A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Yup, and it will work if one wants to go so simple as short slap of a slap shot blending into solid turn of the shoulders on slightly slanted spine.

[bottle]

The Sad Story of Fenimore

Fenimore, who jumped from a high window in Venice, is the subject of "The Beast in the Jungle," a short story by Henry James.

Whether Fenimore, recent descendant of the rich man James Fenimore Cooper, the father of Natty Bumppo and founder of Cooperstown, and Henry himself ever got to play tennis is not precisely known.

The time frame for that may not be good. If Henry and Fenimore had BOTH lived a bit later, they could have played tennis together in the United States. If they had lived earlier, they could have played tennis in Russia on Count Tolstoy's court.

One thing is sure. Natty Bumppo had many other names including "Leatherstocking" and "Deerslayer." He was a white woodsman among Indians in the first growth forests of upper New York state and to the west.

Bumppo was played by Daniel Day Lewis in a film made from Cooper's many novels which most literary historians agree invented the American western.

Another sure thing is that every word written by Cooper was avidly read in Europe and America. Everything Cooper did in fact turned to money. The only professional sports connection here though, other than deerslaying as "sport" and sustenance, is to baseball since Cooperstown, N.Y. is where baseball's Hall of Fame is.

Sophisticated and would be sophisticated youths in this early American era loved to cross to Europe to soak up "culture." This phenomenon lasted for many generations maybe even through today.

Very doubtful it is that Henry and Fenimore played tennis, but if they did, Fenimore didn't know about dogpat, mondo and wipe, and Henry certainly couldn't hit the short angles.

Perhaps this was the source of Fenimore's frustration and Henry's grief.

[bottle]

Short Angle: Where Does the Power Start?

From the low point (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_Rch1MOUQ). The arm work then accelerates in two installments: 1) forward low and then up, 2) up steeper from rolling flick. Does overall body movement follow the arm work? Could be.

[bottle]

Evaluating Tom Avery

A scientist challenges EVERYBODY. I may not be a full scientist but if I were, that's what I would do.

Obviously, I think the video on short angle that Tom made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_Rch1MOUQ) is of inestimable value to me.

And when Tom says, in other free videos, that he doesn't mean to boast but he is good at stroke technique, I sense immediately that this is true.

But "true or false" may be the least way we want to judge the best teachers of the game.

There are voices we choose to listen to and others not.

So I like Tom's voice, obviously again, and by "voice" mean not just timbre but intelligence or the way the person pulls everything together.

Clearly, Tom has bought into the cardinal idea of an early closed racket that naturally opens to square by contact.

Fine, but that doesn't mean I have to fully buy into the idea myself, and in fact I agree with it as prescription for my short angle but not for my staple backhand drive.

This is an individual sport, and for a staple backhand drive best for me I prefer Ed Faulkner's advice to keep racket frame squared up for every inch of the whole stroke-- well, maybe not at the very end.

And on the short angle itself, I'm not so sure about kicking back the way Tom often does. Direction of kick appears toward left fence to stop the considerable body rotation.

In my view this is an interesting idea, especially for flatter deeper shots, but in short angle that rotational momentum should have concluded early and maybe even before contact.

There probably is no right or wrong. We ultimately use our own prescription.

Suppose I am right though. Would that make Tom an idiot or me the idiot for thinking that?

Consider everything that Tom says in other free videos about grips and grip change. Really excellent and for short angle a 3/3 .

[bottle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48

What do you think of this video? Anyone?

I'll put the link down again here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48). Might work better.

[tennis_chiro]

What do you think of this video? Anyone?

I'll put the link down again here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48). Might work better.

The key point most people don't understand is that the release of the lay back of the wrist doesn't happen til well after the ball has left the strings. The "wrist action" that is perceived and is actually influencing the spin of the ball for the pros is the internal shoulder rotation (windshield wiper action) that does not actually require any wrist flexion whatsoever. One of the big points I have seen JY make is that Roger Federer's holding of that laid back wrist through the contact area is much longer than anyone else's. Yes, the wrist does flex and relax later in the swing path after the ball is gone, but if you start trying to do that, you are going to end up flexing the wrist while the ball is still on the strings, and that is not going to be helpful. Oh, you will hit the occasional "home run", but you won't be able to produce anything useful under real conditions.

Must confess, I only watched the first couple of minutes of the video, but that was enough for me.

don

[bottle]

Thanks!

Wonderful. I am truly grateful.

I almost never buy programs like this since I need to save money. And I know that in nearly all cases the most incisive comment if any will come embedded in the hype.

I see this video as a Christmas basket with a piece of fudge and a flashlight inside although I choose to determine length of my forehand by myself.

But the instructions on buying and installing the batteries seem pretty convincing and good.

I try now to combine what I like here with what Don just said.

I can't believe that I ever fell into the trap that the fellow in the video describes but think I probably did since my Federfore/ATP3 used to go better.

John McEnroe as quoted by Clifton Matthews, the pianist giving a North Carolina concert: "The older I get, the better I used to be."

[stotty]

Players who half inch

I wonder if Borg half inched some of Tom Okker's forehand and made it more orthodox. The best do. Pancho Gonzales used to half inch parts of strokes from other players all the time.

[klacr]

To steal from one is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

Keep on keeping on bottle. Take the elements you like and the elements that work and do something special with them. Bottle them up (no pun intended) and enjoy the process. The forehand can be a bugaboo for many, including yours truly. The goal is to feel comfortable and consistent with it. To hit it any day of the week and love the moment. remembering the work and frustrations that went into making it great, or at the very least, your own.

don is spot on with his comments. Listen to him.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[bottle]

Preparing/Initiating Toss with Arm; Tossing from Core

This radical departure from norm depends on revolving body to 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 point of body travel forward and tossing from there.

In an up down and up serve the tossing arm eases up from shoulder even as body completes its subtle turn while traveling forward.

The two real agents of this toss are leftward lean and banking up of left shoulder since the arm has already done its thing.

In self-feed today (but practicing one's serve is always self-feed except in the rare instance of there being a pro to perform the toss for one), I tried to subordinate banking shoulder to leftward lean.

Flat-spined back in other words, by leaning to the left, can perform the toss.

The banking up will simply add some oomph.

Don't know how I am doing with this. Should be able to tell something from the tennis social Friday night if go light at the annual senior men's tennis association dance Thursday night.

[bottle]

Learning Something Obvious (or is it?) About Neutral Stance Step-out

At the time I first got serious about tennis, I carefully watched the very good pro instructing me in basic ground strokes.

If he had time, he drew one foot up on toes sideways close to the other before final step-out or conventional hitting stride toward the net.

Why would he do that when he could just step across from feet at shoulders width or more on a diagonal to reduce necessary footwork?

I must have asked but not liked the answer since it did not stay with me for the past three decades.

I now think the proper answer has to do with turning the racket back.

Closed hitting step perhaps on a 45-degree angle toward the net as Arthur Ashe taught for backhand turns shoulder an extra amount beyond the internal turn one already is putting on it.

Same thing on a closed forehand. The more one steps across the more one's body turn. A certain tennis writer even advises that for the ultimate stab one should just flip racket from the wrist, step across, and hit.

Back to the question. In neutral stance configuration with feet side by side and parallel to net, stepping on a diagonal will turn shoulders a certain amount.

Not as much as stepping across but nevertheless a significant amount.

Should one be conscious of this? Absolutely if one seeks more accuracy in one's game.

Drawing inside foot to outside foot before stepping toward the net with inside foot does not by itself turn the shoulders at all and in fact more closely approximates a baseball swing.

Such knowledge has to affect one's ability to:

1) aim-- with effectiveness

2) put sufficent body turn on the shot

3) not self-block one's own shot.

[bottle]

Shifting Imagery for the McEnrueful

Picture a promontory, with the roiling green ocean rushing by.

The granite on which one stands is still and silent while the wave-filled current is fierce.

If one inches one's racket perfectly sideways, the ocean will catch it and wash it away.

One wants this to happen so one sticks the racket into the current, which plunges down before it rises up.

At top of the wave, everything changes.

The white ocean is flat ice.

This is the slap-shot part of the stroke.

The racket handle plunges to halfway between the two shoulder nubs.

Now one performs a hammer throw from field and track.

Ordinarily, one does this with two hands, here with one hand centered in front of one's navel.

The ball, clobbered, line-drives across the net, sits down in the opponent's court and refuses to bounce up. It just stays there close to the cement, senseless like a commentato.

[bottle]

The key point most people don't understand is that the release of the lay back of the wrist doesn't happen til well after the ball has left the strings. The "wrist action" that is perceived and is actually influencing the spin of the ball for the pros is the internal shoulder rotation (windshield wiper action) that does not actually require any wrist flexion whatsoever. One of the big points I have seen JY make is that Roger Federer's holding of that laid back wrist through the contact area is much longer than anyone else's. Yes, the wrist does flex and relax later in the swing path after the ball is gone, but if you start trying to do that, you are going to end up flexing the wrist while the ball is still on the strings, and that is not going to be helpful. Oh, you will hit the occasional "home run", but you won't be able to produce anything useful under real conditions.

Must confess, I only watched the first couple of minutes of the video, but that was enough for me.

don

I like this quote so much for going to the heart of a question I knew I must deal with. Here is the video again just in case somebody wants to know what Don and I were talking about (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48).

That said, I think there is a big lesson here-- at least for the very personal me-- in this video. Like Don, I'm not interested in the promotion at the end, at least right now. But I have a lot of respect for the person who, deciding to share something, made this video. For so long the members of this forum have discussed the findings of Brian Gordon and talked about the ATP3 forehand often in detail.

What they always left out, however, was a report on their own implementation of Brian's ideas. Well, I don't know how the teaching pro here received his information but receive it he did. And his interpretation is a little different from others I either surmised or have heard explicitly delineated.

Flip a little more to inside of slot, I would say. With racket tip actually flipping a bit out of the slot and behind the back.

Brian writes both about pulling racket knob forward and pulling right to left to generate racket head speed. The pro of this video reconciles both things without appearing to be an overly complicated person.

Maybe that is why I tend to believe him so much (along with experiments in self-feed of course).

In any case, my McEnrueful has a truncated backswing. So I feel authorized to lengthen my Federfore (ATP3). This modification comes under the heading of better orchestration of one's different strokes.

[bottle]

Building the One Stroke on the Other

Here I am, hitting a McEnrueful (https://video.search.yahoo.com/video...=yhs-fh_lsonsw).

This shot proved highly successful at the Friday night tennis social. Modification to Federfore was good too.

Only my short angle failed me, landing stupidly in the middle of my deuce opponent's court rather than over by the outer tramline which would be just and right, i.e., just right.

This unfortunate occurrence, the culmination of weeks of self-feed, indicates that I was late on my service return. How could that be? Stroke too complicated and so is Tom Avery's too. And how did I ever get myself in such a fix?

If McEnrueful was good, then why can't short angle be hit the same basic way to be good too?

First, though, I have to make an admission.

All the stuff I wrote about glyph backswing (-~) on the McEnrueful proved in the actual heat of battle to be exactly that, just "stuff."

As the evening wore on, my backswing edited itself to a simple mild upswing.

And I waited with racket still sometimes just like a zipping hockey player terrifying through pausing at the top of his slap-shot.

Or like myself waiting although there is no time to wait and therefore hitting a perfect volley. Believe it or not, this can happen.

Well, here comes a hard serve out to my forehand side. As I already tried to indicate, I am playing the deuce court. And want to hit my return short in the opponent's deuce court and out wide in the alley, meanwhile coming in for the short volley to the exact same spot.

(I got that from Luke Jensen.)

Okay, everything is ready to go. But no silly loop, please. Reader, did you know that most but not all loops-- in tennis-- are silly?

Me neither.

Continuity of loop is overrated, I have concluded, and creates less precision about who does what when.

Of course my 75th birthday is next week so dementia may be settling in.

A different grip now but backswing the same.

Rhythm however is completely altered.

In the McEnrueful there's the backswing, the optional pause and the slap-shot (arm first to center handle followed by the hammer thrower's pivot). The option means that this shot consists of two or three beats.

In the short angle one can abbreviate the upward slanting backswing (I'll try seven inches today).

All forward motion until flick must be liquid.

So I'll perform a slow motion mondo during the forward seven inches, yes, from top of the backswing and going smoothly and slowly down and up a little under proposed contact point.

Like the McEnrueful, this shall be arm first body second structure.

But with a third element, the flick.

First beat: backswing.

Second beat: arm to body but forceless to put racket square out front.

Third beat: flick and followthrough.

[bottle]

Addendum

I'm thinking-- before I go to the court-- that just because I use a slap shot form for my McEnrueful, I don't have to use it for my short angle.

Easiest of all would be to use any grip at all-- anything under the sun-- so long as it's the grip that does the short angle job.

One then can use a simple bowl back (down and up), and bowl forward too, with all of this liquid and forceless.

The less exotic stuff you do with your feet, the better.

Fine at least this is in theory, but one will see how it does first in self-feed and then
in deuce court service returns in doubles-- may be a while.