A New Year's Serve

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No Surprise

It is no surprise that he who so easily accuses other players of writing out of vanity is so vain himself that he will even delete one of his own posts and re-post it in the most recent position.

This reminds me of the city newsroom in which I worked. One reporter would look around at all the other reporters to assess the degree of absorption on each face.

If some other reporter looked absorbed, he might be working on something good. And Richard couldn't stand that. Richard always had to be the best. So he would engage that reporter in conversation just to interrupt. Richard was the open singles champ of East Hartford, Connecticut by the way.

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Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas

I think it was my Hollins teacher, the Nobel Prize winning William Golding, author of LORD OF THE FLIES, who pointed out in class one day that a certain amount of vanity is present in the work of any writer. Without some self-interest, he suggested, there would be no writing at all.

Where he was going with this, I think, was that concealing one's annoying vanity is part of any writer's job.

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When Not to Think

Whether one's self-authorization to think more than other players entitles one to turn around and then pontificate on when not to think, I do not know.

I only know that I try never to think about when to make final step-out in a forehand or backhand.

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NYT READER POETRY

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
And he found a crooked Pence with a crooked little smile.
He had a crooked daughter, who married a crooked louse,
And they all played together in a crooked White House
.

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Credo

I am perfectly willing to dump the Trump thread just as its founder did sometime back.

The reason I have kept it going is my passionate belief that one should stand up to a demagogue (Trump) and a sophist (don_budge in all things political).

These two goals can be accomplished in other ways, e.g., participate more in the letter communities at Reader Supported News and Common Dreams.

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Down and up Budge-bams are just as effective as the other kind, viz., straight back or loop, and in my case may be more so because of all the McEnruefuls I have hit in recent years.

Why I didn't realize before that a McEnrueful can be hit with a strong eastern grip I don't know other than to say I didn't try that enough in self-feed. This is an exciting new route to explore.

Down and up backswung Budge-bam with two permutations, hips first and shoulders first, now becomes the default forehand.

Shoulders first includes the joker factor of semi or demi mondo-- a sidearm throw as in skipping a stone.

This gives extra impetus to one's racket work, which can lead to brilliance on certain days. On the other days the hips first version is safe.

The McEnrueful proper, hit with composite grip, now becomes an underspun shot.

I especially enjoy a version where hips lowering of racket melds into aeronautical banking but DOWN.

For more topspin I now go for a small round loop but with forward pressure from bending knees and strict avoidance of knee straightening or jumping like the plague.

I'm old and tall. This keeps me grounded. But might be a sentiment proper for anyone.

One can-- again-- hit a hips first or shoulders first shot.

And re-orient from maximum hit through to narrow vertical corridor to encourage low to high strokes.

But always with pliable rather than stiffening knees thus striving for effortless power.

On all shots that rely on delayed hips pivot, the pivot is the weight transfer, one and the same.

This means that early turn of the shoulders happens on the rear or "prop" foot.

The default again is neutral step-out with a few foot-to-foot semi-opens thrown in.

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How First to Use it

I'm still trying to figure out how to use the super sidesteps, better than most one sees in tennis, learned from the varsity basketball coach at Voyageur College Prep High School on Military Drive here in Detroit.

He didn't address the lesson to me (a substitute PE teacher that day) but rather to a select pair of individuals from among the hundreds of students playing basketball during their regular PE classes in the Voyageur gym.

The super technique requires steps so rhythmically small that they amount to a vibration.

And insistence from the coach that this change is no harder to perform than the wider, more lurching sidesteps used by almost everybody.

Three sidesteps rather than two, he argued, or you won't get open for the next pass. Then he demonstrated five sidesteps instead of four.

The two high school kids followed everything he said and soon were doing what both he and they wanted.

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In doubles at the net, I'm thinking. Sidestepping to start is far from the only beginning to a poach but is one of the good choices.

One could just start outrageously early to buzz one's feet through rapid alternation without going anywhere.

Then do the same thing but suddenly start to travel this way or that.

The goal is to drive one's opponents stark raving mad, right?

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Class Action Suit

I can detest the anthropomorphic in literature while thinking it just grand in tennis.

My forehands have soulful eyes and ears and a big mouth, and just put in a class action request to have sex with one another.

Thus my McEnrueful, furious at being neglected for weeks, argues that the form of its backswing-- a succinct bowling action down and up-- can be applied to strong eastern as well as composite grip shots.

Will they feel as good? I don't know. Certainly they will get hand to the same place (now, reader, stop any prurient thoughts you may have).

From there one can hit a Budge-bam-- shoulders first and finish off with hips-- or use the basic form of the McEnrueful, which is hips first to lower the racket followed by uppercutting shoulders.

Will these shots, once in flight, behave differently enough to justify such orchestration? How will they bounce?

I suspect big difference but haven't tried them yet-- we'll see.

One certainly will have fun if it's true.

The Ocelots, sadly, did not fare as well in competition as hoped. It's probably back to Federfores and Grigorfores for me.

But first this down and up experiment.

Once getting past don_budge's Orc-talk, an actual human being could see him making two or one point.

It's true that many people can not follow these technoposts of mine.

But is that because they are any more clotted, dense and obscure than technical discussion by anybody else? Or is it that tennis readers, not wanting as they have been taught to think too much, won't decipher anything?

To summarize this experiment then so that someone other than myself could try it, hit some forehands where shoulders go first and hips second.

Then hit some forehands where hips go first and shoulders second.

To get to the beginning of the option use identical form.

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Observation

From reading Boswell and Johnson (sort of like reading Masters and Johnson), anyone in a two-way debate thinks the other person is an asshole-- I certainly do. The difference is that don_budge writes the word out loud.

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No S&V on This One

A serve.

A Budge-bam.

A Hoppy Ocelot, which forces an error.

Just testing systems. Am making sure that everything is shipshape before entering into real competition tonight.

But suppose the Ocelot was returned?

A second Budge-bam to force an error.

And that gets returned.

Another Budge-bam (but isn't it amazing that no one can either find my backhand or wants to go there, amazing too that they won't go to my partner, who after all I'm trying to set up, the purpose of all this).

Well, this will be my sixth hit and nothing has really worked.

A McEnrueful then for radical change of pace.

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Sidestepping in Basketball

Is it different from sidestepping in tennis or football? I don't think so.

One motors while one sidesteps.

The presumption: Shorter steps with more of them. All done as rhythmic concentrate. If you don't do this in basketball, you won't get effortlessly open for the next pass.

Are the smaller faster steps any harder to do than big, lurching ones that destroy one's balance and ability to break in any direction?

Not at all. One drills the better kind of sidesteps and not the other.

One simply needs to know what one wants and then do it.

Three sidesteps instead of two. Five instead of four.

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Speculation

I'm all for more speculation in tennis. Why does an "ocelot," my name for an imitation Tom Okker forehand, bounce higher when there is less hip action than in Tom's other forehands?

Because one's bent knees can drive forward in linear fashion to produce straight-up rather than circular or slant wipe/topspin.

This is complicated, I suspect, by the fact that delayed, emphatic hips turn can add pace to any forehand-- just one way of doing things.

And by the fact that height of contact is apt to affect the pure direction of the topspin.

This assumes that one is not overly bound to the commonly heard instruction to wipe from right fence to sky to left fence.

One can similarly apply 180 degrees of wiping action but have it start closer to the court and end more to the sky, which will probably lead to a high follow-through wrapped over left shoulder yoke.

So much in a right-hander's forehand conspires to take energy off the ball unless one somehow compensates, say by striking the outside or right edge.

Arthur Ashe even envisioned a huge imaginary forehand where one lands to the left on the court on one's shoulder.

To return to the subject of higher bouncing ocelots: Shoulders, not arm, are best to take racket out front to wipe position. And bent knees with give in them can still go in linear diretion to lend necessary weight.

Okker writes in the book MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, "My relatively light weight of 145 pounds does not limit my ability to generate power in tennis. So long as I can shift my weight into my ground strokes-- especially my forehands-- they will be hit with power."

One learns, if exposed to much tennis instruction, that rear heel rises with forward hips rotation. It also can rise, however, from linear travel on gliding knees.

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The Future

One doesn't have to be brilliant all the time. One needs only to make one or two discoveries of improvement over what formerly were one's best shots.

All this has nothing to do with parrots of Roger suggesting that footwork is the name of the game.

Of course it is. So the inventor needs impeccable footwork just like any other aspiring player.

Great footwork to get him into position with time to hit a freshly minted economo-shot.

Certain procedures and principles are endemic to successful self-feed.

And not all of them are as interesting as Dennis Ralston's advice to catch the oncoming ball-- in practice-- then stop and self-feed.

One simply could see which ocelot bounces highest against the opposite fence.

I have seen that an ocelot without delayed hips pivot, with little hips at all, in fact, bounces higher than either a Budge-bam or that variation of ocelot that concludes with similar last-instant pivot.

Which makes me think that only the hoppiest ocelot is the one I want, that the other ocelot is not sufficently different in outcome, at least in my case, from the Budge-bam to make it worthwhile.

The only time I can see hitting it is when one starts to hit the higher bouncing ocelot but changes one's mind in mid-loop.

A distinct possibility, but wouldn't one have done better to hit the more economical shot in the first place, the Budge-bam?

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From Trophy to Full Squeeze to a Second Right Angle

You can say anything about Pasarell's serve, and probably will, but know this: Charlie Pasarell, as seen on the cover of MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, edited by Larry Sheehan, Atheneum, Hartford 1984, squeezes the two halves of his arm together while his hand is behind his neck.

And then he opens the arm to about 90 degrees as he lines up racket and ball out on the right side of his bod.

Is this significant? To a person who squeezes the arm much later during the same alignment it surely is because it is so different.

Which method produces the best serves? Pasarell's, no doubt. But he also is no doubt more flexible than this average person whom we shall call X.

Just something else to fool around with-- not for the first time, I suspect-- during self-feed.

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The Turn-Tail Laugh

People still laugh when a short lob goes up and they see me run for another court.

USPTR pro Walt Malinowski taught me that-- his first words and instruction to me as a matter of fact.

I've done it ever since and never regretted it.

Another player-- we all were in Front Royal, Virginia-- had a different approach. He would turn his back and duck down his head. His name was Eric Adamson. He was a Front Royal lawyer and excellent gymnast back in college.

But he would steal a glance at the opposing player, then if the ball came to either side of him would make a stab at it.

Not for me. I'm out of there.

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A Tweak for Budge-bams and Ocelots

A Budge-bam is my name for my imitation of a J. Donald Budge forehand, more specifically the easiest one to hit of all filmed Budge forehands that still are extant.

And I know the name is good since don_budge doesn't like it.

The tweak or twick I'm going to propose can also apply to an Ocelot. That would be any imitation of a Tom Okker forehand.

The trick is simply this. From wait position lift both hands straight up from the shoulders. Do this over and over until you're sure the move is memorized. Do it more till grooved. And more till myelinized.

You'll do this during your unit turn so as not to go too directly to pointing on a 45-degree angle at the net.

The combination of unit turn and perfectly vertical lift takes racket to the desired spot, i.e., a 45-degree angle to the net.

And if you're smart, reader, you will try taller and shorter amounts of this lift.

One positive advantage of this twark is that it enables the second phase of one's loop-- the point-across-extra-shoulders-turn-- to be perfectly level and solid and brief, thus positing hand in a known place every time.

The player could simply have a high wait position as advised by former Davis Cup captain Ed Faulkner and hundreds of his imitators instead.

This player won't do that. He prefers lower wait for reasons of backhand efficiency.

Also, I see more adjustability in different amounts of lift.