A New Year's Serve

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Wiper, Viper-- What's the Difference

Is a "viper" simply the way a German touring professional pronounces the word "wiper" or could the two reptiles be different?

The term wiper is universal. The term viper is private, peculiar no doubt to me. Macht nichts, doesn't matter.

If wiper is an action that happens on the ball, then viper is an overall stroke that finishes by left shoulder or elbow. Or, reverse these definitions or replace one of the nouns. We know which one. The other is here to stay.

The point is to reduce confusion by making essential distinction between overall stroke pattern and a relatively small part of the tract-- in which the racket first wipes back and down, and then wipes forward and up.

In a Federfore the racket wipes back in reaction to start of body rotation driving a straight arm. The tour term for this phenomenon is or was "mondo"--players with a bent arm structure do it as well. I very carefully watched a great player do this the other night. Racket wiped back then forward in quick succession as part of a firm overall stroke.

Coaches and analysts often throw out the word "wiper" and then tediously allude to or attempt to explain give in the wrist and forearm followed by a corresponding roll the other way. I'd like to conflate all the blather as exactly the same thing.

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Non-Stop Anti-Intellectualism

Detroit's Eastside Tennis Facility, three different pro-facilitators, an hour-and-a-half session, two different surfaces, fast drills where you're moving all the time-- there's no time to think, which of course I do too much.

These are the best players in the club and they're all a lot younger than my 71. I fall once, after hitting a volley, am trying to move in for another split-step, but one foot hits the other and I roll.

Funny. Has this ever happened in my life? Need to keep feet farther apart. Especially when running backward, as the pro Mark Miller tells me.

And, "Don't turn your back!" a very good woman player cautions. "Not in this group!" I like the way everybody speaks in exclamation points.

I have some contusions and abrasions today but that's all right. I missed some shots but hit some clean winners, too. Maybe hitting a winner has nothing to do with level of the opposition.

My group spends half an hour with each pro, one closer to my age who greets me as a long lost card holder in Gray Power. Then it's on to the next, everything in a rush.

I've never seen anything so effective, but then I never played in college or attended a camp-- was out on a river doing freeze drills in crew.

But-- a high-intensity session like this is not a refutation of my method. No matter how formidable these players are, they all would turn out better if they reconsidered their stroke patterns more often-- not as much as I do but more often than they ever have-- clearly.

Everyone needs a more liquid view for more liquid strokes with no limitation built into them.

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Don't Mess with Pivot Point while Trying to Go Around a Sharp Corner

From examining films of Roger Federer's forehand and John McEnroe's backhand, I reached this startling conclusion: It's common sense, but when do people heed their common sense?

No matter where Roger Federer's racket tip points at contact, his hand is pretty far back, at least in a majority of the new issue forehands of last November. He does everything of course and therefore is difficult to categorize, but in the majority of this series his legs drive his body straight up as his hips and shoulders provide the pivot that underlies his hitting through the ball.

Similarly, in a characteristic closed McEnroe backhand, JM puts weight on front foot early and drives hips straight up as they pivot. I've been preoccupied (happily) with forming a rising wave with rear shoulder. I now believe that wave can maintain or still be happening even during the final, short hitting step.

Again, like Roger, John does all kinds of things, e.g., once weight is on front foot he sends hip out a bit more before he drives up on his strong front leg-- more difficult. HE DOES THAT AND HE DOESN'T DO THAT. My job is not to imitate everything, not even to classify all, but to take precisely what will help my own game.

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Service and Words

The elbow should twist 180 degrees, Phil of Lugano recently quoted Vic Braden as saying, with the reason being that people who open up the racket too soon push the ball rather than hit it. In a VHS three or four decades old, Vic demonstrated the same thing by manipulating the arm of his young assistant Angie. Vic's ideas have changed on a number of topics, it would seem, but not this one.

To rein this opinion in and apply it to self, one needs to decide, I think, how much of this turn should come from horizontal body rotation and how much from horizontal, helicopter-like movement of upper arm in the same direction.

My hope for this discussion is to offer a more repeatable means of adjustment on this point rather than reliance on the pre-verbal. The unconscious serve is the best serve, of course, but the unconscious isn't always one's best friend.

One can turn shoulders more, upper arm less and vice-versa-- no? One wants racket to knife at the ball rather than come at it too open-- yes? Consciousness of how one can play with the two variables along with a third, stance, seems like self-empowerment to me.

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Double Feeler Insect Forehand, Genus, Ziegenfuss

This has been an especially good New Year here at New Year's Serve, and I hope to get back to Service soon, but for now some new closed forehand possibilities have filled the fish bowl of inventive consciousness.

The guppies in the fish bowl keep rising to the surface and snapping their lips. Which insects have they been eating? Let's catch one and subject it to 1000x magnification.

Here's what we see, different from yesterday. The forehand sends two long feelers along the 45-degree path of the goat foot. Inchworm movement precludes the need for a unit turn-- hind foot can gradually splay as it inches along.

The two arms start bent, so they can gradually extend from the elbows. Left hand has gone through a startling evolution from the first tennis lesson in the player's life.

He or she learned to take racket back very fast and far by keeping left hand on the handle, strings or throat.

Then, as she gradually acquired precepts from a Federfore, she pointed her left arm at the right fence to get the shoulders way around. But as she became even more curious, studying the Ziegenfuss, she pointed on a 45-degree angle at the net. The shoulders didn't care, they only wanted to turn way around.

With changes occurring at a frequency sometimes of more than one per day, a tennis player or coach might well ask, "Do I want to get all instruction correct in the first year or is that romantic nonsense? Isn't a program that stresses self-discovery through all the years more advisable?"

We've discussed the left arm, consider now the right. We had both hands traveling along the goat path but, actually, that's probably truer of left than right. Right, the hitting arm, can extend roughly in the same direction but a bit more toward right fence, a bit lower, too. Then, if you slightly angulate left hip like an Austrian skier toward the net, the rear shoulder will load racket down even more.

[bottle]

This shot is already changing. (It is 11:55 a.m. on Dec. 31st after all.) Although I hit it with some success off of Federforian preparation the other night, wouldn't the stroke be more economical if both arms went off to the right more Agassi-like from the very outset?

The design idea here is to give right arm less to do so that the two hands, one driven by shoulders still winding back and the other by straightening, looping, easing arm, can squeeze toward one another at the same time.

Extending right arm can start higher than extending left arm and loop under it as body reverses its tilt in reinforcement.

The last-moment wiper, which goes backward only (during which time it will actually be on the ball) along with the very nature of this shot, enables shallower racket work, i.e., you don't need an early take-back of racket tip and you don't need to take it back far.

Am not worried about deception for now (if ever). When one either gets tired of these goat-foot body-slam shots or occasion dictates, one can hit an open-stance Federfore with one's hand farther back at contact like an jai-alai player.

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Adding Finesse to One's Personalized Version of Ziegenfuss

Once one realizes how much a Federfore consists of hurling a telephone pole from back to side fence, one may be ready, like me, to reconsider any possible and perhaps extremely useful opposite to this stroke.

The term "telephone pole" is not to be taken as literal since arms must always relax and remain pliable in tennis even when extended. Straight is still bent a little. But Roger Federer throws a huge unit back there, with windshield wiper in both directions the significant additive.

The second term "throws" refers to a whole constellation of exertion but more specifically here to what the extended left arm ignition does-- it fires left to start a body rotation that is much earlier than any of us ever learned or taught ourselves except maybe for Tom Okker.

Me, I don't want to use both hands on the racket to take the shoulders very far around in my initial move-- some yes and that's essential. But the real fun is in using left arm pointing across to do the bulk of the job, and early.

So, what's the opposite of all this? A closed Ziegenfuss in which there's no exigency about getting the shoulders around because you won't be using them for a long while. Nor will you "throw." You'll spring not swing. So take your time for the love of Pete.

Well, I couldn't love him too much when he was young since he didn't make me laugh enough, but he's gotten a whole lot better with age as has Ivan Lendl.

Back to the Ziegenfuss. Valerie Ziegenfuss equals arm first, body finishing it off. So why not invent a strange pair of pincers? Instead of pointing at right fence quickly, point at it slowly, taking body turn a bit at a time.

Fooey. You could be turning shoulders backward right up to the time that you reverse them forward, I wouldn't care. And why not just leave left arm where it is, relaxed? The body rotation will take it away just before converging right arm passes under it or collides with it.

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Idea: Hit Federfore at End of Wiper not Middle

If all questions are good, then, most certainly, all ideas are good until they prove to be one-way, dead-end alleys out on the court.

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Goat-foot Step-out

The tennis adjectives "open," "neutral" and "closed" can be usefully applied to forehands but don't cover every option.

I expect an email any day from Valerie Bradshaw requesting that I not play with her maiden name so much-- "Ziegenfuss"-- which translates as "goat-foot."

Back in pre-Columbian times when Valerie Ziegenfuss along with her partner Peaches captured bronze in Mexico City, Valerie contributed the forehand chapter to the collector's book TENNIS FOR WOMEN. Valerie told how, while on the tennis road, she met an amateur male player in Texas who advised moving arm toward ball before chiming in with shoulders to give a forehand follow-through "some place to go" rather than sharply across the body.

Me, I tried it and then played the best tournament match of my life even though I lost at the very end of three tight sets for not knowing how to handle belated kick serves.

Ever since, I've called any forehand constructed like this whether short-armed, middle-armed or long-armed a "Ziegenfuss." But, though Valerie, according to the book, liked to hit this shot either open or while stepping with left foot toward the net, it only really worked for me when stepping toward the net.

So, here's the question. Does neutral stance mean stepping with left foot toward the net? Does closed stance mean stepping with left foot toward right fence? I don't really care, but if so, then I want something in between, and I'll call it "goat-foot."

Any time I choose to hit a Ziegenfuss, in other words, I'll step with inside foot on a 45 degree angle toward net and to right of ball. Arm then along with power pocket will follow the same path. Then front leg will extend as shoulder turn and body weight take ball, hit on the outside, in a slightly different direction off to the left.

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"Mad Men" Meets Tennis Instruction

For more of my life than not I've gone without television-- a deliberate choice. Lately, though, we've been watching "Mad Men," Season One, on DVD, which offers one implicit take on what's wrong with both American society and American tennis instruction. I don't want to make too much out of this since Madison Avenue is everywhere and everybody knows it and the idea is nothing new and certainly not profound. I'll only say that when an advertising man, i.e., a politician, speaks of "narrative," he or she means something entirely different than would an English major, who knows that narrative slowly and naturally emerges rather than being imposed from the beginning. Heimat Security is imposed, American hysteria and over-reaction becomes apparent-- or maybe was apparent ever since the first day of 9-11's thirty-year run.

In tennis, there are brands similar to Heimat Security or 9-11 or Metamucil or
a triple combination weight loss girdle-vibrator. Certain teaching pros become known for certain "strengths" which they then try to market. I wouldn't want to pick on the women's coach at my alma mater-- especially since one wants to hit some low fast ground strokes with neutralizing rather than offensive or defensive volleys-- it's imperative. But teaching pros come up with special ideas sometimes (though not nearly often enough) and then try to market them through great promises.

My name is Bottle, and what I'd like to bottle is more of the self-discovery approach. I'm very inclined to believe the teacher Stotty when he writes most intelligently in these forums that the teaching pro provides 20 per cent input to the player's 80 per cent. In my case it's 10 and 90 where I'm player-- close enough. I just think marketing is very apt to hurt substance-- always-- and that foreign coaches have the advantage of not having been exposed to quite as much advertising. For coaches and players alike, good tennis including the underestimated field of tennis invention just has to happen.

[bottle]

Three Forehands du Jour

1) Federfore. Very fast in the hands of an amateur and therefore good for hitting through holes, but easy to return for a good player in position since the topspin-sidespin mix causes the ball to sit up at medium height.

2) Ziegenfuss. Arm unfolds in force-less loop down and around toward ball while setting up to catch it. Power pocket squeezes toward contact thus changing tilt of the body. Wrist stays closed but opens and rolls backward while actually on the ball. Player springs rather than swings with very late shoulders following what was started by the arm. The shot feels like pushing a beachball forward and straight upward with body behind the palm of one's hand. My version, hit off of first half of Federfore preparation, is best hit closed with maximum body glide (linear) to right of the ball, which then flies off to the left. Depth control is good. The medium topspin sits up somewhat but this is a good moderating shot.

3) Spanish. This shot, hit off of full, Federfore preparation, hops in a challenging way but doesn't move particularly fast, at least right now. The arm scissors upward followed by elbow. Contact is further to the left than in the other two shots. The racket goes high up right side of the body and finishes by left upper arm, with elbow having rolled over once the ball was gone. Racket goes up and down in a skinny parabola. Like a straight-armed window-wipered Federfore, this shot is most commonly struck from open stance.

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No Ball Sitting up at Medium Height and Saying, "Hit me!"

Regretfully, I change back to pronounced wave rise in my 1HTSBH preparation.

Positively, I refuse to tell my legs what to do.

Schema for revised backhand:

1) Turn
2) Wave up
3) Explode
4) Turning of the Corner
5) Lift

Simultaneous elements of 2) wave up: rear shoulder rises, upper limb stretches, wrist curls.

Simultaneous elements of 3) explode: Right hip slams forward as if delivering a body check in hockey, shoulders crash to level, shoulders rotate to perpendicular to net post, hitting arm fires and straightens (muscular), shoulder-blades clench together, forearm stops.

Simultaneous elements of 4) turn the corner: The humped wrist straightens and rolls as if dealing a card in a single, unencumbered timing element of its own.

Simultaneous elements of 5) lift: The arm squeezes out beneath fixed level shoulder. Both ends of the racket travel together for a short while before permitting natural swing of arm about body to resume. Legs may have straightened, be straightening, stay bent.

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After two hours of doubles, I'm not so enamored of the "dead stick" idea.
Tossing higher is the answer. The racket can skim the court as the upward
toss begins. There's a more unified feeling that involves both hands.

For transition to this kind of serving, if you have been doing something else,
I'd say get the archer's bow working first. Then and only then adopt a more
turned around stance and add a big dollop of body rotation to release of the
bow.

But I can see that starting with an entirely rotational serve (the "cylinder serve" that Pat Dougherty talks about) and then later adding the longbow idea also might work.

[bottle]

Win Wimbledon and Kirsten

The movie WIMBLEDON shows very clearly how to win the Wimbledon singles championship and the love of Kirsten Dunst even before Toby Maguire or Spiderman.

This is all you have to do: Keep your tossing arm up a bit longer. Well, how much longer? As Theseus says in THE MEMOIRS OF HELEN OF TROY, by Amanda Elyot, “However slow you want to go, go ten times slower than that.” So keep your arm up ten times longer than before.

But what if, like 95 per cent of servers in the world, you are rotorded, viz., you possess rotor cuff inflexibility which keeps you from rotating the upper limb axle-like far enough back.

Here is your fate: You need to toss high, really high—only in this way will you ever have the chance to hit effective kick. You need to toss so high that the ball can curl over and down to a still very high contact point, with enough descent first to allow you time to do interesting, entirely relaxed, unhurried things.

But suppose this isn’t working, that you can’t break your engrained habit of taking the just-having-tossed hand down too soon.

What are the options? 1) Toss even higher; 2) Toss later so that whatever time you are actually spending with your tossing hand up in the sky will seem magnified.

Let’s go with option 1, which is preferable: To toss higher – assuming that you are a chronic low tosser with tosses even lower than Vic Braden advocates—you need to do something radical. Not enough to say, “I’m going to toss higher now.” You can say that all you want but will you actually do it on a consistent basis? Why not toss overly high for a while? Later, you may or may not quiet your toss down—an easier proposition. For now go all out for heighth. I don’t know about you, but as for me, I don’t want to strain the rotator cuff in one shoulder any more than the other, so I’m not talking here about more expenditure from small muscles. Instead, get tossing shoulder way down low and upper body bent way over, with both arms and both legs bent. Do this first before you even start the serve. Exhale then drop hands (not much distance for tossing hand now, the feel is almost like a low dribble in basketball). The hitting hand can naturally separate and start on its long, scything path back and up toward the sky—a path possibly made even longer by shoulders reversing their tilt for the first time. If a pool player can hesitate between backward and forward cue stroke—called “dead stick”—and still be perfectly accurate, you can let your racket hand start out on its path an arbitrary amount before up-together-toss and body bend start. The idea—and the only idea that really matters—is that the two straight arms reach their respective zeniths at the exact same moment, with time to spare.

Just then the ball starts down. The toss will have risen high enough if you thrusted up with your shoulder and straightened your back sideways—a tripling of previous energy.

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Possibilities not Answers

The ticket here is possibilities rather than answers, with a good chance that if you come up with anything resembling John McEnroe, you'll have a better one-hand backhand than you currently do. Over and over I've posed the question, "What did JM mean when, on television, he criticized Greg Rudeski for not keeping his elbow in?" In other words, how could little u-i utilize the implied answer. And what is the answer? How can one re-structure one's backhand to employ that answer?

Not one person other than myself has ever ventured a reply to these questions. Do I blame anybody though? Why should I-- they with their non-continental grips.

So I now venture another guess, this one most interesting-- possibly-- of all.

Starting from the premise that one can soup up any backhand through making sure that the upper limb stretches backward as hip slides frontward, I question even this motion, I challenge it as I steal from it.

You were creating tension in upper arm-- right? So just relax as hip goes out and add the arm tension later, i.e., now.

The key to what McEnroe's core is doing is a little motion of opposite hand forward quickly ended by stoppage of that hand from clenching shoulder-blades together.

That's a powerful and underestimated motion, that clench, illegal in boxing since it can kill a person. It can add to the catch in rowing. In tennis, I just want to use it to stop arm to passively straighten previously humped wrist and at the same time help with the force on either side of an abrupt change of direction ("turning the corner," in Arthur Ashe's words).

Now, at a certain point in my stroke, my arm is farther back than ever before, but I'm ready to take both ends of the racket toward the target.

So will racket go level then up? Either that or down then up. Will I be conscious of perfect parallelism in hand and racket tip? Probably not since even when you lift both ends of the racket the tip comes around a little-- something to do with human construction.

But I still call the little motion "both ends of the racket moving together"-- a useful phrase.

Limit it, however. Let the follow-through go round naturally after "the straight section." Perhaps u-i can fly then like McEnroe.

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

Note how long he keeps the elbow in. If you start counting from sudden lowering of back shoulder-- the actual start of the forward stroke-- this phenomenon is four clicks in. But if you're going to keep your elbow back/in like that, why not load it at the same time?