A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

My Flippant Reason for not Liking the Term "Flip" in Tennis

Flip is a simple word. It therefore should apply to a simple act. Hand flip should be a simple thing but is not. Flip in a serve or forehand is at least two things: layback of the wrist and clockwise turn of the forearm. So I prefer "mondo." But the same person taught me both terms.

Recent forehand experiments in which one turns one's strings to face the side fence may create a technical and linguistic problem both. I ended by calling that situation a "half-mondo" and began to think I was on a diving board.

Forget that. I'd rather keep my wrist straight and moosh it much later into its hitting pose-- on both serve and forehand.

To do so, I am afraid I'll have to learn how to throw a curveball in baseball, something I never mastered in a lifetime. Perhaps some other reference would work. Reflect on all the great forehands that come from nations where there isn't any baseball.

Well, hardball has been in my blood ever since I caught a long fly ball on my forearms which led to a triple play. So I go with baseball.

On a serve, one will get the racket tip a slight degree less low by keeping wrist straight at teardrop. This could prove fatal but I've got to take the chance.

On a forehand I similarly will threaten the loss of all beneficial structure by trying to do much late but again I choose to take the chance.

Forehand: strings approach the ball from inside then catch the ball on backside then fling it from outside.

Serve: strings approach the ball under backside then catch it on outside and fling it from inside.

Life is pretty complicated if you ask me unless you can get all 28 persons in your kindergarten class to squeak like a mouse at once.

[bottle]

Re-Orchestrate According to Yesterday's Admission of Limited Athleticism

I told what happened on the top of a mountain in Garrison, New York that overlooked the battlements of West Point on the opposite side of the Hudson River.

Dougie Anderson, who was the Lou Gehrig of my childhood (and later the greatest slugger in the history of the Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut baseball team with a batting average of over 500) came up to bat.

I forget or never knew what happened with his contract with the New York Yankees-- a tragic story, I think.

For some reason I was situated in deep right field.

The assertive players on my team waved me way way back almost to the edge of the forest.

With a crack of Dougie's bat the ball that Dougie hit kept rising and rising with a clear intent to come all the way to the exact spot where I was standing.

And then it peaked and came down and down against the part of me where my two arms crossed.

My teammates were screaming at me.

Despite my pain, I threw the hardball high in their general direction.

They performed the rest of a triple play.

Showed character, luck, fate or something, right? Let's call it athletic ineptitude despite the tennis assessment I sometimes receive that I have good hands.

So I'm one year shy of octogenarian, which would put Dougie's fly ball at 71 years ago.

Last night, in tennis, my best shot by far was a towering moonball although I barely missed the sideline with it a couple of times after my caffeination wore off.

This shot is the sole survivor of my several decades long attempt to hit a Federfore.

But it works. So should I abandon it? Never, although I turned it into an orphan for a while.

I'll orchestrate outward from it even though "orchestrate" is a word you never hear from other tennis players, the more fool they.

Federfore for a tall howitzer, McEnrueful for low, flat, deep, Waterwheel for something in between loaded with buzz and penetration both.

The new Waterwheel however will not be hit like the old Waterwheel, which hired and employed a set length of right arm.

Racket tip will rise immediately as in the Federfore-- the backswing I have practiced most and therefore am most comfortable with.

But arm will scissor instead of remaining straight. And there shall be no windshield wipe-- a brush, yes, as elbow finally takes off.

This elbow causes the racket to scythe, you can say, but only if it sighs at the same time.

I was watching Federer's shot of the day as he defeated Quadzilla on Australian TV.

I saw lots of arm, then bod, then more arm as the ball zipped down the line.

[10splayer]

Did you miss me?

[bottle]

Did you miss me?

Absolutely. I'm not that different from the other side, the Trumpenoids. They love to be attacked. Somehow in their twisted psyches the attacks seem to them to justify their very existence, and the more the attacks are well reasoned, well supported and devastating, the happier they are. They love the attention and will never change, can't, don't have that in them.

To further explore their point of view, I haven't been squashed yet on a Detroit highway. There are two schools of thought on Detroit highways.

The first is that they are dangerous, especially in an area such as where I recently lived (no mail delivery and rats climbing up in the walls to avoid the stinky flooding in the basement where the mailboxes were located, just to give a rough idea). And nobody can afford car insurance. Maybe they buy it once then let it lapse.

The second school of thought is that the roads were built in the hayday of Ford, Chrysler and GM.

Then half the people moved away so there was half the traffic so the roads weren't half bad.

Also, I've noticed that when people don't have any car insurance they make a real effort not to crash into other vehicles. There are exceptions of course and one needs a certain amount of blind luck. My shifter cable snapped behind my dentist's office rather than in a more dangerous place. Still it was a very expensive day since I was getting a crown and moving into a new apartment at the same time.

[bottle]

Deja Vu without Redundancy. No "all over again." That has to be the most ignorant expression ever penned.

Am trying to remember a very simple serve I used to have but my remembrance so far is slightly off.

The two elbows separate. The body loads and winds under the floating ball.

Sometimes the score would be love 40 before I tried it. Sometimes then I would run the game. That happened enough times to become significant experience.

It was a topspin serve but not very powerful. A good opponent, in a while, would catch on to it and begin to clobber it along with my other serves.

I don't care.

I want it back again. I know things now I didn't know then.

Would like to see if I can make it work.

[bottle]

Stotty's Teaching Choice on a Loop Forehand

My interpretation of what Stotty says is that he is apt to teach a student to lead with the elbow rather than lift racket tip like Federer because he worries that if the student goes the Federer route he will end with elbow too close to bod and thus lose leverage.

And spacing. And may have a pitch problem too.

One solution might be a wait position with elbow farther out in front although that could change the alignment and dynamic of too many other things.

Less disruptive could be the addition of a small sideways move of the elbow as racket tip goes up.

That in turn suggests a range in the length of this small sideways move.

And possible variety in how much arm bend one uses as the racket tip goes up.

[stotty]

Stotty's Teaching Choice on a Loop Forehand

My interpretation of what Stotty says is that he is apt to teach a student to lead with the elbow rather than lift racket tip like Federer because he worries that if the student goes the Federer route he will end with elbow too close to bod and thus lose leverage.

Not quite the right interpretation. A player can have the racket tip pointing up but not directly vertical. A directly vertical racket tip will by default shove the elbows down into the body. Try it at home. If we tilt the racket tip slightly forwards, the elbows will be inclined to move away from the body when the stroke commences, which is better, I think. A coach can also encourage a player to raise the elbows a little when starting the stroke, sometimes with good results.

[bottle]

Not quite the right interpretation. A player can have the racket tip pointing up but not directly vertical. A directly vertical racket tip will by default shove the elbows down into the body. Try it at home. If we tilt the racket tip slightly forwards, the elbows will be inclined to move away from the body when the stroke commences, which is better, I think. A coach can also encourage a player to raise the elbows a little when starting the stroke, sometimes with good results.

Nice. Good. Thanks.

[bottle]

Significant Step in McEnrueful Development

It's just an imitation John McEnroe forehand without the leg extension and pogo stick hop-landing.

In fact John McEnroe himself hits some of these shots this way, and you can find examples in the stroke archive.

In the Detroit indoor club where I play, there are a lot of teaching pros walking around-- four at the very least.

I don't think any of them believe my McEnrueful is a bad shot. Some of them may even think it interesting although I doubt they ever would connect it to John McEnroe.

The improvement which happened and which I'm trying to describe is a classic case of how you put something with something else.

Something: The down and up racket head rhythm of the backswing. I used to think it should be fast. Now I think the up part of it should be very slow and tailored to the oncoming ball.

The more you can protract this rise of the racket, the more compressed the rest of the stripped down solid bod action will be.

Hips followed by aeronautical banking up is what I'm talking about.

Compression of this sequence turns out to be a good thing.

First it worked in self-feed.

Then I tried it in a hitting session with a good partner but sprayed a few shots.

The next day I tried it the spraying was gone.

I'm afraid to practice this shot very much since I have it just where I want it right now. I'll work on other shots or other aspects of the game, thank you.

[don_budge]

I am very confused.

[bottle]

A smear from an ignorant person, as most smears are. Or does he mean he didn't have the mental capacity to follow? Who knows, with all the rumbling emanations from "deeep state" whatever that is, that continuously occupy his mind.

[bottle]

"Don't Practice This"

I didn't. But I thought about it, and this is human nature. You give yourself a verbal command. You do the opposite.

Well, don't fight it. Two versions of the McEnrueful emerge instead of one.

First version. Down and up backswing. At top of backswing the arm locks into a longer pin through the two shoulderballs.

If this image still remains unclear for you, find the nearest golf course and walk out onto the first green at midnight. Take the pin from its hole and thread it through your elbows behind your neck.

Swing to and fro. This will give you the proper feel.

Forward stroke becomes nothing but a mild sweep down and up. With no awareness by you of segmentation of any kind.

Second version (discussed before).

Slowness of arm rise is followed by abrupt cranking of the hips.

Version one and version two are just that-- two different strokes.

[don_budge]

Two established writers at Brown University saw a similarity between my first novel WINDWAY and LORD OF THE FLIES.

[bottle]

Yeah, and it led to a fellowship and a year of working with William Golding. Cool, eh?

[bottle]

Yeah, and it led to a fellowship and a year of working with William Golding. Cool, eh?

It was like actually being in the middle of LORD OF THE FLIES. I was neither Ralph nor Piggy. I had the sunny disposition of Roger. the thing of Federer we all can imitate.