A New Year's Serve

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It has a lot to recommend it, as would almost any full-hearted attempt to imagine the future at this point in the anthropocene age. But for a dystopian novel I didn't find it-- ultimately-- strange, scary and depressing enough the way 1984 was and still is. But my oh my how 1984 got misinterpreted and distorted by the political right.

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DBBH in a Full Ground Stroke Arsenal

Coil drop hit. No hips. Just leg extension. Until pulled wide.

This outline subtracts time from hit of shot. And adds time to pre-hit of shot.

And is march toward more gradual acceleration for this shot (the modicum-of-topspin DBBH) along with two forehands.

The design is a bit complicated in that all three shots contain a drop, i.e, employ gravity.

The coil plus drop suggests an evenness of racket head speed (slow plus fast producing mathematical operation equaling moderation or modicum).

The even acceleration begins from this moderation. The whole stroke takes more time than before.

If using a forehand wiper, one will control wiper speed as if one had some kind of an automotive knob to turn. Fast shots = faster wiper, slow shots = slower wiper. Well, that's how I want to play.

Slices include both longer and more abrupt versions. Will restore the backhand drive that was receiving knowledgeable compliments before I started fiddling with that side.

Like a volley, that adjunct stroke is a two-count shot. But it includes elbow extension and roll and a block all in a single count, the second.

For any old age topspin I plan from backhand side now I shall rely on the DBBH with its modicum of that. The rest of the time I'll slice more, cross more, and chop more.

I know people good at hitting soft backhand top right off of the court, and at times I have done that myself, but I am in revamp mode right now just as anyone would be who has a continuing life.

Note: "Trump Derangement Syndrome": How I love that Orwellian phrase. Because it cuts in two directions that are perfectly opposite to one another.

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Counterclockwise Stir of Pot to Left: Weight on Left Foot

Counterclockwise stir of pot to right: Step of Right Foot.

Drop of racket: Weight on both feet but settling forward.

Spring up through ball.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov)

Here is where Vic Braden, the broad-shouldered homunculus, went wrong in his adaptation meant to ignite the masses.

The adaptation worked for him, Vic, but not for the masses.

The masses had shoulders that were too narrow. And more height to their build.

Hence, they couldn't step and settle like Vic (called "step-and-hit" in Vic's book TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE).

Here is the better way: (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov)

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Is it True that People, Some of the Most Intelligent Teaching Pros in the World, Miss Stuff?

One great aspect of tennis is that people do NOT notice stuff, and therefore if you notice anything, just are an honest and open observer, you can be quite original.

Well, maybe just to yourself. But why shouldn't that be enough? Isn't tennis an individual sport? Can't you go to the court and give the thing a try?

Take the windup of John Isner's serve (and maybe of certain other big servers in the game). I didn't notice this myself but one of the talking heads on YouTube did. It wasn't Tomaz Mencinger-- he's really good. But do we only want to take advice from those who are good? What does the source of any idea matter if the idea itself is good?

Isner's racket goes up toward the right fence (more or less since he is quite turned around). That changes pitch a lot but so what? We want to let go of the minor considerations, right? We want to let go.

And also-- and this is me noticing something-- Isner doesn't wind backward on his serve. He achieves all the backward turn he needs in a static way, i.e., by the extreme stance he chooses.

I am always coming up with new ideas, have trained myself to do that, you could say. Some obviously are better than others. These two seem especially interesting.

On backward turn-- well, anything that subtracts from what you were doing is usually a positive in tennis.

On lifting racket toward side fence the racket gets high soon, which could help certain servers who can't get racket tip low enough. Could it be that they can fully coordinate leg drive with the racket drop by making that drop taller at the top?

In using this new direction of toss, one can take both arms up together or start with either one first-- that's three different options all of which I plan to try the next time I play just to see what's what.

Will my receiving opponent be upset by the changes? By one method more than another? Because right now all three are produced with about the same difficulty or ease.

A bit surprising but something like that occasionally does happen. After which you (I) move on.

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Reverse Engineering

After two months was finally able to get my vandalized car back and buy cheap groceries-- lots of them without using overloaded cloth bags during bus rides and military prisoner marches to pull my arms off. And made it to an outdoors court on the way home even though it was raining.

When people speak of reverse engineering, their listeners are frequently bamboozled as if by a reverse in football.

But I think I have a clear example here.

Vic Braden designed his backhand and other ground game by watching Don Budge's backhand through a knothole in Detroit.

He then mass-marketed his sit-and-hit to thousands if not millions of people picking up tennis during the tennis craze of the seventies and eighties.

So Braden engineered from Budge. And those of us who took the trouble to learn a sit-and-hit backhand now can engineer away from it back to Budge. At least I plan to, maybe have done so already.

Uncle Vic had you stepping with your inside foot while you lowered both hands in a little arc to your thigh just above the knee. The thigh could even touch the shaft between your two hands.

But Uncle Don doesn't do that, which is my argument. Don Budge, who stirred the pot to the outside now stirs the pot to the inside. And it is during this small swirl to inside-- more economical and a lot easier to do-- that the inside foot steps out.

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Hypothesis: Tennis is Aspiration

And who wouldn't like to have a Don Budge backhand?

Just to intersperse with your Thiemie, your Federian, your Wawrinkit and yourTsitsipasoo.

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Here Here. Ear to Ear: Ten Sources for a Very Simple Sliced Backhand

They are: Old films of Ken Rosewall, most complete tennis family in Cleveland Ohio, Trey Waltke, Stotty, Oscar Wegner, Chris Evert's assessment of Jack Groppel's game ("good slice"), national Czech book of tennis (bad glue in spine and fell apart), Barron's book of German tennis, John M. Barnaby, don_budge with his super cue which I shall always call "ear to ear" with an ear to ear grin.

Should I look into these sources more, explaining each in detail? I think not. But there they are for "students of the game," who, like Jack Groppel, over-intellectualize tennis and probably sex too.

But the tennis family in Cleveland still applies great force to my slice backhand. It wasn't the kid about to start college, the second ranked junior in the state of Ohio. I watched him play a Case Tech tennis recruit in a Cleveland exhibition match. But it was his twin sister teaching in a tennis camp and two of his three uncles, one from San Francisco, and his mother, a previous captain of the Yale women's tennis team who hit every one of her shots precisely on the sweet spot of her racket.

Neither the junior nor the uncle from California would play because of what happened at the previous Stieffel-Steiffel family reunion, when two of the uncles beat the Yale captain and her prodigy son. The family fell apart-- that's what.

But everyone else played and spoke up. We were high in a mountaintop resort in the panhandle of West Virginia. Why was I there? Because Hope, my girlfriend, was part of the family, and the reunion was HUGE.

Was I nervous? You could say that. But what is the best quality of an extended tennis family? A quantity of encouragement.

They had nothing to say about any of my game except for my McEnrueful and my slice. Both of which helped in the achievement of victory in the last match of the day. With a McEnrueful service return as the last shot.

I was still influenced by the 1950's video of the teenaged Rosewall hitting from a skunk tail in Davis Cup.

The skunk as I understand stinkers raises his tail to vertical when he is about to spray.

Someone at Tennis Player did not like the expression but Stotty did.

Later videos of Rosewall showed a slightly lower racket tip just before he goes into his tight rearward loop (see the Tennis Player article on slice backhand by Trey Waltke, who does the same thing).

Use the slightly lower tip position, reader, is my advice if you want it. While still keeping whole racket high.

A quick force-fed tight loop then to blend into a swing from ear to ear.

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Bring Back Skunk Tail for Ear to Ear Doubles Backhand Service Return, Flat Sliced

In writing about skunk tail tennis I realize that I abandoned it some years ago and for no good reason other than that Ken Rosewall seemed to abandon his in the progressing videos of his backhand made over the decades.

Wouldn't it be wise never again to completely abandon any good shot no matter how one's game wants to evolve?

Now that the people who frequently play against me serve exclusively to my deuce court backhand, which they certainly never used to do, it's time to re-introduce the old skunk tail flourish to that side.

I see a good new orchestration coming into play: Don Budge modicum topspin deep drives for young persons who make the dumb mistake of not coming in on their serve alternated with skunk tail slice also hit deep alternated with crossed dinks if they do come in to stop my early seizure of the net.

And for older persons, many on the cusp of their low seventies (me, I enter the high cusp of the seventies in December), if they too choose to stay back, don't just drive the ball deep while coming in. Dink with a lower tip to begin crossed sidespin to the short alley while coming in.

Bill Talbert in THE GAME OF DOUBLES IN TENNIS gives an 80-year-old as an example of a server who doesn't come in on his serve and therefore is worthy of the deep shot treatment but I'm finding this true of many 70-year-olds too.

Use a higher percentage of everything mix is all I say here.

The traditional advice (Talbert) is to save dink returns for serve-and-volleyers.

No longer true but never rely exclusively on dinks. The good old guys will eventually get to them after the bounce if exclusive dinks from backhand side is what they anticipate.

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Ear to Ear Permutations

I play tomorrow and just was doing self-feed today. Along the ear to ear line of the previous post, I found interesting the notion of immediately raising hand to ear level. Then, instead of consciously dropping racket head, raise the elbow in beginning of the forward swing.

This brings racket head into line so that everything proceeds along a curved horizontal line from ear to ear.

I am of the school that accelerates forward swing at the elbow thus getting arm straight before contact but not swinging a straight arm the whole way.

I say that since to my mind these are the two basic categories of backhand slice-- bent arm getting straight or arm being straight all the way.

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Revise, at least for this Evening, the Fulcrum Point in Skunk-Tailed Rosewallian Slice

This order predicts a shift of one's thought from wherever it is to the fanciful level of cue.

The entire forearm from elbow to fist-- with a perfectly straight wrist-- becomes a teeter-totter.

So where does this piece of one's anatomy, this dry bone with no distinction made between radius and ulna, teeter? Where it totters. Most simply bisect the distance between fist and elbow and keep this discovered point well in mind while making the shot.

The racket will no longer fall into level parade behind the rising elbow as it did for one magnificent early morning drop-shot.

Neither will the skunk-tailed strings simply sink to level the way they probably did years ago.

The strings will sink. The elbow will rise. The 90-degree transformation will split itself between these two simultaneous acts.

Say "Look, Mom, I be a twirler of batons. But I don't twirl from my fingers, I twirl from the middle of my forearm."

Behold what this does to both elbows!

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Isner

Does arm move on the toss? Am asking if it (ha) moves independently of the bod, which is rocking parallel to the baseline more than turning backward. The rocking in fact could be defined as knees sliding at the right fence while shoulders slide at the left fence.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...r%20500fps.mp4)

So, is John's right arm affected by this lower bod-upper bod linear segmentation? It has to be, with bod providing a minimized bit of turn to upward travel of the still straight arm as well.

But, back to the original question. What I see is rather mechanical motion morphing into something more organic and snakelike that concludes with elbow retracting toward back fence to line up with the shoulder-balls-- an almost exhilarating baseball pitcher type feel.

So that's part of the inner workings. With answer to the broad question a yes. If arm never "aired the armpit," to use Braden's immortal phrase, the racket in this video would remain a foot lower and a foot forward of where it is when ha starts to bend.

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Can a Person and Should One get Angry at Tennis Instruction as a Whole?

I do. Specifically, why didn't someone tell me that Boris Becker's backhand is different from other backhands, that he doesn't lower it behind his back, just chops (straightens) and rolls toward the front?

Ivan Lendl's backhand was a great backhand. A whole association of Connecticut high school tennis coaches could not return a single one.

Still, I prefer Becker's for its simplicity.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide1.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide2.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ActionRear.mov)

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Is a Crazy Cue the Super Glue that Holds Some Performance Together?

Very likely.

Certainly is true in theater.

So why not in tennis?

In golf, no less a personage than Tom Watson once stated that he was apt to make up a new cue even in the final round of some major tournament.

That's too late but it worked for him.

So yesterday I made up two cues, one relating to skunk tail slice, the other to John Isner's serve.

The service thought(s) were effective for a while but sputtered by the end of three sets.

Despite my not always holding serve my three different teams all prevailed. The Friday night social is the device I use to measure my personal progress in tennis.

And the reason for a great evening was my re-institution of skunk tail slice.

More specifically, I used the fulcrum images of a teeter-totter and baton twirl (post # 4570).

These backhand slices absolutely sizzled, barely cleared the net, skidded when they hit, could fly very deep or not, were virtually nonreturnable.

So now I want to use "forearm middle place fulcrum" in service structure as well.

We westerners don't see hundreds or thousands of people doing Tai Chi every day in city squares.

And because we are overly logical, we'll place some fulcrum at a joint or end of a limb rather than in its middle.

Lesson: Most people with decent backhand slice of the flattish genre claim that it came from Ken Rosewall of Australia. I make that claim also but from the nineteen-year-old Ken Rosewall.

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Re #4572

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide1.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide2.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ActionRear.mov)

In two of these three backhands there is double-clutching, i.e., the racket goes up to a certain spot, then goes up a little more before being force-fed forward down. In the third that doesn't happen. Click on all three to see if you can make the distinction. Then preserve the distinction for extra option if you take the shot all the way to play.

As timing, I see the double-clutch as replacement for all the circling that happens in most one handers. Big and out to side in Lendl's. Small in first Don Budge backhand in the stroke archive. Huge and way down around hips in an Evonne Goolagong.

Not for Becker. While hundreds of other guys are doing all that stuff Boris goes ahead and clubs the ball.

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Skunk Tail

In backhand slice.

In backhand drive.

In service act.

Explore.