A New Year's Serve

[GeoffWilliams]

On one hand backhand, I recently learned, with Geoff Williams' help, not to mess with locked wrist as racket accelerates through a small C-loop U-turn (and with body driving this compressed rip, I would add).

That's it in a nutshell. Wrist stays locked, compressed rip, even with Gasquet type extreme follow through, supinated off to the rear, still wind shield wiper locked wrist, as was commented recently on by an english female commentator: "My what an extreme follow through he has."

[bottle]

And coming out of the compressed rip, make sure that racket is at the low point that you want, I would add.

[bottle]

Book Review

I put up a review yesterday of THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides, http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Plot-...DateDescending
The review, entitled "Students of John Hawkes Unite," is under my formal name John Escher. The main character of this novel about college love affairs, Madeline, whose name is taken from the old kid's picture book MADELINE by Ludwig Bemelmans is a pretty good tennis player.

[bottle]

The Best Tennis Book

The best tennis book isn't a book at all. It's a movie, GROUNDHOG DAY, about doing something over and over until you get it right.

[bottle]

Delayed Reaction

Geoff is very helpful once again, advising in # 1036 that wrist can stay locked all the way to end of an extreme followthrough "supinated off to the rear." The significance of this thought, which builds on previous discussion, only hit me after a couple of days. Yes, we all know what pronation is. And that supination is the opposite. And that an eastern backhand grip with maintained locked wrist can form a wipering action then to be combined with all other elements of the stroke.

[bottle]

Ingredients are Correct But in What Relative Amounts?

Rosewall backhand slice is an exercise in perfect balance; Steffi-slice in perfect imbalance.

Once one gets the ingredients for Steffi-slice down and embraces them with maritime imagery, one can say to oneself, "You know, this is a Teutonic shot, so achtung achtung! Alles muss in Ordnung sein!"

The maritime imagery: One or two dolphins sliding along the ocean surface. Up and down they go. Or a surfer skimming down the front of a large Hawaiian wave.

The racket tip gets back and up at the top of a fully formed wave. Now to tumble down.

Moves we've previously identified are: A teeter-totter from the hand followed immediately by an overhand sweep from the elbow followed by a jackknifing of the trunk.

In culinary terms let teeter-totter and overhand sweep be "pinches," the jackknife a dollop. Here's where the imbalance comes in. You'd fall on your face if arm and racket didn't pull the outside leg forward for a gymnast's landing.

Perhaps we should make this landing the focal point. The amount and timing of jackknife determines the weight, depth and pace of this spinny shot (spinny no matter what and it will stay low).

[bottle]

Haruspex

One practically has to be a haruspex if he wants to make sense of the entrails of a typical forehand.

Phony terms like "kinetic chain" pretend to explain what's going on but romanticize the subject instead. The science of "kinetic chain" may be good but the communication value of it sucks.

Why? Because human beings are going to be human beings. And if you are going to use the word "chain" in any sentence, you must understand that the person reading that sentence is going to see something, a snow chain if he drives a car in Labrador, an anchor chain if he's a ship builder, a winch if he just pulled the engine from a car, a necklace if he just gave an expensive present to his fiancee.

In these cases and others the links are even; i.e., one link is the same size as every other. That's where the analogy breaks down in regard to tennis.

The theory of kinetic chain is inextricable from acceleration-deceleration supposedly. As one segment slows down the next accelerates in one explanation; as one segment accelerates the previous segment decelerates in another. The subject quickly approaches the verge of confusion and plunges down onto the rocks of de-chunked experience so that the aspirant champion is reduced once again to complete beginner.

Now I'm going to push down with one leg, most likely from the outside leg. If I do everything perfectly, rotation may then occur from 1) the feet to the knees, 2) from the knees to the hips (including the hips), 3) the upper body, and 4) the arm and the racket.

But I'm going to cut off 4) the arm and racket, just stick with 1), 2), and 3).

And 4) now is going to have everything to do with stopping this building momentum of 1), 2), and 3).

In fact, I can now think in two units rather than four. "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" said Emerson (Ralph Waldo). He could just have said, "Simplify."

I'm not going to stop there, however. I'm going to take the term "acceleration-deceleration," which I find overly abstract, and invert it to "deceleration-acceleration." I'm going to utterly stop something that was moving fast (the upper body) so that the arm and racket accelerates really fast.

But what's going to take off: The hand or the racket tip? Have you ever heard ANYONE pose that question? And do you think people will answer it? I don't expect them to. So I'll conduct my own experiments.

[bottle]

Wiper After Contact

The other great affective forehand misunderstanding besides kinetic chain: the windshield wiper.

By the word "affective" I refer to how some term is likely to be taken by persons other than him who used it.

In the case of Djoker, does any wiper occur before contact, or during contact, or any time other than right after contact? None whatsoever.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Novak_Djokovic_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/ND_FH_Center&stroke=ND%20FH%20Center%20OpenStance%20Rear1%20500fps.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Novak_Djokovic_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/ND_FH_Center&stroke=ND%20FH%20Center%20OpenStance%20Rear6%20500fps.mov

Now if a person has a 3.5-3 grip rather than Djoker's semiwestern but would like to hit the ball the same basically healthful way, he must close the racket an extra amount either during the backswing, which would destroy deception, or during the forward swing just before contact, which might look like a wiper to somebody.

Clearly a person who doesn't have to make such adjustment due to his stronger grip, being more simple, has natural advantage.

An eastern grip, however, as we all know, contains many compensations.

The eastern player who makes a distinction between arm roll before contact (call it "closing the racket face") and arm roll after contact (call it "windshield wiper") can hit the ball with deceleration-acceleration like Djoker and still remain consistent in his use of language-- in case he wants to write about tennis or teach it.

[bottle]

One Aggressive Forehand Service Return

Turn position can be a moving thing, a film strip instead of a still photo. That must mean the old sequence taken from National Tennis Academy certification: Unit turn and then arm goes back a tiny bit. And since perfect uprightness seems uptightness to me by now, as arm goes back the extra little bit the body can angulate a little bit, i.e., the front hip go out toward the net preparing for extra push from the upper body. The notion of body rotation attenuated beyond contact to an ideal followthrough out front is anything but deceleration-acceleration as applied to some full forehands. This rather is a special concept applied to one version of a forehand service return. And I'm saying that two kinds of attenuated forward body rotation administered at once can increase the feel of shoving back at an oncoming serve. And can return racket face to verticality or just beyond all by itself at the same time.

But if oncoming serve looks to be extremely fast, one can stay hunched over toward the net like Pancho Gonzalez throughout the whole cycle. That will certainly help anybody keep their strings vertical or slightly closed even with a mild grip.

In that case, for added topspin, one would hook the racket down with one's arm as one went back the extra little bit.

But now the serve is coming even faster, it's an Isner. So don't take arm back at all. Just leave it where it started and angulate body a little to take racket down in a more forward position.

And don't forget your twinkle-feet. Do that and you'll be too far away from or too close to the ball.

[bottle]

Twinkle-Feet

I'm already regretting my statement about twinkle-feet but won't delete it. It turns out that if somebody is trying to return a Raonic or Isner serve, they may have time for a limited unit turn off of a split-step where the outer foot doesn't splay even though there still is lower body torque involved.

Yes, this returner will have time for nothing else and certainly not for twinkle-feet or taking the racket back an extra amount as if it's detached from the body. Similarly, a slow-witted and slow-reacting dude can use good abbreviated technique against a slower serve and still be successful.

"The Pro Return: Part 1: Compact Classical" requires extra readings beyond the first because of the amount of information and ideas it contains. That's true of all the best written tennis instruction, I believe. (But I also think that most on-court and even video instruction doesn't go far enough, so maybe, reader, you'd like to dismiss my view. Too much detail in every case is the villain, but in the case of written analysis, with videos, present format is the absolute best since the viewer can come back again and again, if he has the will, to sort things out.)

How about the ideas of Federer's mid stroke step-across and long arm unfurling to the side rather than toward rear fence to reach the extreme wide serve with no available time? Is this move reserved for beautiful animals imbued with youth, genius and natural grace? Possibly, but I doubt it, especially if some geezer can teach himself the pure economy of gravity step basics for recovery from wide position in the deuce court.

[bottle]

Slide-Step

It's a dance step. I refer to furniture # 13 in "The Pro Return: Part 1: Compact Classical" just above the author's photograph. There are two recoveries shown in this video loop, so don't be distracted by the one that occurs in the ad court. The deuce court recovery is the one that requires special study.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/avancedtennis/john_yandell/pro_returns/part_1_compact_classical/

Deuce court recovery is a dance step of two beats with mid-stroke cross-over step already having occurred. First beat is right foot recovery step. Second beat is Michael Jackson type gravity step back toward the center. The inside foot slides a few inches toward the outside foot to help create starter block acceleration.

[bottle]

Figure Eights in Ground Strokes

"The best mental image to produce a draw is thinking of the swing as a figure 8."

That statement occurs in CURE YOUR SLICE FOREVER, a 1994 golf book by John Huggan.

Slice in golf and tennis is different and the same (and usually is quite lousy in golf), but draw is desirably powerful topspin mixed with hook to the inside in both sports.

How does one produce draw then? With an inside out swing. But what are the details of that? A plethora of material is available-- too much in fact. Here are some comments I've therefore written in the margins of the Huggan book in an attempt to personally index for myself so much stuff:

1) "Be counter-intuitive and don't go to the inside too soon."

2) "Don't conceal the racket behind you too soon." (If you believe in pronounced concealment as the teaching pro Chris Lewit does.)

3) "Show opponent the racket just before you hide it."

4) "Line up for a down the line shot, which means racket backswings along a straight line formed by projected contact point and the target point (i.e. project this line in both directions)."

5) "Use a compact body-driven loop within a loop, with said compact loop occurring to the inside of the projected line described in 4)."

6) "All this is a clever trick to make contact occur on that part of the figure 8 in which racket is accelerating to the outside."

7) "Shots in which contact occurs on the front part of a figure 8 cross the ball and therefore are weak."

8) "Use the same swing to produce crosscourt shots with a hand adjustment before contact."

In CURE YOUR SLICE FOREVER, John Huggan writes: "Players, for whatever reason, just don't listen to advice on the setup. Maybe it's because the fundamentals of anything tend to be boring. Maybe it's impatience; people just don't want to get worse before they get better."

[bottle]

Projections

Physical problems are keeping me from challenging these ideas right away, but only mental problems would turn off the faucet of new ideas once begun-- that at least is my experience of pursuing inventive "progressions."

Working from 8), how about projecting a line through two ghost balls slightly to the outside of the imaginary line described in 4).

First ghost ball on a backhand then is to the left of projected contact. Second ghost ball is same small amount to left of projected down-the-line target. Result: a crosscourt.

Arm to rotate (twist) from hand for down the line, arm to twist from elbow for crosscourt, which latter method takes racket head to inside a bit. These twists occur coincident with upper body rotation before you abruptly stop it.

Forward action in every other respect is the same inside out swing re-coinciding with arc toward the actual target.

[bottle]

Hmm. Nobody replied. Must be true then.

[bottle]

Additional Adductional Rotation

carrerakent says that Sam Stosur's right shoulder isn't "torqued and involved enough" in her kick second serve. Let's use this idea for ourself.

Scapular retraction (max) to scapular adduction (to parallellism of spine of scapula with clavicle) affords an extra 45 degrees of racket head turn beyond that already provided by rotating body and supinating forearm and total compression of the two halves of the arm together and easing out of fingers and radial deviation of wrist. The scapular adduction stoppage point must be memorized. The maximum scapular retraction point reaches your physical limit by placing the racket head approximately parallel to the body (i.e., temporarily in close to back as in a Michael Stich serve). Another way of putting this is that you open out the shoulder as much as you can.

All small actions-- much too many to remember-- can reassemble into the single image of the slow racket traveling across the back in a long path which then inverts and continues across the back in the opposite direction as the racket tip continues to work down toward the court.

The racket head goes in a slightly accelerative way all along this switchback hike. If rate of movement isn't perfect the arm can get behind or ahead of one's bod.

If you wouldn't mind, reader, I'll now go maritime and then return to mountainclimb. My brother, in Rhode Island, sells (once in a while) the biggest catamaran I've ever seen much less slept in. All through the night Hope and I peered out a porthole in Tiverton Harbor, as the land, delineated by certain lights, went by in one direction and then the other. This is similar to the current Tennis Channel ad in which a lady up on the end of a rope wants one kind of a rock but not another. The camera appears to circle so that the horizon constantly swims past as she is poised atop the rock.

Always be deliberately turning the racket around you for as long as you can to obtain a beautiful serve and maybe even a good one.