A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

ono. "Maple." That's right. Affected her whole life, especially when she went to the city.

[don_budge]

What's in a name?

Her name was Maple...not April. I see what you mean. The implications are not in my backhand as you know...although I teach his backhand in the land of Borg. He would love me for that alone. Aha! There is the answer. What's in a name?

Don't mind me...I am only a student, quietly taking notes. And please continue. Thank you, sir.

[bottle]

Souping up a Forehand

Have been re-reading TENNIS FOR THINKING PLAYERS by Chet Murphy. What a gyro he was! Cleverness can be a horrid irritant in art; in tennis, it’s usually pretty good.

“But when you do want a great deal of speed in your shot,” he writes, “try a bit of sophisticated body action not often recognized. I’m referring to what can be called ‘reverse body action.’ On the forehand, it works like this.

“Though you turn your shoulders clockwise and move your arm and racket with them into your backswing, they shouldn’t move together as you start your forward swing. Step with your left foot (to shift your weight) and reverse your shoulder action (turn them counterclockwise) while your arm and racket continue to move back for the last foot or so of your backswing. Then whip the racket through the remainder of your backswing and into your forward swing. With such action, in which your body turns first and the arm and racket follow afterward, you’ll be applying the forces successively, one after another, and not simultaneously. The result will be a whip-like swing and probably a faster shot.”

Believing in an idea is half the battle when you know how many of your ideas have let you down before.

[bottle]

Relating New Information on “Heavy Ball” to One’s Personal Ideas

THE MYSTERY OF THE HEAVY BALL is an article by John Yandell on expanded, ongoing research findings sponsored by NASA and started by Yandell and the scientist/physics teacher Nasif Iskander.

Heavy ball (or an oncoming ball that “feels like a brick”) is seen as a special combination of pace and spin, both of which can now be measured, through digital photography, as never before.

A first finding is that any serve, no matter how huge, loses more than half of its speed by the time it reaches the receiver.

Practically speaking, I as receiver should find return of a big serve easier than I ever dreamt.

Actually, however, I need to train my brain first to detect differences in ball speed all at once, again as never before (and never before dreamt).

A good place to start in this quest may be isolation of one’s own focus on a pair of “spots,” 1) bounce of the ball and 2) high point of the arc thereafter.

That is a tennis tip.

About spin, some first findings were that a so-called “topspin serve” is more sidespin than topspin and that big impact with the court generates a greater percentage of the topspin than had been thought.

To me, the autodidact, one obstacle to such learning has been the ready-made notion of acceleration-deceleration.

On a serve, as well as forehand and backhand, we are supposed to find ways to abruptly stop body rotation so that the arm or arms can accelerate through, up, down, or across the ball.

Great spin is wonderful however it is made. The big whirl forehands, serves, or even some backhands we now see, however, have the shoulders rotating through contact and afterward.

[bottle]

How the Human Mind Refuses to Learn (Reprise)

"Don't think," it says to itself. Then it wonders why it is so abysmally stupid.

Somebody has to think in tennis, perhaps one's grandmother, brother or first coach.

But, in the general surge toward opacity in the Bush and Obama administrations, "dumb" somehow became beautiful as if all of us Americans are blonde jokes.

Billie Jean King said that the better the player, the less he or she knows what she is doing.

But we learn here as everywhere through opposites. Billie Jean King did indeed make that statement, but she also says that a good player must know at all times where their racket tip is. And the biographical material on her, whether she or somebody else wrote it, reveals that she, like Arthur Ashe, always read every single tennis book that she could put her hand on.

[bottle]

Idiosyncratic vs. Model Forehands

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/pro_men/HD/Novak_Djokovic/Forehand_Backhand/Forehand_Backhand.html?djokovic_fh_center_side3.mov

During this writing, Novak Djokovich beat Rafa Nadal in the final of the Madrid Open. Always—always...some new player is on his way up.

Could Djokovich be a good model for an ordinary player who is hungry for best possible technique rather than what ordinary tennis lessons will teach him?

What does Djoker’s arm do on a typical forehand? The video I have before me shows westernized grip and bent arm in the takeback, a straightening before start of the whirl, like Federer, but a re-bending of arm at beginning of the whirl followed by absorbency mondo right on the ball.

On the face of it, this idiosyncratic shot doesn’t look too promising for our purposes.

However, if Djoker, himself an expert at miming other players, remains top player in the world for as long as Federer or any other long-termer did, the tennis community will re-examine every tit or jottle of his technique with increasing frequency each year.

And so it will always be with any new player rising to the very top.

Always, however, the questing recreational player, eager to escape his own mediocrity, will want to keep the example of Fred Perry in mind.

Yes, one can go out with the Marlene Dietrich of one’s time just as Fred Perry did with the real Marlene Dietrich.

But to win world championships in tennis and table tennis both?

Or to hit the ball like Fred Perry and make it work?

Again, very unlikely.

I’ll stick with the big whirl forehand of David Ferrer as my prime model unless or until something better comes along—because of this particular shot’s economy and simplicity.

[bottle]

April is the cruelest month, too, or is it May?

[bottle]

David Ferrer: Highly Evolved, Minimalist Ground Strokes?

Cool. About the subject of deleterious backward emphasis forehand now, I'd like to examine it as pure idea.

As early as the old VHS "Masters of the Game," I can remember Tony Roche advocating for smaller loops. Whatever keeps the racket back too long cannot be good.

And yet, if the racket counters back in response to the shoulders whirling forward, the tip is going to whip this way then that as in a good throw or serve, and anybody can make contact way out front or anywhere they please.

Federer, Nadal, Ferrer and other top players, I'm sure, figured this out long ago. Me, I'm just figuring it out for my own strokes right now, but I've always been a late bloomer in everything.

Federer and Nadal do this thing differently. Federer closes his racket as he points across with his left hand. Then he gets his arm straight. Then he starts his big whirl forward. His wrist mondoes in response to the big whirl-- yes the racket tip whips back then forward, but he straightened his arm first.

And that took time.

Nadal, he keeps his relaxed arm bent, takes it back a shorter distance, then uses his body to whirl it straight. Goodness gracious, I haven't even tried this-- great balls of fire! I've tried to figure out why Nadal's elbow goes down before it straightens, but haven't let big whirl drive all the little actions. Could it be that vertical vector, the outside leg thrust that initiates every big whirl is more directly related to racket head speed and direction which is up and to the side?

Ferrer, he may not be the greatest player but might be the most appropriate model for me, given my Ziegenfuss.

Regardless, one can start hitting a whole lot harder if one absorbs with perfect understanding his basic hitting mechanism, and I don't care, reader, how athletically gifted you are or not.

My opinion may be worthless supposing I'm a crazy proselytizer, but it's not, in this case, crazy for me.

For a Ziegenfuss, I get shoulders around, but not particularly far, and stop them and loop slowly and armily right up to the ball, which then is hit with the spring don't swing system. My shoulders will not go beyond parallel to the net and I'll catch the racket slightly to my left. This is a very careful and therefore effective shot.

For the new Ferrer-inspired shot, which looks much the same at its beginning, I get shoulders way around-- just as far as for a Federfore, and, similarly, in two separate installments.

The first is pivot out right but forward toward the ball. The second is pointing across with left hand, at conclusion of which your body is fully loaded.

But what is your bent (and relaxed) right arm doing? Almost nothing! It's just hanging near where ball will be, which is good for hand-to-eye coordination.

Now you whirl. I counted clicks in the Tennis Player conventional archive. From load to contact Ferrer's big whirl is two or three clicks-- very fast. And the big whirl continues past contact, putting weight on the ball.

Arm work consists primarily of elbow taking a free ride on the body if you don't think about racket having just arm-and-wrist-mondoed back, or about the way elbow lifts as you start your wiper for contact on your right side.

[don_budge]

Ok...

Alright...it doesn't matter. You are right. I have his eleven books in my collection. I admit that I have not read it but I began yesterday. It's never too late! I will find it. It is better this way. Thank you and please accept my humble apologies for interrupting your rain of thought.

April...come she will
When streams are ripe
And swelled with rain

[bottle]

I forget. It's not as good a poem as the one you presented, but it's pretty good. And there are others that are better than either.

[don_budge]

April?

bottle...what is the name of that poem? So that I might better understand your question.

[don_budge]

My Backhand and my username...ahem

The Road Not Taken-Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And it has made all the difference.

[gzhpcu]

Mr. don_budge,

...... So, if you name yourself don_budge, you might eventually end up with a backhand like Donald Budge-- no?

Darn, I should have chosen to name myself Pancho_ Gonzales....

[bottle]

Dullard Tennis: Hit the Same Old Shot

Reader, don't give in to this. Such a player may beat you once in a while but you can beat him too through superior invention. If hitting a David Ferrer type forehand, make the take-off real early, having already pointed across with opposite hand at the right fence like Roger Federer.

Reader, you understand by now, don't you, that I'm not writing about Ferrer or Federer-- they're just cash cows-- but about myself and what new wrinkle I plan to try today.

Also, dear reader, if I may ask a favor, do you think you could refrain from being a play reviewer for one minute? Being a drama critic is tremendous fun, one of the most self-indulgent activities available on earth, especially when you include what your girlfriend said in your final printed review.

But everybody's a play reviewer now, especially people who don't like theater and never attend a play. They review politics, NFL "franchise" behavior, whether Osama Bin Laden was polite enough while the Navy Seals killed him.

Here, one meister of this tennis forum has opined that anyone who discusses innovation is a quack since everything in tennis has been done a million times before. Okay-- quack-quack! But he's wrong. There is an infinity of possible arcs that one can describe through the air with the tip of one's racket, which keeps things honest.

So, let's say that David Ferrer's backward loop looks like the shell of a short turtle. At top, acme, or high point of the shell, let's perform our take-off, a big thrust with outside leg to start the giant whirl which has become a staple of modern tennis.

The earliness of this pro-active take-off will counter the arm, which passively then will fold itself into your body and mondo your wrist after which the body just keeps going!

[bottle]

Mr. don_budge,

Thanks so much. A book is in process. But, aside from that, I'm very curious to learn something about your backhand. Robert Frost thought that names have compelling, almost mystical power (in a poem about a girl named April, he traced how her name affected her entire life). So, if you name yourself don_budge, you might eventually end up with a backhand like Donald Budge-- no?