Windscreen wiping

[bottle]

Transcending a Mantra

The words "lift, unfurl, inflate" surely did help progress to this point but have ceased being useful to me. They may still work as general description but no longer correspond to the parts of my forehand in their each syllable well enough.

My idea for today is to set up the timing for a whirl and roll and apply it to a radically different shot. This timing is not bad. It has you ready to drive a double-ending racket with your right leg on count five. Roughly, you use two counts to get the racket up and way back, two more to bring it slightly forward into perfect position. It's a very good emergency shot for when you are totally rushed. Someone could play this way all the time.

Okay, now go for a later whirl with as little roll as necessary integrated into it.
When extreme roll is required, it should perhaps start even before the whirl, at end of the mondo. To put the whirl question another way, substitute the parallellism-out-toward-right-fence and rock-on-a-string tricks for counts three and four. Together they make an easy, blended and slightly accelerative motion.

A surprise in first trying this is the levelness and minimum of pitch change with which the racket arm can sweep back into the body on the basic shot. That would be ball approaching at ideal height, pace and positioning, etc. The spearing racket, though on a collision course just lets the arm miss the body because of the bubble (brief double-ending) you put into its trajectory.

Later, you may explore down and up instead of level, more subtopple,
what to do in the special cases of high ball, etc., etc.

With this bi-directional whirl you come to the same perfect position as in whirl and roll but with the difference of being more lively and less mechanical.

I am not injured right now and have won ten straight matches against an opponent with whom I have been absolutely even for the past two years.
He isn't injured either.

We play three times a week but not full matches. We play one very long set and then two or three extra games as possible consolation, thus leaving
time, energy and sinews available for other things.

[bottle]

Replace the Whole Wiper BLADE

with

Stone on the End of a String.

From lift swing the stone back and out and down and up-sideways and sideways-down to the end of your wrap.

Is there arm roll in this? Yes, it's part of it. When is the question.

The roll begins during mondo at the earliest and stops at contact at the latest.

Is there great delay in rhythm before the rip: Yes.

Is this controlled but swirling motion more of a lariat trick than a windshield wiper? Yes. It is a return to horse days, before the automobile.

Can you outline this swirling motion in greater detail? Okay.

1. both hands up; 2. right hand goes way back in an elipse; 3. push racket out right, laying wrist back (mondo plus conscious double-ending toward right fence); 4. spear, twisting, subtoppling-- all toward net and brief-- during which everything in arm slows down. Subtoppling means that racket butt
slides up as racket head slides down; 5. Rip with hand upward/sideways (unconscious double-ending) and wrap. Soundbite: Rip and Wrap.

Body propulsion, integrated with the above racket work: A. knee shifts forward during 3 and 4; B. Extend (fire) outside leg to drive 5 (rip) and land on inside leg.

A beautiful shot. Just as I love the almost buttery transition from coming around to hitting straight in the previous post (and find this a stroke easy to aim, easy to keep deep, good too for finding short angles), this newest variation has at least one of its own unexpected virtues.

This occurs when you subtopple the racket head by slowly bowling the handle up. Since the hand comes up then, you won't need a long rip in which to hit the ball, and brevity is the soul of wit.

What's accelerative in other models, even in my own, becomes decelerative here, in the tract just before contact. Stuff still moves forward-- the right side of your spiraling body, and with it the buttcap still veering out a smidge.
This forward momentum generally toward the net is essential for what comes next, the abrupt change of direction.

But at the same time the racket tip is nudging backward. Mondo was not the end of the purposeful temporizing. The tip starts back, easy, and then decelerates thanks to your controlled closing of the strings until...

BAM!!! the racket accelerates through the ball. No, it double-ends up the ball. Yes, it does both.

Another difference from the previous experiment is, that, on a waist high ball, the racket tip comes up from a lower place. And since contact occurs in a pencil-thin band of acceleration, racket tip is lower at that point (contact) as well. These Federfores are great for low balls.

One reason Roger gets so high sometimes may be that he wants to keep the ball low relative to his body.

And contact may occur a bit more to the right, also relative to the body given that the whole construction comes at the ball from farther to the right.

There is a time and place for challenge and stimulation. I really do applaud being left alone to work things out for myself, however, and recommend it to anyone-- while believing that having some kind of audience also is helpful.

[bottle]

Consolidation

Consider these words of John M. Barnaby in "Racket Work: the Key to Tennis":
"Now the racket cannot go right through the ball and also stroke up it or down it. It does one or the other, not both, even as a person cannot go north and south simultaneously."

Go to court by yourself with a bunch of balls. Alternate a flat shot with the topspin version (all Federfores) for a long enough time to study differences in accuracy, reliability, carry after the bounce, amount of spin, economy of motion, timing required, weight required, pace generated, etc., etc.

Concentrate on the commonalities that do exist between the two shots: the preparation through double-ending toward right fence, the end of followthrough, the way outside knee shifts forward into position to drive body spiral with extension of same leg, the climaxing of leg and gut and shoulders
during contact.

Play a match hitting all flat shots. Play another match hitting all topspin shots. Play a third match hitting the smart shot.

If this strategy isn't paying off, retreat, drop balls again, hit a backboard, find a ball machine, find hitting partners, return to competition with more confidence in these two shots.

[bottle]

Walk a Little Plainer, Daddy

So, class, did you consider John M. Barnaby’s words? No? You fell asleep while doing your homework? It’s just as well. While Barnaby is one of the greatest tennis thinkers and writers who ever lived, those specific words break down when applied to Federerian logic. For Roger hits through the ball and up it. He does go north and south at the same time.

Lift, unfurl, inflate now refers to the first three beats of five in every Federfore.

A dancer will know immediately what I mean. A weenie-nerd might call the beats “units” instead. A contrarian might organize the stroke some other way—why not.

The next beat, the fourth, is the slow, bowling motion that brings the racket handle high and the racket tip low.

One need never manipulate any arm roll into the slow part of the stroke again if one accepts the notion of different level followthroughs. What was one trying to do with such weird hand distortion anyhow? Simulate something that Roger’s grip is not? If you’re going to do that, just play with a western grip.

I think that in spite of the 27,000 hits on my string, How to Hit the Federer Forehand, at Talk Tennis before management deleted it due to its high quotient of abusiveness, nobody was able sufficiently to address the concept of natural roll. Whether I explain it well here or not, I sure am going to use it on the court.

To return to Barnaby, “Things happen fast, not slowly, and he who has any unnecessary complications in his game often finds himself trying to make two moves in a split second that allows for only one.”

So I eliminate the twist in beat four that I recently talked so much about. I concentrate exclusively on “subtopple” instead. And from there, (subtoppled), hand goes straight to hand target wherever that is.

Practically, the ball is apt to be stroked at different distances from the body. From a given spot in the air, however, there will be a set of variations available. There will be less natural roll if you finish over yoke. More around shoulder. More around upper arm. Most around elbow.

Body acceleration, obviously, peaks at contact. Hand acceleration, due to sudden change of direction from slow to fast, peaks at same place. Those are basics.

Elbow may not or may scissor vigorously during contact. If it doesn’t, it scissors right after contact. This is a joker factor—not a basic—and therefore is fun to mess with. Elbow might even slowly scissor during the bowl sometimes, before the acceleration altogether.

What kind of roll can possibly happen without spoiling the uninhibited nature of the change of direction? Propulsive or non-propulsive? Propulsive. One picture of Oscar Wegner shows him as instructor, no racket, with forefinger turned over and at rest on his yoke (i.e, the ridge between neck and opposite shoulder). Elbow is not all the way up to hand. This to me implies a semi-western grip with muscular forearm rotation. What about those of Roger’s forehands where his elbow is way up by his chin? All or most of the roll must have come from whole arm, not forearm, I think. Whatever you do, it should feel as loose and satisfying as a humongous forehand ping-pong slam.

To review: From subtopple(d) or slow bowl you wrap (fifth beat). Basically, the hand rises on same gradient as whirling body but goes sideways ahead of it. If body were whirling parallel to the court, hand travel might also go parallel to court. But because of the knee shifting out (hip turn before back leg drive) everything goes slightly up. That’s what actually happens. From a cue standpoint, the abrupt hand change is from forward and up (a slow slide) to level sideways (fast). You just have to understand that “level sideways” (the cue) is slightly upward in actuality. You want a precise totalling of body and arm forces for the most powerful yet spinny shots. The variations in followthough, however, will obtain correct pitch, which is more important.

From subtopple then, the hand goes straight to left upper arm, say. The strings by contrast go all over the place—from lower than hand to higher than hand to even with hand and then wherever they want to go.

This action is very different from a slowly swung, blocked Federfore, which seems to work best when coming with level roundabout racket work (fourth beat) from way out right, followed by double-ending (a slight lift or wipe up the ball) before roundabout orbit resumes.

In the first, more pro-active case, with greater spin benefits and therefore control, the hand is the string end. The racket head is the stone. You got to be loose.

[bottle]

A New Fun Gizmo

A nice improvement, developing opposites, is to discard stone on string for the previous stiffness of a wiper blade, but a double-jointed blade the likes of which no windshield has ever seen.

After you've mondoed, you set your strings in space and twist your hand up over them, rightward, with racket head the axle.

Your hand then becomes the axle as the blade fires left.

To repeat, racket head first as axle and then hand as axle the other way.

One can definitely mondo close to the body with this method since the first
rise takes hand to the right where you want it. The whole action is less
awkward than a big bowl (subtopple) by allowing contact farther back.

A recent magazine picture taken from his right during forehand contact makes Roger Federer look like a piece of paper set on edge-- camera, ball, racket, head, shoulders, arms all in a straight line. For flat shots contact wants to be out front; for more topspin a far back contact like this can be great.

So with racket achieving an unstrained downward slant out right, I see two interesting options available for roll.

Natural roll will be spread over entire arm action to end of wrap.

In unnatural roll (all-out, sudden, and muscular-- it's unnatural for all but brutes) the roll rather than being an additive becomes the main engine of the racket work: You reach the extended, inverted forefinger mime position long before it settles on yoke, shoulder, upper arm, or elbow. This inverted arm at end of wrap doesn't change, it's just the faster upper arm twist from rotor muscles in the shoulder that does.

Verbal code for both roll options now becomes "lift" (count 1); "unfurl" (count 2 during which you get left arm straight and way across); "in" (count 3 or mondo); "flate" (count four with hand rolling toward right fence over strings).

IN YOUR HEAD-- to preload rotor muscles-- you're already wiping to left while hand is still moving up to right. That would be for a maximum strength (unnatural) roll shot. IN YOUR HEAD-- to prepare for sudden change of direction-- simply relax hand up to right. That would be for a natural roll shot where arm action across your body is the main component.

I don't deny, incidentally, that arm extension toward net is an important part of any Federfore. Once you get the hand up with the racket head still low it can happen naturally. Body is going around, and arm hinged on one edge of it is also going around, separately, which means OUT.

[bottle]

Consolidation

Jim Kacian, the USPTA pro who spotted me free lessons until he gave up on me (around # 50-- a pretty fair shake) and frequent doubles partner of Martina Navratilova in Virginia and one time of John McEnroe in Maine once let me play number one on a club team that competed against Shenandoah College, of which he also was the coach.

After my match against Kevin Fiery (all you need to know about him is his name), Jim said, "Hmmm. Bot was more affected by the change of surface than anyone else."

Well, that was a thousand years ago, and at the age of 67 I've just put my game together. My serve is way out front because of the limited backward range in my shoulder rotor muscles. My body lifts my upper arm from way low roughly to parallel to the court. I pre-load the rotors and fire spaghetti arm as if I'm throwing my racket over a low warehouse. I want to press the ball out as John M. Barnaby advises in his collector's book, "Racket Work" (which Jim put me on to), but to successfully do it need some topspin, which comes at last nanosecond from upper arm closing to head. The pressing out is indirect in other words. I'm throwing my racket with full extension over the warehouse.

Backhand (one-hand) crosses a thin envelope of body structure due to acuteness of step-out toward left fence. Hands rise, then rear shoulder, then racket goes back and across. On my moosh backhand the hand lowers a little to RIGHT as shoulder also turns to right, but I keep a little bend in arm to release during the actual shot. My sting backhand preparation stays high longer dropping late for more force. In both variations there's plenty of arm roll, driven in my case by clenching shoulderblades. I slant my upper body slightly toward left net post and fight to keep my head still until the ball is far gone.

Overhead, lobs, transition game is much the same. My volleys know a greater distinction between blocked and sticked. Dropshot: Mellowed with age.

My forehand, a committed Federfore which I have explored in this string, is my strength. The thing to do now is to take it alone with a bunch of balls to the nearest court.

Drop a ball and hit the natural roll shot since it is first in importance. Next hit the unnatural roll. Finally, hit the flat version with slight rise coming off the ball necessary for control. Repeat. Explore short angles, deeply high topspin, etc.

Next day play a match, hitting the smart shot every time and never the dumb one, until the last point.

The three variations, depending on situation, are enough for me.

[bottle]

Onward and Upward

You really can combine your mondo with using racket head as a big axle around which to roll the shaft upward like the hand on a clock.

You can still use two counts (3 & 4) but not require any sequence between these actions.

Consolidated then, they become a device for killing the racket in two dimensions even as the body is spinning it about.

You have to think in different systems at once this way if think you must, but you must to learn anything.

The combined action has a unique feel-- you back up the racket tip while keeping it down in glue.

Playing with three variations, depending on what you did before, may seem like a new language; e.g., hitting super roll down the line and natural roll crosscourt are an identical setup.

All kinds of new discoveries like that are waiting to be made.

[bottle]

Finesse-- Federfore

Institute a great break for the ball, led by head lean and body turn. No unit turn except for when ball comes right at you. Then you must manufacture your good hitting coil. It can happen naturally when you're running right. Sometimes it even helps to back from oncoming ball a little, contradicting early tennis instruction. Some but not all of the shoulders turn you'll need is taken during the great break. Speed and economy of initial break is everything. Is this personal opinion, Athenian rather than Spartan, anti-discipline (anti always doing the same automatic thing; i.e., splaying right foot)? Of course.

Using your personal benchmark (a little before the bounce, usually, in my case, I believe, although I no longer try to over-analyze), LIFT (1), UNFURL
(2), INFLATE (3,4), RIP (5).

Lift and unfurl have been explained without change for a long time. It's the
"inflate" where the most recent evolution has occurred.

On IN, simultaneously Mondo and clock the shaft up over the strings. This latter idea is the best one I've ever had in tennis. Lowering racket tip is a good way to play the game; achieving the same purpose through movement of the opposite end of the racket, however, is smooth, liquid and elegant.

On FLATE, simply reach out to the side for the ball like ET.

The more of these shots you hit, the more you'll set up a little farther from the ball. As Vic Braden said long ago, amount of separation is a measure of one's confidence.

Assuming great break, set-up and execution, leading to perfect "feel," you still have to hit the ball, which on some days is a high-maintenance concern of its own.

I concentrate on nothing here-- my preference-- until some carelessness creeps in. Then:

. Am I preloading arm for the roll?
. Am I thinking of slow feel to the right and abrupt acceleration to the left as a single breath?
. Am I holding the racket like a bird's nest?
. Is knee shift forward and immediate leg drive sequence coordinated?
. Am I using just a bit of my psycho-catch mechanism to slow bent left arm so that shoulders move just a bit more slowly than rest of whirling body during contact?
. Am I putting equal zen-- through hitting tract-- into roll (the ping-pong slam-like wipe!) and sideways-upwards acceleration of arm?
. Am I stealing equally from all available sources of tennis intelligence?
. Am I using the racket with the hot strings?
. Anything else?
. Is preparation enough toward rear fence so that contact is far enough back relative to body? Like a jai-alai player, you almost want to catch the ball before you sling it.

[bottle]

More Exploration

IF while obtaining the same followthrough you can superroll, AND you can natural roll, IT FOLLOWS that there is a continuum between the two. The roll always results in the same forefinger inversion but the inversion concludes at different times. The variable is the amount of sideways muscular arm activity. Try to cut the pie in 10 pieces? Has it been a mistake not to do so before?

Why this is important: It is dramatic information and expansion of opportunity. You assumed that natural roll was your best forehand since it was better than superroll. Suddenly, however, there are eight additional shots to explore.

TO THE COURT AND BACK: On a range of 1 to 10, 10 is still the best shot, combining most pace with a modicum of spin. Number one (superroll) is
spinniest and the best example of the John M. Barnaby paradigm: that tennis strokes are best with body weight moving in one direction while racket work
goes at right angles to it. But number twos or threes may be the easiest short angles to hit.

Another future area for exploration in the Federfore is minimizing sideways reach with the racket setting way back. I find myself still using a bit of sideways reach on a fourth count, perhaps to maintain my conditioning of smooth progression from shaft clocking to right up over strings (the shaft rises like a clock hand up on count three and continues to right taking racket head with it on count four).

The question is, does keeping racket back through minimization of this subtle work achieve the goal of taking racket out to right? Yes it does. The whole body is turning so what is far back quickly becomes far right. And the ball now has a hook on it-- very useful to bring a shot hit down the line inbounds at last moment or to tail away from one's opponent if hit crosscourt.

On these bending shots I like to think the crosses got around the outside of the ball. Which recalls two bits of anecdotal information, one received from a teaching pro and recent all-American college player, the second from general reading somewhere: first, that Roger Federer strings at 46 pounds; second, that Roger Federer uses hot string on his crosses rather than his mains, and that when other playing pros try this it doesn't work at all.

My serve and slice backhand bear small resemblance to Federer, but both my staple forehand and backhand accept him cheerfully as their model. How then should I string?

I'm a complete baby when it comes to the new strings, so for my first experiment with them I specified mains at 45, crosses at 47, and had it done at Ski and Tennis Inc., Winston-Salem, NC, where the stringer almost had a heart attack.

First, global warming has all but destroyed the ski business in the southeastern U.S., so the store might just as well admit it's a tennis place.
Second, the crosses were all wrong, the stringer said, they should be soft string, but he would replace them for free after I played once to find this out.

Well, I didn't "find this out." I won 6-0, 6-1 and got about three times as much spin as with my 17-gauge Prince Topspin, and especially liked my sidespun slice backhand, which is mostly performed with the crosses rather than the mains. I haven't been back to Ski and Tennis and don't expect to go at least for a while. "Rules are made to be broken by those who understand them--" Barnaby.

Another area for possible exploration is tilt of the racket as it moves out right. If it's tilted with strings further behind hand, the ball goes higher, but not with enough spin. Body tilt or other factors contributing to goal of high rebound therefore seem more useful.

[bottle]

Hooked Topspin

Since it's Thanksgiving and I want to do something good for myself, I'll stop worrying about micro-distinctions and concentrate on the same old boring forehand.

The boring Federfore I hope to hit almost exclusively during the next week is the one that tails off a pretty consistent amount to the left. It may be the equivalent, in golf, of a 350-yard drive with a hook that makes it roll.

I think I explained in the previous post how to hit it. After a new match and further experimentation, I recommend arm extension a little more to the inside than on other shots, and attention paid to keeping separation, and clocking shaft up over strings followed by minuscule amount of total racket travel also to the right and then shoulders rotation continuing to right as well, and contact as far back relative to body as one can manage without missing the ball.

[bottle]

Tennis is about Sudden Changes of Direction

Nah, I now use that last shot once or twice a match at most. It does add a bit of extra zip, like a plume of water injected during some dogfight into the carburetor of a World War II prop plane.

However, the regular sequence of the normal Federfore produces speed enough for almost anything, but with greater potential for sharp angles.

That would be a preparatory sequence of mondo, clock shaft up over strings and keep going with both ends of racket to right as body motion also feels for the ball.

[bottle]

Building on an Existing Stroke

There are many incurious people in tennis. I'll play anybody but prefer the ones who retain a natural childhood interest in technique, innovation and every fine detail of the game. They are, of course, rewarded by the very fact of doing that. Do they, however, deserve other rewards? I think so.

The trouble is, in tennis, when you try to rob brains or reward people, you often find that although everybody is in the same thicket, the other person probably is following some different path.

So, a late afternoon Christmas present for anyone who has stuck with their Federfore for long enough to develop, like me, a stroke five times better and seven times more consistent than their old one.

Your confidence is better every day, right? Time then to diversify. Change to continental grip and swing exactly the same way except for two big differences: A., snap your wrist at contact and B., finish over the left shoulder rather than around your upper left arm.

I'll bet that these will be the best topspin lobs you can ever hit.

P.S. If you seek external imagery for this type of stroke, study the sequences of McEnroe's forehand in TennisPlayer-- shorter preparation than Roger but similar at the business end except for the difference in grip.

[bottle]

Personal rather than Second-hand Experience

I try to report on personal rather than received experience in this and all of my posts. The biggest technical discovery in hitting a Federfore has been a very small refinement as one might expect. This would be the notion of mondo followed by clocking up over the strings followed by double-ending the racket-- all of it very specific description of hand motion to the outside as the shoulders feelingly (not forcibly) revolve ahead right up to contact.

Is this what Roger Federer does? Maybe! Who really cares unless one is writing an article for PEOPLE magazine. The outside flow replaces the usual lowering of racket tip at end of one's backswing and is something I devised as a response to a visual phenomenon in the film strips of the Federer forehand-- the way the racket shaft appears to spear perfectly straight toward the ball for a long time.

So that's my biggest technical experience in my personal quest to adopt a Federfore. The biggest "substantive" experience has been the debate on this topic tht appeared at the Talk Tennis website before I decided on the present website as a superior forum.

What I learned, in posting there and everywhere, always as "bottle," is that you can inveigh against torture and war, two obvious evils, and never receive much response.

The moment the subject is tennis technique, however, you are apt to receive passionate ("venomous" might be the more precise word) response. Despite
27,000-hit participation, however, the result wasn't very good, didn't deliver enough insight into the Federfore paradigm of stroking excellence, and I take my small share of blame for that.

I now think that extending the hand at right angles to forward angular momentum is a key to both this kind of stroke and a first-rate serve.

In terms of satellite physics, let's say you've got a sputnik launched, and it has small rockets on board which you fire to place the sputnik in wider orbit.

Skater's effect says that extending arm slows spinning core. But if right leg in an open forehand fires right then, the core doesn't slow much at all. The main thing that happens is smooth acceleration of the racket tip, which acceleration can then be exponentially increased with muscular, abrupt change of direction to left and sometimes even accompanied by a shortening of the arm lever if biceps is also used besides outside upper arm muscle (medium and low balls) and deltoid (high balls).

The idea of widening orbit to increase racket head speed was well expressed in the service section of a Czech instruction book of the last century featuring Ivan Lendl, Martina Navratilova and Hana Mandlikova. My copy was so badly made that it has long since fallen apart. Nevertheless, I used to call that book "the check book," no doubt annoying my wife.

[crosscourt]

When you talk about extending the hand at right angles are you talking about laying the wrist back?

[bottle]

Right Angle to Angular Momentum

Thanks for the question.

No, I don't, although laying back the wrist is a part (one third) of extending
the arm out, in my book. The other thirds are clocking the handle over the strings and then pushing both ends of the racket together.

I see a matter of language here. Maybe layback is a fuzzy term. It's
hinge of the hand laying forward from back of the hand.

The three thirds are all hand motion, right, that goes out from the revolving center, right? With the analogy of a satellite and the earth I'm trying to say that the rocket scientists could instruct the little rockets in the satellite to simply bump the orbit further out-- for more satellite speed.

You wouldn't want the rockets to fire forward or backward, just fire outward
from the center of the earth, and you would get more speed.

But maybe it's a mistake to emphasize speed over feel. What works best is
a catching motion with the hand, and I may divide this into strict "steps"
but still the overall motion, with repetition, soon becomes loose, a gentle
reaching outward to where you'll meet the ball.

While this is happening, the body is revolving forward, but if you keep this
gentle, too, you're going to be a better player. Physics says if
you're extending a lever from a revolving object the end of the lever is
going to go faster; on the other hand physics also says the object is going
to revolve slower.

So let's not worry about it, just go for perfect feel and a stroke that takes off
from contact. If shoulders revolved back more than hips, providing elastic
effect from the gut, and if outer knee smoothly gliding forward suddenly extends, and if hand takes off to left, driven by outer muscle in the shoulder for low and medium height shots, from deltoid muscle on inside of shoulder for a high ball, you've got a bunch of really powerful accelerative forces to have fun with, all concentrated together at the crucial part of the stroke.