Windscreen wiping

[crosscourt]

Like many on these boards I agree about the importance of moving the shoulder forwards, and sometimes upwards depending on the trajectory of the shot that I am trying to hit, in my forehand. A couple of years ago the buzz was about kicking off the forehand with a forward hip movement. I have always thought that what these two things -- the hip movement as a way of initiating the swing, and the shoulder motion to give it full effect -- did was to enable our body weight to be transferred into hitting the ball, controlled by the big muscles that most of us have in our backs. So that in effect what we are doing is applying far more mass to the lever that is the arm and racket, that in turn hits the ball, than we do by merely swinging fast.

Am I wrong?

[jeffreycounts]

Like many on these boards I agree about the importance of moving the shoulder forwards, and sometimes upwards depending on the trajectory of the shot that I am trying to hit, in my forehand. A couple of years ago the buzz was about kicking off the forehand with a forward hip movement. I have always thought that what these two things -- the hip movement as a way of initiating the swing, and the shoulder motion to give it full effect -- did was to enable our body weight to be transferred into hitting the ball, controlled by the big muscles that most of us have in our backs. So that in effect what we are doing is applying far more mass to the lever that is the arm and racket, that in turn hits the ball, than we do by merely swinging fast.

Am I wrong?

Absolutely. I think that is a great analysis.

[johnyandell]

There is no doubt that the hips move first and should. But I think that you have to be careful if you key this aggressively. I've seen players who end up too open too fast and lose power instead of gaining.

[crosscourt]

There is no doubt that the hips move first and should. But I think that you have to be careful if you key this aggressively. I've seen players who end up too open too fast and lose power instead of gaining.

You're quite right about opening up too fast. The components have to move together else you end up dissipating the energy before the hit.

[bottle]

Tent Caterpillar Nest Forehand

It's fun writing about Federfores-- Federer-like forehands. Most players use a more westernized grip. So you are in the minority right away-- a rather interesting one though in that Roger Federer is the greatest player in the world.

TERM: "mondo" : on-the-job layback of wrist at a semi-vigorous part of a tennis forehand.

Once the arm is mondoed while taking the hand out left to right the throw is right to left.

All in all, the mondo is more feel than propulsive. Think about it!

Easy motion to right. Violent motion to left. If this violent motion is also somewhat upward you get more top in the spin mix, which should excite you.

thymus, chin, thymus, ignite and fire. 1,2,3,4,FIVE!

thymus, chin, thymus = 1,2,3 = level of right hand.

ignite = 4 = leg thrusting + mondo + guiding racket butt out to side. Think of inflating a tent or an airbag if you prefer. You're kind of creating a "wing" or caterpillar nest out to the right. The construction you end up with will not be known for strong girders or muscular soundness. Nevertheless, it draws strength from traditional elements of kinetic chain used here not to propel racket tip but to send it backwards.

The motion is similar to lowering racket tip during a serve. You have created a speed lever. If you now throw hand diagonally up to left you generate a whoosh probably faster than ever, for you. And if your mild grip is light enough your strings may even flip over occasionally from ball impact on the lower edge.

The first three counts I've outlined can be edited into a simple, slow raising of the racket and unfurling of the arm, done relaxedly late in the run.

The business end of the stroke then becomes the easy prescription of "unfurl, inflate and rip." The more confident one gets the closer one comes to the simple bounce and crunch of Roger himself.

I am suspicious of people who write about Federer's forehand and then become silent on the subject. I imagine that they found something good and want to keep it to themselves.

The exception to all this enthusiasm is the very high ball. Most of us will never have to play Rafa Nadal, but for high balls, as tour technician Ben Ford has pointed out, a Courier-Agassi model (more grip and early bending of arm to engage pec muscle) is no doubt preferable because structurally stronger up there.

Agassi loops far out to right and then brings elbow in close to body. Federer starts close to body and then moves elbow out. No?

[bottle]

Stalking a Federfore

Before driving to the tennis courts, thread a bamboo pole through your arms behind your back and close your right eye. Lean over and slightly backwards and swing the huge thing back and forth (i.e., shallowly up and down), imagining when you will simultaneously lay back your wrist, arch your back, turn your chin to the right and step on the gas.

[bottle]

Science and Tennis

One of last year's Nobel Laureates in medicine, Craig Mello,
recently gave a commencement address. "Science is a
worldwide discussion," he said. "It's imagining and then
checking. It's a humbling process. You're either completely
wrong or you're only partly right."

[bottle]

Federfore

Lift
Unfurl
InFLATE

1 2 3 4 FIVE

[crosscourt]

Before driving to the tennis courts, thread a bamboo pole through your arms behind your back and close your right eye. Lean over and slightly backwards and swing the huge thing back and forth (i.e., shallowly up and down), imagining when you will simultaneously lay back your wrist, arch your back, turn your chin to the right and step on the gas.

Bottle

Does this work for slice?

cc

[bottle]

Eleven Forehands (Roger)

You mean on forehand slice? On any slice it probably would WORK,
but you'd have to make your own decision about whether you wanted
the shot for bread-and-butter purposes. I love a simple straight back (tip slightly up) Oscarian backhand slice where the barrel spearing, eases just a little toward net at which point you violently press your shoulderblades together, ripping everything sideways, although I would have to say that in my case there is some bend at the elbow during the spear interval which only snaps straight during the sideways rip and top edge can be slightly rolling over during contact. (By the way, if I was slow in responding, I apologize. I haven't checked in to this string for a while.)

I actually had a mental conniption just today on the "pole through the
elbows" idea. Sometimes Roger's corner lowering is accomplished with a combination of arm and body movement, with the wrist dynamically laying back (Mondo).

Should my "sometimes" be changed to "always"? For a couple months I have thought the lowering was accomplished by body segmentation only, which led to a particular hard shot where hips first move toward net and then back
leg drives whole body AROUND as much as UP.

This works, but one would gain more variety doing like Roger. The upper body would not always have to be so severely raked back. The racket starting forward would be more closed. And one could rake back later like Roger himself, if necessary, upper body going backwards as part of straight up leg drive on a shot that forced him to retreat (high speed archive, MoveBack, side-- one can see the whole word "Evian" march past his head).

Also, a more independent arm adds free drop blending into the Mondo blending into spear interval blending into subtopple blending into arm roll blending into both ends of racket moving at same speed up and slightly to left of target blending into wrap.

So the arm does six different things on the forward part of every forehand.
"Subtoppling" as I call it is a hard, underhanded bowl of the racket tip adding
to the strength of the immediately succeeding arm roll. On higher, wider balls the tip baseballs around rather than bowls; on shots in between it golfs, I guess.

Billie Jean King, in an old book she collaborated on with Kim Chapin, says
that the better the player, the less they know how they hit the ball.
This makes me grateful that I'm a lousy player. If I were better I'd have half as much fun.

[bottle]

Qualification (of course!)

Probably, I made too much of a distinction between two different methods of rounding the corner while hitting the Federfore genre of forehand.

There is no way one can turn the body while inverting the hand and wrist and still remain totally "solid." The arm may also go down or make other small
adjustments at the same time.

Similarly the hand and arm continue to micro-adjust to make Roger's body driven spear go absolutely straight, which is spectacular in such a circular, vigorous body stroke.

Length of spearing varies from sequence to sequence; but, it is the same principle as "sticking" a volley or hitting any tennis stroke with late spear built into it or driving a nail.

You won't be powerful if handle and head come to nail at the same time (although they do do that--move briefly at same rough speed--in LEAVING the ball in Roger's case).

You can move both ends of the hammer to tap a nail (similar to a blocked volley), but when you desire more force, last second turning of your instrument, ninety degrees usually, will do it.

Also, judging from the eleven forehands in the highest speed section, Roger's head only goes backward in contact zone when his opponent's shot has maybe surprised and forced him to backpeddle.

Film sequences of him shot from the left show characteristic stillness of head long before his patented backward turn from the neck (so hilariously mimed
by Djokovic in his sendup of Roger's physical perfection).

Most film sequences show Roger stalking the ball with a glomming head,
and yes, this in spite of his hips often angulating and turning forward
toward the net.

On both forehand and backhand, stillness of head is just as important to Roger Federer as it was to Jimmy Evert when he was giving Chrissie her beginning stuff.

[bottle]

Sticking the Federfore

All forehands are lesser where the racket tip is still arming around in high gear when it contacts the ball. We try for a cusp of roll to double-end-- there is the ideal, which we achieve more often by purposefully hitting error shots to either side of this cusp.

This means coming around too late (a slapped shot, sometimes useful) or coming around too soon (a pushed shot, sometimes useful).

The full forehand, though, exists on the cusp. The hips on bent knees take the racket around the corner. So too at same time does arm whirl and roll the racket tip around.

The outside leg and gut then drives through contact. The racket just stopped whirling and rolling to that point. And the famous straight line interval we heard so much about through the decades and may have resisted now occurs.

It is one or two balls length rather than the four or five of classical tennis.
But it still is there. I would advise looking for it in all eleven of the highest
speed sequences of Roger's forehand in this website.

[bottle]

Whirl and Roll or Roll and Whirl?

For anyone who has followed these posts and maybe tried out some of the ideas: To explore the possibilities, reverse the whirl and roll or, as my wife the painter Susan Caumont used to say if I unveiled a brilliant tennis invention, "Oh yes, I think that's what I've always done."

Here's how roll and whirl can function in a Federfore. One needs to use a particular kind of roll. Both upper and lower arm should be involved, I believe, and the racket should turn in such a way that the strings are forced neither down, up or forward, but possibly backward or not at all. The wrist will actually roll up over the spearing handle to the outside so as not to disturb it, so that it spins true in other words, as if in bearings, so that it temporizes, contributing nothing to stroke energy.

This roll can come at the end of the "mondo," which is a name for what happens when the wrist also temporizes laying dynamically back as a result of the right knee shifting forward. I say roll at the end rather than during mondo
so as to preserve last instant adjustability of racket angle.

From that point everything is fast yet with control and sequence. The racket, having just wristed back and closed an extra amount, now rips frame
first toward the ball. The "rip" means that the hand flies up and to the left
diagonally-- you'll feel a bunch of Federfores in the top outside muscles of your upper arm, not in your inside delta muscles as in short-arm forehands, which you might also want to learn to deal with high bouncing left-handed topspin from Raphael Nadal.

A good way of figuring out hand path is to watch what makes the strings fly forward with most arm force: It is smooth, powerful, accelerative movement with the hand. Get the strings right in pantomime and they will tell you where the hand should go. Next time move the hand with force.

All this "whirl" happens while the leg drives (extends) and gut turns (contracts) into the ball. Then elbow changes trajectory from diagonally upward roundabout to up a little more. It's as if you've introduced a slight bubble into this roundabout stroke before it wraps.

The "bubble" is "double-ending" (or short space in which both ends of the racket move at roughly the same speed).

Such double-ending is not nearly as conscious, however, as when you roll AFTER you whirl, which seems to generate more of a blocking shot and less of a shearing shot.

If this discussion seems unusual it's because it is. Most people don't like to think about stuff like this. But the devil here, in a positive sense, is once again in the detail.

Many people may not be aware that there are all different kinds of arm roll.
You can drop a ball and hit a fair shot just with arm roll.

The roll and whirl foregoes that energy, relegating roll to retarding or even reversing tip rather than accelerating it.

In the highest speed sequences of Roger Federer's forehand one sometimes sees a lot of spearing. This to me right now is the temporizing mondo and roll I just described, keeping the tip back. "The spear is the roll," I tell myself these days while exploring, i.e., learning the new possibility.

A major confusion probably occurred at Wimbledon two years ago. NBC ran a graphic of Roger's forehand that showed his arm revolving (twisting) slowly right up to contact. John McEnroe downplayed the moment as if wrong information was being dispensed. He didn't show the graphic again, at least that year.

He was too late. People were talking about the spectacular animation all over the world.

I have never seen the Federfore as something for slavish imitation. I think of it as a rough form, rife for exploration by anyone.

Unlike Fred Perry's ping-ponging continental forehand, frequently imitated to the detriment of twentieth century British tennis and John McEnroe's underestimated continental forehand, imitated by no one and yet a close visual cousin to the Federfore (just look at it-- you'll see!) with big knuckle on next pointy ridge to the left, Roger's extreme English grip forehand (big knuckle on next pointy ridge to the right) is a sensible, workmanlike stroke.

My opinion is that Roger's forehand makes perfect if meticulous sense, like a Swiss watch, and is less of an inimitable idiosyncrasy than most people think.

[bottle]

Controlled and Uninhibited

"I was always taught to control the shot all the way through."

Do those words sound familiar? They are from an ad, intended to sell stuff. But was Roger Federer also speaking to us through the ad, using repetition to tell us something useful? Would it be scientific to think that? Of course. Science draws on everything, not just Excel spreadsheets.

Let us combine the control idea (1) with the "mime the racket head through a perfect path and it will tell you where your hand should go" idea (2) and the
"using both the upper and lower arm, slowly roll the wrist up over the racket
shank as it spears toward the ball" idea (3) and the "It's really the graceful, spiraling body that delivers major force, not a flailing arm" idea (4).

Now let's drive our modified Federfore out on the court and start it up.
Remember the old classical forehands in which the student was instructed to move the upper body and the arm as a fixed unit, then push both ends of the racket forward and up embracing contact? Well, this shot still has a bit of such linear push in it; but, before that, the way the strings remain stable and next to and related to the driving body is different through being dynamic.

No longer do you aspire to be a twisting statue, maybe a cast iron miniature hockey or tennis player on a rod.

Instead, one's lightly gripping hand, moving with muscular, controlled acceleration through an abrupt change of direction leftward-upward leverages strength into the racket frame while turning it relatively slowly and slightly but powerfully into position and keeping it down.

That is a mouthful. I'm saying the racket is being slung by hand motion that
goes up to the left but at the same time kind of bores along even trying to turn its tip backward and downward.

Your rolling, i.e., twisting (a separate motion), arm also keeps the racket down with its buttcap going forward and the racket tip still trying to nudge
backward even after the mondo. Thanks to an act of will, the hand feathers around and over the racket without essential disturbance to its flight.

This trick enables you to adjust pitch right up to the nano-second when you wipe the ball, at which point the roll has ended and so too the leftward-
upward business, unless you scissor from the elbow hinge just then (an option for Roger or anyone who plays with variety).

A lot of the time the lifting of the elbow and both ends of the racket simply flows into the wrap with scissoring happening a moment after contact.

But keeping strings down and back on the ball while everything else is rising and going around is very much a signature not only of Roger Federer but of anyone who seriously wants to hit this genre of shot.

High speed frames of Roger right after contact show a characteristic position where his hand is still higher than the racket and his wrist is Concorded like the jetplane.

Though very human, Roger doesn't flail or flip (or fail).

[bottle]

Two Double-ends in the Federfore?

The hitting action in a Federfore is quite far back. Saying that Roger hits out front is not accurate description in my view and that of some other speculators.

If you are like me and you mondo, you probably think that the arm should spear the buttcap toward the net even as the wrist dynamically lays back.
Body is going to do that anyway.

Instead, get your shoulders around so much (which always involves what the feet just did, too) that it is easy to double-end the racket toward the right fence. Use your arm in other words to ship the racket out sideways keeping it parallel to the right fence.

Now do the rock on the end of a string thing but not too vigorously. Give the racket time to feel the abrupt change of direction to which you have just subjected it. Spear back in while rolling arm in such a way as to make the
spearing last for longer.

Then double-end on the ball and flow into the wrap.

Try it again. Lift, unfurl, inflate.