A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Re Durie Tip in # 1664

If your best serve has you lowering the tossing arm to initiate throw before the hitting arm flies up it, then use a photographic technique involving a radioactive or perhaps emulsification cloud conceptually drawing on the Higgs Field in space.

Your arm will create a real or perhaps imaginary image for the hitting arm to fly up.

This shouldn't be hard. Another way of putting it is that the hitting arm can fly up the memory of the tossing arm.

Remember, reader, an electron is both a particle AND a wave, and now it's there and now it isn't so never be too set in your ways.

[bottle]

Shoulders Forward and Down, Rump Back just a Little

I really think this view of a Boris Becker second serve shows the kind of arm compression I've been working toward.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/borisbecker/borisbecker_serve/bb_2nd_serve/bb_2nd_serve.html?BB2ndSDeuceCourtLevelSide1.mov

"Arm compression" could mean too many different things, but what I'm trying to say here is that the two halves of Becker's arm, upper and lower, press together while parallel to the SIDE COURT behind him.

The arm then opens (bounces?) to about a right angle at which point upper arm twist can effectively add to the power brew.

Michael Stich, in some of his serves at least as I recall them in old split frame magazine pieces, had arm even more turned around so that racket might even roughly point at left net post.

I'm sure that other servers do press their arm together this way but at a later point in the cycle.

For someone who's thinking "more whirl like a modern shot-putter, please," this idea could be useful in an overall design that starts out more circular and then gets straightforward to press weight from slightly jack-knifing body length.

[bottle]

Courier on Grigor Dimitrov

In Wimbledon coverage, I found myself impressed with Jim Courier when he suggested that all of Dimitrov's strokes were imitation Federer in an overly literal way.

Courier didn't say one can't learn from Federer. But he did indicate that the best game one can come up with must always contain elements of one's own individuality no matter what source or sources it came from.

[stotty]

Copying smart

In Wimbledon coverage, I found myself impressed with Jim Courier when he suggested that all of Dimitrov's strokes were imitation Federer in an overly literal way.

Courier didn't say one can't learn from Federer. But he did indicate that the best game one can come up with must always contain elements of one's own individuality no matter what source or sources it came from.

Copying can be subconscious or downright deliberate. Dimitrov seems to fall in the latter category. Pancho Gonzales had the best idea. Steal the best from everyone, then make it your own...smart.

[bottle]

Reprise: More Grist for the Service Mill

I was looking for a clip to substantiate my point of view that leaping up is not necessarily the best way to develop the most powerful serve; notice I said, not necessarily. I was and may still use this clip in a comment relating to the thread about the now almost mandatory "kickback" of the modern serve. Said movement does not exist in my favorite model, the Michael Stich serve.

But here is an interesting slomo video of some top athletes generating maximum power in a throw where the front foot stays on the ground a long time and the rear leg swings forward without kicking back. No foot faulting either!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfeD7kDOMWo

I was hoping this might generate some interesting comments.

don

Don't know that my comment will be interesting, but I've been working on more whirl to compensate for not getting racket low enough due to rotordedness in the shoulder.

[bottle]

Hmmm. They're all kicking the other foot back. A sensible person should look into this?

[bottle]

Two Different Strokes Within Rosewallian Slice

Stotty of Great Britain appears to live near Wimbledon and to attend The Championships like no one else. His first-hand study of Ken Rosewall's backhands and backhand volleys, some decades ago, was accomplished, clearly, from a nearby seat. Much discussion happens in the pages of Tennis Player about which video camera a coach should buy. Well, the Stotty camera is very good.

Stotty and I are not the only persons to like the following clip from the 1954 Davis Cup tie between America and Great Britain. One reason I like it is the anonymous narrator telling me that any study I do of Rosewallian slice will have a big pay-off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7kvBGntW8

The three sequences of full slice in the video are what I think of as linked double roll in which there is nothing else between the rolls.

The following photographic sequence of Ken Rosewall however shows a stroke that is closer to the repeating videos of Trey Waltke.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/trey_waltke/the_slice_backhand/the_slice_backhand.html

The racket turns over on the backswing. A small amount of added backward roll then takes place on the foreswing. Followed by straightening of the arm to the outside (a push). Followed by forward roll which involves both the "barred arm" as Geoffrey Williams would say and wrist flattening from concave to straight.

That two such different constructions should exist within the Rosewallian arsenal should come as no surprise to someone paying attention when Stotty pointed out Ken Rosewall's almost infinite variety.

Variety as a characteristic of any good player who likes to hit a lot of slice also is not a new idea. Somebody with a single backhand drive, a pair of good forehands, and a triad of serves might be considered a reasonable person.

Volleys and slice, however, imply a constellation of shots.

[bottle]

Taking Backhand Lob to Another Level (Sixty Feet Higher)

Try linked double roll in which there is nothing else between the rolls.

[stotty]

A little treat

Here's another treat for you, bottle. Rosewall hitting with Newcombe. Check out the running sliced backhand at 0:40. Also, the open stance backhand volley at 1:54. Rosewall was excellent at hitting his backhand volley off any stance. It's balance that counts...and he can find balance and weight transfer off any volley whatever the predicament. After much practice I learnt to do the same myself. A great skill to learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aUnSCp64S0

I don't understand French, not a word. If you do, let me know what the narrator is saying.

[bottle]

French persons have told me that my French is quite bad-- an advantage, I'm sure, in watching this fascinating video.

[bottle]

Which Foot Can Kick Back

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/borisbecker/borisbecker_serve/bb_1st_serve/bb_1st_serve.html?BB1stSDeuceCourtLevelRear.mov

Answer: Either.

[bottle]

Bad Boy Tennis

At the Crooked Run tennis facility in Front Royal, Virginia, there was a foursome of doubles players who'd stuck together for half a century.

To substitute in this group was always a pleasure. As Kathy Jordan of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania once said, playing with very old men can teach anyone a great many useful tricks much of them concerning what not to do.

The foursome in Virginia called themselves "The Bad Boys." The equivalent group in Grosse Pointe, Michigan is more like 20 or 40 persons who play three times a week outside and inside without ever departing from their round robin format.

Everybody sticks their racket butt down in a hole in a carousel that looks like an umbrella rack. This determines who's going to play next. The sequence is supposed to be clockwise, but the second day I played I had an argument with another geezer about what was clockwise and quickly learned to shut up. In either case-- whichever is counterclockwise (are you looking up from the ground under the carousel?)-- the system unfailingly works.

So, as four different courts complete a game, someone yells "Player!" and you grab your first place racket and run out to the designated court perhaps hitting your head on a tree branch and serve.

So you play four games, switching positions (clockwise) and then get a rest. You keep your water bottle, etc., in an oasis between the courts, something it took me one bad experience to learn.

"Who couldn't like this?" I said to the town doubles champ running it. "It's a circus."

He agreed. (I could have called him the Grosse Pointe seniors doubles champ but chose not to.)

In all these clockwise rotations, if you have a limp, you quickly learn that every limp is relative. All kinds of players come prancing or crawling out to your court, with a new player making his appearance every single game.

The youngest player is 55. I at 73 got to play five times with Wally, who was number one at South High School in 1942. That makes him about 89. We won three times and lost two.

Kathy Jordan, of course, won a total of seven grand slam titles.

[bottle]

Different Cue

Accuracy of wipered forehands improved today, in a self-feed session, when I changed my usual cue of "Flip, Spear, Wipe" to "Sweep, Flip, Wipe."

What's happening in this second case during "Flip?"

Not only is the wrist laying back and the forearm winding racket down in various degree, but the arm is pre-loading big time for slingshot effect.

This change, I feel, closes a 3.5 grip produced racket face more, at least for a person with half of Federer's wrist range.

As in all innovation after a certain age something old tries to come back.

This would be my "Ziegenfuss," a stroke in which arm swings forward in a controlled way before body extends the hit and followthrough.

This is different however, robbing and combining features of several different strokes.

First, everything having to do with arm and hand seems to be coming to a stop. In actuality, this isn't true, but an ancient precept in the lore of forehands says that the hand and body are always in a race.

So, okay, one can leave the wrist relaxed but straight all the way through tapping the dog and beyond to allow the dropped arm to ease forward.

Now body passes the arm.

This will create the spearing effect we all desire even though everything is traveling pretty much in a direction toward the net and opposite fence.

Next to me was a young punk of opposite philosophy, using a rapidly popping ball machine to drill the horrible design of his forehands deep into his lizard brain.

[bottle]

Building Rosewallian Slice

To say I'm ecstatic about my new double roll prominent slice would be understatement.

Not that I talk about it anywhere but here. On the court, I use it, in silence, with some new variety emerging yet with how much more still to be discovered/revealed? And I receive all kinds of reinforcement/encouragement back from the old guys I play with three times a week. (Good thing they haven't discovered my politics yet.)

They slice too but there's doesn't go as fast.

As recently as this Spring I could only play tennis one time a week. I take two pills of Aleve now for the arthritic swelling which otherwise will occur in my left knee.

Fascinating to me is Stotty's statement made sometime back-- that among the players he regularly sees (clearly a lot) he sees some with imitation Rosewall backhand slice seemingly perfect in every detail but without the result.

Me, I don't claim to have found the elixir of youth but am seriously interested in contemplating this statement.

Is Rosewallian slice high maintenance? Is it like an old radio that needs to warm up unless you're Ken Rosewall himself? Does the radio station one wants to hear only happen after soon-to-return static goes away?

I only want to think about one slice right now-- the one that goes the fastest, skims the lowest and skids the mostest.

Anyone could and should quickly become addicted to a shot like that.

The different double rolls I'm now using have different lengths to them and rarely are equal, i.e., backward and forward rolls as copies of each other. The fastest variation, as seen in the Davis Cup '54 video, is very long and level from behind the back to the ball.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7kvBGntW8

I have been experimenting with forward hips turn to not only extend arm passively from the elbow but to produce a muscular tug at the shoulder as arm tries to go backward some more.

A bit of forward lean takes all slack out of the arm, Arthur Ashe used to say.

The thusly spring-loaded racket head starts out so open (because of simultaneous backward roll) that it could be a frisbee. And it turns over for contact, which prolongs the gradual acceleration (unlike the more abrupt acceleration of a serve or the ATP Style Forehand, say).

This is my only attempt to explain my one transcendent tennis shot today. It zinged past the left ankle of the best player out there and made me feel good.

[stotty]

I only want to think about one slice right now-- the one that goes the fastest, skims the lowest and skids the mostest.

This slice has the least slice. Rosewall's backhand bordered on flat much of the time...but always with some slice. His backhand travelled fast, low and skidded upon impact (at least on grass, the only surface I witnessed it). But the clincher was his passing shot. Few can hit sliced passing shots with repeated success. Because if you slice TOO much your chances of passing a swift player are slim...the ball cannot afford to hover. Rosewall could pass...pass anyone with his backhand.

Getting too much slice on a sliced backhand scuppers the shot in just about every conceivable way...save the drop shot perhaps.