A New Year's Serve

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Progression: Backhand to the Future

The backhand in this video one should pay most attention to-- perhaps-- is the one where Petr Korda short hops the ball while hardly swinging his arm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA).

Recently, I wrote in this forum about the tennis of my fellow Hollins College graduate Annie Dillard, who received a Pulitzer prize for the first of her many books, PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK.

Tinker Creek ran behind the college, and as you can imagine since I received a Master's Degree from that place I must know those waters well.

Later, Annie was on the board of the Ossabaw Island project whose varied ambitions included the running of an artist colony in an old hacienda ten miles from Savannah across the inland waterway in Georgia.

In fact, I know I was the first person to tell Annie about the Gullah population and snakes and wild pigs and feral donkies and bulls on Ossabaw, which I did in letters. You might think of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM or SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT or the world of THE MAGIC FLUTE or even Illyria in TWELFTH NIGHT.

But there have been other commonalities or should I say parallels other than that we both might show up at the same reunion.

During the time Annie was a professor of English at Wesleyan University, as my partner Hope's father in other years was too, she bought the house previously lived in by Bud Crampton, the university physician and obstetrician and deliverer of my two brothers, a nice house under a mound atop which are the university tennis courts.

Since Annie and her husband wanted to learn tennis they obtained a copy of VIC BRADEN'S TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE and climbed the embankment.

I know those courts well-- the place where Steve Crampton used to quell me with his Don Budge serve.

And while I have never witnessed Professor Dillard's tennis (she once insisted that I call her "Professor" Dillard-- I must have threatened her somehow), I know it couldn't be any good. Nobody who learned their tennis from VIC BRADEN'S TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE has ever had tennis that was any good.

On the other hand, as Vic Seixas attests in the worst most self-aggrandizing tennis autobiography ever written, Vic Braden had a good backhand.

I'll say. I witnessed him hitting it for six hours straight-- from self-feed under a tent in Winchester, Virginia as the rain pelted down. Hit, talk, hit, talk-- Vic Braden's way.

Vic Braden's famous sit and hit drill, introduced in that first and best of all his books, proposes backhands in which arm is little and body is much.

Petr Korda's backhand is similar only Petr doesn't have to sit down to hit it. His knees are already bent, his body is loose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA).

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Progression in DB Serve

One wouldn't want to turn the shoulders back too soon. One already has lined up with racket pointing to right of right net post. That qualifies as turn before turn happens (https://www.tennisplayer.net/tp_player/don-budge/).

The backward shoulders turn needs to be late in that it stretches the elastics of one's gut just at the right time.

And for another reason, that one's toss has a better chance of being good if one isn't moving one's body a lot just then.

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The Most Important Thing

It's always fun when the teaching pro-- she or he-- points out something as "the most important thing" then makes the same claim about something else. Does he realize he's contradicted himself? Sometimes.

This seems like an occupational hazard. The answer would seem to be to space the most important things out, make the assertion on different days, especially if all the items are important (although that's unlikely).

In the Woulda Korda Backhand, I've said keeping elbow at navel for forward roll/arm straightening is important, now I'll say that maintaining angle between racket and arm through a firmly cocked wrist is essential.

Keeping this angle is not difficult through first phases of this forward stroke but gets a bit more difficult toward end of follow-through requiring a bit more conscious effort at least at first when still learning the drill.

But why still maintain arm to racket handle angle when the ball has already been hit and is gone? Because this is a highly disciplined shot, very structured, one might say, and in such a stroke the follow-through can condition what comes before.

Petr Korda played at 145 pounds, 6 feet three inches tall. He was almost as much of a string bean as Eugene Gant in LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. So Petr didn't hit his successful backhands with a superabundance of brute strength.

He must have done it through timing and structure combined with an ability to hit clean shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA

Note: I earlier suggested speed ratios in which second half of the forward stroke was faster than the first half. In this video we see the opposite.

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But now I wonder if expunging the wipe (leaving it altogether out) has not bought enough time to add some Concorde to the wrist to prepare it for the mondo.

One needn't Concorde the wrist every time since this shot, The Bam Forehand, mondoes well from a straight wrist too. Spin and pace are going to be different though.

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Nq

Okay, so the next question is whether the waggle from outside to in front of the face is accomplished from the elbow only.

Reader, you may not think this precision is important but I sure as hell do.

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Sequence in Racket Arm Drop in the DB Serve

The arm straightens and then the whole arm continues back (https://www.tennisplayer.net/tp_player/don-budge/).

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Concorde the Wrist?

The new forehand, The Bam, is beginning to cook. Leon and I won 6-2 instead of 7-5 against the same guys. But now I wonder if expunging the wipe (leaving it altogether out) has not bought enough time to add some Concorde to the wrist to prepare it for the mondo.

"Concorde" alludes to the French jetplane, unfortunately retired. It had a humped beak just like your/my wrist can do if such modification proves a solid idea.

When to do it? That's easy if following the handbodhandbod rule. You do it on the first "hand." Try it in self-feed and then if it adds anything significant work it on up the assembly line.

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Progression

I am sure that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would agree that as something becomes radically simpler, a host of new subtleties settles in.

Sure, there will be a fresh drop-down screen to aid us in our never ending quest for a drop dead backhand.

The first new subtlety, I would say, is a necessity to remember something, namely, to keep the elbow down through forward roll.

But to "keep elbow down" does not mean "to keep elbow pointed down"-- two entirely different things.

A bit of dial change contributes to the open racket face behind one's back in The Woulda Korda.

So too does some winding back of one's forearm.

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Formy Backhand

The strict form of The Woulda Korda Backhand-- racket tip comes round then both ends of the racket travel together-- should provide in time all kinds of new freedom to any level of player: different speed ratio of two halves of forward racket swing, different ratio of distances of the two halves also, deceleration, acceleration, steady state within the given half, etc.

Why then don't we tennis players see more of this unique shot out on the court?

Because teaching pros haven't championed it enough? Just a guess.

The new freedoms I see are similar to those provided by poetic conventions such as limerick, sonnet or haiku.

People who don't know the first thing about writing a poem are able to do well since they suddenly have a few rules to guide them.

The alternative is the virtuoso one-hand backhand gleaned from the modern tour.

In every case the player rolls over the ball, i.e., his racket is rolling as it hits the ball.

This is nothing more or less than JOKER FACTOR applying to ground strokes on either side.

Great players can time the roll. Mediocre players can time the roll on a certain day. But there becomes a bigger separation between great and mediocre players thanks to this method of hitting a tennis ball.

This separation is throwback to the days when tennis was an elitist sport.

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Ratio

1 to 3 ratio between the two forward halves of the Korda backhand?

I raise this question of speed ratio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA).

Experiments need to be conducted in 2 to 1, 1 to 1, 1 to 2, 1 to 3, 1 to 4 and 1 to 5 .

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Motion-Dependent Rather than Artificially Manipulated Backward Roll in DB Serve

The Budge brothers both-- Lloyd and Don-- were very clever.

In Don's case the cleverness extended to whom he got to help him.

We only seem to have available two really good serve videos of the Don Budge serve, and of those for some reason rear view yields more information.

What however about the sideways racket move at beginning of the front view choice (https://www.tennisplayer.net/tp_player/don-budge/

The racket is placed to the player's right. Racket head then goes up to player's face. Racket then drops to outside and then inside to point at rear fence-- a very natural and unencumbered move.

Is this sideways "bubble" to be viewed as useless personal mannerism or as solid essential for the aspirant like me who has decided that the Don Budge type serve is the serve for him?

The sideways motion is more than personalized waggle, I would argue, in that it creates motion-dependent roll as the racket goes back to point at the rear fence.

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I Made This Up

Victor Nance has my McEnrueful in the shop. I'm pretty excited about this as you can imagine. Although I don't know who Victor is, he points out that I hit my McEnrueful well when I'm coming into the net. And he thinks I can hit it just as well when I'm not coming into the net. Just a matter of swinging more slowly, he believes.

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Hold the Onions, Key the Mondo, Hold the Wipe and Bam!

And now, since we so shun superstition and admire Charles Darwin, seeking hard truth, we drop the wipe we've worked on for so many decades, drop it altogether so that it may transmute.

Transmute!? To what? To the bent arm keying (kee-ying) action we've also flirted with for many decades.

Both do the same thing after all. To rephrase, wipe comes mainly from a twist of the upper arm as does KEE-YING. In this sense they are one and the same.

And so we try our new idea out, just a minor incident along the road of our vicious gamey game of "Perfecto" first identified by Timothy Gallway the captain of the Harvard tennis team and subsequent business consultant as well as by Timothy Gallwey the flutist.

One man's Perfecto is the viciousness that keeps him from becoming a good tennis player, the other's the cool balm that keeps him calm. (Hymn: "There is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin-sick soul.")

Set-up is exactly the same with twisted elbow lower and back farther than before though racket still is in the slot.

Mondo too is the same though rather extreme due to the influence of President Sock.

Where before there was wipe there now is KEE-YING which as I've already postulated is much the same thing.

Then comes the BAM! as we shove open the stuck cellar door.

Finally though all in one continued move we gently return our knuckles to the opposite ear.

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Bam!

Yeah, it's Saturday, I went to the park and tried it. This is revolution and rebellion against late wipe after contact. How about wiping TO contact while keeping elbow back. Then just as last of the four footsteps settles down: BOOM! The elbow and body put a big push on the ball for twice the fun.

An important something to keep in mind however: The weight is no longer where the racket is but rather where the racket head is.

I wrote that before I went. May or may not be true. The actual practice session came down to this: Lower and further back elbow position so racket tip points at ball.

The four beats of handbodhandbod: How they now crack up. 1) Twist and float arm and racket, 2) Take body around some more, 3) Mondo and wipe while keying toward ball, 4) Bam out with elbow and return knuckles to left ear.

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Next Forehand Idea: Should I Do This?

I think I should, if nothing else for my own tennis.

Handbodhandbod-- that's four beats. Kyle LaCroix's footwork in the last video of the current article on his forehand: four beats.

Hmmm, four beats and four beats. But only a moron would overthink them into jamming together. ("Look, ma, I'm the tin woodman.")

Still, if one weren't consciously working for that all of the beats might coalesce for a great shot compared to a good one.