A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

The Pinwheel Firework Serve

Revise and streamline, dear reader, and revert to classic urgings to throw an old racket as far as you can.

An elder's advisory might be to spin the old racket as fast as you can once it's out of your hand.

Yes, spin it end over end like a knife thrower only as quickly as possible. (Never mind if you hit the girl. You'll probably just go to a funny farm and not to jail.)

This beats the demure thrust of a dart-thrower who's then going to unscrew a light-bulb having just spoken with twenty paid consultants.

It restores function to the upper arm rotors, which if you're like me, you've practically shut down in an effort to achieve more upwardness of spin. But a good throw has always combined and unified the various sources of power.

The hated phrase "throws like a girl" in fact describes a motion that comes from the triceptic muscle only.

Don't say it around the members of a women's semi-pro softball team.

Sudden, light, pre-loaded action from the triceps is great (this isn't a one-arm push-up from the sky down, you know), but combine it with the other pre-loaded sources of body and axle rotation of the upper arm, and be fully dramatic about this, crazy even.

Yes, let your craziness tell your body what to do.

If you authorize enough adrenalin, you may not even have to knife-throw a racket at all but just go with the idea of doing so.

Don't whap roundhouse with the shoulder (at least not from the shoulder joint). Unless of course it works for you. For me, it doesn't.

This approach of full, crazy drama should restore the greatest spinniness you ever achieved.

"T'was on one first serve in a match in 1949, and I remember it well."

How sad if the spin then or at any time was in a downward direction, but at least if you're using the power sources correctly, you don't draw overly much on the one that exacerbates this fault.

Get MAXIMUM spin first, THEN modify it to go upward and have a nice day.

[johnyandell]

Ok then more Tennisplayer added value... Your wife seems like a wise woman, by the way...

[stumphges]

Thank you dear elder

My initial reaction was confusion, followed by irritation, so I can understand others' reactions to this thread - but not the rudeness - well, that can be understood too, but shouldn't be excused easily on a public forum. Can we use our anonymity as opportunity to be more noble, not more base?

Today I came back and read the last four pages and want to say to bottle: Thank You for writing this.

And to John Yandell: I think it's more and better than harmless idiosyncrasy. And also: I joined and paid my hundred without my wife's consent. I thought she'd be angry; but no - she said your good work deserves it.

[bottle]

In Praise of Imprecision

(Not in tennis but in the kinesthetic cues that lead to good tennis.)

For good Federfores, reader, which one of these cues seems best: 1-2-3-4-FIVE! Fan, Aim, Fire! F-A-N, AIM, FIRE! Ready, Aim, Fire! Rea-dy, Aim, Fire!

If I had to choose one today, it would be "Ready, Aim, Fire!" even though I hate the NRA and greatly admire the Winter Soldiers, whom Iraq vet poet Brian Turner recently suggested "may be the greatest patriots in The United States"; and I argue against particular war every day in blogs or "reaction sections." (John Escher's Blog, Bottle at Common Dreams, Bottle at The Daily Beast, John Escher at Truthout.)

Real conversation in Moe's Southwest Grill an hour ago placing order with "my brother from another mother": "Obama beans but no Afghanistan."

The fact is, I don't have to choose one of the cues nor did I have to write them down here, and my tennis would benefit if I didn't; yes, keep everything oral, even better, fluid, pre-verbal, right-brained.

But reader, if you're not worried about all of Roger Federer's unforced errors (more than any other top ten player) and you haven't given up on the RF forehand or committed suicide like the famous novelist who penned an article on that subject for the failing New York Times Magazine, maybe one of the foregoing cues will temporarily resonate with you unless you've made up a better one yourself or are about to-- highly possible.

Reader, some good forehands are lurking for us amongst these cues whether yours or mine, so long as we don't settle on any one too hard. (I use the word "amongst" on purpose, hoping for an archaic revival replete with new shamans.) Fan the racket over and down having closed from the forearm while strings were still up-top. Now, if using numbers, waste a beat here although that sounds absurd. I mean if you're going to stop the racket at the bottom of your loop, why didn't you just take it back straight in the first place? No, no-- faulty logic. Total body rhythm is wished. And, although the racket is still with wrist not yet distended and everything just resting there mean and male, the left hand is in constant feminine motion, imagistically smoothing the waters and even disturbing your opponent.

Backhand: Easy to overdo the left-brain/right-brain stuff, i.e., to perform all take-back with the left hand, all slow fore-swing with the right hand. That idea, too schematic, is therefore left-brained. Better to take the racket back with left hand, start the arms extension (still backward) with both hands
then let right arm, already at work, take over.

A third possibility would be to perform all extension with the right arm and with left hand traveling along only for passive guidance role. Some day I may get back to exploring this but only if backhand goes sour.

Serve: Re-read the famous Harold Brody article about how sweet spot changes with different strokes. Am hitting and liking serves at a contact point closer to racket tip.

[bottle]

How to Hit the Roger Federer Forehand

"Having fought through, perhaps for years, to understand an experience, and having at last come to that experience, how quick we are to resent someone else's not understanding it..." Theodore Roethke, major American poet and former tennis coach at Penn State.

So I'm back to considering my Federfore. That's what happens in tennis when someone's serve picks up. He immediately evaluates his other strokes.

But in my case "Federfore" is not only my generic if personal forehand, based on Roger Federer, but the whole discussion of whether one can have a significant learning experience in a video-laden website such as this one.

Yes, I say, and I do, but to some others, TennisPlayer or TennisOne are mere entertainment. One would however think that even the uneducable would have a better than normal chance of learning something new when they are entertained.

A sometimes opposite view comes from Roethke again: "In teaching, gruffness may be the true cortesia." That word, Spanish, means courtesy or politeness. The gruff teacher does one a favor, therefore, but HOW is personal interpretation. Perhaps the student won't become too quagmired in the teacher's thought, will develop his own.

"How to Hit the Roger Federer Forehand" was the title of my long discussion-string at Tennis Warehouse, and got deleted at 27,000 hits due to abusive contributors, all in America. No one from Formosa, the Philippines or the Inner Hebrides was abusive, as I recall.

I just remember being banned for a week (I, the thread starter, not the worst abuser, was barred). So I barred myself for life. By then, I think, with no warning the administrator had deleted the thread.

Among the good stuff that went down the Warehouse rat-hole was a question from Tyler Weekes, owner of the Vic Braden Tennis College in Utah. He doubted that anyone other than Roger knew exactly where in his forehand he turns on the power.

By now, I do know. It happens precisely after Roger's racket smoothly fans, closes and lowers backward. There is a semblance of a pause, particularly noticeable in all the UTube videos with crowds hanging on the walls over Roger as he practices or warms up. And the easier he hits, the more noticeable the pause. Always there, I say, whether you see it or not.

Then comes the great power, from leg all the way up. The wrist lays back and down ("Mondo's" during the power), giving Roger the best of both worlds-- body acceleration before contact and a killed racket that allows him virtually to touch the ball.

P.S. Will there be an archaic revival in America? If Citibank can go down a rat-hole, will Tennis Warehouse? That wouldn't bother me.

If Yannick Noah could hit with a board, so can I.

[bottle]

Invention instead of Imitation

It was a big thing for me to realize that Roger lifts his head and turns his shoulders back during his toss. At the same time, I decided, his right arm works in a similar way, independent of his body and yet supplemented by it.

If the tossing arm were to give up its independence, there would be no toss. But if the hitting arm, swinging back, pendulous, suddenly became fixed to the body, which next double-turned, what would be lost?

This was the challenge I took to the court. And I wasn't too disappointed. I had to pay the standard fee for changing anything, but the experiment seems promising, maybe depending on my young man's throw of a rock at a telephone pole in Eastpole, Maine, or wherever it was.

I was trying to impress my Swedish girlfriend, and I missed the pole, but that doesn't matter. The throw was very hard, with no independent arm motion during the huge windup.

"Good in the windup," she said.

The speed of the throw, indicating fine arm and hand transfer, was a good illustration of a cardinal principle of Bill Wright, Coach at the University of California, Berkeley: Great drama in tennis strokes can organize totality of body and soul, producing a tremendous shot.

Left-brain analysis, which breaks stuff into small bits, all too often leaves them unattached to one another.

[bottle]

An Elder's View of Tennis

In Virginia there were two brothers who built a clay court. One had a Swedish wife; the other an American wife who looked Swedish. Their headbands were pure Bjorn Borg and so were their strokes. Even though they played well, some of us laughed at them after Bjorn Borg removed himself from the tour though never completely from the limelight.

Roger and I (sounds like the Michael Moore film) are different. Although my forehand, my backhand, and my serve are now patterned on Roger Federer, it's not that I didn't expose myself to other influences.

Roger is just what works best for me and is clearly better than something I might invent that resembled nobody but myself.

There are many classical elements and some common sense that come easily across-- simple as that.

So here's where I am in my continuing evolution, which I hope doesn't accelerate by 7 a.m. tomorrow. At 69 I am "a village elder," as David Korten would say and worthy of respect (ha-ha!).

One reason I like TennisPlayer.net is that I seldom get it. This keeps my tennis at least-- if not myself-- honest.

BACKHAND. I broke Roger's into seven little bits, but all occurring after movement to the ball-- a different subject. Hands to outside, rear shoulder up, racket moving past it, arm extension, upper body rotation, horizontal arm slow swing, and rip. Then I went to the notebooks of the late poet Theodore Roethke, who, although his body looked a bit dumpy, was a hell of a good player. He even COACHED TENNIS at Penn State. There, his sweat pants, rejects from the football team, fell down. They had been through the washing machines once too often, cooking the elastics.

"A many-sided man has many rhythms," Roethke says.

So I divvyed up the seven motions in a series of experiments, which ultimately broke one of them in two, i.e., arm extension, which is first two-armed and then one-armed in Roger's case.

Now I had eight acts to deal with instead of seven-- hands, shoulder, racket,
two-hands (backswing); one-hand, UBR, level slow arm, rip (foreswing). From trial and error this works best for me, at least right now.

FOREHAND. The "long fan" experiment is going well. It comes largely from the
UTube video with crowd up on the wall behind Roger looking down. Could they hit more like Roger if they believed it possible? Of course. But does Roger always keep his elbow this much in one place? No, he's warming up or practicing. The TennisPlayer videos show him sometimes raising the elbow just a little at the end of the racket-still-being-high phase. Degree of separation is degree of confidence, someone said. (It was Vic Braden and in different words.) The stroke gets a little flatter, the lever longer, the ball faster though it was going fast enough already.

SERVE. Simultaneously straightening the body and turning the shoulders back while tossing is not disruptive as I thought, and adds power and length to the toss.

[bottle]

If You Think Everything about Success at the Near-top is Athletic Genius,

and you don't like the thought of Roger Federer's elbow twisting in one carefully chosen spot, try it anyway, then send your elbow to the right and return it to your side as part of the stroke construction like Andre Agassi, and then send your elbow high and backward and return it down by your side like Ivan Lendl.

After you have done all three things, please tell me which worked best for you in a year's worth of matches.

[bottle]

Fanning the Federfore

How can the ends of the racket appear to move at the same speed and yet left hand push (I said "flip" once but now regret it) racket head up over the right hand, both at the same time?

The answer is that "fanning" occurs, with length of the fan far longer than any tennis racket. The fan is a giant, crooked palm leaf used to cool the King of Siam. It runs from racket tip all the way down to right elbow, which on anything but a high shot stays in one place and twists.

Slow movement of such a long lever is going to put some momentum in the racket head which can spill over to forearm pronation and racket descent.

[bottle]

Federfore: I see now why no one ever wants to teach loop

It has nothing to do with educational philosophy since every part of any athletic cycle affects every other. But the details might have to change every day-- hard on student and teacher both.

Neutral (waiting) position is important. Racket tip favors a backhand. Right elbow is out just a bit more than left elbow. And it's pretty far back. The racket itself is out front as everyone says. Without touching body, though,
it's tucked in-- has to be to put elbow in that perfect hitting position.

"Perfect is the enemy of good." -- Voltaire

First two beats are linked. Let left hand cue them both.

On 1) left arm starts to push to right fence from both shoulder and elbow. The movement also is upward, though. Both ends of racket appear to move at same speed. But is right arm extending? Not really. But if this were a time-elapse photograph the racket would form a number of parallel lines on the negative. So upper part of the hitting arm must be twisting in some weird way. Let it.

On 2) the left arm finally turns the shoulders. While doing that, it may get completely straight or not. If right forearm gently pronates now, such movement can passively extend the arm a little-- a nice idea, that: maximum passivity in the loop. On a higher ball the elbow can't remain in one position but must go up, i.e., more out beyond edge of body.

Counts 3) and 4) take the closed racket down, extending it from the elbow. On a higher ball the arm would already be more straightened with hand farther away and would lower just a little mostly from body segmentation.

Five (5) is the big swing with all of its little tricks.

[bottle]

How Much does Roger Federer's Elbow Move before he hits the Ball with his Forehand?

You mean how much does it move INDEPENDENT OF HIS BODY? Answer:
Very little.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/pro_men/roger_federer/roger

[bottle]

Ground Strokes are Evolving faster than Service right now

Yes, and that's not a conscious decision.

Today's Federfore:

. Left hand simultaneously raises and closes racket head
. Left arm points sideways and almost rearward at right fence while hitting arm begins to extend from elbow drawing high strings back a small amount
. Straight left arm smooths the waters a small amount toward target while right arm straightens a bit more now in downward direction
. Left arm starts to bend as right arm gets straight
. Leg and shoulders drive handle as racket tip lays back and down and arm suddenly changes direction horizontally to left. To a neutral observer standing behind player arm motion appears to be horizontal straight through the ball. Racket head wipes up and across as the arm rolls, too.

Some of the free films illustrating this and other stuff and appearing everywhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymUFbMJJMx8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLYZQX6NSf4&NR=1

Today's backhand back-swing (after initial leaning of head combined with natural pivot same as on forehand side) consists of three actions. Previously, I performed them with three counts, next as a single count. Now I use two counts and this makes a difference. The actions are 1) slight movement of hands to outside 2) slight raising of rear shoulder 3) movement of bent arm around rear shoulder to physical max with elbow arranged directly beneath the strings.

If there is a back-swing, there must be a fore-swing. There is and it consists of three actions: 1) straightening of elbow 2) turn of upper body 3) level turn of arm around upper body to bring strings into delicate touch with the ball. Previously, I performed them with three counts, next as a single count. Now I use two counts and this makes a difference.

It's 1234FIVE! (in which shoulder blades clench violently together as arm rolls strings up ball while itself moving directly through it). This turning inside out of the body to thrust both arms out, besides acceleration, also stops residual body rotation, something that's been known for centuries.

Early closing of both forehand and backhand strings is achieved with left hand on the racket as it still is going up. This eliminates the need for any manipulation of the strings as they go over top of the loop or descend ("Press your palm down toward the court, baby"-- DON'T!!!) so that overall loop becomes a totally relaxed, gravity-assisted affair on both sides.

Such pleasurable grace is usually defined as don't-try-this-at-home athleticism or "tennis genius" limited to a few elites. Despite meaning change for word "elite," you see, tennis still has its exclusivity to deal with, inherited from the old country clubs.

Full disclosure of my knowledge of snobbery dictates I reveal here that in another sport, rowing, I am a "senior sweep oarsman," a distinction far beyond anyone's age and of which I am inordinately proud.

[bottle]

Although I hate to change the subject, tennis evolution, individual or universal, marches on.

Service now is easier.

Forehand and backhand both achieve closed position before one can even see it, while left hand is still on the racket.

[holyhobo]

Nico, if nothing else atleast try for the bonus video!

[bottle]

Thanks for the Flossi...

Nico, I'd like to thank you and certain other tennis teachers for their flossi...

(term well-defined on U-Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMrk9ea1m0g )