A New Year's Serve

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I don't much like the Direction the Elly-bam Development Project has been Taking

Such skepticism is healthy, of course, the only way to truly get anywhere.

The trouble is the possible disparity between teacher and student, the gap between Mercer Beasley, coach, and Ellsworth Vines, world's number one tennis player.

Did Vines truly revere his "dear old coach?" How much did he think the old boy was a moron whose every idea he ought to refute?

Bud Collins tells us, after all, that Vines took racket down almost to the court, while Beasley's green book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS shows anybody about to hit a forehand with racket curled around his neck. That doesn't add up to happy coach with happy pupil all on the same page, now, does it?

What we know from the little information we do have is that this new forehand racket path should be the longest, flattest and most level there ever has been. With wrist totally open and jet engines revving at beginning of the runway.

And that wrist will gradually close to straight so that one can hit the ball with a firm straight wrist exactly as in a McEnrueful.

But who knows how wrist got poised-- open-- at beginning of the runway? Did one commit early to a notion of what level the ball will be? How can we build wiggle room and precise late adjustment into this great/old new stroke?

While we start as in a McEnrueful with down and up backswing, on the down the racket arm can twist racket low and to the inside.

On the up the wrist rolling the opposite way can unfurl and not with gradualness at all. This creates a threat of unmanageable racket head momentum pulling the whole forehand out of form.

But again rules were made to be broken by those who know them. And the sudden burst of momentum can channel into racket drop-- wrist cocked-- to precise level of where the ball will be.

Now long swing/push commences with wrist gradually closing toward ball. Now straight firm wrist continues this protracted shove. And weight throughout is where the racket is.

Speed without forward force started in the backswing and continued through a transition-- the racket drop. This whole section of the stroke is quick but relaxed.

Next one's power goes on, creating a smooth long path. Is the racket work slow? Compared to that in a topspin forehand it is.

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Elly-bam Had Too Much Sequence Built in

HAD: Wrist go as elbow descended and opened out a bit, followed by forearm coming round on elbow pivot.

WILL HAVE: All this happening at once. But the elbow still will stay back until big push.

This gives a shallow U-shape to the whole stroke matching same pattern on backswing, in fact.

Next thought: One sends strings ahead while keeping weight back in violation of the Stan Smith principle that "the weight is where the racket is." On the other hand rules were made to be broken by those who know them. Next question: Does this train of thought lead naturally to a wish to temporize? Elbow could stay close and low during the up of the down and up backswing. Now elbow goes up and BACK during the other items which comprise the speed without force section in this two-part forward mechanism. Good for balance, good for closing the strings, good for establishing one's piston rod, good for speed without force before the application of the big force from farther back.

Just tried this in the living room. Felt awful. But I'll keep slowing it down and try it on a tennis court soon in self-feed.

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So I played doubles today with the Elly-bam for the first time. Didn't hit it exclusively but enough to know I want to go farther with it. We played for two hours. In the first hour I didn't miss one, and some of them were really good shots. Then, in the second hour I missed one long and then another, so resorted to other forehands. All this seems about right for a forehand that only was in self-feed a couple of days before.

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No One Knows how Ellsworth Vines Hit his Forehand

One of the greatest shots ever in tennis. And yet only Bud Collins was brave enough to hazard a guess about how it was hit. That is the way I see it. A bunch of pusillanimous turds-- sorry, I mean toads. I do feel brave or foolish enough myself to perform a re-enactment.

My way of attempting this shot is a total guess, you say, and you are right. And I am not producing the same result as Ellsworth Vines (four years as number one player in the world). You are right again about that, too.

But I am living in a different part of Detroit now, and the seven courts still with a net up at huge Rouge Park-- bigger than Belle Isle, Detroit or Central Park in Manhattan-- is the perfect place or rather the inner court nearest to the parking lot on Plymouth Street is, for mad experiment.

Also, Ellsworth Vines himself wrote a lot on the subject of composite or "Australian" grip.

These courts are so gone-to-seed that some of the weeds growing through the cracks are two-and-a-half feet high. When I want to quit self-feed I drive through Hamtramck and east Detroit and use my $10 annual membership in the Grosse Pointe Senior Men's Tennis Club to try the new stuff out.

What I've got going for me is my McEnrueful, a brief flat forehand with upside down takeback, an easy motion rhythmically bowled down and up.

To hit the Elly-boom or Elly-bam, I extend the exact same rhythm farther back and farther up until I look like a student with racket around neck in Vines coach Mercer Beasley's old green book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS.

From there I believe it is important not to put on power too soon.

More joints in both direction are involved than in more modern forehands, and I've got my topspin when I become too miss or hit.

The forward stroke begins with speed but no force, realigning racket so that strings are ahead of hand.

Is the rest of the stroke a windmill as Bud Collins suggests or a train piston as I like to think? Both.

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More Cheap Topspin

The amount of topspin one can deliver-- in my very personal view-- has more to do with stroke design than muscle or even natural timing.

I've never found enough on this subject available to read, and what I did read was pretty technical, so I'll have a go myself right now.

The image of two rackets butt to butt in hand or baton or airplane propeller embedded in a forehand seems useful. And these shots are quite different from one in which a player slams over the ball but severely from right to left at the same time.

Here's added material I wrote while off-line for several weeks:

Do Anything to put Easy Spin on Forehand Baton

Try slightly earlier mondo on the dogpat. High speed photography shows mondo happening at bottom of the dogpat but put that mondo in middle of racket descent instead. Now straighten the arm during end of the mondo too. This stratagem recognizes that the mondo we see in the stills needs some space in which to fully occur. There ought to be maximum conflict between racket spinning forward and racket spinning backward before racket actually does spin forward, no?

Easy spin as I said is the goal. Can you imagine a drum major being any good if he strains? And, knowing exactly WHERE and WHEN the twirl begins should be another goal.

Rick Macci says not to conk one's imaginary dog on the head and knock it out. Well, we won't because of newly instituted dynamic delay.

The addition of late arm straightening adds to this delay-- adds to the infinitesimal pause in which one does not knock out the dog. And begins the twirl a smidge earlier. Now in fact the baton starts its twirl at bottom of the dogpat or even before. I get that idea from one stop-frame in the old Barron's book, the old book of German tennis with the Czech guy Ivan Lendl on the cover.

Very late straightening of the arm seems crucial-- at least here on the clipboard (a real and not virtual clipboard). And thus resolves the age-old question of whether to wipe with straight or partially bent or fully bent arm. I have a rationale now-- again since these things seem to come around-- for going with straight-arm form. A bent arm creates a bumpy looking spinning axle with elbow jutting out.

One feels more spin pressure on one's forearm but does one need it? Obverse of the argument could be that just straightened arm makes the spin more succinct through turning the racket through a tight circle on a straight axle. Or maybe we should simply ask which form makes some physically varied individual feel in better command of his early twirling baton.

Arm bent or arm straight? With which do you feel strong?

Whatever the case the spin will continue after the dog pat, alloyed by shoving rising arm.

One last question: In what kinetic direction did the arm get straight? I am well aware of South Africa originating Brit teaching pro Luke Digweed's admonition to his student Cate Cowper to point racket at right fence and then at the sky and then at the left fence.

But that is a manner of speaking, the sort of thing a good teaching pro says to elicit desired result.

We're not supposed to ask whether the thing actually occurs and we shouldn't because it doesn't.

The axis of the spinning baton is angled to right or put another way at inner edge of ball. So by the time it gets to ball it will be directly behind it or on outside of it on a line to the target. This is deviation from the great Digweed tennis tip ("right fence, sky, left fence"). But if any deviation is going to happen, better to put it before the ball rather than just as strings are sliding off of the ball.

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Addendum

Naming one's shots can help one's tennis game. Reader, do you want to challenge that? Play then without naming your shots if you'd like? But are you very sure you play better that way? Could be. People are different.

The great Satchel Paige named all his baseball pitches. The colorful names he gave them helped keep them straight in his mind. Also, I would argue, sharpened focus and offered clear purpose.

Satchel Paige is the guy I'd like to learn from.

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Time to Update some Forehand Nomenclature

The McEnrueful should not ever change its name any more than its mechanics. Best hit, it is a solid, connected shot. Occasionally it will go off, I think because of one's natural tendency to push one's arm, good habit in other shots, bad in this one.

The Elly-boom should be The Elly-bam.

The Waterwheel can remain a waterwheel but only if one can master a new trick-- to accelerate one's rising elbow so as to then slow it down for a bit of racket float up top. And only if one can replicate the cleanness of contact one discovered six months back. One oughtn't to go around giving names to shots that aren't at their best. The trouble I think is not knowing exactly how far to TURN the racket tip back. One must calculate forward upper body turn into one's equation. Forward turn of the shoulders is central to "big push" in this shot. And anything that turns the strings toward a square contact can also be the agent of disfunction junction. Upon further reflection, I rename "The Waterwheel" "Big Lots" after the commercial chain of that name that sells big items such as rugs that don't apply to me.

One ought to have a few frill shots, e.g., forehand slice and forehand chop. In the game of nomenclature, however, we have covered three of the four staples of one forehand repertoire.

The fourth is our old friend The Federfore. One can keep that name, in fact do anything one wants in tennis and life if one has the talent, but intellectual honesty requires me to admit that, increasingly, the backswing /upswing for this shot no longer resembles the elegant tip rise of Roger Federer but rather the ugly elbowing of Nick Kyrgios.

[stotty]

[B] I go with the idea of "has" rather than had even after the person is dead.

Actually, I go with a similar notion. But once Segura passes he will be a "had" and no longer a has. For me, Segura has, at 95, the best two-handed forehand of all time and will continue to have so even if he lives to be 120, which he could well..

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The Next Temptation

Any tennis thinker no matter how wonderful may be challenged and should be, same protocol as for any other scientific research. Science builds out of conflict through consensus.

Name of a wonderful tennis thinker: Paul Metzler of Australia. Metzler is rare in voicing preference for free-wristed strokes saying that they are beautiful and contain increased possibility for aim control. He carefully defines free-wristed strokes as strokes in which the wrist closes with gradualness as racket approaches the ball.

To get a feel for this, I believe, one should apply similar gradualness in the backswing as well. And understand that by the time one hits the ball the wrist is straight and firm enough so that the overall shot is no longer free-wristed. Was free-wristed. Now is firm-wristed.

I love this part of Metzler's thought.

But our slow and gradual development of the Elly-bam may require new departure from everybody. Already it wraps one arm around the neck instead of the two in Coach Mercer Beasley's modeling.

A second departure could be a sidearm acceleration of the wrist melding into dynamic forearm just getting right-angled at that point with elbow and weight still hald back on rear foot in good if not overly perfect balance.

The emerging progression seems opposite from that in a topspin forehand where big motion is channeled into sharp curve before opening out again.

The Elly-bam: First wrist goes then forearm then body, arm and soul.

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Re-focusing the McEnrueful

This shot like a lot in life goes in a cycle from good to mediocre to misses to mediocre to good-- but then and this is the unusual part-- becomes excellent out of all proportion to the other cycle markers.

The McEnrueful is worth attention, work and corrective. It has proven potential. To follow the Stan Smith bedrock principle that the weight is where the racket is, I'm betting now on more absorption of energy by one's bod at end of the follow through. Same feel a great golfer like Ellsworth Vines or Aubrey Boomer of Scotland used to strive for. So that the arm doesn't wrap so much. The McEnrueful just isn't a wrap-a-lot shot.

In fact the McEnrueful is much like the flat forehand taught by Welby Van Horn in SECRETS OF A TRUE TENNIS MASTER, only gets hit with a composite grip just a wee bit to left of Van Horn's classic eastern.

The down and up backswing however puts a unique cast on the shot.

Forward hips turn can happen with feet flat. Upper body can then take over, adding upward aeronautical banking and pulling the hips a bit more so that rear heel goes up on its toes and replaces a very small amount.

The shot gets out of whack as the replacement step gets too big-- a red light.

The racket can end up in the slam pose of being closed a bit and pointed at left fence. Good balance then is corresponding signal-- a green light.

P.S. When I'm thinking about this shot I want to think about it. When I'm not, I want to think about different things.

John McEnroe sometimes will hit this shot, staying low in his knees. Most of the time however he drives up through whole body thus adding mild topspin for control. In his autobiography, he points to unique leg strength as his prime physical asset.

While I'm thinking about how I still want to stay down in knees (for I am old and a little bit big), I'll advocate a vertical stretch up through core along with the aeronautical banking that also creates uppercutted control.

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Increase of Possibility

Hit some backhands where the racket goes up instead of down from initial takeback.

Stet. This seems good advice. We see examples of such slices and backhand volleys if we study all available Rosewall films.

In a whole set of backhands seen in the notorious German Barron's tennis book (with Ivan Lendl on the cover), the arm straightens as part of the forward action and not exclusively before it.

This is a genre of backhand reviled by some and supported by others.

To adapt these backhands to first idea proposed here, I am thinking, back and down for topspin. Back and down, shallowly, for most slice. Back and stay at initial level for flat and some slice. Back and up for some flat and slice and to make late adjustment.

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Free-Wristed and Flat

Pancho Segura opines in his book CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY that a player should have three shots to draw upon equally on the backhand side, topspin, flat and underspin.

So why not have the same orchestration on the forehand side? Well, forehand slice is a specialty shot that never will be as good as mastered backhand slice.

I hereby propose a similar but different triad of basic shots, topspin, aeronautical flat, and clobber flat.

When one proposes new orchestration for one's old game, which most veteran players but not I would advise against, one needs to build on shots already there.

This can easily lead to more variety than one can handle if one already has subsections under main category, e.g., I recently described two kinds of topspin forehand, simple shove and shove with baton (or propeller).

But now call either shot topspin and leave it at that. And put with it two different composite grip shots, the McEnrueful, which is aeronautical and very good for low balls, and clobber flat, which should only be hit, same as its counterpart on backhand side, when bounced ball is at least four feet high.

A classic flat shot is uniformly level including the follow through.

To this end I continue my proposal of a free-wristed shot that takes bent forearm back level while gradually opening wrist according to the same rhythm.

These backswing mechanics despite grips being the same are are entirely different from those in a McEnrueful.

But I've always wanted to "farm-gate" some forehands and here is my chance. In fact two levers take the racket back through roll of the forearm from the shoulder (though elbow feels like the fulcrum) and smooth opening of the wrist.

With no loop, we reverse this action for the forward "clobber." Forearm and wrist close in tandem to put strings near the ball.

Then one shoves with bod and elbow, finishing as level as Ellsworth Vines hitting through a car tire suspended in mid-air by his old coach Mercer Beasley.

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Free-Wrister Sister

We don't much care for forehands that are ideologically assembled. We rather believe that one reinvents from the forehands one has.

That would be The Waterwheel, in my case, and The McEnrueful.

The strong Eastern gripped Waterwheel, like its name, is a big vertical wheel that moves at a single pace caused by real or imagined water flow. With a slight exception to that. The racket goes a little faster just before contact then returns to base speed.

But am I that much of a physical artist, i.e., a dancer, to pull this off? Only on increasingly rare days. So I want now to do what I should have done all along. Incorporate within same form a very fast take up/initiatl turn that immediately goes into four inches of deceleration before completing the stroke exactly as before and in the same time.

The McEnrueful, eschewing mondo, uses straight wrist throughout. That besides its rhythmic down and up bowled backswing is its charm. But composite grip, which the McEnrueful uses, is a grip that should permit some shenanigans.

To that end I shall not mess with my McEnrueful. It is much too good a shot although good on increasingly rare days to ever mess with.

But I WILL add a free-wrister sister shot. Which will start by abandonment of the bowled down and up backswing of both arms. And eliminate all aeronautical banking in the shot as well.

This plot would seem to keep left hand on racket for longer but won't because of gradual layback of the wrist that pulls the racket throat away.

Wrist gradally opens in rhythmic tandem with rest of the backswing. And gradually closes during first part of foreswing, the army part. And rolls forward at same time to gradually close the strings. (This roll is caused by level swing with elbow held slightly out from bod.)

Aeronautical banking in a McEnrueful is caused by forward hips rotation that lowers the rear shoulder.

In the proposed sister shot one will keep one's shoulders level. And minimize forward hips turn (although there still will be some). One can swing the trunk, not the hips, to provide the bod half of delayed push on the ball. Delayed release of the elbow provides the other half of big push with wrist once again completely straight.

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How Much Should We Listen to Pancho Segura on the Subject of One-Hand Backhand?

100 per cent. Because he is a smart and experienced cookie whether he himself has/had a bad one-hander or not.

Obviously he had/has one of the greatest forehands ever. I go with the idea of "has" rather than had even after the person is dead. To the 95-year-old undead person in this case let us cede great braininess both prehumous and posthumous whether to do so is humerous with next question whether during the bad one-handers of his hay-day he swung his humerus and how.

In CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY co-written with the late Gladys Heldman Segura decries chicken wing one-handers and yet espouses one-handers with ever straightening elbow built into them, a kind of cousin.

If what he espouses weren't slightly different from what I myself now do I wouldn't write this post.

He says, "As the arm swings forward, it straightens but never becomes rigid. At the moment of impact, when racket meets ball well in front of the body, there is a slight bend in the elbow. At the end of the follow through, the arm is almost but not quite straight."

I infer from this that the arm straightens all the way to the end of the follow through though never getting completely straight. Currently, I straighten only to impact but am open to the new idea because of its increased possibilities for economy combined with inside-out swing.

To this I add that fulcrum for the envisioned shot is not the shoulder ball but center of the back since contraction of the shoulder housing provides most of the power.

Experiment then will be to slow down subordinate elbow straightening even more so that it continues all the way to end of follow through.

No Wawrinka or Thiem, this.. Not in fact any of the many players who bar the arm and bar it early. Federer? He still is straightening his arm during the hitting part of his backhand, it seems to me.

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Simply Pursue the Image of a Small Plane Propeller

Better that than getting hung up on a baton unless one has an unnatural attraction to drum majorettes or majors and perhaps has always been in love with John Philip Sousa.

To be a small plane pilot, let's imagine that human brain and small plane prop are one and the same.

This makes the plane go in the direction we want. So let's set our brain-propeller a small amount to the right of our target.

And slow down the prop speed as suggested in the previous post.

Let's widen the stance and bend the knees a bit more so as to build space under the ball for all of this to happen.

We fly to right of ball. And then fly right at the ball.

Better that than push the ball off to the side.

Final question: What at contact is the level of the hand? Same as ball? Below it? Above it? Choices that affect the quality of one's spin.