A New Year's Serve

[lobndropshot]

Silly...

I couldn't agree more. That is the exact reason my forehand hates it when I try to be Federer or Djokovic. My forehand always protests when I call up images of them. It is my forehand's opinion that there is too much silliness to be had throughout the entire backswing.

[bottle]

Yay!

[bottle]

Still Head More Often than not is a Joke

In my first sport-- rowing-- keeping head still means chin over the keel in that you are on little wheels traveling down and up the boat. One is apt to think of eight heads sliding back and forth on a single rod.

Through keeping chin behind the ball until the ball is gone one can play good golf.

Everybody in tennis knows that Roger Federer hitting a forehand turns his head backward to keep looking at contact point.

So Roger kept his head still, right? Not if both feet went up in the air taking his head with them.

And there are serves like his in which eyes stayed glued on the ball until it likewise is gone. Of course his head rose again with flight of his feet. In all of the best serves the body straightens out like a hard-on in homage to Alexander the Great in love with Alexander Technique.

George Plimpton, sport writer, oarsman and literary man, wrote in his introduction to a tennis book by the teaching pro Vince Eldridge that, he, George, was the worst person in the world at receiving tennis instruction because he took the terms too literally.

One can imagine "keep the head still" as one such term.

So why is being a literary man a handicap in tennis? Because the literary man, unlike too many tennis players, cares about precision of language.

One question in all of this: Did Chris Evert, told by her father to keep her head still, really do so? Whether she did or didn't, her more modern successors don't.

[bottle]

Helium not Lead Elbow

The recent forum discussion about pause or no pause at the top of ground strokes (but why not extend it to serves and overheads too?) gives this dude the idea for slight modification to his always emerging Djokovic-itch.

One design idea for the stroke is no dogpat or anything else before the mondo, that mondo happens at the top, that mondo itself could be called the loop. Also, mondo can be somewhat like the easy fall of the club head as a forward golf swing commences.

This is romantic, I admit, an illusion of ultimate power. (In real time political debate on live television Donald Trump has just boasted that he hits a golf ball 285 feet.)

Against this we posit Ivan Lendl rejecting in his early book collaboration with Eugene Scott the notion that one should drive a tennis ball the way one can a golf ball.

One can use a perfect kinetic chain to do it, Lendl argues, but at the same time lose all hope of consistency and control.

So give me a compromise. A loop abets smoothness, the most desirable quality in athletic motion. A mondo introduces a microsecond of harshness into the smoothness of a good forehand. So we start the golfy fall at top of the fat-bellied outside in contraction we have devised.

But we complete this mondo only on the way down.

The earliness of this completion still frees up a longer bowl of the racket tip under the ball.

And straight bowl and wipe up and rolling wrap around neck all coalesce for more racket head speed and topspin and pace.

[bottle]

When Does a Novak Djokovic Forehand Begin its Deceleration?

A very short distance above contact, one would think. But let's do the clicks that will move us beyond conjecture toward elusive truth.

Here is a forehand (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...1%20500fps.mp4). We click on the third arrow under the still photo. Then we shift to right arrow on our computer keyboard. The vertical block and Djokovic both begin to move. We get Djokovic to where he has just performed his mondo. The strings are on their way down. I think I will have completed my mondo a bit sooner, at least at first.

But from end of Djokovic's mondo (strings just below his shoulder) we start our count. In two clicks the strings are on the ball. They went a long way! They are moving tremendously fast. A third click takes racket one racket head width directly above the ball.

We now do one click, stop, think, just to see what will happen. The next click puts strings about a yard above the ball. The next click starts bringing racket around more than up. The next click gets strings to left shoulder. The next click gets strings past left shoulder. The next click starts making a horizontal turn we can see because of our vantage point. The next click takes racket an even lesser distance. Four more clicks complete the wrap.

We have just described a lot of clicks, 11 in fact.

Compare this 11 with the two that took racket all the way from mondo to contact. We have witnessed both acceleration and deceleration at work, hopefully satisfying our curiosity-- well maybe somewhat.

Now comes a second question: Why should we care? Because, presumably, 1) we possess normal human curiosity and 2) the knowledge may help us tweak our own forehand to an optimal level with acceleration and deceleration now in their proper place.

Personally speaking, the knowledge of these clicks once and for all destroys the image of a windshield wiper as something useful to me.

One could cling to one's dear windshield wiper, I suppose, but the wiper then would work about the way it would if you were sstanding outside at front of your car during an ice blizzard with hand on a moving wiper and applying your body weight to it (inadvisable).

Racket trajectory may resemble that of the wiper but the speed of it is uneven.

And some other explanation or cue may improve on our old wiper friend.

A wipe but not a windshield wipe applies the topspin, and the wipe goes straight up.

Since Djoker's right arm is rotating, and very fast, it may take the racket through a section of arc from five to two o'clock: the crucial part of acceleration that started when the elbow plunged.

The arm then continues to roll as racket wraps around neck, but that part of the stroke is decelerative.

[bottle]

Friday Night Tennis Social

After a hit with my favorite hitting partner Ken Hunt, and three sets of social doubles, dinner then, and just about fifteen balls in self-feed before driving home, I think I was getting off the track a bit when I spoke of strings about a yard above the ball.

That is where the strings are, but, the ball has moved. It's just an optical thing that doesn't indicate anything very much. I thought that special yard might still be acceleration but now I have reconsidered.

My first impulse of interpretation was the best one. The strings go up one racket width from contact. And that is the end of the acceleration, the beginning of the deceleration. I got faster spin when I tried this. This shot can develop into a very good one.

[bottle]

"This Shot Can Develop into a Very Good One"

That's what I said. So all effort should go in that direction, right? Yes and no.

My cat-killing curiosity wants me to compare the following three variations including 1), the one I just described but will describe again.

1) Wrist slightly lays back as arm squeezes racket toward body core and lays back more combined with forearm roll down to complete the mondo as racket launches into the forward shot (mondo but small one).

2) Hump wrist as arm squeezes racket toward body. This will increase the size of the loop/mondo.

3) Keep wrist straight for contraction phase (the squeeze) for a moderate mondo.

Explore the new form with different heights of backswing also: My curiosity exceeds my wish to be immediately good today.

[stotty]

I just had to share this with someone...1939 forever. Play the video.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35734889

[bottle]

Yes, extremely relevant (the year I was born).

[gzhpcu]

Seems like she is not the only one living in 1939....

[don_budge]

Living in the Past…Jethro Tull

Seems like she is not the only one living in 1939....

That's right gzhpcu…everyone else is living in the past. You are the only one who is smart enough and cool enough to be hip, up to date and in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8

Yeah…rock 'n roll was better years ago as well. Oops…there I go again. Living in the Past.

[bottle]

Seems like she is not the only one living in 1939....

That's right. My father was living then too. AND SHE IS MY MOTHER!

[bottle]

On Tennis Stroke Invention

I figure it's difficult, and tennis players don't like difficulty, and so they say stuff like "Don't think!"

[bottle]

Cut the Wire Technology

The phrase "cut the wire," reader, should immediately conjure up for you a huge one-hand topspin backhand, but if it doesn't, well, shame on you.

Me, I've got a small one-hander in which I keep front shoulder down. "Cut the wire" wisdom applies neither there nor to my slices. Simply put, the racket head speed comes from other sources.

But on the biggie I'm now about to institute, I'm going to alter my thought pattern, such course correction lying at the heart of all significant tennis stroke change.

Long, long ago there was a small green book, "the Arco book" that contained John Newcombe's and Roger Taylor's serves, Virginia Wade's forehand and Evonne Goolagong's backhand.

It was a riffle book. You riffled the pages like a deck of cards to animate each one of these four shots. A small bit of text in the margin explained the huge amount of tension created between Goolagong's shoulder and her hand before she suddenly released her racket.

Forget the image now of a waterfall, I'm thinking. A waterfall conveys too much tranquility.

Yes, the racket coming down behind the back does appear in free fall. But tension must build between shoulder and hand at the same time.

For "tension" defined we go quickly to Google: The tension force is the force that is transmitted through a string, rope, cable or wire when it is pulled tight by forces acting from opposite ends. The tension force is directed along the length of the wire and pulls equally on the objects on the opposite ends of the wire.

Next step: Identify the "ends." Front end is the shoulder pressing forward from hips rotation underneath. Rear end is you, the tennis player, holding hand back as arm straightens at the elbow. My new idea, heretical or not but certainly not a thing of the past, shows itself as exhortative or coxswain's command:

Cut the wire.

[gzhpcu]

That's right gzhpcu…everyone else is living in the past. You are the only one who is smart enough and cool enough to be hip, up to date and in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8

Yeah…rock 'n roll was better years ago as well. Oops…there I go again. Living in the Past.

Very perceptive, you got it right...