A New Year's Serve

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Hit a Slice Serve with no Body Rotation

Completely pronate or isissipate or whatever you want to call it. Then let right leg catch your weight.

So, reader, did I mean for you to do this all the time? Nope. Do it once.

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Nice Mutation or Abomination

Will play today in the Grosse Pointe Carousel, after which the Grosse Pointe Senior Men's Club will hold its annual hot dog party-- a very social event second in importance only to its annual Christmas party.

So one will want one's forehand to look good today. This is not the time-- supposedly-- to change a single thing.

But I started to change the single thing last Wednesday, introducing a pencil thin supernumerary loop where before there had been none, only the small loop that is natural byproduct of any mondo.

And one's tennis philosophy must dictate. Mine is always to go with the current change and let myelination, muscle memory, the talent code, Malcolm Gladwell etc. etc. be thoroughly damned.

The diminishment of sperm cells and oleodendricytes that comes with advancing age cannot be a good thing, but the best remedy is invention. If you invent, the amount available to you of sperm cells and goopy myelin which in fact closely resemble one another will increase. I see no better solution, having gardened yesterday at 76 for a 73-year-old who afterward invited me into her house. She was so desperately lonely and ravaged by dementia that she talked too much and couldn't even water her own garden.

So I'll introduce a pencil thin loop but one that emphasizes level sidearmedness.

To start with compromise between turning the elbow up and a slight but only very slight raise of the racket tip. That achieves levelness on the backswing.

The plot is perfect levelness on the foreswing. I want to get hand around while elbow stays back but with less strain than before.

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What is the Best Relation between Horizontal, Vertical and Diagonal Racket Movement?

In a forehand.

In # 3167 I discovered a new theory of levelness. To explore it further, I ask, "Can there ever in tennis be such a thing as a horizontal loop?" The loops I see on television, video, in person all have elements of diagonalness or verticality in them. The racket goes up and down before it gets on a level track if it ever gets on a level track.

A disadvantage of this is that the more golf-like rather than baseball-like the swing, the harder it is to get the racket tip around. Most simply, the economy of one's attempt is bad. A racket that is going down or up isn't coming around as fast as a racket that proceeds with levelness the whole way.

On the other hand the contact I have been working toward is the result of more arm lift or abduction than in many forehands.

So why not employ levelness first before the push of a stuck cellar door that produces arm lift every single time because of the construction of one's bod.

One has to understand that the pushing of the stuck door is idealized. In reality, the legs and body weight would overpower the arm so that elbow would only push out from the bod a slight bit if at all.

We are not so constrained here.

Stroke narrative now: The elbow rises as part of the immediate separation backswing. But the racket rises too-- just enough to go back level. This means that elbow is higher than hand. And racket is in the process of getting closed. And strings temporize. Is that a bad thing on the backswing? I don't think so. The hand going back more slowly than the elbow can use the lesser speed to track the ball, sizing and lining it up.

One could once again (I know I've been here before) call this "straight back preparation." I think I'll call it "temporized straight back preparation" this time.

But I desire transition between the backward and forward stroke. So I let backward bod rotation overlap backward arm rotation by one inch.

Now comes the sidearm throw. Or is it a feel? And one can call it a horizontal loop or not. In all cases the three-quarter length arm represents a shorter radius than that in what is about to happen when the elbow is finally permitted to release.

The ball is struck. The arm then follows through any place it wants if I stay out of it. (Thank you, Nick Wheatley.) What happens on the ball determines the followthrough. So focus on what happens on the ball.

Report : I hit one forehand to die for this way. That is about right in a two-hour session of tennis carousel. Not that my other attempts at it were bad. It's just that one shot was great, a "peak experience." My partner at the time, the senior senior singles champ in this suburb, said "Wow!" I told him the shot was one I just invented today. He seemed dour and unimpressed, probably doesn't believe in sudden invention, but he is a cut shot artist so what can you expect. I took his skepticism to heart, unfortunately, and completely missed my next attempt coming almost immediately to hit the very same forehand. The only thing that matters however is whether this forehand will become something I can love.

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And More...

Backswing: The elbow turning up plus the hand's determination to stay level creates interesting dynamic in which the racket moving keeps closing at the same time.

Transition: The extra inch of backward rotation of the bod allows hand to keep moving while remaining still relative to the bod. This would be good for scaling a rock on a flat pond.

Foreswing: Although one deliberately closes the racket throughout one's backswing, the same deliberateness isn't necessary on the foreswing. The strings in fact are closing in both directions (!), but do so naturally as racket proceeds forward thanks to your keeping back elbow of your three-quarter length arm. And if one's arm were right-angled (one-half length) the strings could stay square and never change pitch. But they do change pitch. And come around sooner than if the arm were at that right angle.

Is there a cue, a tip, a way of indexing this design to make it simple? Although hand twists a lot, hand is the element that can unify the stroke. One needs to train the hand, concentrating on smoothness both in mime and when holding the racket.

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The strings in fact are closing in both directions!

So employ great deliberateness in closing the strings in both direction, with one inch of non-roll solid bod-arm connection in between.

The deliberateness of closing strings in forward direction will get the racket tip around in a short space preparatory to release of the elbow.

All I am doing here is searching for the cue (great deliberateness) to simplify and make this stroke easy to perform.

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The Tragic Flaw of Windshield Wipers

It is a sin within the automotive industry, concealed for too many years, and life-threatening to the tennis game of almost everybody.

When you wipe the ball, your elbow is apt to become unstable and turn over and produce unwanted push.

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From my Partner Visiting in England

From Hope after she witnessed private instruction being given to her granddaughter Cate Cowper: Look for Victor Roubanov and Olga Morisova in The Royal Box. Victor, whose accomplishments include the 10-year coaching of the bad boy Marcus Willis (http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporti...don-fairy-tale), will be honored to be there but on the other hand does not relish having to wear a suit.

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In Praise of "Temporized Level Backswing" on the Forehand Side

My partner Ron and I won 6-0, 6-3 early this morning against good opposition. Consistency helped us prevail.

Observations: 1) If as a senior seniors player you win in straight sets, get out of there rather than play a third, 2) I could be in better shape, 3) It makes sense in more than one way as you become advanced in age to shorten and simplify your strokes. The invention required is good for your neuronal pathways not to mention your brain.

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Is Higher Speed Tennis Harder or Easier?

Depends who you are. In my case, mediocre volleys become good ones. Service returns become simpler (a turn and step in most cases).

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An Anti-Cliche Diatribe

No more "at the end of the day." We English teachers have gotten together and invented a hand-held electronic device that changes the last word of every cliche, in this case the word "day." Now the expression "at the end of the day" becomes "at the end of the world." That ought to shake things up a bit.

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Swing, don't Wrench like an Auto Mechanic

That's a possible cue for the new forehand in explanation here.

But maybe "sweep" is a better kinetic verb even than "swing."

One wants the racket head to accelerate, and yet the most effortless way to do this may be to rely on smoothness permitting natural lengthening of arm from shoulder to produce the satellite speed of something being pushed farther out in space.

I now revise my earlier instruction/self-instruction to take an extra inch of backward body turn as transition between the two halves of 1-2 rhythm. There can be a slight transition but just the hint of a pause that one never thinks about.

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A Different Mondo

When one is trying to be a crank who wipes, one tries for a mondo in which the wrist lays back and forearm winds down.

In the new forehands I have been exploring however windshield wipe remains an option but no longer is central, with abduction (rise of arm away from bod) having taken its place.

I see the sidearm throw one uses to scale a rock along the surface of a pond as basic premise here.

Racket closes during a short backswing (the 1 of 1-2 rhythm). Racket closes more in first part of the hit-- before contact. Relaxed wrist can lay back then too. But forearm need not try to pre-load, an opening of racket that is difficult to deal with anyway.

The all of it-- a) mondo, b) release of elbow, and c) followthrough-- is one move comprising the 2 of 1-2 rhythm.

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The New Mondo Symphony

One will, of course, memorize the new position the racket now takes after a mondo that retains wrist flop while eliminating the forearm-turn-down that for so long poisoned the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The other condition-- self-feed and more specifically those self-fed forehands that effortlessly loft the ball with great zing to the opposite baseline-- will also serve to teach one exactly where the mondoed strings ought to be.

Farther out to the right, I would say.

Now how can one best measure one's progress on a humid Monday night when the entire cardio tennis establishment is out in force running their Masonic drills that normally occur only in the secret cave of the Eastside Detroit Tennis Facility.

To the right, women's doubles. Adjacent though the fence men's doubles played by young Turks you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley late at night.

"Who's that next singles-victim for you?" says one member of this quartet to another. "It's John."

In silence, I accept the compliment while knowing in my heart that singles is something I no longer play.

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Core of the New Forehand: Bad Feather from Crew

Rowing is huge in Detroit. And the Detroit Boat Club, the nation's oldest, like all the rest of Detroit is being reconstructed right now.

Reconstruction took place in Pittsburgh-- that is a fact. The image of the city changed-- so with the image of Detroit once again. If you think this sentiment is PR puff, then explain please why a local patent office recently opened up if not unusual innovation? (http://www.reising.co/wp-content/upl..._Fall_2012.pdf)

And I have a special ticket to the DBC (Detroit Boat Club) to chat with the head coach there Dick Bell. He won't make me coach. He won't make me row.

In the meantime I've brought across bad feather from the rowing sport to tennis. Bad feather is the feather that skies the oar. The oar is then apt to come down as a "crab" that can kill you. The oar handle sweeps toward you at the speed of a tsunami. It catches you in the belly and catapults you out of the boat. Shortly thereafter you drown.

But bad feather is advantage for tennis forehands. Using three-quarter length arm you can scale the racket tip around as if your arm were right-angled which would be one-half length.

This brings the racket around quicker from same organic device-- twisting upper arm-- but closes strings at the same time. Hand travel to achieve most acute angle of departing shot: about 14 inches with arm at half length. Hand travel with arm at three-quarter length: about 4 inches.

Then and only then does elbow release to form a BAM! forehand.

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The Price: Persistence

This change is going to take longer than I am used to. The shots in self-feed can be terrific but not work at all once one starts to play. Either the new shot will prevail or I will have to go back to the drawing board.