A New Year's Serve

[holyhobo]

Cmon stickman dont be dumb! bottle is an unparalled GENIUS!

[stickman]

Heres the truth

Some people dont like me because i am "harsh", in my assesments. So im going to be nice in saying this. SHUT UP!!! And stop wrighting all this bull shit.

Let me explane something to you bottle, very smart people make difficult things look and sound easy. You make easy things impossible to even comprehend!!

You want to serve like the mac? then just do what he does!!! It's not rocket science. You want federes forehand then just do what he does.

[bottle]

Super Relaxed Version

Get all body motion firmly in mind as a single unit (hips, shoulders and clench the sequence). Start the bowl with gravity and lift in a relaxed fashion trying to create a tangent out from the body. Will arm and racket head actually form a straight line if viewed from above? No, not unless you bowl backwards a bit. But it will bowl quite straight considering that your shoulder is rotating right from the motion of you clenching your shoulderblades together. Loosen up on grip a bit. I'll report back if it DIDN'T work.

[bottle]

One Hand Backhand: Rabbit Punch in the Bowling Alley

This expression "rabbit punch" has a grim history that includes small animals. Somebody's definition of it won't be exactly the same as mine. One illegal punch in boxing involves hitting (and probably killing someone) with heel of hand whether open or closed. A photograph of my favorite tennis writer of all time, John O. Barnaby, shows him pressing a net post with the bonking edge of his fist. Why is he doing that?

Because the arm, when bonking, is exceptionally strong. And too many stroke designs ensure that you never will tap this strength. Additionally, there are stroke designs that waste core body energy in straightening the arm. Why not save the big rotation of hips and shoulders for moving the racket frame?

Working from previous posts (I feel committed to learning progressions and even view each one as a separate voyage of adventure), one may slowly nose the racket tip down to inside while straightening the arm and winding the shoulders back. Now we're going to bowl down and up, right? The wrist will straighten naturally, when it wants to. The hips will turn marginally ahead of shoulders but both will then go. The bowling arm may seem detached from body swing but motion is motion and I don't see how it can fail to total up. The indirection of this bowling motion, however, down and up, means that the strings don't get to the ball too fast, which is good. Just think if body and arm were swinging as hard as they could in the same direction both at the same time. You could produce a mighty swat. Most likely, however, you'd lose all feel and control.

Okay, so here's the deal. Instead of thinking about racket tip, for a change, we'll think about racket butt and leading edge of the hand. Will both, at bottom of the bowl, be pointing in the direction you want them to go to produce a powerful, uppercutting bonk?

Drop and hit a ball this way. You got a tremendous amount of snap when you clenched shoulderblades, right? Was it too much? More than you could control? Didn't feel like "unfurling?" Was more of a jerk?

Drop and hit another ball. This time don't exaggerate the spearing or bonk but let the racket come around as it naturally wants to. Salt and pepper, oregano. Hit another ball. Get the seasoning just right.

Okay, fine. Now I've been to the court. This business of how much to bonk has a lot to do with how much you slowly turn the racket tip down as you slowly straighten the arm and slowly wind the shoulders back as you quickly run to the ball.

[bottle]

A Federforish Backhand by any other Name

All slowness shall go into drawing the racket back to hit the ball, which SEEMS like violation of the cardinal rule to approach contact at a low rate of speed.

If you're counting to five, you will put four counts into getting the straight arm parallel to the sideline with yourself having stepped out. FIVE! will be the whole backhand. This is unprecedented.

Furthermore, this will be the first time in history that use of the kinetic chain to describe a tennis stroke will actually help somebody to hit it.

But we'll break this seamless stroke into four parts because we're perverse. Because we also want to communicate, however, we'll name them with letters rather than numbers and do it only once, here, in this sentence: ABCD.

You're using a simplified version of kinetic chain here with only three moving parts, hips, shoulders and clench, to pull handle away from the ball. The clench also delivers whatever weight you put on the ball, but this phenomenon should perhaps be viewed as separate and secondary to the generation of spin and maybe kept out of mind both now and later. Spin occurs when the clench-driven hand goes slightly right and racket tip passively unfurls to left-- a contest.

Down goes the arm with forward hips turn. That's the first half of the bowl. You can't have ANOTHER bowl. One is enough. So now the upper part of the bowl rejoins a lot of BODY ROTATION (you could think of this as only two types: lower body and upper body). Arm goes down with lower, up with upper. Now the shoulder stops. What does the arm do? Depends when, exactly, the bowl rejoins the rotation.

The rejoining needs to happen just before the UBR stops. You want to abruptly change direction of hand travel-- and this is a way to do it. You wouldn't want to do it with arm only, would you? Not if you could do it with your body, which is much more powerful.

Probably the best thing I've said about hitting a Federfore sounds almost naive even to me: "Some things are going right to left, others left to right." If you accept that, all you have to do is decide WHICH THINGS you want to go in the opposite directions. And reverse of course for the one-hand backhand.

Vic Braden showed in the old VCR "Tennis Our Way" how when the shoulders are abruptly stopped the arm will accelerate in the direction of previous rotation since it is a lighter mass. One option is just to keep going to a Don Budge type flourishing finish-- some arm from shoulder (very little actually), some bend from elbow, some resumption of concavity in top of the wrist.

The likely confusion point is the shoulder stopping, the arm continuing, which is useful if you're hitting through the ball. Then free arm travel can start (or add to) some more muscular effort straight toward the target. No, the idea here is to bowl away from the target, same as in a Federfore. I'd say the different acceleration for this is over by the time the arm starts any free travel. And I'd say the bowl is much larger than on the forehand side.

One doesn't want to be too much of a purist or logician in thinking about this. If you're still clenching (shoulderblades) when you hit the ball, you're putting some weight on the ball from left to right but in a very mild arc. The bowl meanwhile permits arm roll, i.e., unfurling upward and sideward in same direction as that bowl, but the spin produced is what tells the truth of what has actually happened.

Some things go left to right, some right to left but a bit of sidespin shows that
left to right prevailed. Still, you get more topspin in the mix than any other way in this particular, general design. What makes it work is the feel of bowling right to left and then continuing the rolling unfurl in that same direction.

When I tried out this stroke at dawn this morning, I thought I'd probably found my optimally individual version of Robert Lansdorp's "academy ball," high, searing moonballs. (All tennis players should recognize a great speech when they hear one: "The Academy Ball and the Pro Drive," August issue.) After ten minutes, however, I realized that I could, with almost no modification, hit screaming line drives and sharp angles same as with a Federfore.

[bottle]

Everybody

Make sure to see The New Yorker Magazine this week for the color photo of the Bryan brothers doing a chest bump. And for the article about them. And for three poems by Richard Wilbur, a very good poet and very nice man and very good tennis player.

[bottle]

Add

Add forward hips turn to straight arm drop, i.e., do these two things at the same time.

That plus solid body instruction-- shoulders after hips blending into front shoulder continuance through natural clenching of shoulderblades (save the violent version of this clench for passive-arm-from-bend variation of your slice) leads to a classic backhand tip, from Pancho Gonzalez, I think.

That would be to finish the stroke with the hitting side of your strings facing top of the opposite fence. This is a go for it shot as far as I'm concerned.

When you add speed bump for a premeditated instant sending arm ahead of this swing, you do generate a bit more topspin and more typical followthrough but become more conservative, too. There's already quite a bit of topspin and pace in the basic shot.

Heel of hand on 7.5 and swing from arm parallel to sideline.

[bottle]

Honor Ideas

Maybe one of them will be really good.

Term: "Speed bump": Slows you down in driving a car but speeds you up in hitting a tennis ball-- return to original speed in either case.

Preliminary action for all backhands: A slight lean combined with slight body turn combined with flying grip change that keeps hand as close as possible to where you think ball might come.

Slowly take racket back at waist level, straightening arm and twisting racket tip completely down and winding shoulders back (SLOWLY) and doing all of this in one synchronized movement as you run including the final hitting step.

Drop straight arm and hit the ball. Right now I prefer this to any upper-lower register full loop shot. The drop then is a long-levered timing drop, utilizing gravity, simple as possible, with nothing to complicate it.

"Concave, straight, concave" along with any arm roll happens during the actual swing, which comes entirely from the body while you maintain the option of a slight bowling speed bump for extra topspin and full extension.

[bottle]

Option for these Backhands

Once shoulders have completed their backward wind, extend arm straight instead of to the three-quarters mark.

Note: Each shot is to be hit at an easy road speed. Adding accelerative bowl then is like passing another car, after which you return to your cruise speed.

Finishing extension-- at end of follow-through-- happens as a result of the short accelerative bowl, without which the shot is still sound and easily produced but under-extended.

After a bowl, attenuated body rotation takes you around with arm far out at head height.

[bottle]

Five-Rung Design for 1HTSBH

All five are decent backhands. So, choose one and play the match with it. Or go up or down the ladder depending on age, mood and the last point.

1) Take arm back, waist high, keeping your bead on the ball with your right hand but leading this back-swing with your racket tip always turning slightly inward. Then use that same smooth hand to continue an easy body punch backward, i.e., turn the shoulders with it. With shoulders stopped, the arm then goes briefly down, straightening to three-fourths of its range. Hit the ball then with no independent swing of the arm whatsoever. You won't reach full extension at end of the followthrough but neither does John McEnroe. You got the forearm parallel to the sideline. Now rotate the shoulders and keep the front one going by naturally clenching your shoulderblades, i.e., you are using two kinds of body rotation but the body doesn't know any difference.

2) Like 1) only add some bowl with elbow or hand, using the reference you prefer. You figure out the broad body arc then bowl from one intersection along it to the next, with both chosen by you. Rejoin speed and direction of broad body arc. You experienced the opposite of a speed bump in a car-- a slight bump of acceleration followed by return to road speed.

3) Like 2) only add muscular extension from elbow as you bowl it, this before contact. If you want to keep same contact as on 1) and 2) simply row body on a diagonal to move head back to make more room. Or you can keep head still and take ball farther out to your left.

4) Start arm up to shoulders, again delaying them but using hand finally to turn them back. They stop and the arm loops down to three-fourths extension. The shot from there is like 3); at the same time the whole thing is more like Roger Federer's forehand than his own backhand.

5) Like Roger Federer or Donald Budge, gradually lift arm in synch with shoulders slowly turning back as you run. Your confidence is so perfect, your knowledge of where the ball so precise, that, you don't much care where the hand is in relation to the ball which you will find with consummate ease. The shoulders stop, arm extends to three-fourths-- from there the stroke is same as 4).

[bottle]

Right Braining the Federfore Over to the Backhand Side

I guess I should leave things right there, not say another word.

I won't, though, because I believe in left brain function, too. Sure, most of the world's jerks are excessively left brained, but that doesn't mean we should all wallow around every day in a puddle of romantic nonsense. Right and left lobes need to work together with the corpus callosum mediating well between them.

The two biggest things I learned in acquiring my Federfore were 1, delaying the second half of upper body turn so as to prolong the wonderful feel of left arm slowly punching across at the right fence. When I hit a forehand I don't like, this is the first corrective; and 2, learning to hit the shot with no independent motion of the arm A) and then B) adding a short bowl from one intersection of the body arc to the next while scissoring arm or not, and finally C) playing around with different stretches of this accelerative bowl though keeping it at the same length.

My curiosity to take these lessons across to backhand has led at first to a dive-bombing preparation where arm first soars up then shoulders finally turn backward then arm dives to three-fourths of being straight, at which time the shoulders start rotating forward and then the shoulderblades clench "naturally"
(Don Budge's favorite word) rather early in the entire cycle of the stroke.

My design in this is to maximize body rotation of the hitting shoulder. Huge body rotation is the secret of the Federfore. It allows you time to string a series of actions along the way. Obviously, one can never replicate so much body rotation on the backhand side; but, one can maximize it with splayed left
foot and extremely closed large step-out parallel to baseline and then a reconceiving of shoulderblades clench as mere continuation of the body rotation, and hit strokes this way with under-extended arm. The result might not be as bad as you expect. But when you get this junior stroke down you'll be ready to add a short bowl from one interesection of body-racket arc to a next. The straight bowl at a section of broad arc chosen by you barely goes to inside of said arc (broader arc than on the forehand side) but nevertheless is there.

These experiments are coming furious and fast as a result of the grip change (heel of hand on 7.5) and determination to get arm parallel to sideline. The nature of the back-swing may or may not change in the near future. Those tennis instructors who have always told us to yank the racket back with the left hand to get our shoulders abruptly around are becoming villains in my mind. And a quick check of Don Budge and Roger Federer backhand videos reveals relentless slowness of shoulders wind-back especially when running.

[bottle]

A Change of Grip!

In DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR, the author says, “For the best backhand grip, I advise turning the hand about a one-eighth turn farther behind the racket than with the forehand—and remember the forehand is the shake-hands, flat part of the hand upon the flat part of the racket. Turn your hand the one-eighth turn and you are ready for the backhand.”

One can see this grip on the book’s rear cover: a photograph from Don Budge’s famous
match with Baron Gottfried von Cramm at Wimbledon in 1935. The thumb on a diagonal up panel six is even with forefinger and big knuckle, which is on panel one.
Don Budge doesn’t say where the heel of his hand is situated, but it appears to be on
top panel (eight). The top of his wrist is just past straight, i.e., is barely convex. The photograph captures him just before contact.

I’m not about to put my thumb back up panel six but am willing to seek other information—especially since I broke my forearm at fourteen schussing an Indian mound in Granville, Ohio and it still may be funky. I’ll turn to the green book with a forward by Arthur Ashe, ED FAULKNER’S TENNIS since my undergraduate major was in American Literature. Ed Faulkner, not William, has maybe the best sections on backhand grip ever written in all of tennis literature.

He says things like, “One of the most astonishing things in all tennis is how few people can hit a topspin backhand.” And doesn’t care at all where the big knuckle ends up. For him, the grip is about where heel of the hand is. He advocates 7.5, which is the sharp
ridge to left of top panel. In a list of 34 backhand problems and what to do about them, he has the singular grace to say which of these most important things is MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, which he describes thus:

“Problem: use of continental grip. Why it is a problem: Heel is too far right, face too open, to permit a hard, topspin drive. Biggest backhand problem there is. What teacher should do. Show player correct eastern backhand grip and correct pattern of motion. Warn him his shots will go down until he gives up his customary forward wrist roll to control height. Hold ball for him to swing against, move to easy feeds, then gradually step up difficulty.”

My interpretation of expression “wrist roll”: roll of whole arm at shoulder and forearm.
Faulkner likes a 45-degree angle between racket and forearm at contact, not 90 degrees since this necessitates contact too far forward. “Have player bring arm back parallel to sideline before swinging forward,” he says. All these suggestions have moved my preparation, swing and contact backward (and more out to side) without altering the stroke in any more significant way.

[bottle]

Federfore: Watching the Ball

Many teaching pros, in the beginning, thought the way Roger Federer watched the ball was the one thing a normal tennis player could take away.

But when one gets the notion firmly in mind of bowling from one intersection to the next and then continuing the original body swing circle, so that racket head from the changes of direction continues passively to unfurl outward to the right,
one naturally watches the contact even after the ball is gone.

The essence of the Federfore, I think (and of course this phenomenon is not limited to this one kind of balletic shot) is swinging in one direction while hitting the ball in another. Doing that holds one's eye on contact, which is very deceptive.

[bottle]

Another Look

On two of the Budge top-spin backhand videos the upper arm starts closed to the body (with no air visible in between); on four of them it starts pointing out in the slot, similar to the body-first-arm-second flatter big separation backhand I have often described in these posts.

The difference now is that shoulders and arm shall swing around independently yet at the same time. This combined with 45-degree hand wag as wrist straightens puts the strings square to the target slightly before contact about a racket's width under the ball.

As Donald Budge delivers the stroke, the racket angle stays constant and follows the ball from early to late, i.e., during a stretch embracing contact.

Arm roll fans the strings upward through the same stretch and can only be muscular. There's no great COD1 or COD2 (abrupt Changes Of Direction) to generate passive roll as in a Federfore.

Arm rise is a swing, not a lift or jerk, and the swing itself is non-accelerative if we can believe the authors Talbert and Old.

However, it could well be that slowed UBR from suddenly clenching shoulderblades together helps accelerate the hitting arm. And it could be that even then no arm acceleration from slowing body occurs if arm isn't in easy motion beforehand, i.e., is exerting some INDEPENDENCE.

One can hit shots this way or with the clench not happening until arm is up
high-- more conventional, I think, but a weaker shot. But there are always times when you don't want to hit hard. Another additive for more topspin, lifting upper body to finish on rear foot can now go straight back rather than on a diagonal as in my previous experiment with a double-direction fast arm
swing. I ended up with more side-spin than I like.

[bottle]

Who Should Hit Easy Serves?

People who are flexible enough to produce upward spin that will bounce unpredictably, and even then they most likely shouldn't do it all the time.

As for inflexible servers, they still can have a rich tennis life if they will focus on hitting the ball very hard, so that their sidespin will convert into topspin when it hits the court.