A New Year's Serve

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Triple-stop One-arm Backhand

1) Shoulders and arm back
2) Roll racket tip down
3) Legs, hips, shoulders and clench (simultaneous)-- throw off the kinetic chains
4) Roll racket tip up hitting ball
5) Finish.

The triple-stop occurs at the end of count three when A) the shoulders stop,
B) the clench stops, C) the hand stops.

Count four (the racket tip goes) can work passively through deceleration-acceleration, and these practice strokes are essential, instructive and significant. We all want free energy where we can get it. Still more racket head speed translating as extra topspin is wanted, however, and comes from shoulder and forearm twist. The two muscular sources and the passive source combine for more concentrated racket head speed than any other way at least in this kind of mild-gripped stroke.

Keeping elbow and hand in one spot as racket twists up and through outside of ball may be what John McEnroe meant when he criticized Greg Rusedski's backhand on international television. Rusedski "fails to keep his elbow in," he said.

I see two different strokes for me here. In one, the shoulders stop, so that arm and racket briefly accelerate since they are a lighter mass (deceleration-acceleration). To hit that shot-- all one sweep really-- you add some muscle from the shoulder, and clench shoulderblades with both arms going out for balance and to keep body edge-on at stroke's conclusion long after you hit the ball.

In this stroke (triple-stop) the clenching occurs much earlier and adds to the muscle mass applying body rotation. Still using deceleration-acceleration, you
only shoot the racket head, not the whole arm. Is the racket head too small a mass for this? Maybe. To add heft, you assist the rotation with muscle in shoulder and forearm.

Count five, the finish, is led by the racket tip. Racket tip leads both backswing and followthrough.

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Feeling your Hips for the First Time in a One-hand Backhand

It happens, as you would expect, when, having smashed the steel bands around your ankles and wrists, you throw off your kinetic chains and scream "No more tyranny, ever!"

In fact, working from learning rung #181, which is most likely the post just before this one, you concentrate entirely on count number three, leaving all other design features intact.

Count three is described as "legs, hips, shoulders, clench," which sounds suspiciously like a kinetic chain, and kinetic chains must be destroyed wherever they exist. Any kinetic chain is an internal terrorist. You must kill it with simultaneity.

Once you resolve to do away with sequence you are on your way. Okay then, you can ask, "legs, hips, shoulders, clench-- if no sequence, then, in what amounts?" The question more than any answer is your next step toward freedom.

Feel your hips as a horizontal wheel, a giant disc, a thirty-three and one third revolutions per minute vinyl record from the 1950's. Slowly swing the wheel as you clench your shoulderblades together, which thrusts out both of your hands to exactly where you want them.

And what did your shoulders do in the meantime? Rotate a small amount, a big amount, no amount, a perfect amount uncalculated by you?

Precisely. And that's my point.

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Racket vs. Rocket

Tennis is rock...nay, is more complicated than rocket science. The rockets usually go straight. The rackets curve all over the place.

But what gives racket head for someone other than Nadal so much speed?

Is it culmination of a kinetic chain or the result of deceleration-acceleration or sudden COD (Change Of Direction) which leads to sling-shotting of the laid back racket head right through the ball as far as I am concerned.

I've thought a lot about COD and sturgeon and haddock, and have wondered how a windshield wiper can possibly cross-breed with a COD, concluding that it can't.

For if arm is pulling hand to left, wouldn't the racket head just want to track behind without a wipe or other work? One COULD wipe at the same time if everything was integrated enough, but at higher speeds, wouldn't the tracking counter the wipe?

As any hyper-patient reader (my favorite kind) already knows, I've gotten my Federfore unequivocally to work, increasing my accuracy by five times. Okay, such a reader would also know I tend to exaggerate, so improvement in accuracy by three times.

So how did it actually happen? Must be, given the subtraction of COD, either from deceleration-acceleration; or, deceleration-acceleration as integrated in the sequencing links of kinetic chain with its stops and starts, or more precisely though less tongue-trippingly, slowings and starts.

All of this is deeply personal, however, and I have declared my war on kinetic chain, which seems less counter-productive than war on terrorism. (I am far from the first tennis player incidentally to declare kinetic chain theoretically okay but functionally useless.)

I'm for a much bigger emphasis on deceleration-acceleration alone.

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Simple Pattern as Power Cue in One-arm Backhand

Racket tip to inside, racket tip to outside, with massive body contribution in between.

Make these slight, balancing curves happen exactly as you know they should look every time.

Snake imagery is always fun in tennis-- so why not slither racket one way and then the other? The most unique aspect of this, inasfar as my personal history of backhands is concerned, is how soon in the stroke the second slither comes.

This stroke is seriously symmetrical. Instead of always viewing a tennis stroke as narrative (left brain), view it as image this time. And work at the task from outside to in. This way the stroke has two appendages: the followthrough and the takeback.

Between these two extensions are the roll-up when you hit the ball and the roll-down when you provide timing to hit the ball. In dead center is the main power pak: clenching shoulderblades, shoulders rotation, hips rotation, the straightening of legs.

A little bit of legs may overflow through contact.

Nothing is more fun than, after hitting a series of these shots, to think only of shoulders and arm. You stop the shoulders and let the arm perform a long sweep barely rising toward the target-- the billiards shot I can't stop talking about.

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Rabbit Punch to the Outside

Preserve all recent design features except for body rotations. You'll have a lot of pivot left over for good recovery. It's important to explore the one-hand backhand extremes. Can teach you so much. Also get the straight arm parallel to the sideline. Clenching the shoulderblades together provides all the deceleration-acceleration one needs.

With large backward rotation of the shoulders, contact has never been so far away, i.e., toward left fence. And the two straight arms can bend at the same time to complete the stroke.

On a Federfore you bowl past the wide contact (when people say you need to hit this kind of shot way out front, they really mean way out to the side, I believe). On this backhand you don't bowl but rather clench your shoulderblades together to send both arms out, with the front arm sending its energy past the wide contact the same way.

On a Federfore, final roll of the loosely gripping wrist and forearm to outside works best when passive. On this backhanding stroke you obtain the same free lift but need to add muscle from shoulder and forearm. I wouldn't want to break down any sequence in the roll other than to say, "It turns the corner for you, and does so right while you're hitting the ball."

I have always known, from feathering in rowing, that there is one kind of roll that doesn't put any pressure on the handle and another that does. In rowing you don't want the pressure; in this backhand you do: strings brush up outside of the ball while putting some weight on it.

All power to the roll.

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Exploring the Rabbit Run Backhand

For billiards backhand wide arm best goes pointing in one direction, racket in another. This forms an angle, right? Which if bisected, best forms a perpendicular to the rear fence.

Pretty complicated, right? Yuppety-yup-up-up. If you seek the simple life, just point the arm on a perpendicular to the rear fence. This is what classical tennis instruction has always preached, and who can fault it?

I can.

When Ed Faulkner said to get the arm parallel to the sideline, he was saying the same thing but in a more immediate way. For sideline is in the direction you are both running and looking. So with this one tip Ed Faulkner placed himself in the same relation to other tennis instructors as William Faulkner to American Literature.

But we should question all assumptions in every subject, especially Afghanistan. So when we have transformed ourself into an evil, ancient comic book boxer leveling the illegal rabbit punch to KO Joe Palooka, just where should the straight arm be?

I'm working on this question and suggest that any other person actually performing this experiment work on it, too, without preconception.

For exactly where the roll should be situated is what this stroke is about. And whether it will even work other than when one is dropping balls or competing against a continental grip player is unknown. If it won't work against heavy topspin, we'll have to adopt a different design. But it may.

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Alternative Roll from Rabbit Punch

Rabbit punch or clenching the shoulderblades to thrust out both arms is the same phenomenon. Most one hand backhanders, it seems to me, do it near end of followthrough as a way to preserve balance and stay on edge.

When you redefine clench as a power source and move it to beginning of forward stroke a bunch of new computer-menus drop down. I'm committed to the concave-straight-concave wrist pattern I deduced from reading about the Budge backhand, but can nevertheless go three ways:

1) hit ball once wrist becomes straight (musculo-skeletal yoke firms up, Lloyd Budge wrote)

2) hit ball after wrist becomes straight and arm is rolling from both shoulder and forearm

3) hit ball while wrist is becoming concave again and elbow is rotating down.
The elbow staying in and turning down feels strange at first since wrist is opening at the same time. The two actions do counter one another; however, this is a perfectly good way to hit a tennis ball.

The goal of these two different roll strokes here, same as on a Federfore, is to send racket tip unfurling toward side fence even while body whirls everything through the ball.

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Crossing the Ball with Deceleration-Acceleration from Rabbit Punch

This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever tried to describe. If you don’t think you can take it, stop reading now. It involves a reversal of something I said before. (But what’s new about reversals, which I long ago authorized myself to perform when necessary, much like hypotheses in formal science?)

It could be argued that using a rabbit punch for the purpose of feeling for the ball is overkill. Equally, it could be argued that not using one’s clench to provide any force in a one-hand backhand is underkill. There was all that force available that you wasted in the followthrough.

Rabbit punch plus passive unfurling of racket head requires a certain interval of time (two of my counts). This is what makes it appropriate as a device for feel. And yet it’s forcible. I don’t think you want to do it (the sequence of both things) very fast; but, a little extra racket head speed with which to work will come in very handy.

The clench stops. The racket tip shoots out. You fling it. It unfurls. The shooting or unfurling is passive and works from the elbow rolling down.

This roll will continue, but from shoulder rotor muscles as swing turns the corner and wrist opens lifting racket head.

Let’s back up the film and start over. As shoulderblades clench, the wrist rolls straight. There are two ways to do this.

One can bring the racket around by 90 degrees from the roll alone. Or leave racket exactly where it is and roll it in place on a diagonal between pinky finger base and thumb base. Of course the rabbit punch itself is bringing the racket around—subtract 90 degrees from that—and as you hit a series of balls look for best racket position to memorize.

You want passive roll down of elbow to be an easy, spacious motion that feels good every time.

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A Significant Experiment

I'm sure, dear readers, that on the basis of that title alone my undear readers already disbelieve me, and I won't even think about my dead and undead readers. In Post # 188, however, I started to draw on another of my own lives, that of senior sweep oarsman and professional crew coach. In competitive rowing one must on every stroke "feather," i.e., roll the oar twice and in the air both times. For decades the U.S. Naval Academy made the mistake of feathering out of the water rather than popping the oar out first. This along with other factors prevented Navy from repeating its numerous Olympic eight-oared championships of two previous historical eras, both times with admirable crews called "The Navy Admirals."

As recently as yesterday, before I went to the court, I wondered if one employed the concave-straight-concave wrist pattern that I'm pretty sure the great Don Budge did, and struck the ball while returning the wrist to concave, would one destroy one's arm forever?

I should have known better. Haven't I for a couple of years struck serves in which wrist closed or opened with no harm other than mental from either?

Today's experiment in applying whaleboat rowing to tennis draws on developmental feather's three stages: 1) The beginner with no instruction depresses and undepresses his wrist too much; 2) The intermediate, more subtle, has transformed the roll into a more diagonal affair in which he never disturbs the level of the oar but still is using his hand too much; 3) The master with confidence uses hand less and fingers more.

It is 1) and 2) that interest me for my tennis. So today's experiment is to cock wrist less on flying grip change, use a more diagonal motion to diminish amount of wrist flattening during the rabbit punch, and employ the same minimalism in reopening the wrist as contact occurs.

Worked pretty well. Keep your human head still sometimes, I would say, and other times don't.

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Once Racket Head Scrapes (Think Noise) up Outside of Ball is Achieved

Is this progression progressing? I think so. One speculates and does, discusses, perhaps revises, perhaps not, but always discovers.

Clearly, there are three places for clench in the forward phase of any one-hand backhand.

Beginning (the present experiment), middle (for a burst of body acceleration), end (which I already rejected as non-contributory).

Perhaps your power train is so efficient that you don't need clench anywhere but at the end. Perhaps you think you need an abrupt body surge in the middle embracing contact. Or perhaps like me you'd rather get rabbit punch and passive turning down of elbow out of the way and use delayed body rotation as the only weight-adding device since it's less mechanical, more organic and more adjustable.

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Contrasting Cue Trains in this One-hander

1) Start turning racket open in waist-high takeback, turn it open more during the racket tip timing drop (all this from forearm only), close wrist straight from a diagonal, delicate roll of hand and forearm and not very much, with this slow movement melding into a turn-down of the elbow which continues twisting in same direction now from muscles (but not very much) while strings are flying up not least from wrist doing a precise imitation of its earlier move only in reverse.

2) Slowly but pro-actively perform a rabbit punch sending both arms out from clenching the shoulderblades together while rhythmically closing the wrist from concave to straight then abruptly stopping everything which passively carries the racket head to almost forcelessly find the ball.

But why do I indulge myself in such analytical stuff? Am I trying to kill a nice backhand now that I've found it?

Well, it's true that one must remember Petrarch, the ancient poet: "He who can say how he burns, burns little." On the other hand Tom Watson, the ancient golfer, like an ancient mariner, has always made up different cues for himself through his long and stellar career.

As long as I stay somewhere between cue trains 1) and 2), semi-confused about bringing them together and thinking about something else, I believe I'll be all right.

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Personal Tennis Lesson from U.S. Open

When Richard Wilbur compared a sonnet to a drop-shot, I didn't think he meant a Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarch: "He who knows how he burns, burns little."

This U.S. Open was one of the best lessons ever in letting something happen. The courageous Del Potro saw through much adversity and took some speed off of his serve which then seemed to help him hit his forehand better and better.

In that spirit, I wish to institute these changes in my own game:

Backhand: The newest version works but is synthetic. What one has done in the past has to matter. Rotation of the shoulders and then clench is a good framework for a one-hander, yet doesn't mean I have to abandon my new ideas about straightening and depressing wrist.

Serve: In letting myself be unduly influenced by a Czech tennis book urging people to contract muscles on front edge of body while expanding them on the trailing edge, I changed the public term "cartwheel" into the private term "catapult"-- this could have been a bad mistake. A beautiful slo-mo sequence of Federer's motion once again showed something I must have suppressed: The cartwheel is gradual, the real power train runs up through the horizontally rotating elements. And slow cartwheel gives one a better chance of not dropping head as Federer was doing on his first serve, according to John McEnroe.

Federfore: Hold straight arm fully extended to right of body with wrist fully laid back. Roll forearm while keeping wrist laid back. Observe where the strings go. Now roll same way but let the wrist straighten. Watch the strings. Notice the difference.

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Personally Best One-Hander Model-- McEnroe

I never should have tried to imitate his serve, but the backhand makes some sense. Because, some time back, I decided my big loop wasn't contributing to my happiness.

So, get racket back with arm straight-- butt pointing at ball-- the rifle site for the shot, that butt-cap.

He steps and forms a slight comma in body once foot is down. Counts one and two to get racket back with racket tip cocked slightly up, count three to step out and get arm parallel to sideline, count four to make the comma which starts the racket lowering.

All the rest, which sounds like a lot, is all one smooth hitting motion. The
downward motion blends into turning the forearm in (taking racket tip down)
which blends into rolling the wrist straight (taking racket tip farther down).
He drops the racket tip and rolls the wrist to a hump and swings the body and stops it and keeps the elbow in and rolls the arm and clenches to move both arms out at the finish. I'm hoping that with my heavier grip, i.e., with more flesh behind handle with heel on 7.5 I won't have to put a hump in wrist.

This shot isn't court-tested yet since it's raining. Whenever I try something new on this side nowadays I also hit a few where I clench or rabbit-punch early instead of at the conventional time just to see what if anything will happen. Well, there's good power, and the shoulder gets around more.
(I make a clean substitution of rabbit punch for body rotation). When the sun comes out, I want to try this variation with lots of arm roll but no body rotation at all or a minimal amount.

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Modification

Suggested before that "unrolling" hand and forearm could mirror image of rolling wrist straight, and elbow could be rolling forward at same time (that forearm unrolled!).

True but maybe inadvisable. Want deceleration-acceleration to contribute to roll but also want all the muscle available to contribute. That means shoulder twist and forearm twist to work together and in same direction and at same time.

But if you simply re-bend wrist during this part of tract, i.e., make top of wrist become concave again, you get a steeper racket head rise.

Is this supposed to be unhealthy?

That I haven't found so far.

You have options here, obviously, could keep wrist straight for a lower more short-angled cross-court shot.

Another point: Keep trailing arm straight and relaxed like McEnroe. Front arm can be different and bend for comfort at end of follow-through (at same time).

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Up the Far Side of a Steep Gorge before the Arms go out

One-hander: Bungalow Bill has taught that one should make a "U" with the racket trajectory, and that is correct, a "U" and not a "V," but a pretty narrow gorge if one dares to pattern on John McEnroe.

The whole premise of the miserable novel PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS is that a thinking centipede will trip all over itself. So let's get the overall movement down very well, first, before we discuss the details. Then let's register those details with precision, all four of them, while understanding that they are one extremely rapid motion only, and even then are just the first half of an overall extremely rapid motion.

It is a daunting task. No one can predict success. The undear writer, I, and the dear reader, you, will have to stay with it and iron out our differences and work together.

So: overall movement. What is it? Observe the following clip.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHShortRear.mov

John McEnroe is running sideways, right? As he does so his shoulders turn back and his arm straightens. I'm for assigning two counts to taking the racket back, one to stepping out, one to forming a slight body comma which takes the racket initially down. Call anything else count five, study it, watch where and how fast the ball goes, and notice McEnroe's opponent, the despondent Clerc, drooping his head.

"So, are we there yet, Dad?" "No, son, we haven't yet described the overall motion. The racket head comes up before the arm goes out."

Another way of putting it is that the gorge of McEnroe's one-hander starts down coincident with upper body turn and comes up after that turn has abruptly stopped, and comes up pretty close to the body because he keeps his elbow in.

So I guess we're ready for the four details. That would be twisting the racket head inward from the forearm (takes it down), rolling the hand and forearm outward (this too takes the racket head down-- especially since body is rotating forward at the same time), letting the racket, still, get carried around some by the body rotation (the bottom of the "U"), and keeping the elbow in while rolling both it and the forearm.

All that's left then is to revive the centipede. How will we do it? Smelling salts, exotic substances, meditation? One way or another we've got to sublimate all details-- having learned them to forget them-- and let the whole thing rip.

A prosaic note here. A confusion in one-hander tennis technique comes from the idea of stopping body rotation to make 1) the arm accelerate ,or, more interestingly, 2) the racket head accelerate. What is the device that does it?
The clench? I may have thought so for most of my life but don't now. It happens before clench, most often, from a tightening of core muscles.