A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Federfores, You Stevedores

"Maybe Roger will throw you a used sweatband," my critics used to say. "And why do you want to imitate him anyway when there're so many other tour players to choose from? Why not James Blake?" Reader, if you don't know by now, you're never going to know, and I doubt that you and I will ever have very much to talk about.

People pretending to criticize the Gordon-Macci-Yandell opus now had better get a few things straight. First, if they think the slogging is worse than fiction, they need to read REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST by Marcel Proust or every volume of FINNEGAN'S WAKE by James Joyce.

Second, to criticize something, you need to talk about it, not just about your own brain or pizzle. But in this case, to read with either is a grave mistake. For this article-- the Gordon-Macci-Yandell-- requires that you read with your arm.

Will you have to change your grip to strong eastern to do this? Very possible unless you are constructed like Rafa Nadal. The authors themselves may disagree-- I hope so. Next issue: All the miserable misguided articles and posts we've had to read about how double-bend is better. It isn't.

But the authors picked Roger as their model long before last Sunday. And for small periods during the 15-year research, Roger didn't do well...for him. Perhaps we all need a simplicity check. His strokes and movement look best and are most functional of all the world's best tennis players.

Let's talk about forehand backswing now on the theory that considering a whole tennis, golf or rowing cycle at once is the best educational approach for most people.

Today I see something I didn't see yesterday, and I deem that a very normal process evident everywhere in life. Such a change has nothing to do with Gordon, Macci, Yandell or anyone else who probably stands between me and my best tennis.

Some videos I've seen lately don't portray racket tip pivoting up on elbow. Rather, both ends of the racket rise at the same speed. This happens after a unit turn of course. And next, the arm extends, which brings racket in toward the body and lines it up with the shoulders.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideInArmActionRear1_500fps.mp4

Golfers, to get this lined up feel, sometimes thread a pin behind their back through their elbows.

This is what I want for myself as I conduct drop and hit experiments today: A very solid connection between upper body and racket during the first part of the forward swing.

Then, as can't-be-delayed-enough-racket becomes perpendicular to baseline and net, the arm gets slingshotted forward on top of big body whirl which naturally will slow down a bit.

Did scapular retraction occur just before this to engender such an effective slingshot encrusted on the still ongoing broad arc whirl? I insist that it did.

[bottle]

Backswing, Flip and Contact

(Seen from the Rear)

In the video I most recently used (in the immediately preceding post) the backswing is to the left of the ball. The flip is to the left of the ball but closer to it. Would this be true on other shots hit to different targets?

Inside Out

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHInsideOutArmActionRear_250fps.mp4

Short

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHShortArmActionRear_250fps.mp4

Moves Back

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Arm_Action&stroke=RFFHMovesBackArmActionRear_250fps.mp4

Forehand Wide

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Forehand/RF_FH_Wide&stroke=RFFHWideOpenStanceRear4_500fps.mp4

[bottle]

Spear Longer

Order 30 20-milligram pills of scapular retraction from the Eli Lilly Company: Only $800 with your physician's prescription from your local pharmacy today.

[bottle]

Swimming Pool Pantomime of Federfores

I found myself doing this one time in a private indoor swimming pool in Somerset, England. The owner of the pool, an internationalist whom I'd known for most of my life, came downstairs to start making breakfast but looked in briefly because she heard thrashing in the water. She finally decided, right then and there, that I was a complete nut.

The direction of arm straightening however is very important. Determined precisely by where the elbow points, it counters the flip before the flip even starts to happen.

People other than myself may not have to dwell on "scapular retraction" since they can achieve the same phenomenon through the less threatening self-command "relax your shoulder right after the flip." (Or during the flip or just before the flip. Let's keep the possibilities open.)

The world contains many swimming pools. Particularly instructive, unit turn completed, is to lift one's hands into such position that right is just under the water with left just out of the water.

[bottle]

Pitch

Building on the previous post with right hand just under the water and left hand just above the surface in the air, why for the love of Pete or Roger or Aggie or any other player one admires would one even think of adjusting pitch anywhere but right there?

Fiddle with the relationship between the two hands. Go this way and the strings close. Go that way and the strings open.

I don't mean to sound preachy, but I'm trying to report activity more economical than what I used to do, and like any recent convert to anything think that everybody else of course should do the same.

Namely, report on the progress toward economy that they've made-- in order to help new persons find that or other edits.

[bottle]

"Subtle Arcs"

"Tennis is about subtle arcs." Somebody said it. I can't remember who. Nor do I care since I believe it. Belief is the important part.

If a subtle arc is slightly off the optimal, the experimenter will develop a whole elaborate mindset such as, "Genius should never be imitated, and Fred Perry's ping-pong-like strokes, unique to him, brought down the tennis fortunes of Great Britain by creating a race of Fred Perry imitators when successful imitation of Fred Perry just wasn't humanly possible."

This is an interesting thesis, but I don't buy it, especially since genius, as Goethe pointed out, is always characterized by simplicity. And I don't think the Brits used a sufficiently Ben Franklin like off-the-wall inventor's garage bench in American suburbia approach and didn't toil for long enough and were overly sensible and therefore gave up too soon. Yes, Alan Bates should have spent even more time with Zorba the Greek.

When anybody imitates anybody, they tend to do it in too slavish and superficial fashion.

The way now to understand the Federer forehand is to turn away from all the videos for a few minutes and study the stroke production opus of Gordon-Macci-Yandell ("The ATP Forehand Parts 1 and 2").

Then start fooling around with the backswing. I know I started preaching backswing toward right rear fence post. Next I thought that racket tip might point there but that once you factor in huge upper body rotation and lifting of both hands, you get a kind of inside out hooping or spiraling hay rake motion to the ball that yes is "inside out" while not exactly being the same as an inside out SWING.

What does that mean, and why should you or anybody care? Because Roger's forehand is almost surely better than the one you currently have, and you should respect ANYBODY'S honest opinion/experience in trying to get closer to it.

If one does the swimming pool experiments of #'s 1204 and 1205, one may end up thinking like me that backswing should go more steeply up and down and closer to the body than one may have thought. (Possible images to mainline best pattern into your neurological system: An upside down boot? A midget church steeple? Just the idea of a twin direction "peaked" backswing going up then down while around toward behind your body without ever getting there seems revolutionary.)

By doing this, one may eliminate some contrived and time drain closing of the strings. Closing nearly always does occur but can blend nicely with other stuff through a little fiddling with how one hand relates to the other during the lift of both. This "two-hands-are-equal" little adjustment feels very different and easier and quicker than some radical twist in the hitting arm.

[bottle]

From Forehand to Serve

Now that we've got the Federfore where we want it, the time has come to take all lessons learned across the bridge to rotorded serve.

And what is the distinguishing feature of the rotorded serve we have developed? A bent arm toss followed by that bent arm remaining poised in the air until all cows have come home.

So what has bent arm got to do with a Federfore? Bent left arm is used sometime to catch the racket but more often not, in which case its function is not to stop the shoulders but significantly slow them, which one should do on a serve, too. A second function for serve and forehand both is to establish opposite hand as the still hand in an elasticized slingshot.

So, get some figure eights going in practice before the first serve. And then add windmills-- but of the kind used as pitching exercise at Jaegersports.com. One can have a racket or two in hand (one in each hand) or not. The point is to stride purposefully toward one's opponent windmilling one's arms toward him, all of which may convince him that you are a nut.

Remember, people are afraid of crazies. "Walk slow, John," my triple-lifers used to say on a day when they were favorably disposed toward their writing teacher and were explaining to him how he might survive walking through big city at 4 a.m. or even at 9 a.m. while crossing the prison yard.

But will your opponent be truly threatened by your two arms flailing toward him since the net is between you? He may simply decide you are doing something gymnastic.

On the chance that he is intimidated, however, shift into reverse. Start windmilling backward while stepping backward. Then, with menacing suddenness, come toward him a second time. The real purpose is to fill your arms with blood.

Already, I'm revising this. First retreat. Then advance. Then retreat. Then do figure eights with bent arm up in the air. Then step up to the line to start the match.

[bottle]

The Narrative Form is Just as Good as Pure Analysis

in Improving Racket Head Direction and Speed

I'm thinking now of a big turned around stance serve with huge horizontal rotation of the shoulders but in two different gears-- fast and then slow.

People with weak knees and even people who simply are well-grounded may not want to get high in the air like Roger Federer or Michael Jordan.

Vic Braden has always held out the alternative of later leg drive and more connection to court in his take on serves.

For myself, I right now seem committed to bent arm toss although straight arm toss works almost as well.

I like the simplification of the bent arm whether I'm supposed to or not. The elbow is firm, i.e., the angle of upper to lower arm does not change. Toss as always is relaxed and from shoulder.

While I have some minimum body rotation kick that jumps quite high but without much pace, and which keeps hitting arm bent like tossing arm for a long while, I'm releasing hitting arm on most serves by now to do what it always did-- get long, bend up, compress, get long, i.e., be relaxed and more like a wet towel or the end of a bull whip.

Keeping chest open to sky creates a throwback breed of serve different from the cartwheel type in which one shoulder rolls over the other .

Such possibilities nowadays are less well known and even seem exotic. Should hips thrust more toward side fence than forward toward the net to keep the shoulders rotation on the up and up?

I'll try it since the prospect of hitting shoulder rotating downward on the face of it seems very bad.

(But damn if this doesn't give me a new idea. What if one thrust hips toward opponent in approved contemporary fashion? And therefore sent hitting shoulder downward in fast/first part of the upper body rotation? Would not the slow second gear of this rotation try to send the racket upward and to the inside, which might counter arm motion that's maybe too downward to the outside?)

This last proposal could be ridiculous, but the temperature is 102 degrees and I'm not going to the tennis court to find out today.

[bottle]

Roger's Forehand Backswing: As Interesting as I Think?

All any of us can do, to be most authentic, is draw on our own experience. And while I never was good at golf, the time I outdrove an entire seaside community was due to one natural feeling backswing.

The fact that my father then outdrove me is irrelevant to this discussion since he was a very good golfer.

In obtaining my mail order certification as a teaching pro, I learned that Joe Cockersham, founder of the Waxahatchee Texas National Tennis Academy (NTA), considers "backswing" to be a small, downward hook of hand and racket that occurs after one's unit turn.

That's simple backswing. But Roger's is complex backswing that doesn't take any more time. It goes slightly up (both hands rise) and immediately goes slightly down (the right arm extends from the elbow).

[bottle]

Movement on the 2012 Wimbledon Ice Floe

We secured agreement among Google, AOL, Amazon Metrics, Federal Drug Administration Enemies List Division and Apple Cores, Inc.

This combined research produced two billion pages of printout, all of which we studied carefully before shredding it and leaving a single question.

How many times did the top players slip or even fall down and how did this affect outcome? Federer, Murray, Djokovic, Nadal?

[bottle]

Ease

Quoting somebody without getting the words exactly right can be pretty bad, but our TV is off right now.

A lot of people are complimenting Roger Federer in the twentieth cycle of criticism then praise.

My favorite is Andre Agassi pointing out that in a sport of incredibly hard hits Roger is always figuring out how to play with less effort.

[stotty]

Roger and Water

That's simple backswing. But Roger's is complex backswing that doesn't take any more time. It goes slightly up (both hands rise) and immediately goes slightly down (the right arm extends from the elbow).

Just because something funny is going on doesn't make it complex. It's actually very simple. The greatest shot in the history of tennis must have simplicity. I define simplicity (at least in most respects) as how quickly the player can produce the shot under duress. Roger can pull out a great forehand in any circumstance imaginable. It's genius.

Water is genius. It' so simple. It has no taste which means any bugger or living thing can drink it. How genius is that!

[don_budge]

Water and Roger's backswing...

Water is genius. It' so simple. It has no taste which means any bugger or living thing can drink it. How genius is that!

The comment about water is either an accident or sheer genius in itself. Water...like common criminals and Roger's backswing seek the path of least resistance. Knowing Stotty it is no accident...he is a bit of a sly devil.

The most complex thing about it is...is when we try to emulate it in it's entirety without understanding the physics or the metaphysical process. You and I ain't Roger but it is the backswing that I teach...incrementally.

[bottle]

Everybody a Dom When it Comes to Tennis

"Jeez," as Anastasia Steele might say. Or "Oh my." Or "Gee willikers."

Just got back from Sleeping Bear Dunes Park on Lake Michigan.

All I know is that the backswing described in # 1209 is one delayed move in which both hands rise to slightly lift the racket and the right arm extends from the elbow to set it down (this before the solid swing flip)-- and does feel like flowing water and leads to the best feeling forehand I've discovered.

Is such personal discovery ever useful to other persons/another person? I don't see why not. But perhaps the other person would have to have actively fiddled with Federfores for more than five years. Perhaps not.

http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/12490-fifty-shades-of-mitt-romney

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Rip Slice, Hip Slice, Rolled Slice and Barred Slice

Hit first five with arm passively straightening on ball. Hit the sixth with arm passively straightened before the ball.

1) Rip slice. Backswing to where you would see a ring on your middle finger. Gently launch racket barrel toward net while keeping bend in arm. Rip shoulderblades together (scapular retraction). Result: sidespin backspin.

2) Hip slice. Exactly the same as 1) except that the abrupt change of direction is caused by delayed rotation of the hips rather than delayed clenching of the shoulderblades. Result: more backspin in the mix.

3) Rip and hip. Same as 1) and 2) but do both at the same time.

4) Same as 3) but fire shoulders simultaneously with hips and scapulae, i.e., slash the ball with everything you got.

5) Rolled slice. This shot is imitation Steffi Graf. The racket tumbles down the front of the stroke.

6) Barred slice. A barred bird or a barred stamp can have a black line through each wing or across the face. A barred backhand however is a backhand in which the arm is swung or punched forward while straight. In keeping with the other slices here and also with my one hand topspin backhand drive, I'm using hips to passively straighten the arm followed by inside out movement on a mildly downward path. The arm work can be slow, just as it can be on the upward spiraling drive version. "Don't flail at the ball," the original Don Budge used to say. Swing easy then. And I've been almost perpetually wondering, Does a slower barred swing go through the ball more since the movement is from the shoulder ball? Is movement from the shoulder housing (scapular retraction) more apt to cross the ball? Is the idea of both movements at once viable? Who would know if he'd done it? Perhaps these alterations could be achieved through simple messing around with speed and exertion of the arm swing combined with different angles of outgoing shot.