A New Year's Serve

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Unhappy Backswing

I'm not unhappy, but somehow the rhythm of the word UN-HAP-PY like the songwriting author here Ju LIE-DEL-PY (https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...0julie%20delpy) helps hone forehand backswing toward what anyone would want.

The level KEY-ING of right angled arm gets the racket tip quickly around and SOAR-ING as elbow finally releases from its posted position close to your side and flies a short distance up.

This short flight is the brain of the shot, the control panel or SHOT-BRAIN where adjustment or altered TIME-ING can take place.

We allude here to a kernel of feel that every tennis stroke should have.

Feel, finesse-- that's what we want, but a power dynamic is at work as well, namely one's stretch-shorten cycle in which the keying reverses.

In actuality both ends of the decelerated racket are finally moving at the same speed but can do this in a bewilderment of ways if we don't choose the right one.

The right one is the one that harnesses the excess of racket tip movement built by keeping elbow in as one whips the strings around-- a move that is as quick, decisive, thoughtless, dry, sterile, mechanical as the subsequent move can be alive.

Remember, this keying is as key as external arm rotation to set up internal arm rotation in a serve.

External, internal-- that is the sequence of elements on which we depend with no passivity to come in between.

One instant the strings are flying around next they decelerate but how? Through the muscles that scale the forearm in opposite direction getting a head start.

At the same time the right angle gets skewed. Structural integrity is maintained but alignment of upper arm post is no longer straight down at ground.

The slant of the whole apparatus is all that flies the racket head back in toward your bod.

Which in turn sets up the whole arm to roll thus becoming one's swamp buggy fan.

One movement is skewed, so is the next. Assuming grip is right, the strings then are slightly closed and scraping ball slightly toward the inside of where a perfectly upright face would aim.

The double roll is linked and very fast as most things in tennis are-- much faster than any words used to describe the happening could be.

The baseball analogy here is a shortstop barehanding a hot grounder. Did he use the weight of the ball pushing against his flesh to activate his perfect throw to first?

The part of backswing from elbow in to elbow up is the shotbrain, we have said. The two ends of the racket move together to form this shotbrain. We might just glom on this form-- fast around the post and two ends of racket moving then at same slow pace-- through the beginning of a warmup.

After that however we need to inject new ingredients into the shotbrain: LePage's glue, Elmer's glue, honey, molasses, 90-weight transmission oil, sawdust, cinders, fragments of cork.

To these decelerants we add a cable that stops a jet plane as it settles down on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

But if that cable is too stiff we change it into a bungee cord.

The idea is to get off the perfect double rolled throw with no transition between backswing and foreswing. Pressure for the sidearm throw builds in the upper arm even as it's going backward.

This has to be a matter of feel not logic. How fast was racket head moving before you proactively decelerated? And how smoothly will it go in all of the many subsequent directions?

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A Forehand Volley with Zero Lift of the Elbow

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_volleys_overheads/mac_fhv/mac_fhv.html?MacFHVBHVWarmUpFront.mov

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Paring Down for Old Age or Any Good Age

Easiest is to key part way then let elbow continue the momentum until racket points at right rear fence post. That closes the racket automatically. But one could easily forget to keep the arm bent-- a big mistake when one considers what happens next.

What happens next is a double loop same as on the backhand side for one's most solidly struck topspin shots.

Similarly also, the elbow stays out.

Ask this question: Does one want two loops with a big overhead loop having occurred first?

That is too much. One eliminates the big loop and goes with the two small ones, mondo and wipe.

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Figure Stuff out Rather than Call it Genius

Example: Forehand volley of John McEnroe. I've already stated or maybe just implied or wished that the difference in backswing from the conventional number (as in "I want to be in that number") is crucial to simplification of backhand volleys.

Backhand volleys!? But they're on the opposite side. Exactly. But I thought we were talking about forehand volleys?

We are. And length on the forehand volley backswing can be anything and in different combination of its basic but blended two parts. Each backswing starts out level. Then rises up or sideways or both. The overall backswing roughly speaking is arc therefore rather than straight line.

Does this create new angles? Absolutely. Although the mentor-writer Tillie Olson advised me that words can express anything, this particular subject takes me beyond the edge of what I personally can describe. But if a guy can achieve a bunch of new angles does he need to talk about each one? It would be better if instead of talking he just did.

I do know that. Also that the emphasis is on tennis not on the writing which in my case enables my tennis whatever it is.

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And I'll Be In Scotland Afore Ye

On the bonnie bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.

Where is it, on backswing, that a curved route is more efficient than a straight line? The forehand volley of John McEnroe. Is the curve also faster than the straight line? I don't know but guess the speed is the same.

So what does McEnroe do (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...cFHVRear.mov)? (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...tLevelRear.mov). Keeps elbow in for part of the backswing. Lifts racket then to where he knows the ball will be.

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Self-Feed Conclusion

Easiest is to key part way then let elbow continue the momentum until racket points at right rear fence post. That closes the racket automatically. But one could easily forget to keep the arm bent-- a big mistake when one considers what happens next (see previous post).

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Got to Try

Just as Jack Sock, down a set, got excited and zoned out while playing David Ferrer, I get excited when I think about what happened last night.

My excitement is about search, not find, and I didn't get to sign a sock and give it to a delighted woman in Auckland.

Steve Navarro had told me that what I need is a good hitting partner, and I found one before the start of the Eastside Detroit Friday night tennis social.

He is Ken Hunt, a senior senior like me, and I have hit with him before then played better than usual in the three sets of doubles that follow.

If Ken didn't teach tennis, he should have. Not that he talked, he didn't except with his racket, but he kept the ball deep with medium pace.

A person having a one-on-one hit should quickly be able to determine whom the hit is about. When it was over Ken said "Better and better."

Well, Ken's game was the same throughout. But as this happy session which caused me to run out of gas by the end of the evening continued, I became aware of just how long we were keeping a single ball in play despite hitting decisively and pretty hard.

When that happens, and one player is building up the other, the other-- I-- has time to figure a few things out.

Forward emphasis, I decided on court, may not mean putting all mechanics out front so much as not putting the bulk of them behind or above one.

So I started taking my FETF (forward emphasis topspin forehand) farther back on level plane. That was all that happened during the hit with Ken, but overnight I've been building on this new idea.

1) For most of backswing keep the elbow in snug against one's side. This is how John McEnroe can prepare his forehand volley so fast even though his wait position is far, far away. So let us, just as a baseball player sometimes pulls in his elbows to get his bat around faster, keep elbow in to get racket tip around quick and far.

2) With racket tip then around and pointing at rear right fence post, let elbow rise no more than a few inches while consequently turning it slightly to close strings. If racket were pointing precisely at fence post it could keep doing so during this process.

3) Time this forehand with a 1-2 rhythm, rising turning elbow then to be classified with backswing. There is no separate transition here.

4) Awareness that duration of end of backswing similar to stop or slowing or easing or floating at top of a looped forehand can vary, in fact invite variance to give you more freedom to choose direction, etc.

5) The raised elbow skews the right angled arm for a second bout of keying, this time in opposite direction down and in toward body to activate mondo (flip).

6) The raised elbow is the extension that teaching pros talk so much about. In imagism, then, ask this question: Does the 20th century teaching metaphor of pushing on a stuck cellar door still apply to 21st century and if not, why not?

7) During body shove part of a quick forehand does bent arm extend (move) against the stuck cellar door? I think not. The arm is firm and activated and part of the push but shouldn't move, not if properly overpowered.

8) Lack of movement in the arm push frees up the arm wipe. One can apply more Zen Buddhism or stretch-shorten or racket head speed focus or whatever one wants to call it.

9) Racket head will rotate down and in before it rotates up and out and finally up and over on a precise perpendicular to one's target.

The overall image here is of a fan-driven swamp buggy boring through the Everglades.

If this forehand doesn't work, I'm sorry.

Note: Shoulder banks down as part of mondo, stays down for contact, banks back up as part of the followthough.

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Mini-Smash Page 67 TENNIS BY PANCHO GONZALES

There's no extra pointing up with opposite hand. The two hands function together to take the racket up to skunk tail position; but, Pancho already has turned strings out to make them square with the ball.

Pancho's left hand then stays where it is for the hit.

Contrast everything in this shot with Pancho's maxi-smash on 68-9 .

I just think, that, when performing an outlandish poach overhead an old guy will have better odds working for him if he knows and uses the mini-version.

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Simultaneity or Sequence in One Hand Backhand Backswing

One can, from cheated over low wait position, turn shoulder down and around and call that the entirety of the backswing.

Can one from that achieved position then perform the forward double roll needed for a successful shot? Yes but maybe not for a great successful shot. Feels a little cramped to me.

My progression/evolution has therefore included the addition of a small amount of independent arm lift to be performed simultaneously to make slightly more space for the subsequent double roll.

Simultaneity as a concept has been promulgated by Martina Navratilova, i.e., she thinks that if simultaneity or sequence will work, go with simultaneity-- you'll be glad later.

Usually I will but in this case I'm not sure. A graceful one hander may include a small amount of independent arm lift to follow the turn as in Cageman's example.

For me the simultaneity has become part of essential timing. So make the two steps have same duration as one, i.e., turn shoulder faster so that the total action takes no more or less time.

I want to try this. Then I may or may not go back to the simultaneity I had before.

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Cageman-- Hard to Escape his Influence

Cageman in his forehand banks down as he flips but doesn't bank up until after he has hit the ball.

I certainly will try the level shoulders during forward swing idea but will try this idea too.

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Swamp Buggy Forehands

All ideas may be capricious but here nevertheless is mine for today regardless of whether I change it tomorrow or next week.

The idea is to set up a contrast between banking and level shoulders in my McEnrueful and my new forward emphasis topspin forehand (FETF).

I've described my McEnrueful a lot so I'll simply say it is a solid body forehand that heavily depends on banking shoulders. During coffee this morning one of four partners stated after our productive doubles that a forehand is largely an arm shot. He is a very good player, maybe the best of us four, so I wasn't about to disagree, but right now I may express my doubt. My McEnrueful is body and arm in its backswing but all body as it strikes the ball.

The FETF is body and arm in both directions. And its mondo combining wrist layback and forearm roll-down (SIM) should emphasize the roll-down since roll-up (windshield wipe) comes immediately afterward while wrist is still bent backward and therefore out of the picture.

A strong eastern grip level backswing FETF is complex enough without the joker factor of banking shoulders. McEnrueful, sad that it's not a John McEnroe forehand, is solid body while FETF is not.

Some people might argue that arm is part of the body but they are of course all wet, it's part of the soul.

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No Evidence Anywhere that Julie Delpy has ever Played Tennis

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/julie-delpy-i-do-have-a-lot-of-neuroses-a6709776.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCtv2ycLH2c

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Tennis in a Short Story by Somerset Maugham

Read two short stories by Somerset Maugham, the first THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER, in which the grasshopper succeeds in driving the ant mad.

In the second, THE THREE FAT WOMEN OF ANTIBES, there is this sentence about tennis:

“They drank their waters together, had their baths at the same hour, they took their strenuous walks together, pounded about the tennis court with a professional to make them run, and ate at the same table their sparse and regulated meals.”

By the end of the story the three protagonist bridge players have undergone a transformation but perhaps not what one might think.

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Swamp Buggy and Stuck Cellar Door

"six degrees (forward pitch) with racket opening up rather than closing down when you actually wipe from right to left."

Close analysis of this complex phrase might either get us lost or give us some ideas. Is there a way to use imagery to shortcut the developmental process?

The image of windshield wipe comes to mind. But if there's a wipe there's a wiper. And a windshield. Curved (modern) or flat (Model T Ford, i.e., ordinary window)?

Flat. At least that's what Luke Digweed was showing my 10-year-old faux granddaughter in the UK. "Look, Cate, at these three freeze positions-- here (racket tip down and pointing at right fence), here (racket tip up toward sky), and here (racket tip down and pointing at left fence)."

I swear, that's all he demonstrated. And Cate's forehands started jumping an extra foot. I ought to know since I hit with her just the night before.

When one thinks about it, a fan whirling around a stalk isn't going to be efficient if the stalk wobbles in any way.

Next image then: a swamp buggy boring through the Everglades.

Next after that: the traditional stuck cellar door imagery of twentieth century instructional tennis.

You push on the door with your whole body and both arms. Then try it with one arm.

The arm is stronger when its rod (forearm) points directly at the door.

Recently in my coddled evolution toward "forward emphasis" I've spoken of racket pitch opening during contact.* How could that happen? Through a level and maximized push from the elbow as fan spins counterclockwise.

I see some sequence here: 1) core body to activate mondo and 2) total body and arm push simultaneous with the wipe.

* Perfect would be single pitch (6 degrees for all three freeze points in this example). But no one is perfect. The choice therefore is between racket closing or opening as it hits the ball.

And a wobble is not the same as a push.

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Topspin Forehand: Cooking up Six Degrees Beyond Square at Contact

This is a variation on what they'll tell you in India: that first time God left dough in the oven too long and got the black man, that God took it out too soon second time and got the white man, that God left it in just the right amount of time on third try and got the Indian.

So, reader, if you think six degrees beyond square is a good idea, first choice is to roll over the ball to get the six degrees on the fly. I saw a girl win a tournament that way but a week later she lost to her mother, who was far too smart to do such a thing.

Second choice is to lift elbow behind you to make a big loop, but what is so hot about long trajectory of one's racket head?

Third choice is to study the grip at mimed contact and adjust it until you get the six degrees with racket opening up rather than closing down when you (a right hander) actually wipe from right to left.