he would steal a glance at the opposing player, then if the ball came to either side of him would make a stab at it.

Not for me. I'm out of there.

[bottle]

From Trophy to Full Squeeze to a Second Right Angle

You can say anything about Pasarell's serve, and probably will, but know this: Charlie Pasarell, as seen on the cover of MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, edited by Larry Sheehan, Atheneum, Hartford 1984, squeezes the two halves of his arm together while his hand is behind his neck.

And then he opens the arm to about 90 degrees as he lines up racket and ball out on the right side of his bod.

Is this significant? To a person who squeezes the arm much later during the same alignment it surely is because it is so different.

Which method produces the best serves? Pasarell's, no doubt. But he also is no doubt more flexible than this average person whom we shall call X.

Just something else to fool around with-- not for the first time, I suspect-- during self-feed.

[bottle]

The Future

One doesn't have to be brilliant all the time. One needs only to make one or two discoveries of improvement over what formerly were one's best shots.

All this has nothing to do with parrots of Roger suggesting that footwork is the name of the game.

Of course it is. So the inventor needs impeccable footwork just like any other aspiring player.

Great footwork to get him into position with time to hit a freshly minted economo-shot.

Certain procedures and principles are endemic to successful self-feed.

And not all of them are as interesting as Dennis Ralston's advice to catch the oncoming ball-- in practice-- then stop and self-feed.

One simply could see which ocelot bounces highest against the opposite fence.

I have seen that an ocelot without delayed hips pivot, with little hips at all, in fact, bounces higher than either a Budge-bam or that variation of ocelot that concludes with similar last-instant pivot.

Which makes me think that only the hoppiest ocelot is the one I want, that the other ocelot is not sufficently different in outcome, at least in my case, from the Budge-bam to make it worthwhile.

The only time I can see hitting it is when one starts to hit the higher bouncing ocelot but changes one's mind in mid-loop.

A distinct possibility, but wouldn't one have done better to hit the more economical shot in the first place, the Budge-bam?

[bottle]

Speculation

I'm all for more speculation in tennis. Why does an "ocelot," my name for an imitation Tom Okker forehand, bounce higher when there is less hip action than in Tom's other forehands?

Because one's bent knees can drive forward in linear fashion to produce straight-up rather than circular or slant wipe/topspin.

This is complicated, I suspect, by the fact that delayed, emphatic hips turn can add pace to any forehand-- just one way of doing things.

And by the fact that height of contact is apt to affect the pure direction of the topspin.

This assumes that one is not overly bound to the commonly heard instruction to wipe from right fence to sky to left fence.

One can similarly apply 180 degrees of wiping action but have it start closer to the court and end more to the sky, which will probably lead to a high follow-through wrapped over left shoulder yoke.

So much in a right-hander's forehand conspires to take energy off the ball unless one somehow compensates, say by striking the outside or right edge.

Arthur Ashe even envisioned a huge imaginary forehand where one lands to the left on the court on one's shoulder.

To return to the subject of higher bouncing ocelots: Shoulders, not arm, are best to take racket out front to wipe position. And bent knees with give in them can still go in linear diretion to lend necessary weight.

Okker writes in the book MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, "My relatively light weight of 145 pounds does not limit my ability to generate power in tennis. So long as I can shift my weight into my ground strokes-- especially my forehands-- they will be hit with power."

One learns, if exposed to much tennis instruction, that rear heel rises with forward hips rotation. It also can rise, however, from linear travel on gliding knees.

[bottle]

Sidestepping in Basketball

Is it different from sidestepping in tennis or football? I don't think so.

One motors while one sidesteps.

The presumption: Shorter steps with more of them. All done as rhythmic concentrate. If you don't do this in basketball, you won't get effortlessly open for the next pass.

Are the smaller faster steps any harder to do than big, lurching ones that destroy one's balance and ability to break in any direction?

Not at all. One drills the better kind of sidesteps and not the other.

One simply needs to know what one wants and then do it.

Three sidesteps instead of two. Five instead of four.

[bottle]

No S&V on This One

A serve.

A Budge-bam.

A Hoppy Ocelot, which forces an error.

Just testing systems. Am making sure that everything is shipshape before entering into real competition tonight.

But suppose the Ocelot was returned?

A second Budge-bam to force an error.

And that gets returned.

Another Budge-bam (but isn't it amazing that no one can either find my backhand or wants to go there, amazing too that they won't go to my partner, who after all I'm trying to set up, the purpose of all this).

Well, this will be my sixth hit and nothing has really worked.

A McEnrueful then for radical change of pace.

[bottle]

Observation

From reading Boswell and Johnson (sort of like reading Masters and Johnson), anyone in a two-way debate thinks the other person is an asshole-- I certainly do. The difference is that don_budge writes the word out loud.