An Elder's View of Tennis
In Virginia there were two brothers who built a clay court. One had a Swedish wife; the other an American wife who looked Swedish. Their headbands were pure Bjorn Borg and so were their strokes. Even though they played well, some of us laughed at them after Bjorn Borg removed himself from the tour though never completely from the limelight.
Roger and I (sounds like the Michael Moore film) are different. Although my forehand, my backhand, and my serve are now patterned on Roger Federer, it's not that I didn't expose myself to other influences.
Roger is just what works best for me and is clearly better than something I might invent that resembled nobody but myself.
There are many classical elements and some common sense that come easily across-- simple as that.
So here's where I am in my continuing evolution, which I hope doesn't accelerate by 7 a.m. tomorrow. At 69 I am "a village elder," as David Korten would say and worthy of respect (ha-ha!).
One reason I like TennisPlayer.net is that I seldom get it. This keeps my tennis at least-- if not myself-- honest.
BACKHAND. I broke Roger's into seven little bits, but all occurring after movement to the ball-- a different subject. Hands to outside, rear shoulder up, racket moving past it, arm extension, upper body rotation, horizontal arm slow swing, and rip. Then I went to the notebooks of the late poet Theodore Roethke, who, although his body looked a bit dumpy, was a hell of a good player. He even COACHED TENNIS at Penn State. There, his sweat pants, rejects from the football team, fell down. They had been through the washing machines once too often, cooking the elastics.
"A many-sided man has many rhythms," Roethke says.
So I divvyed up the seven motions in a series of experiments, which ultimately broke one of them in two, i.e., arm extension, which is first two-armed and then one-armed in Roger's case.
Now I had eight acts to deal with instead of seven-- hands, shoulder, racket,
two-hands (backswing); one-hand, UBR, level slow arm, rip (foreswing). From trial and error this works best for me, at least right now.
FOREHAND. The "long fan" experiment is going well. It comes largely from the
UTube video with crowd up on the wall behind Roger looking down. Could they hit more like Roger if they believed it possible? Of course. But does Roger always keep his elbow this much in one place? No, he's warming up or practicing. The TennisPlayer videos show him sometimes raising the elbow just a little at the end of the racket-still-being-high phase. Degree of separation is degree of confidence, someone said. (It was Vic Braden and in different words.) The stroke gets a little flatter, the lever longer, the ball faster though it was going fast enough already.
SERVE. Simultaneously straightening the body and turning the shoulders back while tossing is not disruptive as I thought, and adds power and length to the toss.
In Virginia there were two brothers who built a clay court. One had a Swedish wife; the other an American wife who looked Swedish. Their headbands were pure Bjorn Borg and so were their strokes. Even though they played well, some of us laughed at them after Bjorn Borg removed himself from the tour though never completely from the limelight.
Roger and I (sounds like the Michael Moore film) are different. Although my forehand, my backhand, and my serve are now patterned on Roger Federer, it's not that I didn't expose myself to other influences.
Roger is just what works best for me and is clearly better than something I might invent that resembled nobody but myself.
There are many classical elements and some common sense that come easily across-- simple as that.
So here's where I am in my continuing evolution, which I hope doesn't accelerate by 7 a.m. tomorrow. At 69 I am "a village elder," as David Korten would say and worthy of respect (ha-ha!).
One reason I like TennisPlayer.net is that I seldom get it. This keeps my tennis at least-- if not myself-- honest.
BACKHAND. I broke Roger's into seven little bits, but all occurring after movement to the ball-- a different subject. Hands to outside, rear shoulder up, racket moving past it, arm extension, upper body rotation, horizontal arm slow swing, and rip. Then I went to the notebooks of the late poet Theodore Roethke, who, although his body looked a bit dumpy, was a hell of a good player. He even COACHED TENNIS at Penn State. There, his sweat pants, rejects from the football team, fell down. They had been through the washing machines once too often, cooking the elastics.
"A many-sided man has many rhythms," Roethke says.
So I divvyed up the seven motions in a series of experiments, which ultimately broke one of them in two, i.e., arm extension, which is first two-armed and then one-armed in Roger's case.
Now I had eight acts to deal with instead of seven-- hands, shoulder, racket,
two-hands (backswing); one-hand, UBR, level slow arm, rip (foreswing). From trial and error this works best for me, at least right now.
FOREHAND. The "long fan" experiment is going well. It comes largely from the
UTube video with crowd up on the wall behind Roger looking down. Could they hit more like Roger if they believed it possible? Of course. But does Roger always keep his elbow this much in one place? No, he's warming up or practicing. The TennisPlayer videos show him sometimes raising the elbow just a little at the end of the racket-still-being-high phase. Degree of separation is degree of confidence, someone said. (It was Vic Braden and in different words.) The stroke gets a little flatter, the lever longer, the ball faster though it was going fast enough already.
SERVE. Simultaneously straightening the body and turning the shoulders back while tossing is not disruptive as I thought, and adds power and length to the toss.
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