A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Spreading Out the Backward Turn

When one gets overly technical in tennis, which to most players means getting technical at all, one has to ask oneself, "Are the distinctions I'm making helpful? Am I being too left brain? Am I being left brain enough? How can I put this stroke together?"

For a while in these posts I've been having a discussion with myself and even conducting a series of experiments over when to turn the body backward during a serve.

The subject is big, e.g., it involves initial stance, stability of the tossing shoulder, using or not using change of direction to fold up the arm, loading axle-like twist into the upper arm, etc., etc. and of course depth of pro drop.

So which is better-- early or late backward turn? Or is that even a good question? Today I'm going to compromise by spreading the turn out to keep racket moving on a straight line for as long as possible as it falls and rises like a roller coaster per don_budge.

In this way, the shoulder will be moving backward a little but not very much as I toss (with body gliding slightly forward).

[tennis_chiro]

Use a weighted racket

When one gets overly technical in tennis, which to most players means getting technical at all, one has to ask oneself, "Are the distinctions I'm making helpful? Am I being too left brain? Am I being left brain enough? How can I put this stroke together?"

For a while in these posts I've been having a discussion with myself and even conducting a series of experiments over when to turn the body backward during a serve.

The subject is big, e.g., it involves initial stance, stability of the tossing shoulder, using or not using change of direction to fold up the arm, loading axle-like twist into the upper arm, etc., etc. and of course depth of pro drop.

So which is better-- early or late backward turn? Or is that even a good question? Today I'm going to compromise by spreading the turn out to keep racket moving on a straight line for as long as possible as it falls and rises like a roller coaster per don_budge.

In this way, the shoulder will be moving backward a little but not very much as I toss (with body gliding slightly forward).

Bottle,
have you tried using a weighted racket: place a 1/2 lb to 1 lb (max) weight on the middle of the racket face; just use some regular string to attach it. Then you will really feel the effect of gravity. If you start the swing with your hands about shoulder height and the head of the racket at about eye level, you need ALMOST no energy to get the racket up to where it will drop...and with the weight it will really drop. Then, just before it drops to the "pro drop", start your upward motion to the contact point area. In addition, try to initiate this motion with your hips (the feet together forward drill is good for feeling this). As the weight pulls the racket head further down the muscles of your throwing shoulder will get loaded for the upward hit. But with the weight, don't swing fast; just easy to get the racket up to full extension, allow full internal rotation and pronation trying to emulate the "Sampras downward racket post contact position" and then let the weight pull you around to the completion of the figure 8 which is, of course, the beginning of the next fig 8. If you do this right, you use only a little effort to swing up to the ball and an even lesser effort to get the figure 8 to do the loop on the opposite side of your body back to the beginning of the motion. Let gravity do the work. All in relative slow motion. Then go back to your own racket and try to feel the weight of the racket head. It will now feel like a twig so you have to work a little bit to find it. Then try to generate the same kind of pulls and feels swinging the regular racket, but still not at full speed. Focus on effortless continuous movement. Then start throwing balls into that motion: practice swing, hit, practice swing, hit. With two balls, you get 4 swings. Hopefully, you are practicing a perfect swing with the dry figure 8 and you can carry some of it over to the actual hit. And no steps allowed.

Try it out and let us know if that helps.
don

[tennis_chiro]

I linked the wrong post

In reading "Your Strokes: Arthur Gosnell: Serve," I see a big argument for using John's windmill exercise along with Don's figure eight exercise if you are a rotorded server.

The argument is that, in the racket drop, you may actually hit your back with the racket, and that would be all right-- maybe not in your best serve, but this is an exercise to take you toward your best serve.

To go from that to what I personally want to do right now, I will next do normal figure eights and finally a few abnormal ones, where racket hits the back, then regain smoothness but with racket continuing to pass through the deeper vicinity.

The two exercises are close enough that THEY SHOULD BE DISCUSSED TOGETHER IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).

Sorry, should have linked the above post to this one.
don

Here you go:

Bottle,
have you tried using a weighted racket: place a 1/2 lb to 1 lb (max) weight on the middle of the racket face; just use some regular string to attach it. Then you will really feel the effect of gravity. If you start the swing with your hands about shoulder height and the head of the racket at about eye level, you need ALMOST no energy to get the racket up to where it will drop...and with the weight it will really drop. Then, just before it drops to the "pro drop", start your upward motion to the contact point area. In addition, try to initiate this motion with your hips (the feet together forward drill is good for feeling this). As the weight pulls the racket head further down the muscles of your throwing shoulder will get loaded for the upward hit. But with the weight, don't swing fast; just easy to get the racket up to full extension, allow full internal rotation and pronation trying to emulate the "Sampras downward racket post contact position" and then let the weight pull you around to the completion of the figure 8 which is, of course, the beginning of the next fig 8. If you do this right, you use only a little effort to swing up to the ball and an even lesser effort to get the figure 8 to do the loop on the opposite side of your body back to the beginning of the motion. Let gravity do the work. All in relative slow motion. Then go back to your own racket and try to feel the weight of the racket head. It will now feel like a twig so you have to work a little bit to find it. Then try to generate the same kind of pulls and feels swinging the regular racket, but still not at full speed. Focus on effortless continuous movement. Then start throwing balls into that motion: practice swing, hit, practice swing, hit. With two balls, you get 4 swings. Hopefully, you are practicing a perfect swing with the dry figure 8 and you can carry some of it over to the actual hit. And no steps allowed.

Try it out and let us know if that helps.
don

[bottle]

I'm tying a 3/4 pound weight to the center of a racket with ordinary string right now.

[bottle]

The Weirdest Tennis Book in Captivity?

And you can have it for free-- don't buy the DVD! Just go to "Tennisforall.com" or possibly to "The Animated Tennis Book" or google the phrase "Tennis books will never be the same."

Is one of these phrases the book's title or do they all qualify if run together? And who is the author? It took me a couple of hours to partially find out. Have you ever, reader, seen a book where the author's name was not readily available? That's a new one on me.

But, during the search, I was multi-tasking and therefore was having fun. One gets to see animations of great strokes, videos, too, with good perceptions-- the author is especially good on contact point.

Additionally, the photos are good. But the shy author states: "The most important part of these pages is the writing, because writing is the medium through which knowledge is passed on."

The book comes to us from Great Britain, I would imagine, since the people over there may be more inclined to believe in words.

The author, I finally learned, is variously self-described as "Ewwy" or "Ewwy-Ewwy." I don't know about your computer, reader, but mine sometimes makes those two w's at word's center look like four v's . And that would be eight v's in Evvvvy-Evvvvy as in Evelyn, a woman. But then there is Evelyn Waugh, a man. But the author was covering a tournament in Key Biscayne, Florida where he repulsed Mary Joe Fernandez with his hirsute presence. Sounds like a male to me.

But who is the real author behind "Ewwy," reader? Do you know? Would someone ask Mary Joe? Would she or anyone share the secret here? I thought maybe, because of anti-intellectualism directed at Boris Becker and the author's positive though rambling and gossipy review of Andre Agassi's autobiography, and Ewwy's disdain for Pete Sampras' refusal to sign a boy's autograph one time, and Ewwy's allusion to the 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne, that, he was, perhaps, Michael Mewshaw.

But then I remembered that Mewshaw's positive review of Agassi's book was pretty tight.

So Ewwy-Ewwy must be somebody else. Euuw?

[bottle]

Double-Gravity Service Rhythm: Very Good Stuff

Re #'s 692 and 693: These are extraordinary communication.

Although I haven't even gone to the court yet to introduce tossed balls into the new (or slightly new) service motion, I've been following Don's directions out on the lawn here, using a normal racket and another with a 12-ounce ball peen hammer tied to it.

That racket is a little tip heavy but works well so long as I take it easy, and I suspect that we'll buy or find another ball peen before we ever take the 12-ounce one off.

Clearly, the service structure Don's exercises and explanation can produce is superior to anything I've ever tried to invent on my own (although I don't renounce that constant effort).

[tennis_chiro]

Never Give In!

Re #'s 692 and 693:
...(although I don't renounce that constant effort).

Good stuff, Bottle.

NEVER GIVE IN!!!

don

[don_budge]

Careful...

Re #'s 692 and 693: These are extraordinary communication.

That racket is a little tip heavy but works well so long as I take it easy, and I suspect that we'll buy or find another ball peen before we ever take the 12-ounce one off.

Clearly, the service structure Don's exercises and explanation can produce is superior to anything I've ever tried to invent on my own (although I don't renounce that constant effort).

For God's sake...swing that thing easily, bottle. You can hurt yourself.

[bottle]

Adventure on Ball Peen Mountain

This new development is such a high, out on the court, that I'm tempted to stop writing about it altogether in the interest of the serenity that comes from simplification.

In the past, when any teaching pro has given me anything that was valuable, I then had a tendency, after a short time of awe, to "elaborate," or, as USPTA pro Jim Kacian said, to "embroider" upon it-- a bad thing in his view obviously and leading to subtle subtraction from the original meaning.

He himself had a highly topspun serve resembling a fireplace bellows in which his whole body seemed to breathe (exhale or inhale-- I haven't a clue) as it arched down in perfect sync with the falling racket-head.

I'm not in favor of embroidery this time. On the other hand, all new discoveries create new substance, and life just has to be like that in art, science and everywhere else. Even Timothy Gallwey told us to simply observe different tennis strokes without prejudice. Whether he wanted us to then report back, I'm not sure.

A big subject here for quite a while has been "rotordedness" (see post # 666 for a definition-- wow, I've memorized that). Rotordedness requires a very high elbow if one desires to develop any decency of serve.

Once one's elbow has risen way up in the air-- early-- there to stay forever, what about the upper arm twist that takes the Sampras, Roddick, Gorgo racket tip so low?

We rotorded ones (most servers in the world) aren't going to generate much of such twist, are we?-- but, as Vic Braden said, "You use what you got."

But, the cocking or twisting or supranation of supination or tomato soup or some other impossibly Latinate word if you know it and it's better will go
sideways to the outside, not down, in the case of the most extremely rotorded but good-serving player, and this will happen during the smooth body rotations up to the ball.

*********************************************

So, I went to my favorite three courts out over the waters of Lake St. Clair, Michigan, where I started doing figure eights and windmills with my racket that has a ball peen hammer crucified against its strings.

On the other two courts to my left, two teaching pros were instructing children under the age of eight-- six students apiece.

Neither paid any attention to the kids. They could only watch the 71-year-old twirling his ball peen racket.

[bottle]

Learning through Indirection

Learning seldom occurs in the orderly way that bad educators would prefer as they bore us to death.

Let's take the current article by the wonderful Welby Van Horn, a man whom Arthur Ashe called the greatest teaching pro in the world. I don't think a lot of people, even the worshippers of Robert Lansdorp or some other effective teaching pro, would waste energy disputing this assertion preferring as they do GOAT discussions about famous players over teachers.

"The Volley in My Teaching System" in the current issue of TP, seems to me a very great article what with its clear explanations, checkpoints and demonstrations-- something useful for the fledgling and for an experienced volleyer as well to spark up his net game through a quick re-read or two.

But Van Horn's opinion about pre-composite backhand volley grip (for certain beginners) could open a possible window into groundies as well.

"Players with a one-handed backhand using a Continental grip should use that grip when learning the backhand volley...By Continental grip I mean the heel pad is mainly on bevel 1, or the top bevel, but partially on bevel 8 . The index knuckle is in the middle of bevel 2 ."

This is a 2-1 or 2-8.5 grip in the Tennis Player system in which notation big knuckle comes first.

So I infer that, in Mr. Van Horn's view, Continental grips of this type still exist, and still should exist, in the game of tennis.

Just to hear a knowledgeable person talk or write spontaneously about the mysterious subject called "grip" could help anyone.

That most players, wedded to what they themselves do, don't know much about grip is my belief.

And suppose someone wanted more angle between arm and racket on topspin backhands and topspin serves both. A 2-8.5 might do it.

[bottle]

Ferrer Forehands

I started writing about David Ferrer before I knew who he was or that he had beaten Rafa Nadal a couple of times. I simply liked the look of his forehand as recorded in Tennis Player.

Watching carefully (on Tennis Channel) what he just did in the Davis Cup tie between Spain and the United States is not very apt to change my mind. For a little guy, he is one hell of a player, and I'd like to continue to be inspired by that forehand.

My personal understanding of it comes by way of Chet Murphy, who wrote about the reverse action in certain forehands where the arm is still going backward as the shoulders rotate forward.

Perhaps one should think about Andre Agassi here, and how he takes arm way out to the side and then brings it in and then mondoes the wrist in reaction to the forward body turn.

Whether wrist does it or whole arm does it or both do it at the same time, the operative expression is "reverse action."

This is true whether the forehand is double bend or of the straight arm variety. Most people understand by now that they can generate more power this way, and the best will even gain control from the increased racket head speed. If a guy exaggerates too much, however, he loses control, and as Don Brosseau has suggested, may hurt himself.

Actually, in the following clip of Agassi, there's a lot of control in the way
he brings his arm in first before his wrist turns inside out-- no?

An alternative is to set the racket pretty far back but just a bit out
from the body, then one can be quite uninhibited as body whips both arm
and wrist into itself.

Agassi:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/andreagassi/aa_forehand/aa_fh_center/aa_fh_center.html?AAFHCenterRear1.mov

Ferrer:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/david_ferrer/df_forehand/df_fh_center/df_fh_center.html?DFFHCenterOpenStanceCourtLevelRear3.mov

[tennis_chiro]

An interesting comparison

I started writing about David Ferrer before I knew who he was or that he had beaten Rafa Nadal a couple of times. I simply liked the look of his forehand as recorded in Tennis Player.

Watching carefully (on Tennis Channel) what he just did in the Davis Cup tie between Spain and the United States is not very apt to change my mind. For a little guy, he is one hell of a player, and I'd like to continue to be inspired by that forehand.

My personal understanding of it comes by way of Chet Murphy, who wrote about the reverse action in certain forehands where the arm is still going backward as the shoulders rotate forward.

Perhaps one should think about Andre Agassi here, and how he takes arm way out to the side and then brings it in and then mondoes the wrist in reaction to the forward body turn.

Whether wrist does it or whole arm does it or both do it at the same time, the operative expression is "reverse action."

This is true whether the forehand is double bend or of the straight arm variety. Most people understand by now that they can generate more power this way, and the best will even gain control from the increased racket head speed. If a guy exaggerates too much, however, he loses control, and as Don Brosseau has suggested, may hurt himself.

Actually, in the following clip of Agassi, there's a lot of control in the way
he brings his arm in first before his wrist turns inside out-- no?

An alternative is to set the racket pretty far back but just a bit out
from the body, then one can be quite uninhibited as body whips both arm
and wrist into itself.

Agassi:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/andreagassi/aa_forehand/aa_fh_center/aa_fh_center.html?AAFHCenterRear1.mov

Ferrer:
http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...LevelRear3.mov

I think what you mean becomes very clear if you go 36 clicks in on the Ferrer clip and 37 clicks in on the Agassi clip where they both get the racket head "inside" with the butt of the racket "flashlight pointed" at the ball. Does that focus your point here?

don

[bottle]

Yes.

[bottle]

Ball Peen 2-8.5 Backhand

Miming with the above grip could work for serves and Wawrinkan backhands both.

If trying to sharpen a Stanislas the Manislas Wawrinka type backhand, having a 12-oz. ball peen hammer tied to your strings might develop feel for what this stroke, which I previously suggested might be the world's simplest, ought to be.

My statements, as in the case of any honest person, are apt to reverse themselves, and so I say-- now-- that this Wawrinker is a bit complicated.

Reader, do you notice the way I do in this clip that during the level part of the shoulders rotation those shoulders slow down before continuing at close to original speed?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterClosedStanceRear1.mov

That happens when both arms go out, the one toward the target, the other toward the back fence. Both ends of the racket go out and up at the same speed, then occurs a resumption of roundabout racket tip action with racket carrying on up behind one's head.

If you then are a New Age type, an acolyte of Jack Broudy and a gazer at the art books of M.C. Escher with all of his moebius strips, you may whirl the racket back to starting point just the way Rafa Nadal does in conclusion of his halo-signatured forehand.

My name however is John Escher, not M.C. Escher, so I don't need to do that.

I can simply lower racket from high point behind the head directly down the recent pathway to ready position and the next stroke.

As everyone warns (see post # 698), you don't want to harm yourself with a weighted racket.

The weighted racket, however, can teach you some evanescent feel. I can remember Ray and Becky Brown, who combine their knowledge of tennis and neuroscience, loading up their racket butts with modeling clay.

Is the moral of the story that rackets have become stupidly light? No, lightness has its advantages. But so does heaviness. Swinging a very heavy racket may teach you some good form-- the only choice if you don't want to hurt yourself.

Later, I suppose, you can add arm roll and other flourishes and bells.

[bottle]

Wawrinkan Backhand: Think Again

It's a single fling of the straight arm.

Fling straight arm down and out and up, and then let it bend as it pulls the body around a bit more.

Fling down equals leveling of the shoulders.

Fling out equals level swing of the shoulders plus level swing from the shoulder (simultaneous).

Fling up equals both ends of the racket traveling at same speed and the two arms countering each other as they thrust and lift.

Pulling the body around means that the arm's left over momentum does the work.

The beginning part of this forward stroke, the "fling," is what interests me most.

In Stanislas the Manislas' case, the full whirl of arm even after contact may have a positive retro effect on rip of the ball, but for most players, i.e., myself, I don't see a good argument against a more comfortable follow-through.

In the 2-8.5 variation of this stroke (remember: grip, not image, is all) the racket finishes quite horizontal at the finish with strings facing top of opposite fence-- a reference point promulgated by Pancho Gonzalez in the most popular of his instruction books.

A simple relaxing of hand can help racket fall back to ready position.

The relaxing of hand plus relaxed bending of the arm leads to an exceptionally economical finish.

Why am I insisting on this narrative? Because other descriptions by me or anyone else may not stress the simple fling idea well enough.

We Americans have a special way that we use the word "Zen" as in "The Zen of this thing."

The Zen of this thing is that one needn't whirl the arm as much as Stan does after contact if one has flung properly out toward the target.

The only task that will remain is absorption of any excess momentum, and to do that I'm suggesting the following simultaneity.

A) Body rotates for a third time and in a third way, pulled by racket.

B) Arm bends and relaxes.

Racket can fall naturally to ready position with hand loosening and re-adjusting to forehand grip.

This proposed shot is quite different from conventional one-handers taught everywhere.

It is:

1) Less of a hammered backhand

2) Less of an arm twisting backhand

3) More of a body twisting backhand

4) More of a contraption in which both ends of the racket rise suddenly off the end of a ski jump.

The finish is brief.

In very easy backhands there need be no final body rotation, just a dropping and folding and re-adjustment of the hand.

How many toys should your backhand have? Mine has a golf swing, a baseball swing and a ski jump all closely linked-- quite enough.