A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Add

Add forward hips turn to straight arm drop, i.e., do these two things at the same time.

That plus solid body instruction-- shoulders after hips blending into front shoulder continuance through natural clenching of shoulderblades (save the violent version of this clench for passive-arm-from-bend variation of your slice) leads to a classic backhand tip, from Pancho Gonzalez, I think.

That would be to finish the stroke with the hitting side of your strings facing top of the opposite fence. This is a go for it shot as far as I'm concerned.

When you add speed bump for a premeditated instant sending arm ahead of this swing, you do generate a bit more topspin and more typical followthrough but become more conservative, too. There's already quite a bit of topspin and pace in the basic shot.

Heel of hand on 7.5 and swing from arm parallel to sideline.

[bottle]

Everybody

Make sure to see The New Yorker Magazine this week for the color photo of the Bryan brothers doing a chest bump. And for the article about them. And for three poems by Richard Wilbur, a very good poet and very nice man and very good tennis player.

[bottle]

A Federforish Backhand by any other Name

All slowness shall go into drawing the racket back to hit the ball, which SEEMS like violation of the cardinal rule to approach contact at a low rate of speed.

If you're counting to five, you will put four counts into getting the straight arm parallel to the sideline with yourself having stepped out. FIVE! will be the whole backhand. This is unprecedented.

Furthermore, this will be the first time in history that use of the kinetic chain to describe a tennis stroke will actually help somebody to hit it.

But we'll break this seamless stroke into four parts because we're perverse. Because we also want to communicate, however, we'll name them with letters rather than numbers and do it only once, here, in this sentence: ABCD.

You're using a simplified version of kinetic chain here with only three moving parts, hips, shoulders and clench, to pull handle away from the ball. The clench also delivers whatever weight you put on the ball, but this phenomenon should perhaps be viewed as separate and secondary to the generation of spin and maybe kept out of mind both now and later. Spin occurs when the clench-driven hand goes slightly right and racket tip passively unfurls to left-- a contest.

Down goes the arm with forward hips turn. That's the first half of the bowl. You can't have ANOTHER bowl. One is enough. So now the upper part of the bowl rejoins a lot of BODY ROTATION (you could think of this as only two types: lower body and upper body). Arm goes down with lower, up with upper. Now the shoulder stops. What does the arm do? Depends when, exactly, the bowl rejoins the rotation.

The rejoining needs to happen just before the UBR stops. You want to abruptly change direction of hand travel-- and this is a way to do it. You wouldn't want to do it with arm only, would you? Not if you could do it with your body, which is much more powerful.

Probably the best thing I've said about hitting a Federfore sounds almost naive even to me: "Some things are going right to left, others left to right." If you accept that, all you have to do is decide WHICH THINGS you want to go in the opposite directions. And reverse of course for the one-hand backhand.

Vic Braden showed in the old VCR "Tennis Our Way" how when the shoulders are abruptly stopped the arm will accelerate in the direction of previous rotation since it is a lighter mass. One option is just to keep going to a Don Budge type flourishing finish-- some arm from shoulder (very little actually), some bend from elbow, some resumption of concavity in top of the wrist.

The likely confusion point is the shoulder stopping, the arm continuing, which is useful if you're hitting through the ball. Then free arm travel can start (or add to) some more muscular effort straight toward the target. No, the idea here is to bowl away from the target, same as in a Federfore. I'd say the different acceleration for this is over by the time the arm starts any free travel. And I'd say the bowl is much larger than on the forehand side.

One doesn't want to be too much of a purist or logician in thinking about this. If you're still clenching (shoulderblades) when you hit the ball, you're putting some weight on the ball from left to right but in a very mild arc. The bowl meanwhile permits arm roll, i.e., unfurling upward and sideward in same direction as that bowl, but the spin produced is what tells the truth of what has actually happened.

Some things go left to right, some right to left but a bit of sidespin shows that
left to right prevailed. Still, you get more topspin in the mix than any other way in this particular, general design. What makes it work is the feel of bowling right to left and then continuing the rolling unfurl in that same direction.

When I tried out this stroke at dawn this morning, I thought I'd probably found my optimally individual version of Robert Lansdorp's "academy ball," high, searing moonballs. (All tennis players should recognize a great speech when they hear one: "The Academy Ball and the Pro Drive," August issue.) After ten minutes, however, I realized that I could, with almost no modification, hit screaming line drives and sharp angles same as with a Federfore.

[bottle]

One Hand Backhand: Rabbit Punch in the Bowling Alley

This expression "rabbit punch" has a grim history that includes small animals. Somebody's definition of it won't be exactly the same as mine. One illegal punch in boxing involves hitting (and probably killing someone) with heel of hand whether open or closed. A photograph of my favorite tennis writer of all time, John O. Barnaby, shows him pressing a net post with the bonking edge of his fist. Why is he doing that?

Because the arm, when bonking, is exceptionally strong. And too many stroke designs ensure that you never will tap this strength. Additionally, there are stroke designs that waste core body energy in straightening the arm. Why not save the big rotation of hips and shoulders for moving the racket frame?

Working from previous posts (I feel committed to learning progressions and even view each one as a separate voyage of adventure), one may slowly nose the racket tip down to inside while straightening the arm and winding the shoulders back. Now we're going to bowl down and up, right? The wrist will straighten naturally, when it wants to. The hips will turn marginally ahead of shoulders but both will then go. The bowling arm may seem detached from body swing but motion is motion and I don't see how it can fail to total up. The indirection of this bowling motion, however, down and up, means that the strings don't get to the ball too fast, which is good. Just think if body and arm were swinging as hard as they could in the same direction both at the same time. You could produce a mighty swat. Most likely, however, you'd lose all feel and control.

Okay, so here's the deal. Instead of thinking about racket tip, for a change, we'll think about racket butt and leading edge of the hand. Will both, at bottom of the bowl, be pointing in the direction you want them to go to produce a powerful, uppercutting bonk?

Drop and hit a ball this way. You got a tremendous amount of snap when you clenched shoulderblades, right? Was it too much? More than you could control? Didn't feel like "unfurling?" Was more of a jerk?

Drop and hit another ball. This time don't exaggerate the spearing or bonk but let the racket come around as it naturally wants to. Salt and pepper, oregano. Hit another ball. Get the seasoning just right.

Okay, fine. Now I've been to the court. This business of how much to bonk has a lot to do with how much you slowly turn the racket tip down as you slowly straighten the arm and slowly wind the shoulders back as you quickly run to the ball.

[bottle]

Super Relaxed Version

Get all body motion firmly in mind as a single unit (hips, shoulders and clench the sequence). Start the bowl with gravity and lift in a relaxed fashion trying to create a tangent out from the body. Will arm and racket head actually form a straight line if viewed from above? No, not unless you bowl backwards a bit. But it will bowl quite straight considering that your shoulder is rotating right from the motion of you clenching your shoulderblades together. Loosen up on grip a bit. I'll report back if it DIDN'T work.

[stickman]

Heres the truth

Some people dont like me because i am "harsh", in my assesments. So im going to be nice in saying this. SHUT UP!!! And stop wrighting all this bull shit.

Let me explane something to you bottle, very smart people make difficult things look and sound easy. You make easy things impossible to even comprehend!!

You want to serve like the mac? then just do what he does!!! It's not rocket science. You want federes forehand then just do what he does.

[holyhobo]

Cmon stickman dont be dumb! bottle is an unparalled GENIUS!

[nabrug]

Some people dont like me because i am "harsh", in my assesments. So im going to be nice in saying this. SHUT UP!!! And stop wrighting all this bull shit.

Let me explane something to you bottle, very smart people make difficult things look and sound easy. You make easy things impossible to even comprehend!!

You want to serve like the mac? then just do what he does!!! It's not rocket science. You want federes forehand then just do what he does.

This post has been deleted due to violation of Forum guidelines.

[bottle]

Anecdotal Evidence in a Website such as this

This piece was written in longhand before I read the previous three comments.

There's some (anecdotal evidence) but could be more. I often have the feeling that people are overly reluctant to reveal themselves. It doesn't help that they know they may get attacked (much more likely here than at a political or public affairs site where you'd think the passions really would run high).

"How can we know whether to believe you? How can we tell whether you're on the level or you're making this stuff up." I can remember this criticism.

But if somebody says they won a match they probably did (6-2, 6-0 at dawn this morning). And great skepticism, essential to a discussion of history, science, or Afghanistan, may not always be so appropriate here. Tennis, after all, is just as much art as science and therefore is an act of faith (both art and science are, actually). And now that my backhand has really started to cook similar to what finally happened with my forehand, I know that discoveries in stroke technique are age-indifferent. Anyone can learn anything if it's approached right. Athleticism, reflexes, strength, speed-- another story although the perceived limits there also are exaggerated.

I do regret that for one reason or another I couldn't learn passive forearm-roll-to-the-outside ground strokes sooner and younger so that I could enjoy them for a lot longer. I'll just tell something now I learned long ago from another sport.

"Jelled" is as distinct and real a phenomenon in any sport as ice-out in nature.
As an oarsman, I became acutely aware of jelling as something that could happen once during each season in advance of our eight-oared crew winning all three of its Dad Vail National Regatta championships in Philadelphia. As a rowing coach 20 years later, I became acutely aware of ice-out at the first Saturday regatta I hosted on Fish Creek in New York state.

Fish Creek is more of a boulevard than a creek but has enough current to stay open when everything else freezes. My wife had prepared ceramic trophies for the winner of each race. To mark the course I put down 2000 meters worth of milk cartons painted day-glo orange. Each was attached to a cinderblock under the water. At the end of the third race the couple of hundred participants heard a loud crack: Saratoga Lake had let go.

Saratoga Lake is five miles in every direction. The ice sheets came along mowing down bushes twenty feet in on either bank. The day-glo plastic went under. The ice moved toward the Hudson River ten miles away.

Nobody from the six colleges said a word and nobody left. These are among the things I best remember: the silence of those oarsmen and oarswomen, and the sound of ice splintering in the heavy brush.

Everybody had brought their lunch. After three hours the day-glo buoys started to pop up. The ice was gone. The morning regatta became an afternoon regatta. We finished the races and went home.

Well, jelling in sports is just as real as that. When it happens, you know it. And you don't have to put a film of yourself on the internet although you can.

[bottle]

Sling Blade

Sling the racket to the outside.

[stumphges]

Some people dont like me because i am "harsh", in my assesments. So im going to be nice in saying this. SHUT UP!!! And stop wrighting all this bull shit.

Let me explane something to you bottle, very smart people make difficult things look and sound easy. You make easy things impossible to even comprehend!!

You want to serve like the mac? then just do what he does!!! It's not rocket science. You want federes forehand then just do what he does.

Sheesh, sounds like someone took away your bottle!

I sure hope this is deleted and some consequences are meted out. This is a heck of a lot ruder (not to mention just plain abusive) than anything in the super controversial "where the heck did that double bend come from" thread.

[gsheiner]

Bottle,

Just a short note defending your right to post without being attacked, especially since your contributions, although opaque to me at times, seem to represent a passionate, if off-beat, attitude towards the game.

There's a constancy to your posts in your semi-private thread which I have to admit I admire.

[bottle]

Complexity vs. Simplicity

Thank you very much, gsheiner, and for your social concern, stumphges. I've been thinking seriously about this. An occasional attack would be all right if it didn't come from a Rottweiler. Sometimes, even, I miss "challenges" (a milder word for sure) to what I'm saying and recall how they made me focus more and even achieve simplicity sometimes back when I was teaching writing classes for UMASS in Norfolk and Walpole state prisons in Massachusetts. (Willie Horton was one of my students.) Nobody was into euphemism, qualification, grammar, spelling, complex sentences or symbolism. Whoever the student was, he wanted me to be clear and transparent and stark. I must have done it a bit since I lasted the whole calendar year and still am alive enough to tell the tale.

Some things I've said here recently about wrist-- "concave, straight, concave" to try for Don Budge's backhand feel-- have gone unchallenged by anybody. Is this good? I don't know. Did I really find significance in this case by dropping balls and hitting them? Did I misinterpret a very few words from the old sages Talbert and Old? Does it matter? Is there ever an "answer" when it comes to tennis technique or just a "progression?" I stick with my personal metaphor of getting lost in Budapest, Hungary.

Given my appreciation of tennis complexity, I do need something. Not the right to post without being attacked, but permission to be opaque sometimes.
One might find a more interesting destination by allowing oneself to get lost first, I think. That's how Andy Roddick invented his serve, isn't it?

[bottle]

Coordinate three distinct arm motions with three distinct body motions and then reduce the size of everything.

Bowl down and hips turn: together.
Bowl up and shoulders turn: together.
Arm roll and clenching of shoulderblades: together.

First realization was how much it all should occur to side of body. Second idea is to make it happen, on a low ball, at a pretty low level, so that racket rising to comfortable finish spirals upward and across body.

Match score at dawn: 6-1, 6-1 . But thought I was pushing backhand a little. So I take this newest notion to the court now. Reporting back: Everything went as expected for a change. Concave wrist (when viewed from the top)
straightens as you bowl down. Lots of legs in shot. Lots of step-across to get low and maximize body rotation. Trust shoulderblades clench to supply weight and abrupt change of direction. If starting to crowd ball try a few
hit-through shots from Budge-like preparation deeper in slot just to restore respect for proper separation (some would say "spacing"), then return to main shot, making contact farther out now.

The most important thing is to sling strings to left during contact.

[bottle]

Three Backhands: Go With or Too Many?

I'm not including slice, which Nathan, a Winston-Salem teaching pro and brother, recommended some years past that I use exclusively. (I am described by the counter workers at Moe's Southwest Grill as "a brother from another mother.") Backhand slice is my best shot because I can hit it either from muscular or passive elbow straightening in middle of its forward action.

No, I mean the earlier described billiards shot, which I seem never able to get rid of no matter how often I try (it's just too economical and smooth to abandon), the billiards shot modified for a bit more topspin, and the full sling blade backhand which I've been learning and describing here recently.

I know, I know. Learn first before describing. However, I rebel against that tired notion which leads to PR for something already arrived at (arrived at and therefore dead). And full description with warts takes me more rapidly to my next idea.

On forehand side I was able to whittle too big a shot assortment down to one-- the Federfore-- one of the virtues of that particular kind of shot according to Carrera Kent. Two independent persons, he and I, working in entirely different situations, maybe even with different ideas but playing in the same genre reached the same conclusion: In spite of variations, it's all one shot, and this would greatly simplify anyone's game.

Returning now to my backhand concern: The billiards shot modified, if one of the three shots is to become "the staple," seems the most likely candidate. In this shot back-swing is more to the outside. Does arm get fully parallel to sideline? Maybe during step-out but I doubt it.

Such a short backswing means you can delay to get bounce and arm level correct, you can turn down racket tip then as key timing device, you can bowl shallowly both down and up as shoulders turn slowly forward, you can sling blade to left as right shoulder veers right (from shoulderblades clench) with result that strings go both straight yet powerfully upward.

After two matches against same opponent on successive mornings with same result (6-1, 6-1), I think that modified billiard might produce a bit less topspin than full sling blade but is more easily produced-- perhaps the best argument.

When Vic Braden modified Don Budge's backhand for his own use and later description in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, he learned to bring his arm in close to rear thigh accordion-like before he sent it back out. But I'm not sure that Don Budge's original design isn't equally good, and that's what I'm trying to follow now.

Did Don Budge use "shallow bowl?" From the films I see, I can't decide. In any case it seems to be what's working best.