A New Year's Serve

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Refinement of One's Approach Shot Down the Line

I don't play singles any more but am sure my refined approach shots will come in handy one way or another in doubles.

In the decades when I did play singles I probably thought these approach shots of mine were pretty good.

It could be though that they became too quick with not enough spin.

John M. Barnaby, author of the collector's item RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS, seems absolute best on this subject.

His view aligns with Pancho Segura's in his book CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY. Both men advocate sidespin for soundness of approach down the line.

Any player who just came in farther than usual should like seeing his heavy ball stay low and deep yet break to the outside = a weighty sidespun-backspun combo.

The books of Barnaby teach straight arm preparation far to the side and not back at all. The farther the racket to the side, he points out, the better to rasp across the ball.

Yet when it comes time for Barnaby to teach closely related forehand chop, he starts with a bit of bend in the arm.

From which I infer that a player who straightens his arm during the forward portion of any backhand needn't necessarily abandon that method. And that if this works on backhands and forehand chop it could work on forehand sidespin as well.

Pulling across from straight arm preparation however = more feel; while pulling across from a chopped beginning = more mechanical. Pulling with arm while pushing in linear fashion while stepping through/around = a new word supplied by John M. Barnaby: you "PLUSH" the ball.

All written tennis instruction is of course obscure. Just as all oral tennis instruction is woefully inadequate.

One can come back to a favored writer like Barnaby once every ten years and still miss something vital.

Not his fault. He makes tennis abundantly clear. The villain is one's own denseness, recalcitrance and feeble power of observation.

In re-reading any great writer on the technique of anything, there always will be a truth right in front of you that you never have been able to grasp.

This time I have decided to call it "banjo shoulders," having just rejected guitar, ukelele and mandolin.

One doesn't turn one's banjo away from the audience but rather lets them see it.

Conversely, one doesn't let an opponent see one's racket if one knows how to turn one's back on him. That would be for a concealed drive.

An approach shot is intrinsically opposite although it contains its own concealed likely surprise of an excellent crosscourt dropshot.

The shoulders are turned back only a little = Banjo Preparation.

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Report

(Background or weather: too cold for murderers)

Hit nothing but forehands, alternating topspin and flat.

Went for precisely uniform duration of each shot although I didn't bring a teaching assistant along with a Heuer stopwatch.

Uniform duration meant that the breaststroke between backward and forward bod movement in the flat stroke took the exact same amount of time as scissoring of the arm in the topspin version.

The most significant difference between the two strokes then became their respective length of tract.

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The Universal Attitude of ALL people in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Black and White, about Self-Feed in Rouge River Park, which I have done now for Six Months

"You will be robbed and murdered."

Philosophically speaking, I'll readily admit, this could happen in my last two weeks of living here.

If one person comes, I'll brain him the way Miss Marple would with a forehand chop as he stabs me.

The chop is a good stroke, all about management of lower edge. Used it to kill a rat in Winston-Salem. The racket was an old one and the rat was a big one. Basement apartment, don't you know.

If it's ten persons I shall whimper and mercifully die while Donald Trump was still the president.

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Zone-out vs. Burnout
Topspin: Same squeezed backswing but with transitioning arm extension almost straight down followed by scissoring to find ball as hips fire followed by shoulders with arm extension and roll followed by bending of arm again in the follow through.

This shot was pretty good last night but pretty good is not enough.

The mechanics seem in place but the overall concept needs to be tweaked.

I have always hated big, looping forehands that then seem to stop when racket has come down to the court so that all significant motion has to start up all over again.

A brief pause or slowdown near top of the loop has always made more sense.

But now because my name is John Escher I eschew all that.

No longer enough to parrot all the instructors who cry, "Get the racket back!"

The idea for experimentation today is "Get the racket back and down in one swell foop."

For if there is going to be a pause or "wait" in a forehand as in the trusted formula "hurry-then-wait" for the shot, it can only be in one place no matter where in the tract you personally think, reader, that slowdown ought to be.

So I want to get squeezed racket back superquick primarily with bod but with the superquickness continued into all arm as I assume the Atlanta Falcons logo of one wing out and the other down.

Rhythm then in a three-count forehand is 1) back and down, 2) slow scissor, 3) cream the ball.

Everything described is willpower.

If there is to be magic in the shot, however, I suspect it will come from a weird combination of power and finesse.

The hips fire = power. The arm scissors = finesse. These two actions are simultaneous.

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Pleasing Revision

I don't like the forehand form of backspin-sidespin I have proposed, am worried about balance and trying for the silliness of too much speed.

Reader, go to page 107 of RACKET WORK by John M. Barnaby if you can be so lucky as to find a copy.

If using the down and up backswing of a McEnrueful, take racket up to your right side rather than behind you.

Step directly at your target with prop foot and final step both. This will add still more weight to the opening of shoulders and bowing from Barnaby's very little amount of turning back in the first place. It also gets you faster to the net with still another step, the walk through (the ball).

The arm work is a whole different system at right angles to the first. It comes from far to the side in both forehand and backhand slice to cut the ball with a high number of revolutions per second.

[bottle]

Zone-out vs. Burnout

In my case, a zone-out is most apt to occur from making the choice to use only one forehand for the duration of a match.

On a day when this ploy clearly won't work-- most days-- one may as well revel in one's forehand variety. The chance still remains of sudden discovery among the other forehands.

It also is true that a day may come when all of one's strokes work at once.

I just wouldn't count on it.

As for the professional psychologists who supposedly can easily induce the "zone," unless they are professional hypnotists as well, beware! While they are good at identifying characteristics of zoniness, chances are equally good that no one on earth knows less about inspiration. Too much analysis and not enough synthesis at home is my guess.

I recommend reading the poems of Emily Dickinson one by one instead. They are short. One soon will find the poem that works best.

But I have already stated that, with me, choice of forehand has most to do with zoning out. To which I add the experience of zoning out in two different national championship eight-oared regattas, the Henley distance Dad Vail final 1960 and the three-mile IRA the same year on Lake Onondaga, Syracuse. With all 13 crews lined up side by side across those Indian waters. And no wind, which meant that every oar was reflected under the surface. That helped.

But so did our incredible preparation. We went three miles three times on the Potomac against the best of all high school crews. Without ever knowing ahead of time which of the three crews, each covering a mile, was the fast one.

Any time I feel now the way I did in those days, I play tennis well.

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Forehand orchestration as of today:

1) Bottlebam: Turn back to opponents holding racket close, slight separation of elbows then, and forward swing from shoulders then hips.

2) Topspin: Same squeezed backswing but with transitioning arm extension almost straight down followed by scissoring to find ball as hips fire followed by shoulders with arm extension and roll followed by bending of arm again in the follow through.

3) Budgebam: Based on film of the younger Budge in his hayday rather than that in middle-age. Two hands to point-across to take racket back to outside. A brief arm fall abetted by wrist turning downward to compensate for natural weakness of arms being out so far.

4) McEnrueful: Down and up backswing followed by forward hips rotation to lower arm and racket in a core-connected way. Aeronautical banking of shoulders then gives ball a good ride. Composite rather than strong eastern grip is employed.

5) Backspin Sidespin Combination: Backswing and grip are same as for The McEnrueful, but forward rotatiing hips protrude more sideways so that shoulders cantilever as arm straightens to right as well. Aeronautical banking picks up again but in a downward direction. While thus divebombing you pull the arm across.

5) has been revised. Please see the newer post entitled "Pleasing Revision."

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Free and Easy

I'll talk about anybody I please. And certainly have earned a green light to do so from comments you have made. It could be, despite your efforts to intimate otherwise, that I am more of a free and easy guy than you. I detect some brittleness in you, don_budge.

I'm telling you, I didn't mind when you tried to discuss Hope's sexuality, in fact thought it quite funny.

And you cannot say that I ever alluded to your wife's sexuality, although I did link her, since she is a Swede, with the World War II universal Swedish guilt at having the black trains roll through carrying supplies for the decimation of Norway, Denmark and Holland.

But she and her horses and house way out in the woods seem pretty cool and attractive to me.

So I'll now declare that no regular Swede or child or grandchild or great-grandchild of that Swede deserves the World War II blame if one is ready to put it all on the shoulders of the king or prime minister or other high official.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ok-claims.html)

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This Guy

Why are you so angry? Why are you vehement? This guy has the perception of a natterjack toad.

How about this different question: How come you are so mirthful when it comes to the subject of don_budge or Don Trump?

Would the real Don Budge have supported the real Don Trump? I don't know. I hope not. At least don_budge's real father didn't, the time I met him. And he picked up the bill. What a nice guy. An actual adult.

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TSFH: Don't Waste Hips on Lowering the Racket

Wipe is the given. But what are the variables that can add powerful speed to the wipe?

We deal with a mixture of public and private sector now.

Public is the same for everybody. Private is recent development that has altered one's personal landscape.

We're back to unencumbered arm movement between the backswing and the foreswing, both of which are close to being pure core.

As opposed to the flat stroke transition, this swan dive or breaststroke-- take your pick-- resembles the Atlanta Falcons logo with one wing going out and the other down.

The racket arm thus extends low before the hips chime in. The other arm will maintain its point-across until the hips fire. Arm uses the biceps muscle to bend itself but does not roll as the hips fire.

Arm rolls and straightens as shoulders fire.

But what makes shoulders fire upward as well as around?

The hips. They snaked ahead as they fired.

To summarize:

The arm extends and bends and extends and bends.

The scissoring arm, considered alone, lifts the racket somewhat. Upwardness however is transformed to levelness by angulation of the rotating hips just before the sharp rise of everything but the legs.

Worth a try. Stay very loose, Bottle, so as not to hurt your arm.

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Decision Made

Well, it isn't yet. But I am excited at the prospect.

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Topspin Forehand

Try to make aeronautical banking of the shoulders go more sharply upward. Try to make arm-lift-with-roll follow the same precise angle of upward incline.

The closeness of the two hands to one's neck-- there to launch one's flatter versions of forehand-- feels like the top of a baseball pitcher's windup while also creating a myriad of new topspin possibility.

One may not want a bunch of new options here, and I don't, but I would like to make one or two choices.

First would be some kinds of powerful lob, second, the best version of topspin forehand drive available out of the new context.

One could press palm down as racket descends somewhat toward rear fence. Not only does this feel unnatural but uses up one's arm roll before one needs it.

One could lower while keeping racket square.

Or open falling racket face which does feel natural and increases range of upcoming roll.

There to scissor arm or not as part of the independent though simultaneous lift.

Or try to combine some scissoring with roll.

Or use no roll.

One needs to simplify here, i.e., to decide what is repeatable and true rather than respectable and false..

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Jumpy Style

I notice in don_budge's overblown reaction to Stotty's calling my writing style "acrobatic," a confusion between literary term and person.

Clearly, don_budge took Stotty to mean that I am an acrobat, something very untrue as anyone who knows me well can attest.

My uncle George Hubler was a Dayton, Ohio acrobat, and my great-grandfather John Ohmer was a Dayton, Ohio inventor with more than 80 patents.

Me, I try to be an inventor like the Wright brothers every day.

Sometimes it works.

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Hawthorne

The greatest American writer of fiction, based on one novel, THE SCARLET LETTER, and one short story, WAKEFIELD, is Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The jealousy of the British writer, D.H. Lawrence, especially of the good-looking Hawthorne's blue eyes, does not subtract from that judgment.

In reading or re-reading TWICE-TOLD TALES, which is early Hawthorne, one is struck by the smudged kinship or smallness of difference between fantasy and certain journalism.

Both are tales, but CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL, about an engraver of headstones on Martha's Vineyard, is pure journalism

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Arm Adjustment in One Direction only thus Allowing Forehand Levers of Different Scope

I'm tired of turning the shoulders in two different ways, don't you know, by first keeping opposite hand on racket and second by point-across.

I can't see what's great about that since its only object is to turn the shoulders a maximum amount.

However one wants to achieve that maximum amount is fine with me so long as one does it.

So why can't two hands on racket do it all? One merely needs to shorten (bend) both arms during the unit turn. This lifts the racket straight up and in toward the bod where opposite hand can easily remain on the throat.

In the case of Grigor Dimitrov, this lift of the racket sometimes even leaves racket tip pointing INWARD toward his bod.

Once one gets the idea of this down, one is ready to hit flat shots of different arm length from extremely bent to extremely straight scope.

One's arm length can better adjust for emergencies and/or to one's idealized distance of separation from the ball.

One should learn along the way the arm length that actually produces one's best shot.

But for heavily topped shots one can crowd the ball on purpose and unfurl maximum scope of the arm straight down.

Put arm straight and close to your bod in other words.

In a hips first shot, then, one can next generate maximum upward spin from 1) lift of arm up a longer runway, 2) uppercutting shoulders (aeronautical banking), 3) brief wipe or twist of whole arm.

1), 2) and 3) may be thought of as simultaneous whether that is true or not.

The departure in all this from what one has been doing may be too great for some players to achieve.

Me, I don't care so much about that as achieving most intelligent method.

I will in other words put in the time to make this change believing such effort worth it.

For increased adaptability to awkward bounces if nothing else.

But I see at least one other advantage as well.

That would be more stillness for one's breaststroking transition from backswing to foreswing.

One no longer will be simultaneously turning backward as one spreads one's arms no matter how one plans to do that.

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With the Humble Feel of Riding Evolution, we Adopt the New Guru shot Complete with its Sidestep, then Adapt it to our own Nefarious Purpose

Here is the guru whom we always liked anyway but now of a certain age.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...DBFHFront2.mov)

The two hands rise slowly then diverge as shoulders continue to wind back.

We've been saying we want two forward shots, one in which shoulders go first, the other in which hips go first.

That design remains yet in slightly altered form.

The guru shot now begins with a paper cutter fall which activates the shoulders followed by the hips.

The hips first shot remains basically the same as before but is contained within a narrow frame.

For the paper cutter fall in this latter shot wants to keep dropping forever. Which brings the racket farther forward to thus narrow the backside of a new frame.

The new frame gets foreshortened on its front side as well. What does this is reversal of the paper cutter, a second arm lift again straight up with hips pivot the engine that brings the racket tip sufficiently around.

Is there a vertical extension up through the bod called "Alexander Technique" happening at the same time? Probably. But we may exempt the front leg from that.

We go with Tom Okker instead. I like to think Tom drew the black arrows in MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES himself.

The arrows, located behind a knee, both point straight at the net.

Final question: Should whole arm then turn (wipe) to abet the independent arm lift and aeronautical banking already underway?

Sure. Why not.

Seldom has the beginning to any forehand felt as good as this one useful for two different shots.

Think of an imaginary X drawn in the air to the right and slightly behind one.

The X is where the hands separate after which both arms rise up and away in a mild breaststroke.

The X meanwhile can move farther around.

If one can continue the loose expansiveness of all this one will hit a great shot.