A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

What do you mean by rolling over the ball. I would suspect this is misguided, but shoot.

I suspected that too until I tried it. I mean that the upper edge goes forward. And this can happen while the whole straight arm is lifting. The turning of the racket is much faster when arm and wrist are straight just as in a serve. But I'm speculating that despite the speed of this fierce little move one can prolong it and control it just a bit through lift of the arm.

[bottle]

Degrees of the Lousiness of Rolling over on a Forehand

Rolling over is abhorred and eschewed by most teaching professionals.

But some very great players in the history of tennis have done it, e.g., Rod Laver even in the videos of him at this website.

I found a video where I think he rolls over and another where I think he does not. Just go to the last entry in the stroke archive and play the two Laver forehands shown there.

The idea I recently had-- totally strange to me at least-- is of using ISR on a forehand the way you do on a serve. This makes top edge of the racket push forward rather than remaining vertical and fanning upward.

My experimentation so far is inconclusive in that I have done so in self-feed only (dropping a ball and hitting it after the bounce), but I plan to try the new shot in competition soon.

Maybe I'd be wise to give it a trial first against a bangboard.

Or in a neutral hit with a nice guy partner. Or do both things in sequence, bangboard first.

And insert some practice with a ball machine if a good one is available.

My hope is that rolling over (admittedly usually bad-- to jam two adverbs together), done with long arm and straight wrist will land in court and produce a disconcertingly different bounce.

[bottle]

What do you mean by rolling over the ball. I would suspect this is misguided, but shoot.

Thanks for this post. I am grateful for it.

[bottle]

Evolution of One Forehand: Dispense With and Add To

DISPENSE WITH: The not so great Kid Gavilan bolo punch loops (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Gavil%C3%A1n) used by the great playing pros of our age. And the in between bod rotations arm work seen in almost anybody's forehand.

ADD TO: Elbow work in both directions. Before: a very small raising of racket tip was the only arm work in preparation of the two-part stroke. After: The exact same small amount of racket tilt toward the net is achieved-- only combined with some drawing back of the elbow. This in turn adds to the length of cast net form in a crushed forehand with its slightly crowded contact point. And to the length of slant path in big separation straight arm straight wrist rolled forehands contacted farther to the outside.

There is a chance that, although racket path now is lengthened at its rear end, it is similarly shortened at its front end. As Ivan Lendl pointed out in his book with Eugene Scott, so as not to weaken oneself in all ground strokes one never wants to take the ball TOO FAR out front.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk

I include this video of a bolo punch not to endorse it as something useful in tennis but to eschew it. But you may try it if you want ("Gee, thanks, Bottle." "You're welcome").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO8qVrcT9ZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mYyUHGBHxY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrtPKCoPxQs

I'm old enough to remember that it was his other punches, not his showy bolo punch, that made Kid Gavilan a great fighter.

[bottle]

How Many Times Do the Shoulders Rotate Backward in this Bolo Punch Forehand?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk)

Once, you say? Good. That is a solid opinion. I like it and will use it.

But for now I'll say three times.

Once with opposite hand on racket. Once with opposite hand pointing across. Once to begin the bolo punch.

With a Pete Sampras follow-through.

[bottle]

Service Form of Administered Topspin Applied to Forehand

If one form of effective serve taught in California is a cone, why not lay the point of the cone on its side to bring one's forehand to a tight point?

Conical form in a serve refers to a broad base and circular motions becoming gradually smaller and less horizontal and more vertical as the cone rises to its sharp point.

But I don't have to conjure up that complicated image so often if I know from first hand experience that I produce more topspin this way than that way.

This way: Roll the just straightened arm to a Federer-like contact point well to the side but on outside of the ball with straight wrist retained.

That way: Lay back the wrist to form a windshield wiper or just for refreshment speak of a swamp buggy fan this time. It's more what Roger Federer himself does.

But the buggy fan just doesn't produce as many RPS for me.

Maybe my strength is "willowy" as a very good teaching pro once accused. Jim Kacian, USPTA, meant that I'm stronger in close to the trunk and weaker out in the leaves.

But isn't that true of anybody? We none of us really should want to fight Archimedes on the wrong end of any of his levers.

The remedy proposed here: Use the same three-phase backswing for maximum topspin that one does for one's slightly crowded bolo punch flat forehand (post 4160).

The difference is that one sets up for contact farther to the side. And finishes straightening the arm. And keeps the wrist straight rather than mondoeing it. And rolls racket's front edge so it leads coming off the ball.

Two different options now hove into view: 1) Send weight through the ball or 2) Put all weight into racket head speed.

Go with 2) not 1). What does one need 1) for when one already has the bolo punch flat forehand for personal use whenever one wants it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk).

The counter-argument: You can have one contact point for both shots. You can hit all your forehands with the same straight arm. You can mondo or not within identical form thus contacting two different quadrants of the ball.

The ultimate determing factor however: Which of your flat forehands is going to work best?

[bottle]

Don't Think About The Backswing

Or the follow-through.

Just the bolo punch from A to B.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk)

A is the aim point or end of the backswing you didn't think about.

The arm, the racket have taken a bead on the target. A pause there? Sort of. Regardless, the forward stroke begins. With B the contact point on the outer edge of the ball.

What describes the path from A to B? A straight line? Hardly. A serpentine with big curves? Hardly again.

A serpentine then with the mildest of curves.

Racket plunges down and to the left because of the shoulders turning back.

Racket continues to accelerate to right edge of ball.

The total path is in out in.

But body needs to continue the acceleration from contact onward.

[bottle]

Stuck Peanut Butter Jar Volleys

This cue is much more than a funky image. (https://www.google.com/search?q=funk...hrome&ie=UTF-8)

The thing is, the image is tactile more than visual although it is that too.

And combines two disparate tactile imperatives that need not be desperate.

One tells one's slightly loose fingers to slightly tighten their pressure. And whole hand and wrist to screw the peanut butter lid off.

One can easily climb from that educational plateau to the next by remembering the old Volkswagen vans where one front axle bolt was threaded one way and the other the opposite way.

Many an amateur mechanic couldn't wake up to this conundrum and so torqued the front of his van into nemesis.

It's ancient history, belonging in the category of sunken lobster boat and other catastrophe best forgotten.

So go with peanut butter jars instead.

Thread one jar one way and the other the opposite way. The right-hander turns the lid counterclockwise to unscrew a backhand volley. He turns the lid clockwise to unscrew a forehand volley. The finger pressure particularly from the bottom three will naturally increase in both cases.

The combined move produces a succinctness that can be mimed with or without a racket.

And we're always told to make our volleys brief, right? And crisp.

Whatever else you do, you're now learning to drive the lower rim of your racket thus opening the strings.

And can strike the volley at a contact point which is a tiny bit farther back.

And change a blocked volley into a sticked one by virtue of having just brought the racket tip an abrupt albeit small amount around.

More pace, more solidity, less pace and more spin when you want it-- all part of the same package.

[bottle]

Report from Competition

New bolo punch forehand: Entirely positive.

Straight arm and wrist topspun forehand taken out front but wide to the side: Tremendous in self-feed but mediocre in competition, requiring more work.

Did a gremlin creep in, some nasty atavism, an attempt to use radial deviation instead of straight arm and wrist roll? It's possible.

Can a leaf move a branch, thus reversing all kinetic theory of fast-moving sap rising up the tree trunk? Possible too.

If that's true, could the force of the racket roll actually increase the force of the arm as it spirals up around you?

If so, should one's arm roll, reviled by centuries of tennis instruction, complete itself just before contact?

Or should one bet the house on unpopular roll coincident with the contact?

[bottle]

Too Much Freedom > Too Little Freedom

In present iteration of the serve, the racket has all the time in the world to go back and up or back then up or up then back and end in a hundred different places to start the toss.

Remembering what one tried becomes of utmost importance. With so much freedom one needs specific things from other days with which to compare.

Today I'll start with a consistently rising spiral that's going to take the racket way way back but also high enough to face palm down with no artificial twisting from you (me).

And the tendency is always to toss too soon.

So I shall create a very organic and identifiable cue to tell myself the last moment in which to toss.

A stretch that thrusts out the chest while pulling the two elbows apart is what I propose-- while not allowing this to compromise the linkage of immediately reversing bod whirl.

Leading to this situation: Hit arm is still straight. Toss arm is still bent but its elbow just started a slinging motion slightly toward the net while tossing hand lagged behind to stay where it was. The toss hand is an ice cream cone or Hungarian hot dog. Turn it upside down and the ice cream or hot dog will fall out of its hole along with mustard, relish and onions.

The hit arm meanwhile is very straight (I repeat that). You look like you are ready to hurl a stone over the top of a barn but in fact you will do nothing of the sort. The energy will go straight up while bod presses this vertical throw to slant it a bit forward.

The body has not yet turned back nor inverted nor run along its little track toward the net.

Those three actions are integral to the toss along with a fourth and more. When you separated the elbows you left just a bit of room for elbow to go around a tad more so that both elbows now can line up with both shoulder balls.

The toss and bending of the hit arm are complicit simultaneity.

But they don't happen until the elbows have gone out.

The delayed-until-then shoulders turn back while the ball is tossed!

As shoulders next reverse their direction, the spaghetti arm has nothing to do but form a natural loop which you never ever should think about.

[bottle]

Bolo Punch Forehand

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk)

Arm starts acceleration while shoulder winds back. And shoulder reversing then drives down as well as around.

[bottle]

Report from Competition

Can a leaf move a branch, thus reversing all kinetic theory of fast-moving sap rising up the tree trunk? Possible too.

If that's true, could the force of the racket roll actually increase the force of the arm as it spirals up around you?

If so, should one's arm roll, reviled by centuries of tennis instruction, complete itself just before contact?

Or should one bet the house on unpopular roll coincident with the contact?

After Self-Feed: Bet the house on high trajectory forehands intended to land deep. Complete the racket roll early for a see see, at least for now. And crowd ball in that case but hit it way out front for the separation from bod you want.

[bottle]

Peanut Butter Jar Lid Topspin Ground Strokes

This is a matter of connecting dots. If someone buys into post 4163, which is all about straight wrist composite grip volleys on either side, and the motion of rolling racket open combined with a bearing down of the bottom three fingers produces a newly succinct crispness, would not that person immediately want to apply the same cleverness to the most opposite thing he can think of, a topspin ground stroke?

Again, one needs to contemplate the old Volkswagen vans with front axle bolts on either side threaded in opposite direction.

Despite one's different grip, the threading can remain the same as for the volleys since now one is tightening the lid rather than unscrewing it.

The hardest thing to understand about all this may be that tightening one's fingers to produce only one inch of extra racket tip travel is a huge change to any shot's direction along with speed of its strings' scrape.

I apologize, reader, for suddenly introducing an idea that could upend everything you love and to which you are accustomed.

I apologize to myself on the same ground. In fact, my prime antagonist has averred that my only reader is I-- a Nazi propagandist's lie-- but on the other hand he is correct that I do write for myself.

Have I tried these inverted peanut butter lids? Not yet.

All is theory and speculation here then.

But what if it all works?

Wonderful? Disastrous?

Please join me, reader, in anticipating how a topspin forehand now will feel.

The shoulder, kept level for a see see, will now plunge downward same as in one's bolo punch flat forehand.

And shoulders will rotate at murderous pace.

One meanwhile will stiff-arm like a raunchy halfback breaking loose from the opponents' secondary in American football.

This arm straightening, though toward front, will also go decisively out to the side.

So think of this sequence: Elbow straightens then hand straightens with wrist kept straight throughout.

Elbow straightens then fingers clamp combined with a closing roll.

[bottle]

Peanut Butter Jar Lid See See

1) You keep shoulders level.

2) You set up slightly to outside of shot.

3) You take ball in front.

4) You use a sit-and-hit, the details of which are:

A) You put weight on front foot as soon as possible.

B) You do this by combining forward hips turn and neutral stance step-out.

C) You straighten arm fully coincident with the step-out.

D) You extend arm DOWN.

E) You don't wind shoulders back any extra amount or very much in the first place.

F) The hip turn starts while foot is in the air and concludes with foot on the court.

G) The hip turn, forbidden from issuing power, is a slow dance step used to achieve perfect balance on front foot.

H) Now comes tightening of the reverse-threaded peanut butter lid.

I) Follow-through is a natural "wherever-racket-wants-to-go-after-this."

With all my recent emphasis on such exotic machinations as reverse-threaded axle bolts, combined with inverted strokes and reversals (forehand to backhand thinking) one well might surmise that sooner or later one will compress one's fingers only to discover that one has diminished racket head speed rather than increased it.

Not so. Doesn't matter whether more of hand is rolling over or under the racket stalk. Compressing the bottom fingers adds horizontal movement to the racket tip every time.

To see that this is true, one can hold a pencil like a tennis racket and make it twiddle.

I do have to admit, though, that some fulcrum points for thumb and forefinger look better than others.

Have I tried even one of these specialty shots in competition, in a hit, in self-feed? Not yet. That is why I am willing to bet they work.

[bottle]

Insanely Better Toss

A kindergartener saw me miming it. "What are you doing?" he said.

A good question.

Already, I changed the when of my toss. But to change the mechanics of it? Do not contemplate that choice, murderer!

Well, Bottle, do you want an inanely better serve? Then do it.

Employ a wait position that is insanely high. Too much of any service motion is about getting the elbow high. So start with it high. And keep it high, thus eliminating one of the many insane problems.

New insanity can include the way you tilt your ice cream cone toward the net..

The way you point racket tip toward the net too, holding both arms straight. For a two-prong point.