A New Year's Serve

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More Precise Mechanical Delineation in the McEnrueful-- DTL Approach Shot-- Crosscourt Dropshot Complex

Is that title off-putting? So sorry, my reader, but remember I am not here to entertain you but rather to work on my own orchestration.

If someone wishes to come along in my forehand progressions, fine. If not, that's fine, too.

"Orchestration." A big word not used enough. And continuous orchestration is a huge part of my tennis life. I would much rather do forehand re-orchestration than a cardio drill.

I recently went through studies from all films and available information on the Ellsworth Vines and J. Donald Budge forehands. The result of those experiments was a beefed up flat forehand for myself which I now am all but ready to jettison.

For I see that new flat forehand as mere scaffolding for a big topspin forehand. Which, if fully mastered, will prove better complement to the softer composite grip McEnrueful than something eastern-gripped and fast and basically flat (and likely to go out in my and probably your case too).

The McEnrueful-- one of my favorite subjects in all of tennis-- is imitation of just one of John McEnroe's forehands, the one where he keeps his knees bent rather than extend them in a pogo-stock finish that carries weight through the ball.

But hips to shoulders sequence is still one of this shot's characteristics. The hips rotating foward lower the shoulder and racket behind one. The shoulders rotating forward then bank up to the ball for a quite accurate shot.

From same composite grip one can do much similar but some different to prepare for one's down the line approach shot. The racket goes down and up to one's side, not behind one. And the arm meanwhile straightens more. Contact is slightly to the right.

Elbow fall seems a good image to glom on even though one is dragging the racket butt across. The full arm slices down and across in a unified blend. It then folds at the elbow. This folding happens sooner than I have done it before, which makes the crossing much more comfortable and assured.

So, straight arm to bent but with the bending (or scissoring) to happen after the ball is gone.*

This pattern is reversed for the dropshot. Straight arm bends soon while hitting the ball. And the topspin forehand hit from a strong eastern within a narrow more vertically oriented frame better balances these shots. Which adds up to four forehands-- enough.

* In re-checking John M. Barnaby, which after all is where this great shot came from, I notice he doesn't ever bend the arm, just keeps it straight and going sideways. Whatever works best.

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Pusillanimous Tennis

A good word, eh? It's not enough that I hit a good tennis shot. I'd like to throw a brickbat or two as well.

We can't think. And we certainly can't use the word "inches." Wouldn't be natural. Would be too schematic. A hopeless attempt at logic, when, as Jim Courier tells us, one doesn't find logic in top tennis.

I rebel against that! With abandon, I start my forehands with a quick, one-piece backswing near the end of which my two hands have separated to one-and-a-half feet apart.

For flat version the front hand goes forward three inches while the rear hand goes backward three inches. My core does not turn in any direction. I call this part of the tract "my breaststroke." It is a time to consolidate balance. The two hands moving in opposite direction help do this. They simultaneously create some wait-- you hurried up to get here but now it's time to wait for the ball.

Wait as well as weight is also built into the topspin version although arm contribution to desired balance is carried out in a very different way.

The left hand stops high where it is. The right arm straightens as it inverts to press one's palm down at the court. I almost think of a post hole digger. One anchors the stroke with a post.

The shortness of this plunge is due to the hands being out from one's body. The process of it meanwhile takes the hitting hand nine inches forward.

Both hands now begin to move with rotating upper body, which pushes hips forward and slightly away from the ball. The right shoulder spins down as much as around. Which cancels scissoring from the arm, so that there is a short level pathway of racket travel down near the court. And the scissoring carries the racket head nine inches more to a spot directly below one's guide hand.

The hips now kick in. If this stroke is characterized by kinetic chain despite one's shoulders having decisively turned first, that chain starts now. Might be more productive, though, to think of the hips and bent knees as carrying one's natural weight into the court.

Well, as hips go, the elbow lifts-- BAM!-- and racket after extending beautifully forward settles over yoke of opposite shoulder.

Is there any wipe (twisting of the arm) built into this explosive lift? There might or might not be. One already gave some of that potential away when one inverted while pressing down with the palm of one's hand.

Still, though, there could be some. If so, it wouldn't be of the wimpy windshield-wiping or baton-twirling kind but rather be combined with the dynamic upward/forward explosion of the elbow.

My friend Richard Wilbur,* a passionate and very good tennis player with his own court in Cummington, Massachusetts, thought poetry should celebrate, not be the vehicle of hate-filled criticism.

Much of his celebrated imagery-- a battered bird, caught in his daughter Ellen's room at the prow of the old grey arc of a house where the Wilbur family lived in Portland, Connecticut finally finding the open window and soaring away; the mind caught underground finally correcting the cave that surrounds it.

For me, consistently hitting topspin forehands from the hips would be something like that.

Ellen tells me that at Dick's funeral, in Cummington, there were even more farmers present than writers-- something that would have pleased her father very much.

* At a time when the internet is filled with interviews of Richard Wilbur, the former poet laureate, saying that he was your friend may sound pretentious. But he was my friend. He told me that a newspaper article I wrote was the sole reason for the sale of tax-free but commercial My Weekly Reader for 58 million dollars. I made Wesleyan University go straight in other words.

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Someone New to Hate

I'm looking for someone new to hate. Not that I plan to take any less of a dim view of Trump, Bannon, Sessions, Bridge-boy, Huckabee Sanders and her father Huckabee, etc., etc. I greatly miss Sean Spicer and Kellyann Conway. On the other hand I've put a lot of people behind by deciding not to watch TV any longer. Even turned down the offer of a free one today. I prefer to read.

My first nomination for Spicer replacement is a person in a song. Can't tell whether it's man, woman or android. Don't know anything about this nondescript person other than it lives on the western side of the Missouri River and longs for the Shenandoah Valley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfI2dgMHOTg).

I've lived in the Shenandoah Valley. It had many things to recommend it, even some good tennis around Winchester and Berryville. All in all though it wasn't that hot except for a Hungarian woman living on an offshoot creek that ran across huge flat rocks into the North Fork of the Shenandoah River.

So what kind of a person, who doesn't have ears, eyes, a brain, a soul, an opinion of any kind, lives by one river while longing for another?

A worthy target, I'd say, for total hatred.

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The Crosscourt Dropshot that Complements Forehand Plush Approach Shot Down the Line

I can't conceive of any new shot I haven't tried in self-feed.

A carioca step will definitely send the message that a plush shot down the line is about to occur.

But-- whoops-- a sharp crosscourt dropshot just happened instead.

Is the drop-shot basically good in self-feed? Why good, so very good? Because the shoulders are never turned far away from the shot and everything in the arm gets to curl-- not just the wrist but the elbow A.K.A. "scissoring."

So actual exploration of this shot, which has been all theory up to now, has begun.

Self-feed of course is one thing, actual play another. We shall see if the shot lives up to its self-feed promise.

A lot of people want to bring back the all-court game.

Well, here is a part of doing that instead of just talking about it.

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De-fanging and Re-fanging of a Flat Forehand

Detection of a growing glitch becomes possible due to the tripartite form of the flat forehand-- huge superfast turn, still breaststroke, the forward swing.

Breaststroke could be just the suggestion of a breaststroke, we said, comprised of a slight moving out of both elbows.

Well, move them out a bit more.

Couple this with more decisive separation from the ball.

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Perfecting the Forehand Plush

"Plush" is a word coined by John M. Barnaby to describe a certain kind of rapidly spun yet heavy slice.

I'm pursuing only the forehand version since I have other types of slice to hit off backhand side.

The plush I want is a forehand approach shot down the line. I include basic description here as I see it, along with a paper cutter type fall of straight arm and racket before I pull it across.

I have added this brief fall not as embellishment to a great shot but so as to develop three-beat syncopation compatible with my other shots.

I always want to know I'm using three counts, in other words, on any ground stroke or even volley, where one prepares, waits, then hits the ball.

"Wait" is the key word. How does one best hurry up and wait?

In the plush forehand down the line the instruction simply to put racket out to side on a straight arm is not good enough for me.

I want a mild down and up swoop to put it there but in one beat only, accompanied by shoulders getting themselves roughly perpendicular to the target but just a little more (to accomodate subsequent walk through).

Then the straight arm shall fall a few inches. This is count two and the wait part.

Count three is the actual plush, the pull of racket butt across as one pushes from jackknifing body and stepping around.

But if one didn't want any long arm fall, one could simply wait between preparation and performance-- hover the racket in mid-air the way one does on a volley.

Barnaby's description: "The weight pushes forward as the racket cuts across. Note that the right leg walks through to add weight. Note the bottom edge of the racket leads decisively all the way through."

Like it or not, there is some mild closing of the wrist involved too.

If one waits well for a volley, perhaps one can wait well before launching THIS shot.

If one's nerves give one trouble with static weight times, however, moving something like an elephant could be the best idea, e.g., an ear, trunk, tail, take the arm bent to the side then straighten it.

How about take the arm while straightening it far to the side, then count to one, then do the plush, the monster plush?

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Reflection

It is interesting to see what other people think is important in tennis. Need I explain more? I have already explained enough. And believe in this material even when it goes wrong, which is often.

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De-fanged and Re-fanged Slice for the Rotorded Server

The rotorded server-- he or she with limited rotational possibility in their internal shoulder-- can't hit the kind of kick they desired, which in my case and era would be that of the doubles specialist Jared Palmer.

Bad enough. But the same rotorded server now spoils his potential for powerful slice as well through taking to heart a certain tip he ought to ignore.

Braden and others have advised any player who wants to hit more spin to keep his palm like Palmer parallel to the side of his head as it passes his ear.

A great thought for many but not for that subset of servers struggling just to achieve another inch or two of racket tip lowness.

Do Bill Tilden or Pancho Gonzalez or a dozen early tennis writers-- and who should care which unless doing a tennis history research project-- say anything about keeping Palmer-type palm in mind? I don't think so.

To hit a slice serve, they say, hit your regular flat shot only cant it a bit to the right so it crosses the ball more from left to right.

Or right to left for the lefty. Mario Puzo's literary agent, the lefty Sterling Lord, wrote a fine book called SINISTER TENNIS, all about and for lefties but wasn't so far out of it that he couldn't give good advice for righties too.

For the righty, then, he advised a toss six inches more out front and six inches more to the right.

And Tilden, I'm pretty sure, just said to hit more to the right. (Off of the exact same toss then?) Hit your flrst serve in other words but on a trajectory more to the right.

Pretty simple? And if one can accept that much simplicity, one can still bend the wrist back, not so that it faces one's ear like Jared Palmer, but so that it faces the sky.

This gains another few crucial inches of racket tip lowness.

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A Reward for Indecision

The forehand specialist who never could decide between straight-armed and double-bend shots-- oscillated back and forth between them all through his silly tennis life-- can finally reward himself by orchestrating them together.

Just as a shallow-shouldered crossed approach shot and crosscourt dropshot can be thought of as single concept by a right-handed player in the deuce court, so can straight topspin and straight-arm-turning-into-bent-arm topspin balance one another.

In other words we can take any two shots that naturally complement each other in tennis and call this a devious and well-conceived plot.

Straight-arm for down the line, bent arm for crosscourt.

Try the opposite conformation too: straight arm for crosscourt, straight-to-bent for down the line.

See which works best, is more powerful, fools better.

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Shortening the Frame

The grand expression "shortening the frame" can be extremely useful for the development of more consistent topspin in one's ground strokes.

Do you even care, reader, who came up with those words? He doesn't care about attribution, so why should you? He thinks all tennis ideas should live in a special canvas bag for free pulling out by any player at any time. Who cares who said something if that something, coming from anyone or anywhere, will help you teach or play?

A frame is something that goes around a painting. A narrow frame squeezes the contents of the painting. That is exactly what you want if you seek more topspin and can think of yourself as a painting.

The Atlanta Falcons logo we have discussed-- one wing out, one straight down-- shortens rear end of the frame.

The higher follow through that Tom Okker advocates for more topspin than in a flat shot (he teaches both) shortens the front end of the imaginary frame as well.

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Minimal Separation for a Flat Forehand

I'm talking about the "breaststroke" part of a high, in close backswing.

The shoulders have turned. The hips have turned. The outside foot has turned. Bod will only start turning again after the "breaststroke."

Which can be very small, just a mild separation of the elbows if one wants, more of a "suggestion" of the breaststroke if you please.

Why should long straightening of the opposite arm matter in a double-bend forehand? Better to keep both arms doing a similar thing.

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Runwayitis

A server with limited rotational possibility from his internal shoulder does everything in his power to lengthen his runway up to the ball.

This becomes a self-defeating proposition in that if he puts all straightness of runway under the ball he will put no straightness of runway-- not even two centimeters-- above the ball.

Even very flexible, wonderful servers have to be careful to place a bit of runway above the ball. This is a mental concept. Some players envision a ghost ball above where the real ball will be, and put their effort into scraping upward on that.

The reason for such gymnastics of the imagination is that the racket changes direction immediately after it contacts the ball.

And any server who jumps the gun and changes direction before or even during the ball spoils the serve.

The phrase "longest possible runway," though very important for purpose of achieving maximum acceleration, could be modified to "longest possible runway with just a bit of that runway extending up from the ball."

The inflexible server-- the "rotorded" server, I like to call him-- is like any server thus apt to hit one of Pam Shriver's "decels," a serve that didn't keep accelerating as it contacted the ball.

The inflexible server, having obsessed too much about a longer runway, thus fails to get full reward out of the limited range that he does have.

Vic Braden: "You use what you got."

John M. Barnaby: "Spin is how you come off of the ball."

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Short to Long

A radial swing from a short lever turning into a longer lever is one of the basic ways of accelerating the racket head according to Dr. Jiri Holm of Czech.

(One of my favorite Czechs, Veronika Larson of San Francisco, refers to her native country as "Czech." She has led me to believe that most Czechs use that same form. What seemingly ought to be a modifier becomes a proper noun and full country. Much snappier than "Czech Republic," it seems to me.)

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Pulverizing Every Link in the Dreadful K-Chain

One can see, in carefully studying the photo sequences of Tom Okker in the old book MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, that when he starts his early shoulders (in his topspin forehand), they pull his hips around just a bit at the same time.

I don't have a scanner, so you will have to take my word for it. The other thing they do is push those hips forward. Which lowers the right shoulder. When you take all this together, you see that Okker's early shoulders rotate in a skewed fashion to take his racket down.

Just as it comes up. Through arm scissoring in the plan I'm now out to institute. Because I want to get something out of all of this for myself.

The emerging image is of two canceling motions creating low, level racket travel.

One thinks of the chair lift analogy of teaching pro Bill Wright in his old book AEROBIC TENNIS.

A skier waits. The chair comes at him level and then takes him up in the air.

I'm not sure I have ever consciously sought out this phenomenon but through various designs the thing keeps happening.

And just as shoulders can pull hips around while pushing them forward, hips can then pull shoulders, i.e., cause the aeronautical banking (Welby Van Horn's term) I'm always writing about. There's not MUCH aeronautical banking; the shoulders just return to level, but the impetus for this can come from lower than the transverse stomach muscles which already fired.

It can come from the hips.

Whether you follow me or not, reader, I'm implementing two forehands of equal duration, flat and topspin. I love to alternate them in self-feed, hitting one then the other over and over again. They both start their forward motion with shoulders rotation that violates the nasty, limiting religion of over-interpreted kinetic chain, something I detest almost as much as Donald Trump.

Kinetic chain exists, sure, but usually after a lot of other things have happened. But overly conceptual persons tend to think the "other things" should follow the kinetic chain scenario as well.

ADDENDUM: Don Budge flat forehand: shoulders then hips. Ellsworth Vines flat forehand: shoulders then hips. Mercer Beasley flat forehand: shoulders then hips. Tom Okker flat and topspin forehands both: shoulders then hips.

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Just because Voltaire took a couple of easy potshots at scientists doesn't mean that the A-bomb didn't explode.