A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Flat Feet and from the Gut

Shoulders only pull the hips to pull the rear heel up at the end.

Moe is a great explainer too. In these videos there is all kinds of stuff to pay attention to BEYOND big questions of hips vs. gut or hips and gut vs. hips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGw3YuuevaA

Should one follow Moe Norman down the primrose path of extracting most energy from between the hips and the shoulders?

If one has nothing better to do. Probably depends on how one started out as a kid. In the golf-oriented family from which I come a big and early hips pivot was paramount.

Ironically, although I eventually picked up tennis invention in a big way, I was better at it at 16 than 74.

My primary effort at 74 is to recover my good if somewhat erratic 16-year-old's forehand (which sat up too much for the opponent). To recover it in the light of more knowledge and different grips, etc.

How interesting (and fun) it is to know some alternate ways of hitting a ball-- though I like to see legs push hips rotation to the max. (I am an oarsman so I always think the legs ought to be pushing something.)

As you indicate, Steve, what a character that Moe.

[don_budge]

Moe Norman...Vertical Drop and Horizontal Tug

Don Budge-- a hell of a polite and impeccably dressed guy. Liked big bands. Esther Williams. Joking around. Steve Navarro.

"Tennis is golf on the run"...don_budge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_uVZ44ogfI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_3491461347&feature=iv&src_vid=3_uVZ44ogfI&v=UEV-SR8Q_nI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1yPPC4RXUQ

And wobble your way through an unrealized tennis life.

bottle...really knows how to put it into words. Speaking of which...Moe says no hips but it certainly looks like hips to me. Maybe what he means is "limited" hips.

Here bottle...we talk of Hogan. Here is the other side of the coin...Moe Norman. Quite the interesting character. Sort of the "Rain Man" of golf. An idiot savant...like "The Idiot" of Dostoyevsky. Is there something of interest here for us tennis theorists.

Just some food for thought...some words to play a "round" with. Thanks...please continue.

[bottle]

Backhand Grip: An Ugly Memoir

All the one-handers were wrapping their thumb around the handle so I did too.

So many people acting unanimously showed knowledge reinforced by a solid data base, I thought.

My thumb rode tucked against the side of my ring finger.

Against fast balls this arrangement produced a few good if unstable shots.

Never did I recover the clean clink of earlier experiments.

I couldn't find much information on this subject. Finally, I read someplace that people use the wrap for more flexibility.

But I wanted less flexibility.

It wasn't until my 74th year that I saw the old video where Don Budge advises tennis aspirants to place a bit more thumb behind the ball.

Don Budge-- a hell of a polite and impeccably dressed guy. Liked big bands. Esther Williams. Joking around. Steve Navarro.

His brother Lloyd judging from Lloyd's famous tennis book was as shrewd a hepcat as ever did live.

And Don himself seemed more rational than anyone else I have ever encountered in tennis except for the time at Wimbledon when he confused his own backhand slice with his own backhand topspin.

Such a rational man in every way except for that one glitch. But did not that glitch prove that he was human and therefore even more credible?

I am not kidding. Why should I not now believe Don Budge on the seldom debated question of diagonal thumb over all living tennis professionals who teach their unwitting one-hander students a full wrap?

Vic Braden: Diagonal thumb across rear plane of racket (# 7). Roy Emerson: Same. Ed Faulkner: Same.

The reason I failed to turn this message into conviction the first time I read ED FAULKNER'S TENNIS was that that tall green book was written for rational people.

And I am not always a rational person. For instance, I once was fired as chauffeur to the Ambassador of Sri Lanka because of my irrational sense of direction.

We were due at a large reception at the personal home of Willi Brandt, chancellor of West Germany.

I would steer the long black embassy limousine (a Buick) proudly flying a plastic encased lion on its right fender um die Ecke ("around the corner") and there would be The Berlin Wall.

Over and over. Fired.

Similarly, if one extends thumb straight up panel 7, as Ed Faulkner explains, one 1) closes strings and 2) lags racket tip farther behind.

Try it! Short-circuit my 30-year mistake rather than repeat it.

Hold the racket level in front with a one hand backhand grip. Put thumb on a diagonal across panel 7. Now slide thumb straight up panel 7 . Now return to the diagonal. Repeat. There will be a change. What do the strings do?

They do as Ed Faulkner says.

But you can adjust thumb to less than 45 degrees too. You can be like everybody else and use the full wrap "for more flexibility."

And wobble your way through an unrealized tennis life.

[bottle]

Next time I make it to L.A. (although that could be a while). Would be much more interesting than the set I played with the screen-writer at Griffith Park the time I did find myself out there.

[tennis_chiro]

Sometimes, Bottle, I really wish I could have you on the court just one time. We would have a wonderful time going through some of your various theories with a little assistance from my "Twins".

don

[bottle]

Learn How to Do Something Wrong in Order to Do it Right

I've got my basic and easy backhand. It is NOT sit and hit. In fact when I sit, i.e., step out, the racket remains at shoulder level while the shoulders continue to wind back.

Sit and hit however buys time for effective spear which generates a delayed spring-driven release.

There is nothing wrong with this. I repeat. Nothing wrong.

The wrong I shall now attempt will be to bring the racket tip around entirely with action of the hips starting with flying splay of the front foot as both knees turn sharply to the right.

Vic Braden asserted that one could actually hit the ball something like this in his famous tale of the Argentine leather craftsman who fashioned him a holster so that he could hit backhands with no hands.

What Vic Braden didn't say although I will forgive him is that one would reduce dwell on the ball this way.

We should just try swinging racket tip with hips though.

THEN, hold shoulders back. And racket tip back. As hips doing same thing as before move the spear.

Have hips move the tip. Then have hips move the spear. Alternating three times. Repeat on forehand side. Then play some tennis moving the spear.

[bottle]

Cut the Wire Type Release

Pulling the knob expands the zone in which you hit through the ball.-- Craig Monroe

This precept applies to tennis as well as baseball, but, pulling the knob to shrink-wrap the sharpest turn to make it coincide for longest with one's contact point certainly is counter-intuitive.

Coincides then while it goes the fastest.

This discussion for me right now is both about topspin backhands and Federfores, where the spearing also qualifies as "pulling the knob."

A one hand topspin backhand of any kind is really two hand one hand only with different places where the two hands separate.

For 1htsbh to short tee, the backhand that interests me most right now, one can do the sit and hit described in # 2175 and then build tension while spearing from rear thigh to front thigh.

Cue possibility then becomes good if one has the diagonal thumb behind racket that I have come with pain to advise.

Vic Braden used to use a magic marker to draw an X on the ball of the thumb and tell people to swing the X toward the target.

If in trying to employ cut the wire technology however you build tension between hands while spearing the small amount from rear to front thigh, you may want to keep spearing more after the sudden hand separation. You will want to do this especially if you have the idea in mind of pulling on the butt ring.

Don't do it. That is a mistake. Press with thumb in a circular swing pattern instead while guide hand holds the tip back, i.e., creates the spear.

You try to swing while you actually spear. While the two hands fight each other. You build turning (swinging) tension. Release of the racket then springs the strings around through the ball.

Tennis strokes are best learned from feel over logic, and the feel of this scheme will have to be bizarre. You will stub the racket out of the opposite hand.

So there is tension-- wonderful. Completely relax however or nothing will work.

*************************************

Upon further reflection, pulling knob toward ball though not by the butt rim seems best prescription for one's Federfore as well.

On backhand side one has the use of two hands to build up some future racket head speed. On forehand side, one can do a one-handed mondo for the same purpose.

One only has to think of mondo or flip as three elements: sudden wrist layback, sudden winding back of forearm and protracted effort to make something go straight that would rather swing around.

Call the suddenness part of the effort at protraction followed by a "cut the wire" type release.

An implication of this at least for me is no more loose motion from the shoulder at this point. Extra turn of the shoulder compared to classic method, not looseness at the shoulder, makes the spear stay straight for a long time and get out front.

[bottle]

New Backhand, New Forehand

The two grandkids along with my daughter-in-law and son are off to their next stop in Cleveland in a cloud of weasel poop.

It was a great if expensive annual visit. Now at 74 with sciatica on both sides, a sprained right ankle and a strong wish not to replace my arthritic left knee, the time is here to go to a tennis court and self-feed # 2174, Sideways Element in McEnrueful Backswing. I'll do this as soon as the rain stops if I can briefly forestall work in Hope's professional gardening Co.

But I want to try something completely new on backhand side, as well, building on my square-racket-from-here-to-eternity one hand topspin backhand.

That cleanly struck shot goes high, is very firm and consistent and deep.

But I don't think anyone can keep such a shot on edge (square) from beginning to end without a bit of forward roll.

Well, it's "slow swing" from back far enough that the racket tip gets around in time. A bit of forward roll or adjustment won't spoil a slow swing.

But now the ball comes very fast. And I need to hit a good pass. Or a short angle. Or anything with more top.

Since racket started cheated left at shoulder level, there was amazingly little to do to get the shot off, and because of this relaxed shot, I'm pretty sure, Marina, a very excellent woman player against whom I compete only once a year on the Fourth of July, called my whole game "awesome."

Hope's daughter Melissa and I however lost to Marina and her son Nicholas Vanderbrink, the best Little League baseball player in Grosse Pointe since Prince Fielder 6-3 .

Hope thought the 11-year-old Nick had never had a tennis lesson so natural appearing was he.

"Are you kidding?" he said. "I've been playing tennis ever since I was five years old."

So, I want to build on the easy topped backhands, thumb on a diagonal (but NOT extended more than that up the racket!).

My scheme here is about short angle. I figure that if I can hit good short angle I can hit anything.

Arthur Ashe allowed in the old VHS TENNIS OUR WAY or was it someplace else that on a day when his topped backhand short angle wasn't working he wouldn't even attempt it.

Imagine an athlete as smooth as Arthur Ashe or Chris Paul having days when he can't hit some shot. Gives perspective, doesn't it?

On a day when this short angle WAS working for Arthur Ashe, he wouldn't, he said, even bother to conceal it, would lower his racket more directly and right away.

That is what I want, would like to try when the rain stops.

Backswing is from same shoulder-level position cheated left. The addition is slow flattening of wrist from there to waist level with the speed of the whole move accelerated to resemble a Vic Braden sit and hit.

In other words the racket will reach low point just as the hitting step touches down (very different).

With racket in this waist high position and parallel to court I will build up tension between the two hands before a "cutting of the wire."

My previous ideas about building this tension during straightening of the arm whether expressed here or not were fanciful because of wrong vectors.

Is what I am proposing a continuous swing? Hardly. Continuous swing is saved for the easy topped shot and includes step-out while the racket remains high with shoulders turning backward.

The slightly flattening wrist will act as a signal to speed everything up in order to make time for the tension-creating pause. Followed by cut the wire and ball zinging with plenty of top to the short tee (hee).

[bottle]

Sideways Element in McEnrueful Backswing

You're either wrong or you're partially right.-- Craig B. Mello

My McEnrueful wants essentially to be neutral stance shot. There will be an inner foot step-out whether this telegraphs to opposing net-man in doubles or not.

The designer in me says to use the fact that any step-out causes extra turning of the shoulders to pare down the shot even more.

I'm thinking that the down-and-up of hitting arm can shorten if it happens more on a straight slant from inside to outside.

But I still want perfect coordination between the two arms as in the old serving saw "down together, up together."

As the arms come up the body has substantially turned while the left hand has pointed throughout and gotten nearer to the side fence.

Should this pointing now stop? I think not. Am talking about extra pointing from step-out only.

What kind of step-out though?

With stepping foot square or splayed?

If splayed, you think that hips turn ought to start while foot is still in the air. Detroit Tiger Craig Monroe expounded this concept in a baseball telecast.

It (hips turn) certainly won't stop when foot comes down, not if one plans to finish like Ben Hogan.

[bottle]

More McEnrueful

No answers. Just progressions. That's me.

So it's always what I want to do, i.e., try next.

A strange way to play tennis? Which keeps tennis of great interest.

I say I think the arm is still going back as the hips snail and roll forward Ben Hogan like. Or do hips snail forward and then roll? Or combine the snail and the roll all at once?

Dunno. Better not to know at least with precision.

Is the arm still going back during the forward hip action as I posited? Am not so sure today from hitting with a very strong player after months of inaction due to foot injury. Like Steve Navarro I am beginning to get back on the court and find my shots. I'll state here unequivocally that the arm goes exactly where it wants to go. Figure out that position then and adjust to that.

Wes and I hit balls all over the grid, but the most interesting conversation we repeatedly had was a hard fast cross-court by me, more like a ping-pong slam than anything else followed by a beautifully lifted topspin forehand from him.

Fast and flat, high and controlled, back and forth, over and over. Not that his shots didn't go fast, too.

So great just to have such a hit after a too long lay-off. Some all age inter-generational doubles sets were played too since this was the Fourth of July.

I'm trying to answer Stotty's rhetorical question as if it is an actual question directed to me.

He wanted to know why his McEnroe-like forehand seems slower to him than his looped continental forehand.

I've tried to outline some editing that I think can go on, at least in the case of somebody who knows nothing, which excludes Stotty, someone who has taught me a lot.

As I participated in these long cross-court rallies I began to feel more and more of a pause as the racket changed direction-- with better and better results.

This feeling makes me want to hit a neutral step version in which the foot goes out naturally-- not far and not splayed.

"Not splayed" means that one doesn't believe that forward hips turn starts during the step but immediately afterward.

My wish is to keep all shot ingredients minimal followed by a big hit.

I want to try a down and up backswing shaded to the outside. In the middle comes step out, which continues to turn already turning shoulders. As forward hips turn kicks in, the racket continues to turn back or rather to inside with solid body arm connection (i.e., there is no independent arm movement from the shoulder at this point).

[bottle]

More

I haven't put a stopwatch on my McEnrueful and my Federfore yet to compare their duration since I think that act would resemble an emotionally dysfunctional doctor trying to figure out a patient prescription for love.

But I do think the Federfore has not been as quick as it could be ever since I got through my consciousness the notion of simultaneously tilting my head and turning my body toward the place where I want to go.

What some people might term explosive unit turn getting racket sufficiently back all at once I now compare to premature ejaculation. Rather, the unit turn should be the beginning of movement to some specific place. And the shoulders should continue to turn as the non-hitting arm then points across.

If one has started out with racket head up and cheated over for backhand as I do, the racket path will become quite interesting, even bizarre: sideways first staying near ball and only then going back as one "pats the dog."

This, needless to say, takes time. And is pretty complicated.

The McEnrueful, by contrast, just lets racket fall down and up as in down and up preparation for a serve.

Simultaneously the non-hitting hand while also falling down and up points itself nearer and nearer to the side fence thus pulling the shoulders around as far as one wants.

Some editing has occurred in other words. Gone: patting the dog. Gone: the initial sequence of turning shoulders followed by slow extension of the arm (and more turning of the shoulders).

Racket work and turning back of the body have combined into the more unified nature of a golf backswing.

So what does one do with the extra nano-seconds now procured?

Put them into a relaxed body loop, I would suggest, a loop in which the racket head gets into perfectly solid connection with the body as the body turns inside out.

Yes, there is independent motion from the shoulder during the down and up of the two separate arms, but hitting arm welds itself to what the body is doing, viz., a unique skittle-like forward motion resembling Ben Hogan's hip turn.

Next question: Do hips turn forward while racket is still naturally decelerating up? I think so. Next question: Is the forward hips turn so extreme and so fast that it stops before resuming like that of Zach Allen in the video that Steve Navarro provided (post # 2165)? Or should it never stop the way Ben Hogan's lead hip does?

In either case the tennis racket or golf club has lagged. In either case there finally is a release. Ben Hogan speaks of that, too. Yes, he uses the word "release."

With all of this said, I turn to the humongously looped forehand of the homunculus Tiny Tom Okker and what he said in my old but extremely valued tennis book called "MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES."

Oh damn. I can't easily find it. And people are coming. And there is a lot to do.

But what Okker says is that most hackers spend about one second getting off their forehand when the time ought to be around two seconds.

Jack Kramer, however, closely examined Okker's humongously looped topspin forehand in a photo-essay for TENNIS, I think it was.

The time for those photo-examined forehands was 1.20 or less. Maybe Tom Okker was rushing his strokes that day; maybe what Tom says and does are different.

I love his contention though that one ought to improve one's movement to the point that one can take more time to hit the shot.

That throws the gunslinger's analogy back to Karl May and other fictioneers of the old American west including my schoolboy friend David Peoples, author of the Clint Eastwood film THE UNFORGIVEN.

Those fictioneers of The Wild West can keep fast draw to themselves although I do admit it can come in handy in tennis in the form of a sudden block.

[bottle]

Yes incredibly simple. But why is that I need more time on the ball to play like McEnroe than Federer? Is it because I am not McEnroe that I cannot get the shot out in time off fast balls? But then I'm not Federer either.

Is the continuity of a loop faster to produce than a McEnroe style forehand? Sure feels like it.

If it were a spaghetti western gunfight, Federer would get his shot off first and McEnroe would be dead.

My experience is opposite-- the McEnrueful is faster if not of same duration. We could put a stopwatch on the two different basic ways of hitting a ball. You and I must be doing something different. In any case, when I play, I end far more points (with clean winners) using the McEnrueful rather than my Federfore.

[GeoffWilliams]

Mad mac at his very best would be destroyed by today's top four, (even on his horse steroids) and that goes without saying every past echelon. Let no man strike asunder what life has struck aseparate.

The same delusional old guys who think tiny wooden racquets are better than current, believe tiny wooden golf drivers better than titanium/basalt. The "young" guys are now 19/23. They used to be 16/18 yrs. old ala Hewitt and Ped/nadal.

Borg quit at 26. Does anyone think Nadal will quit at 28 even with bad knees?

[stotty]

In other words he plays tennis with more economy than the current players at Wimbledon.

Yes incredibly simple. But why is that I need more time on the ball to play like McEnroe than Federer? Is it because I am not McEnroe that I cannot get the shot out in time off fast balls? But then I'm not Federer either.

Is the continuity of a loop faster to produce than a McEnroe style forehand? Sure feels like it.

If it were a spaghetti western gunfight, Federer would get his shot off first and McEnroe would be dead.

[bottle]

Love and Tennis Compared

If you want to learn something about love you read Symborska, Sappho, Ahkmatova, Bishop, W.C. Williams, Homer, Euripides, Aeneas, Ovid, Catullus, Goethe, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Hawthorne. You don't talk with Dr. Ruth. You don't talk with anybody whose talk in the least resembles that of Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil, Dr. Wayne, Dr. 6-pak or Dr. Anybody since doctors are not noticeably better at love than other persons.

"Before art, psychoanalysis should lay down its arms." -- Sigmund Freud

You can try some actual loving, too. That might teach you something.

In tennis, there are those who read and those who don't. More specifically there are those who read about tennis. Both Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King stated in separate autobiography that they read every single word they could find on tennis.

The relationship between tennis and literature is of exceeding interest at least to me. Ezra Pound was a cut-shot artist extraordinaire. Richard Wilbur compared the writing of a sonnet with hitting a drop-shot. Theodore Roethke was assistant men's coach at Penn State. Thornton Wilder's brother made it to Wimbledon although he lost in the first round.

Reading and studying tennis can clearly help some. Has it harmed others? Maybe.

More likely there was something else that hurt them.

My 11-year-old friend and hitting partner Maxine, who is as good at love as my 100-year-old friend Frieda, says or rather wrote in a school project full of poems, drawings and other stuff, "Love is happiness."