A New Year's Serve

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Modern Retro

The people who think that modern retro is useful only to Federer and not to all the people who have followed him are not the brightest bulbs on the planet but nevertheless may have some intelligence to offer us.

This would be the part about watching the ball past contact or keeping the head still or even turning it back a little-- the one feature of Roger's form, they insist, that everybody should emulate.

Do it on both forehands and serves, I'd say, but don't be doctrinaire and left brain about it. The head doesn't really turn backward, it only seems to turn backward in relation to what the rest of the body is doing just then.

From contact the head finally does turn forward with one's bod.

If this isn't clear or you just want to drill the lesson, go to a swimming pool and think about best form in the front or Australian crawl. When breathing, the head rotates with the body and then doesn't.

[don_budge]

Why?

This would be the part about watching the ball past contact or keeping the head still or even turning it back a little-- the one feature of Roger's form, they insist, that everybody should emulate.

John...what are the reason(s) that one should emulate this characteristic of Roger Federer's?

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Tennis as golf on wheels. Chris Evert stating that the most important technical point she ever received from anybody was from her father, and it was to keep her head still. How can somebody even see the ball if their head is lurching around? But also, if you believe that arcs have their place in tennis (or golf or baseball), you need to center each one somehow. MY father, a Metro handicap of 2 (New York City) golfer, swore by one tip for ten years. It was to point your chin behind the ball. After the ten years he probably went on to think about something else.

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Rotorded Kick Iteration

Bet everything on a swing that comes more over the top of the body.

Ingredients:

1) Extreme stance with body turned as much as both feet allow through being turned way round themselves.

2) Get chest open to the sky and freeze hips in their most wound round position. If Pat Dougherty, the serve doctor at the Bollettieri Academy, says 50-50 hips to shoulders for a first serve and 30-70 for a second (kick) serve, the severely rotorded server is fully justified in saying, "5-95 degrees hips to shoulders for a second (kick) serve."

3) Absolutely stiff though bent legs on flat, unyielding feet most effectively to stretch transverse stomach muscles to form a slingshot. Reader, I'd like to respect you but not if you insist on the needlessly high-fallutin' and scientific term or tennis bon mot "stretch-shorten cycle." "Slingshot" means the same thing. You stretch some set of rubber bands inside of your body; abruptly, then, they shorten. And if you want to buy a new cycle, make sure its chain is properly tensioned and well lubricated.

4) Stop the shoulders 95 per cent forward rotation through resistance rising up through the extending legs. You kept legs firm when they were bent. Now keep them firm when they are extended.

5) Five per cent hips rotation backward and forward. Why have any? Because the backward motion lends feel and rhythm to everything that goes forward. And because you need something to turn the shoulders before the slingshot in the gut releases. You need this initial forward turn as part of working the racket head to the "slot" that's parallel to the outer edge of your body.

6) To force of belly slingshot add scapular adduction slingshot for 10 per cent more racket head speed.

7) In depth understanding of the word "iteration." That means not only to learn its derivation (a "going through") but, like any live word, to understand its resonance-- in this case the vibe must resound through your muscle and bone. Nobody in tennis survives through formula. Tennis is music. People hit the right note through trying for it in new iterations again and again.

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Dads and Golf...Keeping the head still ala Federer and Evert

Tennis as golf on wheels. MY father, a Metro handicap of 2 (New York City) golfer, swore by one tip for ten years.

Exactly. If you keep your eyes on the ball and keep your eyes where the ball was just after you strike it you keep your head from moving while your racquet is meeting the ball. Arcs and tangents.

If you keep your head still you will not develop the bad habit of lifting the head as you swing...many do this in an attempt to generate topspin. Better to stay down and swing through the ball cleanly allowing the path of the racquet face to dictate the path of the ball.

Keeping the head still as the stationary point of a compass you feel that your shoulders swing freely around the head...just like the golf swing.

Anyone with a two handicap from NYC must be a very special person. Amazing.

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...many do this in an attempt to generate topspin. Better to stay down and swing through the ball cleanly allowing the path of the racquet face to dictate the path of the ball.

Keeping the head still as the stationary point of a compass you feel that your shoulders swing freely around the head...just like the golf swing.

I like the idea of staying down. Wish there were more videos of Miloslav Mecir available.

Note: I have finally succeeded in darkening a quote from another person. I've been at this stuff for years! This is the first time.

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Even More Rotorded

A person even more rotorded than the server in post # 1264 might try everything the same but with the re-conception that once you start turning your hips backward, presumably at the end of the shoulders wind (long i), you give away needed tension in the stomachy slingshot.

This server, still working with 5 to 95 per cent ratio (before in possible but not inevitable frustration trying something else) would simply load and even pre-load his gut right through the backward 5 per cent of hips even if this meant picking up on something he already was doing.

With only 5 per cent forward hips turn now available (just think perhaps "a very small amount"), one could end up having combined the little move with three big things:

1) The "double-wind" (long i) identified by Charlie Pasarell in the great old book MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES. Shoulders wind back (long i) with back arching at the same time.

2) Beginning scapular retraction, which definitely is the most important component of arching one's back.

3) Easy but powerful drive from both legs to create a wide-threaded corkscrew upward and help put racket head in the slot and conclude the scapular retraction for one's second slingshot with both scheduled for simultaneous release.

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Quick Start Applied to One Hander Topspin Backhands

We all know the wonderful advantages of the Quick Start tennis program in the United States.

Softer balls that a dog can pull through the walls of a tennis basket, softer kids and parents who are softer in the head, nurturing mentors of the type that get the kids hopping around on one foot pretending to be a flamingo.

It's all great but hasn't produced instant results the way it's supposed to. The 2012 U.S. Open finalists were a Brit and a Serb.

So let's rush ahead and steal Quick Start for our one hander topspin backhands while we wait for the American finalists to appear.

Apply both scapular adduction and scapular retraction to the hips turn part of the forward stroke.

New questions immediately emerge.

Does scapular retraction then continue through the rest of the stroke? Along with shoulder ball rotation of the extending or extended (barred) arm? Very possible.

For years, in web posts such as this one, although I have repeatedly posed the question of when one should best apply scapular retraction, I have received no reply from the same persons who will answer any other question.

Perhaps I have my answer? We'll see.

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Results for # 1267

. Maximum hop of the ball came with knees and hips initiating the backward turn. Tried but rejected backward shoulders-hips sequence.

. Backward hips to shoulders ratio: 20--80 per cent.

. Decided not to initiate forward turn with hips. The forward hips and shoulders turns should be simultaneous as far as I'm concerned, as of this morning. (Note: I'll change this idea by afternoon in this same post. The rotations will be simultaneous but in opposite directions at least in one sense).

. Move head toward net as part of the forward action but do it slowly. Imagine that this small tract of cartwheel is activated by and is in tandem with "horizontal" rotation of the shoulders. Thus one speed determines the other and is exactly the same-- an idea from drive belts and equal size drive pulleys in car mechanics. Swing both elbows in sync with this weird, altering arc of the shoulders. One of the Brian Gordon animations shows a colored barrel rotating first horizontally then more vertically. This experiment here may or may not challenge that sequence or any sequence. But chest is open to sky even as head slides toward net.

. The head stays still, i.e., is the hub of the swing but not in a fixed and slavish way. The head rather moves forward as already indicated. The shoulders rotate around the head until they finally take the head with them.

. Archer's bow has been restored. The hips go out at the most natural feeling part of backward body turn. Release of bow is not a twang but a dream release in slow motion. Abruptness is saved for the simultaneous slingshots of gut and scapula.

. Chest remains open to the sky through brush of the ball.

NOTE from another John Escher voice later in the same day: "Sounds like two different speeds of forward rotation to me." So why can't hips keep fighting the gut as both turn slowly forward? Another way of saying this is that shoulders don't just wind back during the backswing but keep winding during the 20 per cent forward hips turn even though this contradicts my third bullet point up above. Added bonus: It's easier to drop racket into a scabbard parallel with right edge of the body when that edge is winding TOWARD the drop.

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Fall in a Federfore?

Is there any fall in a Federfore (Featherfore in English and Featherfoot in Barnyard)?

This seems a simple question in a world in which all questions are said to be good.

If one posed it at the annual meeting of cutting edge teaching professionals held at Flushing Meadows, however, one might get flushed right out of the room.

"What are your credentials for such a question, John?" one of the friendly peers might ask.

Your name might be Ebenezer or Gertrude or Mark Papas but the response could be the same.

Suppose however there were an Einstein in the group, a Szilard or Nils Bohr, known to have come to the rescue of the young Richard P. Feynman in the Center for Advanced Studies at Princeton? And he quickly taught the others through example to view your question with respect?

First there would be a defining of terms. "Just what is a Federfore?" "An imitation Roger Federer forehand." "And what do you mean by fall?" "Well, not Autumn." "He's talking about gravity then." "Yes, gravity that occurs right after an early flip and before one's scapular adduction-- maybe only one inch!"

At that point a twenty minute discussion of adduction, addiction, abduction and seduction would begin.

Let's pull up any forehand by Roger Federer and decide for ourselves.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHShortArmActionSide_250fps.mp4

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHCenterArmActionSide_250fps.mp4

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_wide/rf_fh_wide.html?RFFHWideOpenStanceRear2.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_wide/rf_fh_wide.html?RFFHWideOpenStanceCourtLevelRear1.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideOutArmActionSide1_500fps.mp4

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionFront_250fps.mp4

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHShortArmActionSide_250fps.mp4

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I think you're right. I can't see any either.

But a recreational player sure could change pitch and direction in a last instant hurry by adding a little.

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If You, If You (Volleys)

You heard me correctly. One word is worth a thousand pictures. If you choke up on the handle, you'll hit better volleys. If you open the strings during contact the volleys may improve.

Depends on the way you open. By twisting the racket? Or by sending it ahead from your shoulder? Or either at different times? Which method is better for you on this 15-30 point right now?

Am I trying to mess with your volley? Of course. I enjoy being a troublemaker.

If you send the racket ahead of you while it's going down, the strings will open. If you send the racket ahead of you while it's going up you'll open them even more, probably too much. How then to compensate?

Well, on a backhand volley, one could be straightening one's arm at the same time. Straightening the arm always closes the racket face. And if it's opening and closing at the same time perhaps one will arrive at the perfect amount.

Same thing on a forehand volley but done a different way. Suppose that the racket is going away from you and up at the same time, but you prefer always to volley with a bent arm on forehand side if you can.

What else could diminish the opening at contact? There's more than one answer. Think I'll go with rotating the shoulder through contact. If I call the shoulder "body," then the racket isn't going away from the body quite as much.

But everybody knows, you argue, that the racket is supposed to descend slightly on every volley. But everybody doesn't know that, it turns out, e.g., Billie Jean King, one of the best volleyers ever to live, advised the readers of one of her books to keep their volleys level.

Peter Burwash, the Canadian, would start out beginner volleying students in Peter Burwash International with butterfly nets.

Just think about how that emphasizes the catching aspect of a volley. What will taking one's oldest racket and replacing the hitting strings with some kind of netting lead to? High to low volleys? Well, maybe sometimes but...

I distinctly heard Luke Jensen tell the women of Grosse Pointe, Michigan to make their volley stroke go upward. And when he himself did the difficult exercise that he ordered (a chip service return in the alley followed by a killer volley to the exact same place), I assume that his volley stroke went upward. And when he and his twin brother Murph won the French Open Championship, I assume that their volley strokes went up.

Just to forget you for an instant, esteemed reader, will these strange volley notions help my net game? Probably not. I'll probably be better off volleying the way I always do whatever that is and will revert to it as soon as possible.

But how do I know I won't be better off the other way? And what's so bad about opening up new possibilities? How can an honest person ever predict a sure non-result?

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Putting Posts # 1257 and 1271 Together

Because Federer can lay his wrist back farther than most people who want to swing somewhat like him, they must take different measures to strike best edge or facet of ball-- which is available to anyone.

Re-adjustment of racket setting in middle of the backswing is the way to go. Do we all agree on what "backswing" is however? And do we all agree that this often delayed move is characterized by its smoothness and singleness even though it's broken into two parts: A) lift of the racket head but not the racket handle and B) extension of the arm from bent to straight in a direction dictated by the elbow hinge.

In the most practical YouTube video ever on short angle, post # 1257, "Applying Tom Avery Spin Lesson to One's Full Federfore," I found an ingredient which for good reason Tom does not discuss although he certainly demonstrates it--straight bowl from the shoulder ball opening up the racket. Tom has to do that so that he won't egg the ball and add sidespin virus and lose control. There is good sidespin, it turns out, and there is bad. The bad is the tennis cousin of smothered slice in golf. (The drive may go thirty yards or cross three fairways.)

Tom succeeds in finding proper edge of ball since the swing and grip he uses closes racket face at the outset. And when an eastern grip player watches a lot of Federer videos he's likely to be surprised at how much Federer does, while using a 3.5 eastern, still manage to get his racket closed.

So this novice with eastern grip racks his brain to close his racket more in some equally effective way (he hopes) when maybe he ought to open the strings a bit.

To do this, how about fiddling more with setting halfway through the backswing? I find that if I topple the racket tip over an inch or two more I get the basic result I want.

That is a solid core action that feels like swinging a bamboo pole threaded behind you or in front of you.

Solid swing in the middle characterizes a Roger Federer forehand, and solid swing in the middle characterizes a Federfore, too.

Solid swing goes right to and through the final scapular adduction or slingshot that helps take the loosely held with light medium pressure racket so effectively UP the ball.

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No Need to Stop and Bail Out

I'm not ready to bail out on learning progressions that have taken my serve this far. But what does the nutty expression "bail out" really mean? A small pram but not a baby carriage with a foot of water in the bottom. Momentum has ceased. One sprang a leak sometime back. Either that or water washed in over a gunwale, the transom or the bow. A plastic milk carton with a good handle and the bottom cut off usually will save your life.

For people with gimpy legs and a lot of others, too: Keep your feet flat, knees bent. Develop gravity drop and figure eights. Use opposite hand to hold your hitting elbow stationary in front of you and whip the racket back and forth, full cycle six or seven times.

Time to serve. Take racket back with knees. Keep er going with shoulders. You could send front hip toward net now but don't. Save that to help with a great drop.

One can see improved drop using a weighted racket and watching oneself in a big mirror.

To repeat: Start racket back with knees. Keep er going with shoulders from gut. After weight reverses for the toss, send hips toward net as they rotate forward! (The exclamation point is from chess notation.)

As hips rotate slightly forward while bending toward net, you keep er going.

"Keep er going" refers to shoulders still winding back.

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Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot

Suppose that a tennis player decided to read every Agatha Christie mystery about the fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

I'm not about to do this despite all the tennis in those novels. I don't even watch very often on TV the BBC version that stars David Suchet, the British actor who is so excellent with or without a mustache.

All the episodes are good but just too many were made, I guess.

Think John McEnroe as a tennis announcer. He's very good but suffers from overexposure. Remember how so many of us, including John McEnroe, came to resent Dick Enberg although we think he's fine by now? We simply heard and watched too much Dick Enberg over a period of years, maybe decades.

Just once in a while I like to read some Agatha Christie-- anything by Agatha Christie-- simply to experience her vision of pure evil and extreme human nastiness.

I haven't met many tennis players that bad. One kid went to jail for jewel theft but that was the extent of it. I could beat him indoors but not outdoors, where he brought along a hooting gang to watch our unchaperoned singles match in the city/town tennis championships.

I guess this was karmic reprise of the time in chess when I was playing the behind-the-walls school superintendent at Massachusetts Correctional Institute, Norfolk, and a bunch of triple-lifers gathered around the board and started chanting, "N-O-R-F-O-L-K, Norfolk!"

Bad, good or in between, whatever a person is, detective work is required for him to figure out his best tennis strokes.

Mystery novels then have more true relevance to tennis than we thought.

Face it, the bad person is a detective, too. Had to figure how not to be caught, right?

In this sense he represents an early draft of the complete crime and its ultimate solution.

The tennis players I best know are stuck on the first draft. And I would be a worse player (some would say an "even worse" player) if I hadn't decided to include both scapular adduction and scapular retraction in the forward hips portion of my one-handed topspin backhand.