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

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A Small Saturday Morning Manifesto for Hitting CC Short Angle ("The Pro Shot&quot

We are conditioned to take the racket back. We think that's what we ought to do. I seek instead to employ the following ideas some of which are more reflective and philosophical than others:

1) Don't disguise the shot, even announce it.

2) Always be willing to adjust grip toward western one half-notch more which will make angle one half-notch more acute.

3) Face the target, i.e., get one's shoulders perpendicular to the targeted part of the ball before one undergoes the shot. Do this to avoid blocking the arm to which one now imparts more freedom.

4) Use a bi-dimensional loop combined with right-angled arm and carpenter's common sense to strike the ball with sufficient spin to bring it down then hop it into side fence.

5) Always start the loop in an overhand way as if using one's racket to form a breaking wave but immediately change racket direction to outside of that by 90 degrees.

6) People will tell you, when hitting any kind of a ground stroke, to "pull a rope" or "shine a flashlight at the ball." What they won't tell you is how briefly to maintain this image-- one passes through it rather than maintains it. I personally like to use the phrase "spear with the handle." Whatever the metaphor, the intention is the same: to create a hammer stroke in which the hammer head moves through an arc of 90 degrees.

7) The basic pre-stretch idea in tennis makes use of opposite motions that overlap with nothing in between. The overhead loop that turns into a sideways while downward loop followed by a horizontal power swing can accomplish this.

8) Initiation of loop in a vertical direction can provide a compass marker 90 degrees to the outside of the target. If an opponent were to figure this out, he could start speeding to the spot where the ball will be. That would be good. You as perpetrator would use the same time to slide into ideal volley position.

9) Any angular or linear body weight flowing into this shot is minimal. The racket work, which again follows the logic of a hammer stroke, needs to be perfect, i.e., to contain late but sufficient take-away.

10) No matter the grip, one will probably need a more closed racket face than that, so should keep elbow protruding to the outside of the shot.

11) Wrist is almost straight throughout. One does EVERYTHING for more acuity.

Note on how I came to write SHORT ANGLE, THE TENNIS BOOK. The idea came from the clear reluctance of other tennis writers to tackle this subject. And from one tennis book that simply advocated that the method by which one hits one's most acute crosscourt angles should be individual and figured out by oneself. I did not believe this contention for a single minute, and I therefore set out not to cop out like that author although I realized I would need to perform much lonely self-feed and research. There are things to say about this subject, of course there are. And things to say that others can learn from unless they have time, inclination and the stupidity for all of this experimentation themselves.

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The End of a String?

The previous entry would amount to the logical conclusion of a printed book containing a real life search.

This however is the internet where things go on and on like the quest for better short angles which I hope will never end.

That said, to quote e.e. cummings, "What a wonderful thing is the end of a string." While I doubt very much that this entry is last word, I can see how the previous one might be so in traditional papery presentation.

Here is the poem I used to love to discuss with my students in American Literature survey courses:

o by the by by e.e. cummings

o by the by
has anybody seen
little you-I
who stood on a green
hill and threw
his wish at blue

with a swoop and a dart
out flew his wish
(it dived like a fish
but it climbed like a dream)
throbbing like a heart
singing like a flame

blue took it my
far beyond far
and high beyond high
bluer took it your
but bluest took it our
away beyond where

what a wonderful thing
is the end of a string
(murmurs little you-I
as the hill becomes nil)
and will somebody tell
me why people let go

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Pro Shot as Commonly Conceived is a Blocked Shot

I mean "blocked" as in "blockheaded." In our lust for power we turn our shoulders more and more. This works. But what if we want the opposite of power?

You must admit, reader, that the more you turn your shoulders, the more you must turn them back to hit the pro shot. You end up using a bazooka to kill a flea.

"The pro shot" is tennis lingo for a short angle crosscourt putaway. I didn't make the term up any more than I did "mondo" which is otherwise known as "flip" and which I don't recommend for this shot.

Bang! The ball is gone. The pros supposedly never miss this shot. That is why it's called the pro shot. In reality however the pros miss this shot all the time just like everybody else which could be the reason that they don't try it more often say at the beginning of a rally.

And why wouldn't anybody turned so far away from proper aim point on the ball be likely to miss this special shot?

Once in a while somebody makes it and calls himself a pro (huzzah!), having just wasted his most powerful forehand mechanics when delicacy was called for.

How then to unblock the shot? My first idea was not to turn the shoulders at all-- a notion that wasn't strong enough. Hit with shoulders open a bit in direction of the intended shot to free up the arm.

The easiest way to do this for a right-hander is to hit an open shot in which he has stepped farther toward the net with his right foot than his left.

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First Attempts at New Shot are Clean Winners

Am just reporting from the headlines of The Winchester Star, Winchester, Virginia, the place where the Winchester Rifle was born.

The Star has an unusually large tennis section in its sport pages.

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Am just reporting from the headlines of The Winchester Star, Winchester, Virginia, the place where the Winchester Rifle was born.

The Star has an unusually large tennis section in its sport pages.

Oh, sorry, I guess I did make that one up. 66 and two/thirds per cent of the content was true, though, and the other 33 and a third per cent is true in that the first shots were winners. There just wasn't a headline as in the time when I defeated the number two player in the largest division's draw.

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Another Stupid Thing and Another and Another-- a Brilliant Thing Actually

Okay, my short angle gives every indication of working better now than ever before.

So I should be as happy as a pea in its pod, right?

No, there will always and should be something else.

I now wish to review the basics of this "arm only" shot and then add something new to give more crispness to its crucial topspin.

Remember: Bent arm loop starts toward opposite side of net and then veers 90 degrees to the outside. I really like this constant of 90 degrees and feel that it gives one the chance of understanding the navigation in the shot with a certain amount of precision.

90 degrees in one direction equals 90 degrees in the other for contact on a direct line to the target. But should the reversal be this symmetrical?

One can achieve a 90-degree forward swing with more hammer head acceleration through delay.

Start with loop toward opposite side of net, then as racket veers down and around to outside don't take the full 90 degrees off of planned contact that theory asks-- take about 70 degrees instead.

The rest of the backswing-- the extra 20 degrees to establish a fleeting spear of racket handle toward an outside point on the ball-- can happen from elbow moving no more than an inch or two forward around the body.

In effect this delay will now cause the forearm to whip faster through the 90 degrees one had in mind much the way my friend Nome scales a flat rock out over water.

Then comes the brush but with resultant added topspin this time.

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Short Angle in Doubles, an Illustration

Righty reader, do you want to hit better short angles in order to move from a 4.0 to a 5.0 ?

If so, study the following illustration carefully. Step with right foot. Free up the arm, baby! Do this by smoothing the racket away from body toward the net before taking the racket tip a total of 90 degrees to right (70 during downward rightward loop, 20 during forward essentially level shot up to the brush).

You see, I'm not real cool. But I do shoot pool. I play chess too and find tennis a bit too self-referential at times. This would be one of those times, specifically, when one has committed to hitting better short angles.

So what will the frame of reference be? Chess? Forget it. Tennis? Tennis is all about hitting the ball out into the opponent's court.

Pool then. You got it.

A few of the things you could concentrate on:

1) Getting contact point on the ball straight, i.e., do you understand it? Are you correct?

2) No body flow. This shot is all arm.

3) A teardrop loop down to right to establish reasonable contact point farther to right similar to that in a normal tennis shot.

4) You could, I suppose (having done it), continue loop slightly back toward the ball. Easier however than taking racket in three directions-- a) toward net, b) away from ball, c) back toward ball-- is a) + b) followed by two inches of elbow travel-- toward the ball-- to complete the 90-degree preparation to hammer.

5) Keep constant bend in the arm. Don't mess with construction of the hammer.

Note: The circle is the ball, not your head.

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Pool Analogy Pursued

I'll do another drawing this time to show the best method I know (line up a ghost ball) for hitting a simple angle to the nearest pocket in pocket billiards.

The three balls in the drawing on the left: 8-ball, ghost ball, cue ball.

The ball in the drawing to the right is a tennis ball. The straight line is racket head. The dotted line again is a bee-line to the target.

In either pocket billiards or tennis, one needs precision in how one lines up a short angle shot. A good question for the tennis example, I think: How should one's feet be arranged?

I realize that loose jargon such as "short angle" or "pro shot" is subject to various interpretation.

To hit a hard shot off of the court at the side tee I try to use my ordinary mechanics. But I have been writing throughout this thread about an angle much more acute or cute, and if you don't believe me, do click on the illustration in the post that is immediately previous to this one.

That illustration reaped an immediate viewing by four persons.

Maybe this one will be viewed by one person.

That is just fine since this thread is designed not for broad publication but to help me defeat other persons in tennis.

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Nothing Wrong

I see nothing wrong with combining initial part of loop where one eases arm and racket toward net on a carefully crafted angle with step-out of the outside foot to turn the body in order to free the arm.

That buys extra time for the top of teardrop loop to turn hammer head 70 degrees and forward elbow travel of two inches to add 20 more degrees to hammer head placement.

You use your right-angled but straight-wristed arm to hammer and brush, O yes you do.

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New Contact: Run Around the Ball and Use a Shrink-Wrap?

Why not be happy with what one has got? Because if one thing works, another might, too.

The right-hander was becoming pleased that his contact point was beginning to resemble that of his other forehands.

But couldn't there be a case where he overran the ball, put himself on the outside of it, yet liked what happened next?

So we replicate that situation on purpose.

Building on what we learned in the last iteration, we push racket to the left to start rather than toward the net. Racket scootches toward the left fence as right foot steps out in other words.

Now instead of a teardrop loop, the racket goes flat toward the net this time and you add to it straightening of the arm.

You can do this at a level you like. When the elbow then takes its two inches forward, the arm re-contracts to its right angle as the wrist performs a full mondo i.e. it flips with all of this forming the only loop. Yes you just laid back the wrist this time unlike the previous iteration.

From there you hammer the 90 degrees and brush.

Turn of racket tip to 90 degrees away from ball can now occur in a 1 to 1 ratio, 45 degrees in takeback, 45 degrees in shrink-wrap forwardness although "forwardness" could seem to happen almost toward rear fence.

Note well: Initial direction of racket travel is everything in all of these shots. It entirely determines what happens next, so be open to every variation (of initial direction). Also, in the pattern just described, the racket has started to the outside of where the "shrink-wrapped" contact now will occur.

Intention of the word "brush" here: roll up from forearm only.

A Working Principle: Always get ready to hammer from a 90-degree bent arm configuration. And then you use upper arm as if it is a vertical pin in a farm gate to hammer though 90 degrees at which point you brush.

Learn this hammer action first. Different ways of achieving the beginning of this form may work-- so explore them and choose the best.

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Direction of Initial Step, Direction of Initial Racket Movement (Diff. and SIM)

Before I even get to the court to try # 145 out, I'm thinking that direction of initial step with outside foot is equally important as initial direction of racket movement.

One can use this double initialization as a sensible way to free up the arm and aim.

Cramped arm and aim, it seems to me, is why someone's attempt at short angle is most likely to fail.

Term: SIM = simultaneous.

Note: The fact that forward body turn is not a factor makes, in a sense, this ground stroke more simple than others.

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Court Report

No, # 145 (the "shrink-wrap") works but is not nearly as promising for me personally as my earlier bent-arm straight wristed version in which arm keeps a single length.

But I include the skunk-wrap model as an offering since I'm sure that a lot of tennis players, once having decided to imitate the mondoes of the top players, want to mondo on ALL of their forehands, and some players as well might want to go from straight arm to bent arm (before contact) as in one of Berdych's big forehands.

All of this is unnecessarily intricate for me but too hot doggy as well. I would rather mondo on a Federfore and reverse short angle, not mondo on McEnrueful and "the pro shot," which is the short angled crosscourt.

I note that there is a lot of detail in any tennis stroke whether one chooses to think about it or not.

In the constant bend short angle I have settled on, I had trouble today-- for a while-- remembering my 70-20 formula for creating a 90-degree hammer stroke. Remembering to do that produces a marked increase in topspin.

A good thing I write things down is all I can say.

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Ghost Ball in Pool and Tennis CCSA (crosscourt short angle)

My three main points today from self-feed yesterday:

1) Combining step by outside foot with easing of racket toward the net means that the racket path need not be so radical. If however the right-hander steps way to his right to get to the ball (the ghost ball), this step won't turn the body as much as when he stepped directly toward the net. So racket will have to move on its path of several inches more to the left as you clear your arm to give it a little breathing room. This whole initialization announces the shot-- conscious preference over the deception choice. Better to make an opponent run. He gets to rest too much if you have completely fooled him.

2) A ghost ball for short angle in pocket billiards snuggles next to target ball, the ball you want to send into the side pocket. Ghost ball is a ball you imagine. Center of target ball and center of ghost ball form a straight line into the middle of the pocket. The cue ball then becomes the ghost ball to make the shot. (Hitting cue ball softly dead center with no frivolous spin is the wisest, most basic way to do this if you are not worried about your leave.)

3) In a ground shot, volley or overhead in tennis, ghost ball could be called the target ball, i.e., a spot in the air where you expect the oncoming ball will arrive. And at that moment when ball does arrive you need to expect that racket brushing for short angle will form a perpendicular to your aim spot on the opposite court. And yes, I would like to say, forearm parallel to court in bend configuration just sidearmed fast through 90 degrees of arc.

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Initial Move: Racket Head Purposefully Telegraphs the Target

The racket might move only a few inches toward the net before going into a teardrop-shaped sideways-oriented loop.

These two, three or five inches however have put the strings on a perpendicular to the target, telegraphing the target to the opponent so he can run there if he wants.

Which is what you, reader, should like.

Note: The telegraphing is a message for yourself, too: "This is the racket angle I want when I finish my rigamarole and make contact with the ball."

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Erratus

Combining step by outside foot with easing of racket toward the net means that the racket path need not be so radical. If however the right-hander steps way to his right to get to the ball (the ghost ball), this step won't turn the body as much as when he stepped directly toward the net. So racket will have to move on its path of several inches more to the left as you clear your arm to give it a little breathing room. This whole initialization announces the shot-- conscious preference over the deception choice. Better to make an opponent run. He gets to rest too much if you have completely fooled him.

In the olden days of journalism an editor might write that his cub reporter's account of a law suit in which four big dogs jumped up on a horse in East Haddam, Connecticut was "erroneous," a word with a Gothic roll and ring to it.

The reporter might have written or did a linotype operator omit one lead ingot from deathless prose that read "The four dogs jumped on the hore, who sustained psychic damage and contusions and abrasions on her buttocks."

Here, not only is the account of a proposed tennis stroke erroneous, but the tennis stroke itself erroneous in flying to the left and failing to clear the net.

The strong arm bent arm tennis player can use the counter-revolution of his body to strike his short angle from farther out front than ever before but only if he glides the racket simultaneous with step of his outside leg an extra foot or more straight toward the net.

If he does this perfectly along with sideways teardrop loop, clever elbow, sidearm throw and proper brush, he will not be erroneous.