A New Year's Serve

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1 2 prop step 5

The hand is in the slot even with maximum back swing. JM could see it through an easy turn of his head if he wished. Racket tip is cocked higher and farther around than hand.

The racket tip goes down with terrific speed to start the forward, upward drive. I refuse to consider this an easy drop. It may be gravity-assisted but it's closer to that point in a good golf swing where the power suddenly turns on.

So a number of elements, as previously discussed, are taking the racket tip down but faster than imagined before.

If dropping slow one could imagine a feeling of going backward. When the swing is really fast, however, you feel as if everything is going forward and are perhaps more aware of the hips which in fact are doing just that.

Viewed this way, the backward sliding shoulders are just part of the loop, broadening and literally giving it body (and going backward enough to provide some control in the crucial, pre-contact phase of the stroke).

Figuring out exactly where in this loop-to-contact-tract forearm and wrist do what may now become hopelessly left-brained.

You know exactly what you want the forearm to do-- twist one way and then the other. You know exactly what you want the wrist to do-- hump one way and then straighten the other. You know exactly when you want these four things to occur-- between beginning of drop and contact. Isn't that enough for you (or me) in the detail department?

After contact is completed, the arm can bend to relax one's entire body.
John McEnroe did it, Donald Budge did it, and anyone can do it where it feels most comfortable, i.e., preserves the most balance.

The ball is gone. So why not do something really easy and nice for yourself?

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1 2 prop 4 5

where "prop" includes balancing on back foot, bringing front foot close to back foot while turning shoulders last possible bit and step-out-- with all of these elements accomplished through quickness, confidence and even mastery.

Note: Completion of exaggerated shoulders turn before step-out is a good because stabilizing thing.

It uncomplicates (simplifies) the step-out and therefore can add to its lateness.

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Once Again, Why Hit with JM type BH?

You get to use your wrist for:

A) more racket head speed
B) more (late) racket tip lowness
C) more racket head variety
D) more simple logic in linking forearm roll, i.e., pronation as arm extends backward, with wrist then curling racket tip even farther down almost like lowering a centerboard in a small boat at beginning of body-driven arm travel forward
E) shots in general that employ more large body propulsion than many conventional eastern backhands of dubious design
F) a stroke with the sensuous and versatile continental grip, following Martina Navratilova's enlightening instruction during her excellent televised commentary on the French Open: "You can hit a backhand with any grip you want," she said at a time when she was receiving chemotherapy, a good reason to listen to her if you needed a new one to go with the others.

An argument against this continental grip plan, I suppose, is that less meat settles itself behind the handle.

This is true. That you will regularly hit the ball into the sky or strain your wrist may, however, be myth. That you may compensate for any perceived weakness of construction with impeccable timing also could be true. And maybe you SHOULD hold yourself to a higher standard.

In experimenting with this stroke I've been left to my own devices since very few tennis players wish to discuss it or much less model it. And I'm thinking at the moment that one should keep knee over foot while extending front leg, i.e., cut back on forward hip rotation in favor of more pure leg drive combined with rotation(s) from the gut.

This simultaneity (leg plus gut in one or more directions plus straightening of the wrist just before contact) creates more sling in arm when you finally let it go.

Also, I've spoken a lot about "clench" of the shoulder-blades. I still see that occurring sometimes but after contact in the JM videos. The exception is high backhands hit well to the side, with added power from clench then occurring right at contact.

In most of these backhands, it seems to me, non-hitting hand is used suddenly to brake shoulders and thereby accelerate the arm passively from the shoulder-- a maneuver that must be kept exceptionally small and simple to work.

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Tuning a Serve

Using the idea of hitting serves downward either to bounce them as high as possible or to cross the net, try to A) cut the ball in half with the frame and B) scrape the ball on the right half.

A range of opinion is available on just when one ought to begin one's pronation, but rather than figure that out, why not simply tune the whole shebang like a violin string?

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Braden and McEnroe Backhands-- Similar?

Attempts to swing arm about the body may go down the wrong road. I say this in view of Vic Braden's old story about the leather worker in South America who fabricated a holster for him. Braden was then able to hit backhands from the hips with no arm movement at all.

So, a new idea: Instead of bowling arm down and up (see video of Coach Kyril in post # 358) or even using an antique horizontal rotating clock pendulum (one interpretation of post # 362), keep arm fixed with wriggling body almost to contact.

Only then give the arm its freedom just as shoulder-blade clench occurs, so that one feels, as Oscar Wegner's St. Louis representative John Carpenter has asserted, that he is "developing one set of muscles on top of another."

How could this work? Well, it might be different from anything Braden, Kyril, Wegner, Carpenter or John McEnroe himself has ever done yet draw upon them all.

It certainly draws from John M. Barnaby's contention that one hander wannabes are always taking arm back too far, that even if they point the arm perpendicular at rear fence, by the time they step across they're way more turned around than that with little prospect for a clean hit.

So, change grip and slowly turn shoulders as you run toward the ball. Keep shoulders and arm fixed together until front shoulder is aimed at the ball bounce on your side of the net. Where's arm? Pointed at the LEFT fence.

Now you step across. The movement cocks the shoulders to hit the ball. Obviously the fixed arm goes back some more.

Now your front foot has landed. If hitting DTL simply press front hip toward the target. Upper body slides the opposite way. Fixed arm straightens, forearm pronates, wrist first straightens then curls (if you are using continental grip).

If hitting CC, press front hip toward the target, which means you'll rotate your hips at the same time you press them out. The arm becomes once again roughly perpendicular to the left fence but with wrist curled.

The power train in both variations goes from front hip movement to clench of the shoulder-blades. At time of clench arm extends freely out toward the net but to right of where the strings will fly. Is there roll from the shoulder and forearm also?

Not as much as in some other backhands.

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More Never, Use and Always in JM type BH

Never alter elbow level, at least not until you've hit the ball.

Use the racket tip as a separate, sensate system from the body system but make them work in sync.

Get back turned toward opponent.

Let legs extension and arm rotations provide the topspin; the elbow swing around the body (in both directions) is horizontal but with a longer lever
going forward.

So, this sounds like the circular swing that Vic Seixas recommended in which arm and racket tip move as a single unit, right? Of course Seixas was
known by meanie wags as the last person without a good backhand to win the final at Wimbledon.

No, there's still some "flashlight" in this stroke (Bolletieri's term). But it's caused by a little wrist curl in first half of the forward swing. The racket tip is allowed to fall in behind the hand for a short stretch. The flashlight doesn't come from vertical arm swing or bowl as in totally different genres of backhand.

The essentially horizontal swing here allows good connection with large back muscles and enables a second extension of the lever. First lever: bent arm. Second lever: straight arm from hand to shoulder. Third lever: hand to center of back.

Absorb impact through looseness of fingers and wrist. They are loose but tightening as they hit the ball.

This backhand has just gotten a whole lot shorter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TRYING THIS. There is great simplicity in swinging the elbow at a single level about the body, and the balls were well hit. The lowering of racket tip behind you doesn't alter the basic structure of this to and fro. But how does lowering happen then? Through slight tilting of upper body backward (A), straightening of arm (B), pronating of arm (C), straightening wrist if it wasn't already (D).

Good feel came from extending wrist straight (A,B,C&D are simultaneous).

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Back to JM Model

Put late convex curve in wrist at end of bowl...then flip the racket with wrist straightening somewhat like dealing a card. Obviously the mixture of roll, wrist straightening and power of propelled arm will determine success of the shot.

The ball will not rise to the sun despite any shop teacher's claim.

Pace will come from A) weight going through ball and B) length of arm lever (is fulcrum at shoulder or in center of the back?).

Grip is slight for this shot (continental). Any absorbency beyond string job is provided by controlled looseness of the fingers.

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One Hand Backhand: the Joy of Circularity

The reason I go round and around, tennis instructors, is that YOU taught me eighth grade carpentry when I sought the cabinetmaking of the Danish master Gordon Frid.

So, slice today (after the sun comes up) turns into topspin. Chopper grip turns into Kyril grip with everything going backward and rolling right up to the ball. Wrist is never fixed. The fingers tighten for impact as wrist still straightens back for absorption. The wrist only gets fully straight at impact.

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Golfer Snake

Three sets of guest mens doubles last night tell me that the new backhand isn't ready yet.

So I'll try it with a different one of many possible formation counts: 1) shoulders around 2) racket up 3) and 4) downward spoke of the U; finally, 5) the rip.

People talk about whether Wegner, Braden, Lansdorp, Bolletieri, Mauriesmo, Mandlikova, Rolley, or Ziegenfuss is a genius or a buffoon, but more interesting is practical application to one's own game of what each of these coaches or anyone has to say.

Monica Seles used two hands on both sides and I use two hands on neither, but I think she is the clearest illustration of effective delayed takeback in the modern era.

Seles would measure each shot with both hands before she took the racket back. She would move to the ball with head lean and simultaneous pivot and running that placed her hands close to where she soon would hit the ball.

In my electronic communications with Bungalow Bill-- which weren't all cantankerous by any means-- he said that he himself lines up the ball with his lead shoulder rather than with his hand.

A useful idea. Still level shoulders with hand rising slowly and slightly behind could become an effective siting mechanism, like a snake with the slightest motion readying itself to strike.

Films of the Federer and McEnroe backhands show a more leisurely turning back of the shoulders as these two great players glide to the ball. The videos bring to mind some basic options seldom discussed together all at once. Should one use a full loop as they do or take the racket back straight or golf it up and down like Bjorn Borg or Ivan Lendl? Should one wind shoulders back smoothly and slowly like McEnroe and Federer or yank suddenly with left hand on racket throat as Nick Bolletieri used to preach? If one is going to YANK or merely take the racket back with rapidity, a fair question remains of whether this action should be delayed and not come too soon.

On the other hand, since shoulders originally turn as part of first movement one could maximize this motion and have less to do-- if one wants to run with midsection muscles fully stretched.

Doesn't this discussion relate to keeping the racket in front and then using left hand to point at the right fence on a forehand? You can't use a full unit turn as they taught us at the NTA and then turn a whole lot more by pointing with left hand, too-- that's overkill, awkward, inelegant.

Conventional tennis instruction, whether it understands this or not, seeks to deaden the soul of American kids and bore them to death along with its dreadful tendency toward overly early preparation.

I admire Oscar's idea that experienced players ruin their strokes through pulling the trigger too soon more often than by pulling it too late.

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More on One Hand Backhand

People need more latitude in tennis, I think, more ideas from which to choose.

Instead of declaring any one of the following three filmstrips more useful than the others, let's compare them if we can. First, Martina Navratilova:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_woman/martinanavratilova/nav_net/nav_approach_and_volley/nav_approach_and_volley.html?MartinaBHRet2ndSFHHalfVRear.mov

Second, John McEnroe:

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

Third, Coach Kyril:

http://www.coachkyriltennis.com/wordpress/how-roger-federer-hits-those-wicked-one-handed-backhands-and-how-you-can-do-it-too/

Obviously Navratilova and McEnroe, using continental grip, don't hit the ball up into the sky, but Coach Kyril's lesson is nevertheless a great one, with heart in the right place and revealing a clear enthusiasm for helping anyone.

So, when I try Coach Kyril's demonstrated backhand later this afternoon (no tilting backward like McEnroe in the middle of the stroke and therefore more simplicity with shoulders level throughout-- hoorah) I'll steal it in a nano-second if it's better than what I already have.

I've always been partial to a five-count rhythm and see two counts here to get shoulders around, one to raise arm a slight bit, one to golf arm down easily and fifth devoted to a final rip.

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No Reason for Trepidation!

Phil, I must have agreed entirely for most of my tennis life since I had the grips on both sides you describe and probably the supinations and pronations, too. That would be 30 years of non-stop tennis.

I wonder, though, if maybe one's wrist doesn't get strong after three decades, in which case one could try something new but only if one wanted to. As Martina Navratilova pointed out in the Tennis Channel coverage of the French Open, one can hit a backhand with any grip one chooses, that there isn't a rule, that controlling the pitch is what matters, that different people have differently constructed wrists that are only strongest when they use the best tailormade grip.

This is an argument against one size fits all, for sure, and you've got to hand it to Martina for trying to help people open up and become more sophisticated, and why shouldn't we consider her own backhand grip when evaluating possibilities since she did pretty well in tennis?

Could lack of sophistication be the trouble with American tennis-- it's possible!

That said, I believe that both Arthur Ashe and Donald Budge urged their students to put more meat behind their backhand grips than either of them themselves did.

So should I now do as they said or do as they did?

In one film I saw, Ashe pointed out that the less meat behind the handle, the more one has to rely on timing to achieve the same effective strength. That might explain John McEnroe's backhand as well as Arthur's own.

Combine this with all the new information on "absorption" in ground strokes and you might have an interesting new working idea.

Strings give when you hit the ball but so does the hand and wrist.

If the wrist is moving BACKWARD do you strain it?

Public discussion has concentrated on forehand wrist give so far. But what applies to the forehand may also apply to the backhand, as you yourself suggested, and thanks.

[gzhpcu]

This is a very, very long thread, and, consequently, with a certain sense of trepidation I will risk making a couple of comments (based on what I think I picked up towards the last 10 or so posts...):

If I do not want to have a strain on my wrist, I want to get the palm of the hand behind the racket handle. This is why I never used the continental grip on either forehand or backhand. I use eastern forehand, eastern backhand.

I feel that the topspin backhand is a mirror image of the forehand to a certain extent (excluding the body rotation):

- forehand: laid back wrist/flexion at the bottom of the swing, supination at the bottom of the swing to enhance and speed up (stretch-shorten cycle) the subsequent pronation of the forearm needed for the windshield wiper motion. To accentuate the low to high motion, the racket frame is angled downwards when coming forward prior to impact.
- backhand: laid back wrist/flextion at the the bottom of the swing , pronation at the bottom of the swing to enhance the speed up (stretch-shorten cycle) the subsequent supination of the forearm to hit up and across the ball. To accentuate the low to high motion, the racket frame is angled downwards when coming forward prior to impact. The finish is high, however, and not near the hip.

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Michigan Turn Backhand—Different from Winston-Salem Backhand

Why not try a backward moving wrist on backhand as well as forehand? I took this notion from my first mixed doubles match in Michigan, during which I had two c-grip adventures. The opposite male was a teaching pro roughly my age who decided to give me the benefit of his doubt.

Those two most interesting shots I hit, unexpectedly effective, in my own view, were a lob and half-volley, both rushed on a day in which I didn’t feel sharp. Both times the racket butt flashlighted toward the ball and the wrist moved backward very late. In a McEnroe backhand this filmed phenomenon is perhaps more visible than in a Federfore.

Well may we ask: In the parlance of tennis, does “wrist moving backward” mean the wrist moves forward while the hand moves backward? Once you have reached your decision, dear reader, you will be ready to continue paying attention to this blog.

Me, as a direct result of the two shots, I chose a conceptual return to Barnabian Bonk of the netpost. No wrist will want to move forward when encountering a netpost. But the wrist might consider offering some give for absorption as in catching a ball. This is the experiment and it might apply to a whole bunch of tennis shots, e.g., were we all not instructed to lead with the wrist on every volley and exactly what does that mean—static
lead or lead that internally moves?

And what could the same concept mean applied to a ground stroke? That you could continue whatever bonk you had going not just as you approach the ball but as you hit it? The weak grips of Arthur Ashe and John McEnroe allow them to do this well, I think, to “turn the corner” as they hit the ball but not before. The bonk—the heel or edge of the hand—is total karate except for the WRIST. If one brings over from slice one’s knowledge of abrupt racket direction change for an easy burst of acceleration, the racket can go BUTT FIRST THEN BUTT FIRST IN ANOTHER DIRECTION WHICH IS LOWER ON THE ARM IN THE DRIVE NOT SLICE VERSION.

The big roll of this shot (muscles working in both upper and lower arm) is countered by the wrist moving backward.

What does the experiment look like with racket in the hand?

Lloyd Budge thought that the musculo-skeletal structure of the wrist—or “stirrup”—naturally tightened for contact. Talbert and Olds, or maybe one or the other, thought the wrist should be laid back, then straighten, then continue moving after the contact, which would re-transform it (the wrist) into a concave position—no?

Well, say “no,” dear reader, if you’d like. That would be perfectly all right. For who can know exactly what these old tennis engineers were getting at, not with all tennis language as ambiguous as it is.

My humble belief is that Lloyd Budge, Bill Talbert and Bruce Olds talked about the Don Budge backhand but only Don Budge ever hit it. And his later coach Tom Stow never messed with it, not once. And the back flyleaf of Don Budge’s TENNIS MEMOIR, a photo of him hitting his famous backhand against Gottfried von Cramm, may very well picture a wrist which is moving backward.

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Dialing the Right Numbers

The universal grip system of TennisPlayer is very useful. But one has to start counting on top panel and not finish there. Thus Roger Federer's most conventional forehand grip is 3/3 as if he went "palm slide close trigger."

Recently, while afflicted by an evil spell cast by Morgan le Fey, I described John McEnroe's single grip for all shots as big knuckle on 1.5 and was far from the truth since 2.5 is where that big knuckle resides.

Similarly, Donald Budge's big knuckle, as seen on the backhand cover of DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR is somewhere around 2.5 or 2.0 as he displeases Adolf Hitler in 1935 .

Now, let's get the rhythm numbers right for John McEnroe's frisbee-like backhand as well, a subject which interests me not only for reason of tennis aspiration but because I've never thrown a frisbee as well as either of my two brothers.

Two counts to get slice-ready wrist back. Two counts to get racket cocked on straightened arm and curled wrist down low behind rear hip. One count to let the contraption go, with the mechanics of this final hitting count "FIVE!" explained in more detail in my previous posts.

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All the Way with J.M.

"But you can't do that-- he's a genius and you're just an ordinary person!"

Well, stuff it, say I. A genius is more simple. The continental grip variation works better than the eastern backhand version (post # 351). Genius shouldn't imitate ordinary people, e.g., Obama following Bush's bad examples, or Donald Budge telling his tennis students to put their big knuckle on top of the racket even though he himself didn't do that when defeating Baron von Cramm.

Conversely, ordinary people should imitate the elegance of genius whenever possible. But ordinary people are usually too complicated for that.

As arm and body both take racket down, curling wrist does, too, and even the legs, sometimes, can bend an extra amount from where they already are if they want to. There's more of a distinct gathering of frisbee-like force.

Now the stroke starts forward, in more concentrated form. The elbow stays in place, at first, rolling down. The wrist straightens at the same moment-- how John McEnroe turns such a sharp corner.

Does this method "sling the racket at the ball" as Arthur Ashe recommended? Precisely.

The racket head gets flung, and the rowing body with clenching shoulder-blades counters the fling. The racket, caught between, whips. The wrist can relax at contact as if to catch the ball.