Split step

[don_budge]

Perfection...The Don Budge forehand volley

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...DropVFront.mov

What do you guys think?

Thanks for getting us back on step lobndropshot...oh wait...that was that other thread. I always enjoy your posts. What do I think? Well...I think it is just perfect.

But what we have here is a jewel hidden and buried in the stroke archives of one John Yandall...the wizard behind the curtain of tennisplayer.net. A homey from the Bay Area of The Donald's.

Speaking of wizards...Don Budge is a vastly underrated tennis player from the past as the modern age of disinformation and propaganda has taken over in a manner that would make Joseph Goebbels green with envy.

It looks as if Mr. Budge is following his serve to the net...which they used to do when the game was still tennis and not the pseudo nonsense that passes for tennis these days. He lands just inside the service line with feline agility...ready to pounce on the little "white" mouse. Instead he finds that the ball is going to be inside of his wheel-house for the forehand volley so he deftly sidesteps with his front left foot and back steps with his right. Text book footwork right out of the works of Bill Tilden on how to handle a shot that is played close to the body on the forehand side.

As he is dancing with the tennis ball with all of the nimbleness of a twinkle toed Fred Astaire he is rotating his body as if it were a "Lazy Susan" on the platform of a pair of stallion legs. The racquet automatically raises to a position where a synchronized motion with the shoulders and arm and hand send the head of the racquet down and though the approaching air born projectile. Perfect controlled underspin with superb placement...nothing over done or overcooked. Just perfect control...the ultimate power.

The response from his opponent is routinely anticipated and met with the same catlike balance, it is easily angled off as a cross court drop shot for a winner. Deft touch in black and white. Thank you for this wonderful post lobndropshot from the archives of Mr. Yandell. I would venture to guess that Mr. Budge never uttered the word "split step" and never took a video lesson in his life. Somehow he managed to be the first man to win all four Grand Slam titles in one year. Traversing oceans on an ocean liner instead of first class passage on a jet. These were men of great intestinal fortitude.

Look at those slacks and the white polo shirt still tucked in perfectly. Not a wrinkle.

[don_budge]

Don Budge...the man and the legend

Love the way Don Budge split steps and sweeps to the side of the ball to play that first volley. He's nimble and keeps the racket head up through the shot. Expertly done through years of practice. When you watch him hit that first volley, you get the impression he probably had great feel. It's so hard to tell things like that through these old clips, but that one shot that gives it away for me. I find him a very elegant player, too.

From his oncourt posture and body language, I get the impression his character was upstanding and excellent...I get the impression he was a good person.

don_budge is very luck to have known Don Budge.

He was an affable fellow. Gee...that's a great word for him. I looked it up after I typed it just to be certain. It stays. bottle here I come!

Some of my fondest memories are of those two summers that I spent at his camp in McDonough, Maryland at that beautiful prep school. Me...the half-breed Columbian in a school of rich Jewish kids from New York and a grab bag of the rest of America. Andy Berliner and I had the wonderful opportunity to play doubles against Mr. Budge and his female head tennis counselor...Connie something or other. They won of course. Mr. Budge was impossible to serve against. I learned my perfect service motion from him...I was the only one to have the nerve to ask him to hit with me. He told me to go and fetch his racquet for him...I ran to do it. Eagerly.

What a wonderful man. Plus...he really understood how to have a good time. He was no prude either. Before the days of political correctness he was just a genuine and decent human being. There will certainly be a chapter in my book entitled "Johnny Tango and the Rouge Hotel" about the time that I spent at his camp. The Summer of '72...those were magical days. I was lucky...of course. But sometimes fate has a hand in things too! Tennis can be such a wonderful metaphor for life...don't you think so?

[bottle]

Yes. And it really annoys me when my best friend drops me for not being more literary when her father who is more literary than either of us is (or was since he is about 94) a great tennis player. Oh well, she and I have always mended the fence before and that may but not necessarily will happen again. But I am strongly reminded of her by seeing the Bridge of Sighs after the one in Venice in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Elizabeth Taylor lived on one side and Richard Burton in his own place on the ocean side. All this in "Gringo Gulch" which is mostly a mountain. Down the road was John Huston's house where he stayed while directing NIGHT OF THE IGUANA.

Contrary to popular belief, Ava Gardner not Elizabeth Taylor was love interest in the film. As was Deborah Kerr, who with physical resemblance could have been a stand in for my difficult friend carrying around on her arm her father, "the oldest living poet in the world." And contrary to popular belief, either Taylor or Burton crossed the bridge, probably with frequency determined by how much drinking there just had been. And contrary to popular belief, my friend and I never really crossed the fence. Another guy, in a similar relationship with her, finally shot himself. And that is why his sister is cool and reserved when the two ladies, who live close to each other, have their infrequent meeting.

[stotty]

Life

Tennis can be such a wonderful metaphor for life...don't you think so?

Yes, it certainly can.