A New Year's Serve

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Liquid Discovery on the Backhand Side

1) Flat with roll. Pendulum use of shoulders. They stop and long arm continues.

2) Flat (choked up) with roll. Pendulum use of shoulders. They stop and bent arm continues.

3) Topspin. Reverse order of 1), i.e., sit-and-hit from same wide preparation. Unlike a TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE backhand (Braden), however, one can step out first and sit second as concave wrist straightens and racket tip turns down and straight arm falls in two directions (both inward and forward). The cocked shoulders remain still throughout this. And the body folds down like an accordion.

The next step is to straighten whole body accordion-like as arm lifts powerfully but smoothly and more forward and to outside, feeling for the ball. It's the arm swing for sample 1), only sooner, which also establishes the normal arm-body separation out to the side of sample 1).

Finally, accelerate the racket in a very unusual way. You authorize two core body actions which normally occur before and after this section of tract.

Simultaneously or consecutively, you A) rotate shoulders at slow swing speed of 1) or even slower, and B) you smoothly clench shoulder blades together to add power to this short swing while stopping it with the left hand (all one action) so you don't fall over. You also can do either of these actions without the other-- I'm in the process of deciding for myself.

Many backhands (more "hammered," in current lingo) don't swing shoulders very much at all, although there has never been a backhand of any kind that didn't open up the body somewhat.

We (I again) haven't chosen to stop the shoulders before contact here but just the opposite (a design decision). The combination low speed swing-and-clench activates relaxed arm roll which passively rips up the outside of the ball to a balanced finish.

P.S. An accordionist-player may have many moves, e.g., he might extend his legs without straightening whole body.

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Denial of the Other Person's Experience

This is what bad teachers do, in any field. They want to impose a full set of values and prefer students who don't talk back.

Personally, I think that tennis instruction is so subjective, so much a matter of opinion, that anyone who fails to challenge every idea short of "you hold the racket at this end" is denying himself his true potential.

That's the way Bill Tilden was, and he had it right. He despised the USTA and still would if he were alive along with all the other alphabet soups. No great tennis player is ever a sheeple.

So let's just pick a generally accepted idea and poke it. It supposedly comes from Bruce Elliott. Even people who know nothing about him love to quote it. His name "Bruce" reminds them of Bruce Wayne, who reminds them of Batman.
The idea is that the greatest source of power in the serve is internal rotation of the upper arm. The statement is wonderfully confusing-- the first requirement for a long-lasting tennis cliche. Not one person in a thousand knows exactly what it means, and I sure don't. Rotation (twist) as if the shoulder socket is a set of ball bearings and the upper arm is an axle? Movement of the elbow about the body and inward? Both of these things?

No matter what anyone's personal answer, the original statement is a lie anyway. The main source of power is big muscles in the core of the human body.

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Never Giving up on Cobra Version of Serve

GOAL: To apply wrist action from Budgian backhand to spin serve.

From post # 133: Immobilizing your forearm by pressing it down against a table, you can hold a pen with your wrist concave as if you're about to hit a one-arm backhand. If you simply then straighten the wrist you will do nothing to bring the tip of the pen around...If however you simultaneously wag the hand from radius to ulna, the pen will circle through 45 degrees of arc...

It's always interesting to take some feature of one's game and apply it to a different stroke. How best to do it, though, translates here into WHERE BEST TO DO IT. Let's try it somewhere along the route of arm extension, building carefully upon the individual service pattern already established. That way one can maybe progress faster and merely add a variation rather than replace something good.

1) As the two halves of the arm clench together, forearm turns out and elbow goes up with all of this single act the arm's passive answer to leg drive. The beginning of upper body rotation (vertical, horizontal or hybrid) then passively opens arm out to a right angle. This is how you (I) may routinely prepare for the serving fireworks to come.

2) One other thing happens, however. Returning to the arm on table analogy, the wrist becomes similarly concave while down behind your back. Reverse this. Make wrist convex instead, which should feel natural because of the forearm turning out at the same time.

3) The beginning of ubr can relax arm out toward a right angle no matter which way the wrist is humped, to get hand farther away from body.

4) The violent combined throw of elbow from shoulder and triceps extension seems a place where one can completely reverse the wrist, turning it inside out, and doing all three things at once.

5) High-five, but while permitting yourself the influence of the emboldened words above.

6) Return to question of WHERE BEST TO DO IT, i.e., where to complete all these late reversals of wrist (three of them, actually). Should the second of these transformations occur someplace near halfway through fast arm extension? The total is a lot of movement to squeeze in. Final wrist action seems the same as in one's normal serves. But there is a lot more "loosey-goosey" with the wrist all the way up in this version, which may or may not prove out to work as individual improvement.

7) Unfold wrist into the ball instead of "fold, turn inside out then close it to straightness and pronation" of 6). You have to try this since you are now in position to do so. Because of other evolutions in serve, perhaps this option will work for you (me) this time. This option has nothing to do with wrist movement in a Don Budge backhand but is a good example of the learning precept "bend the stick the other way."

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I tried these proposals. Experienced promise with 6) but not 7). How much was the apparent effectiveness individual or applicable to other people? And how will a good receiver respond? Don't know yet.

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In Deflection of a Bean Ball

NABRUG, when one says "learn from the pros" (tennis) or "learn from the masters" (areas of life other than tennis), one sets up a teaching method separate from ground up.

Basics are essential for everyone in the beginning and optional thereafter. What happens when something goes wrong or when the player seeks innovation and departure from all that has gone before?

A player lacking enthusiasm for more than a return to basics is needlessly self-limited. But I have written more than three sentences, so, by your own assertion once in English and once in Dutch, you have fallen asleep.

However, I write here to instruct, not to delight, so how interesting you find the individual sentences and paragraphs is irrelevant.

The tennis experiments behind the language are all that is of importance-- presently in my case wide separation groundstrokes like Roger Federer's forehand or Donald Budge's backhand.

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Stiff-arm or Scissoring Arm-- Rejoin the Path in Either Case

One can hit a Federfore either way. Smartest, though, is not even to think about it, but to concentrate instead on finding the shortcut from one part of the curving trail to the next. The mountain hasn't gotten steep yet. You zap through the shortcut. Now you're back on the main trail.

Try hitting some Federfores without the shortcut. Just sweep the racket around in a wide circle. The shots don't have much upward spin but go pretty fast. The outside leg applies power before, not while you're hitting the ball.

If you want to get philosophical as you're doing this, reflect that your contact point is at least a foot wider than that of most people you play. Roger Federer is fast, it's true, but he also has to run a foot less to get where he wants to go.

When you add the bowl from first intersection in main trail to the second you accelerate, taking the swing ahead of the one you already started. This is the only time you need to do so. It's acceleration within a succinct distance followed by return to initial speed. Think about that now and when you do it and the next time you pass a car on the open highway.

Those tennis writers who have described the mondo without ever giving it a name-- a handful of pros here at TennisPlayer along with Vic Braden and Doug King-- should get credit for being among the first persons to discuss and answer questions about it at all.

Simultaneously, the wrist lays back and the forearm rolls down. But Roger's wrist laid back about half of the available distance near the beginning of the stroke, leaving him with only half of it to go-- so, experiment.

Doug King has spoken of mondo (yes, without giving it a name) as killing the racket head speed so that legs and body can take on the main task of springing up the back of the ball. Okay, but that's a different stroke. Roger fired his right leg earlier.

Braden, using Andre Agassi for model, speaks of mondo (true, without giving it a name) as creating spring in hand which releases on ball.

Enough theory. I hurt my arm and I hurt it bad, twisting every part of the arm violently one way and then the other with no rest in between. I was trying to simulate some slap shot technique in hockey that's better done with two arms slamming against ice.

As my arm slowly began to heal, I hit a few forehands, and the one that hurt the least is the one I'm still hitting now.

I see two changes of direction as you leave the main trail and then rejoin it. Racket rolls up fast on passive forearm as you re-enter the big circle. Is this accelerative roll-up of the racket tip automatic? Amazingly automatic. (But you need precision and lightness of touch to make it happen every time.)

So how does direction of this fanning rise compare with that in more muscular ways of doing this still for an eastern grip player? It produces a greater topspin to sidespin ratio.

The elbow twists up later.

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Jammer Backhand II

I may have been following the wrong track in trying to develop a specialty shot all of its own to deal with the situation of being jammed at the baseline. Since I'm having success and a lot of fun with the simplest Donald Budge type easy swing topspin backhand, why not build on it?

One can do the equivalent of choking up on a bat and getting the stroke off faster, maybe in four counts instead of five. I think I've said before in these discussions, patient listener, that one points arm in this shot by first taking
elbow back and then extending rest of the way. Well, just don't extend.
Try a bent arm backhand, preserving the same elbow separation from body as on the long-armed stroke.

However because of the grip all on panel one, with that separation, and arm
bent, the racket is going to get farther around toward the rear fence. Don't let it. Take arm more out to side, i.e., shorten the backswing, because you're aiming for a junior version of the other shot but a complete replica in all the important elements. Another way of thinking about this could be to draw an imaginary line from your body to the racket tip AFTER it has wound down. You could call that imaginary line a "spoke." So, with arm bent, but at same elbow separation, keep racket tip on the old spoke.

Then, hit the ball pretty much the same way. Swing the two shoulders, probably a bit faster, while rolling wrist straight and arm too (both upper and
lower) for desired pitch. You're coming up to contact more steeply and will leave the ball more steeply but the basic mechanics are the same. And if you change the timing just a little you can BAM! (really lift) the elbow upward with slight variations of direction as an option to a pocket-billiards shot. You're definitely going to get more topspin and less long leverage no matter what you do in this construction-- it's just a question of how much.

This isn't one of those shots where you twist racket around the outside of the
ball as you hit it-- at least as far as I'm concerned. No, if you're really going
to lift the elbow on relaxed shoulder as fast as you can, sometimes, you want that motion pure and untainted in every way.

P.S. I've seen book illustrations of topspin backhand service returns where the author wanted you to shorten the backward turn of the shoulders. I reject that. A big turn of shoulders both ways is essential to the mechanics of hitting the oncoming ball no matter what its velocity in both of these shots.

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Describing the Federfore

Cut-lines under photograph in New York Post or The Daily News or was it in neither close to headline CHIMP TEARS OFF WOMAN'S FACE BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LIKE HER NEW HAIR-DO:

"Michael Pernfors hits a Federfore in exhibition tennis match against Roger Federer in WTA production of HMS Pinafore."

Unfortunately, as any first-hand observer in the theatrical crowd will attest, Pernfors' Federfore was in the form of a broad circle without one corner bashed in and therefore wasn't properly stroked.

During intermission, this reporter detected five tennis players in the WTA theater foyer busily arguing among themselves.

"It's kinetic chain," one player said. "That's how Roger does it. He hits the ball like an inverted tornado."

"You must enjoy the National Science Museum castle," another said, "the red building on the mall in Washington, D.C. with all the nineteenth century inventions inside. It's full of moving conveyers and wheels, and things stopping and starting and trip wires connected to hesitating sprockets."

"Nah," the third player said. "That's a wrong description of what Roger does. His jette is smooth like Nureyev, Nijinski and Baryshnikov."

"But not in a perfect circle," the reporter thought to himself, afraid to speak. "No, Roger's body swings the racket in a broad circle. He then accelerates his hand down and up to a farther spot along the arc, and makes that hand rejoin the arc, and then of course the smooth circle loses its shape again on its back side."

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Jammer Backhand

My ideas about this shot are evolving so quickly that I or anyone could argue that I should remain quiet until I have decided more; however, that's not my method, or my mission, which is fluid discovery from one second to the next.

Much depends on what you're working from. In the six videos of Donald Budge one can clearly see that his bent elbow goes back before it straightens (two counts). But the total action can simply be called "pointing arm": a good place then to gain some time.

Count one: Point arm on a slant at rear fence while turning shoulders considerably less than usual.
Count two: Roll tip down left while bringing in arm to reduce scope and bowing shoulders in rough direction of desired departing shot.
Count three: Rotate shoulders to get racket head at least somewhat between you and the ball.
Count four: Roll wrist straight and establish desired pitch with whole arm.
Count five: Lift elbow from shoulder while thrusting hips for weight and upward power (BAM!).

Alternatively, one can spend two counts on the pointing part and combine
counts three and four into a single action. Think of the intimidating topspin
Jimmy Arias generated with his brutal arm lift as a kid before he conventionalized his backhand.

Follow-through can be Don Budge comfortable (bent arm, concave wrist).

Questions: Can this shot also be hit from open or semi-open stance and as
a service return and on the rise? Most certainly.

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The Imitative or Federer-influenced Category of Modern Retro Forehand

Rolls off of the tongue, right? I just wanted to give people who are reluctant to use the term "Federfore" a happy alternative.

The term "modern retro" to describe Federer's forehand comes from Roger himself
(See THE ROGER FEDERER STORY: QUEST FOR PERFECTION by Rene Stouffer-- I don't remember which page).

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Wrist Movement in Budgian Backhands

Immobilizing your forearm by pressing it down against a table, you can hold a pen with your wrist concave as if you're about to hit a one-arm backhand. If you simply then straighten the wrist you will do nothing to bring the tip of the pen around.

If however you simultaneously wag the hand from radius to ulna, the pen will circle through 45 degrees of arc, which is huge. You will then be in position to shorten any one of your backhand strokes if you want to.

Of course I wanted to do it on every backhand and immediately screwed up my slice, and had inconclusive results with my backhand volley. I now do it only on flat, topspin and crowded/jammed (offensive) backhands. On the flat version this combined wrist movement happens as the shoulders slowly roll around-- a convenient aid. On the other two shots better not to be so left brain but simply follow the rough principle of "concave-- straight (lightly firm)-- concave" with no over-conceptualized correspondence of these acts to others you are performing-- all you really need to know is that light, straight wrist firmness happens while you are hitting the ball.

This combination of wrist straightening and hand wagging across forearm bones-- might as well call it "wrist roll" for lack of a better term-- will combine with forearm roll (which is a true roll) and with whole arm roll, too, if you use that as well, i.e., your backhand will become more sensory.

An exception to the formula would be if you decided to omit the second "concave" and rolled the straightened wrist more around the outside of the ball instead-- in that case I wouldn't bend the arm for comfort at end of the followthrough as I now customarily do.

As always one can pursue the opposite of any idea-- a great way to learn-- e.g., have your wrist injected with novocaine and set in plaster.

No, there are sensors in your wrist which are useless to you until you move it.
That's my argument.

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Cleaning up Debris from Change in Federfore

Earlier, kind reader, I said that one could slightly vary direction of arm extension in the mondo for a down the line vs. short angle shot.

But mondo now is seen as part of the bowl, which is a precise, mechanical set-piece that one needn't vary once one has mastered it. The hand, driven through solid connection with the smoothly rotating body, travels in a broad circle. Suddenly the hand bowls shallowly, drawing a straight line from a first intersection in the broad arc to a second. Your mondoed hand rejoining the circle is just enough of a second change of direction to roll the racket tip out right and upward on relaxed forearm at high velocity.

There are great players who rotate the racket tip up with muscles, but you don't have to be one of them. You can do the same thing with physics.

I also suggested that you could throw hand to left of the broad circle to "whap" or push or clobber the ball sharply sideways for a quick short angle.
It's true. But to really hit the ball with maximum spin for a more precise shot you can extend the arm forward a bit more (to gain time) and then bowl, rejoining the broad circle same as usual.

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Federfore Reiterated: A Big Circle with one Small Section of Perimeter Bashed in

If one enjoys tennis, one likes competition, and therefore should welcome any contest to describe the Federfore.

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Two Corollaries for Rotorded Servers

The two sides of each corollary are in inverse proportion to one another like judgment and sympathy in life or in fiction.

1) Elbow throw vs. arm extension. Both actions to be muscular and simultaneous. Other variables besides respective muscular effort include length and direction. Keeping the idea basic, however, we can see the two actions as equal or unequal. Perhaps that is the best way to think of them.

2) Horizontal rotation vs. vertical rotation of back shoulder ball around (over) the front shoulder ball. One might like to say these two extremes were similar; however, horizontal rotation of the shoulders seems most powerfully to come from the center of the body, not from the left edge of it, which means, like it or not, the left shoulder will go backward. The more vertical the rotation, however, the more still the front ball can stay. Some degree of both rotations will transpire in all serves.

People may tell you that rotation of the upper arm-- as if it is a twisting axle-- is essential component of all good serves. Ignore them unless they are speaking of things that happen above the head.

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Two New Variations in Donald Budge Backhand Genre

Rule of post: "I" equals "you."

Neither of the following (additional) variations has yet been match-tested. "Keep innovations fluid" is my motto.

1) Why doesn't the topspin the way I've been hitting it work as well as the flatter shot (which has a milder version of topspin)? Because the shoulders don't turn as much when you're doing a whole body coil and uncoil? It could well be that you have to work much harder, taking much longer, to get the racket around, and most times you never get that shoulders weight applied at the right time. What if you prepared the same way with just as much backward shoulders turn but shortened the back-swing, pointed straight arm at LEFT FENCE and then twisted the racket down so it pointed only at left fence post? At same time you could add a folding down of the body like an accordion. This would take racket tip low but not from the arm. Figure eight then becomes entirely formed by the body. The ball went very high when I tried this, depending on amount I didn't roll wrist straight approaching contact. There was good pace and spin.

I don't even know how this all works in a high left elbow closed racket Braden backhand (for which I've already dramatized my admiration-- five and one-half hours as witness). I never went to tennis college in southern California, tried on my own, didn't master the shot to my satisfaction, but no longer care. Why should I, considering what I've got? Concave wrist to straight helps bring the racket tip around. You can therefore use the shortest back-swing possible.

2) When jammed or crowding the ball. I figure that with all the separation or "scope" in every Don Budge backhand ever seen, you need a variation same as Federer in which arm comes closer into the body; without it you're a sitting duck for a jamming. But this special shot, whether Budge, Federer or you could have enough virtues of it own to be more than just defensive.

The solution I've come up with may or may not be an arbitrary tilt toward mechanics adapted more from the flatter shot. At ball comes toward your body you wind the racket tip down and to left per usual but at the same time row head left and also bring the arm closer to the body, thus reducing scope. Now your shoulders because of skater's effect will naturally want to rotate faster and farther-- let them. Then stop them with left hand and send the racket forward and up at 90 degrees to its just previously cross-ward path. More upward arm swing than usual. Most likely a cross-court shot.

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Report from the Front

If one agrees with me, dear reader (not always so likely, I know), then each American war since World War II has been stupider than the last, and battle metaphors should be relegated to the effect of black coffee on an empty stomach or to one's efforts to modify carefully chosen tennis strokes. I'm not even going to think about my backhand slice. Talking about or messing with one's best stroke also is idiocy.

1) forehand (Federfore). Try the opposite of the idea I suggested, which started with placing a straight-edge on the right side of a circle, thereby identifying two points of intersection and then bowling from one to the other out on the court. "Don't be overly romantic and think you can just rejoin the circle at the second intersection," I wrote. Wrong. Be romantic and do it, thus working through opposites just the way that the pronouns "you" and "I" are interchangeable in all tennis discourse. Mondo to occur during the bowl. Throw hand to left of circle's perimeter to whap the ball severely cross-court (short angle).

2) backhand (Budgian). Sometimes we have to go with what nature gives us. If my opponent stays at the baseline, the best non-slice I can hit, I have decided, is the most simple Budgian. That is a backswing-transition sequence in which the straight arm first points at the rear fence and then the racket points at the rear fence. But how do they do so? In such a way that bisection of the angle between these two imaginary lines will form a perpendicular to the rear fence. From there you slowly swing the shoulders to any position you want and stop them with the arm continuing on (with contact right there). Slowness of swing and just straightened, firmed up wrist enables this to happen. It's a pocket-billiards shot. You should be able to hit any depth and angle you want.

But, what about more topspin, more like the Vic Braden backhand which is a Don Budge spin-off? (This overdrive shot has to be seen to be believed and I watched it for five and one-half hours once-- Vic drops balls and hits them while he talks). I'm saving my version for passing shots. I see a mild figure eight or inside out arm movement up to the ball before contact, which ideally is at same exact big separation as for the first (flatter) shot, but with vertical as well as angular body uncoil.

But what if I get jammed? I'm still thinking about this, and am tending toward something more like the first (flat) shot and always hit to my right. Just to show you how crazy I am (or substitute the term "right brain," kind reader) I have dreams of jamming myself on purpose. The shot may look like the inside out topspin to begin. After step-out, the arm can drop slightly forward and inward as it twists racket tip down/left in synch and knees may or may not bend more, too. On the unjammed version the arm then figure eights back to exactly where it would have been had you decided to hit the flatter version. Here the arm can simply bowl in the direction already started, going down and up as shoulders slowly unwind. Arm twist to happen pre-contact in all of these shots along with the concave-flat-concave movement of the wrist which is spread throughout the entire forward stroke.

Rotorded flat, slice, spin serves. Save your stingy rotors for discharge where they won't do harm. That would be with the racket high above your head. Use upper body rotation to passively centrifugate clenched arm out to a right angle-- this won't require much from you other than relaxation and a little arm delay. Throw from there (farther back) with simultaneous firing of triceps and elbow from shoulder. Emphasize stomach muscles in hitting flat and slice. Revolve one shoulder ball up over the other for spin (but don't let the front one go down). Also for spin, understand that elbow throw and elbow extension (opening of scissors) now are corollaries, inversely proportional and at right angle to each other. You may want to explore the different possible mixtures. I've had better luck with both my spin and slice so far if I wind racket head around more behind my back-- so it points more at left than rear fence. Whatever these positions, the forearm should be cocked to the right, I'm pretty sure.