A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Turn the Corner Twice

If I admit frustration while mastering my new backhand, people will take that as repudiation of continental grip, i.e., another demonstration that c.g. doesn't work and is a relic of the past whether charming or not.

I don't buy this. I think that John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and Arthur Ashe all made continental grip work very well, and I believe Navratilova over the majority of tennis instructors in the world when she says, as she did on Tennis Channel during the French Open, "You can hit a backhand with any grip you want."

Actually, there is one serious drawback to continental grip on the backhand side. There isn't as much information available about it. So, if you don't know something, i.e., there's a piece missing from your puzzle, you may have to go to the eastern gripophiles and then attempt to translate from their language to your own.

Chris Lewit, page 299, THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE, "The arm and racquet should extend straight through the contact point and continue out and to the left (from the player's perspective), arcing higher until the arms reach a full extension and stretch on the right side of the body. For players who do not extend in this way naturally, it must be extensively practiced and trained."

Extension to the outside after contact appears to be what JM does even with his continental grip.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHCenterRear2.mov

[bottle]

Take the Vision Train Downtown

Re # 530: Tent, a structure formed by arm, leg and rest of the body, inflates in a split-second after you step out. I guess I'm thinking of an inflated tent in an empty subway station.

We've gone into the detail of this plenty enough. Now it's time for one or two mental connections to make everything simple and do-able and a single unit. That was the brilliance of sit-and-hit even though no top pro ever adopted it.

Sit-and-hit was 1) an educational tool and 2) Vic Braden's own topspin backhand, the huge effectiveness of which I almost couldn't believe when I witnessed it at Stonebrook Racquet Club in Winchester, Virginia. In the time of TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, Vic with his co-author Bill Bruns was writing that he'd modeled his sit-and-hit contraption on Donald Budge's backhand.

But how could this be true? Don Budge took racket way back, stepped, then wound it down like Evonne Goolagong. Both of them leaned into the shot a bit to remove all slack from the arm. Contact was far away from the body-- the baseball swing of Ted Williams, Budge said.

Many people through the decades have admired and even advocated this basic form. But if you can form something so solid behind your back you can do it with left hand touching top of left knee or even with butt cap very close to pricking low part of right thigh. Vic Braden allowed for sits-and-hit within this range.

The tent idea now-- my daydream of the night, if you prefer-- is a tension-building structure with the prow of it a bit forward of front knee. The old winding down of racket tip now concludes in this forward position rather than behind one's back like Budge or Goolagong Cawley.

Where are legs in all of this? A bit ahead of full inflation of the tent. Legs were bent before you stepped out. The hips went out on still bent front knee. The front knee began to straighten as arm wound down (so that racket tip would point inward between the legs). The front leg straightens more as you screw the racket up. Then you clench your shoulder-blades together.

[bottle]

Pronation and Mirabelle

Pronation: twisting of lower arm
Mirabelle: twisting of upper arm
Supination and supranation: stupefaction
Apparent goal: a world in which everybody is either prostrate or supine.

I call eternal rotation of upper arm "Mirabelle" because the best tennis scientists wish to assign the word "pronation," which the most tennis players can relate to, to lower arm only. But these same scientists find that rotation of the upper arm is much more important. So I'm an English teacher and I give them an F for not putting best name on the more important item.

Has anyone tried the backhand experiment outlined in Post # 528? The way one would do it is to watch and hear Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sing and dance The Continental and then hum it.

Then, to adopt the image of an inflating tent (think indoor tennis bubble), send hip out on planted front foot as arm adusts forward and Mirabelles and pronates and humps to point racket tip in between the legs.

I see this and what comes next as similar to Vic Braden's old sit-and-hit but occurring after step-out in a very brief interval of time.

The elbow then will retreat toward body core as you extend front leg while screwing the racket head upward. I said elbow could come a centimeter or inch backward but this amount could be as much as two inches.

What is the idea of this? Well, watch the racket head. Does it knife or does it flip? And when you drive a screw down-- a powerful motion-- what does your elbow do? Does the screwdriver flip off of the screw to the right? I hope not.

As racket knifes upward, shoulder-blades can clench to finish the stroke.

Again, has anyone tried this? Was the result promising or hopeless? I only know that I can't play tennis until tomorrow night, but that, like the tennis inventor Rosheem, I get tennis ideas when I'm doing something else.

[bottle]

Rafa Expands his Talents

Somebody sent me this video. Hope and I are considering making our own version for Elderhostels.

http://lomastv.com/player_cdn.php?id=1318&tlang_id=en

[bottle]

A New Interpretation of "Keeping the Elbow in"

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHCenterFront.mov

In post # 527, we decided that "turn the corner" meant 100 degrees of racket tip arc.

To pre-load this motion then, we must point the racket tip inward and downward between the two knees either by making the stroke two hand one hand, or, like John McEnroe, by pronating the arm as it straightens and adjusts slightly forward toward the net.

In both cases there is the feel of "stubbing" the racket tip backward before you let it go.

If one accepts all this, the next logical step may be-- for controlling geometric regularity of the corner-- to actually reverse travel of the elbow and make it go backward a centimeter or an inch as it and every other part of the arm twist the racket in a perfectly tight circle around.

Will this temporize too much? Will it disrupt rhythm and crack the elbow into a thousand pieces?

Will a Mack truck flatten one? Will one incur heart disease, cancer and diabetes? Will one have stepped on another roadside bomb?

I don't know. And I can't get to the court today. So somebody else will have to try this experiment first.

[bottle]

More Fun Studying a Single Backhand

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHCenterFront.mov

One click takes butt cap from pointing at the viewer to being completely obscured, a turn of 100 degrees. This is "turning the corner." Is hand "stopped" while this happens? I'd say so. Racket then cuts up the outside of the ball.

Conclusion of the day: As JM golfs down, whole arm gets to front edge of trunk. As far as I'm concerned this is the only loose forward arm motion in this particular shot. (But I hope I don't change my mind tomorrow.)

Yes, there's one tenth the effort put out by anyone else.

[bottle]

Using Some New Stroke to Hone an Old One

If drills help with movement, I don't know why a "drill shot" wouldn't help my Ziegenfuss. The double feeler forehand I've discussed and used for a month sends both arms slowly extending on a 45-degree angle toward ball and the net. Body then springs and rotates slam-like to complete the shot, which travels to the left of where the arms just pointed.

This shot works and maybe even is extraordinary for an impossibly wide get. One had better hit a clean winner though since the recovery component is not as good as for some other shots, particularly if one's inside foot crossed over.

The main benefit may be what this stroke teaches about another. One learns where left arm can best be, and right arm then can revert to a compact, round, hydraulic loop that extends arm like a slow piston along the same track as before. The difference may be the small amount of momentum in the racket head. A second lesson may be, "Thou shalt not be overly reasonable." One is apt to define too much by saying, "These Ziegenfusses are strictly arm first, body second" without taking into account, thanks to the sudden change of direction, a slight bit of slinging overlap.

Similarly, in the great old book "Mastering Your Tennis Strokes," Charlito Pasarell tells how when one wants to restore edge to one's serve, one can shift knuckle to eastern forehand and serve that way for a while before returning to natural serving grip.

For more discussion of restoring edge, please see #525, the previous post.

[bottle]

Proper Range of Possibility with Racket Edge

Remember: People talk about some great serves coming up with BACKSIDE of the strings facing the ball. This is beyond the bisection idea, viz., that your frame can look as if it will cut the ball in two.

Thousands of us need to consider such matters in the light of agreement among a bunch of formidable instructors that opening the racket too soon or too much pushes the ball and spoils the serve through giving your opponent too easy a reply.

To be scientific, the server needs to explore ALL possible combinations of stance, body rotation, and helicoptering, where the term "helicoptering" refers to roundabout movement of the upper limb from the shoulder joint, usually with the two halves of the arm bent toward one another or glued.

If one helicopters less, one can rotate body more to point elbow at the same spot with theoretically no change in quality of spin administered-- and vice-versa.

In reality, however, reducing body rotation subtracts from racket head speed, assuming that cocking and release of archer's bow is the same.

So, one needs to be aggressive and pro-active to find "the beam" of better struck serves. This means bending the stick in both directions, i.e., push the ball on purpose, knife it so much that you hit it with the frame, even hit the ball with the non-hitting side of the strings.

Will these deliberate and conscious experiments apply just to flat serves or to all serves?

Make them apply to all serves while understanding that in some spin serves racket may both come at and depart from ball in a slightly different direction. Doesn't matter, the principle is the same: Racket must knife first to empower left edge for when internal rotation from the shoulder takes over.

Another variable-- a joker factor as far as I am concerned-- gets introduced if you ever try reverse wrist serves. I have one in which it's easy to push the ball in a very high trajectory-- the wrist, first curled, opens out. Such an innocuous serve sometimes wins the point when nothing else can against very good players. But this will become more than a mere surprise serve if application of the ideas above can generate more clink and hop.

[bottle]

Federfore: Windshield Wiper Control from '97 Camry Owner's Manual

"The 'INT TIME' band lets you adjust the wiping time interval when the wiper lever is in the intermittent position. Twist the band upward to increase the time between sweeps, and downward to decrease it."

To apply these concepts to tennis, one might introduce a third element between mondo and anti-mondo, viz., spearing with the racket barrel. By giving oneself more to do, one might, like Roger Federer, prolong by a microsecond the interval when wiper is at rest, thus improving spin while at the same time producing forehand contact farther out front.

[bottle]

Ideas for a Better Dr. Spain

Hit it off of Federforian preparation, which isn't hard to learn. As Jonas Bjorkman once indicated, he could, through mime, do everything with Roger Federer's forehand that Roger could except produce the same result.

My belief is that Bjorkman was playing too much tennis and therefore didn't have time to finish the experiment, which required his becoming analytical, i.e., that he go into the wheels and springs of a Swiss watch rather than concern himself only with the face. Very few tennis players actually want to become technicians, and we hear the upside of this all the time ("Never thinks-- hallelujah-- that's why he's so wonderful!").

The equally valid converse of this, far less publicized: "He never thinks, therefore he never reaches his true potential." Anti-intellectualism is a huge component of modern life no matter what your particular profession or interest.

A third avenue is that of exceptionalism, in which you decide that the greatness of players at the top has no relevance for lowly you. It's a variation of the Bernstein song in WEST SIDE STORY: "Keep to your own kind." Such players then find themselves a good shop manual, firm adherents of back to basics, which can work if they hire a good and imaginative instructor.

With some reservations, I'm for solid instruction at the beginning of one's tennis career. But women in particular cling to this for too long, and everybody should after a short while branch out.

For a better Dr. Spain, such an independent-minded player, as Chris Lewit has suggested, could explore the phenomenon of scissoring the elbow on the ball. I remember the great derision my early web discussions on this subject incurred. Derision or refusal even to discuss the subject.

Two main elements vie for precedence when one takes up the subject of this distinct genre of stroke: wiper and the scissoring. Are they different or the same? How should they combine? On a high ball one might sequence them but not on a low ball? How about picking up the energy from leg extension with arm then scissoring in rapid sequence? In studying Tennis Player filmstrips of four Spanish players I saw elbow bending on the ball, after the ball, and before the ball-- a beginning reconsideration of the basic strokes that Oscar Wegner has always taught.

[bottle]

At Lucubration Lane: Right and Right Again

DETROIT 1/10: Teaching professionals in three states have praised my one hand topspin backhand. Only I know it isn't any good.

So, following all approved models for ground-strokes, I'll slightly overhaul my backhand according to a daydream I had this morning. Backhand model:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHCenterFront.mov

Backhand followed by forehand model: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v16tK...FF568&index=22

From the Stockholm Open model I take the spleen required for an overhaul. From the backhand model I adopt John McEnroe's lowering of racket tip behind his back in conjunction with hips going out. Note that tip also WINDS down. For a third cooking ingredient I'll add some curling of the wrist.

What to happen next? Just this. Arm will straighten from the elbow. Forearm will rotate. Wrist will stay curled. Elbow won't move relative to body. Forearm rotation will work for one reason only: Angle of the arm toward the court.

And then? Whole arm will rotate in tandem with straightening wrist. Turning of the corner is complete.

All that remains is a violent clench together of the shoulder-blades employing arm trajectory as described in a previous post and resulting in human flight at an altitude of one inch.

[bottle]

Evolution Caused by Tennis Social-- a Very Good Time to Experiment

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHCenterFront.mov

If a golf swing, a flat one. The knees go out, after the step, before they go up.

The trajectory of the swing to come thenceforth becomes "flatter," i.e., more baseball-like.

If bowling is vertical movement close to the body and baseball is horizontal movement far from the body, a flat golf swing is between those two extremes.

Ziegenfuss: Better to get shoulders turned and stopped before adjusting the
steering globe. Why not call it "the world" rather than a soccer ball, a basketball, a beach ball or a tennis ball? One could cheat on this if one wanted. One could start the double turning while still performing foot work if one wanted to do less near contact.

Dr. Spain: Racket work is too ponderous right now. Not getting the clink I want yet.

Serve: Better to be loose, starting with weight on front foot if that's what one has always done, but naturally incorporating the recent improvements, viz., higher toss and philosophy of the longbow.

[bottle]

Dr. Spain

If tennis is self-expression, one needs to learn it from the inside out instead of by rote. I've got my Federfore and my Ziegenfuss and now I want a third forehand, highly personal but influenced or rather re-inspired by Chris Lewit's tennis studies in Spain. Think I'll call it my "Dr. Spain."

As one of the 22 per cent of Americans who believe in evolution, I don't think anyone receives or should receive all their tennis information in one big lump just as they are setting out. I know the familiar argument-- that tennis technique is horribly difficult to change once learned and that one should hit the same old boring shot again and again. True if one is a bore. Then the bore and the boring shot can act as one for the rest of the person's life.

More congenial to me are the twin notions that in tennis no two strokes are ever alike and that if one learns from the beginning HOW TO LEARN (could involve some philosophy of science), then changing one's tennis technique will never be anything but a delight.

Federfore is a fast and versatile shot but I now am interested primarily in the one version where hips stay back and ball is struck with a straight arm. The purity of this arrangement affords the chance for kinetic chain to work in a repeatable way; it happened only occasionally for me in the earlier life forms of my forehand technique-- a molten surge of energy out of all proportion to my application of a small, additional use of hips. Ivan Lendl, who hit the ball hard enough, said in his book with Eugene Scott that he wasn't interested in loss of control, that his hips followed his shoulders as far as he was concerned.

My Ziegenfuss right now offers an exciting balance of medium heavy topspin and pace with surprising accuracy. The topspin is more straight up and less of a mixture with sidespin. Pushing an imaginary beach ball through and straight up the back with one's body makes good sense.

The Dr. Spain I'm working on reintroduces scissoring of the arm. From Federfore I transplant the notion of letting forward body rotation activate some passive wrist and forearm in the opposite direction.

And from double-feeler approach in a Ziegenfuss only more toward the right fence I simply curl one of the feelers-- the racket arm-- down and around rear thigh with just enough space toward the rear fence to permit a small and comfortable loop as mondo occurs, followed then by a second but forward wipe.

Most important, I wind back shoulders to the max with left arm. This enables the "summing of forces" to generate racket head speed that Oscar Wegner has written so much about. Forward whirl of the shoulders is a big component of the sum.

In Federfore there is a section of the backswing where shoulders are still but arm continues. In the Ziegenfuss and Dr. Spain as I currently am developing them, this isn't true. Shoulders turn back more slowly but simply change direction. The middle step is gone.

[bottle]

The Backhand: A Review

Reader, I hope you find the above title as ludicrous as I do, even though tennis books have postulated assertions like that for over a century. "The Backhand" indeed, as if there's a single one.

If you have read carefully, reader, and I would never accuse you of anything else, you know that I advocate continental grip.

Only on the backhand side, however. A year-long experiment playing with a John McEnroe type forehand convinced me once and for all that I wanted nothing further to do with that stroke.

The reason I like continental grip for a topspin backhand is that it enables one to curl and straighten the wrist as if dealing a card. This makes two key phrases used by Arthur Ashe come to life. They are "Turn the corner" and "Sling the racket at the ball."

I'm quite the ignoramus about western backhand grip but have played with strong eastern on both sides for most of my life.

The eastern backhand puts more hand behind the ball. A perceived weakness forces the continental player to use timing to achieve equivalent strength.

Are we talking here about extraordinarily gifted players? I argue that any intermediate player needs the timing challenge even more. Continental grip will force him or her to hit the ball well or not at all.

I wish now to view this shot from a different standpoint than in previous posts. Still taking guidance from the Tennis Player clips of John McEnroe, I point to the way, typically, his front foot lifts an inch or two from the court and rearranges itself a small but significant distance toward the net. The significance is that body weight is going into the court.

I've always wanted a simple way to understand this simple shot, and now, finally, this may be possible. One golfs or bowls the racket barrel with a free arm (for more detail, see earlier posts).

As soon as front foot steps out you raise shoulder by extending front leg. But that force isn't-- or shouldn't be-- enough to lift you off of the court. What then causes the phenomenon of small flight?

It is a combination of two factors: 1) tilt of shoulder slowly reversing from contact of foot with court to top of the follow-through and 2) clenching of the shoulder-blades together. Although the front shoulder, which was down, doesn't go up very much (except for a lob), it does so enough to re-arrange the vector of the clench. This is what makes McEnroe, and could make anyone, fly at an altitude of one inch.

At the same time there is a change of direction, but this, too, is very slight.
Racket butt is gliding easily toward opposite left fence post when rising fulcrum of the shoulder, mostly from leg drive, slightly accelerates it. At the same time, too, the wrist straightens in unforced, unhurried manner, and just then the shoulder-blades clenching take racket in a new direction up to the right.

How much of a change of direction is there? And how solid is the body-arm connection as arm goes up? The greatest amount of loose arm action occurs as you golf the racket barrel down and forward slightly to the outside. The most body-arm connection occurs during the clench.

There still is residual looseness in the arm, however. There has to be. You don't want the racket entirely to follow the right shoulder clenching around, but rather to go up to the left of it, at least through contact.

[bottle]

One-Two Punch: Golfing Backhand Followed by Ball-Rolling Ziegenfuss

Two of my best readers have said they prefer blogs like # 516 in which I make no mention of arms. Sorry, playing tennis without arms isn't an attractive alternative and is one of the many reasons why, in blogs at other websites, I have opposed the Iraq and Afghan wars so much.

On the subject of one of the most simple 1HTSBH's in existence, it amazes me that I keep finding new things to say, which happens in the middle of the night, I'm quite sure. Today I need the golf instruction of the early twentieth century Scotch pro Percy Boomer to try and explain to myself one aspect of John McEnroe's backhand. To say that JM golfs the ball is not too far from the truth. Trying this, one can combine the instruction of Virginia Wade from an old video. On the backswing she doesn't twist upper shoulders extremely much but rather does twist back her hips as she "props," to apply Tony Roche's useful term. The action tilts down the front shoulder at the last minute, i.e., back shoulder goes up in a first wave as advised nowadays by Doug King.

From there one can step and golf. The foot rhythm if one were a John McEnroe might be scamper-scamper-scam-per, where "scam" is a bringing up of outside foot to broaden the base of the prop, and "per" is a short hitting step with that same foot. Does one resemble then a dancer, a bird or Groucho Marx?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHWideSide.mov

Notice how all the motion is unified with nothing abrupt. The shoulders reverse their tilt but just slightly, and this mild action is elongated from step to end of the follow-through. The front leg extends, which action starts immediately from step, which lifts arm's pivot point (front shoulder) more. The easily golfing, straightening arm accelerates. Why? Because you've changed its fulcrum upward. Energy from leg extension and the overall swing also is elongated all the way to end of the follow-through, or so it appears if we notice how, in various filmstrips, body flies a tittle before settling on balance somewhat into the court.

In post # 506, I found a way to passively roll the wrist in a unit all of its own, and was surprised that I could hit something effective that way, all loaded with extreme topspin, in an actual match. Now, however, I'm thinking of that as a trick shot, almost a fluke. Today I prefer arm extension and card dealing with wrist and forearm to be all of a piece and smooth and accomplished without any clench of the shoulder-blades. That will occur to change direction after the card is dealt.

*****

Present Ziegenfuss takes both arms extending like insect feelers off to the right but with a slight separation between them sufficient to hold a soccer ball or basketball. Since a Ziegenfuss is a body shot more than a body-and-arm shot, the challenge is to lower rear shoulder and then raise it again in a wave action. What is the best way to do this?

One can bulge left hip out toward net. Or simply lower rear shoulder. Or do some of both. A basic idea in tennis and editing, however, is always to pare things down if one can, and the two arms going out like feelers afford such a chance.

As the arms go out simply revolve them around one another. Front shoulder will go up, rear shoulder go down. Additionally, front shoulder following hand pointing on a 45 degree angle toward net can go around toward right fence with trailing shoulder turning in. It's all how you roll-adjust an imaginary ball, I'd say "steering wheel," but steering wheel only covers one dimension.

With racket now cocked in two different directions, you apply your upward-forward slam from body as relaxed wrist and forearm colliding with oncoming shot yield backward. You have to prepare for this by keeping wrist straight through all of the pre-contact cycle. (I find this relaxes me a lot.)