A New Year's Serve

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"Longest Runway Possible"

The seminal phrase. Three words. No less and no more.

I thought of writing nothing today. Champagne social is scheduled for tomorrow-- the Friday night tennis mixer at Eastside Tennis and Fitness Club. Comely guests welcome. When in Detroit don't miss it.

But the dinner party has not occurred in two weeks. And the current cold snap hasn't helped. Except for the quarter-mile cross-country ski track alongside of this senior center for affordable housing-- a runway which is long enough.

Each time my long skis go swooshing in giant steps, the slick tract gets faster. Quarter-mile to the tenth power. Time then to go up to the great new apartment and take a nap.

No, do not sit down on the rowing machine. That is for loosening up BEFORE the speed trials.

The challenge now is a runway just as good behind the back.

But all the tennis ideas are backed up, damn 'em, they're dammed. Not much chance therefore for tennis success tomorrow but you never know.

Enjoy the process. Toss hand and racket tip go down together and stay down low together even after the elbow has twisted up.

"Longest runway possible." Apply exactly what that means.

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How Late Can One Hit a McEnrueful (an imitation of a John McEnroe forehand only without any big vertical leg drive)?

Later than one has been hitting them, most likely. And that could be why the excellent versions of this shot have been sporadic. It's hit, after all, with a composite grip halfway between continental and eastern forehand.

But if one has hit eastern forehands for most of one's life, the contact point drilled into one's nerves is a bit forward.

Special effort, therefore, should go to hitting one's composite grip shots a bit later (or rather, farther back).

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Should You, Could You?-- I Just Ask

Working off of the lowering tip forehand backswing strong eastern grip pattern recently established/re-established, could one substitute something different for breaststroke to generate more pure topspin rather than topspin and pace?

The something different could be half a breaststroke just as one learned to master half a mondo. Not only was a half-mondo possible but improved overall stroke.

By "half a breaststroke" one could mean that one arm only moves insect feeler like while the other remains perfectly still.

The opponent will never notice. He's unobservant.

This leaves hitting arm (the still one) closer to bod right after the unit turn and therefore better able to create a narrow gorge of down and up racket path.

But ball must be fairly high if one wants to preserve the arm scissoring arm roll melded sequence one has so carefully worked out.

For a really low ball i would choose a McEnrueful any time or else cross the ball.

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Talking to Carol about her Huge Flat Forehand

This is a conversation I haven't had yet.

"Carol, have you ever played on Laykold?"

"No-o-o."

"I learned on Laykold. It shaped my whole game. I was sick when the club resurfaced to the same stuff as here."

"What's so good about Laykold?"

"It's fast and smooth. Your forehand wouldn't slow down after the bounce. And you'd get a bigger reward for coming to net. I fell on it one time and just slid without even getting a bruise. Did the same thing here and spent months trying to heal my knee."

Carol will be curious.

i will end by advising her when playing outside to look for old courts that haven't been well kept.

Where the little nubs have worn down over the years until the surface is as slick as Laykold.

'You just have to remove the sticks and leaves before you play."

"I'll do that, John."

"Better than all the little bayonets in the surface here."

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Tennis Tips Everlasting

Old age tennis with a two-week layoff is tough, but as I say, good for one's cross-country skiing.

The big challenge once again: return of hot serves-- the place in the game where one ought to be most creative?

You know what I mean, reader, correct? I'm talking about serves so hot that NO ONE can touch them.

Time to be very creative. You have a hundred possibilities? Run through the whole list?

More efficient, though, may be good listening or overhearing of what some particularly generous player is saying to somebody else. Since anyone must solve the same problem, i.e., the same hot serve.

This overheard conversation could come between sessions if partners are changing within a large group.

But one has to know beforehand who is the most generous, easy and outgoing among the more capable players.

That's a player one ought to keep one's eye on and never get too far away from.

And here he is, showing a lesser partner exactly how he stays in place and barely shifts his weight from foot to foot so he can break in either direction.

The muscles in his legs flex and work but not much else happens.

But the shifts are a steady vibration.

He shows something else.

"If I bounce like this," he says, "the serve is already by me."

That gives me two options instead of a hundred for the rest of the evening.

1) Stay in place and vibrate like the generous player; 2) Get feet one in front of the other and do rock-steps like in swing dance, then fly forward, on the attack, and bounce just once.

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Once Upon a Time

Invention of a new tennis stroke (and any little tweak makes the whole thing "new" as far as I am concerned) is not as intrinsically awful as most tennis players think.

The worst aspect of it may be the high hope it engenders. One's grooved strokes, most often but not always, are better. Disappointment is easy to come by in this pursuit.

What one does next at such times of gloomy self-assessment is perhaps most revealing of who one is and where in the life cycle.

A simplicity check is good at any age. But so is invention. In my case I probably need to remember one tournament in Berryville, Virginia more than everything I know about technique.

I drew a very good professional tennis instructor in my first round match but nevertheless was able to take the opening set. Convincingly, too.

When he won the next two sets and the match was over, he carefully explained to me that my toss was higher in the first set and I therefore didn't "bend-arm" any of my serves.

Something to think about even now, forty years later.

Perhaps the main thing.

[bottle]

Higher Toss and...

Turn out forearm while keeping wrist straight.

Worth a try.

Worth a try if good semiwestern and western players are killing your serve with their forehands.

You have everything to gain.

Not to try new stuff would be insane.

(This is an all-age-inclusive observation.)

###########################

When then to turn forearm out while keeping wrist straight?

Could I have the nominations?

They are: 1) At address; 2) At bottom of down together; 3) As racket goes past right shin; 4) As arm goes up; 5) As closed racket approaches head; 6) At bottom of second racket drop; 7) In middle of arm extension; 8) At top of arm extension.

Vote for one candidate only*

*Check John McEnroe serves for straight or depressed wrist at all eight checkpoints.

Remember from rowing that depressed to straight roll with hand set at 45 degrees to handle produces a perfect feather for the year or so before fingers get more in the act.

https://webtennisgear.com/blogs/wtrs/whats-the-right-shot-episode-151?utm_content=168130&utm_medium=Email&utm_name=Id&utm_source=Actionetics

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Rowing, Baseball and Tennis

Feathering at the catch is more like throwing a curve ball.

Feathering at the release is more like throwing a screw ball.

You do both on every stroke you ever take.

Well, should you do both on all of your serves?

Go from depressed to straight wrist to throw the curve ball.

Go from straight to depressed to throw the screw ball.

Do both in a single melded sequence to serve in tennis?

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Top of the Serve to You

Consider a single melded last-instant move in which wrist goes from depressed to straight to depressed again.

William Inge: "Madge is the pretty one."

Stephen King: "They're all going to laugh at you."

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Off of the Side Track, Back on the Main Track

But "main track" does not imply a consensus forehand beyond certain broad parameters. but rather a personal main track emerging from one's own experiments and thus a clean idea of what one would now like to try.

I watch the videos and read the discussions. Always, it seems to me, something gets left out.

Today we all love Fognini's forehand. But without pointing out that he turns first then does a breaststroke.

Okay, it's a great shot but one could, if one wanted, still be turning the bod as the arms go out.

That compresses the moment in just about all forehands where one's bod isn't doing anything and the hitting arm is doing everything.

The new "everything" is a simple drop or plunge of the racket.

You see it in other batting/hitting sports. You see it in the old instruction of Vic Braden.

So it's up and face strings at side fence straight off today for me. Both hands are on the racket which is out in the slot. The arms are bent. Ernest Gulbis can do something else, poor rich guy. And he can get to a real court, not a virtual one, because he didn't spend the day sub teaching at Voyageur Prep charter school in Detroit, Michigan with subject how to read the way a writer reads.

Further orientation of the racket can be worked out later if at all. Might be better to let all those different dimension tilts take care of themselves. Did you hit a good shot? If so you must have done something right and therefore shouldn't look too hard.

In the new plan, one's (my, your) arms are to separate from that moment when strings face side fence as bod continues to turn. With wrist cocked up from having just faced strings at fence.

Hey, one in a thousand might call this a half-mondo the way I do. And one in a hundred might call it a half-flip.

I reject that term on the grounds that it puts me on a diving platform a mile above a very deep swimming pool.

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Taut Left Side

Keeping left side firm is one of the oldest service tips, saws, aphorisms, witticisms, basics, foundations, nuggets, male sexual allusions, tinker toys, aluminum girders, building stanchions, oaken posts to prevent a mine from caving in.

Put another way, if energy isn't building up from the ground to stabilize the front shoulder at just the right time, the rear shoulder, which is the hitting shoulder, won't fly up with sufficient vigor to prove to an uncertain world that you are a REAL MAN.

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Fighting the Over-Engineering of Kinetic Chain

It's all where you are, I guess, in your forehand progression if progression there be.

Me, I have at least for the time being but hopefully forever accepted the Ivan Lendl-- Eugene Scott forehand pattern as outlined in their joint book IVAN LENDL'S POWER TENNIS.

The hips don't precede the shoulders but rather seem to follow them.

Kinetic chain may still happen. (The book doesn't say this but I do.) If it happens it happens within the above prescription.

This view could amount to significant re-conceptualization for many of us. Combining it with early facing of strings at side fence, one can better attune one's arm movements to beginning of rotation of the shoulders so that there will be a portion of tract where elbow and the two shoulder balls are all on the same line.

This same alignment in a serve empowers both horizontal and more vertical rotation up to the ball.

In a forehand it empowers both horizontal and more vertical rotation down to the ball or to below it.

That's where I would like to stop all thought, at least for today, since I play tonight.

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Mine Post Serves

New York city's decision to divest itself of fossil fuels combined with the world's sudden though belated realization that Donald Trump is a shithole relegates abandoned coal mines to a purpose better than they have had for a long time.

That would be as model for an old-fashioned tennis serve that does not cave in.

One can start this quest by watching the 1951 Billy Wilder film starring Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling called ACE IN THE HOLE.

Next one can imagine oneself as an old-fashioned mine owner contemplating whether to use oak or locust posts to support the roof of his catacomb but settling on willow and cottonwood.

A possibly useful or pernicious way of starting one's serve as one's toss starts coming down is to lower or change the lead arm-- the toss arm-- in some weird way.

If one lowers the elbow while bending it, the tunnel caves in.

What though if one just bends it? Could not the elbow then stay aligned with both shoulder balls?

And with that as habit, could not the still aligned elbow become the serve's fulcrum not only for cartwheel but for scapular slingshot fired all the way from one elbow to the other?

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Consecutive Legs in an Old Fashioned Serve. It's platform stance though pinpoint is possible, too.

As rear leg fires it arches the back, which action includes scapular retraction. Deliberately, one accompanies it with bending of the toss arm to latch elbow to an imaginary high shelf.

As front leg fires, if arching has concluded, upper body cartwheels and "husks," which is another term for scapular adduction. Both cartwheeling and husking happen in an upward direction from the firm shelf.

Toss can tilt the body. The hitting arm therefore does not have to rise far to align with the two shoulder balls.

Front shoulder tilts up. Rear shoulder tilts down. But this move shall not reverse itself.

Since latching of the elbow is to occur simultaneous with rear leg drive the knees should have already bent in the down of down-and-up.

Gladys Heldman philosophy of the toss: One should bend one's knees before or afterward. In this experiment one bends one's knees before the toss.

The general sequence of this should be kept general. One will find one's way as to when final bending concludes and all final unbending begins.

Extended sequence: Rear leg, front leg, back.

On paper this seems all right. But when one goes to pantomime the rear leg wants to continue the bend that already was started. Latch elbow then coincident with this further bend.

If one does that, the upward sequence of the two legs will be a close buh-boom.

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Longer Gesture

A teaching pro here recently stated to me that she sees reminding people of what they already know as a big part of her job.

She combined that with advising a higher toss.

Well, high toss can create more time for accomplishment of all the things one wants to do.

So, if I have the new sprezzatura of latching my toss arm to a high wooden shelf, I may as well be bending the hit arm at the same time.

This idea is both aesthetic (will look good especially if toss hand and racket tip approach one another) and physiological (will synthesize two motions into a single brain impulse).

While assuming that one has kept both arms straight through the up of down-and-up.

And that both arms will bend together with hitting arm perhaps farther back than it was before.

Which creates more space for compressed intricacy near high contact.