A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Forehand Brainwork for Gentle Slope Downward Backswing

The gentle slope means that racket will glide to the outside.

For that reason I considered rejecting it since I've learned enough tennis over the years to know that hand in a forehand ought to help line up the ball.

And while playing doubles last week I noticed that my service returns were uncommonly good thanks to strict down-and-up bowlback.

Why not? Lining up is good with a straight rather than circular backswing.

But there is good argument for circularity. So my brain assigns a gentle and prolonged slope to the outside, yes; but, as hand and racket swing back up to inside of the slot they have aligned themselves with the oncoming ball.

While hand strays, eye looks into the future to line up the ball. I end in fact with eye and hand in a straight line to the oncoming ball while keeping two-way circularity of a 19th century guy with a scythe.

Note: One can catch a ball out front to help learn how to line up with the oncoming shot. One therefore can catch the ball behind one for the same purpose. When lining up, a surveyor is frequently quite far from his target. Does a few feet's difference in placement of the instrument really matter? But catching the ball behind one, when translated into tennis terms, places final alignment closer to the forward swing.

[bottle]

Self-Feed

Self-feed is the tricky basis of true stroke invention. If a player can't toss a ball to bounce it and then hit it, he never will be able to deal with an oncoming shot from Marin Cilic.

Well, he most likely won't be able to do that anyway. So he may as well invent. For fun.

I didn't even know the term "self-feed" until I saw it in a Tennis Player article on Karsten Popp written by Scott Murphy. I was amazed that a tennis player, teacher and writer as good as Scott Murphy would suddenly start doing self-feed mid-career.

Come to think of it however, no really good teaching pro walking past has ever laughed at me-- at least not when I was doing self-feed. I imagine that such a person would never laugh at anybody doing self-feed.

It is the ignorami who make wise-ass remarks. The best course is to throw something even more wise-ass back.

On a beautiful Sunday morning a good tennis player I knew by sight and reputation only went strolling past.

He went down to Lake St. Clair-- a Great Lake on-line and in disguise-- and traced a long swatch of shoreline.

When he returned, he said, "Wow, you've hit a lot of balls." As you can imagine, reader, this led to a pretty full chat and not just because these were the final days of the U.S. Open.

He wants to hit.

[bottle]

How Big a Patch Do You Mow on One Swing?

We are all in a single line across the field, we serfs, and there is no going back to cut some missed tuft.

We've got the manpower to level the field in a single take.

But the work must be perfect, and I as foreman would appreciate complete evenness from border to border with no rest until we reach that line of trees over there.

Oh my God, here comes Count Leo. Look, he has a scythe, brand new just like his new tennis racquet fresh out of its French box. And his supposedly new tennis court as if anyone knows where it is.

And if it's an outdoor or indoor site and whether Leo plans to hit off of walls.

Doesn't matter. Leo is quiet now but he can talk-- we all know that. And word gets around.

Leo wants to learn tennis from the double direction swing we all use. He can just watch then. But oh no, he has to do it himself, says that his scythe itself will teach him our technique.

Careful not to ding that shiny new blade. Watch out, stones and snakes! I'll come back later to cut the whiskers he misses.

Step cut step cut. Down up, down through. Get it right Count Tolstoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Time#mediaviewer/File:LoC-Rotunda-Clock-detail-Father-Time.jpeg

[bottle]

Revision of an Earlier Thought

The idea was to weaken front of one's forehand grip, particularly on a flat forehand. Whatever the reasons I imagined for doing that, I think I temporarily forgot the old saw about tightening the last three fingers of one's hand to firm up the wrist just as one's strings come to the ball.

That makes good sense and I'll keep the fingers wrapped closely to do it.

That doesn't leave a thumb's width between fingers and drumstick of the hitting thumb as Chrissie preached in her video but sobeit.

Exploration of some idea deserves exploration of its opposite. So I'll try squeezing the fingers early in order to relax them a bit during contact and expect to do both things in play some day when I grow up.

[bottle]

Exploring the Outer Reaches of Palm Up Serves

Raonic and Isner are good examples. And then there is a fellow named Marin Cilic.

Vic Braden wanted palm down. Which led to a complicated in and out and in motion.

I have evidence from various sources (obvious under noses) that Don Budge was partial to keeping palm at least vertical and probably down.

One can no doubt discuss palm down vs. palm up in connection with every tennis player who ever lived.

Personally, I've explored palm down more than palm up. Time then for some palm up.

Think I'll start with enough palm up to balance a hundred small canapes on my strings at ready position, i.e., the hitting side of strings will form a tray that faces the sky.

This is more open than Ed Faulkner's reasonable median of hitting side of strings facing left fence at address to facing right fence after a down-and-up.

How much stance and shoulders turn and anything else are small details to be worked out later.

We will try Faulkner's opinion that one ought to hold elbow back during first part of the body mechanics forward so that delayed elbow can then be HURLED.

But we've far exceeded the Faulknerian specs, so who knows what will happen-- one reason that such endeavors are fun.

Note to Phil Picuri: If Goran Ivanisovich is just going to say "Throw the ball up and hit it," I don't want him to build my house. If however that is just a perspective-imparting front for the greater detail he shares through words or example with his chosen and very successful Croatian students, he's got the job.

[bottle]

Unique Roll for McEnruefuls

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_forehand/mac_forehand.html?MacFHWideSide1.mov

The roll in this forehand is completely different from the roll in three discussed recently elsewhere in the forearm, viz., Cilic, Nishikori and Federer.

But that doesn’t mean the quick roll here is not similarly dynamic though not as long.

McEnroe’s grip requires dynamic roll to produce vertical strings by contact out front. This quick, propulsive roll also helps multiply ball speed.

From contact and a bit beyond, the strings remain vertical i.e. square.

Then they gently roll over as part of the comfortable followthrough—an entirely different kind of roll from the first one.

One could argue I suppose that the two rolls are the same roll performed at two different speeds.

No doubt there is percentage in keeping the strings vertical as arm proceeds out from the body, and the only balanced way to do that is with continued roll.

Reader, as in the case of so much in tennis instruction, this is personal opinion. If you care to, set me straight or present an opinion of your own so that others and I can have the opportunity to steal it.

[bottle]

Re-Watching the Tennis Scenes from PAT AND MIKE

This movie was written by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, my former doubles partner's bosom pals until Kanin wrote the book called TRACY AND HEPBURN, which is by far the best of any Katharine Hepburn biography in print or film.

Decades later, Hepburn, Kanin and Gordon reconciled although I suspect Hepburn never at any time had a bad word to think about Kanin's wife Ruth Gordon.

You may ask, reader, why I am wasting my time watching old movies. My partner Hope is frequently apt to pose that question. And Katharine Hepburn, according to Hepburn biographer Scott Berg once posed it to him in those exact same words: "Why are you wasting your time watching old movies?"

In my case it's the tennis. The cameo appearances of Don Budge, Alice Marble and Frank Parker in PAT AND MIKE, though small, do manage to register. The scene of Hepburn as Pat Pemberton competing against Gorgeous Gussie Moran is more substantial if you know what to look for.

That would be first, the Hepburn backhand. Clearly, Tilden had worked on it, and I don't want anything to do with it since I'm happy with my own backhand right now.

Second, Hepburn's all-court game.

Third, Hepburn's serves. Pretty good, as I also recall from when she and I beat my brother and her brother in straight sets in Fenwick, Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Fourth, her volleys. Crisp as her personality! Fifth, her forehand. I can't believe that Tilden would mess with it.

At the beginning of the Gorgeous Gussie scene, Pat Pemberton hits one overhand loop forehand deep to Moran's backhand. It is an approach shot with a bit of fade so good that I don't believe Moran even hits it back, but I will re-watch my DVD recording later to check any and all factoids. (Whoops-- Gussie hit that shot back.)

After that, every one of Pemberton's forehands is characterized by the scythe-like backswings of Connors, Evert and McEnroe.

And I know that Pemberton didn't steal that backswing from any of them since they weren't conceived.

So where does that golfy backswing come from?

Pitch shots, which were Hepburn's greatest strength as she made her brisk walk around the Scotch patterned nine-hole Fenwick golf course-- small greens and short fairways except for one monster, the fifth, where Howard Hughes landed his plane.

[bottle]

Get Pattern Right-- Then Stay, Shrink or Expand

I'm still on my scything kick. I think a scythe-like backswing can produce the basis for flat forehands and McEnruefuls both without a mondo/flip but also a Federfore/ATP3 and do all of this nicely.

How shrink however and how expand? Keep the same proportion in this down-and-up backswing predicated on a low point nearer the "up."

The basic shot for this scythe-like program will be the flat drive. One wants to be like an old-fashioned field worker who lets his blade do the work and can last all day.

[bottle]

McEnrueful Followthrough

Followthrough almost doesn't matter-- if one rolls fast to hit square out front then stays square for a short distance after contact.

The roll accelerates the strings forward and up.

Not all big forehand rolls accelerate the strings forward.

But they all accelerate the strings up.

In suggesting that followthrough doesn't matter, I mean that the nature of the followthrough doesn't matter, e.g., some specific amount of roll.

The ball is gone.

Let me be clear: There should be a followthrough. But in this specific shot, let the racket go where and how it wants.

[bottle]

A First Lesson in Twenty Years

The big baseball coach in Grosse Pointe, Michigan is an acquaintance susceptible to some of my ideas.

A shortstop of his has decided to play varsity high school tennis rather than ball but has never had the sufficiently crazy advisor in tennis who might help him to develop some individual style.

Also, Mark suggested, besides being a great athlete, the lad is smart off the map-- "almost too smart."

Got it. A thinker. The bane of tennis, baseball and life. With the potential of becoming a tennis wonk. Who therefore could be a good match with me.

I scheduled the first-- possibly the only?-- lesson for 2 p.m. with me to bring the balls. In addition to the kid, the kid's father and Mark himself have threatened to show up.

My speculation is that after these three gentlemen realize what it is I propose to teach, Mark's shortstop will return to playing errorless ball.

[don_budge]

Sling it Kid...

Teach him to sling his forehand sidearm...my father was a shortstop in the Tiger system when Harvey Kuenn was the Detroit shortstop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlOttZS9zsc

[bottle]

Good Advice

Unfortunately, I think he did this already. Number 2 on his high school team after only one year of tennis. Nice kick on his serve. A powerful two-hander (of course). And everything else except for backhand slice, so I started him on that.

And bequeathed him to Sebastien Foka, teaching pro at Eastside and Indian Village here in Detroit. Sebastien used to hit with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in France, has best winning record ever at Wayne State. Most important, he is a great teacher.

The kid and both parents showed up, then the parents left, returned an hour and a half later. I was proud that I could hit somewhat with this boy, won some points when we played points.

"He's too good," I told his father. But if ideas in tennis are worth anything, the lad now has some new ones.

[don_budge]

bottle...or anyone?

Teach him to sling his forehand sidearm...my father was a shortstop in the Tiger system when Harvey Kuenn was the Detroit shortstop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlOttZS9zsc

John or anyone...take a look at the video of Brad Ziegler pitching sidearm or submarine style and tell me what you think. Or better yet...what you see. What elements of the ATP 3 forehand do you detect? It looks scary similar on a number of different points.

Footwork? Body rotation? Motion of the arm? Follow through? Very interesting...I would venture.

[bottle]

Will explore soon.

[bottle]

For the Love of me, i.e., in Self-Love, Why not More Tracycakes?

When one looks around, one just doesn't see enough of this style of tennis. But let me take this story from the top.

Once one has mastered the natural forehand turn of Evert, Connors and McEnroe, why not take the final step and learn the device that trumped them all, the ice cream cone backswing of Tracy Austin?

I am not saying Tracycakes beat Connors and McEnroe at the U.S. Open the way she did Chris Evert, except in cleverness. (But Connors and McEnroe played in a different division of the U.S. Open, something hard for dopes to grasp.)

Now Connors and Evert were boyfriend and girlfriend once.

Think of their secret conversations during which they decided to have similar backswings or discovered that they already had them.

Along came John McEnroe.

He bowled slightly down and up if not level and up-- same basic idea.

I do not say that Austin beat Evert with her forehand alone although that is the significant factor we wish to explore here.

There also was the unique relationship Austin shared with her coach, Robert Lansdorp, cemented when the two of them went ice skating together and he fell on top of her and broke her leg.

I have another theory about Tracycakes as well. It has to do not with her girlish twin pigtails but her voice, the squeakiness of which repelled people. It kept them away. It created an incubation zone similar to the Smithsonian's breeding facility for rare and endangered animals on the back of a sprawling mountain in Front Royal, Virginia.

You get rid of people. You have your zoo but without the crowds. In womblike silence Robert Lansdorp and Tracy Austin created her ice cream cone backswing.

Please, reader, do not tell me differently. This is what I want to believe. Moreover, it is what I shall now try. Does that mean I must abandon any of the other shots I presently have? Of course not.

The new decision arrived yesterday or rather in the middle of last night. While hitting with a super prospect yesterday afternoon, I noticed that his heavy topspin was causing my flat shots to fly up in the air or limp back across the net with unwanted backspin.

As we played points however I bowled higher, so the down part of my hockey slapshot attained the ice-like levelness of subsequent stroke I most desired.

Good shots resulted, in other words, hit from on top of the ball.

I was supposed to help the boy but the boy helped me. (Good thing I didn't charge for the lesson-- the parents offered dough.)

Why swing down and up when you can just swing arm slowly, feelingly, deliberately and even gradually around on a path that is parallel with the court?

I certainly shall not abandon my down-and-ups or my attempts to master down-and-up Federfores. I love all of these shots far too much. Once in a while though...a Tracycakes!