A New Year's Serve

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Advertisements for Myself

(Some new ideas on Federfore at Ochi's string, "Straight arm, no double bend, but going big," post # 9)

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Exploring the Federform

I may be one of the players who over-obsess with stroke technique. On the other hand, if I retain sufficient detachment on the subject, I may do science or art instead, or in a third way achieve some sort of real progress.

My method-- days of dropping and hitting balls interspersed with fierce matches usually with the same player-- is somewhat isolating.

That is why I'm glad I spent the morning yesterday at the Randy Pate Tennis Academy, Winston-Salem, where the kids were learning from the excellent instructors and from one another and, generally speaking, were hitting the cover off of the ball. They didn't all have huge western grips either.

Today my forehand was mysteriously transformed. That's not a big deal, however, since I sometimes experience five transformations in a single afternoon.

But I found myself playing with a new idea. When moving the arm independent of the body, you're either hammering (racket tip going faster than hand) or feeling (racket tip and hand moving at the same speed).

This philosophy permits one to lift harder and later from the shoulder and yet still call this action "feeling for the ball."

I think that if someone wants to use a count structure for their strokes (and I do) and stays very long with this learning method, they will move some cherished action backward or forward in the overall tract they've developed.
Next they will say, "Oh no, I was so wrong in that discussion I had with Jeffrey Counts." (Oh, God, and I didn't even intend the pun.)

The phone numbers I'm using now (and changing all the time) refer also to individual frames of a TennisPlayer Stroke Archive video. The new idea created a 55439 before deceleration. I only want to discuss the nine.

The 9 starts with the racket strings recently mondoed and facing the target. This is doubtless not the only way to hit the ball but a very interesting way. Among other things it may cause you to open up the shoulders early and more than you used to do. The 3, the mondo, is essential in this approach to achieving rough aim for the shot.

So there you are, strings already facing the target, outer leg fired, shoulders spinning strongly, a good separation between body and hand. To do "9," which is all acceleration, you add a vigorous lift of the straight arm from the relaxed shoulder with hand aiming for the ball. Before it gets there, though, it
veers 90 degrees to the left not only from two sets of arm muscles but from the upper body rotation itself, sending the strings up past the ball as the rotational forearm muscles, instead of trying to add power of their own, remain relaxed enough to transmit but activated just enough to preserve shape.

This shape is a straight runway, same as an idealized kick serve, and it goes from left to right as subtly as a good golf swing. Whether your human head also flows right or stays fixed, one's racket angle is preserved from end of mondo through lift and rotation of racket up on forearm.

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Federfore: Learning Ladder rather than Immediate Comprehension

I'll be opinionated today, so don't be shocked. It's just a striving for vigor in advancing some ideas. If tomorrow I don't like where the opinions led, I'll change them the day after that.

In improving a Federfore, particularly that version in which loose fingers, loose wrist and loose forearm passively sling the racket tip out to the right, kinetic chain theory, visual tennis theory, and even pre-verbal tennis theory are useless, so throw them out.

First we learned to ease back on our muscularity in twisting the forearm (called "pronation" in the serve but never referred as such in the forehand in order to perpetuate confusion and superstition-- actually, this movement is one and the same whatever the stroke).

Second we learned to throw/bowl the straight arm up and out at the ball so that both ends of the racket move at the same speed.

Third we learned to veer the hand away to the left just before contact, using two (or one) muscular system in the arm and the ongoing UBR (upper body rotation).

Fourth we must calibrate this total UBR more finely, so that right shoulder pushes directly behind the straight elbow as it bowls right and immediately pushes directly behind the hand as it veers left. If this is done with precision the word "veer" may become untenable suggesting as it does a COD (change of direction) of 10-30 degrees rather than the desired 90 degrees.

Success in this last step also authorizes a straight arm version of the stroke for those occasions when separation is ocean wide, i.e., with contact well beyond the outside edge of a batter's plate in this non-baseballer's, non-golfer's but bowling ping-ponger's forehand slam.

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Federfore: Putting the Word "Unfurl" where it Most Counts

(With apologies once again to Jeffrey Counts.)

In some of my earlier word pictures I wasted the word "unfurl," a sailing term, on extension of the arm behind oneself or perhaps more toward the right fence.

It's a fair description of one aspect of what happens during the mondo, but that pro tour word "mondo" itself has the potential to carry all meaning necessary for the peculiar action it describes including some simultaneous small parts intricacy (the wrist laying back to max, the forearm rolling down to max).

No, much better to save "unfurl" for something simple yet liberating, a tone-downed version of forward forehand roll that lifts the frame, preserving its setting, to make a surgical incision as straight and thin as a tennis racket in the air.

This puts us in the delicious position of attacking the fundament of modern tennis, the "windshield wiper."

We've all used the term, and most of you, dear readers, will continue to do so, but I must tell you from excessive experience with old cars, the time comes (about once a year) when you must replace the rubbers.

Forget car wipers along with truck wipers and screwballs in baseball.

Focus instead on every slow motion film you've ever seen of Roger Federer's forehand.

Notice how he in turn focuses on a projected contact point impossibly far to his right, bowling up with his straight arm but with the CP still an extra racket
length away.

So how do the strings travel that last distance at such a late moment?

They unfurl.

[stumphges]

Here I go again interjecting, interrupting. But I've got a question:

Bottle, can you tell if the hitting-arm shoulder is included in the mondo? That is, the mondo involves external rotation, or winding, which is then unwound (or unfurled) in the 'wiper'. As forearm supination is an external rotation, an external furling. Is the shoulder joint included in this furling as well?

The way to tell is to focus on the humerus, or the elbow (hard to do on videos). Does the inner crease of the elbow point more directly 'up' after the mondo than before? If so, then the humerus has externally rotated during the mondo and is part of this furling.

This would make sense, as there are all sorts of little muscles/tendons that could get involved in the stretch/shorten elasticity. I think others have talked about 'stretching the chest', which I take to mean using the stretch/shorten facility of the shoulder in the extension/flexion and (less so) the adduction, abduction directions. But I've never heard mention of the rotational element (which is really furling.

I ask as it seems to me if I let my humerus and elbow externally rotate along with forearm during mondo that the inside-out butt to the ball alignment is set up more naturally, and the racquet face remains closed more easily (except on the high ball, where it just don't stay closed). This is all along that theme of 'pulling' the stroke.

This furled shoulder-forearm pulling then unfurls all the more, or so it seems?

BTW, have you checked out the Laver forehand in the archive? That guy could mondo, straight arm and whip-wiper! He may even have had an F2.

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A Good Powertrain won't Injure you Either (see Baseball KC Thread)

I think we probably agree on most of the tennis here, but as to the language, I have serious misgivings.

Words like "supination," "adduction," and "abduction" seem intended to glaze someone's eyes over, and to disguise meaning rather than convey it, and I say that as a person who studied (and enjoyed) Latin.

Making words more abstract can never be a good idea in something as sensuous as tennis?

The exception, I suppose, would be a scientific, i.e., logical only discussion, but this is, or ought rather to be, a discussion of Rabelaisian pleasure and tennis shot control and accuracy?

As for "unfurl," yes, we can apply it anywhere but why should we? My idea was to use it in the best, i.e., most liberating way.

And I just played my first match since seriously spraining my elbow. How did I sprain it? With a short forehand crosscourt winner hit like a slapshot in hockey. The strings were coming up but moving toward the target as well. The forearm was involved to the max, as was the whole arm, with both rolling violently toward the target. I'll tell you something. I'm very lucky I only missed three weeks.

Today I hit ten such winners. Each one was painless, effortless and pinpointedly accurate. That is why any reader of my posts should re-read
numbers 108 and 109. The theory behind them may be solid or not, but as a practical way to hit "the confidence shot" or "the pro shot," i.e., the short crosscourt clear winner, I don't think they can be beat.
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Your questions, stumphges. Hitting arm-shoulder included in mondo? Absolutely. Forearm and whole arm close racket up high. Forearm and whole arm open racket down low. With a Roger grip, that leaves the strings at about a 45-degree angle closed (it just opened out some).

"This furled shoulder-forearm pulling then unfurls all the more, or so it seems?"

Sorry, can't follow. You get a curmudgeonly, writerly, man with a Russian linguist for a brother-in-law response. SAVE WORD "UNFURL" FOR THE RACKET HEAD ITSELF AS IT MAKES A NEATLY SURGICAL INCISION IN THE AIR.
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Now I want to look at the Laver forehand to see if I think he's doing exactly what enabled me to hit the effortless short angles today, and will report back, putting the answer in capitals.

#1. Wow-- racket and front arm both out of the slot and behind the back.
Very unFedererly. Continental grip, right? The milder the grip the more extraordinary the talent required. YES I THINK SO. Reasoning: the racket comes up off of the ball before it starts to cross his body.

#2. NOT ON THIS ONE! This is precisely how I hurt myself. Rod Laver was only saved by the extraordinary musculature of his arm.

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Worth a Try

Accelerate the angle up to the ball where...

"The angle" is all the hand layback you can muster on any given serve.

Delay the entire wrist extension-forearm roll combination until after contact in other words.

High-five but with wrist laid back, trying for as loud a slap as possible same as always.

To do this you hit up but snap down with how exactly you snap down less important than ever before.

By eliminating the two wimpy contributors (wrist and forearm) from the upward path, you begin to rely on larger body parts for final acceleration on the ball, i.e., triceptic arm extension which creates a tight arc of the racket, and shoulder throw of whole arm along the same exact line only in a broader arc.

Do this sequentially or simultaneously? Decide for yourself. If sequentially, you have a couple of choices for sequence (whole arm or lower arm first).

A fourth option is whether to twist the elbow during this process, and if so, a fifth option of where to do so, e.g., twist elbow while it points in a single direction or twist it out at some later point or even to delay this twist along with forearm and wrist actions until after the contact itself.

In such a throw the elbow and hand can come at the ball along a number of different lines and arcs and with variations of which part of the ball gets struck.

This is a radical idea for people like myself who use twice as much arm extension as most of the best servers. We do it to get the racket tip farther
down. Windmill action without a pause does help. So does bending the knees
as hands first go down, getting the lead hip out next and bending down still more on front leg after that.

This is opposite sequence from Justine Henin and some others who bend the knees first then travel. Here you travel first then bend some more. The time interval is the same, so this modification should not interfere with your accustomed overall motion.

One irony of bending your arm completely when you serve is that the hand
gets too close to your body with the result that you lose leverage. But if you
twist the racket tip back more rather than down your elbow can point in such
a direction that the forward, upward arm action will be more of a 3/4ths than
4/4ths throw, i.e., neither overhead or sidearm but in between.

This way you restore some of the leverage you lost by squeezing the two halves of your arm completely together. The throw comes from farther back
and therefore is more in synch with the moving line between your two shoulders.

The best serve in this experiment I hit today was a fast slice out wide in the deuce court. I'm sure that wrist and forearm played a part-- but by trying
not to use them at all I at least delayed them way past the place where I usually let them go.

Result: At least one great serve with the prospect of more.

Old tennis maxim: It's not what you do, it's what you think you do.

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Length of Runway

Servers wanting to lengthen their accelerative runway may squeeze the two halves of their arm together without realizing they just have countered their goal.

This is not to say there aren't remedies available, but first the server has to acknowledge the creation of a new problem. For when the racket is behind your back and you completely fold up your arm (or rather fold it down), you bring your hand in too close to your body.

I'll leave this thought right there for now. Opinions?

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Underwhelming Answers

Right. I didn't think so. The problem is too much for His Puniness, the human mind. Please never wonder, dear reader, why I write so much. It's because the thoughts I require won't come from anyone else.

Today I think I'll try "to stir the pot," i.e., accelerate all right hand travel until the two halves of the arm press completely together just as I toss.

Then I'll open the arm out to a right angle during hip jut and added compression of front leg.

"In other words you'll end up in the same position as someone who kept his right arm straight for the toss and then bent the arm to a right angle," a debater might say. "So isn't this wasted experiment?"

Perhaps. But it's "bending the stick the other way." And any time you do that you never know. And extension rather than compression of the arm to a right angle also provides a naturally opportune time in which to twist the forearm out. And all this will occur as shoulders tilt back. Hand motion will joint this tilting backward instead of countering it for a change.

To the court: Similar results but with a different feel. Some serves probably went twice as fast. More errors than usual but worth pursuing. A lot of this seems about when to open the racket out. One can keep palm more faced down when one is using such early arm compression-- but it makes me think one's better off opening the racket out early, even down by the knees during the drop if you opt for late full arm compression, i.e., the mind proceeds through opposites.

Another choice is keeping the palm vertical-- turned neither down nor up-- something I've probably done for too long.

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Mondo Backward a Little

If you agree, in your Federfore, that you'll start the arm acceleration by bowling with both ends of the racket, there remains another interesting change to make.

That is to mondo backward a little so as to make the bowling motion longer.

In other words, as you pivot your racket up on a still elbow, the racket is well out in the slot.

It will remain so, but as the arm attains full length (part of the mondo, which all in all, is a pretty complicated motion) not only will the forearm come backward a little as simple function of where the elbow is pointing, but elbow itself can move a few inches backward toward the shoulders line, which just then is swinging around.

Elbow never goes behind the shoulders line, thus staying in the slot, but it does get close to it.

This gives you more of a bowl up and out toward the ball before your hand and elbow veer left as the racket head rolls up and to the right (i.e., it unfurls with little muscular twist of either kind-- from forearm or shoulder rotors-- and now becomes a semi-passive act).

P.S. Do always mondo but don't mondo backward like this all the time-- particularly to produce a short-angled crosscourt forehand. The option seems
very good for most down the line shots but for some deep crosscourts, too. An option is what it is.

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DB Backhand Algebra

Was Ted Williams a goose for over-analyzing hitting mechanics? He is generally regarded as the most aggressive batting coach that ever lived. He came up with a pretty good personalized swing, I'll say, but which came first, the swing or the directions? I don't know. Don Budge, on the other hand, never over-analyzed anything. He didn't even analyze his own strokes as much as his older brother Lloyd, who taught him to play tennis, or the tennista writers Talbert and Old, or his coach, Tom Stow, who tweaked every aspect of Don's game except for his backhand. But Don Budge modeled his backhand on Ted Williams' lefty baseball swing. So, was Don Budge a goose? I don't think so. But there is room for over-analysis in tennis even when it came through baseball. It may have produced some good result.

Whatever one thinks, if one decides to emulate the DB liquid uppercut, one will not find the information one needs in the tennis literature of the past without using some algebra, i.e., employ suppositions the same as trying to learn from the most non-baseball-like, pingpong-slam-like Federfore. Budge backhand: Not talked about enough and therefore kept in code. Federfore:
Outside conventional coaching knowledge and therefore kept in code.

All the people mentioned so far, however, are tremendous sources of information, as is Stow student Jim McLennan, who has spoken of getting the wrist straight to hit very natural backhands. You slowly get wrist straight in the early part of the stroke while you are swinging with both shoulders, thus rolling the racket from open to square (me talking now). The wrist then firms itself just the right amount while you are hitting the ball. The wrist then becomes concave again if you read Lloyd Budge the same way I do. You go from concave to straight to concave every time you hit this stroke, which makes it "free-wristed" and more pleasurable than a Swiss watch action whether Federer or Wawrinka. And, as Talbert and Old tell us, it is non-accelerative. It is extraordinarily easy to aim, too. My regular opponent loudly rued this right away. And, if you want, you can add a Bradenesque (and Budgian) leap into the air, caused by a combination of leg extension and the Sunday punch swing working together, although you should probably delay this leaping aspect until much later.

Best of all, to achieve ridiculous simplicity, you can take bent arm back at waist level (count 1), straighten arm (count 2), twist straight arm or just start rowing sideways with body to lower racket tip (count 3), slowly rotate the shoulders to the ball (count 4), and let the arm go (count 5).

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Rowing Option in DBBH

In rowing correctly on the water, you drive legs, body and arms all at once. A sequence then naturally occurs since legs overpower back which overpowers arms.

In rowing in a Don Budge backhand (something he probably did once in a while), the motion seems intended more to generate position than power, WITHOUT the above mentioned legs-back sequence, at least in the beginning.

In fact the front leg gently compresses as the back comes up rather than fires as part of a double-barreled shotgun as the back tries in vain to come up.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHFront2.mov

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Learning Progression, DBBH

Vic Braden demonstrates two different kinds of rotational movement in his famous book, TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, and the video TENNIS OUR WAY
made with Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe.

In the book, Braden's backhand emphasis is on hip movement combined with lift from the legs. In the video, the emphasis is on shoulders movement or UBR (upper body rotation).

In the book, as you would expect, along with visuals there is a lot of verbal explanation and even story-telling, as Braden describes a trip to South America, where he found a leather-maker who fabricated a special holster that enabled him to hit backhands from the hips alone.

In the video, as you also would expect, he demonstrates backhand body rotation with a minimum of verbiage, only it's the shoulders that are turning this time, and from the waist up. Should one get mad? Or simply say, "The world is complicated?" In this video Vic demonstrates how the shoulders stop and the arm continues.

In a Don Budge type backhand, I would suggest, one can do either thing or both but probably not at the same time; however, I like to write from my own experience-- someone else's will be different.

Part of my primal tennis experience definitely is reading TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, the central image of which is the young Vic Braden watching Don Budge hit backhands through a hole in a Chicago wall (think Pyramus and Thisbe) while Don's whole body keeps coming off of the ground.

Right now I see these three of many options:

1) Simply take an easy cut at the ball "without flailing at it like a .050-hitting pitcher" (DB from DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR).

2) Add some mustard but hold the pickles, I mean "turn the hips marginally before the shoulders" as Ted Williams said.

3) Don't turn the shoulders at all. Do it all with the hips, combining this rotation with lift from the front leg, then let the arm go.

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Triceptic vs. Septic with Spaghetti for Dinner

Tennis may be a simple game, but how simple is real improvement in playing it?

What works best for me is a complete yielding to my own obsession with technique, combined with a conviction that no one person is ever going to be sufficiently intelligent to grasp any set of fine points within a given stroke on a given day.

This leads to a belief in a revolving loop as in a sanding machine—a conveyer belt with different years and names of stroke attempts embedded in the grit.

So, if one didn’t master commensurate with one’s athletic potential the Don Budge backhand in 1952, one waits until the subject comes naturally up in 1968 and perhaps again in 1980. In 2009, one is re-reading the part of Don Budge’s memoir where he recommends a big knuckle on bevel one, which is even milder than the grip his protege Vic Braden espouses (big knuckle on bevel eight). This leads to a rolling of the wrist straight, firming up for contact, reversing back to its original concavity during the followthrough. Coincidentally, the stroke finally begins to percolate.

Similarly with the Federfore, one may spend years figuring out exactly how mondo works with a paucity of articles available on the subject, whose authors are reluctant even to give this clear phenomenon its tour-ascribed name (“mondo”).

And in serving for a rotorded person (rotordedness being the opposite of Andy Roddick’s double-jointedness in his shoulder rotors), I have found some guidance from the outside but all in all an indifference and insufficiency, which still again means figuring things out for oneself.

My biggest question, I guess, is which is better—to extend arm with the triceps or to employ the musclelessness of a spaghettied arm, keeping in mind the challenge may be different depending on degree of bend in the arm first.

From re-reading C.M. Jones, THE MAKING OF A TENNIS CHAMPION, I have decided that a healthy distance of hand from the body at start of service acceleration is absolutely crucial to establishing desired racket head position and speed.

This means that even the rotorded server, so apt to be neurotic about making sure to point his racket tip down at the court, should open up the arm to a right angle before
really letting it go. Mark Phillippoussis does it and so should he.

When obsessing along these lines, one may discover a day when the serves suddenly start flying into the bottom of the net. Perhaps the reason is that the arm is suddenly getting straight much faster than ever before. A few minor adjustments and...

Well, to do it, one can accelerate the super-relaxed right angle, i.e., the elbow, from the shoulder forward and inward with a very fast motion that multiplies from the speed of one’s body rotation.

Double-jointed servers like Roddick and Sampras may twist the upper arm, axle-like, when it is parallel to the court—how will the rotorded server ever know for sure?

He, too, will twist the whole arm, as well as the forearm, so racket tip flies more toward the right fence. Both those twists will occur when the racket is high. That’s the difference.

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Don Budge Type Backhand Maximum Topspin

Budgian backhands afford good opportunity to hit flat (but with a modicum of spin for control) as well as to generate greater topspin. For that, try twisting racket head down in tandem with front leg bending as front foot settles (think of the old Vic Braden sit and hit drill). The minimum hand swing from contact may be preserved, but to bring strings up to ball one can twist straight arm in tandem with forward hip turn and leg extension. This idea of keeping things in tandem is different from other types of one-hand backhand, where the sequential steps can sometimes seem harsh. And don't forget to roll the wrist straight even as you twist the whole arm; then, unroll the wrist in the followthrough same as for a flatter shot.

Personally speaking, I like to roll wrist straight and firm it up a big farther before the ball when going for the more heavily topspun shot.

However, a fair question is whether this topspin if coming as innovation is better than what some senior, say, may already have had. One has to remember the pathetic portrait Frank Deford drew of Bill Tilden, who was so wedded to the idea of innovation that, apparently toward the end of his life, he wasted energy in trying to add an extra hitting step to his ground strokes, thus unnaturally diminishing his tremendous game.

The shoulders turn rather than hips turn variation is what wins this argument for me. Any innovation has to be worthwhile for a seniors player if it suddenly gives him a new minimalist shot with out-sized result. This Don Budge type variation with slow, pendulous upper body swing feels like something good in pocket-billiards.