A New Year's Serve

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Bopping your Wrist on a One-hand Backhand

I am a person who is always looking for a new kinesthetic cue. They say that Tom Watson is the same way in golf, so this is not necessarily a recipe for disaster.

The more I play with a John McEnroe type backhand only with heel of hand on pointy ridge at 7.5, the more I realize how much more compact I'm becoming every day.

Keeping the arm bent as you take it back, stepping...keeping the arm bent as you simultaneously lower by virtue of upper body straightening and racket tip keying down-- did I already say the next thing I'm about to say here?-- with arm still bent-- makes you very compact indeed, almost as if you're on the face of a medallion with a motto along the bottom: "PERFECTLY PROPORTIONED JOCK."

You may disagree, may always disagree, but the next thing is pure Oscar Wegner, is "feeling for the ball." One of the items the misunderstanders don't get is that Oscar has you still adjusting hand to the ball at a moment that seems much too late but isn't. Then you are on your own about how you're going to, in a continuous motion, take racket back and bring it forward to touch the ball. That's right. Oscar wants you to invent. How unusual for a tennis instructor!

In my case I'm going to use my port-side feathering motion from shell-boat racing fifty years ago (three Dad Vail national championships for emerging collegiate rowing powers). I slowly roll my wrist straight as I extend my arm, then roll the whole arm a little more, then return my wrist to concave before I hit the ball with a big rabbit punch.

This last independent motion of the wrist-- the return of it to concave-- is the bop, bop, re-bop of my backhand. And it's a large addition. Not only does it get the racket tip around as never before, and with seemingly no physical effort, but it is a zero at the bone sensation that is a distinct marker in the continuous motion.

So, when I'm pantomiming without a racket (I'm doing it right now with my pen), I wave my arm around in front of me-- or so it would look to a beautiful woman sitting up next to me in this bed-- but each time I bop with the wrist it's a DTL, a DTC, a deep CC, a short CC. Do I bop with the wrist at different points in the stroke circle? Sure. Why not? What's the advantage of altering the basic structure of the stroke? You might make the next shot but miss the one after that.

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Slugging a Chop Serve

Everything in modern serving is about coming over the ball. So, fire the whole subject-- give it its walking papers, at least in the case of one archaic serve.
Archaic is good since people haven't seen it in a while, at least not if they aren't archaic themselves.

Use a semi-open stance, almost as if you're going to hit a semi-open forehand. Wind back, wind forward, wipe down the back of the ball. Low toss? No problem. Jack-knifing the body? No problem again. In fact, jack-knifing the body is advisable (since you don't have to stay tall), and so's a low toss.

But don't jack-knife while developing this shot. Just wipe down. Maybe you can start with a full head of steam developed from swinging up and down before you meet the ball. If you carefully read the heavy duty sports scientists Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey in their book TECHNICAL TENNIS, you'll see that they like up and down swings-- early-- even when you're hitting over the ball.

Ball goes in net? Open the racket more for wiping down. Goes long? Keep the racket openness right there but add the body jack-knife.

In a good jack-knife, butt goes backward as shoulders go forward for the greatest push a human being can deliver to a tennis ball, just as John O. Barnaby wrote in RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS.

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Short-arming a Serve

In my initial advanced age tournament, my first round opponent, a veteran teaching pro, explained why I won the first set but he the next two. "You were getting your arm straight on your serve," he said, "but then you stopped doing that." I have been extremely aware of this point ever since. Getting arm straight has been the imperative for ALL serves at ALL times.

But, "Rules were made to be broken by those who know them," wrote John O. Barnaby, the college coach of Timothy Gallwey and five decades worth of other Harvard University varsity players.

My short arm awakening happened 27 years ago, and now I'm ready for another, only with an opposite conclusion. Because my new fire ladder serve plus new knowledge that wrist flexion along with shoulder twist but not forearm twist (this known as "pronation") is a prime contributor to racket head speed, has changed everything.

The ladder to which I refer is the type with sections folded neatly together on the back of a fire truck. Hydraulically, the ladder is able effectively to snake upward, though with no especial speed or power. This is what my lob kick serve, finally mastered only four days before my 70th birthday, feels like. Elbow inverts with arm squeezing together and then racket goes up from way low to very high all blended and smooth and extensive.

There isn't the delicious rasp there is in the same serve hit by Brent Abel (video at post # 279) but the ball trajectory is extremely high, the ball lands
very deep, it has enough upward spin to clear the crossbar on the opposite fence, optically speaking.

Well if that works, and you know how, from Jeff Greenwald type serves, to extend triceps from low inversion toward the back fence, what would happen
if you tilted the whole runway backward and forward a bit? Instead of going straight up to the bottom of the descending ball, the racket might pass forward across the upper left corner.

All I can say is that the weather is very cold in the South, which keeps most North Carolinan players inside. A 75-year-old, however, not a Yankee like me, came by for a pick-up hit the other day and grumbled, "What's all the fuss about? You move around-- then you don't get cold."

Today and other days, however, he didn't appear. And my regular opponent, the real reason that both this new partner and several others now, myself included, hit the ball pretty well, is recovering from having a lens put in his left eye (yikes!). But when no one is around, you can invent best. Just ask Andy Roddick if he was in the middle of league play when he invented his teenage (and present) serve.

So I've tried many things, passively extending the arm, using triceps part-way, extending all the way from triceps, holding the bend, throwing the elbow, not throwing the elbow, etc., etc.

With the fire ladder serve, after low elbow inversion, arm extension and shoulder twist keep taking racket up and up and you hit ball as high as possible near tip of racket.

With the bent arm, what works best for me is 1) keep some arm bend, but fire the shoulder twist and wrist flexion simultaneously as always. (Pronation happens at same time but slower than shoulder twist and I'm not going to worry about it any more.) And 2) don't fire the elbow but keep it solid with rotating body.

Before I make my final statement here, I must clearly ask, how can bending the arm possibly be good? Well, it changes the angle of racket beneath ball, which is what a player of limited flexibility in the shoulder, lowlier than Sampras and Roddick, has always wanted.

I've already told the story, I think, of my former doubles partner, a complete beginner who mastered a kick serve his first week. His brother never will in his entire life, guaranteed. Me, I needed 28 years. I hit some kick serves, sure, but didn't master them.

With this bent arm serve, one can use a continental grip if one wants-- it needn't be more extreme than that.

And one can make the ball jump about as high as fire-ladder method, but it will travel through the air a bit faster. The trick appears to be to treat it as a first serve, knifing right at the ball for as long as possible rather than coming to it from the left. In this fashion, you can hit softly upward.

The great irony of this, however, is that if you employ the inverse proportion rule for upper body horizontal rotation and upper body vertical rotation (the more of one the less of the other), you get hard, fast kick from more vertical, and hard, fast kick slice from the more horizontal-- not what I was trying for but I'll take it!

These serves are not quite as fast as my full arm extension serves but so what? They're useful.

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New True Cues

SLING WITHOUT SWING: First Part of Backhand. If one has implemented John McEnroe's advice to keep elbow in and no longer is about to let it fly too soon like Greg Rusedski (in McEnroe's opinion), one may be ready for a new cue, this one from Billie Jean King: "Always know where the racket is." Or did she say, "Always know where the racket tip is." Whatever she said, make it your business to know where both are.

A main principle of my backhand drive design (described in full earlier in this thread) is to find the oncoming ball with the hand and then hit it with the strings. If one simply gets the arm stretched out toward left fence, with a straight (flat) wrist, one can hit the ball quite well. And practicing this can help one slow down the transition in the slightly longer version. Note the seeming pause in the middle of McEnroe's stroke. That's the transition I'm talking about.

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

In other extremely short backhand systems I've read described, one gets the racket going from the shoulder just a bit before turning on the power. I'm thinking, provide corresponding starting motion with wrist instead. Change wrist from flat to concave. Sounds like a service return to me or playing on grass-- something I've never done.

For a normal backhand, I've got a bent arm action twisting racket down one way and then out the other as arm straightens with concave wrist getting rolled flat by forearm before whole arm rolls a little.

I see four pretty fast counts to get racket to end of that sequence, in position for the starting motion. You're really slinging the racket around a lot without swinging it. The hand in fact moves very little, remaining slow to find the ball for a second time. The overall stroke rhythm is 1234 f-five.

FEDERFORE MAINTENANCE. Because of the chill on all outside tennis in North Carolina, I've pretty much had to work on serves only. But when I then did hit with somebody, I didn't generate enough spin on the maximum separated version where Roger makes impact way out wide toward the right fence. From concentrating-- before the lay-off-- on the medium separated version where Roger's wrist mondoes backward and down during contact, I temporarily forgot my own mountain trail analogy for the wide shot, where mondo occurs earlier to permit wrist and forearm to unfurl the racket tip straight out to the side. That's how I get a lot of spin (someone else may do it differently). You're climbing a mountain up a zig-zagging trail. You find a shortcut or half broken out path that takes you straight from your trail to the switchback above. In maximum separated Federfore, this translates into a bowl down before the strings roll up. In medium separated Federfore, bowling action only goes up.

The tract to low point doesn't change for either of these forehands. The difference is in where speed starts-- at low point for medium separated shot in which you hit more through ball. Speed starts before low point for maximum separated shot going down for scrape past ball. Timing doesn't change, mechanics do.

An omission that can compromise both of these strokes is to forget to twist the hitting forearm outward, up top, as left arm crosses in front toward right fence to fully wind the shoulders-- a split infinitive with a big purpose.

FOREHAND VOLLEY. U-shaped arm driven by shoulders with just a little downward hand action is the most solid volley I've ever come by.

BACKHAND VOLLEY. The following filmstrip of Bob Bryan is the simplest I've ever come by (in my shopping efforts). He speaks of sticking this shot. That means hammering it, sideways, I believe. But he only does 45 degrees of sideways hammer, not 90. And his arm is bent. The free movement comes from relaxed shoulder. He only straightens arm for a low volley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDk0r-t6Lxs&NR=1

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Pooch Ace

This serve goes for surprise out wide in deuce court or down middle in ad. From a very full, closed stance, it employs a golfer's knees turning gently backward and forward in coupled sequence to loop the arm almost unconsciously. At end of forward knees turn, shoulders turn in a horizontal way faster than the knees went. Then arm goes also in a circle and faster than the shoulders went.

Do shoulders stop to accelerate the arm? I don't think so-- for the arm then might proceed too uncontrollably. The serve is more "smooth, smooth, accelerate, accelerate": That seems to work best.

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Groupthink: Chip Return Gonzalez Style (Not)

"The power of the general will is enormous-- to resist it is much harder than people think-- and we are all marked by the times we live in." -- Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Osip, persecuted and destroyed for a poem in which these four words about Joseph Stalin exist: "his cockroach whiskers leer."

Any tennis subject seems trivial compared to the fate of Osip Mandelstam, Afghan peasants, or an American war protester-- but the same principle of fashionable group acceptance, where everybody has thought Stalin cool or at worst harmless, still may apply.

The most difficult shot in the game for me to learn has been kick serve. Now that I have one, most difficult becomes return of a good kick serve. Whatever the best players do, I don't see them dropping a dying bird sharply crosscourt to inside the short T as Pancho Gonzalez is reputed to have done.

Is such a shot even within human capability? In his writings, John M. Barnaby thinks so. The first step is acquisition of a conviction that the only way to adjust pitch on the backhand side-- to put a lid on the ball-- is through change of grip, i.e., turn hand farther and farther over on handle until you get what you need.

I won't attempt a full explanation here of this most complex of shots. Best would be to read Barnaby himself in the old book GROUND STROKES IN MATCH PLAY, USTA Instructional Series. There's nothing like Barnaby's passage on this subject in any other tennis book I have read except for RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS or ADVANTAGE TENNIS: RACKET WORK, TACTICS AND LOGIC also by Barnaby. Then, however, I think it would be interesting to consider two drawings in TECHNICAL TENNIS, Cross & Lindsey, a more recent book.

postcard.gif

The words in my drawing are mine, but I believe in them. For chop (or chip, which is same thing), the usual instruction about hitting outside of ball for sharp crosscourt can be reversed. You may or may not get desired spiralspin, which would make ball break outward after its bounce very nicely, but at least in the attempt you won't hit a short ball that breaks fatally toward center of the court.

The ad court requires more turning of every kind for the right hand player. You need to gradually turn shoulders as you chop, I believe, keep racket at a constant distance from body for constant pitch, gradually move arm to right as it chops, keep wrist concave until after contact, stop shoulders so both ends of racket keep chopping at same speed through contact, bow slightly at waist from instant that shoulders stop.

[bottle]

A Tale of Six Baskets

The first and only basket I ever bought was milky green with frail struts no thicker than coat hangers. It didn't hold many tennis balls, and if its lid was too loose you could bend the edge tight with your bare fingers.

At least it could pick up balls, like any other tennis court basket; next was same style but heavier and bigger, jet black and given to me by a USPTA pro whose house was getting cluttered and, who appreciated my not always successful ferocity when I attacked his passive but solid English opening in chess.

I lost both of these baskets, along with skis downhill and cross-country, and boots, poles, etc. when the marriage broke up and I shrank all possessions down into two suitcases and moved to Hungary.

The third basket also involved divorce. A kind woman, a former tennis player driving past the court, saw me practicing my serve with balls out of my tennis bag. "You're wasting too much time picking up balls," she said as she plucked her husband's hi-rise 75 out of the trunk of her car.

That was my first table-type basket, and I thought I'd never need or have another. I work on my serve more than other people, however, and this means frequently coming to courts as the only human being.

Which means, in turn, that I get blue knitted scarves, water bottles, old rackets, and all other personal belongings left behind if I choose to take them home rather than hang them on the fence-- always a moral decision.

Unless the goods are half in, half out of a big trash barrel. At such a moment the intention is clear, and this is how numbers four, five and six came into my life.

They all were huge, heavy table baskets, rusted, and I hoisted each one. They felt made out of cast iron. One was forest green, one racket cover yellow, the third a snowy white coming apart and two thirds down in the barrel.

Green and yellow were standing primly next to the barrel with only a few loose struts, and those mostly at the top. The lids were much too loose, which made think the owner didn't know what he or she was doing. I took them home, emptied my 75 balls into one and then the other on successive days.

Repairing the lids was easy if you had two vice-grips. Briefly, I contemplated going to a welder for the loose struts before I settled on cord and twisty-ties.

Having a huge, heavy basket only half full of balls is an interesting trip, to use the lingo of the sixties. The basket is so heavy that a frail person couldn't heft it. But you can pick up five balls at once easy just by placing the thing on top of them and letting its own weight descend.

When you turn the long handles down into long legs, it's not too stable, probably from when it served for target practice-- a perfect match.

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Can You Throw Your Elbow Backward?

I can't if I'm throwing hard. If I'm throwing easy, however, I can, and there's nothing to it. Well, throwing hard, I CAN, but the elbow is too close in over the head for the consistency of an effective serve-- and maybe your shoulder dislocates as Vic Braden demonstrated with a plastic doll in one of his old videos.

Such closeness of elbow overhead is not a problem if you're just schlepping the racket tip straight up into the sky. This may mean taking the fire truck ladder image quite seriously.

The ladder is on the back of a fire truck, and the overall image is what works-- not a left-brained correspondence of each ladder section to a strictly defined section of your serve.

I am however permitting myself one such correspondence here for purpose of explanation-- but only because I now know I can then put the whole lob kick serve back together again. The correspondence is between a rising section of hydraulic ladder and your elbow going backward. "Hydraulic" might not be the perfect expression. Neither is "hard throw." Something in between, perhaps "fluid toss," is more precise. The kinetic energy of the rising elbow is indeed important, even though this energy is slow and blended with the even, "felt" rise overall.

At this point I can only describe a bit of style I've developed for all serves through various influences and repetitions. It's not the common prescription of getting tall before the knees bend-- example: Roger Federer. The knees start bending earlier with extreme slowness even a tad before the hands descend for the toss. The knees keep right on bending through everything that continues, which includes a shift onto the front foot. The knees bend so slowly that they don't compromise the toss. And the front leg is still bending as the low arm finishes its formation of a right angle (tilted).

Front leg drive then passively inverts the elbow and squeezes the two halves of the arm together and cocks the forearm starting everything straight up to the bottom of the ball.

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Modification: Slight Retreat from one Goal

I have to be happy with a 50 per cent return on post # 291 . Although I have in these chop experiments broken the ball outward on both sides, I can only do it consistently from the deuce court.

Doesn't matter. I got the Federfore. Then the one-hand backhand I like. And finally the kick serve. And once the girl after three years of trying. So I can get short cross-court chop in the ad court as well.

Wow, what a simple shot if you accept it's from arm only, with body staying closed, but with a little push from the gut.

Contact shall be directly in front of the body almost as if you're performing heart surgery, starting with the sternum. But maybe that smacks too much of medical soap opera. So how about you be the Russian cossack who killed Hungary's greatest poet, 26 years old.

You'll probably need a full eastern grip-- whatever it takes to get the precise downward chop. Sandor Petofi won't thank you.

Racket to swirl 90 degrees from open to edge on. That means turning the elbow down as arm extends, but do both easily. I want the tip to go up before it comes down, but not have to come down too much, which could upset timing. Maybe call the whole easy swirl "preparation for surgery."

The shot can be hit anywhere from waist level on up. Another name for it: "high backhand." There are other kinds of high backhand, I know, but anyone who masters this shot will find it useful for more even than returning a good kick serve.

During the "swirl" I just talked about, how fast should the racket go? Not very. You feel for the ball. Then when you're ready to hit it you employ John M. Barnaby's combination word: "PLUSH." You pull with the racket butt straight down while you push from the stomach, i.e., while keeping body edge on, you bow a little to adjust solidity.

Now you've chopped the ball, so what would be best to do next? Keep pulling the racket butt sideways to your right-- a different feel. You're pulling the racket butt still but maybe not from the rim.

When racket has circled right just let it continue, to pull body around and bring up your outside foot, which feels good.

If racket tries to come up, you didn't properly absorb the excess energy.

If you wound up to hit the ball a foot or more above your head, and you're an uptight person, you might circle with the racket at a still high level. Easier, however, would be just to let it fall as it goes round.

The End.

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The Cossack's Chop

When the cossack split open the 26-year-old Sandor Petofi longitudinally, was the arm holding his saber straight or bent?

Considering how wonderful Petofi's poetry is (there's an umlaut over the "o" in his name incidentally)-- especially a mock epic poem called "The Village Hammer"-- this has to be right up there among the most senseless and wasteful events in world history.

For purposes of tennis technique, however, I grant myself detachment from the horror of it all and immunity to anyone actually ambitious enough to learn Pancho Gonzalez's stock reply to high kick serves to his backhand.

The people of Hungary, by the way, turned Petofi's beautiful wife into a pariah for not waiting a full year before she re-married.

May a chop be considered a swing? If so, it's a short swing that hits the ball and then opens out.

But WHAT makes it open out? The direction of the elbow, which points slightly to the right.

I'm now prepared to say that the quickest way to spoil the stroke-- to engender inaccuracy-- is to straighten arm through the chop. You probably will never get the same result twice, at least I didn't.

I've considered this stroke without much luck in acquiring it for many decades by now.

I sit here with the three books of John M. Barnaby spread out in front of me, open in each case to the pages where the scarce, pertinent visuals exist.

In the first and best photo sequence, in RACKET WORK, Barnaby himself hits the ball a foot-and-a-half above his head with a straight arm. In ADVANTAGE TENNIS he hits the ball barely above his head with a bent arm. In GROUND STROKES IN MATCH PLAY, it's not the charmingly dwarfish Barnaby who's doing the chopping, but a strapping youth with racket outrageously, tremendously high, upper arm more than parallel to the court, whole arm slightly bent. From that we go to finish position with racket down low out right and left foot having drawn forward. Since there is no impact point for us to study, we have to imagine it.

So it's back to the Barnaby contact points. What do they have in common? VERTICALITY OF THE STRINGS.

The implications are huge. The hand is UNDER the strings. Contact therefore
is relatively close to the body. And hitting this shot at the lower altitudes won't work. And there's no need for an intermediate arm swing after contact. The chop can transform directly into the body turn. In RACKET WORK, the strings go right down to close to right side of right foot and in front of it before ending more rearward and to right.

There seems a chance that there is no separate movement of the arm after the chop if you don't count extension. Body turn then and direction in which elbow points would be all that created the final arm position.

The arm relaxes straight-- from elbow at least. Am not sure about wrist.

Dropping balls and keeping arm bent till under contact is the only route I can see toward initial development of this stroke. (Eventually, you'll need to practice with someone who has a really good kick serve.)

If the bent arm were straightening down on top of ball, the racket orientation would be diagonal or horizontal, but the two photos of Barnaby himself at contact have THIS in common: The racket orientation is VERTICAL.

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Chop Return in Ad Court, Cont'd

Why not use LESS GRIP if that will send ball farther to the right?

That would be big knuckle on 1.5 .

With hand under strings, keeping wrist concave would also send ball farther to the right-- a nice addition.

The normal method of closing a backhand through INCREASING GRIP seems more applicable to a horizontal or diagonal racket and may be irrelevant to this shot.

When you're chopping with racket tip cocked way up, less grip means balls that fly farther to the right.

With arm bent also, you can key racket tip upward easily. But how powerfully would you want to do this during what reasonably ought to be the delicate part of the stroke? More power would derive from keeping elbow stationary and keying the racket tip up; I'm advocating the opposite-- LESS power at this part of the tract. Why not move both ends of the lever at the same time then, i.e., slant lever from tip of racket to bent elbow-- tilt the whole contraption for control.

Then, accelerate down back of ball in precise direction of target.

Is this movement perfectly vertical or with just enough slant to contribute solidity?

The pitch must ultimately be determined by amount of upward spin on the oncoming serve.

The ball is trying to jump up off of your racket but you force it down with your chop.

For every punch there is a counter-punch, so is this it? Are we considering all the known opinions on this subject as we develop a new, more effective shot?

Are we answering every question and questioning every answer?

Me, I'll try leading with the bent elbow, pulling the racket down with the butt rim, hoping to do absolutely nothing that will mess with the arrow-like motion of the racket length. Simultaneous push from the gut should help the elbow head fly true. How about a little straightening from the elbow? Yes, but "little" is the operational word. Next, arm can finish straightening under/after contact to help finish the stroke.

But we haven't discussed body. I see a bent-arm take-back embracing a diagonal step-out. And racket tip keying down as body rears up. Racket then keying the other way as high body holds still. Shoulders pressing forward then during contact and opening in the follow-through.

The worst that can possibly happen, same as always, is the whole thing prove ridiculous.

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The Voice of Barnaby

The chop I seek is a carved serve in reverse, and since few people carve their serves any more, the knowledge with which to hit it is extremely difficult to come by.

If you want to experience tennis ignorance (don't know why you would) put "How to Chop a Kick Serve Return" in a search engine and see what you get.

The most solid piece of advice I could find, from my old favorite talk place, "Talk Tennis," is DON'T DO IT: THE BALL WILL FLOAT.

However, John M. Barnaby addresses that problem in his three books. He suggests maybe putting the thumb flatter on the back of the handle, or otherwise fiddling with grip until solidity is achieved.

We know this shot can work, spectacularly, because Pancho Gonzalez did it again and again. He is even reputed to purposely have let the ball get high on him for more acute angles.

John M. Barnaby writes, "The high backhand return of service is another spot where the ability to slice is indispensable. The racket must be cocked straight up above and outside the ball, then must carve around the outside of the ball and down across the striker so the follow-through is low on the right side. The lower edge of the racket must lead around, down, and through. If one pivots by rotating or swivelling on the ball of the right foot as the shot is played, so the left foot steps out to the left as the shot is finished, the ball can be carved for an astonishingly effective crosscourt return."

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The Moral of Delpo

If you crack your wrist straight through every shot, you may win the U.S. Open; but, you also may hurt your wrist.

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New Conclusions on Old Age Rotorded Serving

Unexpectedly, I found myself playing against Saleem, a cut-shot artist from Montreal and Lebanon, who clearly wasn't bothered enough by my first serve.

It's not a bad serve, just a little mediocre, and definitely employs leftward leap if not great leftward lean. I asked myself, "What really is the use of the modern leap and left foot landing if you don't get far off the ground?" I combined this thought with the maxim: "Old men shouldn't jump up in the air." And advice from one of the Vic Braden acolyte teaching pros who accompanied Vic to Winchester, Virginia, and who, after observing the airborne footwork on my serve, asked simply, "How do you hit the ball?" That wasn't enough for me, however, since I like to combine information from a variety of sources sometimes before I make an important decision.

As the lob kick second serve I recently developed after three decades of trying came in most part from periodic study of the fly leaf of TENNIS MADE EASY by Lloyd Budge, I decided to consult that book once again.

There's Lloyd, on the cover, showing the easy kick that carried him and his partner to the finals of the U.S. Open, Forest Hills, where they lost to Lloyd's brother and Gene Mako in four sets.

Somebody-- perhaps a writer at the old magazine "Tennis World"-- called TENNIS MADE EASY one of the five greatest instructional books ever written.

Remembering that, I looked now at the sparsely chosen photographs inside. Trying to divine a whole stroke from one or two photos is a far cry from running the videos at Tennis Player, stopping them, reversing them, repeating them, perhaps even counting frames.

What you see is mostly in your imagination. Is this a bad thing? Depends on your imagination.

I was struck this time by Lloyd hitting flat (two photos) and slice (one photo).
The toss was WAY out to the side behind the baseline in both cases. And for flat, Lloyd didn't even follow the old "Tennis World" rule of drawing a straight mental line from left leg up right arm to the ball.

Nope, at contact on page 81, Lloyd's racket is vertical, which seems text-book. But his extended right arm is well outside his extended left leg, and his right leg has moved up with his revolving body under the ball, an airborne peg-leg on the move. The extended left foot, which went up on its toe to help passively cock the racket tip downward has already settled on its heel again.

I have noticed that his brother, Don, of whom many more visuals are available, did that, too.

Works for me.

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More on the Serves of Lloyd Budge in TENNIS MADE EASY

No pivot of front foot or movement of rear foot on his slice and kick serves as of contact. Yes, pivot of front foot on his "flat" serve. And the pivot brings dead leg around. But front foot has settled on its heel again by the time that zombie leg, slightly in air, reaches the ball at same instant the racket does.