A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Or maybe Tom Okker keeps his bent knees pressing toward the net in this one photo-sequence of his famous topspin forehand, so different from all other famous photo-sequences of this special Okkerish item emceed e.g. by Jack Kramer.

In MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, Okker writes, "When you're stroking well, your forward knee remains bent during the entire shot. I often see club players stiffen that forward leg at impact and then kind of jump back on their heels. That's the hacker's finish.

"A good follow-through carries you into the court another step as a natural consequence of your having shifted your weight into the shot and having kept the racket following the ball along its line of flight for as long as possible.

"Many players would be surprised at the amount of effortless power they generate on forehands if they learned to extend the finish along the line of flight."

[bottle]

Hoppy Topspin with Spent Shoulders and Little Hips

I'm back to my favorite tennis book ever, MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES, which was missing for five years but turned up in my latest move. I have penned in its title on the fresh white adhesive tape that runs down its spine. This book is clotted with my own notes written in both pencil and pen and even black magic marker over many decades.

The topspin forehand to which I refer occurs on page 76. There are other topspin forehands in the book including one on page 50 that include a big hips pivot at the end.

But since delayed pivot is by now a regular feature of my go-to forehand (flat but with sufficient topspin), I now want to relegate my topspin forehand as a specialty shot that does something different.

Dr. Samel Johnson and his biographer James Boswell agree that writers who write about themselves enjoy less reputation.

That may be true, but when I write about my tennis strokes, I feel I am writing about a different person.

And if shoulders are spent with hips about to exert themselves very little, all that can be left is arm lift (independent) combined with some degree of wipe.

Maybe this is, at last, the deceleration-acceleration that Vic Braden spoke so much about. I look forward to hitting this shot for the first time in my life.

[bottle]

First Times

The first time I played with my spondee forehand (Budge on the backswing and bam on the foreswing), the score was 6-0, 3-0 when we quit for new partners.

One reason for that score was that I only hit the one forehand and forewent all others.

[bottle]

Heavy Topspin Variation

Love of mystery is essential to positive exploration. A neurotic person can't stand uncertainty and therefore won't be able to participate in trial balloons.

The Federfores and Grigorfores I've dabbled with utilize early hips movement to turn body inside out and then pour energy into a continuing balletic turn of that whole bod.

I thought for a while I could have different forehands with both early and late hips but now suspect I bit off more than I could chew.

Thus a return to past fascination with the forehand of Tiny Tom Okker.

As a pioneer of heavy topspin, he was a player who hit it from shoulders first and hips second.

Why can't this work just as well as the opposite sequence?

The shot will look like a Budge-bam through its early phases but then will add full mondo and wipe.

[bottle]

How Much Independence of Hand Movement is there in a Budge-bam?

None so far as backward and forward travel is concerned. All that action is accomplished by turning hips and shoulders (unit turn), by turning shoulders (point across phase), by returning shoulders to ball, by turning hips from ball to target.

That is why one's loop requires conscious figuring out. One wants the loop and skip-a-rock semi-mondo to better hit the ball but without compromising the priority of having body turn accomplish all backward and forward hand travel.

That predicts initial attention to detail while acquiring this shot.

Okay, and here's what I've come up with in a first brainstorm or trial balloon.

The spate of hot forehands that helped produce the 6-0, 3-0 score (partners then switched) was predicated on mirroring the slightly U-shaped path that worked so well to take the strings down to the ball.

And I no doubt will revert to this mimicry some time when things aren't going so well.

I was using a very free-form loop in other words.

By end of the evening however the forehand had lost some lustre.

So I want something a bit clunky and repeatable if less apt to produce mercurial shots.

Connected hands can lift together during the unit turn. Think of initial move in the windup of most pitchers in baseball. Now upper level has been attained. Now the hand separation during point across phase is perfectly level. And now hand gets in same place most of the time for best skipping of a stone.

[bottle]

Right. Hi, Steve. Hi, don_budge. I liked the part about me being able to do anything I please. Sounds like a slogan in a Detroit charter school.

[don_budge]

I think you have to be careful here. You might be coming across just as a middle schooler or "a tough guy from Detroit" (in your own words) when you need to be more than that.

Please just go back to you mental masturbation. Don't ever mention me again. Not ever. Just go on and on and on with your self indulgence. Your anger. It is none of my business. But I'm not taking any crap from you...I don't need your advice. Keep disrespecting our President. It is your choice. I won't tell you that you need to be more than that...because you don't. You can do anything you fucking well please. ANYTHING!

[bottle]

And then they all giggle in unison at the funny, bald white guy. It is all...so gay. As in frivolously happy. Boy? 6-0, 6-0. Knuckle head.

I think you have to be careful here. You might be coming across just as a middle schooler or "a tough guy from Detroit" (in your own words) when you need to be more than that.

[bottle]

From Self-Feed to 6-0, 3-0

It can only be done with perfect information and a remembered trick to immediately achieve the necessary athleticism. And a doubles partner, who, although a beginner, is young and fast and just did the warm-up drill with a teaching pro who is too expensive for myself.

The "perfect information" refers to the reality that only one kind of Budge forehand, as seen in this website, will work for me, bottle.

That is the one that uses half mondo like skipping a flat stone across the surface of a pond.

On the other side of this forearm boost there is no small plane propeller nor twirling baton nor windshield wiper of any kind. Only the connected rise of body and racket as one's delayed hips finally chime in.

When one watches the videos that are going to matter, especially more recent forehands in the Golden Oldie Section, one realizes that the racket at contact is far from being parallel to the court, and that J. Donald Budge is golfing the ball.

An interesting question, at least to me: Are all pitch considerations vastly different when racket tip is quite far beneath the hand?

One shapes a loop from the beginning.

The racket then golfs down to the ball from both one's lowering hand and the half-mondo mentioned before. This combined action replicates the feel of skipping a stone.

But that is sum of the independent arm work in the stroke. The arm loops and sidearms but never goes ahead of the truly significant body work in this shot. That is the reason that such strange pitch control can work. Because, although the arm is moving, it never passes nor lags behind one's bod.

To more deeply imprint these lessons-- they only exist on the surface of papyrus or parchment right now-- one needs some modern paper to soak in some India ink.

One will need to return to the abandoned 12 courts of Detroit's Rouge River Park, there to feel more tiny burrs against one skin, each one signed by don_budge.

The goal of this Saturday session will be replication of the flatter Budge backhands that so let me down at the same tennis social just a week ago.

Some flatter shots are of absolute necessity. Not that I will ever try them again in a match. I need to practice them to tell my whatever-it-is bod precisely where transverse stomach muscles leave off and hips pivot begins.

That question is smudged by the addition of loop.

So alternate one flat shot with one loopy golfed shot over and over again.

And don't fret over flat shots that don't stay in the court. Who at Rouge Park cares?

The future looks bright. Instead of diversifying into imitation of the other Budge shots, one can emulate Tom Okker's type of heavy topspin athough with a strong eastern grip.

Okker too, like Mercer Beasley (whom I watched play), Ellsworth Vines and Budge himself, starts his shoulders before his hips.

P.S. The instant athleticism trick: Before playing tennis, get oneself on a Concept 2 rowing machine back in the exercise room. The muscles used are entirely different, but one reminds oneself that one along with his best friends won three Dad Vail national collegiate championships. So, by process of deduction, there still is an athlete lurking inside of oneself if all of this is current fact as opposed to ancient dream.

[don_budge]

My feelings are terribly hurt. Lighten up, little boy. I'll do to you what I do to other little Detroit boys although unlike you they are black. I chase them around the room while I bluster at them. Then I say, "Do you think I'm angry? No, i'm just somebody who used to be on the stage."

And then they all giggle in unison at the funny, bald white guy. It is all...so gay. As in frivolously happy. Boy? 6-0, 6-0. Knuckle head.

[don_budge]

But please continue. Start a new streak of public masturbation. You remind me of another Super Liberal. Weinstein? Loser.

[bottle]

My feelings are terribly hurt (knot). Lighten up, little boy. I'll do to you what I do to other little Detroit boys although unlike you they are black. I chase them around the room while I bluster at them. Then I say, "Do you think I'm angry? No, i'm just somebody who used to be on the stage."

[don_budge]

57 straight posts in a row...this is a conversation of a true lunatic. The only conversation you are capable of having. No wonder you beg people to respond to your nonsense. Your sheer and utter nonsense. Talking to himself. It's a tennis forum.

[bottle]

Down Together Up Together Re-evaluated

Once a server has learned to thrust his lead hip out toward the net, he can go in one of two developmental directions.

Psychologically, he can put emphasis on this forward movement of the front hip. Or he can put his emphasis on the bend of the knees to prepare for upward firing of all of his extensors.

I used to put too much on 1), now am ready to go more with 2).

And to prepare for 2) want body involvement in the down and up which comes before.

It needn't be much. Especially when one considers that some careful servers stand perfectly erect through the down and up part of their serve.

But that won't put extra body weight on the subsequent body compression that protrudes the front hip.

One wants extra force to elicit more ground swell.

So how should body rise during the toss? From legs only? From all parts of the bod? Perhaps one does better not to define here.

A little force most probably but not a lot.

[bottle]

Think more, not less, about your One Hand Backhand but do it in a Personalized rather than Generic Way

The usual crap about thinking less does not apply to me. My whole identity is wrapped up in transitioning from verbal cue to athleticism. Give that up and I might as well talk to my older sister and ask her if she would consider taking back the nickname she assigned to me at birth, "Bottle."

One he she it little u-i in the E.E. Cummings poem about letting go of the end of a string attached to a kite needs to put body, not just arm into this shot.

John McEnroe can use forward hips turn to launch his great one hander if he wants but that prescription does not apply to me.

And all prescriptions to step straight toward the net do not apply to me.

Arthur Ashe's prescription to step at 45 degrees to the net does.

And so does my own prescription to emulate McEnroe's backswing as much as possible, so that forward hips turn will drive front shoulder around and up both.

But arm in my own backhand will launch the stroke down under the dipped front shoulder.

No wasting of hips turn to straighten the arm early for a gradual arm straightener like me.

But one (I) must be absolutely clear in my own head about when I want to use the three big accelerators available to me and in what sequence.

They are 1) forward hips turn, 2) scapular retraction and 3) total straightening of the legs and bod.

I've wasted years in not being definite about what works. This however was not entirely my own fault. A number of different combinations will work. One has to choose from among them then stay with that choice decade after decade.

Not me. Say I was too curious.

But now 1) loose bent arm launches the stroke; 2) hips straighten arm on an inside out path while one consciously slows down this straightening to avoid uncontrolled snap; 3) the hips turn melds into a straightening of the legs and bod along with clench together of the shoulderblades to finish the stroke off.