A New Year's Serve

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On Re-reading DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR, Copyright (c) 1969 by Donald Budge and Frank Deford, I see that Don called Ellsworth Vines "Ellie."

Therefore, in my view, the Elly-bam should be re-named the Ellie-bam. But the Beasley-bam is the shot that most players aye eee I should learn to hit.

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Better

The Beasley-bams were better today than the Elly-bams were on Monday, just as I expected. It could be that Mercer Beasley once coached both of these shots, but it figures-- doesn't it?-- that a great coach, if writing a tennis book, would teach a forehand that the majority of his readers can hit.

Out of this positive experience I'll have a return plan tor all servers the next time I play, which will be on Friday.

McEnrueful for a first serve, Beasley-bam for a second, with any topspin forehands reserved for later in the rally.

In the "carousel" or four-game round-robin we play, a lot of players get mixed in (four courts plus spares today). Obviously, with 18-plus players participating, some geezers will prove to be better servers than others.

Doesn't matter. It's good sometime just to cling to a simple plan in order to ritualize one portion of one's game to reduce the number of things to think about. Besides, a McEnrueful immediately preceding a Beasley-bam gets the wrist accustomed to straightness.

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"360 Degrees" "Windmill"-- What the Hell did Bud Collins Mean?

He was trying, in his ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TENNIS, to describe the famous Ellsworth Vines forehand. But the Vines forehand didn't look like a windmill. Not in any way. You can see for yourself by watching the four videos in Post # 3617 of this thread.

Furthermore, if such a windmill ever existed, what was it doing spinning horizontally? Was God, or maybe Zeus, blowing straight down from the apex of the sky?

At least when I used the term "waterwheel" to describe a certain forehand loop, I had both spinning vertically.

But am I too hard on old dead Bud, him of the loud trousers?

Maybe he got his idea of the Vines forehand from reading HOW TO PLAY TENNIS by Vines' coach Mercer Beasley.

Maybe Bud was trying to describe a Beasley-bam and not an Elly-bam.

But Beasley wants us to finish with racket pointed at the target the way Vines does, something hard for me physically and personally to do.

Or for anyone I should think who has done wrap-around finish for a long time.

So I'm going to try 360-degree Beasley-bams for a while-- harmless. But 270-degree Beasley-bams would be closer to the Beasley-Vines ideal.

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Virginia teaching pro Walt Malinowski, USPTR, once drove to Rock Creek Park to see what he could see. Some of the circuit pros, he told me, were hitting arm only service returns one after another. No unit turn. Or turning of the shoulders in any direction. Just a lot of arm.

Tried it. Did nothing for me.

Now though many decades later I may be ready. As I just suggested, the attempt would be harmless.

A windmill of the arm with Zeus blowing wind straight down.

Think I'll try this both with body turn and without.

Think I'll just keep these Beasley-bams a-going so that racket can finish where it started.

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One Step Back

When a new stroke fails at the outset and clearly won't get off the ground, my usual procedure is to return to whatever I was doing just before the change.

That would be the Beasley-bam that was coming along nicely. According to my friend Ken Hunt, who tells me everything, I was hitting the ball very well a week ago from today, which would be last Monday. And my good forehands included some of these Beasley-bams. I probably was calling them Elly-bams, and Ellsworth Vines probably hit Beasley-bams before he hit Elly-bams, but that doesn't mean I personally should try to follow the same route. No, I believe my ability level will keep me hitting Beasley-bams, and that is dandy since a Beasley-bam is a very good shot.

So what is the difference, as I see it, since I may be the only one playing this game?

The Elly-bam, as revealed in the four videos of post # 3617, is hit with bent arm from start to finish. And Vines sometimes even squeezes his elbow for a small amount of spin. This is a significantly small amount of scissoring considering that the arm starts already bent! And sometimes he just keeps going up with elbow too thus turning the shot into a reverse forehand.

In addition, there is a baseball-like hitter's drop performed out in the slot. The stroke seems a two-part sidearm throw-- up and back 1), unified forward stroke 2) . Try it. I thought the difficulty I experienced was due to high winds. But then I went to another set of courts and tried some self-feed. And came to realize how virtuoso the true Elly-bam is. There is truth in the precept that a tennis genius does things that an ordinary mortal should try but quickly abandon.

Well, I hit one or two good ones. But will this shot, hit by me in 90-degree heat and 25-mph wind stand up? It won't. Proved that today.

As I suggested, Ellsworth Vines hits his forehand with tremendous (and prolonged) pivoting of his hips, same thing one wants to do in one's Beasley-bam.

Big difference though is that Vines keeps his arm bent at a constant setting or even squeezes it. Whereas his coach, Beasley, advises his students gradually to straighten arm through the whole stroke.

Another item belongs in the "Don't beat up on yourself too much" category. From hitting thousands of McEnruefuls, arm and racket sometime end up pointing at side fence. Don't worry about this. Maybe one hit a good shot. Maybe it's enough to know that the long-term goal is racket pointing precisely at one's target.

To start one's Beasley-bam, lift racket to shoulder as shoulders whirl backward. Then use momentum of this whirl to continue a level arm whirl while straightening it a bit. This bit of straightening is the start of arm straightening throughout.

Next question: Should one use straight wrist or laid back wrist? If one has been hitting McEnruefuls, one should stay consistent and use straight wrist throughout and all the time.

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Excitement of New Shot: How will one Handle it?

"I'll be hard to handle" (https://www.google.com/search?q=i%27...hrome&ie=UTF-8).

No, one will be fine if one uses the excitement and gives into it but not too much.

A good idea will be to pretend that one has hit this shot for ten thousand years.

Yesterday, of course, I still was using the fuller, more behind-the-back loop of Mercer Beasley. And the Stan Smith rule is, "You play with the shot you practiced."

No, not in my case. I am too old for that. And I need time this morning for my drive to Grosse Pointe. I don't have the necessary energy nor can I fit in another self-feed before we play.

But the excitement of something new can inspire. The first attempts at a shot sometime are brilliant, with efficacy falling off then, say, in the second hour of a two-hour session. But my friend Ken Hunt was still talking four days later about two returns I made off of his serve last week in the same game-- shots he didn't know, or maybe he did, that I had never hit in my life.

Today should be a grand adventure. The old Pathe videos are so good. The hips still are turning slowly forward as part of the replacement step.

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Three questions that could interfere today with one's purity of animal motion. And I am foolish, somebody could say, to pose them now. Same answer as before. I'm too old to hold back. When you have questions, and you are older, you need to get them out. Gertrude Stein: What is silent in a young man must become spoken." Same thing for an old man.

1) Did Ellsworth Vines, rebelling against his dear old coach, Mercer Beasley, abbreviate his forehand backswing and put it out in the slot or did the two of them work together to produce that significant improvement?

2) The Elly-bam and the Beasley-bam both teach a player to STAY DOWN. How might this provocative decision influence The McEnrueful, a shot where the temptation always exists to be an erect martinet and come up as John McEnroe often does and perform a pogo-hop with the front foot? Answer: I've known for a long time that my McEnruefuls are better when I STAY DOWN. But how to rationalize the mechanics of this? The hips turn is earlier in a McEnrueful than in an Elly-bam. So how does one hit through the ball similar to an Elly-bam? By trusting one's transverse stomach muscles to prolong levelness of hand movement. If one thinks the stomach muscles can only turn the shoulders in a horizontal direction, then theoretically, if one is bent from the hips stomach muscles are going to drive the shoulders straight down at the court. But we have posited for over a year that aeronautical banking occurs. Well, just enough of it, I now say, to keep the racket going level.

3) The Topspin Forehand, building on the down and up bowled backswing of The McEnrueful, now offers the disquieting prospect of re-grip during "float" after strings are flung upward. One will only do this if it works. Otherwise one will already have performed a discrete grip change before one turns racket inward, turns it out, then lets the flung strings float.

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Acquirable Mechanics Despite what Anyone may Think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcY4pkX5GC8

One can see that Ellsworth Vines finishes his forehands with racket pointed at target. But should one, if trying to hit flat shots roughly this way, have (at contact) bent arm, straight arm, bent wrist, straight wrist? At the beginning of HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, just before a long list of national titles won by pupils coached by Mercer Beasley, Beasley writes: "No two tennis champions have ever played the game exactly alike. All of them, however, possessed a strong foundation and sound tennis fundamentals. What follow here are the fundamentals of modern tennis, on which you can build your own individual game."

So, the player on the cover of the revised 1937 edition has very straight arm and perfectly straight wrist long before contact and is stroking with huge separation between his bod and the ball unlike the Vines in these videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd3IjogiD6o#t=61.381

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UzQdhjQzWk#t=21.102352

http://www.britishpathe.com/workspac...is-Finals/full
10th video down. Note how Vines has abbreviated his master's forehand from the forehand taught in his master's book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS. Is this the 360-degree windmill that Bud Collins describes in his ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TENNIS? Hardly. No wonder the master/author of HOW TO PLAY TENNIS calls Vines "the master of the flat forehand." And shouldn't anyone who wants a flat forehand to go along with his topspin forehand aspire to be the master of it? Shouldn't everybody be a master at all times? Shouldn't one choose the abbreviated rather than the attenuated version as one's model? Vines did well enough with it (number one player in the world in four different years before he took up professional golf at the age of 28).

It is not the overall result (losses) in two out of three of these matches that interests me, but rather the acquirable mechanics in Vines forehand that these old films reveal. And the incredible brevity of the stroke.

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Next Step: Elly-bam

A turn and a loop and a pivot and the finish: Same exact Mondo-less stroke but quick and loose.

This cue leads to such speed of execution that one may have to slow down EVERYTHING to make it all work.

The offset wait position is key. So too an early straightening, balancing left arm that stays in one place treading water.

And all backhands, driven by longer flying grip change, become quicker in their execution as well. One may consciously have to make more time in which to hit with them too.

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The Elly-bam: One shouldn't think that the pivot ends the shot.

No, there's a little more arm to go including straightening of the wrist to finish off and point at the target.

If this iteration is accurate, each shot is a sandwich. There's bread (arm) on either side of the substance in the middle, i.e., the pivot.

But pivot does determine direction of the shot, i.e., which way the straightened arm now points.

Contrasting this shot with The McEnrueful helps me understand both.

Hips turn or pivot happens earlier in The McEnrueful. Hips turn or pivot happens later in The Elly-bam. But just a little later, not a lot later.

The form of the shot consists of racket to shoulder, loop to ball, pivot and follow through.

McEnrueful: Hips, shoulders, arm points to side.

Elly-bam: Arm, hips, arm with balance concluded on front foot and racket pointing at the target.

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Implementation

The initial tries at this first new backswing for an Elly-bam should be done with eyes closed, I believe.

That at least is what I am doing in my living room preparatory to going to Rouge Park for self-feed.

Because racket is now set in front of right shoulder, it can go directly up to that shoulder vertically with little or no round-about to it as both shoulders rotate backward and stop.

The arms then keep going while pressing out a little. This is transition to the forward stroke.

Are little things important in tennis? Just asking.

Questions about a low ball

Which is going to work best?

A. Lowering the racket to ball level and stroking level.

B. Swinging down to ball then stroking level.

C. Lowering and swinging down to ball both, in sequence or simultaneity.

As I say, I am about to go to self-feed.

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No Fuss Change in WP (Wait Position)

Right upper arm perpendicular to court. Racket medium high, largely due to body hunch, with tip up just a bit perpendicular to net.

One will learn to start all ground strokes on both sides from this position. The nature of it, however, of the position itself comes from one's desire to hit Elly-bams first and foremost.

The new WP could add some starch to one's game. New discipline will continue as one lifts racket up to shoulder from both elbows, as one then moves elbows slightly out in such a way that the racket continues to move AROUND ONE'S NECK.

One's modern strokes (in my case my McEnrueful and my forehand topspin) keep their backswings in the slot. But this is not a modern shot, it is throwback to 1936 Ellsworth Vines.

1) Racket goes up (vertical motion) while rotating shoulders take the whole rising apparatus around.

2) Racket continues around still neck (horizontal motion).

The racket going out a bit is still close to bod. The entire stroke is structured on the goal of racket pointing at target at the very end. Spent racket then dribbles down to next WP.

Lengthening distance the racket tightly encircles the neck provides enough scope to put the forward stroke entirely on right side of bod thus enabling delayed bod pivot to finish it with racket tip precisely on target.

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Carousel

Played one whole day (two hours) with long backswing for my Elly-bam, but who wants a long backswing when he can have a short one that produces the same results?

I went the longer route because I wanted a set of three forehands all with upside down backswing.

But think, Bottle, think. Which is more important, great orchestration of three shots (they'll all look a bit the same as one takes the racket back), or the ability to set the racket in effective position twice as fast one way than another?

Besides, good orchestration will remain for the other two shots (McEnrueful, basically flat, and topspin replete with early dogpat of a tall dog).

I just think the Elly-bam has the potential to be such a great shot that one can announce it without bad consequence.

To make this choice, however, I'll have to center wait position, which could affect all backhands since they are used to slightly offset WP.

I'll risk that on Monday, the next day of our geezers' carousel, a great running opportunity for innovation and fooling around if ever there was.

Four games only, with different partner and opponents every game, and lots of people feeding all this variety. I truly prefer the weird format over whole sets. A circus, that's wot.

Well, that is aside, but I am coming to the conclusion that there is no possible way to outsmart the late Mercer Beasley.

Bud Collins could call the Ellsworth Vines forehand a "windmill," but I would bet you anything, reader, that Mercer Beasley wouldn't, and as for myself, I call what I understand of it an extremely compact and powerful shot.

Will assess all this speculation against the reality of the Monday carousel. Will center racket in WP (wait position) for first time in a decade. Will hit every Elly-bam from racket on shoulder with horizontally timed leverage press next.

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Multiple Choice (Pick the Better Answer)

A. Tennis is a game that lends itself to invention.

B. Tennis is best played by hitting the same old boring shot.

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Something New Every Day

That's my motto. And today I want to reverse order of spinal fulcrum and shoulder ball fulcrum in a one hand backhand once again.

A complicated thought, right? With the words "one" and "once" trying happily to co-exist in the same sentence.

But a one hander is similarly complex. Most people don't even recognize that the two different halves of the forward section of a one hand stroke might occur from different fulcra.

The seminal video in this decision to reverse order is this depiction of Grigor Dimitrov hitting a backhand return of serve (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...sue/2017/june/).

Grigor here like Roger Federer but not Stan Wawrinka or Domenic Thiem, clearly is straightening his arm as it swings with smooth gusto toward the ball.

Those other guys bar the arm first. Which is another way of saying they first make the arm into a long bar or long stick.

The gradual extenders are another story that is equally valid.

One can lever from the spine if one can imagine the hitting side scapula as a tectonic plate. The scapula is capable of producing force in a multitude of directions. But does it "centrifugate" the arm straight? I don't think so. That would make for an overly loose joker card arm. To me, the arm should contribute to its own straightening thus creating a smooth blend of motion.

But which should come first-- shoulder ball or spinal fulcrum (the order Grigor uses here)? Me, I have been doing the opposite, which also works. And now want to compare both ways.

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Comparing the Timing Unit in Two Basic Ways of Hitting an Elly-bam

The timing unit, as only is befitting, takes the same amount of time in both strokes.

In the first, as Mercer Beasley shows us in his 1936 book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, the player bends his racket up to his shoulder almost to rest it there.

The timing unit then consists of a slight pushing out of both arms away from the bod, a horizontal movement.

In the related version I have been striving to invent the arm also bends at the elbow but backswings in a scimitar-shaped pattern down and up and bit farther around-- it's all one swoosh. Now the arm doesn't have to push out for leverage since it already is in leverage position.

The timing unit now is a short drop similar to that used by many baseball hitters and can vary in depth according to how low or high the ball is going to be-- a vertical motion that always goes down.

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Excess Racket Work Eliminated

The lucky guess was number 3 item in the previous post, discipline in keeping strings above wrist, an old-fashioned idea if one keeps wrist laid back, too.

That is the modification that gives one's Elly-bam a whole new cast.

The shot now is much more compact.

One should have inferred this new succinctness much earlier just from the young forehander's "look" in the photographic plates in Beasley's HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, the way the young guy starts his forward swing from racket rest on his shoulder.

Though clunky, that pose will work for anyone if the person then remembers to keep racket above the wrist as it glides around-- like Tracy Austin, Chris Evert or Jimmy Connors.

But I prefer for myself what I call a "scimitar" backswing. The racket, slightly offset to left, goes down and around right side-- out a little-- and spirals up just a bit out of slot to one's left with arm quite bent. The wrist gradually opening through every micro-second of this makes it feel quick and good. And the result in how well the ball crosses the net and bounces (or doesn't bounce much) is roughly the same.

With this latter backswing one puts more of the forward arm swing on the right side of the bod. But in trying it in self-feed amongst the clumps of poison ivy at Rouge Park I found one needs a timing drop (anything from an inch to two feet) before the level forward swing which evolves into big push from late hips pivot and arm extension. What kind of arm extension? Arm extension from both external elbow (shoulder) and internal elbow (straightening of arm from shoulder on down) but no longer including a gradual straightening of the wrist.

No, the wrist now stays back to end of the follow through where racket points precisely at one's target. The energy is spent right there, so that the racket dribbles down into next wait position with no effort from you.

This method keeps gradual opening of wrist on the backswing but abandons gradual closing of wrist in beginning of the foreswing. Now one gets a better push on the ball. But if one put in time developing a gradual wrist closing in beginning of the foreswing, one now will be glad. One won't hit the ball quite as well doing that but may discover surprising angles.