A New Year's Serve

[10splayer]

Gotta say it. Even though I don't agree with some of your ideas, you are an interesting read, and a fantastic writer. Best of holidays to you Bottle.

[bottle]

Billiards on Wheels: Two Motions Pretend to be Three

Shorten the takeup. Think Richard Gasquet and do the opposite. Think slap-shot to dismiss that idea as well. Think of the finesse of a pocket billiards shot but not "dead stick." Lope for the ball through leaning your head in the direction you wish to go with racket winding slowly backward.

Now you're there. Take rear shoulder slightly upward (1) and stroke the ball (2). This rise of the shoulder is no more than a slight swell at 5 a.m. in the Bay of Fundy. Think of the day the ball went over the backboard and landed four courts away.

What happened? A player picked it up. He swung slowly up to the ball. Only then did he accelerate.

The ball flew over the first fence, then the second and third. And then it cleared the tall backboard and landed in my hand.

Swing like that. Go down, sweep the court. Finally, accelerate.

Let your intention as you raise the rear shoulder be only to sling the racket head straight up the back and outside of the ball.

A Petr Korda backhand, one of the most gorgeous tennis shots ever invented.

[bottle]

Leg Gave Out

No, I'm okay. Had another one of those shots in the back for sciatica same as Agassi did in his book. The first at the Ministry of Love and Spines in WINSTON-Salem did nothing. The second in Bloomfield, Michigan, Henry Ford Hospital, appears to have worked!

One difficulty however was that I injured the other leg first-- the one with no relation to sciatica playing with three other old coots.

I'm right handed, was playing backhand side, just came in and saw an extremely wide ball tailing away from me-- my partner decided there wasn't a chance in hell that I would get to it, so he stopped in the other half of our court.

The dingbat. If he'd shifted with me I would have been all right since he could have covered the return. But there was nothing behind me except for a hole.

I hit a good shot off of my outside leg in order to spring back. But there was no spring, just a sproing.

My chiropracter thinks I twisted stuff but I don't. I think there was simple overload. Everything up and down the whole leg was sprained. That sounds bad, I know, but the sprain was evenly spread out. Most important, the meniscus stayed reconstructed. Well, the chiro and I are on task with among other ideas pulsing electromagnetic fields to stimulate circulation in the areas of loosened adhesion.

Finally, I had to play tennis since my head was hurting, too. This wasn't the disaster that well-meaning people predicted.

The worst was when I went to the pain center for the sciatica. A screening nurse made sure that I only talked about the sciatica although the pain on the other side-- just then-- was far worse.

Steve-- reactions to MS, a new and improved kind of tennis journalism, will be coming via private email (I'm on page 90 out of the roughly 500).

[bottle]

Golf on Wheels

In my tennis book, http://bottle-booksandstuffbyjohnescher.blogspot.com/, Chapter Fifteen is called "Using Injuries." I don't want to discuss my present injuries simply because first topic in Detroit is the failed economy and second directly connected is the human body falling apart and health talk gets boring after a short while. Anything else? Something...Christmas? Please.

Last night I competed for the first time in a month. Trips to an outside court to work on all new one hand backhand ideas and keep the injuries fresh certainly had taken place, but the usual chain of dropping balls, backboard, hitting with a partner, competition last was severely broken.

So what did I or rather the person standing next to me immediately discern as we started the warm-up? "A bit late on that one."

During the actual play I hit one Steffi-slice so fabulous that no one, especially me-- could believe it. But the Korda-drive never hove into view. It will I'm pretty sure if I stick to a master plan involving my three proposed backhands and multiple hitting partners.

First, I'll hit my myelinated, level-shouldered slice. It's a two part rhythm-- therefore I'll keep it: 1) a backswing and 2) send the barrel toward the net then clench the shoulderblades.

Second, racket back to same place but then the rear shoulder rises: the Steffi-slice.

Third, racket back lower and then the rear shoulder rises: the Korda-drive hit solid-wristed for now. Later, may try more McEnroe-type wrist action such as tennischiro describes up above, in which wrist pave-loads (gets convex) to begin with as if the player is getting ready to hurl a Frisbee from the backhand side. Looking down on a 1/8 grip, by contrast, one sees one's wrist as a canyon, and this canyon-likeness continues all through the stroke.

Going to be late? Yes but on purpose! Rise of the rear shoulder and hitting step and bounce of the ball equals SIMULTANEITY.

(.20 -- just stay there and click repeatedly)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypaqILo4rFo

Korda and Graf hit their topspin backhands late. This I believe.

As I tried to suggest, for my skeptics, the grip can be extreme and locked, the feel of the stroke a firing down then roll in the middle and lift in the end. This stroke is going gangbusters in drop-the-ball stage. That's where one must start. Finally, in competition, it will if one climbs the progressive ladder from idea up to action with patience enough hove into view for use whenever one wants.

[tennis_chiro]

Passive Hinge; well, not quite...

Are you saying the one handed backhand should be wristless...no wrist pumping? I pump mine...especially on passing shots...or a least it "feels" like I'm pumping. I tend to hit right thru the ball in baseline to baseline rallies... using much less wrist in this type of scenario.

Nastase was a wrist pumper....Fed seems to roll his wrist...Vilas looks solid in the wrist like Korda. No wrist looks best...more reliable perhaps?

Really enjoying your thread and the Korda clips, bottle.

My thought is that the wrist works to control the ball, acting almost as a passive hinge trying to keep the racket head on the ball through the impact zone (so it is actually active, but not as a major source of power you might get by slapping the wrist). Vilas is a little too stiff, but a great model to get on the right track. Sometimes in golf, a trick is used with the left wrist to limit the usage of the wrist. They put a pencil under the watchband that extends from the back of the distal forearm (not the palmar side) past the wrist to the hand. Therefore, the golfer can't extend his left wrist. In the same way, you don't want to extend the wrist of the right hand in a 1hbh. That is, if you can imagine the surface on the back of the hand, you could place a pencil laying flat under a wristlet extending to the middle of the top of the right hand (right-hander). Place the sharp point of the pencil towards the hand. That pencil should be able to lay flat through the backhand stroke. It might be a little difficult with radial rotation in an extreme topspin backhand, but the point of that pencil will keep the face of the racket headed in the right direction just a little longer. Moving up to that point from flexed wrist to neutral prior to reaching the contact zone is a natural part of "unwinding" through the shot, but you don't want the wrist to go past that neutral position into extension. The big muscles of the upper and posterior shoulder need to do their work to keep the racket on that path. The wrist is "busy" just trying to stay on the ball.

At least that's the way I see it in a classic backhand like Korda. It would be nice if we could find a good overhead shot.

don

[stotty]

One of the things you should recognize is that from just before impact, through impact and probably a foot or two after impact, the angle in the horizontal plain between the forearm and the racket shaft is maintained; that is, the wrist isn't really moving...just trying to hold the ball on the strings.
don

Are you saying the one handed backhand should be wristless...no wrist pumping? I pump mine...especially on passing shots...or a least it "feels" like I'm pumping. I tend to hit right thru the ball in baseline to baseline rallies... using much less wrist in this type of scenario.

Nastase was a wrist pumper....Fed seems to roll his wrist...Vilas looks solid in the wrist like Korda. No wrist looks best...more reliable perhaps?

Really enjoying your thread and the Korda clips, bottle.

[tennis_chiro]

Angle at the wrist maintained

So, if racket tip slings around and then up, does it continue to come around as it lifts up? Yes, somewhat, to judge from the videos of Petr Korda I've posted here. Looking toward him from across the net, you can see his arm rise on one side of his shoulder and continue to rise on the other.

One of the things you should recognize is that from just before impact, through impact and probably a foot or two after impact, the angle in the horizontal plain between the forearm and the racket shaft is maintained; that is, the wrist isn't really moving...just trying to hold the ball on the strings. The arm may be externally rotating which adds more spin and lift as it moves the racket head up in the vertical plain, brushing the ball slightly (not turning over it). I'm not sure you can find it on youtube, but there may be some video from the Grand Slam Cup (I think 1994) where Korda played a lot of great matches and they had the overhead view of the players in the Olympic Basketball stadium in Munich (special for me because I played my only tour level matches there in the 1975 WCT event).

One of my favorite "tricks" for many years has been one I use in teaching the 1hbh. I ask the student to try to take the knuckles to the target on the follow through and finish seeing the ball under the extended racket as it travels out. I tell them to put a "halo" (the racket head) over my head (only way one will ever get there!). The best example of this was Vilas. For my money, that is a little too stiff, but it is a great exercise in a teaching progression.

The modern game wants to create more topspin and upward and across movement of the racket head. But if you can learn to hit solidly through that one-handed backhand like Korda, it is a wonderful feeling. You just "unwind" through the ball, but with a little discipline on the follow through to hold your control.

Try it out.

don

[bottle]

~

So, if racket tip slings around and then up, does it continue to come around as it lifts up? Yes, somewhat, to judge from the videos of Petr Korda I've posted here. Looking toward him from across the net, you can see his arm rise on one side of his shoulder and continue to rise on the other.

[bottle]

Broad Design Idea

Engineers get into the detail. Architects take the long view. Is this backhand we've been working a Singapore Sling? It's some kind of a sling.

A few of my posts here have gotten complicated-- goes with the territory. Feel contact in butt rim? Compress forearm in some weird way? Don't think so.

Once you change the grip so that twisting arm can sling the racket head around on edge, you get a different kind of subsequent arm lift. Your palm wants to sail up.

I don't think hand on the racket throat like Stotty (and me) adversely affects one's ability to sling.

Korda's alternative way with hand up on strings is interesting, suggests another star of the past, Wendy Overton. That kind of backhand almost makes one feel like a stoker slinging lengths of old telephone pole into a wood furnace.

But the sling can work in other ways. Flying grip change can put palm way over top of racket and open the face.

Did I say that first half of the forward swing is with racket on edge? Not entirely true. Most of this part of the tract probably is on edge. But arm rolls. So to bring racket around strictly level without closing pitch is biomechanical impossibility.

But grip change gets racket open. So racket changes from open to square as it whips around. The key is to keep elbow in then lift elbow and palm together.

Butt rim does lead racket head around. Palm then lifts. It's all a single motion easily mimed without a racket.

[bottle]

~

This is a stroke in which racket should stay on edge. So make sure it does. More grip, in my case, brings the racket head around low and level and on edge-- then everything rips upward to the economical and characteristic finish.

What characteristic? Statue of Liberty? No that was wrong. Some of the Korda finishes, depending on camera angle, may look upright like a torch or ice cream cone, but are more apt to be raked back a bit-- which happens as a result of very pure lift untarnished by twist.

Why would you need to twist more when you just did twist-- to bring the racket tip around level?

For an emergency angle, I suppose. But upward spin wouldn't be as pure. This basic stroke to me is exceptionally promising and simple.

The big change in thought here is an adjustment of grip toward eastern or even more. Rather than use number system or be persnickety in some other way, put racket on edge and re-grip.

When a simple roll of the arm brings racket head around perfectly level while on edge and without closing (beveling), one may be ready to rumble.

[bottle]

~

Man, does he get low. That's a big part of it.

[bottle]

More Korda Backhands

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Z-MaFtHfs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypaqILo4rFo

(.20 -- just stay there and click repeatedly)

Racket length in windup at 45 degrees to court with elbow pointed down.

[bottle]

Ready, One, Two, Three, SQUID!

"Let me be perfectly clear," say the politicians as they prepare to throw ink in the water. I only follow Petr Korda in the materials I have to a certain point and then let the speculations take over.

What did I decide? That I need more clear purpose in my grip change than mere grip change. I'm performing a physical stretch but hopefully not a mental one.

The bent elbow goes as far as it can around the body, compressing the human flesh machine until discomfort results. And the shoulders are pulling on the hips until discomfort results. Do these things often enough and they become comfortable. Clear?

So the bonk I've been talking so much about, becoming a bit lethal once again, is upper and lower arm both. Whatever else happens-- no matter how anyone interprets it-- I establish light pressure against the butt cap, which will come to point along the baseline parallel to net and rear fence (and far distant fence) as this body-and-arm-spring suddenly releases.

Butt cap through contact. Long part of the handle to top of the Statue of Liberty finish.

Looks like junior champion Jimmy Arias until he conventionalized his backhand and ruined it forever.

*********************************
Note: I've implicitly compared the Petr Korda and Steffi Graf topspin backhands or rather Don Brosseau did when he presented them to me here together. Steffi's high take back disguises her slice. Petr's take back is lower leading to less complication and announces itself although it does this rather late.

One dominant player in the northwestern corner of Virginia where I lived had a backhand like this: The first time I played doubles against him, and he took his racket back, my partner correctly diagnosed what Jason Robertson was about to hit and cried "Watch out!" and practically screamed.

Also, I go with John McEnroe's regard for this stroke which makes the whole enterprise more palatable. John with a great left-handed backhand himself makes no distinction between right-handed and left-handed, applying hyperbole to all effortless one hand topspin backhands wherever it is due and despising players like Greg Rusedski for not keeping their elbow in.

Korda's, Henin's and Wawrinka's backhands are nice as you will ever see, with each the best in the world.

[bottle]

Korda Backhand: A First Conclusion

Study how much shoulders do/don't turn back along with hips. Compare with Virginia Wade or some other player with whom this backswing amount is familiar and to one's own present habit. What's the combination that places racket PARALLEL TO REAR FENCE with butt rim slightly protruding out from body toward side fence like Korda's once the arm bonks straight? Similarly, how much does bent elbow first point downward to produce this visual position?

We have now re-configured both slice and topspin backhands through self-authorization as code-breaker. "To discern is divine," says Steve Navarro, i.e., stop labeling tennis players so much and draw more subtle distinctions among all fully developed tennis individuals. If nothing else, one's conclusions will be one's own.

The mid-ability player's imitation of professional stroke technique is an activity "fraught with" problems and danger in the words of John Yandell. The irony of this is terrific since he is the man who offers the best opportunity for one to do this. The tennis writer John M. Barnaby is another force who similarly stresses basics and series instruction like the rungs of a ladder that one must climb one at a time or else fall down to the bottom.

Bill Tilden's idea of identifying one's weak link and working just on that stroke losing matches every day as he did in 1920's Providence indoors winter is slightly different.

Pancho Gonzalez's process of wandering around the edge of tennis courts where the best players are at work and then stealing with discrimination in the best sense of that word is a slightly different course of action once again.

Basics are essential. A student needs to be turned on, however. Personally speaking, I find too much continued series learning once one has the rudiments the essence of boredom and stultification.

I find the slice backhand of Steffi Graf a far easier model to copy than that of Ken Rosewall or Trey Waltke. And I find the topspin backhand of Petr Korda or Steffi Graf (extremely similar!) a far easier model than Ivan Lendl, Roger Federer or J. Donald Budge.

[bottle]

Upsey-Daisy Downsey-Daisy

"He has such extraordinary timing," the announcers used to say as they observed Petr Korda backhanding Pete Sampras.

This was the establishment's standard dismissive warning to club players never to try anything really cool in tennis at home.

But, as a certain jazz writer wrote, "I don' care what Momma don' 'low, gonna play that eighty-eight anyhow..."

We'll do it in this case by following "the rim theory," viz., we'll drive our fan with butt rim of the racket even if this creates a hitch in rising strings just after they contact the ball.

The hitch won't really slow the overall, ice cream cone like rise of the strings and will occur safely post-contact.

If all this theory doesn't pan out we can relax our own rule and shift from pulling rim to pushing on a long side of the handle to the Statue of Liberty finish.

Why "fan?" Why not the "wiper" beloved by moocows? Well, Jimmy Arias preaches no wiper of any kind for any tennis player before he passes the 4.5 mark, and Arias was a pretty good player so he must be right.
*****************************************
What's the rhythm? One-two like Steffi Graf's slice. What's the grip change?
A combination of 90-degree flip back and palm coming over the handle. And what's the racket work during the last instant rise of rear shoulder? Nonexistent, i.e., solidly connected to body and produced by it alone.

Next, as everything reverses, how is bonk produced? From straightening of elbow, so don't hit anybody just then or you will kill your elbow.

Bonk is simultaneous with hips rotating forward. Which is simultaneous with shoulders leveling out. Which is simultaneous with racket head thrusting down parallel with rear fence.

I only have eyes for 13:02 here. No step-out as I'll be using, but a tremendously clear exhibit of desired rhythm and racket work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyGy62vWQgA

I only have eyes for 40 here, where three of Korda's big backhands occur in a row followed by his leaping, mythic split and a bullfight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn-WekdIbaA