A New Year's Serve

[ochi]

Bottle, do you have a copy of "Technical Tennis," by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey? The section on "Spin and the Serve" is interesting, particularly the part about how Sampras put so much spin on his serves -- by tossing so high and striking the ball as it descended.

There's a whole lot of other stuff, too, about racquets, strings, "18 Different Ways to Hit the Ball," and so on.

[bottle]

Orchestrating Forehand and One Hander

Count for Federfore: 1234 before you even BOWL, which is the beginning of deceleration-acceleration. One hander count: 1234 before you SWING, with 4 vigorous from the leg same as in the Federfore.

SWING replaces BOWL, although both actions are performed from the shoulder. When you BOWL, it's straight from one intersection on horizontal arc to the next. When you SWING, it's along a horizontal arc. That's the difference.

I'm willing now to allot (which may or may not sound crazy) two counts to take the racket up, two to take it down to perfect very wide hitting position (hand out far enough to allow space for a water wing), and two (2) separate instances of deceleration-acceleration during the final count five, very similar to a Federfore.

Deceleration-acceleration 1): tension built between front shoulder and racket tip during count four, but you're swinging now. You release this tension not with twist-- which I tried-- but with arm swing. Yes, you let the swing or bonk go,
but stop it immediately for deceleration-acceleration 2) which is twist. The twist is so fast that you still can start a rabbit punch before contact.

Such gyros in tennis as Vic Braden, John O. Barnaby, Ed Faulkner and Lloyd Budge are left brain, which is why the right brain racists (left brain themselves) tend to hate them.

I want to steal once again from Mr. Barnaby (whom I'll take over his 1960's Harvard captain Timothy Gallwey any time), specifically, Coach Barnaby's book photograph of himself bonking a net post with the heel of his hand.

I want to incorporate the net post in my one hander. But if I hit it too hard
I'll injure myself, so I wouldn't want to do that. If I went for smoothness on my forehands I'll go for abruptness here. I bonk into an imaginary net post to twist my straight wrist in a very fast snap. Sounds passive but is a combination once again. The sudden stop lends to speed but so do fast twitch muscles in the shoulder and the forearm. Intentional abruptness results in overall smoothness.

[bottle]

Three Eyes

In a sense, with these recent posts, I've been coming closer to and yet moving away from what I want both at the same time.

While playing short court tennis with my student, I kept one eye on her body, one on what she was doing, and the third on all the sidespin in my own backhand.

She'll be out of town since her publisher is paying for her to fly to Europe and read from her book on social security in front of the Swiss Parliament, so this is a good chance for me to transform my sideward spin into something more straight up.

The statements I'll work from are Billie Jean King: "It's like throwing a frisbie,"
John McEnroe: "Keep your elbow in. Its hard to learn but worth doing." And Arthur Ashe: "Think about turning the corner."

To court now and report back: Achieved goal with the first ball dropped and hit. There may always be sidespin. Today, it came in a much better mix.

The solution: Roll wrist, then roll arm, then open wrist during rabbit punch, which starts an inch to a foot before contact.

However, I never learned to throw a frisbie as well as my brothers, so I don't know what Billie Jean was talking about unless she meant passive, tight and deceleration-acceleration driven arm roll followed by clenching the shoulderblades together.

And I've never figured out what McEnroe meant by "Keep the elbow in." At the beginning? In the middle? Nowhere? Everywhere? These questions don't matter any more. The racket whirl can be tight-- that keeps elbow from flying out. Rabbit punch also keeps elbow from swinging out as far as it would go if you were also swinging from the shoulder. And this in turn, combined with wrist returning to concave channels the strings in a more upward path.

The sequence of fast, tight, passive roll followed by muscular extension of both arms from center of one's back seems healthy and productive. And I'm happy to retain my new ideas about deceleration-acceleration albeit in modified form, e.g., print tennis instruction most frequently thinks of left hand as device to keep racket on ball-- only part of the story. I really see, I'm afraid, left hand going back twice (but in one motion).

Nothing in life or tennis is or ever should be automatic; however, within this rough stroke design there lurks a cluster of magical backhands hanging like upside-down bats in some internal cave.

[bottle]

Kinesthesia (Making Something More Right Brain)

Post # 198 offered an outline. This one wants to flesh it out and describe how loading up the crucial section could feel.

A person gets to built torsion in the arm as hips turn forward, shoulders get level. He continues to build it in stopping phase as arm straightens, wrist rolls straight, hand moves out in slot, racket head re-locates so middle of top of rim is next to free left hand if left arm stays bent like Roger Federer's. All this simultaneous action includes stopping maneuvers of the body. What image expresses all that? One lung filling with air thanks to the power pedal on the end of your right leg?

Arthur Ashe spoke of stringing a bow, Billie Jean King of throwing a frisbie. Cocked racket then, strings still by body but lower now, the handle to outside as in a Don Budge backhand-- all of it feels weird, like a coiled spring, which helps explain what happens next.

Rewind. Since extending leg is pressing leveled shoulder forward and up as part of the stop, make racket tip press down and back while keeping hand pretty much in one place.

[bottle]

Applying Lessons from Budge and McEnroe to Federer-type One Hander

Why should this be necessary? Well, I don't think I ever properly understood Roger's backhand, and I wonder, dear reader, did you? Did you know or ever read a single word anywhere to the effect that you must roll your cocked wrist straight if you want to hit like Roger?

"Oh, I do that naturally," a right brain romanticist might say whether true or not. I believe, however, in both lobes of the brain working evenly together.

Hip turn starts when racket head is slightly above left shoulder. Hip turn is directly linked to shoulders leveling out. Hip turn decelerates as arm straightens to second check place for left hand (and wrist rolls straight).

First check place for left hand is on racket throat. Second check place is with handle still spearing to left of oncoming ball and with hand free but near middle of upper rim of racket head.

Wrist roll to arm roll unfurls the strings with this sequence possibly becoming entirely passive. Rabbit punch/clench applies weight and racket does not turn any more (it makes a long straight path to end of followthrough!).

There is no section in the roll where wrist is straight. The wrist goes directly from becoming straight to becoming concave. Wrist can, however, close when strings assume second position relative to left hand, thus simplifying the subsequent arm roll for more passivity.

The hand gets quite close to the ball. The strings then hit the ball quite
close to where the hand was. Why? Because arm twists more than it moves to get to contact.

The wrist closes then opens as the arm rolls! Rabbit punch is from contact onward.

There is NO leveling of shoulders before hips turn. To repeat, hip turn and shoulders leveling are simultaneous.

The wrist and shoulders corrections should streamline the stroke considerably.

Stopping the hips as racket assumes its second position relative to left hand should put more passive snap into racket roll than ever before. The stoppage comes from A)front leg straightening B)left leg moving toward inside of right leg C)left hand moving back six inches to a foot. The arm gets mostly straight at the same time, it seems to me.

The left leg can fly left near end of stroke just as in the most desperate running backhand ever; but, try not to let it proceed past the front foot. It can set down directly behind the front foot, in other words, and off you go to the right in a very good, spare recovery.

[bottle]

Your Back in One-Hander: Slanted or Upright

Easy. This is your hypnotist speaking. Keep hand in one place vis-a-vis the upper body all the way until after the hit. Easy, easy. Now, what will happen if instead of segmenting for straightness of upper body, you lean it with same timing toward the sideline?

You will A), if racket is directly behind you, lose the slight racket lowering you achieved from body segmentation alone, and you will close the strings a bit,
B) regain lowness closer to contact as upper body swings, C) raise racket if you've made the mistake of taking it farther around, D) lower racket if you've kept it out in slot, maybe even pointing it on a perpendicular to sideline before you step out, so it will come around even lower.

Listen, dear reader, there are two ways to bring the shoulders around when your spine is on a slant: 1) like a Bucyrus-Erie power shovel or 2) like a golfer whose rear shoulder swings down as his front shoulder swings up.

Electing 2), we have a real sense of shoulders pressing back hand down before it draws back. And we have thought an awful lot and would like to continue on the subject of abrupt stoppage of the hitting shoulder. Why not perform this stop exactly when shoulders become level?

Generally speaking, who should slant their upper body, who keep it upright? Tall people like me (6 ft. 4), short people like McEnroe (5 ft. 11).

[bottle]

Modified McEnroe in a One-hander

Hit some great shots imitating that man but not enough of them to my mind, and so am carrying Ed Faulkner's idea of leading back-swing with racket tip to a dive-bombing extreme.

This simply means more opening of the racket during the take-back instead of performing the same action later as part of the hit the way John McEnroe does.

Why? Because simplification is good in tennis except when it isn't. Now, in my count five I'll simply have to roll wrist straight as body swings and have a non-rolling section as body brings racket around to complete that swing. Body is to stop as I roll arm mightily (upper and lower both) as wrist becomes concave again.

Four elements will have been reduced to three.

This allows more time for stiffening of core muscles perfectly to create deceleration-acceleration every time. Watch this stiffening process in the same McEnroe sequence I showed before:

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

Look for the mid-stroke body moment where McEnroe sets himself. He looks
casual overall. That particular moment, by contrast, is dramatic and assertive.

Among the many elements I'll retain is the slight segmenting of body (count four) to bring the racket, open now, part way down before I do anything with my wrist.

Divide forward upper body swing fifty-fifty between rolling wrist straight and keeping it straight. Then try different combinations, e.g., one-third/two-thirds, two thirds/one-third in a search for what works best.

[bottle]

Up the Far Side of a Steep Gorge before the Arms go out

One-hander: Bungalow Bill has taught that one should make a "U" with the racket trajectory, and that is correct, a "U" and not a "V," but a pretty narrow gorge if one dares to pattern on John McEnroe.

The whole premise of the miserable novel PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS is that a thinking centipede will trip all over itself. So let's get the overall movement down very well, first, before we discuss the details. Then let's register those details with precision, all four of them, while understanding that they are one extremely rapid motion only, and even then are just the first half of an overall extremely rapid motion.

It is a daunting task. No one can predict success. The undear writer, I, and the dear reader, you, will have to stay with it and iron out our differences and work together.

So: overall movement. What is it? Observe the following clip.

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

John McEnroe is running sideways, right? As he does so his shoulders turn back and his arm straightens. I'm for assigning two counts to taking the racket back, one to stepping out, one to forming a slight body comma which takes the racket initially down. Call anything else count five, study it, watch where and how fast the ball goes, and notice McEnroe's opponent, the despondent Clerc, drooping his head.

"So, are we there yet, Dad?" "No, son, we haven't yet described the overall motion. The racket head comes up before the arm goes out."

Another way of putting it is that the gorge of McEnroe's one-hander starts down coincident with upper body turn and comes up after that turn has abruptly stopped, and comes up pretty close to the body because he keeps his elbow in.

So I guess we're ready for the four details. That would be twisting the racket head inward from the forearm (takes it down), rolling the hand and forearm outward (this too takes the racket head down-- especially since body is rotating forward at the same time), letting the racket, still, get carried around some by the body rotation (the bottom of the "U"), and keeping the elbow in while rolling both it and the forearm.

All that's left then is to revive the centipede. How will we do it? Smelling salts, exotic substances, meditation? One way or another we've got to sublimate all details-- having learned them to forget them-- and let the whole thing rip.

A prosaic note here. A confusion in one-hander tennis technique comes from the idea of stopping body rotation to make 1) the arm accelerate ,or, more interestingly, 2) the racket head accelerate. What is the device that does it?
The clench? I may have thought so for most of my life but don't now. It happens before clench, most often, from a tightening of core muscles.

[bottle]

Modification

Suggested before that "unrolling" hand and forearm could mirror image of rolling wrist straight, and elbow could be rolling forward at same time (that forearm unrolled!).

True but maybe inadvisable. Want deceleration-acceleration to contribute to roll but also want all the muscle available to contribute. That means shoulder twist and forearm twist to work together and in same direction and at same time.

But if you simply re-bend wrist during this part of tract, i.e., make top of wrist become concave again, you get a steeper racket head rise.

Is this supposed to be unhealthy?

That I haven't found so far.

You have options here, obviously, could keep wrist straight for a lower more short-angled cross-court shot.

Another point: Keep trailing arm straight and relaxed like McEnroe. Front arm can be different and bend for comfort at end of follow-through (at same time).

[bottle]

Personally Best One-Hander Model-- McEnroe

I never should have tried to imitate his serve, but the backhand makes some sense. Because, some time back, I decided my big loop wasn't contributing to my happiness.

So, get racket back with arm straight-- butt pointing at ball-- the rifle site for the shot, that butt-cap.

He steps and forms a slight comma in body once foot is down. Counts one and two to get racket back with racket tip cocked slightly up, count three to step out and get arm parallel to sideline, count four to make the comma which starts the racket lowering.

All the rest, which sounds like a lot, is all one smooth hitting motion. The
downward motion blends into turning the forearm in (taking racket tip down)
which blends into rolling the wrist straight (taking racket tip farther down).
He drops the racket tip and rolls the wrist to a hump and swings the body and stops it and keeps the elbow in and rolls the arm and clenches to move both arms out at the finish. I'm hoping that with my heavier grip, i.e., with more flesh behind handle with heel on 7.5 I won't have to put a hump in wrist.

This shot isn't court-tested yet since it's raining. Whenever I try something new on this side nowadays I also hit a few where I clench or rabbit-punch early instead of at the conventional time just to see what if anything will happen. Well, there's good power, and the shoulder gets around more.
(I make a clean substitution of rabbit punch for body rotation). When the sun comes out, I want to try this variation with lots of arm roll but no body rotation at all or a minimal amount.

[bottle]

Personal Tennis Lesson from U.S. Open

When Richard Wilbur compared a sonnet to a drop-shot, I didn't think he meant a Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarch: "He who knows how he burns, burns little."

This U.S. Open was one of the best lessons ever in letting something happen. The courageous Del Potro saw through much adversity and took some speed off of his serve which then seemed to help him hit his forehand better and better.

In that spirit, I wish to institute these changes in my own game:

Backhand: The newest version works but is synthetic. What one has done in the past has to matter. Rotation of the shoulders and then clench is a good framework for a one-hander, yet doesn't mean I have to abandon my new ideas about straightening and depressing wrist.

Serve: In letting myself be unduly influenced by a Czech tennis book urging people to contract muscles on front edge of body while expanding them on the trailing edge, I changed the public term "cartwheel" into the private term "catapult"-- this could have been a bad mistake. A beautiful slo-mo sequence of Federer's motion once again showed something I must have suppressed: The cartwheel is gradual, the real power train runs up through the horizontally rotating elements. And slow cartwheel gives one a better chance of not dropping head as Federer was doing on his first serve, according to John McEnroe.

Federfore: Hold straight arm fully extended to right of body with wrist fully laid back. Roll forearm while keeping wrist laid back. Observe where the strings go. Now roll same way but let the wrist straighten. Watch the strings. Notice the difference.

[bottle]

Contrasting Cue Trains in this One-hander

1) Start turning racket open in waist-high takeback, turn it open more during the racket tip timing drop (all this from forearm only), close wrist straight from a diagonal, delicate roll of hand and forearm and not very much, with this slow movement melding into a turn-down of the elbow which continues twisting in same direction now from muscles (but not very much) while strings are flying up not least from wrist doing a precise imitation of its earlier move only in reverse.

2) Slowly but pro-actively perform a rabbit punch sending both arms out from clenching the shoulderblades together while rhythmically closing the wrist from concave to straight then abruptly stopping everything which passively carries the racket head to almost forcelessly find the ball.

But why do I indulge myself in such analytical stuff? Am I trying to kill a nice backhand now that I've found it?

Well, it's true that one must remember Petrarch, the ancient poet: "He who can say how he burns, burns little." On the other hand Tom Watson, the ancient golfer, like an ancient mariner, has always made up different cues for himself through his long and stellar career.

As long as I stay somewhere between cue trains 1) and 2), semi-confused about bringing them together and thinking about something else, I believe I'll be all right.

[bottle]

Once Racket Head Scrapes (Think Noise) up Outside of Ball is Achieved

Is this progression progressing? I think so. One speculates and does, discusses, perhaps revises, perhaps not, but always discovers.

Clearly, there are three places for clench in the forward phase of any one-hand backhand.

Beginning (the present experiment), middle (for a burst of body acceleration), end (which I already rejected as non-contributory).

Perhaps your power train is so efficient that you don't need clench anywhere but at the end. Perhaps you think you need an abrupt body surge in the middle embracing contact. Or perhaps like me you'd rather get rabbit punch and passive turning down of elbow out of the way and use delayed body rotation as the only weight-adding device since it's less mechanical, more organic and more adjustable.

[bottle]

A Significant Experiment

I'm sure, dear readers, that on the basis of that title alone my undear readers already disbelieve me, and I won't even think about my dead and undead readers. In Post # 188, however, I started to draw on another of my own lives, that of senior sweep oarsman and professional crew coach. In competitive rowing one must on every stroke "feather," i.e., roll the oar twice and in the air both times. For decades the U.S. Naval Academy made the mistake of feathering out of the water rather than popping the oar out first. This along with other factors prevented Navy from repeating its numerous Olympic eight-oared championships of two previous historical eras, both times with admirable crews called "The Navy Admirals."

As recently as yesterday, before I went to the court, I wondered if one employed the concave-straight-concave wrist pattern that I'm pretty sure the great Don Budge did, and struck the ball while returning the wrist to concave, would one destroy one's arm forever?

I should have known better. Haven't I for a couple of years struck serves in which wrist closed or opened with no harm other than mental from either?

Today's experiment in applying whaleboat rowing to tennis draws on developmental feather's three stages: 1) The beginner with no instruction depresses and undepresses his wrist too much; 2) The intermediate, more subtle, has transformed the roll into a more diagonal affair in which he never disturbs the level of the oar but still is using his hand too much; 3) The master with confidence uses hand less and fingers more.

It is 1) and 2) that interest me for my tennis. So today's experiment is to cock wrist less on flying grip change, use a more diagonal motion to diminish amount of wrist flattening during the rabbit punch, and employ the same minimalism in reopening the wrist as contact occurs.

Worked pretty well. Keep your human head still sometimes, I would say, and other times don't.

[bottle]

Crossing the Ball with Deceleration-Acceleration from Rabbit Punch

This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever tried to describe. If you don’t think you can take it, stop reading now. It involves a reversal of something I said before. (But what’s new about reversals, which I long ago authorized myself to perform when necessary, much like hypotheses in formal science?)

It could be argued that using a rabbit punch for the purpose of feeling for the ball is overkill. Equally, it could be argued that not using one’s clench to provide any force in a one-hand backhand is underkill. There was all that force available that you wasted in the followthrough.

Rabbit punch plus passive unfurling of racket head requires a certain interval of time (two of my counts). This is what makes it appropriate as a device for feel. And yet it’s forcible. I don’t think you want to do it (the sequence of both things) very fast; but, a little extra racket head speed with which to work will come in very handy.

The clench stops. The racket tip shoots out. You fling it. It unfurls. The shooting or unfurling is passive and works from the elbow rolling down.

This roll will continue, but from shoulder rotor muscles as swing turns the corner and wrist opens lifting racket head.

Let’s back up the film and start over. As shoulderblades clench, the wrist rolls straight. There are two ways to do this.

One can bring the racket around by 90 degrees from the roll alone. Or leave racket exactly where it is and roll it in place on a diagonal between pinky finger base and thumb base. Of course the rabbit punch itself is bringing the racket around—subtract 90 degrees from that—and as you hit a series of balls look for best racket position to memorize.

You want passive roll down of elbow to be an easy, spacious motion that feels good every time.