A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Good Tennis Strokes are Aspirational

By that I mean that any how-to that anybody comes up with should be articulated in advance of physical trial. Then, to steal from Pete Seeger, you may be right, you may be wrong, but you have "the right to sing this song."

How-to after the trial is just too late. One's heart is no longer engaged. One is on to other things.

And so, to consider loopy forehands today, let us examine some probable developments in one's sorry past: 1) too tight a grip, 2) too big a loop, 3) too much influence of Federer, 4) too much effort to perform the loop at a single speed.

The last point, 4) is the one I choose to discuss here. For I always heard that one should pause or at least slow the racket somewhere near the rear of the top of the loop.

Which led me to not having sufficient time to hit the shot every time I tried it.

But with a small or medium size loop, one can have sufficient time provided one's method is "natural" enough.

Such "naturalness" can come from holding the racket handle in a ring of thumb and middle finger. The other three fingers are still on the racket but may as well not be at least in hitting a fast shot. The flip lays wrist all the way back for bio-mechanical firmness. Which means you don't have to discover optimal finger pressure as for other shots.

The loop thus performed will be the same for flattened out shots and topspin shots in which the racket gets twirled by thumb-and-middle finger ring on one side and extended tip of index finger on the other.

A slight lift of elbow as one flies the racket head can create the utterly relaxed and cushioned weightlessness that such analysts as Pancho Segura have always seemed to write about and advise.

Racket goes up slightly to the outside. it loops slightly down to the inside but remains in the slot. That is when the flip occurs.

From there one implements the alternative of flattened out or more topspin.

[bottle]

Book Review

Rich Solak, a regular tennis partner/opponent of mine, used to be the city manager of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan.

His wife Nancy, a librarian, decided to write books late.

Her first, reviewed here, is set in Italy, her second in China, a third underway will be declared fiction.

I am not permitted by disgusting Amazon to be one of 77 reviewers of Nancy's first book since I have not purchased $50 in books from them in the last 12 months and in fact took this one out of the library.

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A FOOTPATH IN UMBRIA, Review, by John Escher

A FOOTPATH IN UMBRIA is not a travel book, it is a book. And its author, Nancy Yuktonis Solak, is not a reluctant traveler. She loves to travel (and to read-- a similar idea). And I could go on and will: Rather than nonfiction this book is fiction in the very best sense. It has a wise and sympathetic protagonist whose flaws and fears are her strengths, it has well drawn characters both major and minor, it has a unifying sensibility along with a compelling narrative. Most of all it lures us into a strange and wonderful world (old world) that we may or may not have encountered before.

Okay, it is a travel book, too. But does LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL fail as autobiography just because Thomas Wolfe called Asheville "Altamont" and Chapel Hill "Pulpit Hill?"

The best American fiction of the last hundred years, it seems to me, does not fit into neat categories whether we like that or not. Good writing is good writing, and, given a healthy interest in people, is largely the result of 1) energy, 2) detail and 3) overall shape (structure).

The Italian washing machines here carry too little water and rotate back and forth while making a strident racket, the dogs are polite, the opportunity for "connection" with locals seems enhanced-- some of which surely is due to the attractive personalities of Nancy and her husband Rich themselves.

The fifty photographs in the book, extremely effective, reflect the remarkably sunny disposition of Italians living at home in Italy. My Italian brother-in-law however seems to do well in the United States.

The thing I love most about this book, other than Nancy's cultural insights and the fact that she often feels cold and so learns to drink Italian wine to stay warm, is its title and central image. The place that Nancy and Rich find to rent in the countryside has one serious drawback in view of their determination to walk back and forth the three miles from town: A very dangerous highway loaded with big trucks and other traffic. Nancy's fear is relatable to this reader. And her pleasure is relatable too, specifically of basic individual and unassisted discovery-- in pieces-- of an all but abandoned alternate route lush with a secret garden quality all of its own.

[bottle]

The Recent Tennis Player Discussion of Hesitation Serving Makes me Want to Conduct my own Experiment

Instead of assuming pre-toss trophy as Brian said he has his students do for about a month, or as Dennis Ralston did to develop his famous slice (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ice_serve.html), I draw on personal trials in the past of bent-arm horizontal take back.

The toss will happen a bit sooner from still being simultaneous with arm and bod take back.

This serve will invite a slight replacement of front foot (optional of course).

It will invite more total end-over-end form through both cartwheel and torso twist by putting full load on rear foot and a saving of leftward lean (or slight head veer) for when one is in the actual process of hitting the ball.

I see no separate drop of toss arm to initiate cartwheel but rather a folding inward of that arm to accelerate both cartwheel and torso twist.

And dream of extending upper body skyward during the torso twist.

I had the experience, when I was very young, of playing singles against someone who actually received his serving lessons at Wesleyan University from Stanley Plagenhoef.

I now believe this bending and straightening of the whole body is what the late Steve Crampton did.

[bottle]

Head to Side

Had a pretty good day, but more important is this question: Would final rise of the racket change direction less if head were moving out of the way during the transition of cartwheel to torso twist?

I have seen serves in which this late veering off of the head was visible. Were they superior serves but I just didn't know it?

Synchronization of abduction/adduction and torso twist might help, i.e., if one makes these two things simultaneous .

But abduction/adduction is the fourth of the upward arm rotations.

And we know where it starts-- from low point.

That means the 1) ESR, 2) ER of forearm, and 3) wrist extension occurred just to achieve low point simultaneous with leg thrust.

So make all of this more conscious before it mercifully becomes less so?

In addition, a lot of the famous Sidney Plagenhoef book drawings show hips pretty much over the feet at maximum speed of the cartwheel.

So where did the speed come from? From hearty thrust from rear foot, yes, but from shoulders kicking forward as fanny kicks back, too?

Remember: If that happened during contact it would earn itself the pejorative "jackknifing" the way Brian Gordon uses that term. He'd rather, if I understand him correctly, see the bod not do that and in a perfect world be doing the opposite, extending to get taller.

But if it happens before torso twist, you as server conceivably could obtain something good.

Now, in terms of cue, you won't be able to coordinate leg thrust with three of the arm rotations-- too much to think about.

Coordinating leg thrust with the third of them, however, might be possible.

Try to coordinate leg thrust with extension of the wrist.

[bottle]

Suspect will find, in match play tomorrow morning, that if I start traveling during the toss I will not want to stop, rockstep and start all over again. So it will be toss travel, cartwheel and torso twist in a single continuum.

Think I'll concentrate on momentum build as felt in rear shoulder and nothing else except for lobbing the Mabel. It's good to have a plan.

[bottle]

What is Trophy Position?

If that means toss arm vertical but hitting elbow pressed against bod as in Vic Braden's derisive portrait in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, that is very bad.

But if trophy position has toss arm vertical and has or produces upper part of hit arm yardarmed or 10 degrees higher than yardarmed that's okay.

If I set up in this good trophy, with weight evenly distributed on both legs, I can then perform a leftward lean and rockstep on rear foot, thus loading properly for what comes next.

But also can alternately eschew the rockstep, i.e., do the leftward lean with weight still evenly distributed.

In either case, once bod leans it holds the lean through the cartwheel then the torso twist.

A secret would seem to be that one feels enough momentum in hit shoulder through cartwheel that one can continue to feel it during the torso twist in a new direction.

These observations are predicated on some forward body motion during the toss.

[bottle]

Forehand Loop

The precise design of one's loop may not be essential to production of a forehand but still is part of a cycle any part of which affects any other.

A recent experiment in which I emulated this forehand (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...DBFHFront1.mov) surprised me by the extent to which it didn't alter my basic forehands.

I hit a few of them in matches and thought, "Wow, why not all the time if it's smaller yet produces the same result?"

A week later I had returned to my normal loop which once in a while it produced a better than ordinary shot.

But does that mean no further change to my forehand loop ever? Hardly. In fact the little side-road reminded me that I've played a lot with different elbow positions and that elbow lift in the backswing, if one decides to use it, need not be extreme.

[bottle]

One distributes the Zen through three elements in other words, twirled racket rise, twirled racket wrench forward, elbow sling forward.

The bod meanwhile contributes horizontal weight or vertical lift or a bit of both.

The shot is a topspin backhand which can be improved by relegating the arm twist function to a specific pair of pressure points in one's hand.

Forehand (in my case): 1) locked intersection of middle finger beneath thumb; 2) tip of forefinger.

Backhand: 1) tip of thumb; 2) pinkie finger, with both contributing 50-50 to strings rise and strings going through.

The elbow sling contributes meanwhile to strings going through.

What is the best verb to describe the single action? Arthur Ashe used "sling."

[bottle]

Self-Sabotage and Tap Hammer

Try level-shouldered backhands in which everything is down or up with no transition of racket head keying downward between the two swings. The down and up, in fact, are both to be located in the foreswing.

Raising this question: To hammer well on the downstroke the elbow moves a little as it extends. So, hammer badly? Make this motion come all from the elbow as if you are tapping a nail into a wall on which to hang the schedule for your next doubles match?

That frees the recently loaded elbow to spring forward as it rolls the strings sharply upward.

It is the newfound sharpness of this rise that suggests the addition of another agent of levelness besides one's body weight oozing toward the net.

Does a spinning elbow that springs forward a little still qualify for the "KEEP THE ELBOW IN" admonition with which John McEnroe hit Greg Rusedski? Perhaps. At least the elbow, controlled, won't flail.

Add:

Significant delayed flashlighting of the racket butt as arm taps straight. Which means the racket head will come around toward the net in a tight arc with mucho leverage. As it rises. As it springs forward. But what about "dwell?" Nobody ever said this stuff wasn't complicated except for a few wrong persons who like to make a habit of being wrong about everything.

To sound more sympathetic toward them, I perhaps should say that extremely technical information in any field is rather apt to be slippery. In tennis, it seems, you might figure out what you want to do-- now you have a course of action at least. But when you try to figure out all the elements involved, you leave something out, something important.

And yet if you don't try for something along these lines, you are just parroting someone else's ideas. You want to find the best designs you can. But then you need more invention to make them your own. Ever talk to an engineer working with an architect? Even if you yourself are both, you've got to get these two professions to talk to each other.

[bottle]

DBBH as Mass-Produced by Vic Braden

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov

One can see Don Budge's chest open out: scapular retraction. And his body straighten and leave the ground: Alexander technique. And attainment of yardarm: minimized limb swing. And left leg rise and slowly cross for the smooth landing: external hips rotation. And slight closing of the racket: leg and back prying or rowing technique.

And then there is what Don Budge himself called it: an easy Ted Williams baseball swing.

Now, who in the world tried most to bottle this magic and mass-produce it? Vic Braden. Are we supposed to dismiss every technical idea Vic Braden ever had just because he dismissed a few of them himself in his old age?

How about his idea of a racket drop followed by a lift of the hips combined with smooth arm swing but as little as possible?

Nasty old Vic Seixas played Vic Braden and was not very charitable about this match when it came time to write it up in his awful autobiography.

Even Vic, however, allowed that Vic had a very good backhand (something that he, Vic, was famous for not having-- he just served and volleyed and hit approach shots all day and came into the net).

But Vic Braden's backhand was the core of his hugely impactful book TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, was even the basis for the weird sit-and-hit forehands he espoused.

My question: how is Vic Braden's backhand, created for the masses, most different from the Don Budge original?

Answer: two hands to drop instead of one.

[bottle]

Self-Sabotage and Tap Hammer

"I hit my backhands better from level shoulders." That's what you said, Bottle. And why not believe it? Why mess with something that was working? And don't tug with hands against each other before you snap-separate them either. That's a questionable theory that can be especially disruptive.

So what was the agent of this self-awakening? A really great topspin forehand which an opponent had mastered and used to tear me apart.

No further litany of excuses, please. I don't care either that my team won. The lesson was about one hand topspin backhand.

Rx: Go to court with same 10 balls in black overcoat as last time when hit 30 topspin backhands in self-feed. In play the next morning did not miss one.

Try level-shouldered backhands in which everything is down or up with no transition of racket head keying downward between the two swings. The down and up, in fact, are both to be located in the foreswing.

Raising this question: To hammer well on the downstroke the elbow moves a little as it extends. So, hammer badly? Make this motion come all from the elbow as if you are tapping a nail into a wall on which to hang the schedule for your next doubles match?

That frees the recently loaded elbow to spring forward as it rolls the strings sharply upward.

It is the newfound sharpness of this rise that suggests the addition of another agent of levelness besides one's body weight oozing toward the net.

Does a spinning elbow that springs forward a little still qualify for the "KEEP THE ELBOW IN" admonition with which John McEnroe hit Greg Rusedski? Perhaps. At least the elbow, controlled, won't flail.

[bottle]

Three Common Signatures in Budge and McEnroe Backhands

1) Relaxed guide hand down by side

2) Jack-in-the-box characteristic (Don Budge). Jack-in-the-pulpit characteristic (John McEnroe). Send-off of one leg up and the other out.

3) Bent hitting arm at end of the follow through.

As a one hander, Budge with its early straightening and baseball batter's drop offers huge separation/scope. McEnroe meanwhile offers abbreviation everywhere. So there are huge differences. But let's stick with commonality and devise a course of action.

Relaxed guide hand down by side indicates that scapular retraction (the pressing of one's two shoulder-blades toward one another) occurred early. When it occurs late the two arms fly out straight and high.

Don Budge is tall and open as he bounds toward the ball in large increments (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov). John McEnroe uses a plethora of mincing steps while keeping himself small and ensconced (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...enterFront.mov).

To take pressure off Budge's sweeping long arm he bends it near end of the stroke. McEnroe meanwhile hammers sideways. Hammering, a combination of slight elbow movement and arm straightening when properly done is pro-active to state the obvious mildly. My friend Greg Robinson, a cabinet-maker, drives every nail all the way down with one whack.

Proceeding directly to prescription, we hammer sideways, i.e., level. Then elbow stays in one spot while it rolls strings sharply upward. The upwardness continues if one then lets the elbow bend again.

But how does scapular retraction fit in? Well, I love the timing unit of Budge's batting drop. And propose replacing it with a slight tug between the two hands. Which can be combined with slight movement from the outside if one believes that every one hander ought to contain a figure eight. The tugging engages the scapulae which then let go.

P.S. I can't try any of this until the indoor tennis social tonight. But my firm belief is that although the John McEnroe wrist structure is impossible for a mere mortal to imitate, one can put thumb on a diagonal across the back of the racket and keep wrist straight throughout. It's not what a lot of people do but so what? You heard me correctly: Use a Don Budge backhand grip to hit a John McEnroe type backhand.

The teaching pro Vince Eldridge wrote a tennis book, preface by George Plimpton, that advised an "ensconced" Jack-in-the-pulpit one hander like this. And John McEnroe certainly has a pulpit but I'm trying to suggest the word in a physical sense. A pulpit is high but sometimes enclosed and a bit homelike. Like Father Mapple's New Bedford pulpit in MOBY DICK with a rope ladder and all kinds of whaling stuff built in.

[bottle]

Keep Front Shoulder Down

That is something a very good teaching pro told me. But my best one hand backhands are delivered from level shoulders. And I observe, from video, that John McEnroe dips front shoulder to begin, levels it in the middle, lifts it at the end.

I defy anyone to defy any of this.

To run an experiment, I like to write it up before I perform it. By the time I've performed it, I'm on to thinking the things that other people think I ought to think, e.g., "Lob the Mabel."

Today with 10 balls in the pockets of my black overcoat for self-feed, I plan to keep my front shoulder down all the way for a blocked shot.

That means I will have dipped it in the backswing to lift the racket slightly behind me and somewhat out in the slot. The arm will proactively (muscularly) straighten and roll before both ends of the racket move out.

From same preparation, for topspin, I will similarly hammer down a gentle slope. But roll of the arm will be delayed so that it scrapes racket face sharply up. Which will be reinforced by a return of front shoulder to level and leg extension.

Unless I want more body weight to come through in which case front knee will stay bent and press toward net.

In none of these three strokes will there be early straightening of the arm combined with a Don Budge type of baseball batter's drop.

Furthermore, for the topspin, the elbow will commit to stay in one spot, twisting, not take off in mad flight.

[bottle]

Plan for Both Sides in DB Imitation Ground Strokes: Low Outside to High Inside then Hitting Drop

In early (young) DBFH video, striking pattern is a racket laid on court with stalk pointed at net, i.e., outside inside straight.

A loop that rises as racket works to outside next must come across slot before it descends.

If first move however is low the elbow will naturally rise and can imediately become stationary (though twisting).

One brain impulse gets racket in perfect position for what comes next: a pure hitting drop straight down as in many baseball swings (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...DBFHFront1.mov).

DBBH: Previous description of left hand pulling and right hand then pushing is possible but complicated.

I now opt for equal contribution from both hands. They guide racket low to outside then bend racket up to inside.

Same vertical drop now becomes immediately possible.

The two legs next work together. They just have different functions. (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...l?DBBHRear.mov)

[bottle]

What if you were fast approaching 79 with 80 close behind and were working on a Don Budge imitation backhand...

And this project was coming along better than all nine previous attempts (at 43, 53, 56, 58, 61, 63, 66, 69 and 74)...

And you noticed that the young Budge in this TP forehand # 1 (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...DBFHFront1.mov) employed a backswing with similar shape and rhythm...

And so you tried it in self-feed and discovered that your forehands were no less accurate than when...

You use a conventional loop as Don Budge himself did when he was older (forehands 2 and 3 in the same menu)...

Would you have the moxie to go with the earlier version that was more of a piece with the Budge backhand?

I don't know since I'm still in self-feed and won't play before Election Day...

But plan right now to use it for low shots while retaining the loop for higher versions.