A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

L'anamour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjpDtcHS7Sg

Lyrics

Aucun Boeing sur mon transit
Aucun bateau sous mon transat
Je cherche en vain la porte exacte
Je cherche en vain le mot exit

Je chante pour les transistors
Ce récit de l’étrange histoire
De tes anamours transitoires
De Belle au Bois Dormant qui dort

Je t’aime et je crains
De m’égarer
Et je sème des grains
De pavot sur les pavés
De l’anamour

Tu sais ces photos de l’Asie
Que j’ai prises à deux cents Asa
Maintenant que tu n’es pas là
Leurs couleurs vives ont pâli

J’ai cru entendre les hélices
D’un quadrimoteur mais hélas
C’est un ventilateur qui passe
Au ciel du poste de police

Je t’aime et je crains
De m’égarer
Et je sème des grains
De pavot sur les pavés
De l’anamour

Je t’aime et je crains
De m’égarer
Et je sème des grains
De pavot sur les pavés
De l’anamour

Songwriter: Serge Gainsbourg
L'Anamour lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

Nonlove

No Boeing on my path
No boat on my course
I look in vain for the right door
I look in vain for the word exit

For the transistors I sing
This strange story
About your transitory nonloves
About Sleeping Beauty who sleeps

I love you and I fear
Of going astray
And I sow the seeds
Of poppies on the cobblestones
Of nonlove

You know those photos from Asia
That I took for two hundred ASA
Now that you are not here
Their bright colors are faded

I thought I heard the turbines
Of a four engined plane but alas
It's a fan that moves
In the police station's sky

I love you and I fear
Of going astray
And I sow the seeds
Of poppies on the cobblestones
Of nonlove

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_pHxJL3EIE

[bottle]

From Wait Position Slightly Cheated to Left (which helps all backhands):

Point across with opposite hand to start all forehands.

But keep the forehand backswings as connected as possible.

"How can you say that, Escher, you who eschew keeping hand on the racket, you who are always messing around with your pronouns?"

You're just another voice, Escher, almost but not quite tired of being Bottle. (For as the Chicago journalist Richard Woodley once pointed out, "Bot is what you got.")

A tennis player can stay solid if he knows how, just has to say, "Look, ma, no hand."

Exception to the rule is a cast net forehand, flat with no wipe.

That one starts with a slight raise of racket tip, which is compromise to the rule.

You (I) might just as well eschew all evolution of backhand and start with racket tip up in wait position the old Ed Faulkner way.

Then all one has to do is turn one's bod, drop the racket and let the shots fly from either side.

Won't do it because I don't like the backhands it produces.

So I compromise by lifting racket tip. From there however, once tip is up, I take the racket back perfectly level until the transverse stomach muscles are ready to spring.

And now, compromised, enjoy my evil state by trying to launch topspin shots as well. Do they work? Possibly. But if not, go with Plan B, which is no raising of racket tip except from bod.

This as I see it is the beginning of a bolo punch.

The model is Myshkin Dudivanovitch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk).

First half of solid backswing is level as if one is a beginning baseball player. Second half creates lift through a change of axis as if one now wishes to play golf.

The hand is ready to curve down and crunch into the opponent's midsection.

The racket mondoes and wipes.

[bottle]

Had a second pickup hit in two days. Unusual in these parts. Happened more often in Winston-Salem.

Hit with an elderly gentleman who spends his winters playing on clay in Florida. Found that unwanted underspin was creeping into some of my forehands. May take some of the recent innovations and apply them to lower register shots. I'm a tall guy after all. Why should I want the racket high so much of the time?

So I'm trying forehands right now that take racket back level then drop it but with arm still bent. I want my extension from the elbow to be active and part of the immediately forward bod action that takes racket to its wiping point.

[bottle]

"Stretch-Shorten Cycle" is Elaborate Language for a Spring that Pulls

One can hate it for its fanciness while loving it for its attempt to deliver detail of crucial bio-mechanics in three words only.

I myself use the word "spring" to refer not to a virgin spring in a forest but rather to the spring in a toy or medieval catapult.

Players who sacrificed smoothness for too many springs in their forehand probably became addicted along the way to the catnip of Nadal-like ball rotation achievable solely by Nadal and a few others (with the others not good enough to play on the tour). I notice a forum member called "morespin." A great guy no doubt but a bad name unless he was thinking of underspin, sidespin or both.

I'm contemplating arm spring right now, the type that occurs when one turns down one's racket tip instead of leaving it where it was or turning it up.

Baseball comes to mind-- the sidearm reliever, the shortstop who throws from his shoelaces all the way to first base.

What might happen if I situate such arm spring at a late place in my stroke? Can I then get what I want without sacrificing smoothness and the versatility of a strong eastern grip?

Will try level take back to meld into a turning down of the racket with arm still coiled.

Well, if arm is still coiled, then what besides ISR takes racket down? A lowering of the shoulder through a change in the rotational axis.

Then, as shoulders seamlessly reverse, a full mondo that includes zingy extension from the elbow can put strings on ball at the precise moment one's wipe begins.

Mondo and wipe, mondo and wipe. Time to acknowledge how close and tightly related they are.

[bottle]

For Better Axis Control in a Forehand

Start by studying how and when Roger does his axis change. Lewit: Roger stares down the slope of his shoulder and arm as he makes contact with the ball.

A slope? So how did the slope happen? Is Roger as beautifully upright as the sycophantic claims would have him? Or beautifully bent like a golfer from the hips? Or both at different parts of the same stroke?

Keep your butt away from the ball. I will, I will. But how can it all best happen?

I studied Roger (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...1%20500fps.mp4). Now it's time not to study Roger. But to pursue same goal.

One can say this: Bend a little, not a lot. Bend a lot and you lose balance. Your eyes would move too much as well.

So, stay level for first half of the backswing. Establish slope in the second half. The whole apparatus of upper bod and racket can be continuing back.

The bucket of a steam shovel can be lowering even as it turns back.

If you maximize point across in lieu of keeping opposite hand on racket, you can:

1) During first half of backswing keep the point-across level.

2) In second half of the backswing let shoulder take the point-across up.

Point arm shoulder going up means that hit arm shoulder is going down.

But upper body needs to tilt a small bit at the same time (second half of the backswing).

Bite the side fence.

Stare at contact point after the ball is gone like Roger or Steffi-- I wonder if the boy Federer camp got the idea from her? Or maybe somebody in somebody's family was a golfer?

[bottle]

Report

An interesting self-feed came out of #4205 when I combined all sentiments there with the notion of narrower base hence more vertical energy.

In old models for a well-struck ball, e.g., Welby Van Horn, a distinct ingredient is "aeronautical banking" (AB).

I definitely use aeronautical banking in my McEnrueful, the forehand of mine the experts most like.

But what is the AB function in that or any basically flat shot no matter the grip?

To press against the ball, I contend, to build a power vector low, hard and fast over the net. The shoulder, which already is twisting through on a horizontal plane also rises on a diagonal thus adding to the total power of the press.

By claiming narrow base as a positive however I do not refer to distance the feet are apart (they can be far apart) but rather to an imaginary frame formed by the end places where racket goes down and comes up.

That is the narrowness to which I refer.

And when one starts to swing like this one notices right away a new ease in producing high trajectory balls.

Not to mention a changed function for AB.

No longer does AB apply horizontal pressure on the ball as much as add to the racket head speed of the wiping racket.

Yes! Teaching pros and other experts will sometime suggest that vertical bod movement can add to the force of one's vertical wipe.

I've heard that sentiment more than once but not from persons who believe one should carefully distinguish arm lift (relatively weak) from bod lift (stronger).

Besides, wipe lift does not combine well with arm lift. Better one or the other than both, in which dual case the arm is simply trying to do too much.

When bod alone provides the extra lift, the arm can-- more Zenlike-- use ISR (internal shoulder rotation) to wipe.

[bottle]

Reverse Rotation Serves

If your serve hesitates in trophy position, you are a non-subscriber to palm down natural loop old fashion Braden-advocated whirligigged serves.

More power to you. The effective racket work in your serve only starts from the trophy but your bod will have been hard at work for some time.

You are going to put more vertical force into your serve than someone following the whirligig route.

(Although a truly great server might find some unique way of doing both.)

Those of us with limited range at rear end of external axle-like twist of upper arm in its socket, however, still have a long runway available to us if we are not averse to calling a curved runway a car race track.

By combining bod wind with a bit of arm bend and residual arm wind and have all this happen at beginning of toss one can facilitate a natural palm down spaghetti arm loop that is faster than ego-driven persons can devise.

You literally let go of yourself.

The shoulders meanwhile turn forward from turning backward with no transition.

Half and half as part of the toss is my humble recommendation to all rotorded servers, to all players with one or more knee replacements as well..

[bottle]

People May Claim to Have 1-2 Rhythm Ground Strokes but Do They Really?

I look around. 1-2-3 rhythm ground strokes.

1) backswing
2) some variation of a breaststroke or swan dive
3) foreswing.

I'll go directly from backswing to foreswing, thank you.

Think I'll rush the stroke? Nah. I'll just do everything a bit slower and end up using the same amount of time.

[bottle]

A New Backhand: Are you Crazy, Bottle?

Of course. Come and join my game of Crazy Eights.

"But everybody is saying they like your backhand right now. Why would you change it?"

To possibly make it better. What does anybody know anyway? Every statement in tennis gets contradicted within six hours. And if I don't like the change, I'll go back. Either that or or use both things. Not as much fun as forging single-mindedly ahead but something I've done many times before with occasional success.

Proposal: Instead of using forward hips rotation to obliterate arm work (which consists of straighten to roll), put some starch in lower bod and obliterate with the transverse stomach muscles.

That keeps hips available for a pressing of both knees toward the net.

Yeah, just got up to do some miming in front of a mirror. Learn to hit backhands these two different ways. Ought to wreak havoc within the head of some overly sane person.

[bottle]

Good Posture Hunch in the Abbreviated Narrow Column Topspin Forehand

We build on image of a hoop.

The hoop is created in first half of backswing, the level part. I've got the hit hand moving out a foot from the point across hand.

Someone in a helicopter can see a hoop formed one fourth by bod, two fourths by bent arms, one fourth of free air.

Now the hoop, keeping shape, tilts as one bent arm goes up the other down.

I've also suggested that upper body should hunch or deviate a bit from its vertical axis during this tilt. Yes, but keep spine straight, not curved. One performs a double-tilt.

Rely on the tilt from the hips to set pitch of strong eastern racket more than by manipulation. I know that tennis technicians myself included have advanced that suggestion, viz. , that hand and arm should twist strings backward to get closed. Now I retract it.

Arm in second half of the backswing should do nothing but stay as it was.

Should we speak more on what will now happen? Perhaps not. On the other hand we have postulated that we will rely on aeronautical banking to supplement the windshield wipe.

Save up your AB then. Don't let it happen too soon. We're still bent a bit from the hips as bod rotates from the gut. The body angle, if you take ball enough out front, should assure that racket is square or slightly closed as it approaches a spot beneath the ball on a narrower trajectory than if you had remained bolt upright. So which was it-- stationary but rotating hips leading to no change of pitch or shoulders from the gut only which would open pitch a bit thanks to the tilt? Or a combination you'd rather not know too much about? The arm is fixed though straightening. The straightening, too, closes racket. Did you know that? Thank Ray Brown the observant neuro-scientist for pointing it out.

Backswing: Level then double-tilt.
Foreswing: Level then double-straighten.

It is instructive to realize that the arm straightening just discussed is sidearm throw from the elbow during level part of the foreswing.

[bottle]

Swing from the Hips or from the Shoulders?

A much better question than most people realize.

Ivan Lendl once suggested that one could swing from the shoulders and hips could almost follow along.

In the round-a-bout of any tennis forehand it seems very likely that both things-- forward shoulders and forward hips rotations-- take place every time. The questions are to what degree and in what sequence if any and what do you want to do.

One could kick out a foot to slow the hips. For someone with a damaged or replaced front knee, I suggest kicking that one out-- forward-- rather than the other-- backward-- so as to avoid any hop on the damage/replacement.

In a semi-open stance of course one has the option of swinging as if one's stroke is neutral stance. Front foot then stays down and rear foot can stay where it was or slip to the side.

[bottle]

Whip Wipe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wphQA7ZVNNc

[bottle]

Happy Self-Feed Coming Up This Morning

Let the extraneous stuff continue to fall away. The goals it contains can be achieved in ready position. Shoulders just a bit forward, elbows sticking out a bit more, hands starting a bit closer to brain. All this should help ground strokes on both sides, but only concentrate on forehand whip wipe for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWBbUpn6cZA

[bottle]

First Self-Feed Modeling Videos from 4212 and 4213

Maybe hit a hundred balls before I got one to hop the truly extra amount I want.

This little challenge is very much about applying some sound thought to my particular decisions of late, firstly to eliminate customary transition between backward and forward bod rotations.

That idea, to me at least, suggests that the forward bod rotation, muscularly speaking, can start while bod still is rotating back.

But that doesn't mean the same formula can be applied to every other action involved.

I'm thinking of a cue to create the lag I want-- that not only does fist pull away from racket but that racket gets momentarily stuck behind an imaginary nail.

[bottle]

How to Point Racket at Side Fence

You don't need to read instruction on that, right? Wrong. You need to do it with ulnar deviation whether static or kinetic-- should that matter?

That is, if you want to compress the column on a topspin forehand (from a strong eastern grip). Should I explain more? I don't think so. Figure this out for yourself, reader, or else just point racket at side fence?

Am I being wise-ass or not? I just think a slight lump at base of thumb changes all parameters and means bod and arm can assign racket a bit farther forward with same effect, viz., racket perpendicular to side fence.