A New Year's Serve

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Arm to Left after the Hit?

Ivan Lendl does that. So does John McEnroe though to the right (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...LevelRear1.mov). Valerie Ziegenfuss Cooper, Peaches Barkowicz's Olympics doubles partner, does it too. Still, all these examples don't mean it is or isn't a good idea.

The young man hitting forehands in HOW TO PLAY TENNIS (what a name for a tennis book!) seems NOT to do it but rather point with his racket tip straight at the target exactly as Mercer Beasley wants.

We must assume that Ellsworth Vines did that too. But on the day Bud Collins saw him if in fact Collins ever did see him, Vines suffered from an excess of energy that made his racket fly 360 degrees like a windmill.

I believe that Mercer Beasley knew what he was talking about, and that although Ellsworth Vines had fine brains, Beasley was the brains behind the Vines forehand.

Thinking that, I try now to eliminate all sideways tail from my Elly-bam.

What will do it? Here are five guesses. 1) Less speed of forward arm, 2) Slightly longer backswing to put more arm to right of bod as one swings and pushes through, 3) Discipline in keeping strings above wrist, 4) After whirling racket a bit farther than inner edge of the slot, dropping it or otherwise moving it passively in any direction to provide a timed transition for control, 5) Abandoning the notion of forward free-wristedness attractive though it is. This keeps racket tip back for more right side swing and push.

If one does 5), thus relegating gradual free-wristedness to backswing only (unless one insists on a mondo as one goes forward), one will put more push than swing on to the ball.

The whole idea is to coordinate one's arm with one's hips.

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Slowing Down the Arm so as to Smoosh the Ball with Hips Transfer

A photo caption in Beasley's HOW TO PLAY TENNIS proudly claims, "Due to perfect pivot, speed of racket has made it disappear." So there was (and still can be) advantage to slower shutter speed. But in all other text having to do with the hips, the co-authors use terms like "smoothness," "smooth," "pivot," and "dance-like pivot."

"Dance-like consolidation of weight and balance on front foot through forward hips turn" is my language, not that of Beasley and Holmes, but every one of these expressions refers to the same thing.

The hips turn, in any words, is a smooth though powerful pivot and anything but an uninhibited "crank"-- the way some players will always try to play.

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To slow down the arm, I opt for Paul Metzler's free-wristed route. (His book with introduction by John Newcombe is ADVANCED TENNIS.)

The addition of one extra moving joint means that all the other joints can simultaneously move a little more slowly.

To employ Metzler's prescribed pattern, the slowly closing wrist must still be relaxed after having straightened.

"You turn your hips with the stroke. This is the pivot," say Beasley and Holmes. "It is not the force with which you make the stroke, but the weight of your body coming into the stroke that creates the force."

And

"You coordinate the weight of your body to the swing of the arm."

And they point out that for that to happen the hand and wrist, though firm, must not press, must stay relaxed.

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In the age of unremittingly fast racket head speed, one can spot a player hitting flat shots with old fashioned weight transfer and racket swim a mile away. The next thing I've noticed is that such a player usually cleans up.

But a savvy player can hit the ball both ways, can he not? Can she not?

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Continued

As the most obnoxious person don_budge has ever met, I have a high standard of behavior to maintain.

I am sure that writing about Mercer Beasley and Ellsworth Vines annoys some potential readers, especially players who hit all topspin and never ever will try a flat shot in a thousand years.

You can't entirely blame them. Topspin keeps the ball in the court. Topspin wins matches.

But Ryan Harrison needs to flatten out some of his forehands. In fact, lots of players at every level would benefit from more variety and greater assortment of options.

And if one is going to hit flat shots why shouldn't one consider for model what clearly was one of the greatest flat shots ever?

More important than annoying the annoyable, than "making widows wince" in the words of the poet Wallace Stevens, is paying sufficient homage to Mercer Beasley, the coach who took Ellsworth Vines to the top through teaching him The Game of Errors, a tennis exercise that only recognizes one's errors and not one's aces and makes any player who participates more consistent.

And just as Vines is underrated in the history of the game, so is his great coach.

And I am sorry I said Beasley produces no instruction on forehand backswing in his book-- totally untrue, I just hadn't read carefully and noticed enough.

The forehand backswing advocated is amazingly succinct, a deft lift of racket to turning shoulder.

On some level this must have registered. But I shunned that option because of the breaststroke that immediately follows to move both arms away from core for balance and leverage.

But one need never do slavish imitation while performing re-enactment. In fact, a re-enactment's differences from the original should be of great interest. One can move both arms out from core, just do it a little not a lot. And from a starting position that bears closer resemblance to what one does in other strokes. Not with both hands on shoulder, just one, and opposite hand almost pointing across.

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Tearing up One's Old Stroke: The only Reason I can See for not Doing what I do (I invent a lot of stuff, something new every day)

And it's worse than that. Often one will tear up a design that only came into being three hours before.

Face it. The Elly-bam needs elegance on the backswing to become repeatable. And backswing is not a subject that Mercer Beasley even addresses in the only real source of technical information we have on the Ellsworth Vines forehand (HOW TO PLAY TENNIS by Mercer Beasley and Milton Holmes, 1936).

So now I ask where, player, is your racket in neutral/wait position: low left, middle centered, high centered? That matters to what happens next. I have to proceed from what I personally use, middling but offset a bit to left.

And I have been flirting with flip wrist layback followed by a down and up motion of the arm.

That is three steps where there should be two.

First step: racket backswing like a backhand in composite grip. Racket backswings down and around and up. That sounds like three steps but is only two-- down and up. The wrist can gradually open during this whole scimitar. But one will only achieve the perfect feel of that through a great willpower of delicacy.

The most economical thing will be if one finds level of ball with end of the racket rise.

But that cannot always happen. One will frequently then replace the racket down, up, to the side, maybe back a bit thus providing transition before the free-wristed onset of the level, forward swing from beginning to end.

Can there be transition on some shots and not on others? I don't see why not.

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Backswing for Elly-bam Now Becomes Simpler

Save the dipsey-doodle of racket twisting one way then the other on down and up backswing for topspin shots.

For topspin OR flat, the flip start now seems best (and I hope I won't have to recant and return to earlier line of thought).

On Elly-bam backswing the racket needn't do any twisting as it then, after the flip, bowls backward to find level of the ball.

End the forward stroke by pointing racket tip at the target with the hips!

That is the ideal. But if I have tried to hit too hard the arm continues off toward side fence. Maybe that's what Bud Collins meant by a windmill.

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Flipping Racket out of Opposite Hand to Start one's Forehand can Work

The opposite hand can start its down and up point at side fence at same time.

The hitting arm can next start its down and up with twist-in happening on the down and twist-out on the up and a second twist-in trying to happen from the top yet prevented from doing so by arm straightening at the elbow.

That straightening of the arm (dogpat) retards the twist-in for only so long. Baton twirl, stubbing, continues and with sudden acceleration.

Note to Reader: I hope you have enjoyed this latest spate of tennis introspection running through several posts. And find the conclusion as disturbing as I do since it involves new vistas and new work. Flipping wrist open to start definitely gives the stroke a whole new shape which could be bad or good.

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By Making Backswing into Something that is Mechanically Consistent (racket twist internal, racket twist external then wrist opening to propel one's "float"), one won't have to Think so much during that part of the Stroke other than Finding Level of the Ball.

One can put one's mojo then entirely into easy sweep forward and dancer's smoothness of pivot through ball (Elly-bam); or. purity of fast propeller twirl combined with similar shoulder press or extension although arm will already be straight on one's topspin forehand, which also will be hit with stronger grip.

On paper these backswing mechanics, same for both shots, seem complex, lugubrious and slow. In actuality this is a single deft move that takes no longer than the simple down and up in a John McEnroe forehand. Although there is more to do, the timing which includes the versatile "float" is just the same.

Aspirationally, at least for an old guy, the topspin option now becomes quite weird. First the propelled "float" goes up rather than any other direction. Second, at top of this rise you already are trying to crank the racket the other way. Only one's elbow straightening just then prevents the twirl from twirling early.

Remember, one twisted racket one way then the other just before floating it. Now one starts twirling in original direction-- at top of the backswing-- although there won't yet be actual twist movement in that direction.

Self-feed Exercise: Hit some topspin forehands with wrist held fully laid back even in wait position. Start with wrist laid back, in other words, and only straighten it after the ball is gone. Just hope this exercise doesn't work too well since that may lead to an editing of one's backswing all over again.

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Is Mondo Useful or just a Fashion Statement?

Mondo or "flip" as I understand it is simultaneous late flyback-of-the-wrist-and-turn-down-of-the-forearm as racket approaches the ball. To me the wrist flyback is all show, i.e., "Look at me. I can lay back my wrist just before I hit the ball and I'll be just as good as you who don't do that or better."

The wrist doesn't then do something, does it? No it just stays laid back until the ball is gone. Did the sudden loading result in a sudden unloading? Does any kind of loading (cocking) lead to a corresponding unloading or uncocking? No. Not in a modern topspin forehand.

Now forearm twisting racket down behind itself (behind forearm) is a different story. As is whole arm twisting racket downward behind itself if that happens too.

But all these movements tend to be loose. So what is the point of them?

It is the muscular stretching of one's twisters that matters, and since when does ballistic movement help one to stretch?

One wants conflict between arm rolling backward and arm trying to roll forward until arm roll forward finally gets in the ascendancy and springs.

Loose motion for a player who is not a great virtuoso, who is not a great hot dog, could be what is confusing the issue and leading to lower rpm's.

Besides, people grow old and need to start something a little early to make it happen on time.

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The second part of this disquisition concerns Pancho Segura's assertion that a great tennis artist can loop up and around and down at even speed before he hits the ball well. But most players, Segura says, are better off not burdening themselves with such a heavy challenge. It is safer, as Segura sees it, to use either a pause or a slow-down up high, thus abbreviating the amount of constant speed one will use to get near the ball.

I like to think of the racket "floating" a little when up top if you are using an upper register or tortoise shell loop.

Now that I've gone to upside down backswing, however, I see full pause, i.e., change of direction as replacement for the floating slow-down in that overhand loop.

What kind of stop should there be in The Elly-bam? Down sometime, up sometime, sideways in toward bod sometime, leave racket where it is sometime.

But I just said there won't be floating and all four possibilities, which I insist be practiced in self-feed, do seem like floating. Yes then but a different kind of floating because of more direct change of direction and because of racket acceleration just before the "float."

Will this work? On a consistent basis? I can honestly say I don't know. But I got off to a good start in finding out.

Early on in round-robin doubles play with the Grosse Pointe geezers I found myself receiving serve from Ken Hunt, third in the Midwest. Now is the time to try the new shots, I said to myself, since Ken will beat up on the old ones.

The topspin version of the new upside-downedness was low priority but I decided to try it anyways. This as a shot was pure theory. I had never aired it in self-feed, in actual play, ball machine, backboard, hitting partner, etc., etc.

And I hit a clean winner deep in Ken's alley. Encouraged then, on next reception of Ken's serve, I tried new version of the Elly-bam also never hit before. And produced another unreturnable return.

Later, Ken told me he had been unable to get the power going that day (yesterday) on his usually reliable serve. Fine, I believe him, but this story was a bit more dramatic from my end.

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Who Said This, Roughly? "Every place is okay for a while but then begins to stink for your own personal benefit?"

Google didn't know. Google came up with stuff about deodorants.

I'm in a new place, in western Detroit, with great freight trains wailing at the low protection street crossing here (flashing lights but no moving gates of any kind) and then whistling past for a long time. But there are few, well, actually, NO friends. But friends on the internet have been good, an old friend or two has reappeared, and commuting to Grosse Pointe to play tennis with the geezers I know is a joy-- especially when they praise new shots which they don't know are new shots.

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Shoulder over Shoulder Movement in One's Service: Friend and Enemy of the Rotorded Server (most servers)

FRIEND in that lower bod, particularly rear leg, can crouch with heel coming up on toes thus providing starter-block connection with earth for delayed implementation of hip over hip movement thus sparking the shoulder over shoulder power unit in anybody's serve.

ENEMY in that the fuller one's end over end (let's unify the hips part and the shoulders part as a single thought) the higher the spring-loaded racket gets before it lets go. This is not a problem for a server with extraordinary flexibility in twist capacity of his upper arm, but for anybody else is a terrible problem because the springing racket springs forward rather than upward every time.

So what is the possible antidote so that the rotorded server like a playing pro on the circuit can happily use this essential power unit? To substitute Alexander Technique (straight up body extension; Alexander the rattlesnake strikes high, Wimpy the copperhead strikes low) for some of the end-over-end? To stay on rear leg for longer and not glide forward during the toss?

These are real items that I never have heard any serving clinician seriously address other than to suggest taking elbow way up above the shoulders line-- something that leads to weakness and poor health.

The main question is what best to do other than go some dicey medical route that might or might not work. And I don't know how many times to say all this until somebody at least takes a shot at coming to the rescue.

It could be that I answered some of the questions in this old gripe just in trying to express it. There has been a lot of discussion at TennisPlayer recently about still body for the toss, and about slight tilt from lower body as opposed to "archer's bow." These suggestions, taken together, today achieved more upwardness of spin than usual for me, and I was more apt to hold serve. For physical reasons, I'm quite sure, I have problems with upward spin that carries sufficent pace as well. I'm beginning to think that a rotorded server such as myself is better off tossing with weight still on rear foot rather than tossing while traveling forward. And I've thought this before yet couldn't cash in the difference.

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Letter to a Friend

But while you're on the motorcycle you feel great, right? Same thing with me playing tennis. Had an unbelievable day using two forehands that were only theory just 12 hours before. So I never had hit them even from a dropped ball (self-feed, we call that) and yet I was hitting winners for which I was getting adulation from six watching geezers. They didn't know, couldn't know they were witnessing shots never seen before on this earth, the one an imagined reenactment of Ellsworth Vines from 1936 which I call The Elly-bam,, the other an upside down backswing topspin producing number I just invented to go along with my other best shots and make everything consistent.. Now I just called in to my family physician for a new prescription of Celebrex..

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Don't Straighten Up!

Who in speaking of forehands would say such a thing? Probably the tennis players who still like the forehands of Bill Tilden, whose number one precept was to keep one's butt away from the ball, and those of Pancho Gonzalez, who always, in photographs, appears quite hunched from the hips.

In rowing we call degree of being hunched with strong straight back from the hips one's "body angle." You see it in golf. And you see it in tennis, just not in martinets like John McEnroe.

"Don't straighten up" is the advice of Mercer Beasley, avatar of the Ellsworth Vines forehand. Vines himself could write books and be quite the articulate fellow, but when it came right down to the heresy at the core of his greatest stroke, he didn't discuss it, left that to his coach, Beasley, just quit tennis and went into professional golf at the age of 28 .

If you are bent from the hips, it seems to me, you put a longer lever on the ball if pivoting from those hips just then.

I have to now admit or perhaps learn for the first time that when I hit my McEnrueful, I am bent over unlike John McEnroe, although I then do use aeronautical banking like him to lift the shoulder to the ball.

'Twill be different when I hit the Elly-bam. There won't be any banking. This shot is "stay down, stay down." And hips, not trunk or hips and trunk, is the dance element that pivots on the ball.

Hips will not rotate early to lower the hitting shoulder as in a McEnrueful. No, shoulders to stay level with one another.

And swing, for me at least, will come from two arm joints, shoulder and wrist. Push then will come all at once from shoulder, elbow and hips.

A swing and a push. Absolutely.

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Shoulder over Shoulder Movement in One's Service: Friend and Enemy of the Rotorded Server (most servers)

FRIEND in that lower bod, particularly rear leg, can crouch with heel coming up on toes thus providing starter-block connection with earth for delayed implementation of hip over hip movement thus sparking the shoulder over shoulder power unit in anybody's serve.

ENEMY in that the fuller one's end over end (let's unify the hips part and the shoulders part as a single thought) the higher the spring-loaded racket gets before it lets go. This is not a problem for a server with extraordinary flexibility in twist capacity of his upper arm, but for anybody else is a terrible problem because the springing racket springs forward rather than upward every time.

So what is the possible antidote so that the rotorded server like a playing pro on the circuit can happily use this essential power unit? To substitute Alexander Technique (straight up body extension; Alexander the rattlesnake strikes high, Wimpy the copperhead strikes low) for some of the end-over-end? To stay on rear leg for longer and not glide forward during the toss?

These are real items that I never have heard any serving clinician seriously address other than to suggest taking elbow way up above the shoulders line-- something that leads to weakness and poor health.

The main question is what best to do other than go some dicey medical route that might or might not work. And I don't know how many times to say all this until somebody at least takes a shot at coming to the rescue.

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If the Mind Wants to Race, Should one Let it?

Or should one, as always, slowly climb the ladder of reasonable increment one rung at a time?

I am not aware of some rule on this topic woven into the do-not's and doughnuts of one's Pocket Companion.

At 77 one may do better to give one's mind its head.

Here I am not even having tried, in self-feed OR actual play, the dynamic new backswing for the Elly-bam, yet am so confident of its efficacy that I want to shift thumb over to next pointy ridge and try the same thing to generate the small plane propeller of topspin forehands.

Right now I have at work two diametrically opposed backswings for two topspin shots and for two flat shots. Nothing wrong with that yet I have always known that one's game would cohere better if one always did one or the other but not both.

And I have tried, without enough success, to apply the down-and-up, the bowled backswing of John McEnroe, to one's full topspin.

Racket not high enough to generate maximum spin? Well, there has been a change. Who says the new dynamic momentum infused into one's backswing cannot next float the racket down or up or leave it where it is or take it a little sideways? In the composite grip forehands-- the McEnrueful and the Elly-bam-- I see this as flexibility and late instant discovery of accurate coordinates of the ball.

One makes same late discovery while using one's waterwheel, but wouldn't it make sense to rid oneself of the waterwheel once and for all?

And so, with bowled backswing packed with energy and floating high thanks to the combo of rolling arm and opening wrist (one's mondo actually just set early in the stroke) one then thrusts arm straight to create essential mondo-conflict for earlier starting propeller.

Probably this scheme will not work and get rejected thus preserving one more historic waterwheel.

But what if it does work? How will one know unless one tries?

Note: One thing for sure. The wrist once open will stay open through spinning baton or small plane prop.

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"Swing into it smoothly, employing timing, ONE, TWO. One, swing-- Two, hit. When you hit the ball, your work is over."

-- Mercer Beasley, HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, p 41 .

"The flat forehand is used mostly by the champions in tournament play for the reason that it is the speediest of all strokes. Furthermore, it is the shot most difficult for the opponent to handle owing to its lack of spin and its low bounce.

"Ellsworth Vines is master of the flat forehand. This, more than any other factor, is responsible for his being the world's foremost player in 1936 . It is the champion's power play."

I just found this great old dark green book in a cardboard box after talking about it so much. One thing I immediately notice is the two-handed wrap around neck followed by footwork and a breaststroke like that used by Juan Del Potro nowadays.

I bypass that by building on the upside down backswing of a John McEnroe forehand.

It is in the forward action that there should be closer similarity between what Beasley teaches and what I am trying to accomplish with my Elly-bam.

The issue of fixed or free wrist does not seem addressed in the tight, modern prose of Mercer Beasley. I take my free-wristed notion from Paul Metzler of Australia.

A big difference between the Beasley and Bud Collins description of this generic forehand (Collins alleging a Vines' "windmill" and "360 degrees") lies in these two functional tips from Beasley:

1) "Where you point your racket for the ending is where the ball will go.

"This changed ending controls the difference in the pivot or actual hit which is necessary to send the ball in the desired direction... If you had let go of the racket when you struck the ball, the racket would have followed the ball over the net. But, as you need your racket for the next stroke, you do not let go of it. You merely allow it to follow the ball until your arm is fully outstretched."

2) "IN EVERY CASE, THE RACKET FINISHES ON A LEVEL WITH THE ACTUAL HIT."

Note: I was mistaken in my recollection that Beasley's tire target was suspended in mid-air. In photographic depictions of the Beasley forehand the tire target is on edge down on the opposite court and always in a different place.