A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Forehand Satyricus: Thinking About It More

On high balls, the arm de-slackens (tautens?) from shoulder end.

On medium balls from both ends.

On very low balls from racket end, i.e., the racket goes down completely before the shoulder kicks up.

In all three cases the shoulder become a sling shot.

[stotty]

Voices Speak in His Sleep

Alphonse: You did away with descending milkweed? That was the best part of your forehand!

Black Bart: It's gone. But replaced with the relaxation of ulnar deviation and racket roll-down, arm still moderate high and bent.

Alphonse: That doesn't sound a tenth as good as descending milkweed.



To the court, where Bottle learns in self-feed that Stotty is right once again. Better to get elbow out from bod early. But Bottle is stubborn. So he compromises. Half of elbow space is achieved during wrist lay-back, the other half during nuclear straightening of the arm.

My Marco, who is 15 and more on the recreational side of tennis yet has a performance level forehand, keeps his elbow very close to his body at all times. It's funny because when you stop coaching a child sometimes a wonderful thing can happen all on its own. Marco can really belt a forehand and rarely misses. His technique lends itself well to running round backhands to hit forehands. It also makes the shot very safe. Hugging the body feels more safe somehow.

Marco is an easy-going, happy boy who takes life and tennis in his stride. He wins many matches because he doesn't get nervous. Not getting nervous is a hell of an asset.

[bottle]

My Marco, who is 15 and more on the recreational side of tennis yet has a performance level forehand, keeps his elbow very close to his body at all times. It's funny because when you stop coaching a child sometimes a wonderful thing can happen all on its own. Marco can really belt a forehand and rarely misses. His technique lends itself well to running round backhands to hit forehands. It also makes the shot very safe. Hugging the body feels more safe somehow.

Marco is an easy-going, happy boy who takes life and tennis in his stride. He wins many matches because he doesn't get nervous. Not getting nervous is a hell of an asset.

Nice. In experimenting in self-feed early this morning, I tried different elbow settings at the end of my thumb sweep and curl. The 45 degrees of humerus down toward the court, as Brian Gordon suggested, certainly is attractive as a mean. But wherever the elbow first is placed, there still needs to be some space allowed for it to get stretched, i.e., for stretching of the shoulder house. Which I guess is the scapula if you don't call it the glenohumeral joint. (No great arm throw in any sport comes alone from inside the rotator cuff.)

Sensational answers were not immediately forthcoming except maybe for one. If setting of the humerus is less than 45 degrees, i.e., quite close to the body, then one is better situated to thrust one's whole body upward, i.e., produce a narrow frame shot. Everything will be steeper. The margin of safety ought to be greater. One will need good balance but when if ever is that not true?

A while back, Tennischiro wrote at length about the contribution a stretched scapula can make to one's serve. I probably then went off on a tangent in which I imagined the two scapulae making a double contribution, too romantic a notion.

The late Mark Papas, with whom I know you personally corresponded, recommended a shoulder stretch on one side of the body while serving. So why not the same idea on a forehand? Seems to make sense in either case.

Good day to you, this Sunday, with no Wimbledon going on and a cloudless cobalt sky overhead here. "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."-- Wordsworth, "The old Leech-gatherer." (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...d-independence.)

Question: Now that medicine has moved on from taking a LOT of blood, are leeches making a comeback in the UK and elsewhere in the world? (By "leeches" I mean the black squirmy bitey sucking things in limpid ponds, not doctors although I know that is their old name which we must make sure they never forget.)

[bottle]

ATP18

Will the ATP forehand go bigger or smaller? I opt for smaller, and handsier, but keep in mind who I am: a 78-year-old with a partial knee replacement in one leg and a squashed meniscus in the other.

These typicalities of aging don't keep me from rebelling against the obnoxious notion that old guys should stick with or even learn the mediocre ground strokes of the past.

Yah, yah, hit flat or underspin/sidespin all the time and watch the ball go out.

The important lesson here is that nothing stands still and there isn't one answer, everything is in flux, nobody owns the truth. If there is an ATP3, there will be an ATP4 etc., etc....

[bottle]

State of the Game

The serve in # 4289 is not worth further pursuit at least for me.

What works is roller coaster with first coaster mountain in front with hand at level of neck.

Second coaster mountain or rather small hill not in Costa Rica is behind with hand at level of neck but a farther distance away from neck.

It is easy to bend the arm too much right there. Less is more. But more distance behind neck is more, too. The greater distance makes one almost feel that one's hand is below the neck. The geometry of the move however does two things:

1) puts hand behind neck. 2) eliminates the need for muscular lift to reach this position. Downward momentum from first natural fall spills back to accomplish the task.

As for toss, delay is marginal. Right hand goes up slightly before tossing left hand. The action is almost down together up together but not quite. The right hand wins the horse race if there is a horse race.

Forehand Satyricus, the result of insatiable sexual research, satirizes the gratuitous arm motion in swashbuckling forehands.

In this respect it is like a John McEnroe forehand, which does the same thing.

A McEnrueful just bowls down and up-- minimally-- then massages the ball as Stotty says.

The Forehand Satyricus replaces one's exhibiting arm movement of a peacock with a small bit of hand and thumb movement.

The same or more pace-mit-spin is the result.

On the other side, the constellation of slices remains just that. The drive is taken from FUNDAMENTALS OF TENNIS by Stanley Plagenhoef, one of the best tennis books ever because of its short section on backhand. The volleys rely more and more on subtle alteration of hand pressure as Dennis Ralston has taught. This leads, as one bothers to learn it, to astonishingly better feel, solidity, and control of direction.

Overheads require repeated practice with a good partner whenever possible. Lobs, drop shots and dinks just require loads of inspiration.

The most inspired lob is the one that comes down on the opponent's head since he probably does not own a good smash.

[bottle]

In Stroke Invention, I Think, One Can't Stress too Much the Importance of Being Shameless. No Worry then about Attribution or Where the Idea Came from. One Just Takes it and Tries it. And the Very Best Teaching Pros Applaud this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4u...04&app=desktop

Me, I was unhappy where I was in my serve (as were some others including my doubles partners), so I decided to do away with down together up together form.

But I put the hitting arm ahead of the tossing arm and even began to hold serve more. But here is a way of putting toss arm ahead of hitting arm, the exact opposite thought. To try this will be "bending the stick the other way" (while keeping palm down for both choices). Will it work?

Is this experimentation too messy for you, reader? Does it disturb you? If so I say to you, especially if you have long hair, mess it up first. Then try bending the stick this way then that way, this way, that way, etc. Anything but down together up together (which some professional physiologists even have declared an unsound idea due to something having to do with brain impulse).

If you don't mess around, i.e., have a sense of light play in your experiments, it seems to me, you may never discover anything.

[bottle]

My Marco, who is 15 and more on the recreational side of tennis yet has a performance level forehand, keeps his elbow very close to his body at all times. It's funny because when you stop coaching a child sometimes a wonderful thing can happen all on its own. Marco can really belt a forehand and rarely misses. His technique lends itself well to running round backhands to hit forehands. It also makes the shot very safe. Hugging the body feels more safe somehow.

Keeping elbow in helps this old guy, too, at least from the evidence of self-feed. I believe in the advantages you outline and will find out tomorrow-- with the geezers-- if what I think is entirely true. Hooray for longitude? All praise to narrow frame forehands?

[bottle]

A Perhaps Unwanted Message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4u...04&app=desktop

The comments under this video if not my own-- that of John Escher-- seem to me altogether too tentative in their enthusiasm. I believe that people just naturally distrust new ideas-- any new idea. Whereas someone with a truly curious mind gives all benefit of the doubt to the thing being tried. Let other people disprove it, through peer review? Or disprove it yourself later the way Richard P. Feynman, while earning a Nobel Prize, rejected the basis of his previous Nobel Prize?

Okay, okay, no prizes here, just the simple satisfaction of something that may work a whole lot better than what one was doing.

Note: The advantages here, it seems to me, lie not just in what Nadim says but in what he shows. And the level of the serve's address or beginning lends itself to really nifty figure eights which will lead in the future to still better serves. It's not roller coaster but it's great. The most important aspect of the very, very beginning, it seems to me, is a 90 degree bod turn from whatever the stance you originally chose. The toss coming next can include forward travel and body bow under the ball all at once.

With a lot of power next to extend from left leg up left side combined with the circularity of hips and shoulders closing somewhat. In the book MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, Charles Pasarell called the two things, horizontal and the vertical, "double-wind."

You can't send an order directly to your cerebellum much less start celebrating your cerebellum until you've done your homework starting in the front of your brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvX_5ym_ajI

Homework first, celebration second, front of the brain first, back of the brain second, kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

Learn the words first.

[bottle]

Gallwey as Old Man

I stick with this (Nadim's beginning to a serve-- solid information to my eyes). But really like the Gallwey as old man clip over at "Fluid Motion Factor-- Steve Yellin." I calculate Gallwey's age at 79 or 80 since he was captain of the Harvard tennis team in 1960 .

But you'll note that Gallwey gives no such resume material whereas Steve Yellin wants us to know he was the number one player at Penn.

Which is part of the same educational complex as Wharton School of Business-- Ivy League!-- our president, Donald J. Trump, asserts whenever possible.

I sort of like Yellin but like Gallwey in this clip more. One of the strong points of going to another Ivy League college is that we learned to prefer primary over secondary sources.

It is a lesson one can absorb as well from schools that aren't Ivy League, about which I always say, having taught in some, that the best people are just as good but maybe there aren't quite as many of them.

At Harvard, Gallwey was coached by John M. Barnaby, who told him when volleying to "bite the ball."

I love the distinction that Gallwey makes here between a 10-cent computer and a billion dollar computer, the first in front of the other in anybody's brain. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pisD1RPj61A)

I figure that Trump-- and maybe Yellin this one time-- and anybody anywhere who sees the Ivy League only as "elite" or ready made idea or "bastion of privilege" is operating from the 10-cent computer only.

[bottle]

New Ideas on Beginning of Forehand and Serve

Forehand: Lay wrist back and roll racket down in simultaneity rather than sequence as arm straightens somewhat and everything goes down. That creates a loop but unlike most on the tour-- 1) is pencil thin, 2) utilizes gravity from outset 3) is slow, 4) steals from the fact that the arm work in standard flip-head philosophy is rather mild. For if arm extension is smooth and slow it doesn't impart much kinetic energy. When one's bod turns and lifts it causes the wrist layback and racket roll-down which I now propose to get out of the way. That leaves a residual bit of arm extension to take over those previous small functions.

Serve: Note the huge golf club waggle in PAT AND MIKE of Katharine Hepburn, an excellent golfer and tennis player. Such a waggle can work in either game whether it goes to and fro or up and down. But to let it be an organic part of one's backswing is unnecessary and possibly ridiculous. So instead of gravity drop to start a roller coaster, I propose using knees to take racket back just the way a golfer does to remove his club from the ball. There still is a drop of about three inches in both arms but this drop now becomes subordinated to the bod turn.

[bottle]

10-Cent Computer, Billion Dollar Computer? Hold on! Hold on!

Here is an extremely readable article by Christopher Bergland, author of THE ATHLETE'S WAY, that may turn some paradigms on a dime and thus revise our overly conditioned ideas about function of the brain.

"Your Left Cerebellar Hemisphere may Play a Role in Cognition."

(https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...e-in-cognition)

Vocabulary in this article: "rageaholic." Also, "proprioception." All Harvard super-athletes, e.g. the Cambridge, MA single scullers Ben Jones and his wife Cricket speak a lot about proprioception. If Tom Lehrer were still alive he might write a song about proprioception. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27PSHASlGUU)

[bottle]

Why Right Heel Up So Soon?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4u...04&app=desktop)

Flat feet drive more stretch into one's mid-section. Weight transfers from front foot to both feet to front. With feet close together in an effort to maximize vertical thrust, the weight could go from front to back to front (and I'm thinking about a second back!). Well, in any case at what speed? 1,2, or 3? Slow, slower or slowest?

Do knees and hips twist at all? Some. That movement is harnessed and diminished by flat feet.

Does the backward bod twist originate in the knees? Not unless you want stupid kinetic chain. The turning shoulders build maximum energy in the gut while drawing the slack out of hips and knees. But if one stops to think about this, wouldn't it be better to take the slack out first?

But shoulders are doing two other things at the same time: 1) straightening to assist the sideways component of the toss, 2) segmenting backward. Put another way, the hips segment forward to form an archer's bow.

You don't like all these words, reader? Me neither. So let's conspire together to return to our superduper billion dollar swashbuckling ability to take in everything we need in tennis from our eyes alone, which are fantabulous if you will just ask us.

My eyes are how I came up with these words. But who needs words other than myself? So visualize your model without words and follow it.

Oh, a two mph serve? Just persist.

Or as Tom Lehrer would say and did in his Vatican Rag, "Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect."

Well, you had to bend your knees to thrust your lead hip out.

The ball is in the air.

Use intelligent kinetic chain this time to drive front leg upward while turning hips.

But remember this: Percy Boomer and David Ledbetter both encased their genuflecting golfers in iron strait-jackets, i.e., a metal cylinder.

You bend your knees too much, reader, and they get stuck. You bend them moderately and they clear the inside of the cylinder and work freely and are great. Like the knees of Ellsworth Vines or Althea Gibson in either tennis or golf or the knees of Tom Okker just in tennis. (Maybe he does play golf-- I don't know.)

But reader, and try now to catch this: If you straighten knees too much, they get stuck inside the iron barrel too.

Neither Boomer of Scotland, who came up with the idea, or Ledbetter of the United States, who stole it, ever quite explained how straight knees in a steel barrel would get stuck, so we just have to take their word for it and come up with some other frame of reference that isn't visual but may use symbols or words of logical formation.

How about, "Ease of hips rotation varies in inverse proportion to straightness of one's legs?"

So, reader, you're not going to get your knees and hips to turn as much as you would like once that front leg gets straight. Why not just step forward with your rear foot?

Nothing swashbuckles like a pegleg, right?

And bring the sharp edge of your pirate's sword as close as possible to the ball, even try sometimes to cleave it in two or frame it.

This is the only way to reduce the radius of your applied ISR (internal shoulder rotation).

But this service iteration of today does not end here.

We've tossed, we've bowed, we're ready to go.

The left leg thrusts as the rear leg twists.

The left leg has read David Ledbetter so knows it can't twist much while thrusting upward so much.

So it assigns its twisting function to the rear knee and hip. The hips movement now is centered on one leg only, internalized, one could say. Rear foot turns then steps into the court. Keep going and knock off the volley.

Let's start another serve but slow the shoulders even more this time.

And summarize: Get pigeontoed just before you step.

[bottle]

Similar Serve with Narrower Stance and Three Different Weight Shifts and Knees Well Bent from Outset

Start with weight on rear foot. Feet are close together and parallel to one another rather than offset.

1) The shoulders slowly turn to slightly separate hands and remove rotational slack from flat-footed legs.

2) The shoulders continue to turn to stretch the gut while weight shifts onto front foot and you lift the ball.

3) The rear foot remains flat but the front foot rises on its toes. This indicates that toss has occurred and weight has naturally relocated on rear foot.

You screw weight back on front foot with internalized hips turn that splays right heel and re-flattens front foot just before the firing of all extensors with pegleg stepping through.

You wanted a longer runway up to the ball?

Well now you've got it.

[bottle]

A Reflection on FUNDAMENTALS OF TENNIS by Stanley Plagenhoef

In this book, should we extrapolate the fine attention given to firmness of grip at contact in the serve to late adjustment of finger pressure, particularly of the bottom three, to all the strokes, to every tennis stroke there is?

Already we received a change to our volleys, a significant improvement through reading Dennis Ralston on the same subject.

The volleys have separate intelligence divorced from myself.

Quite happy, they are, since they enjoy direct connection with a billion dollar cerebellar computer to embody the single cue of a stuck peanut butter jar.

All they asked was that I envision conventional threading in my backhand volley and counterclockwise threading in my forehand volley.

Hence on backhand volleys I would apply finger pressure combined with opening of the racket face to loosen the lid. The less the pressure the more the outgoing volley would go down the line. The greater the pressure the more the seemingly same shot would fly crosscourt. The same cue worked just as well on forehand side. All I need do was practice one-bounce dinks against a wall. This improved both dinks and volleys. Directional control was not the only subject that suddenly came into sharp focus. There was a new crispness to all of these shots.

Now we find Plagenhoef making similar assertion along with comparative measurement (firm grip serves vs. infirm grip serves).

One needs to investigate the difference in racket face direction also.

And for lobs, overheads, dropshots and all ground strokes.

[bottle]

The Greatest Tennis Cue that Ever Flew under the Radar?

I haven't tested it today so don't know if that's true.

But I'm very sure I know why this cue flew under the radar.

It's because nobody wants to peel an onion or pare an apple skin to hit a slice serve, and everybody knows that isn't what happens.

But it is the feeling of the peeling we ought to preserve.

The exercise to build it goes like this: Adopt a paveloader service finish even though you won't ever use it in real life.

Your hand is the paveloader's scoop. The racket head is way back behind you. Your hand is full of imaginary dirt.

Now straighten your wrist and even cock it while bringing racket back a foot, then return immediately to the paveloader's finish.

Go back two feet next time, then three feet, four feet, etc.

When hand gets behind your head, however, abandon the paveloader finish and start miming a whirled finish instead off to the right.

The feel of this is what will enable you to keep edge on to the ball for much longer which as we all know leads to better serves. At the same time, as edge of your pirate's sword approaches the ball, wrist will turn inside out and pressure will increase in bottom three fingers just as ISR (internal shoulder rotation) kicks in.

What has the paveloader exercise done for you?

Given you all the feel of throwing a curveball in baseball.

Which you need before you arrive at the ball in order for your ISR to properly work.