A New Year's Serve

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From a Friend

Bot, if you are casting about for a serving idea for your column, here's a good one an instructor gave to Tennis or World Tennis years ago. Perhaps you'll recall it. Perhaps you do it.


Make like you're throwing a dart at the ceiling... at about a 70 degree angle, I guess. That was it, in a full-page cartoon.

I'm adding, let the wrist lag back, good and relaxed, turned inward while you let the racquet down your right side, and stay loose on the way up to the strike. Think about this only in practice. Then think/feel only looseness during points. As you well know, thinking likely will louse up a serve. Your forearm will propel the wrist and racquet into the strike. Do not tighten up on the way up. Do not be muscular. Let the racquet do the work. Trust that it will. You might think you've gotten your wrist to be really loose, but you can probably improve on it. And it probably won't come close to being loose enough after only a half-dozen serves.

This will look like a nice easy motion, but there will be a lot more racquethead speed than you'd get if you grip the handle at all tightly. And no one will see it, it happens so fast.

If you grip the racquet too lightly, it will fly out of your hand and break when it hits the court. I used to have a rawhide thong tied to the handle and looped over my wrist to prevent this, after having cracked a brand new Pro Staff.

RH

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Arm Lift

Like everybody else, I'm wondering how Rafa will do in the French, if he can win now again.

Whether he does, however, my prime focus will remain on his hitting mechanics. To me, at times, Rafa's forehand and The Federfore have seemed identical strokes except for a slight difference of grip.

At other times, however, they've seemed markedly different-- could I have been on the wrong thought track?

Of course. When it comes to world class mechanics, the most simple relationship-- the one right in front of everybody's nose-- is apt to be the last thing anyone notices.

This, I submit, according to a set of perceptions apt to change tomorrow, is "body-arm connectedness" vs. "swing from the shoulder."

The new Grandaddy's Throw to First forehand I'm so excited about-- because of its startling accuracy (as the name does suggest although name is not the reason for the accuracy) is primarily from the shoulder with upper body rotation following behind for support and ending balance like delayed leg extension and straightening of the body.

A Nadalian forehand or Federfore, I think, is both phenomena in rapid succession. Body and arm are solid first and this gives the arm freedom to do what it wants, which in this case is to lift steeply up with "lift" being the key word.

Too many of us aspirants have been infected with the windshield wiper virus, which turns brain cells to pink mush and makes us twist the racket at the ball.

I'm for-- at least today-- putting emphasis on pure arm lift in second half of the forward dynamic. Any twist near contact is moderate with sole function of maintaining constancy of racket pitch. The much bigger item is sharp lift. Depending on how you define "wiper," most of wiper or all of wiper occurs after contact.

Finally, body can draw back a little to increase freedom of the arm lift.

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Progression, Federfore/Nadalfore, Extra Low Ball

The loop on all of these Federfores/Nadalfores is a constant. You probably shaped it long ago. But you (I) need to continue the loop downward and forward for an extra low ball. That means stealing something once again from Grandaddy's Throw to First.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBFHFront1.mov

There are three videos of the Don Budge forehand in Tennis Player's Stroke Archive. The first which I call "Grandaddy's Throw to First" however boils the other two down to their essential nub.

The way the stroke works is pure theater. You convince yourself, even if you're European, that you're a third baseman, shortstop or second baseman in American baseball. If you're in Japan or Formosa, there's no problem since the national consciousness there allows for this.

The batter sends a dribbler in your direction-- you charge the ball, barehand it, throw the runner out at first.

What are the mechanics of making this throw? I have no idea since I was always relegated to playing right field.

A baseball coach could tell you, but, from simple visual connection, I imagine the sidearm mechanics to be similar to the clip above.

The player's ready position has him leaning forward, knees slightly bent. The arm then goes quickly down to initiate the throw. Rest of the body stays still for that micro-second.

Knees now go down an extra amount. Turning to our shared sport, the racket reaches a low point forward of that usually obtained in somebody's conventional forehand. Shoulders should straighten backward somewhat. Knees extend next and arm comes back in a unified follow-through restoring perfect balance.

This is a bent arm shot, and the Federfore/Nadalfore is characteristically though not always a straight arm shot, but the idea is the same. For a low ball, sink into the shot a bit before hips come naturally up.

For a medium height or high ball, one needn't do this except perhaps when one has extra time for more topspin. Original leg position from when you planted outside foot, most likely, gives you enough knee bend to work with, and you can, economically, bring back shoulders as you straighten leg, i.e., straighten upper body at a different time.

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From a Letter to a Friend

Yes, Wawrinka opens so much, he can hit his backhands either open or closed. I used this model for a while with interesting results (for a while). I decided that a big turn of the shoulders was what it was all about with arm work embedded in it almost as something secondary and beginning and ending at the same time.

I guess I'd seen some pictures of Don Budge's finish where he was rather open and maybe therefore thought the two backhands were similar.

I went back to the Don Budge videos I have-- therefore-- and was pretty surprised. First, Budge doesn't take his racket up like Wawrinka...well, he does in the old Talbert and Olds book but not in the Tennis Player videos. No, he starts with racket pretty level with the court and out in the slot. That saves a lot of time. I've gone from thinking the Budge backhand one of the longest in the world to one of the most economical.

Anyway, such a start makes time to do some interesting other stuff. If one finishes straightening arm and wrist just as one steps out, and keeps that step-out sort of stiff-- a peg-leg affair, not all rolling heel like Guga but not a bent leg landing either-- one can then use the delayed leg bending in an interesting way.

You're swinging from the shoulder and perhaps rolling the racket a little or not while the whole level swing goes down a little. I am absolutely entranced by any ground strokes now, on either side, in which knees go down a bit late as part of the actual swing.

I've always wanted something that goes down before it comes up but I tried to do it too much with arm. One can swing the arm level to the outside-- that really gets it around and doesn't mess so much with pitch and aim-- while sinking into the shot and straightening back (Budge, Guga, McEnroe and others I haven't examined all do this).

Now balance is pretty good as one comes up, and I think Budge hunches forward again as he flies. So he was hunched to start, and he's hunched again to finish, but in between he was perfectly upright, balanced and elegant, and then both ends of the racket can rip upward together.

The thinking is opposite to what I thought about Wawrinka. Arm swing then lift predominates with body in the secondary role supporting it.

Anyway, I'm having fun with these new late-legged rises.

Best,

Bot

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Article on WAW Backhand in "TENNIS": a Response

To go WAW (to hit a backhand like Stanislas the Manislas) one may have to revise the usual thinking about arm-from-the-shoulder swing.

The June Tennis Magazine article by Rick Macci begins with John McEnroe's quote that Stan Wawrinka's backhand is best in the world and uses that term "Stanislas the Manislas."

After that, Macci and the four sparse photos say too little just as I will say too much, but what the magazine does give us is good-- especially its contention that WAW getting his arm straight early means less to go wrong.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterOpenStanceSide2.mov

Note WAW's shoulders in the above clip. I see them as spinning not level but like a golfer who takes the pin out of the eighteenth cup and threads it through his elbows behind his back.

The golfer then does a mock swing. Let's put the flag with the "18" on it in trailing position. The "18" then doesn't come around entirely level but slightly dips and then rises.

In WAW's case, the shoulders then level out one micro-second before contact. Now they're rotating in a new direction. But the hand keeps going in the original direction. Nadal and Federer do the same thing on their forehands.

Another interesting aspect of this video is the front foot rising up in the air to provide a classical definition of a lousy backhand.

Time to relax one's most persnickety standards.

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Manislas

Man up and learn to hit the Don Budge backhand. People have tried for 73 years but their information was atrocious and they always got something wrong.

After that, man up again and learn the Manislas backhand. Never mind if you don't hit it exactly like Stan Wawrinka.

To hell with taking the racket tip up high and then winding it back more later, which creates unnecessary downward component just then.

Do always turn back shoulders an extra amount if you're stepping out, but just start straightening the arm as if you were going to lay the racket out level in the slot for the Don Budge backhand.

But wind racket around body and tip up rear shoulder, an orchestrated difference maybe good for invoking your opponent's fear of skunks and king cobras.

Now swing the straightened unit. Start swinging from the shoulder about the time the shoulders swing goes level. (See above post, reader, if this isn't perfectly clear to you.)

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One Stroke Informing Another

I like the idea of one stroke informing another. The minimalist Don Budge backhands, as learned from the Tennis Player archives, teach one to swing from the outside, and to get racket to the outside smoothly but quickly in order to do this.

A vigorous effort to master this shot may lead one around again to the under-discussed sit and hit strokes of Vic Braden.

Those strokes, introduced to tennis in 1977, were peculiar inventions entailing a three-point landing: Left hand would contact left leg just above the knee, right foot would contact the court, butt would contact a real or imaginary chair.

Here was this huge idea coming along in the seventies and eighties with nobody in the tennis industry willing to discuss it publicly except for its originator, Vic Braden.

Did you try this simultaneity back then, reader? I know I did and even received some compliments for elegant backhands between my losses.

But the idea for these shots came from Don Budge. Braden and Bruns made this very clear in their collaborative book TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE.

And now I'm saying after thinking about all of this for much too long, that there is a kind of sit and hit built into a Don Budge backhand albeit a sitting up with back that restores balance as knees compress. Don Budge keeps his shoulders level, i.e., parallel to the court throughout. He hunches, straightens, hunches again as he flies, but a line through both shoulders is always parallel to the court.

Supposition: That in the backhands of Gustavo Kuerten, John McEnroe and Stanislas Wawrinka, shoulders TILT provides equally intricate core body action but in a different direction. The tilting of shoulders and leveling of them that occurs drives racket to the outside in the most solid fashion possible, i.e., core body motion performs the task rather than arm motion or even arm and body motion.

Here's one case where sequence is superior to simultaneity. One wastes no time on removal of slack from one's hitting apparatus, having achieved that objective-- substantially-- during initial turn and step out. (If this paragraph contains a non-sequitur, I apologize. I am simply listing ingredients for a fine stew.)

While one steps out, winding shoulders back more, one can extend arm and wrist a last bit, which closes racket face. Opening or closing racket face at the last instant is a choice one always has in any backhand no matter what one calls it.

As to thumb up the back, the way Don Budge and Braden did, no, that's not imperative-- not any more than open or closed racket face, or getting racket arm straight early, or keeping it bent until close to contact with ball.

If keeping arm bent a little until beginning of the shoulders leveling ax chop to the outside is most comfortable and foolproof, then do it.

As an experiment, I'm for full body chopping today, arm firmly connected to core.

When racket is to the outside the shoulders swing then transforms itself from golf to baseball. Both ends of the racket lift at the same time.

Body swing-- baseball swing-- then puts strings on outer edge of ball, which is on your left side. Don't think that the arm does it. The arm is lifting both ends of the racket upward at same speed. It's body that brings the racket tip around.

If the conglomeration generates excess energy, roll the arm for absorption at end of the follow-through like WAW, and be glad for such a quick, short and easy return of racket to ready position.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide4.mov

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Wrong Information as Usual

Recently, I've seen some statements I can't agree with: 1) Technique: There's not much to it and 2) Straighten your arm gradually into a one hand backhand.

As far as 1) tennis technique goes, if you don't change your mind several times in the course of a day, you're not doing your job.

The advocates of "don't think" and "learn by feel, not mechanics" attack people like me, not understanding that we aspire to higher shots than they themselves have.

Any romantic who follows the "feel only" approach is too left brain-- why wouldn't feel and thought go together as much as black and white or up and down?

The assertion that a technician takes longer to arrive at something good than a natural jock or dancer who can see something once and then do it, does, however, hold some validity.

But how often does the jock aspire to something higher than he already has?

There's a real advantage to being a lesser player-- the chance to experiment more, to be creative. What is there to lose? An added pleasure may be genetic-- a primal enjoyment of the intricacy in tennis for the sake of intricacy and problem-solving themselves.

Personally, I'm rather fond of the auto mechanics I've known and always look up to them so long as they don't cheat people. And I've never seen them fix a car with a single look. Usually, they open the hood, sometimes even the trunk.

As to 2), straightening arm into a one-hander, Brent Abel says it and so does Mark Papas. So do I for my personal slice.

At the French, Roger Federer, known to straighten later than other players, hit a down the line topspin winner. This shot was so dramatic that the camera then slowed it down for us. Roger got his arm straight in time for plenty of long arm swing.

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From a Friend

Bot, thought you'd be interested, and think I might have mentioned this a while back, before I took it further. A few weeks ago, I added weight to my gel Radical OS -- two strips of lead tape to the end of the hoop, a lot more lead tape around the handle, under the grip above where I hold it, plus heavy soldering wire around the butt, under black tape. I liked it. Took it to the PO and had it weighed. 11.8 ounces (it had been 10.4), not as heavy as some of the Kramers we used to use, and nowhere near the 16-oz. antique racquet I have. The other day, I hit two bigtime returns off second serves, without even trying. A decent netman didn't react at all. Stability is better, too. Any time I play lousy now, I know that I must not blame the racquet.

I tried two other racquets I'd weighted, but not as much, and they felt too light. The additional weight is really negligible, but I'm sure most players would say, "11.8, are you kidding? That's a club."

The Tennis Warehouse forum's equipment category includes a Heavy Racquet Club, 12 oz. and up. Interesting posts from nuts like you and me. Maybe I'll go up to 12 someday. If I don't like it, I can peel it off.

RH

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Adding Snaky Coil to One's WAW Modeled Backhand

There's no use in my regret for saying something glib about raising the racket in a WAW type backhand: "To hell with taking the racket tip high and then winding it back more later, which creates unnecessary downward component just then."

Upon further reflection, this is exactly what happens, particularly in this video which I embedded in post # 637 :

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide4.mov

I'm sure some people find irritating my habit of saying something over, but any true English teacher believes in rewrites.

And I wonder if tennis shouldn't proceed by revisions as well.

Timothy Gallwey and others thought the inner game he called "perfecto" thoroughly objectionable.

But maybe, just maybe, the world has yet to see its first number one tennis player who never imitated himself-- somebody who persisted in exploratory madness long enough for it really to matter.

From all reports, Jack Nicklaus has been that kind of golfer.

WAW begins his backhand by turning his shoulders. Now the racket tip is up. It goes back farther, close to the body because 1) his shoulders are turning back, 2) his elbow is sliding past his trunk, 3) his arm is extending at the elbow to the most comfortable position for a snakelike strike.

The slow (and ominous) smoothness of the upright racket tip going back just has to be impressive.

This is a great, relaxed and effortless way to hit a tennis ball, one could argue, well beyond my or anybody else's anguished talk.

But language is double-edged. It can take a person farther away from something good or farther toward it.

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Big Backhands (Aw, They're WAW)

You've heard of the Wardlaw Imperatives? Well, here are the Manislas Delays.

Swinging shoulders on a slant keeps them from coming around too much too soon.

Do they come around some? Yes, and powerfully. Is wave imagery appropriate to this? Yes again. Golf pin, broom or golf club threaded through the elbows behind one's back is appropriate imagery as well.

Raise back shoulder like a rearing horse in the maritime imagery of Stephen Crane. The wave crashes as the shoulders level out. Swing your broom handle.

Are knees and hips involved in this? Heart and soul. It's all one powerful, golfy motion. And golf, for equal effort, doesn't get the hands around as far as baseball. Down and up keeps the concentrate of stored power in a certain area for longer-- the first of the Manislas Delays.

The second is the arm itself. It, too, is kept back. Swing the core body only.
Arm is in check.

The entire forward action (gasp!) is a single motion. As shoulders become level they rotate on a level plane. Golfing shoulders become baseballing shoulders all in a single breath with no hesitation or holding back-- swing for the right field stands.

At the same time swing all out with the straight arm. There's a step in this arm swing in which both ends of the racket rise at the same rate, but the overall is full out, heart and soul, the measure of which is Stanislas Wawrinka's arm reaching its high point BEHIND HIS HEAD.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide5.mov

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Manislas Restoration of Forehand Grip

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide2.mov

I can't say that the little restoration move seen here-- where Stanislas the Manislas Wawrinka lowers his racket head before bringing it up in forehand grip-- is apparent in every video of him, but I find this phenomenon interesting nevertheless.

Because of the rearward racket high point, after contact, the recovery is apt to feel different than in other single hand topspin backhands that one may have tried.

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Knotty Physics Applied to All Strokes

This article by Australian physicist Rod Cross, http://www.racquetsportsindustry.com...the_serve.html, is intended to apply to tennis, baseball and golf. Within tennis, Cross relates his ideas to service and forehand (in this article), but I certainly want to see if they add to other shots as well. Both Don Brosseau and I have found the need to read and re-read the article. Don helped me interpret how Cross's second phase of acceleration, centripetal force, may work in a serve (See Racquet snaps the wrist on serve, post # 12, "You have to try simple exercises to feel it.")

Forehand application, despite Cross's warning that it will be "different," seems easy to try, especially in reverse forehand, where deceleration of the forearm,
Cross's phase three of acceleration, is more than half of what this shot is about.

Within my own present bag of tricks, that's a shot that begins like a standard forehand hit by David Ferrer but with no attempt "to get the racket back early."

The well wound shoulders turn forward, the bent arm whips backward and forward to catch up. While it's doing this, it can employ the Cross thesis for even more pop.

What are the steps? 1) mondo and waggle backward, 2) waggle forward, 3)smash around ping-pong-like with the forearm, 4) waggle forward again to stop the forearm and 5) finish behind one's head on hitting side.

What makes this easier to understand, I think, is that the two waggles forward can be same motion, reproduced. The world is complicated, however, and I was the one, not Cross, who said that. The second forward waggle is counter-intuitive. You get better wrist snap by waggling FORWARD to produce forearm deceleration since butt of racket digs into your palm. No one knows for sure whether this little backwardness actually retards the forearm or merely is the signal for you to make everything work.

To summarize, I'll have a waggle waggle with a centrifuge in the middle and a halo on top.

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Re # 642

The Stanislas the Manislas backhand may be a very natural shot to hit once a person has taken the trouble to understand it, but there may be one part of it that requires sheer willpower and many repetitions to adopt.

That is recovery to waiting position same as Rafa Nadal does on one of his reverse forehands-- there are curlicues of tract in both cases through which one returns the racket to where and how it began.

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Torture

Okay, I've now brought over the second Rod Cross article-- http://twu.tennis-warehouse.com/lear...lependulum.php -- over from "Racquet snaps the wrist on serve." I have now read a bunch of Rod Cross essays but nothing like this one. A person can thoroughly admire science and still be oppressed by too many numbers and charts. The oppression is most apt to occur if the reader is passionately self-interested and on the make for items he can put to use that day.

The best feature of this essay is the film strip of the young woman walking.

The second best feature may be the statement, "Less wrist action can actually generate a higher serve speed." This intelligence may lead to a phase one and phase three of acceleration, as introduced in the earlier article, but in which the waggles, though similar moves, are of differing degree. Only in phase three will racket butt dig significantly into one's hand.

The third best feature is the comparison of tennis stroke mechanics with data from double pendulum experiments.

The late John Hawkes, novelist and best writer at Brown University, examining the language of Buckminster Fuller, found it to contain deliberate obfuscation.

As one of my older sister's boyfriends, who had just driven to Northampton, Massachusetts from far away, once shouted from the rear of a huge lecture hall at Smith College, "LOUDER, FUNNIER, DIRTIER!"