A New Year's Serve

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When you love someone or even something, you see more.

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Not Quite So High

Perhaps one remembers one ace from a time when one didn't get the elbow quite so high.

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Kiddie Slide Serve

I think you've really got something if after assembling all the parts you can speed up the total mechanism to allow more time for the ball to come down.

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Forehands

I leave the advocacy of passive loops to those who have them and like them and use them for timing and positioning of their rackets.

Me, I prefer the power loop that the bolo punch forehand enables-- that is the forehand subject I can best explore right now.

The first question to ask is whether immediate segue of backward to forward rotation of the shoulders can accelerate a circular racket loop through up, round, down and forward directions to a whiplike wiper. The answer is yes.

One need only develop a severe cocking of the racket tip downward during the supernumerary shoulders turn one can detect in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk).

That will next spring the racket head in the opposite direction as forward shoulders rotation takes over to help carry the strings with good velocity to beginning of a windshield whip to replace one's previous windshield wipe.

Everything can lighten up and become less muscular, slow and strained.

That is the goal.

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Playground Slide Serve

I'm trying to help people visualize it.

One stands with butt protruded at rear fence.

This creates a desire in the racket to go up a ramp (the slide).

The slide is long. One simultaneously creates its length at both ends.

The hit arm goes a short distance up the slide at which time one thrusts out one's upper sternum to pull both shoulders back. At the same time both arms get straight.

The slide has been created. The rhythm of the just completed downward movement of the toss arm simulates the down of a down and up serve.

Toss-and-wind, integrated and simultaneous, is about to occur.

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Three Options in a Bolo Punch Forehand

If you don't write down your idea when you have it, you'll want to kill yourself later. -- David Lynch

Option 1: Splay hands for a shot down the line.

Option 2: Keep hand on racket for a crosscourt.

Option 3: Nobody but you will ever figure out these first two distinctions expressed here. But suppose someone did. You could mix him up by switching the roles.

The most interesting aspect of this however is that Thing 1 and Thing 2 are both natural to their stated purpose.

And once one commits to supernumerary turn one can shorten initial turn to make the strokes easier.

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A Painful Lesson Learned

If one is to be a self-feed advocate, an inventor totally unafraid of change, one needs to keep the self-feed going right up to the time one plays, can't take a day off as I did on Thursday.

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Propose and Renounce: Anabolism and Catabolism

I'm lucky to dwell in a place where there is much tennis to be had.

Or should I say enough tennis for good integration of my self-feed experiments into competitive play.

Last night was the last of the Friday night tennis "socials" at Eastside Tennis (indoors) in Detroit-- the last until next Fall.

These socials or mixers with their preliminary anti-intellectual drill took me up one level thanks to significant improvement in my one-hand backhand.

Catabolism is taking the body down while anabolism is taking the backhand up.

The significant backhand improvement most came from gzhpcu's forum suggestion of looking at a book, FUNDAMENTALS OF TENNIS by Stanley Plagenhoef.

Plagenhoef's backhand section caused me to adopt a more modest backswing, not so high, to don an elbow corset with both elbows protruding more, to become perfectly clear in my own mind about how I wanted to "turn the corner" with pro-active arm extension melding into smooth arm roll which starts I think just before the arm is completely straight. Next to apply Geoffrey Williams' advocacy of committed, speedy forward hips turn to seemingly obliterate all such arm work without actually doing so. And stop the bod with shoulders parallel to the sideline so that the racket double-ends from there on.

The forehand (on the other hand) decided last night to be catabolic, to join the bod in going downhill.

Close linkage of shoulder rotations is fine, but the racket loop I chose was too intricate and slowed me down so that I couldn't keep up with the club's hard hitters.

Perhaps the racket tip has to go up as I was doing before though a very small amount.

Cast net forehands to be restored first. Then same shot with more topspin. The difference could be as simple as golfing the shoulders a little instead of bringing them horizontally around.

Cast net: no wipe. Golfier: wipe.

Listen, though, Mr. Escher. If you got slight lift of racket tip to work last week and lowering of racket tip to partially work this week, why not try no change of racket tip level at all?

In the backswing of course.

Deciding to keep racket tip where it started could be the best decision made today. Subtraction is a form of addition that often works better in tennis than just addition itself.

And wait position with racket cheated to left means that backward turn of the bod will point one's tip at the net.

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A One-inch Rise of Hand in Last Phase of Backswing

See it in my model video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk)? Just as the dude turns his shoulders back an extra bit? Surely this is what gives his bolo punch half of its magnificent feel.

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Needed: Organic Cue for Lifting Hand One Inch in Bolo Punch Forehand

That moment when forward and backward rotations are in balance, viz., the shoulders are trying to go forward while still going back.

Will it help to start hand marginally before shoulders now that 95 per cent of backswing is level? Possibly.

With this symmetry: One inch of horizontal hand travel to start backswing. One inch of vertical hand travel to start foreswing.

Guess as to why backhand was able to gel: Because all attention was going to forehand.

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Haven't Tried these Bolos Yet

Flat shot raises tip a little at start.

Topspin shot leaves tip at level where it is at start.

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Bolo

This forehand design series proceeds.

Levelness is taking over.

Hand leads the backward turn by one inch (horizontal).

Hand leads the forward turn by one inch (vertical). But not the same hand. The other hand!

Well, both hands go up an inch but in two different ways.

The front hand goes up independent.

The rear hand goes up because the rear shoulder goes up.

The hands are still level now but an inch higher.

Bolo.

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

I see now that Senor Dude does indeed take up his hitting hand with his hitting shoulder, but unlike me at self-feed today doesn't worry about his front hand and lets it go down naturally since it's attached to his descending front shoulder. (Is therefore likely to catch one in the puss?)

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Add Disguise to Flat Bolo Topspin Bolo Distinction

Disguise ought to be the last item in sensible tennis stroke design.

Put another way, the addition of disguise should signal the end of any design series.

Unfortunately however design is eternal, i.e., never ceases.

Say something is finished and it isn't.

Put still another way, sensibleness in design seldom happens. Nor should one try to make it happen.

Make a situation instead where you can connect dots in unexpected ways preferably in your sleep.

We left things yesterday with our pair of bolos marching toward levelness of backswing, took this idea to court and adjudicated that it was wise.

That early Sunday morning self-feed was marked by exceptionally good energy caused by lack of breakfast.

My favorite tennis model in these parts is Ken Hunt, 90, who eats two apples.

But despite the excellence of the self-feed, I had to reflect later that levelness of backswing could work for a flat shot too.

One could roll tip up at beginning of the bolo which doesn't start until near end of shoulders winding back.

Now you've got level backswing for both bolos starting with one inch of independent hand travel.

And two different ways of creating the last instant rise that makes a bolo punch so much fun.

1) Flat: Roll tip up but not far which would lower elbow. I see this move as a reversion to the classical saw of keeping racket cocked above wrist.

2) Topspin: Raise shoulder without altering hand.

Furthermore: Draw energy from gut by keeping lower body somewhat firm. Save Kentucky Fried Chicken (kinetic chain theory) for a McEnrueful.

1) Flat: Continue to stand straight and drive racket in a cast net swing along a level path with terrific extension.

2) Topspin: Alter everything to golf down before you wipe up again with terrific extension.

Point across in both cases, lifting hand then to same height (two inches up for topspin, one inch up for flat).

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Present Orchestration Eschewed and Edited through a Hit with a Former Number Five at Clemson: The Sort of Thing that Should Happen More Often.

An auto worker who saw my self-feed made the long trek around all of the courts to come to my side of the fence.

He wanted to start with some half-court but I had been watching him work on his serve-- for a very long time-- and wanted to try and return it. No problem.

Such a level of ease in his ground strokes compared to what I usually see.

About 60 years old. Will introduce me to the very best seniors in the area.

Like the other superior players I occasionally play with, he liked my McEnrueful the best.

They don't say, "Oh, it looks like a John McEnroe forehand, a shot I've never liked."

They just react to the placements it enables.

Still, I hit it best when I rely on it sparingly.

Gone now is the bolo flat.

Bolo topspin is alive and well.

Early raise of racket tip is about to reprise.

Will then have two basic ways of hitting topspin-- from bottom and top.

Older cast net flat will make its reprise too.

McEnrueful flat however looks to be the staple flat.

Dick Milford told me that his father, an orthopedic surgeon, was the sports doctor at Clemson University for decades and played tennis until he was my age.

He told me to be careful.

I'll have to if I want to make it to the nineties like my friend Ken Hunt.