A New Year's Serve

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One Inch of Solid Sideways Travel

Tennis is the game of willfulness (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willful). What you want to do is equally important with your capability. On a good day the two will come together.

My friend Ron Carloni has been studying tennis recently with my friend Sebastien Foka, the Wayne State star and teaching pro from France who grew up hitting with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

The other day Sebastien told Ron, "You're just going to revert to what you've always done anyway."

"Recidivism!" I said when Ron told me that. We prison teachers used to consider recidivism rates as essential part of our line of work. And Tom Okker in the forehand section of MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES used the same word to disparage the majority of persons who take tennis lessons.

Fortunately for me I never thought the baseline of whatever I initially acquired was particularly good so have always felt entirely free to torpedo it.

My subject today is total commitment to BAM! forehands since I am about to go to the neighborhood courts where I shall compete.

Today's cues for that stroke: 1) one inch to the inside of solid sideways travel of racket and bod as a single unit before commencement of the forward swish, 2) FEEL for the ball, for the correct pitch, for the proper aim setting while holding elbow back, 3) push through a stuck cellar door with arm imagined so strong that it moves equally much with all of the other body parts, 4) meld preceding actions into smooth followthrough over the shoulder yoke.

Too much to think about. Right. So spread out the acquisition of this instruction over the next ten years. We are athletic, read psychotic out on the court. But this is written form in a forum where things are different sometime.

Note: There are two kinds of BAM! forehand as far as I am concerned: 1) conservative and 2) passionate. In the conservative version one slightly rolls racket as elbow pushes to keep one's strings square. In the passionate version one simply lets the elbow rip the ball, having relied on one's perfect contact point and other perfect decisions to achieve one's perfect consistency.

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Response to Play

So one does better if one doesn't roll the racket over the ball when hitting it. Not rolling may be harder but could be a higher level of the game. Certainly I am not the only player or coach ever to recommend this.

Once one has eliminated all likely exceptions in circumstance to this rule, one could pretty much draw thought down to the basics of this forehand I have chosen, the BAM!

And with the onset of these basics comes new considerations. Does one want never to alter the contact point for this shot, i.e., no matter the situation one will always meet the ball the same distance in front of one?

Although one can't always succeed in such an ideal the constancy of the effort could be good.

Similarly, one could add a smidge of forward roll to one's mondo for more adjustment or wiggle room to that ephemeral point where one finally pushes the elbow.

An exceedingly light grip seems integral to this emerging shot.

Integral again is the understanding that one will make one's adjustments first so that one can have more uninhibited fun when one flies the elbow.

Note: "Adding a smidge of forward roll to the mondo" could seem inimical to any mondo in that the mondo consists of 1) flapping wrist back, 2) rolling forearm down, 3) rolling elbow down too in some cases.

If one doesn't roll elbow down one can roll it up a little at the same time one rolls forearm down.

I persist in thinking that a player should get off some of these BAM's with no extra roll to adjust anywhere in them-- lobs or moonballs I should think-- but much depends on one's contact point and grip.

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Use Figure Eights and Perfect Mime to Groove the New Ground Strokes

Do this with and without a racket. Feel the subtle adjustment with elbow held back. Feel the small lift of the delayed elbow after which you finally get to roll or wipe, the element you have purged from your actual BAM! Forehand.

You will still need roll, e.g., to pluck a quick descending ball out of the air. The descending path plus the rising racket for your rolling arm will provide added topspin for the reversed direction of the shot.

For a normal forehand taken on the bounce however the lifting or pushing elbow will provide the spin. I advise four figure eights with a lift followed by a final one with full push and followthrough over the shoulder yoke.

Mime similarly but without the figure eight the PetraKordian over and over, feeling how the arm extending roll melds immediately into the circular and thrusting body hit (circle and thrust SIM).

If you were a skier you would be Jean Claude Killy of France staying over his feet, not some Austrian or Vic Braden doing tricks of angulation to thrust out his hips. If rear foot is to slide, it slides right then.

Roll arm and hit, roll arm and hit, keeping elbow in for the roll and flying it toward side fence for the immediately separated hit.

The smoothly decelerating followthrough to opposite side of the bod is just icing on the cake.

QUESTION: Do you keep head still while using a PetraKordian to hit the ball? One certainly keeps eyes fixed on the ball but has to be honest. The head moves up as part of the straightening while turning bod. Vic Braden did this too. So keeping head still in this genre of shot is pure myth. But don't feel bad. Elaphe Vulpinus moves his head too but still is pretty accurate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XryKA3z_uWk).

NOTE: It has taken years, even decades for me to develop any kind of an effective PetraKordian. Reader, if any of these accounts have helped to shorten learning curve for you I am glad to have been of service.

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On Forehand, Can One Really Roll the Forearm and Elbow in Opposite Direction?

Yes. It's like stirring to get a stew just right.

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Controlled Arm vs. All Arm Uncontrolled Topspin Backhands

Am still thinking about the PetraKordian Backhand, of course (https://video.search.yahoo.com/video...&hsimp=yhs-002).

Narrative of this stroke: A lot of arm, some arm but mostly bod, some bod but mostly arm (the followthrough).

Now for "uncontrolled arm." That would not be Federer, Wawrinka or Thiem-- they control their arm very well. They use it to the max. They whirl it twisting it around like a dervish, but they've figured out how to integrate this with their bod. And Carla Suarez-Navarro-- she's careful, so she can do it too.

The uncontrolled ones are the unwashed multitudes trying to imitate. They'd be better off with arm first, then twisting elongating bod, next more arm, but this could take a while to learn.

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What Happened to Tennis Pro who Used Snake too much as Metaphor for Hitting the Ball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--KOE08bvxM

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Adding Design to a Serve that already Possesses a Lot of Design

We start with a Don Budge serve here (http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...DB1stSRear.mov). Don Budge was known to have the most natural backhand in the world said to derive from his early interest in baseball. He wasn't hurt by having a much older brother Lloyd with reputation of being a great tennis teaching pro.

Lloyd introduced Don to all of the strokes judging from Don's introduction to Lloyd's book TENNIS MADE EASY.

Another famous teaching pro, Tom Stow, worked with Don Budge on his other strokes, i.e., strokes other than his famous backhand which Tom studiously left alone. Tom and Don studied Don's serve along with practicing it. They concluded that during the serve, weight should not transfer until the tossed ball started coming down.

It is fun to speculate on exactly which part of weight transfer they were writing about since, clearly in the films, shoulders topple somewhat forward right from inception of the toss.

None of Don's studied strokes were as good as the natural one, according to tennis person and writer Ed Weiss. And yet Don Budge was the first person to win a Grand Slam, so none of his strokes could have been too bad.

In copying his service motion, I notice straightening of elbow melding into plying of straight arm melding into solid connection with the two shoulder balls which then rotate backward as a single unit if only for a brief moment until the arm bends to throw.

I should like now to combine the above described motions into a single vector going down. That's going to raise front shoulder at an earlier time than ever before.

Will more body tilt be enabled by this decision? Possibly. Maybe hip jutting toward net was only achieving middling tilt. And amount of tilt is crucial to anyone who doesn't possess the inner flexibility of a Roddick or Sampras.

One will need a mirror-- in my case a lucky reflection occurred in an outside window next to the driveway pavement where I first tried this new design.

One wants to see-- in window or mirror-- the tossing arm and the two shoulderballs and the hitting arm all in a straight line.

Or at least the tossing arm and the two shoulderballs and the upper half of the hitting arm all in a straight line.

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Forehand Tweak

Replace one inch of sideways solid body-arm travel with two inches of backward hand float.

The idea of these exotic little finesses is like the elephant to always keep something moving.

If nothing is moving, watch out. The elephant is charging at 25 mph with a head squashing in mind.

That might be hard to incorporate into one's game unless one is an elephant. Better to float the hand under the elbow which coincidentally will close one's strings a bit more and make the subsequent mondo less harsh and will help continuity through a very small loop.

Elbow will as always stay back while you push hand forward. And you should by now know what comes next, the BAM!

Before, twisting elbow stilled itself to let the body move it. Now the hand floats at end of the elbow twist, taking less time.

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"I want to hit my PetraKordian harder"

Then stand farther away from the ball. Keep your back straight but bend over from the hips. And be very confident in your interpretation of this shot.

Reader, I can only hope that your interpretation of a PetraKordian and mine have come to be the same regardless of how we arrived at such personal viewpoint.

Me, I read an old tennis book printed on cheap paper. It had a flimsy cover along with a feeble glued spine that caused it to disintegrate some decades ago.

It was put out by the Czech tennis establishment back in the heady hayday of Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova, back when Czech was part of Czechoslovakia and those two players were fleeing to the United States.

Much was about the Czech training methods of that time but there was a list too of design ideas for tennis strokes, a sort of list I have never seen anywhere else.

One of THE CZECH BOOK's design thoughts was that somebody can swing a lever at one length but right in the middle of the swing increase the lever length for added speed out at the end.

To soak this idea for all it is worth in a PetraKordian, why not lean over more from the hips? Since keeping elbow in is essential ingredient in the recipe, one will have created a cave above one's arm.

Now think of all arm travel-- the racket roll/arm extension and delayed release of the elbow as proceeding toward side fence rather than net, and with this arm action to be deliberate and slow enough to practically hold strings in place for bod to deliver the blow.

Arm and bod always were corollaries, right? The less arm in a one hander the more bod and vice-versa. We use little arm now to hit the ball, relegating that task to bod-blend of bod rotation and bod extension a.k.a. "the Alexander technique."

The arm however keeps the strings for extra dwell on the ball by slowly pushing it to the outside. After ball is gone the arm and racket easily follow through to opposite side of the bod.

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Handbodhandbod Redux

Some time back I told about finding a really good hitting partner, Ken Hunt. Recently, I got to play next to him a few times in doubles. I thought he was 60, maybe 65. Nope, he is 87 .

"It's not always about age," he says, but then he points to the increased difficulty of a quick first step.

The guy is black inspiration.

So, to keep learning I'll choose better initiation. And to complete the imperative to use the extra time generated in shot production hence the decision to return to my strict handbodhandbod formula.

For added inspiration I draw on the peak moment in a single tennis day, one great shot hit last week. I was returning serve in the ad court. I hit a reverse crosscourt deep in the alley, a howitzer with pace, spin and shape. So, good, something great happened. Next question: how repeatable is it? Probably more than one is apt to think.

I'll bet on my personalized formula along with non-manipulated backswing. The essence of the BAM! forehand is having the strings in perfect position when you finally throw the elbow. How the strings got there is relatively unimportant. So mime the correct position. Then, in actual play, get there in the most natural but momentum-generating way you know.

For me, that will be the same arm roll that made me a bad player when I was 18 . What made me bad then will make me good now-- the same roll will happen a bit sooner just before I throw the elbow to hit the ball.

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# 1 PetraKordian in this Video

The foot splays late-- reflecting head start on hips turn (https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?...&hsimp=yhs-002).

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The BAM (BF), The Abduction (AF), The Fox Snake (FS), The Elephant (AKSM)-- Same)

Most of these names for the same forehand are self-explanatory. The AKSM refers however to the way a docile elephant always keeps something moving.

Similarly, on the backhand side, the PetraKordian and Fox Snake (FSBH) are essentially the same shot. The only difference between them is that Petr sometimes is more upright as in the first of his 16 backhands here (https://video.search.yahoo.com/video...&hsimp=yhs-002). In that case there still is accordion effect but coming mostly from the front leg rather than from front leg and back. Leg and back always figure but in varying degree. Another way of putting this is that the blend may remain the same but with different body angle for different situations so that one's eyes and head never have to displace very much. One constant or major power source in all cases however is forward rotation of the hips. This can be hard to understand in that shoulders could be still turning backward during the hitting step (or not). But just before the foot settles on the court the forward hips turn commences resulting in last instant splay of the toes somewhat toward the net.

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Ratio Within the Handbodhandbod Imperative

Of course, reader, nobody has to do anything. Tennis is willpower, not determinism, a chosen course rather than global warming although a good argument could be made there that GW too is gloomy and self-hating chosen course.

So I use the word "imperative" as it applies to someone who is partial to forward emphasis abduction forehands.

I use the term "handbodhandbod" too as verbal attempt to describe a complex stroke. I've described the motion that corresponds to each unit of this syllable salad before. My question now is about the time interval associated with each syllable, and I come to this conclusion: 1,1,2,1 .

To explain further, the first, second and fourth syllables take the same time.

The third syllable however takes twice as long as any other.

In terms of coded motion then-- and most language unfortunately is code-- the third syllable or second "hand" is a roll of whole arm set at three-quarters length. Or to say the whole construction in a way that might provide further guidance, "handbodh-a-a-ndbod."

This roll, which includes the complexity of mondo, i.e., the forearm down-roll and wrist layback as elbow rolls in opposite direction, should take twice as long as either syllable immediately preceding or succeeding it.

One can put the whole shot into a count: 123-45 . One two threefour five. One two stir-the-pot five. While you're learning it.

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Leftward Lean in a Don Budge Serve

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...B1stSFront.mov)
(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...DB1stSRear.mov)

Tossing and winding process is one aspect of this serve with elbow straightening melding into full arm ply melding into backward rotation of the shoulders.

A second aspect is leftward lean occurring late. It starts at the end of backward rotation of the shoulders. One's eyes and shoulders lower away from the ball as if is poison.

The whole body is involved. My personal preference is that the front foot stay flat as in the drawings in TALBERT AND OLDS. Whole body involvement means that shoulders go toward left fence while knees, especially the right knee, go toward right fence.

We still are discussing "leftward lean"-- nothing more and nothing less.

To focus on right hip's contribution to the process we ask, Does right hip go with shoulders toward the left fence or with knees toward the right fence? Experiment. Answer: Toward right fence. Here is some added leftward lean. But it will continue as forward rotation of hips takes right heel up on its toes. And will continue again as left leg extends to stiffen bod and bump right foot up in the air.

The arm meanwhile has taken off. These classical serves feature arm whipping around rather than being pushed by the bod.

The arm also exhibits ISR (internal shoulder rotation). In both ways the arm flies strings ahead of right foot which only comes through late to catch bod weight.

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Use the New Forehand Knowledge in a Different Way?

Why not? At 76 I am very stiff both before and after I play tennis-- unlike my friend Ken who is 87 .

So while I could as all tennis players must, go with what I've got, I think I'll re-introduce a small overhand loop into the mix. Again, why not? New designs are frequently more fun than old ones.

The small overhand loop should enable some see sees as never before. First though I'll need to work on a pair of consciously chosen followthroughs to tell myself what I just did. Both types of shot will be hit off of the same small loop.

1) Followthrough over the shoulder yoke. I just used elbow throw rather than ISR (windshield wipe from internal shoulder rotation). Most of these shots are deep, with shape. But one can flatten them out by introducing roll before the elbow throw.

2) Followthrough around the shoulder where a vaccination mark used to be. This indicates a mild amount of windshield wipe which I now wish to combine with delayed elbow throw.

See Sees

The small loop involves leading back with the elbow while raising the racket head a slight amount. This doesn't close the strings as much as simply rolling elbow up. It can't. One rolls the elbow in opposite direction to take the the strings up. So strings now are more open. The challenge is to find another way to close them.

The three-quarters length arm will prove crucial. If one brings the forearm around level toward the net the strings will close. This would not be true if forearm were parallel to the court.

Now one can throw elbow and twist it SIM for followthrough around opposite shoulder.