A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Worth a Try

Accelerate the angle up to the ball where...

"The angle" is all the hand layback you can muster on any given serve.

Delay the entire wrist extension-forearm roll combination until after contact in other words.

High-five but with wrist laid back, trying for as loud a slap as possible same as always.

To do this you hit up but snap down with how exactly you snap down less important than ever before.

By eliminating the two wimpy contributors (wrist and forearm) from the upward path, you begin to rely on larger body parts for final acceleration on the ball, i.e., triceptic arm extension which creates a tight arc of the racket, and shoulder throw of whole arm along the same exact line only in a broader arc.

Do this sequentially or simultaneously? Decide for yourself. If sequentially, you have a couple of choices for sequence (whole arm or lower arm first).

A fourth option is whether to twist the elbow during this process, and if so, a fifth option of where to do so, e.g., twist elbow while it points in a single direction or twist it out at some later point or even to delay this twist along with forearm and wrist actions until after the contact itself.

In such a throw the elbow and hand can come at the ball along a number of different lines and arcs and with variations of which part of the ball gets struck.

This is a radical idea for people like myself who use twice as much arm extension as most of the best servers. We do it to get the racket tip farther
down. Windmill action without a pause does help. So does bending the knees
as hands first go down, getting the lead hip out next and bending down still more on front leg after that.

This is opposite sequence from Justine Henin and some others who bend the knees first then travel. Here you travel first then bend some more. The time interval is the same, so this modification should not interfere with your accustomed overall motion.

One irony of bending your arm completely when you serve is that the hand
gets too close to your body with the result that you lose leverage. But if you
twist the racket tip back more rather than down your elbow can point in such
a direction that the forward, upward arm action will be more of a 3/4ths than
4/4ths throw, i.e., neither overhead or sidearm but in between.

This way you restore some of the leverage you lost by squeezing the two halves of your arm completely together. The throw comes from farther back
and therefore is more in synch with the moving line between your two shoulders.

The best serve in this experiment I hit today was a fast slice out wide in the deuce court. I'm sure that wrist and forearm played a part-- but by trying
not to use them at all I at least delayed them way past the place where I usually let them go.

Result: At least one great serve with the prospect of more.

Old tennis maxim: It's not what you do, it's what you think you do.

[bottle]

A Good Powertrain won't Injure you Either (see Baseball KC Thread)

I think we probably agree on most of the tennis here, but as to the language, I have serious misgivings.

Words like "supination," "adduction," and "abduction" seem intended to glaze someone's eyes over, and to disguise meaning rather than convey it, and I say that as a person who studied (and enjoyed) Latin.

Making words more abstract can never be a good idea in something as sensuous as tennis?

The exception, I suppose, would be a scientific, i.e., logical only discussion, but this is, or ought rather to be, a discussion of Rabelaisian pleasure and tennis shot control and accuracy?

As for "unfurl," yes, we can apply it anywhere but why should we? My idea was to use it in the best, i.e., most liberating way.

And I just played my first match since seriously spraining my elbow. How did I sprain it? With a short forehand crosscourt winner hit like a slapshot in hockey. The strings were coming up but moving toward the target as well. The forearm was involved to the max, as was the whole arm, with both rolling violently toward the target. I'll tell you something. I'm very lucky I only missed three weeks.

Today I hit ten such winners. Each one was painless, effortless and pinpointedly accurate. That is why any reader of my posts should re-read
numbers 108 and 109. The theory behind them may be solid or not, but as a practical way to hit "the confidence shot" or "the pro shot," i.e., the short crosscourt clear winner, I don't think they can be beat.
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Your questions, stumphges. Hitting arm-shoulder included in mondo? Absolutely. Forearm and whole arm close racket up high. Forearm and whole arm open racket down low. With a Roger grip, that leaves the strings at about a 45-degree angle closed (it just opened out some).

"This furled shoulder-forearm pulling then unfurls all the more, or so it seems?"

Sorry, can't follow. You get a curmudgeonly, writerly, man with a Russian linguist for a brother-in-law response. SAVE WORD "UNFURL" FOR THE RACKET HEAD ITSELF AS IT MAKES A NEATLY SURGICAL INCISION IN THE AIR.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now I want to look at the Laver forehand to see if I think he's doing exactly what enabled me to hit the effortless short angles today, and will report back, putting the answer in capitals.

#1. Wow-- racket and front arm both out of the slot and behind the back.
Very unFedererly. Continental grip, right? The milder the grip the more extraordinary the talent required. YES I THINK SO. Reasoning: the racket comes up off of the ball before it starts to cross his body.

#2. NOT ON THIS ONE! This is precisely how I hurt myself. Rod Laver was only saved by the extraordinary musculature of his arm.

[stumphges]

Here I go again interjecting, interrupting. But I've got a question:

Bottle, can you tell if the hitting-arm shoulder is included in the mondo? That is, the mondo involves external rotation, or winding, which is then unwound (or unfurled) in the 'wiper'. As forearm supination is an external rotation, an external furling. Is the shoulder joint included in this furling as well?

The way to tell is to focus on the humerus, or the elbow (hard to do on videos). Does the inner crease of the elbow point more directly 'up' after the mondo than before? If so, then the humerus has externally rotated during the mondo and is part of this furling.

This would make sense, as there are all sorts of little muscles/tendons that could get involved in the stretch/shorten elasticity. I think others have talked about 'stretching the chest', which I take to mean using the stretch/shorten facility of the shoulder in the extension/flexion and (less so) the adduction, abduction directions. But I've never heard mention of the rotational element (which is really furling.

I ask as it seems to me if I let my humerus and elbow externally rotate along with forearm during mondo that the inside-out butt to the ball alignment is set up more naturally, and the racquet face remains closed more easily (except on the high ball, where it just don't stay closed). This is all along that theme of 'pulling' the stroke.

This furled shoulder-forearm pulling then unfurls all the more, or so it seems?

BTW, have you checked out the Laver forehand in the archive? That guy could mondo, straight arm and whip-wiper! He may even have had an F2.

[bottle]

Federfore: Putting the Word "Unfurl" where it Most Counts

(With apologies once again to Jeffrey Counts.)

In some of my earlier word pictures I wasted the word "unfurl," a sailing term, on extension of the arm behind oneself or perhaps more toward the right fence.

It's a fair description of one aspect of what happens during the mondo, but that pro tour word "mondo" itself has the potential to carry all meaning necessary for the peculiar action it describes including some simultaneous small parts intricacy (the wrist laying back to max, the forearm rolling down to max).

No, much better to save "unfurl" for something simple yet liberating, a tone-downed version of forward forehand roll that lifts the frame, preserving its setting, to make a surgical incision as straight and thin as a tennis racket in the air.

This puts us in the delicious position of attacking the fundament of modern tennis, the "windshield wiper."

We've all used the term, and most of you, dear readers, will continue to do so, but I must tell you from excessive experience with old cars, the time comes (about once a year) when you must replace the rubbers.

Forget car wipers along with truck wipers and screwballs in baseball.

Focus instead on every slow motion film you've ever seen of Roger Federer's forehand.

Notice how he in turn focuses on a projected contact point impossibly far to his right, bowling up with his straight arm but with the CP still an extra racket
length away.

So how do the strings travel that last distance at such a late moment?

They unfurl.

[bottle]

Federfore: Learning Ladder rather than Immediate Comprehension

I'll be opinionated today, so don't be shocked. It's just a striving for vigor in advancing some ideas. If tomorrow I don't like where the opinions led, I'll change them the day after that.

In improving a Federfore, particularly that version in which loose fingers, loose wrist and loose forearm passively sling the racket tip out to the right, kinetic chain theory, visual tennis theory, and even pre-verbal tennis theory are useless, so throw them out.

First we learned to ease back on our muscularity in twisting the forearm (called "pronation" in the serve but never referred as such in the forehand in order to perpetuate confusion and superstition-- actually, this movement is one and the same whatever the stroke).

Second we learned to throw/bowl the straight arm up and out at the ball so that both ends of the racket move at the same speed.

Third we learned to veer the hand away to the left just before contact, using two (or one) muscular system in the arm and the ongoing UBR (upper body rotation).

Fourth we must calibrate this total UBR more finely, so that right shoulder pushes directly behind the straight elbow as it bowls right and immediately pushes directly behind the hand as it veers left. If this is done with precision the word "veer" may become untenable suggesting as it does a COD (change of direction) of 10-30 degrees rather than the desired 90 degrees.

Success in this last step also authorizes a straight arm version of the stroke for those occasions when separation is ocean wide, i.e., with contact well beyond the outside edge of a batter's plate in this non-baseballer's, non-golfer's but bowling ping-ponger's forehand slam.

[bottle]

Exploring the Federform

I may be one of the players who over-obsess with stroke technique. On the other hand, if I retain sufficient detachment on the subject, I may do science or art instead, or in a third way achieve some sort of real progress.

My method-- days of dropping and hitting balls interspersed with fierce matches usually with the same player-- is somewhat isolating.

That is why I'm glad I spent the morning yesterday at the Randy Pate Tennis Academy, Winston-Salem, where the kids were learning from the excellent instructors and from one another and, generally speaking, were hitting the cover off of the ball. They didn't all have huge western grips either.

Today my forehand was mysteriously transformed. That's not a big deal, however, since I sometimes experience five transformations in a single afternoon.

But I found myself playing with a new idea. When moving the arm independent of the body, you're either hammering (racket tip going faster than hand) or feeling (racket tip and hand moving at the same speed).

This philosophy permits one to lift harder and later from the shoulder and yet still call this action "feeling for the ball."

I think that if someone wants to use a count structure for their strokes (and I do) and stays very long with this learning method, they will move some cherished action backward or forward in the overall tract they've developed.
Next they will say, "Oh no, I was so wrong in that discussion I had with Jeffrey Counts." (Oh, God, and I didn't even intend the pun.)

The phone numbers I'm using now (and changing all the time) refer also to individual frames of a TennisPlayer Stroke Archive video. The new idea created a 55439 before deceleration. I only want to discuss the nine.

The 9 starts with the racket strings recently mondoed and facing the target. This is doubtless not the only way to hit the ball but a very interesting way. Among other things it may cause you to open up the shoulders early and more than you used to do. The 3, the mondo, is essential in this approach to achieving rough aim for the shot.

So there you are, strings already facing the target, outer leg fired, shoulders spinning strongly, a good separation between body and hand. To do "9," which is all acceleration, you add a vigorous lift of the straight arm from the relaxed shoulder with hand aiming for the ball. Before it gets there, though, it
veers 90 degrees to the left not only from two sets of arm muscles but from the upper body rotation itself, sending the strings up past the ball as the rotational forearm muscles, instead of trying to add power of their own, remain relaxed enough to transmit but activated just enough to preserve shape.

This shape is a straight runway, same as an idealized kick serve, and it goes from left to right as subtly as a good golf swing. Whether your human head also flows right or stays fixed, one's racket angle is preserved from end of mondo through lift and rotation of racket up on forearm.

[bottle]

Advertisements for Myself

(Some new ideas on Federfore at Ochi's string, "Straight arm, no double bend, but going big," post # 9)

[bottle]

Federfore (more commentary at straight arm/double bend discussion)

FEDERFORE

55463 (and ten frames to finish)

wok wok wuk feeeel SLAaaaaaaaaam

feel slaam

feeeel SLAaaaaaaaaam

[bottle]

Federer's vs. Budge's Backhand Grip

Sorry again. There are eight bevels on the racket, so a one eighth turn is one bevel.

Going by big knuckle system alone (not as good as when you assign a second number for heel of hand), Roger Federer comes in at 8, Don Budge at 1, John McEnroe at 1.5 yes for his topspin backhand but for all of his strokes as well according to himself in YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.

[bottle]

Continuation and Correction

Donald Budge's topspin backhand is a new/old avenue, with different shops along the sides, one of which is called "Grip" and may sell suitcases.

On his grip, Don says, "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." So I was 3/8ths mistaken when I compared this grip to Roger Federer's.

On other persons' topspin backhands sometime in mid-twentieth century, Don admired Arthur Ashe, Manuel Santana, Don McNeill, Frank Kovacs,
Tony Trabert, and Frank Parker. He thought good but not great the TSBH's of
Rod Laver, Dennis Ralston and Bobby Riggs.

All this is from the backhand section, pages 110-115 of DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR. As to where he himself fits in comparisons, he says, "I would settle for none but my own. I state that unequivocally, not because I think mine was necessarily better but because I am sure that it was a more natural shot than anyone else's."

On how difficult his type is to hit, he says, "There is nothing very tricky to this."

On the technical aspects, he says, "I do not want to go into a long involved polemic on exactly how and when to pivot your hips and turn your shoulders and swivel your neck and furrow your brow...If you will hit the easy baseball-style backhand that I do, about all I must tell you is to stand sideways, feet spaced comfortably apart, and then stroke through the ball-- that is, do not flail at it like a .050-hitting pitcher. If you follow my suggestions, the rest of your body, the legs and the shoulders and the arms and the back, will all take care of themselves. You will be surprised how easy it is to hit a really good backhand."

Elsewhere, he compares his BH to Ted Williams' baseball swing (and in fact Don Budge swang lefty in baseball). Maybe he didn't know or care that in describing technique, his own or anybody else's, Ted Williams could fill an oral encyclopedia in less than three minutes.

Don's much older brother Lloyd, he of the great kick serve, is the person who inveigled Don away from baseball, so one assumes Lloyd at least started him on his backhand.

In TENNIS MADE EASY, one of the classic tennis books, the magnetic Lloyd, whose ugliness was so extreme it passed for handsomeness, emphasizes keeping the elbow out.

Don, on the other hand, emphasizes keeping it in, but he's probably talking about ready position.

On height of takeback, Lloyd says, "The higher the elbow, the lower level the racket attains on its course back." And Talbert and Old, in THE GAME OF SINGLES IN TENNIS, picture Don with a high takeback.

In the six video sequences at TennisPlayer, though, takeback is around waist level, and Don seems to be doing just fine.

In his memoir again, he says of his backhand, "When I was good, it was very good; when I was bad, it was still good."

The exception was at one of his Wimbledons, when the stroke suddenly went sour on him. So he wandered to an outlying court, where two veteran women were playing singles, one of whom was dominating. "That old girl," he writes, "moved over and reached out and hit this gorgeous zinging topspin backhand."

At that moment he realized he had been hitting down on the ball rather than up on it. So you see, reader, how he kept even his autologues simple: "Am I hitting slice or am I hitting topspin?" Would that my life-- maybe-- were that simple.

Me, I messed up my elbow in a match with The Partridge last week by ill-advisedly hitting a perfect slap-shot forehand in the opposite direction from which both myself and The Partridge were looking.

The only shots I can hit right now are backhands, so I thought it would be fun to take my high rise basket to the court for a couple of weeks and revisit the
Don Budge backhand-- just to see what new I can learn and if there is anything I want to keep.

But one commonly neglected aspect of this whole discussion, it seems to me, is the excellent backhand of Vic Braden, used by him both to play and to teach.

His model, as he tells us in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE (a book that deeply affected at least one full tennis generation) was Don Budge as seen through a small hole in a fence.

The part about when and how to move the hips is quite complicated, I've always thought. Just going by the six videos at TennisPlayer, they move differently when one stays on the ground or leaves it: The airborne version is especially interesting for its bouncing recovery-- the hips rotate just before a simultaneous landing on both feet followed by a bound and then a sidestep toward the center.

(BUT "Old men shouldn't jump up in the air!" I can still hear that cry from an adjacent court.)

Vic Braden may have based all the TFTF ground strokes on the Don Budge backhand-- maximum leg extension with minimum hand travel.

Braden's innately and intently gyro cleverness may have adapted it quite a bit, though. First, on backhand side, grip is more around to left. Second, the racket face starts closed, way out left, then loops in for the "sit and hit."

The real fun in hitting this type of shot, however, may be in taking a nice easy cut at the ball before the front leg chimes in and keeping everything going, easy, on the slight gradient upward with internal weight transfer spread all the way to the end.

Caveat: When you see a film of Don Budge's body rising into the air as his left leg moves toward left fence, you know that his weight already had to be on the front foot. The same thing is true in a Federer backhand where, preferring not to go into the air, he moves his left leg toward the right fence as front leg extends.

[bottle]

Re-dial 55645 (Hear the Beeps)

In reference to Mondo + One or Post # 99, 55645 is less dramatic but healthier for the arm, giving it an extra frame in which to change direction during the four (4), which breaks down as follows:

First frame: Step on gas and turn shoulders

Second frame: Mondo (SIM)

Third frame: Rest forearm before turning it the opposite way

Fourth frame: Twist racket along runway and take-off.

[bottle]

The Longest Backhand Ever?

Don Budge may have had the greatest backhand. That doesn't mean, though, that he or his brother Lloyd or William F. Talbert or Bruce S. Old was necessarily the best person at explaining it.

I simply want to apply the Mondo principle as seen in the pooch version of a Roger Federer genre forehand, post # 100, to a Don Budge backhand.

The idea comes from Talbert and Old, THE GAME OF SINGLES IN TENNIS, page 142: "The shot should be made with a firm grip, the wrist straightening and locking naturally at the time of contact." The beautiful drawings and diagrams of Ed Vebell, Katharine D. Old and Stephen P. Baldwin give no help in understanding this.

For, if the wrist is going to straighten, it must have been bent. And if it was bent, then it was bent in one of two ways, either humped or concave.

If humped, the strings would be closed behind Don Budge's back-- but they are open. Wrist must be moving from concave to straight then during his large forward upper body turn with arm and body a single unit at these fleeting points in the tract.

We're looking for some extra person-generated sponginess in the strings as the racket makes contact. The simple act of straightening the wrist as shoulders swing produces roll in the racket, i.e., the upper edge goes forward while the lower edge goes backward-- so there it is.

Assumption: Contact in lower half of racket. True some times and not others. If you believe that Don Budge hit the ball exactly in the middle of his wooden racket's small sweet spot every time (not hard to believe, I'll readily admit) you win the argument and I am wrong.

Talbert and Old also tell us that the swing is non-accelerative. And we can see from both the drawings in the book and the videos at TennisPlayer that the arm is not rolling in the crucial area, i.e., ripping the strings upward at contact as in a closed string starting Federer backhand so much as hitting through with a long, gradual uppercut.

But Budge got the racket pretty square. And his organic straightening of wrist added to his feel along with all of his power. And the risk of damage to his arm in such a "conk" backhand is diminished in that the total swing is easy, unhurried and perhaps even non-accelerative, as the book's two authors assert.

Note 1: Budge like Federer kept his hand in the slot. This "longest of all backhands," the Budgian phenomenon, is positively short when you consider hand travel alone.

Note 2: The Budge and Federer backhands are hit pretty much with the same grip.

Note 3: A rueful but maybe positive observation about tennis: When your arm gets hurt it becomes a better sensor.

[bottle]

A Pooch Forehand

Maximize the Mondo by keeping the wrist straight through a preparatory loop. Then slightly delay. Then start the graceful spiral (later than in the just described forehand posted moments before this one). The racket is going backward this time. It's going backward and downward as the body springs and torques into the ball.

One very important note on all of this. In any forehand of the species Federforis, the arm mondos well out in the slot. Just check out where the racket head points when Roger's arm is still bent. It's pointing more toward the right fence than at the rear fence. It's pointing pretty much in the direction that Roger's eyes are looking.

Contrast this kind of preparation with a Stan Smith forehand where arm actually is wound round past the shoulders line.

What these two preparations have in common, however, is a huge shoulders turn.

[bottle]

Mondo + One

What physical action produces the warp in Federer's racket? (Here comes another video example: Note how the warp occurs one frame after the mondo-- it is an effect of Federer's racket moving faster than the film, and is perhaps more useful for us to observe than the highest speed series available, at least in this present instance and for this person.)

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_wide/rf_fh_wide.html?RFFHWideOpenStanceCourtLevelRear1.mov

We've already decided not to close the racket from the wrist, so the action in question couldn't be that. And I got hurt when I tried prematurely turning the whole arm too close to contact, so it couldn't be that. And yet the racket butt turns a lot just at this point in the stroke, and this happens repeatedly in other sequences.

Is the blurring acceleration a wiper from the forearm, then? If so Federer is wiping the floor, not a windshield. In fact, there are a number of ways to twist from the forearm-- so that the racket rotates as if on a still axle, or so the racket is driven forward, closing, or so the racket is driven up, sideways, down. Actually, it seems here that this wiper drives up a bit, but only after it has wiped a level floor.

What images might help us to do this? A slap shot from hockey where the ice forces the stick blade backwards before it powers the other way. A frail boy or skinny tomboy who is good at skipping a flat rock across the still surface of a pond.

Why frailness and skinniness? Because one needs cleverness and forearm "knack" here rather than brute strength. If you are a filmmaker-athlete you want a blur but don't want to try too hard. The preference is to produce the blurring speed through biophysics of the smartest variety.

This brings us back to the "mondo" term. The pros using it could mean a full sidearm throw and not just the cocking back/downward of the racket tip for all I know. If not, maybe we should call the forearm twist that wipes the floor "mondo plus one." The point is not terminology but whether the linked backward and forward motion is a psychologically unified desire like an infielder's throw to first base. You lay the wrist back as you twist the forearm down (SIM) but you immediately fire the cocked wrist forward (from your forearm) and now you're ready to swing right to left with arm just beginning to scissor.

Such thinking might lead to a phone number such as 55735, which digits seem useless to the athlete-filmmaker since his body moves differently from the individual frames in film-- until he thinks about RATIO or PROPORTION at which moment he can feel all subtle differences. Consider the 7 in this light-- a bit longer than the lift with wrist laying conventionally back (5) or the continued lift with wrist at conventional Eastern setting (5). It puts slight arm extension downward from a still upper body (two frames) with level arm separation, racket closing and completion of the body turn the five frames previous.

Now the mondo plus one (three frames) starts with thrust of outer leg and the beginning of the long spiraling turn of the upper body all the way to a balanced ending. There is no utility in mentally separating hip turn from shoulders turn as far as I am concerned. The leg thrusts the upper body into a long, balletic jet with every Federfore.

Within that framework, however, there are three key frames where film and athletic movement, despite anything I've suggested, are one to one. You step on the gas, you mondo, you sidearm the racket tip parallel to the court (three frames, linked-- very fast).

We're working toward a stroke of 32 frames total where contact occurs somewhere between the twentieth and twenty-fifth frames: I gave a value of 5 (the last phone digit) to the final acceleration which occurs while actually hitting the ball because I was thinking of two frames more before contact and three frames afterward. I'd prefer not to think about the decelerative frames that come later but bring the total to 32. Every nuance of proportion up to contact and slightly beyond it is, however, well worth one's conscious attention. The goal is big hooking over-spin which you will recognize when you achieve it. Wanted: great spin and pace similar to a well struck drive in golf that makes the ball slightly hook and roll.

Some will have followed my proportions, others not, which is fine so long as they will consider developing their own. To quote the late Hungarian educator Lomb once again: "The knowledge you obtain at the expense of some brainwork will be more yours than what you receive ready-made."

[bottle]

Ouch

I dunno. After two days of hitting successively with heavy topspinning high school stars returning to the game, Brian, 48 and Bryant, 32, righty and lefty, I have some pain starting to develop just above the elbow on the inside of the arm, from forehands.

Still like the frames phone number 99945 but am not going to be twisting elbow while bending it during heavy contact in the match today or at any other time. Maybe I can twist elbow during arm and gut acceleration (4), but be done with that by the time I start bending it inches before contact (5). If I need any more closing of the strings embracing contact (which I probably won't since I'm playing somebody who hits flat), I'll provide it from forearm only.