Short Angle: A Tennis Book, Simon and Schuster 2016, 504 Pages

[bottle]

I would send this proposal right away to Jonathan Karp, the Simon and Schuster CEO since my partner Hope Hoffman, a Detroit business consultant, has been explaining to me the difference between a CEO and a CFO.

A CEO is Chief Executive of Operations while a CFO is Chief Executive of Finance.

Yes, I would submit SHORT ANGLE to Jonathan Karp if I didn't think that SHORT ANGLE would have a SHORT LIFE then, and if I did not suspect that Jonathan Karp is a COLD FISH.

(He wouldn't even tell me if he plays tennis.)

I am, after all, the guy who got run out of Eastport, Maine for quoting Abner Stokes in The Maine Times.

Abner was a Canadian who came across the border to work in a herring plant.

"You can always tell Eastporters," he said. "They're all inbred and they look like fish."

That quote put me on lively journalistic ground and I've never looked back. Except when I look back. I know to use the word "fish" whenever possible.

The thing about a short angle is that we tennis players all have hit one. We dished up a short ball sort of like a dead fish.

And suddenly there was our opponent bouncing at the net.

ZING! We hit a stunning crosscourt right past him.

Now that was our natural short angle, the one we should always have hit thereafter.

But things happened, reader, not least discovery that there are many kinds of short angle, too many in fact.

Which other than the passing shot I just described is the best?

That is a question I shall endeavor to answer here and in "A New Year's Serve" and out on the court.

A lifelong project, kind reader, for which I solicit your help.

[bottle]

Dear Jonathan Karp: 10splayer, one of your sub-editors, wants to see more succinctness in my writing. So I have decided to make SHORT ANGLE 704 instead of 504 pages. Mr. Karp, please take fishy notice.

[bottle]

Success!

Short Angle Plan 2 under "A New Year's Serve" worked well, so I may not have to bother Jonathan Karp, that terribly busy fish-man.

[bottle]

Whoops!

By now I have actually tried Short Angle Plan 2, which hadn't worked as well as I supposed, so the search continues. Watch out, Jonathan, don't backfin into the murky depths. More proposals coming your way.

[bottle]

Tennis Will Come To You

How about that title, Jonathan? I hope you like it even though there is nothing carpy about it. I got it from my friend Steve Navarro in Sweden. He gave me permission to use it.

[bottle]

Lively Self-Dialogue Here if I Do Say So Meeself

10splayer, that subterranean sub-editor of yourself, Mr. Jonathan Karp, who yourself are a blind fish in the deep and fracking polluted water caves of American publishing, has pointed out that dialogue is more interesting than monologue.

But is it really? Just as 10splayer used his editorial skills to grow SHORT ANGLE from 504 to 704 pages, he now encourages me to seek less dialogue, with all its wordiness, racism, drone-support, kapok and echolalia, and rely still more on self-feed and mirror reflection.

There is good reason for this, and I am sure you will agree with me, Mr. Karp.

As writers, do we wish to please the readership available to us, or do we wish to learn more clever tennis strokes? Clearly the latter (to answer my own question).

An idea novel to anyone but myself and the teaching pro Steve Navarro in Sweden but a proven one nevertheless.

Writing about tennis strokes can make them more clever, and I know this, and may even wish to convey this knowledge to others although that won't help me out on the court.

As to your slimy sub-editor's recommendation that I start a third forum thread at Tennis Player, I'll say this.

He is a ____ ____ ____ _____. Besides, a third thread would be too much work and might even prove tiresome.

In answer to your anticipated query on this, Karp, the middle two blanks start with f and end with d.

I learned from my rowing experience at Annapolis that if each sentence does not contain f___ ___d in the middle, no sailor anywhere can comprehend it.

[bottle]

Oh, I may have confused 10splayer with stroke. Call it racism. In any case, Mr. Weiss is right and I will shut up for now.

[gzhpcu]

Sorry if I ask, but what is this thread actually about?

[bottle]

Self-indulgence. Which I suggest for you, too.

[don_budge]

Self-indulgence…being full of ones self

Sorry if I ask, but what is this thread actually about?

Afterall…if you are not full of yourself, what exactly is it that fills you?

"Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature." -- T.S. Eliot

By the way bottle…after you commented on my comment about Donald Young "Being There", I read "The Painted Bird" and went one better and read "Blind Date". Thanks for the tips…a couple of the best to come out of the forum lately. I wasn't even aware that he had written "Being There". Tennis is a game for a lifetime…isn't it?

[bottle]

Reverse Psychology

Thanks to 10splayer and stroke for telling me, essentially, to "button it up." Immediately, SHORT ANGLE grew from 504 pages to 704 pages. Now it is 804 pages.

I see a parallel between my behavior and that of the nurse in Maine returning from working against ebola in Africa.

The governor of Maine, wishing to be a horse's ass like the governor of New Jersey, wanted the nurse to stay in her house. So she went for a bike ride.

The Maine governor then said the nurse was "not being too smart" when it was apparent to anyone with half a brain that the governor was dumber than a rotted piling on the edge of the Bay of Fundy.

Why did Chris Christie not provide heat for the nurse when he locked her up in a tent in New Jersey?

Who will be to blame if all the people in New Jersey and Maine die of ebola? Christie and LePage, not the nurse.

[bottle]

The Short Angle Skill Set is not One to Take for Granted

I very much like Steve Navarro's use of the phrase "skill set" as something in tennis that could be renewed or become outdated or go into disrepair.

To me, the specificity of that phrase applies well to my proposed 804-page book SHORT ANGLE.

Am I a player over-obsessed with the questions associated with producing great short angle? Not at all.

I've told how my youngest brother has been able to beat me with good short angle whenever we play singles.

I simply want myself to know this device, sometimes called "the pro shot," a shot that a pro never misses.

And believe that any tennis instructor able to help his student master this shot will immediately raise that student's playing ability by one full level.

[hockeyscout]

.

[bottle]

She got him.

[bottle]

My Self-Interested Decision to Concentrate Upon the Skill Set Known as SHORT ANGLE

A crosscourt dropshot, effective too, is espoused by one of the greatest advocates ever of down-the-line approach followed immediately or one exchange later by put-a-way volley, Pancho Segura.

My friend Jim Kacian sat next to Segura once at a tournament and was entranced to hear him keep holding forth between points games and sets on the topic of approaches, i.e., mid-court game, indisputably the tragic flaw of modern tennis.

Me, I own PANCHO SEGURA'S CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY. On page 100 he writes,

When you come to net, your approach shot must be deep. If it is short and high, only a weak or nervous opponent will fail to pass you. You can come in on sidespin (forehand), underspin (backhand) or topspin (either side), but your depth must be good. Naturally the harder you hit the approach shot or the more bite to your spin, the more difficult it will be for the opponent to pass you. However, you must hit with control: the first rule of the approach is that it must go in.

Elsewhere Segura writes, "Avoid the short crosscourts that leave your down-the-line alley open for a winner, and only try the sharp, short crosscourt when your opponent is out of position."

Perfect jockeying of the opponent is KEY. Perfect mechanics picked from across the whole grip spectrum also are KEY. Modern racketry/stringery also is KEY since we understand that Segura played in another era. Plane geometry however does not change.

I bet on composite grip shots hit in the way I have described but admit at 75 next month that I am still learning this (for me) very complex short angle method. So I am more than open to any other ideas that anyone may have on how best to learn and carry off SHORT ANGLE or THE PRO SHOT.