A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Knee the Ball

Anyone trying to hit the PetraKordian one hand backhand will find that Petr Korda's racket work is simple enough for easy acquisition.

Learning to knee the ball by sending the knee along or parallel to the baseline will prove a bit harder.

[bottle]

A Tennis Firewall against Learning New Strokes

In self-feed yesterday I hit all kinds of Clarabells. They were honking all over the place.

Today in doubles competition I never hit a single Clarabell. Because I was too busy hitting BAM! forehands in which the racket tip topples under the hand which momentum initiates a big push-rich lift.

The topple needs to be precise to deliver one's desired result of trajectory, pace and spin. One sees different rates of success with these shots on different days; always however there seems a great option available of a topspin lob.

In any case I got involved in the technicalities of perfect "topple under." Many players some of them very good never get involved in the technicalities of anything.

Technicality in this subject can destroy the technicality of something else. So that some poor player gives up too soon.

I'll master my Clarabells. I'll remember the shape of them first off the court and then on the court and then in competitive play.

[bottle]

PetraKordian: To Try

Front foot step with shoulders still turning back. Roll of arm to straighten arm and close racket and bring tip round a bit. Step with rear foot along baseline while hitting the ball.

This is a sequence, not a simultaneity, a sequence I want to explore. One question: Does step of the rear foot twist the body or does body twist drag the foot or both?

Report: Yes, not moving rear foot until arm has rolled seems to work well. And the main hit one then puts on the ball-- a combination of lengthening and twisting body-- might bring into mind two different skiers of the past who both were number one in the world at different times. Franz Klammer would angulate all over the place while Jean Claude Killy was always right over his feet. I have no doubt at all on the question of which method is easier to do.

Under the heading of "great accordion backhands I have known" I then place Vic Braden and Petr Korda with the same distinction between them as Klammer and Killy. Some who already think I am nuts will doubly think so for my putting Vic Braden's backhand at such a high worldwide level. I'll tell you what though, it was one of the best backhands I've ever seen, as Vic self-fed it on and off over a period of six hours.

[bottle]

Maximizing Roll in a Clarabell

The Clarabell forehand, unlike its elbow hurling companion the BAM! forehand, can from identical forward preparation administer its topspin in upper arm then lower arm sequence.

My stuck or thing in this thread is speculation. Without almost constant speculation, in my view, one doesn't play good/fun tennis.

Today, in self-feed, I wish to try purposeful destablilization and restabilization of the elbow caused by roll from the forearm just as the elbow drives inside out.

After contact, I expect the elbow roll to destabilize once again.

I'm thinking of the same preparation one uses for the BAM! version of a high lob.

The elbow of 3/4 length arm stays back as the racket tip topples or bowls quite far forward under the hand thus opening the racket face.

Now I start acceleration with a vigorous, destablilizing twist from the elbow. I used to have a ping-pong slam like this, unreliable and hit or miss. The savagery of it however was good and is the part I would like to preserve.

Rolling forearm chimes in for contact which ought to retard the spinning elbow (if we are believers in any kind of kinetic chain theory).

Design features: Racket tip to topple under with elbow held back. (This is when mondo happens.) Racket head to pry/slam forward with elbow held back. Forearm roll-- more controlled and taking strings in a more vertical direction-- to chime in as elbow, finally releasing, adds push to the ball.

This is just a scheme du jour. But one's more fanciful schemes sometimes lead to best result. What I like, before I go to the court, is the almost vertical racket tip position pointing down. This is enabled by an inside positioning of the racket quite close to the bod.

Report: This shot goes too fast to be useful as one's staple forehand for somebody of my age except maybe on a rare day. Used judiciously, however, it will interest me a lot.

[bottle]

Observation

Reader, I gave you a pretty good thing in # 3139 if you can understand it and learn to use it well. Of course you probably are using something else that you think is just as good and maybe better. We won't debate. We'll just play against each other.

Bottle, I gave you a pretty good thing in # 3139 . Look at it this way. Using a similar research method, you came up with two good forehands, first The McEnrueful and second The BAM! No one with whom you actually play, Bottle, would assert that either is a bad shot.

So this third shot, The Clarabell, besides going faster than the others will be an excellent shot too.

[bottle]

"I Am A Rotorded Server"

I'd like to confess to this meeting of the Rotorded Serving Association (RSA) that I am a rotorded server, something that maybe or maybe not one should say every day, i.e., somebody who can't get the racket tip very low. My Don Budge modeled serve (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...DB1stSRear.mov) has nevertheless been coming along well.

If I try to explain this, will I curb my progress? Possibly but I'm not superstitious so I'll take that risk.

A significant factor, I believe, is my decision to concentrate on lengthening the arm in three melded steps: First arm straightens at the still elbow then hand continues at end of the straight arm, then straight arm becomes even longer due to rotating backward with the two shoulder balls.

As shoulders and arm in line with them rotate backward, but near end of this part, the hips start their rotation forward. Then shoulders spring fast to pass the hips, and let's not even talk right now about what the arm does then and before and after.

The combination of shoulders going backward and hips going forward is a good time for one to alter the tilt of the shot by thrusting out the turning hips toward the net.

One adds to this the important notion of gliding forward as one tosses. At first I only did this as hitting arm straightened but now continue with it through straight arm taking its solo.

[lobndropshot]

I agree it is important to say every day out loud "I am a rotorted server." Nothing affects your whole game like being a Rotorted server. Which is why I am submitting my application to become a lifetime member of the RSA. May I join?

[bottle]

Absolutely. I declare you a retorted server.

[lobndropshot]

I was hoping to be a rotorted server.

[bottle]

One can't have everything.

[bottle]

Compression of Time

The BAM! and Clarabell forehands employed together present a unique learning challenge in that one contains more working parts than the other.

One wants to feel roughly the same rhythm in getting off either one of them. This could mean bloating one or squeezing the other into the same small envelope. So there's the choice: Squeeze or bloat with squeeze looking more rational, but with compromise from the two different ends also a strong possibility.

Tom Okker once made two devastating criticisms of the recreational player: 1) recidivism and 2) not taking long enough to hit one's shot.

Focusing on numero two since I'll never go back to prison (famous last words but remember I only taught there, wasn't yet thinking of becoming an inmate) I consciously determine to "spread the lift out." This should not be hard since one starts with the BAM! already being a uniquely smooth shot. One twists up the elbow behind one but not too high, somewhere around waist level. One keeps elbow back then while mondoeing racket forward. The term "bloat" now becomes unfortunate since the movement in this stroke is better described as smooth. Hand bowls under before elbow lifts. And the smoothness can be lengthened despite the quickness of the rip.

The other end of the compromise to make these two shots feel more the same could require decades of repetition but who has that time?

I feel the same way about the A&P3. A loop (wastes time) and then a dogpat (wastes time) and then a flip too before the wipe that starts before one hits the ball?

I even think that Roger Federer's forehand is overly complicated with racket tip first rising then racket closing-- but all that is fast for him from a million repetitions.

Whether one likes the overall look of Nick Kyrgios, one might like the way he twists up his elbow immediately, wasting no time.

The BAM! does that. So does the Clarabell. Both shots can remain exactly the same through the mondo.

The difference though is that the Clarabell now slams the racket head forward while still keeping the elbow back. So mondo and slam will need to be consciously drilled as a unified sidearm throw to avoid any extra decades of practice for which one hasn't time.

And if one is really good, the "slam" may turn into something else, a smoothing forward while closing the racket head before it will open out to maybe get square at contact.

Have the two shots yet started to feel the same? I hope so. The mental grouping of mondo and slam in the one shot can be the equivalent of just mondo in the other.

The Clarabell can conclude with pushing forearm roll and shorter lower followthrough to substitute for the BAM's smooth pushing lift and return of knuckles to ear.

And with so much lowness of racket tip at the end of a Clarabell, one may just as well form a figure eight to return racket to ready position (1) or (2) hit six Clarabells in a row without ever touching racket with opposite hand. (2) here is a bit fanciful but could be a good way to groove the stroke just as one can help groove one's serve by practicing continuous figure eights.

Can one hit such figure-eighted Clarabells in which everything is smooth and liquid except for a brief part of the tract where the racket whistles? Yes one can.

And the figure eights begin to conduct their own class. They teach you to smooth out the sidearm throw rather than make it abrupt. They change the word "slam" to "squeeze" so that racket gets out ahead of hand in the smoothest possible way. Finally, they preach early unhurried forward preparation for a contact way out front.

However you've prepared before you now prepare earlier. When the ball arrives at your racket you're already wiping with your forearm from right fence toward left.

[bottle]

Who Said It?

Somebody on TV. Use ball to generate the spin for a see see. Closed racket face then?

[bottle]

Forehands: Use What Parts of the Arm and How?

The question is retort to the common ideas "feel for the ball" and "hit the ball with full extension."

The body firsters don't even want to talk about arm although racket work clearly is the key to tennis. If racket is correct at contact, the body can be doing all kind of crazy things and still make the shot (although that may not be recommended)... Braden.

Feel through extending from the elbow? No, I think. Feel through rolling a fixed elbow.

Extend from the elbow? No, extend from the shoulder right while you are hitting the ball.

A related question: Loop or don't loop? I've argued against loop in the past. The loop I argued against however was an extra loop besides the loop one forms when one mondoes then wipes up outside back of the ball.

So now I argue for twisting upper arm, twisting lower arm loop for total of about 180 degrees and that this loop be formed in that sequence.

Most of the subsequent wipe from right fence to left I classify as followthrough.

The trickiest part of this new iteration is feeling for the ball through rolling the elbow-- the usual means of destabilizing (and frequently but not always ruining) a stroke.

Of necessity, the racket action cause by this full arm roll will keep the racket tip lower than the base of the thumb.

I want to try this with both BAM! forehands and Clarabells.

[bottle]

Clarabell Deep-Sixed

Good forehands today, mediocre ones tomorrow-- so what's new. The time may have come to jettison the Clarabell or bullshit forehand once and for all and just go with the BAM!

Howdy Doody-- Paul Ryan?-- Clarabell the honking clown himself-- Buffalo Bob and Princess Summerfallwinterspring are more recent history than John Smith and Pocohontas, but oh my how Howdy prefigures 2016 trying to reenact the 1950's:

It's Howdy Doody Time
It's Howdy Doody Time
Bob Smith and Howdy too
Say howdy do to you

Isolationism, McCarthyism, a new cold war, witch hunts all over the place, thanks but no thanks. America wasn't great in the 1950's and it won't be great in the 2010's if it doesn't shape up fast.

And neither is my Clarabell any good. While I love hitting figure eights with it because of the good swish they make, I think the future for me lies in the forward shoulder-yoke finishing sweep of the BAM! both with forward roll of whole arm happening during contact and not.

With McEnruefuls as back-up.

[bottle]

Assembling One's PetraKordian, Step by Step

Each time I watch the 16 casual PetraKordians in this video I see something new (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA).

Yesterday it was inside out elbow travel right after the arm-extending roll.

Face the fact that contact does not occur much space after that roll.

So the heft of the stroke happens right then between the roll and a little past contact.

After that the minimalist stroke shifts its racket action just barely over to opposite side of bod.

A nice overall shape, that, indicating along with more horizontal footwork already installed a heavy reliance on angular not linear momentum to provide the power in this shot.

One could think of a champion frisbee or Jai Alai player. He cranks.

The transition between self-feed and competitive play will remain as always the hardest part but also the best test of one's concept. Does the new thing work? That is what matters.

Addendum: Behold the beauty of Petr's backhand followthrough. Then think of the Korda and Lendl family connections to golf. How can Petr's followthrough be so strangely effortless and easy? Well, first, it is mostly arm. There may be a bit of residual body weight involved but, basically, the ball is gone having already been hit.