A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Another Source of Power

would be to row like an oarsman, specifically, to use a combination of leg drive and back straightening, just as Pancho Segura used to do on his two-hand forehand.

(Check clip just above one more time to try and isolate this phenomenon.)

[bottle]

Every Kind of Roll: ALL the Possibilities

Talkin about the 1hbh. Why accept anyone's word for anything if you possess all the capability to develop your own criterion? You have to experiment, work at it. You can't be lazy.

Of course if you don't have that much capability, as expressed in frequent griping about your lack of time, sign on with Sun Mung Prettybun Moocow.

Here's a new roll idea, at least from my standpoint. And there may be an infinite supply of roly-poly ideas available in the tennis universe.

Using an eastern backhand grip with heel of hand on 7.5 and with wrist quite concave as you look down upon it, roll your racket open from the forearm, then close it by rolling your elbow down then bowl up to and past the ball with wrist straightening-- backward you could say-- during the contact.

Did that work? Then be emboldened, or bow like Mauro after he hits a cone (see previous post). Wouldn't it be fun to hit just one backhand like John McEnroe in one's life?

Put big knuckle on 1.5 . Start with a straight wrist. Roll open racket with forearm as before, but at the same time hump the wrist in the most unhealthy fashion possible. Close racket and make the short corner by rolling down elbow as before.

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

As you bowl up to the ball move wrist back to straight. Nothing unhealthy about that. As you strike the ball, slightly hump the wrist again to provide some give to the ball. Do it just the right amount.

Pantomime the whole action again.

Now pull out a copy of DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR, Viking Press, if you have it. The dust jacket has to be intact. Ignore the forehand on the front-- too good for a normal human being. Turn the book over and read the caption:
"Don Budge displays his famous backhand in a match with Baron Gottfried von Cramm at Wimbledon in 1935 ."

Note where big knuckle is on his racket. Note the configuration of his wrist (slightly convex, i.e., humped). Compare with John McEnroe and Arthur Ashe.

Be happy with arm bowl for now. Add power later perhaps. One obvious power source would be to clench shoulder-blades together.

[bottle]

1HBH Design (Evolution)

When Mauro Marcos describes a one-hand backhand in the following video, he's trying to reach 10,000 people:

http://www.coachkyriltennis.com/wordpress/

When I describe a new one-hand backhand idea, I'm trying to reach one person-- myself-- and if three others overhear me, that's more than sufficient.

If I bowl straight like Mauro, I know that my racket face will constantly open unless I minimize this by rolling my arm slightly.

And I'm not afraid to discuss the different arm roll possibilities-- all of them. Is that too left brain of me, dear reader?

My idea of the day is, starting with strong eastern backhand grip and a concave wrist, twist racket tip down with the forearm, then twist it up through elbow turning down, i.e., with the shoulder, then lower it again through rolling the wrist straight during the upward bowl past contact.

This pattern is counterintuitive. The overly logical mind says, "If the racket tip starts down, I want it to continue down," and one soon will see that one can hit the ball that way. The ultimate question as always is what works best.

However, if following the newer idea, one can then return the wrist to concave at the very end of the follow-through thus following the ancient Budgian pattern described by the tennis writers Talbert and Olds.

After that, if one is a real masochist, one may reconsider the wrists and milder grips of both John McEnroe and Don Budge. Do they have wrist give in their backhands like many staple forehands nowadays? Does wrist go forward or backward while they hit the ball?

[bottle]

Have You Ever Read an Article

that said that kinetic chain (feet to knees, knees to hips, upper body, arm and racket) is superior/inferior to Degas dancer hips spinning at the center of your body with two different force fields emanating up and down?

Me neither. Nor have I read an article rejecting the premises of such basic options in favor of a third way of serving that emphasizes vertical thrust. Even VT serving on the tour has its successive rotational components-- no?

Just didn't want to see you get too complacent about whatever it is you do, dear reader.

[bottle]

Ricky Fowler Upside Down

When no less a tennis authority than Howard Brody at the University of Pennsylvania appears to subscribe to his colleagues' assertion that a tennis serve is a golf swing upside down, we tennis neophytes if not tennis sheeple must make the moral choice: I want more power-- I know that-- but which sport shall I study today?

If tennis, the tennis gods will remain appeased, but we and you or "little u-i" as the late E.E. Cummings used to say, may become "a dull boy" as the late Fotherington Tomas-- a fictive creation of Geoffrey Wilkerson, the Brit-- used to say.

So let all games begin, say I, and who can deny that the entire golf world is a-buzz about a new cover story in Golf Magazine by the young powerhouse Ricky Fowler.

I only read the article in a doctor's waiting room with half-attention, I freely confess.

Fowler, on take-back, nevertheless keeps his lower legs more still than the great Jack Nicklaus, who likes to jive with his knees and heels a very small bit, and Tiger, too, and beyond either one of these three are millions of shankers who are altogether too loosey-goosey with their legs and hips and therefore lose three-quarters of their power.

Best amount of tension in lower body, it would seem, enables the big rubber bands in one's middle to wind and stretch with less self-consciousness and most directness, fullness, harshness and purity.

As soon as one's shoulders have slowly wound to the max, Fowler insists, one can immediately crank one's hips with all that one's got the opposite way.

"Immediately" means with no self-conscious faltering or pause.

So in tennis serving, a right-side up sport, if one can also figure out a way effectively and with no self-consciousness to toss while shoulders are still turning back, one can eliminate the usual delay before one blasts off with legs and hips and achieve good result.

Note: I haven't had time to experiment yet, so feel free, dear reader, to beat me to it.

P.S. I changed profession at the age of 14 when a garlic-chewing golfer threw his clubs off of the 400-foot-high Indian mound in Granville, Ohio and said, "Caddy, go get them."

[bottle]

So That was the Long Version

And here's the short version, followed by a question.

"Sling the racket head at the ball." -- Arthur Ashe

Is the shape of such a swing, which starts with a SLING, compatible with finding the ball? Won't slinging the racket destroy one's hand-eye coordination?

Answer: Slinging racket moves its tip a lot but not the hand.

[bottle]

More on John McEnroe's Backhand as a Model

Personally, I think the JMBH as productive model makes more sense than Roger Federer, Ivan Lendl, Justine Henin, Ivan Ljubicic, Eliot Teltscher, Brian Gottfried, Evonne Goolagong, Donald Budge or almost any other great one-hander anybody can think of.

First, the JMBH is almost as minimalist as the short straight back backhands favored by most of those tennis instructors who actually do teach one-handers nowadays.

Loop, however, is declared essential to a good one-hander by no less a master than E. Teltscher. Okay, so JM has a loop. The difference, compared to RF, say, is that the loop is small.

One probable reason people DON'T emulate JM is his zany, hump-wristed grip. Who else did that? Arthur Ashe. And JM places big knuckle on 1.5 for all of his strokes as revealed in YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS. What all this means is that wrist goes from humped to straight in the "turn the corner" phase of his arm swing. But why doesn't he hit the ball up into the sky? Because he rolls his arm to close his racket face, i.e., he keeps his elbow in, twisting it down. How much does he or doesn't he roll his forearm, too (?), one might wonder, but this is an academic question for someone with an eastern backhand grip.

Directing one's energies to finding one's own best way to round the corner sharply like Arthur Ashe or John McEnroe seems preferable over lockstep imitation of one or the other.

The goal again, re-phrased, is-- without using any disruptive muscular effort-- to push the racket tip ahead of the hand before the most vigorous part of the stroke.

What are the elements available for doing this? Moving wrist from concave to straight to concave again. Rolling the forearm clockwise. Rolling the elbow clockwise. But in what sequence or amounts or simultaneity? There is only one answer, and it comes in a single word: Invent.

Essential to the enterprise, as far as I'm concerned, is a very old tennis idea implicit in the McEnroe strips and in my old Arco book in which one riffles pages to see Evonne Goolagong clobber/caress the ball. This latter film has no soundtrack unless one is a poker shark super-sensitive to the noise of shuffling cards.

Thinking McEnroe only now, I say two counts to get the shoulders and bent arm turned back, one count including body segmentation and forward shoulders turn and rolling down of the racket tip to take all slack out of the arm (the very old tennis idea), one count to turn the corner with hand still held back, and a big fifth hitting count in which gross body takes over.

[bottle]

Backhand Finesse: John McEnroe Model

Once you're in position with racket behind you, just barely beyond a perpendicular toward rear fence, you lower racket to inside then roll-wrist it to outside then clench your shoulder-blades together for the leg-enjoined real power in the stroke.

Roll-wrist as a verb is tricky, with too many meanings perhaps. And just because someone does something a certain way doesn't mean another person ought to do the same thing. The wrist and forearm roll straight, the arm then rolls with elbow turning down. Throughout the arm roll the wrist can continue to move the racket tip around.

I'm trying to stress one thing here: the inside-out nature of the pre-swing before muscles in the back take over. This is a useful cue for generating "snap" in the stroke, like John McEnroe, as seen here:

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

(Click on BH Center Front)

[bottle]

You'd better ask John.

[chokomakashi]

hello

hello there.. you got great knowledge... last question your said.. i can't really figure out.. i will read more...

hey bottle.. do you know how to put picture in this thread?

thanks

[bottle]

Rough Instruction Beats Fine Instruction Every Time

Chokomakashi,

There's something in between simplissimus, e.g., throw a football, and a completely dry, technical and overly thorough, clotted description of the service motion.

1) Take racket down to right fence or rear fence or in between combined with maximum body turn

2) Change direction and toss with right arm continuing its low short path around

3) Bend onto front foot with right arm continuing its low short path around

4) Bend arm to right angle as part of leg drive and VUBR

5) Use HUBR to bend arm rest of way and cock elbow as high as you want it-- anywhere from upper arm parallel to court to vertical to court. Palm down orientation will facilitate these options.

6) A) extend arm and B) twist arm while extending arm in 2/5-3/5 acceleration ratio.

Terms: VUBR (vertical upper body rotation), HUBR (horizontal upper body rotation), SUBR (sideways upper body rotation), DUBR (diagonal upper body rotation).

II. Rotorded Version: Substitute SUBR for VUBR. In other words keep head still almost until you hit ball then move it sideways to help achieve more verticality. This simplifies arm compression also. There's no conscious bending or loop of arm whatsoever. HUBR does it all.

NOTE: All serves, like life itself, are in progress.

QUESTION: Is HUBR still HUBR after body has tilted to the left? A saboteur could call it DUBR or a different kind of VUBR. So let's strictly define HUBR as motion propelled by transverse stomach muscles that spin shoulders around beneath a mostly still head.

[bottle]

Mauro Marcos and all the new Free Forehand Stuff out on the Web

"up the broad Nile and in to the river bank
I brought my dipping squadron."

-- Odysseus telling a tall tale in THE ODYSSEY

Amazing what can happen if you're open to new tennis instruction and finding old girlfriends on the web. She was an English professor's daughter in Middletown, Connecticut but now, 46 years later, is a high level business consultant in Detroit, Michigan. As I prepare to move from Winston-Salem to Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan looking to find Aaron Krickstein for a hit (though actually I prefer opponents who generate slightly less topspin than he), I see that Coach Kyril, mentioned with a film here in this thread, has made the inspired and truly wise decision to pair himself with Mauro Marcos.

Already I've met the Grosse Pointe French teaching pro Sebastian, who played for Wayne State, and Ochi has suggested that my new/old girlfriend may be looking for an annuity, which is a real laugh.

Coach Kyril's journey is no less real than mine. Mauro Marcos, famous for his work with Jennifer Capriati, is one of the best talking, most dramatically demonstrative and charming tennis teaching pros who ever lived. And the surprisingly good at listening Coach Kyril and Mauro together seem to produce a new free forehand video, well made, every day.

I may not agree with everything Mauro says, prejudiced as I am by my Federfore and by those like Eric Matuszewski, J.M. Peredo, Jeff Counts and
Carrera Kent who helped me develop it. Mauro's classic two-handed pivot to immediately get the racket head back I've called the "Waxyhatcheetaxchee" for many decades by now after the National Tennis Academy printed materials. The NTA provided me with my mail order certification so I'm no doubt some kind of dreadful ingrate. However, this quick take-back followed immediately by a further takeback of the arm followed by the three NTA inchworm steps BIMP, BIMP, BIMP has always made me know I was performing the 1950's dance The Bunny Hop. Furthermore, it was Tom Okker who suggested that pointing directly at the oncoming ball was "overly mannered"-- better to point across at the right fence like Federer. And it was J.M. Peredo who suggested that it was perfectly okay to complete the body turn a little later with that cross-over left arm-- makes you more natural and better able to cope with funny bounces, I think. And for what happens next with left arm I've always preferred Okker's image above others: The left arm "smooths the waters."

There is more than one way to hit a tennis ball, however, and the immensely knowledgeable Mauro Marcos (just look into his notebooks as it is possible to do in the films) probably knows them all. He is not averse, e.g., to "all topspin" shots while remaining committed to the hit-through additive, even throws his racket down the alley at the net to show where he thinks the energy ought to go.

No one will ever suffer from doing as he: Simply stand at one end of an alley, drop a ball, hit to the opposite end of the alley. How accurate was this shot? Closer to one tramline than the other? How deep? How high? And did you take your full cut at the ball?

Mauro also has provocative notions about straight arm to bent arm sequence, contact point (way out front), wrist layback, twisty wrist additive to scissoring arm, "catching" the ball first and many other subjects, providing just enough detail where there is a detail vacuum according to one of his on-film students.

Whatever else one thinks, one shouldn't deny that people like Mauro and Will Hamilton, just like Robert Lansdorp, offer a distinctive voice.

A distinctive voice in tennis may represent someone who ought to be your guru or not. Eschew the guru, say I. Just be very quiet to turn on his faucet and then pick his brain.

[bottle]

Do you have American Footballs in Japan?

Is that where you are? It may not only be the palm that ought to be central to any football-tennis discussion but spiralspin on the ball itself.

Actually, I've been looking at your posts and wondering what to do about them.
I promise to respond more fully soon. Have been very busy traveling. I wouldn't worry about immediate response to a post at this website. Much like teaching,
you can never be entirely sure about who was listening. Years later, in the street, you see a student who compliments you, and you say, "That person never said a word, just sat there in row ten!"

More soon. I know you're sincere. And any sincere voice in tennis gets heard.
We all love the same thing-- right?

[chokomakashi]

hey there

hello there.. i reaed couple of your thread and has great information..It is a shame that people do not interact out here... should share information together not just with your thread...

I will try to read more... yes as we know.. serve can get very complex and not many people want to bother about it... and that's why we see more and more people service incorrectly....

See one of the biggest problem.. for me it is.. maybe you already discussed in your thread but i didn't catch it.....so if you have idea you can tell me..

one of the biggest challenge i see myself and my student is ....

put racket in correct position before you hit... fist of all racket is too long to start with.. unlike basebal or football.. so racket go though the correct path in oder to get to final position... which is face is pointing to side fence.. before pronate.. see.. to me even pros to get to final positino they take bit different path... most common one is racket face pointing back of head before arm goes up...

For me.... only one method worked so far...imagine racket is football and throw that to reciever... see funny thing.. if you don't think this is tennis.. acutally i do really well... see one very simiilarity throwing football and racket is before they throw their hand... opposite of palm is pointing side fence... however, baseball. when you throw palm is pointing to catcher....or opposite of palm is pointing to center field....

see if you serve with racket compelely choke up (hold just below the racket face) and serve... you will find out it is so much easier.. but when you hold grip.. then it gets so tough....

well, any thoughts...

[bottle]

Old and New Federfores

Old: Hand sometimes lifted above shoulder.

New: Hand never lifts above shoulder.

(Note to reader: Reader, this post is brief, I know, a relief. Still, you ought
to read the one before this.)