A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Next Step: Elly-bam

A turn and a loop and a pivot and the finish: Same exact Mondo-less stroke but quick and loose.

This cue leads to such speed of execution that one may have to slow down EVERYTHING to make it all work.

The offset wait position is key. So too an early straightening, balancing left arm that stays in one place treading water.

And all backhands, driven by longer flying grip change, become quicker in their execution as well. One may consciously have to make more time in which to hit with them too.

[bottle]

Acquirable Mechanics Despite what Anyone may Think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcY4pkX5GC8

One can see that Ellsworth Vines finishes his forehands with racket pointed at target. But should one, if trying to hit flat shots roughly this way, have (at contact) bent arm, straight arm, bent wrist, straight wrist? At the beginning of HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, just before a long list of national titles won by pupils coached by Mercer Beasley, Beasley writes: "No two tennis champions have ever played the game exactly alike. All of them, however, possessed a strong foundation and sound tennis fundamentals. What follow here are the fundamentals of modern tennis, on which you can build your own individual game."

So, the player on the cover of the revised 1937 edition has very straight arm and perfectly straight wrist long before contact and is stroking with huge separation between his bod and the ball unlike the Vines in these videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd3IjogiD6o#t=61.381

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UzQdhjQzWk#t=21.102352

http://www.britishpathe.com/workspac...is-Finals/full
10th video down. Note how Vines has abbreviated his master's forehand from the forehand taught in his master's book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS. Is this the 360-degree windmill that Bud Collins describes in his ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TENNIS? Hardly. No wonder the master/author of HOW TO PLAY TENNIS calls Vines "the master of the flat forehand." And shouldn't anyone who wants a flat forehand to go along with his topspin forehand aspire to be the master of it? Shouldn't everybody be a master at all times? Shouldn't one choose the abbreviated rather than the attenuated version as one's model? Vines did well enough with it (number one player in the world in four different years before he took up professional golf at the age of 28).

It is not the overall result (losses) in two out of three of these matches that interests me, but rather the acquirable mechanics in Vines forehand that these old films reveal. And the incredible brevity of the stroke.

[bottle]

Excitement of New Shot: How will one Handle it?

"I'll be hard to handle" (https://www.google.com/search?q=i%27...hrome&ie=UTF-8).

No, one will be fine if one uses the excitement and gives into it but not too much.

A good idea will be to pretend that one has hit this shot for ten thousand years.

Yesterday, of course, I still was using the fuller, more behind-the-back loop of Mercer Beasley. And the Stan Smith rule is, "You play with the shot you practiced."

No, not in my case. I am too old for that. And I need time this morning for my drive to Grosse Pointe. I don't have the necessary energy nor can I fit in another self-feed before we play.

But the excitement of something new can inspire. The first attempts at a shot sometime are brilliant, with efficacy falling off then, say, in the second hour of a two-hour session. But my friend Ken Hunt was still talking four days later about two returns I made off of his serve last week in the same game-- shots he didn't know, or maybe he did, that I had never hit in my life.

Today should be a grand adventure. The old Pathe videos are so good. The hips still are turning slowly forward as part of the replacement step.

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Three questions that could interfere today with one's purity of animal motion. And I am foolish, somebody could say, to pose them now. Same answer as before. I'm too old to hold back. When you have questions, and you are older, you need to get them out. Gertrude Stein: What is silent in a young man must become spoken." Same thing for an old man.

1) Did Ellsworth Vines, rebelling against his dear old coach, Mercer Beasley, abbreviate his forehand backswing and put it out in the slot or did the two of them work together to produce that significant improvement?

2) The Elly-bam and the Beasley-bam both teach a player to STAY DOWN. How might this provocative decision influence The McEnrueful, a shot where the temptation always exists to be an erect martinet and come up as John McEnroe often does and perform a pogo-hop with the front foot? Answer: I've known for a long time that my McEnruefuls are better when I STAY DOWN. But how to rationalize the mechanics of this? The hips turn is earlier in a McEnrueful than in an Elly-bam. So how does one hit through the ball similar to an Elly-bam? By trusting one's transverse stomach muscles to prolong levelness of hand movement. If one thinks the stomach muscles can only turn the shoulders in a horizontal direction, then theoretically, if one is bent from the hips stomach muscles are going to drive the shoulders straight down at the court. But we have posited for over a year that aeronautical banking occurs. Well, just enough of it, I now say, to keep the racket going level.

3) The Topspin Forehand, building on the down and up bowled backswing of The McEnrueful, now offers the disquieting prospect of re-grip during "float" after strings are flung upward. One will only do this if it works. Otherwise one will already have performed a discrete grip change before one turns racket inward, turns it out, then lets the flung strings float.

[bottle]

One Step Back

When a new stroke fails at the outset and clearly won't get off the ground, my usual procedure is to return to whatever I was doing just before the change.

That would be the Beasley-bam that was coming along nicely. According to my friend Ken Hunt, who tells me everything, I was hitting the ball very well a week ago from today, which would be last Monday. And my good forehands included some of these Beasley-bams. I probably was calling them Elly-bams, and Ellsworth Vines probably hit Beasley-bams before he hit Elly-bams, but that doesn't mean I personally should try to follow the same route. No, I believe my ability level will keep me hitting Beasley-bams, and that is dandy since a Beasley-bam is a very good shot.

So what is the difference, as I see it, since I may be the only one playing this game?

The Elly-bam, as revealed in the four videos of post # 3617, is hit with bent arm from start to finish. And Vines sometimes even squeezes his elbow for a small amount of spin. This is a significantly small amount of scissoring considering that the arm starts already bent! And sometimes he just keeps going up with elbow too thus turning the shot into a reverse forehand.

In addition, there is a baseball-like hitter's drop performed out in the slot. The stroke seems a two-part sidearm throw-- up and back 1), unified forward stroke 2) . Try it. I thought the difficulty I experienced was due to high winds. But then I went to another set of courts and tried some self-feed. And came to realize how virtuoso the true Elly-bam is. There is truth in the precept that a tennis genius does things that an ordinary mortal should try but quickly abandon.

Well, I hit one or two good ones. But will this shot, hit by me in 90-degree heat and 25-mph wind stand up? It won't. Proved that today.

As I suggested, Ellsworth Vines hits his forehand with tremendous (and prolonged) pivoting of his hips, same thing one wants to do in one's Beasley-bam.

Big difference though is that Vines keeps his arm bent at a constant setting or even squeezes it. Whereas his coach, Beasley, advises his students gradually to straighten arm through the whole stroke.

Another item belongs in the "Don't beat up on yourself too much" category. From hitting thousands of McEnruefuls, arm and racket sometime end up pointing at side fence. Don't worry about this. Maybe one hit a good shot. Maybe it's enough to know that the long-term goal is racket pointing precisely at one's target.

To start one's Beasley-bam, lift racket to shoulder as shoulders whirl backward. Then use momentum of this whirl to continue a level arm whirl while straightening it a bit. This bit of straightening is the start of arm straightening throughout.

Next question: Should one use straight wrist or laid back wrist? If one has been hitting McEnruefuls, one should stay consistent and use straight wrist throughout and all the time.

[bottle]

"360 Degrees" "Windmill"-- What the Hell did Bud Collins Mean?

He was trying, in his ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TENNIS, to describe the famous Ellsworth Vines forehand. But the Vines forehand didn't look like a windmill. Not in any way. You can see for yourself by watching the four videos in Post # 3617 of this thread.

Furthermore, if such a windmill ever existed, what was it doing spinning horizontally? Was God, or maybe Zeus, blowing straight down from the apex of the sky?

At least when I used the term "waterwheel" to describe a certain forehand loop, I had both spinning vertically.

But am I too hard on old dead Bud, him of the loud trousers?

Maybe he got his idea of the Vines forehand from reading HOW TO PLAY TENNIS by Vines' coach Mercer Beasley.

Maybe Bud was trying to describe a Beasley-bam and not an Elly-bam.

But Beasley wants us to finish with racket pointed at the target the way Vines does, something hard for me physically and personally to do.

Or for anyone I should think who has done wrap-around finish for a long time.

So I'm going to try 360-degree Beasley-bams for a while-- harmless. But 270-degree Beasley-bams would be closer to the Beasley-Vines ideal.

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

Virginia teaching pro Walt Malinowski, USPTR, once drove to Rock Creek Park to see what he could see. Some of the circuit pros, he told me, were hitting arm only service returns one after another. No unit turn. Or turning of the shoulders in any direction. Just a lot of arm.

Tried it. Did nothing for me.

Now though many decades later I may be ready. As I just suggested, the attempt would be harmless.

A windmill of the arm with Zeus blowing wind straight down.

Think I'll try this both with body turn and without.

Think I'll just keep these Beasley-bams a-going so that racket can finish where it started.

[bottle]

Better

The Beasley-bams were better today than the Elly-bams were on Monday, just as I expected. It could be that Mercer Beasley once coached both of these shots, but it figures-- doesn't it?-- that a great coach, if writing a tennis book, would teach a forehand that the majority of his readers can hit.

Out of this positive experience I'll have a return plan tor all servers the next time I play, which will be on Friday.

McEnrueful for a first serve, Beasley-bam for a second, with any topspin forehands reserved for later in the rally.

In the "carousel" or four-game round-robin we play, a lot of players get mixed in (four courts plus spares today). Obviously, with 18-plus players participating, some geezers will prove to be better servers than others.

Doesn't matter. It's good sometime just to cling to a simple plan in order to ritualize one portion of one's game to reduce the number of things to think about. Besides, a McEnrueful immediately preceding a Beasley-bam gets the wrist accustomed to straightness.

[bottle]

On Re-reading DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR, Copyright (c) 1969 by Donald Budge and Frank Deford, I see that Don called Ellsworth Vines "Ellie."

Therefore, in my view, the Elly-bam should be re-named the Ellie-bam. But the Beasley-bam is the shot that most players aye eee I should learn to hit.

[bottle]

The Election Results Keep Mounting

Now J. Donald Budge has weighed in. He too favors a forehand follow through in which the racket points directly at the target while trying to fly at it behind the ball.

It is only one's hand and strong wish to keep playing the point, Mercer Beasley asserts, that prevents such tennis racket flight.

And me-- I have expressed difficulty in making energy conclude right there.

During one point in Wednesday's carousel however I was in the process of hitting a relaxed Beasley-bam.

The speed of hips pivot at end of the stroke, inspired by one of my opponents taking the net, created a sharp crosscourt passing shot that was entirely effective and fast.

Herein, methought, lies the future.

And I must reflect that the Beasley-bam development project was coming along quite nicely before I foolishly decided to interrupt it with a spate of Ellie-bams.

Even worse now would be to interrupt it with J. Donald Budge imitation forehands.

Or with any other sidearmed forehand that resembles a baseball throw from shortstop to first.

The Beasley-bam is very different. It is a round-about thing in which all arm straightening (a lot!) whether from the shoulder or the elbow happens all at once with gradualness, i.e., a little at a time.

If one is having trouble concluding energy at the ideal spot, I figure, perhaps one can put a little more of the swing behind one's back.

[bottle]

Farther Around the Back?

Say it ain't so, Joe. Modern forehands keep backswing in the slot.

But does a geezer playing doubles really want a modern forehand? Maybe he wants a flat forehand. And who is the best model for that? Ellsworth Vines?

We have examined the difference between a Beasley-bam and its first cousin, the Ellie-bam, identical pretty much in contact and follow through (except for a detail or two).

In deciding for the Beasley-bam, we fully acknowledge that wrapping both hands around one's neck to start a forehand appears (but only appears) a dubious proposition.

Could take too long? Not really. Teaching pros generally want you to keep two hands on the racket to help get the shoulders quickly and fully around.

Well, the start to a Beasley-bam is that idea on steroids.

And now both hands are touching the outside of the back of one's neck.

And next the arms do a little breast-stroke in which both elbows while straightening a little go out in opposite direction from bod a little, thus establishing nice separation between the hands.

This move, while creating the image of a hoop, also is very good for timing in my view.

Does the hoop now have to change its form?

I don't think so. Both arms can gently swing parallel to one another as both gently straighten. In describing a maybe not so different flat forehand Tom Okker spoke of lead arm calming the waters, an image that might put any forehand out to sea or really work.

Then comes smooth hips pivot to conclude the shot.

Question: Are both arms still moving and straightening when hips take over? Should.

Note: I expect this shot, with parallel arms extended like insect feelers, to end points. If in the long run it proves unsustainable technique, though, I'll still be glad I restored it as a museum piece.

[bottle]

Report

Workable but didn't produce the clean and solid hits that sometime occurred with my less mannered initial attempts at hitting Beasley-bams-- before I got distracted by Pathe films of Ellsworth Vines himself.

Time now to revisit those films (post # 3617). I don't think that Vines ended up with two straight and parallel arms forming an avenue toward the target the way the boy in the Beasley photo montages does in HOW TO PLAY TENNIS, 1937 revised edition.

My whole idea is to study the contact area in the Ellie-bams while ignoring his earlier part of the same stroke. I feel the same way about the forehands of J. Donald Budge, who was Vines' regular rival. There is a similarity. The Budge and Vines forehands are magnificent sidearm throws that look incredibly easy but aren't, in fact are beyond my ability.

To the first film. No, Vines doesn't do anything fancy with his left arm shortly before his pivot. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcY4pkX5GC8) Simplification for me is about to occur. I'll have less to do.

If arm straightens gradually as Mercer Beasley teaches, let this advice apply to just one of the two arms, the hitting arm.

Also, I'll point across sooner. No need to drag left arm all the way up to side of back of neck.

To summarize: More right arm function where before both arms were more in the act.

[bottle]

Ellie-bam, Beasley-bam-- it's all the same BAM

It's just that one is the short version, the other the long version, and in terms of development the long version probably has to come first.

After watching Ellsworth Vines films for the 20th time, I think that he, Ellie, puts a push on the ball from the elbow before he contracts his arm again.

But all that is nothing compared to the push that the "external elbow" and perfectly timed hips pivot applies.

To say everything happens at once would be understatement.

In terms of personal development of these shots, I put myself somewhere in the middle, with a one-arm coil replacing the two-arm coil I had just yesterday.

Eventually-- who knows?-- the pared down, stripped down version of Vines himself may prove more attainable than I thought. (I've been back and forth on that one.)

Perhaps I shouldn't pick on poor dead Bud Collins again, but remain shocked by his view that the Ellsworth Vines forehand was a 360-degree anomaly.

The Vines forehand is one of the most compact tennis strokes there ever has been.

Yesterday I got a short ball in the middle of the court, wound up with both hands on my neck, then missed the shot.

"He tried to hurt me," one of my opponents said.

Hurting him could still be possible.

The most provocative thing is the body angle that Ellworth Vines always sustains.

He is anything but upright.

The body angle is a factor in his lauded speed about the court.

His weight of head is always leading the charge to the next shot.

The body angle, too, applies a longer lever from the hips.

Do such bent over shots carry the risk of loss of balance?

Of course, and that should be resisted.

[bottle]

Mondo, Flip, Flop and Fashion Mondo

How to solve the problem of this needless move once and for all.

You, reader, probably think there is good reason to flip, and there have been long decades in which I was in your camp.

I've read technical explanation on why to do it but not much. For the most part people would prefer not to discuss mondo or even think about it. As I say, I've probably heard some good reasoning in support. It just that I'm getting old and forget.

The term "fashion mondo," of course, is one of utter contempt. Most people who mondo don't have any idea why. They mondo because everybody else mondoes.

Also, it's a hot dog thing to do. And seems economical. Wouldn't one be more economical though just to eliminate it altogether?

To that end, I propose forehands with wrist laid back to one half of the wrist layback range. One can wait with hands slightly offset to left. Racket with this .5 wrist setting will then point straight at net.

Where this experiment will lead, I'm not sure, but I like exploration for the sake of exploration.

I know that flat wrist works well for flat shots, and suspect that .5 layback will work for them and for push topspin forehands as well.

It is in the more extreme form of baton-propeller topspin forehand that the most questions will arise.

Bring them on.

Self-Feed Report:

The weeds on half the courts at Rouge Park were mowed yesterday. But just so any tennis players wouldn't get arrogant, one three-foot bush was left standing somewhere on each court. That would be at the baseline center mark on the court I use.

Beasley-bams were best hit with straight wrist, like McEnruefuls. Ellie-bams were best hit with same grip only with wrist set at .5 layback. Push topspin was best hit with strong eastern set at .5 layback. Same thing for baton-propeller topspin forehands. And rotorded serves worked best if human head moved BEHIND its toss position with bending of both knees including rear heel lift. Also, more serving power was generated if racket position when legs thrust mimicked same racket position on opposite side of hand when legs took their bend. So much about serving concerns precise cues, doesn't it? And I am sure that best cue on when to bend and when to thrust with legs varies within a range of commonality from server to server.

[bottle]

How Does the Elbow Go Up and then Come Down in an Ellie-bam?

Answer: Not much and with very little work. The loop is pencil thin. I doubt that the loose motion of a mondo could succeed in such a small arrangement but don't intend to find out. I have removed the mondo or flip from all of my forehands. It is the cause of mediocrity.

Judging from films of the Ellsworth Vines forehand, he takes elbow up no more than a couple of inches above where he knows the ball will be.

Then he drops the elbow those couple inches and pushes it out.

Push means push from the hips, push from the elbow, and push from within the elbow before arm contracts back to where it was. There has been a unified knockout punch.

The trouble with first seeing a Vines or Budge forehand is that one only sees a two-count sidearm throw.

No, a forehand needs to perform in three counts, at least it does if you are me, Bottle John Escher.

In a Beasley-bam, first count, which includes the whole backward bod turn, bends the two halves of the arm completely together. Second count coils elbow back a few inches more as arm straightens also by a few inches. Third count is the rest of the gradual arm straightening combined with pivot into the ball and straight arm finish at the target.

In an Ellie-bam, first count is elbow lift of a couple inches combined with bod turn and racket tip never pointing back very much and everything out in the slot. Second count is elbow drop of a couple inches. Third count is the knockout punch, a dramatic push-pull.

In topspin push shot by contrast the elbow leads upward motion not by inches but by a foot or more-- count one. Vertical loop then circles down and around-- count two. Big push still preserving coin on edge form lifts strings straight forward and up.

In baton-propeller topspin, count one is same as elbow lift in the topspin push shot. Count two however is more of an in and out affair. The forearm still coils backward but no longer with loose motion. The whole straightened arm begins to twirl. All that happens in count two. In count three the twirl continues to put strings on outside of the ball combined with a big push or not.

But let's return to the Ellie-bam. The first count is elbow lift, we decided, the second elbow drop, the third elbow push (along with push from everything else).

These minimalist shots, in self-feed, go as fast and far as those produced by the Beasley-bams.

When one hits them, one feels that the drop and push is a single act. And it is. Still, a drop is a drop, you didn't consciously push the elbow down. In this way elbow drop-- gravity operated-- although exceedingly small still qualifies as a full count.

[bottle]

B-Bam & E-Bam Same at Effectiveness in Self-Feed, Almost Same in a Hit, Unequal in Play

And so, in play, I hit a lot of Beasley-bams, altered so that one arm instead of two takes the racket up around one's neck.

It is a great shot threatening in its greatness to become my staple forehand, invented at the age of 77.5 among the three-foot bushes on the tennis courts at fabled Rouge Park in Detroit.

I hit these Beasley-bams hard and I hit them soft. I hit some moderate ones just beyond the outstretched arm and racket of the nearest opponent.

Aim was a dream.

I love these shots better than the topspin I've worked so hard to master.

I would hit more topspin if I still played singles, but I don't, I play doubles.

And don't care in the least that my Beasley-bam is a museum piece, resurrected out of the Mercer Beasley book, 1937 revised edition, HOW TO PLAY TENNIS.

Beasley, if he needs further creds than those he already has in tennis history, wrote among other things,

"The secret of the volley is simply this:

"The ball hits the racket. The RACKET DOES NOT SWING AND HIT THE BALL.

"The volley is strictly a blocked or deflected shot, executed in one motion: FORWARD.

"There is practically no follow through on volley shots."

Beasley coached Frank Parker, Clifford Sutter, Helen Fulton, Ned Russell, Bonnie Miller, Frances Herron, Bitsy Grant, Wilmer Allison, Wilber Hess, Carolin Babcock.

We all know, though, who the brightest star in Beasley's pantheon of champions was.

And if the Beasley-bam is a museum piece, it is a still effective museum piece in 2017 .

Whether I can go the last step of incorporating the Ellsworth Vines modifications to the Beasley-bam I do not know (out in the slot and pull the punch to score a knockout).

I might be forever content just to gradually straighten the arm so that it and the racket point directly at the target as hips complete their pivot.

[bottle]

Where Next?

I'd like to graduate from Beasley-bam to Ellie-bam but am unsure of how to get there.

Watching films of Ellsworth Vines leads to acknowledgement of differences along with the similarities in technique.

Before giving in to the differences too much, I'd like to try simple reductions of "the platter loop" that takes a Beasley-bam to a shoulder-high ball.

Lower balls can elicit a spiraling down of the racket before hips pivot drives strings level-- more complicated.

So the level racketwork shot is the place to make one's initial reduction in scope if such effective reduction is possible.

Maybe the full scope of hand easing beyond neck is essential to efficiency-- don't know yet.

Propose less bend in arm but same feel of a "stir" only farther toward slot or actually out in the slot.