A New Year's Serve

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Specialization

Re # 889, hit backhand drive as described, down the line. Then add scapular retraction to "turning the corner" to redirect same shot crosscourt.

One more additive for even more redirection (sharpest crosscourt) is still available, viz., borrow from Steffi-slice once again through using the same type of arm roll in which elbow drops closer to body.

Once mastered, this particular topspin drive will employ many available sources of human strength all at once, so why not play with stance and contact point to then develop a more powerful version of the down the line shot advised in first paragraph here?

Remember, all the usual nonsense about kinetic chain, i.e., a powerful hips to shoulders marginal sequence has been edited out through the act of lowering shoulder at end of the backswing.

Hips alone then are the way to go. Virginia Wade demonstrated this rare but effective notion in the packed half-hour teaching video she once made on Hilton Head Island. No winding back of upper body to the max in her view. And if upper body isn't going to use its mid-belly elastic properties to the max as it goes back it won't use them to the max as it twists forward either.

Simultaneous scapular retraction encrusted on an easy turn of the hips may then become possible.

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From LAWN TENNIS by Bill Tilden: "England will never be the advanced tennis-playing country that her colonies are, for her whole atmosphere is one of conservatism in sport."

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Terminology From My Book

Federfore: An imitation Roger Federer forehand.

Roger Featherer: English translation of Roger Federer

Feathering in Rowing: Repeated adjustment of pitch

Ziegenfuss: A backward forehand as hit by Valerie Ziegenfuss in the pre-women's movement, lacy dress, old collector's item book TENNIS FOR WOMEN.

Backward Forehand: A forehand in which arm swings at the ball before the shoulders do

Goat Foot: English translation of Ziegenfuss

Valerie Ziegenfuss (Wikipedia): Valerie Bradshaw, nee Ziegenfuss, who was one of The Original 9 rebelling against the USTA and helping to bring about the Virginia Slims Circuit and the WTA Tour. Fourth round French Open 1972; Fourth round US Open 1969 and 1975; Bronze Medal in Doubles 1968 Mexico City Olympics partnered with Jane (“Peaches”) Bartkowicz.

Satchel Paige: The greatest, most colorful baseball pitcher ever. Three of his infinite number of pitches: "Two-Hump Blooper," "Little Tom," and "Long Tom."

Ferrerfore: An imitation David Ferrer forehand

Nadal type Forehand (shortened form “Nadalian”): Self-explanatory but generating more topspin than any other forehand at the time of this writing.

Rotorded Server: A very intelligent person who recognizes tightness of the rotor muscles in the shoulder and has successfully developed compensating adjustments in his or her serve.

Wawrinkan Backhand: In the year 2011, John McEnroe declared the backhand of Switzerland’s number two player Stanislas Wawrinka best on the planet. Whether McEnroe’s assertion was correct, I submit that Waw’s is a great model for ordinary players.

Emiran Backhand: An improvement on the Wawrinkan Backhand based on film of an eleven-year-old player, Emira Stafford.

Chinetic Kine: Derisive inversion of “kinetic chain,” a term useful for bogging down anyone’s overactive mind and thereby impeding their freedom of physical movement. The term “big whirl” is more kinesthetic and works better.

Myelin: Fatty goop one would like to wrap around one’s neuronal pathways.

Defining terms sometimes forms sufficient essay, which in this case leads back to a first question: Why use colorful terms in tennis or anyplace else?

1) So as not to be a bore

2) They're easier to remember

3) They're briefer than their descriptions, i.e., they “chunk” experience.

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Alternating Two-Part Shots

Both shots employ shoulder lowering at end of backswing. Do they still employ loops? Yes but loop, which opens racket face, is performed "on the run" as kinetic element in the slightly forward and downward action.

1) Steffi-slice. Racket pivots open from right hand as fulcrum.

2) Drive topspin. Racket pivots open from right elbow as fulcrum. Elbow then swings forward and down more while straightening. Elbow slows and rolls ("turns the corner" while conveying the acceleration through the hand). At same time left hand counters the revolving hips. Arm accelerates on forward, upward path. Shape of swing, circular and far away from body is also a very shallow U. Shoulders resume rotation near end of followthrough.

Try it again, starting backward motion of left hand earlier. Instead of coordinating the intricate arm work with forward hip rotation, delay hip rotation so that it seemingly has sole function of passively straightening the arm which contained only a slight bend to start.

One can also synchronize the arm work with hips turn as on slice while going easy with left hand. (Let it simply fall down at first).

Either of these or other closely related methods may produce more racket head acceleration or general solidity than another-- go with that (when you want more spin or solidity).

If, in a match, this shot isn't cooking, then hit more Steffi-slice.

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Because the elbow now is pivot point as racket tip first lowers and therefore elbow doesn't rise an extra amount as in the Steffi-slice, the subsequent forward roll needs to be of pure nature, i.e., one will keep in mind the idea of simply rolling one's arm while moving the roll itself forward just a little. "Keep the elbow in," some might say. Others would never say this since the exhortation "keep the elbow in" means something different to them.

Performing this essential of "roll" through rearrangement of elbow level down is not a good option now. Bringing elbow close in to the body like that just isn't advisable, if one wants to retain the good leverage and racket face control to outer edge of ball that a wide, circular and free, upward-rising swing can give.

Keep the Elbow in
What does this slippery phrase mean anyway? In the slice we've been discussing the elbow actually flies inward a bit as it flies forward and down. Think of a three-quarter overhead sling-shotting of the racket head. In the drive, by contrast, we'd prefer that the elbow stay at shake hands distance away for all of the swing until the ball.

Recently, I acquired the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF TENNIS by "The Editors of Sports Illustrated," Lippincott, 1961, but supposedly prepared by William F. Talbert. Actually, it's a spin-off or bowdlerization of earlier Talbert and Old books in which Ed Vebell's drawings of Don Budge originally appeared.

Well, here they are, recycled. Despite the inclusion of these wonderful illustrations, the book is a horrid little affair purporting to be much more than it is and carefully designed to make money but not teach anything substantial about the game.

It cost me nothing since I found it abandoned in an empty mansion after an estate sale. Even so, I always read every horrible tennis book in my quest for one or two usable items. In SI BOOK OF TENNIS appears the statement that while hitting his famous backhand, Don Budge kept his shoulder "well down."

I always thought Don Budge's shoulders were level. So I study the drawings once again and see how, yes, one could say that the shoulder is down.

But how does Don Budge keep his elbow in? The elbow is shake hands but with somebody you really don't like. So we'll have to define in a different way.

Don Budge's controlled elbow rolls so that, in the pre-contact phase of his swing, his racket tip travels faster and farther than his hand. One could say "swing the racket head" and not be wrong.

A Down and Up Swing?
In reconsidering Vebell, my old question asserted itself about the two drawings in which Don Budge's backhand motion is compared to Ted Williams' baseball swing.

This is certainly not like topspin shots in which the player gets racket as low and close behind him as possible, then swings sharply upward.

Rather, the swing is level-- until one looks harder (too hard?)-- and then one wonders from the drawings if maybe the swing doesn't go down just a little almost all the way to the ball before it then goes up just slightly in a fierce uppercut.

Is this assumption compatible with the question of how to modify Steffi-slice for driven, topspin shots? I think so.

Eliminating Transition in All Ground Strokes
Here is a futuristic idea to which I've periodically returned (but always abandoned). Jim Kacian, USPTA pro, did not laugh when he discovered me messing with it one day. If one's strokes have two parts instead of three one can wait for longer and thus reduce the error-producing variables before one commits.

The lateness of Steffi in hitting all of her ground strokes has always incurred the ire of critics who never will be number one in anything not even punditry.

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Diversifying from One's Steffi-Slice

The Steffi-slice is an extremely interesting shot, rather German in that it employs precise and intricate mechanics for its success.

It reminds me of convoluted, inverse sentence structure and long compound words in the German language-- phenomena characteristically imbued with so much cleverness and logic as almost to irritate.

The backhand slice of Ken Rosewall and Trey Waltke is more straightforward in that it utilizes level shoulders. The backhand slice of Mark Phillippoussis starts out with similarly level shoulders but abandons them in the middle of the forward action for a net-leaning slope.

This is what the Barron's slicer does as well, the Barron's slicer being the slice demonstrator in the official book of the Deutscher Tennis Bund published in 1988 as part of the Barron's Educational Series of Hauppauge, New York.

It is my sincere belief that this unknown slicer was trying to imitate Steffi-slice but failed to note that she slopes her shoulders downward at the end of her preparation. "Simplify, simplify, simplify," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, himself the incorporator of German structure in his longer sentences, and simplification is what both the Barron's slicer and Mark Phillippoussis failed to do.

I tried the level shoulders of Rosewall and Waltke-- another simplification-- with some success. My greatest success however had a spotty quality to it, and so I conclude that these shots require greater personal virtuosity, whereas the simple logic of Steffi's more intricate mechanics, if properly understood, is accessible to anyone and promises greater consistency.

To get this shot, I think, we ordinary players must first become code-breakers.

I stick with my formula of post # 885, "Quadruple dig, dig, Dad?"

Then, once one realizes what a solid shot this is ("half block, half slice" in one description but of course that could be said of Rosewall, too), one may like me want to use it as one's staple backhand and slightly modify one's topspin so one can hit both shots from the same preparation and perhaps even with the same grip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL1vjxx-raE

I'm very struck by the Jim McLennan instruction which says that best slice (Rosewall) and best drive on the backhand side really needn't be very different from one another. A similar conclusion may be derived from the autobiography of J. Donald Budge in which he describes how his famous drive went sour just before a major final, but he restored it through realizing that he was hitting unwanted slice.

Could these two shots of Don Budge have been so close to each other that sometimes he wasn't aware of the difference? Could Don Budge have been such a naturally unconscious player that sometimes he didn't even know whether he was hitting topspin or slice?

The above video addresses same close similarity in the case of Steffi Graf. The first thing I notice (1:03) is, again, that she slopes downward in preparation not forward swing. Second, that racket first lowers through twisting from the elbow rather than the hand.

Note 1: To have an easy view of this shot 30 different times, get cursor on the 1:03 spot (the number should come up as a flag), then hold it there, clicking after each sequence.

Note 2: This sequence should drive Oscar Wegner critics nuts since Steffi doesn't start taking her racket back until the bounce.

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Curiosities of Tennis Publishing

Here is the list of chapters in my tennis book, A NEW YEAR'S SERVE:


List of Chapters

Chapter One. Goop Theory
Chapter Two. Nadal, Federer And Other Forehands
Chapter Three. More About Federfores
Chapter Four. Right Braining the Federfore Over To The Backhand Side
Chapter Five. Progressions
Chapter Six: More Exploratory Campouts
Chapter Seven. Sudden Reversals
Chapter Eight. Applying the Internal Progression Idea Everywhere
Chapter Nine. Bars and Tennis
Chapter Ten. Bars, Sleep and Tennis, Continued
Chapter Eleven. Mostly Backhands
Chapter Twelve. Swingeing from the Hips
Chapter Thirteen. Hold the Attribution
Chapter Fourteen. David Ferrer—Highly Evolved, Minimalist yet Big Whirl Ground Strokes
Chapter Fifteen. Using Injuries
Chapter Sixteen. Pooch Ace Go With
Chapter Seventeen. The Voice of Barnaby
Chapter Eighteen. Bull Whip
Chapter Nineteen. First Strike Capability
Chapter Twenty. More Epistolary Dialogue, with Revelation
Chapter Twenty-one: Wrapping Up This Discussion

Here, the list appears as I wrote it. Strangely, though, when I previewed it in the Amazon Books conversion machine, Chapter Fourteen looked like this:
Chapter Fourteen. David Ferrer-- Highly Evolved, Minimalist yet Big Whirl Ground Strokes

Yes, the description of David Ferrer's ground strokes was emboldened. But I didn't do it! So who did? A Kindle Books technician in Hyderabad? David Ferrer? The conversion machine, a tennis player itself although we didn't know it? And why, when I then tried to remove the bold on ten different occasions, would the conversion machine not permit me to do that?

Just one of the many mysteries of tennis publishing. To see the glitch in person, go to the following website and click on the cover to A NEW YEAR'S SERVE. That will take you to another cover of A NEW YEAR'S SERVE. Click on that. Which will take you to a third cover of A NEW YEAR'S SERVE with a red arrow on it, inviting you to come inside. Click on that, too, with none of this costing you a cent. Then scroll down to the List of Chapters and you will see what I'm talking about.

http://bottle-booksandstuffbyjohnescher.blogspot.com/

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This is such a good shot. I'd recommend it to anybody. The only drawback I can see is all the new avenues it opens up.

Also, I'm liking the following service lesson. What was weight distribution on my serve: 90-10, 10-90? Certainly not the 70-30, 30-70 recommended by Steve. From the following-- only rocking back to 50-50-- I suppose, one could eventually depart-- slightly.

But even as a server with limited shoulder flexibility, I immediately found more control of aim and spin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki1JbK1i--s&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Quadruple-Dig, Dig, Dad?

Dig with front shoulder as part of the one-piece backswing.

Now comes the foreswing which we break down only for purposes of understanding after which we put the pieces back together and forget them.

It's something like cleaning an ancient, priceless chandelier. When the job is almost done, you say to your partner, "Let's not think about this," and you grab the chain with both hands, lift up over the railing and push the whole shebang out into the air of the bottomless stairwell.

Stilling the imagination, though hard, is possible, as your partner, with arms thrust through spokes of the banister to keep every crystal from contacting wood, wonders when she can let go.

What if the chain breaks or the ceiling fixture doesn't hold?

But if you can do that, if you can set the intact, gleaming chandelier out in mid-space so nothing moves, you can probably master the basics of the Steffi-Graf-Slice-Backhand.

First dig was in single piece backswing. Second, third and fourth digs are in the single piece foreswing. Second: The racket tip lowers while the hand stays at a single level in space, third: The elbow lowers forward to close the racket face, fourth: The upper body, from contact, jack-knifes a few inches to lower the shoulders and keep the strings on line and reduce sidespin in favor of pure backspin.

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Amplitude or Wimpitude?

So, are we going to hit this shot or wimp out at the attempt? I say play the slo-mo at marker 20 20 times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8RibH0lB3w

There definitely is some rolling forward of the shoulders along with everything else.

Some pretty good instructors tell us that this lowering of hitting shoulder will lead to errors, but what if they just are saying that because Steffi is a woman? What if they're right, though? Don't do it then?

Jack-knifing from the gut occurs too. Precisely when? From contact, I'd say, and not before. From contact until downward leg of the followthrough is concluded.

Note how quickly and completely equilibrium is restored on upward leg of Steffi's followthrough.

Omigod, not until I write something do my real ideas begin. Following my own direction, at about the sixth viewing of the marker 20 slo-mo sequence, I finally realized that Steffi lowers her front shoulder in her backswing-- there's some design for you!

We could still call that move "digging," I suppose, or refer to rear shoulder for our cue instead, perhaps stating that rear shoulder rises like a wave.

If we do that, how about reassigning the verb form "digging" to the jack-knifing from contact?

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An Earlier Contact Than Thought

I should perhaps apologize for alluding so much to a photo sequence that isn't in front of us all. On the other hand, the goal is simply to hit slice like that of Steffi Graf, which is lavishly illustrated at YouTube on the internet.

Here's some Steffi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8RibH0lB3w

But I'm still working from the 14 frames of the Barron's slicer, who's trying, I'm convinced, to hit exactly like Steffi.

And once he's lowered his racket to the canapes holding position the forward stroke beginning in a hurry won't travel very much to contact.

From canapes to contact what's the simultaneous motion happening then?

The body leans on the ball (vertical rotation).

The body turns into the ball (horizontal rotation).

The body puts scapular muscle on the ball.

The arm straightens into the ball (but wasn't very bent to start).

The arm rolls into the ball through a forward lowering of the elbow.

The front knee sinks somewhat into the shot.


From contact, the body stays parallel with the side fence until racket has finished its descent toward the target.

The racket then rises to right as body rotates in its two separate ways again.

The scapular retraction continues.

Note: It's easy to think that the ball is hit with the followthrough downward. It isn't. It's hit flat before that with the combination of forces just outlined.

It's important to keep the elbow in until the ball is struck.

Suggestion: Practice the tract from canapes to contact before adding the two legs of the followthrough.

Those again are 1) down and out toward the target and 2) up to right of target.

Note 2: At the 20 marker in the video here, it could be argued that Steffi doesn't reach full canape position, i.e., with strings completely open to sky like a tray. Think eight-iron here rather than pitching wedge.

Note 3: The rhythm of Steffi's shot is two parts not three-- back, forward with no transition. The slight lowering of the racket head as delay is part of the forward motion. It's not its own step.

Note 4: Now I see a jack-knife from the gut as well as a rolling forward of the shoulder at least in some of these Steffi-shots.

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Where Explanation Should Break Down

In the present stroke being discussed:

Arm work starts before body work.

Body revolves horizontally right up to the below nipples position but continues digging through contact.

Feel the arm swing pulling first, with shoulders level, before unified body turn commences. This first part of the swing is of the racket butt only.

So, where should explanation break down?

Maybe it shouldn't. There's some heresy for you! Espousers of explanation can claim a "fine attention to detail" and a belief in Mumbo-Jumbo on the part of all detractors.

This is not to reject mystery. In re-reading on Kindle MATCH PLAY AND THE SPIN OF THE BALL, I find a great emphasis on weight going through the ball just at the right moment, the achievement of which could seem pretty mysterious.

Timing, spin and everything is seen related to this happy occurrence. And Tilden, confessing that his timing was, at first, not very good, attributes his eventual success to his ideas on footwork.

These ideas are nicely general, i.e., right-brained, e.g., run all out for a distant ball and then start skipping when you're about six feet away to get feet just right.

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Barron's Unknown Slicer

I'm going to say elbow first comes up to just below shoulders. On teeter-totter it comes up to shoulders. On slanting drop it comes to just below the nipples and lined up with leading edge of the body but out toward side fence.

So from where to where is the "dig?" (That would be the slight roll of the shoulders toward the net.)

From start of forward motion to end of descent of the racket.

Shoulders then level out as racket comes up again.

The most complete example of this type of slice would be all the You-Tube videos of Steffi Graf at Wimbledon-- but these, though amazing to behold, are not too good for instruction.

For total contrast there's Roger Federer's level-shouldered chop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=_YE-k1QwZfg

For partial contrast there's the videos of Waltke, Rosewall and Phillippoussis discussed so much here and elsewhere in this forum.

These guys keep their shoulders level but hit through the ball pretty flat.

I'm going to say that Graf and the Barron's slicer provide a compromise: heavy spin but they hit through the ball more than Roger, too.

I've already told the story of a Swiss lady playing in a high-level tournament at my club in Virginia and cutting through the field like butter by remembering to dig on her slice. I'd like to cut through a lot of blather on this subject in the same way. If nothing else, a new option might come out of the attempt.

What should one do when faced with a number of options in tennis technique?
Only go with what one sees on the internet? In tennis books? What one has seen first-person? What one has experienced on the court first-person?

Some combination of course.

http://bottle-booksandstuffbyjohnescher.blogspot.com/

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I like keeping things at the design level for a longer time than most persons are comfortable with. "You should only go with the discoveries you make on the court," one player said. But his strokes were very ordinary as I recall.

If this stroke I'm working on is, as I suspect, the Steffi-slice, then it's a very special stroke with a big pay-off for anyone who actually figures it out. I don't think many people have. Worse, they didn't try.

For guidance, let's use serve, the most powerful stroke in tennis, along with one coach's maxim: "Go for more unity and less sequence."

Backswing should be wide according to the Deutscher Tennis Bund book. That means less bend in the arm.

We've already talked a lot about arm. So let's talk more about body. In a serve body rotates in more than a single way and all at once. So let's try that.

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In fact, one may be able to get away with using only two of the three available types of roll: Simultaneous digging with front shoulder and lowering of elbow are the two I vote for without yet having gone to the court, although I have already swung a racket outside.

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Backhand Slice in TENNIS SKILLS, Barron's 1990

If shape of the swing is from inside to outside to inside one obtains a longer leg of straightness with which to scrape but not "hit" or "chop" the ball.

The backhand slice sequence in this Deutscher Tennis Bund book, which opens with a large two-page photo of Steffi Graf hitting her signature backhand slice, also is done in facing pages but with a large amount of text and a 14-frame photo sequence from reader's right to left.

Helpfully, the text advises that one can extend the arm and roll the racket over at one and the same time. I wish to add, "with perfect confidence." Would the average player arrive at something like that unless someone told him? I doubt it.

Aside from that, the text really doesn't say what I want to learn. But I wish I could easily reproduce the photo sequence here. Because it's different from Ken Rosewall or Trey Waltke or Mark Phillippoussis. Is it similar to the way Steffi hit her slice? In the one frame in common between the frontispiece starring Steffi and the instructional section starring an unnamed man the shoulders are slanted down toward the net and the handle is considerably beneath the strings.

I have always thought that the Steffi-slice, perhaps the greatest backhand slice of the present era, resembles a sea-serpent. But how exactly? Do racket or shoulders do it or what? I didn't know but that was my impression.

So, does the man in the official Deutscher Tennis Bund instructional backhand slice presentation resemble a sea-serpent? Well, his racket does, could even be a dolphin or two gliding through the water.

Here's what his racket tip does: Goes around wide, lowers, rises, lowers, rises.

But knowing that isn't enough. Exactly how high does the racket tip rise after it has slightly lowered behind the man's back? Well, it rises higher than it was before that first lowering.

Hand by contrast, which has traveled to almost even with the man's chin, has lowered substantially, and we know that such lowering will roll the racket head toward the net and close it. But the man didn't lower so much that the racket tip went on a level path or descended. No, it went up. So some other kind of roll-- a simple hand roll or the roll of the shoulders into the tilt-- must also be involved.

Me, I'll split the roll 33-33-33 among the three types then adjust as I begin to explore this interesting shot, which enables both body rotation (1) and scapular muscles (2) to go to work before contact.