A New Year's Serve

[stotty]

Players who half inch

I wonder if Borg half inched some of Tom Okker's forehand and made it more orthodox. The best do. Pancho Gonzales used to half inch parts of strokes from other players all the time.

[bottle]

Thanks!

Wonderful. I am truly grateful.

I almost never buy programs like this since I need to save money. And I know that in nearly all cases the most incisive comment if any will come embedded in the hype.

I see this video as a Christmas basket with a piece of fudge and a flashlight inside although I choose to determine length of my forehand by myself.

But the instructions on buying and installing the batteries seem pretty convincing and good.

I try now to combine what I like here with what Don just said.

I can't believe that I ever fell into the trap that the fellow in the video describes but think I probably did since my Federfore/ATP3 used to go better.

John McEnroe as quoted by Clifton Matthews, the pianist giving a North Carolina concert: "The older I get, the better I used to be."

[tennis_chiro]

What do you think of this video? Anyone?

I'll put the link down again here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48). Might work better.

The key point most people don't understand is that the release of the lay back of the wrist doesn't happen til well after the ball has left the strings. The "wrist action" that is perceived and is actually influencing the spin of the ball for the pros is the internal shoulder rotation (windshield wiper action) that does not actually require any wrist flexion whatsoever. One of the big points I have seen JY make is that Roger Federer's holding of that laid back wrist through the contact area is much longer than anyone else's. Yes, the wrist does flex and relax later in the swing path after the ball is gone, but if you start trying to do that, you are going to end up flexing the wrist while the ball is still on the strings, and that is not going to be helpful. Oh, you will hit the occasional "home run", but you won't be able to produce anything useful under real conditions.

Must confess, I only watched the first couple of minutes of the video, but that was enough for me.

don

[bottle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48

What do you think of this video? Anyone?

I'll put the link down again here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndoyq4R5a48). Might work better.

[bottle]

Evaluating Tom Avery

A scientist challenges EVERYBODY. I may not be a full scientist but if I were, that's what I would do.

Obviously, I think the video on short angle that Tom made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_Rch1MOUQ) is of inestimable value to me.

And when Tom says, in other free videos, that he doesn't mean to boast but he is good at stroke technique, I sense immediately that this is true.

But "true or false" may be the least way we want to judge the best teachers of the game.

There are voices we choose to listen to and others not.

So I like Tom's voice, obviously again, and by "voice" mean not just timbre but intelligence or the way the person pulls everything together.

Clearly, Tom has bought into the cardinal idea of an early closed racket that naturally opens to square by contact.

Fine, but that doesn't mean I have to fully buy into the idea myself, and in fact I agree with it as prescription for my short angle but not for my staple backhand drive.

This is an individual sport, and for a staple backhand drive best for me I prefer Ed Faulkner's advice to keep racket frame squared up for every inch of the whole stroke-- well, maybe not at the very end.

And on the short angle itself, I'm not so sure about kicking back the way Tom often does. Direction of kick appears toward left fence to stop the considerable body rotation.

In my view this is an interesting idea, especially for flatter deeper shots, but in short angle that rotational momentum should have concluded early and maybe even before contact.

There probably is no right or wrong. We ultimately use our own prescription.

Suppose I am right though. Would that make Tom an idiot or me the idiot for thinking that?

Consider everything that Tom says in other free videos about grips and grip change. Really excellent and for short angle a 3/3 .

[bottle]

Short Angle: Where Does the Power Start?

From the low point (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_Rch1MOUQ). The arm work then accelerates in two installments: 1) forward low and then up, 2) up steeper from rolling flick. Does overall body movement follow the arm work? Could be.

[bottle]

The Sad Story of Fenimore

Fenimore, who jumped from a high window in Venice, is the subject of "The Beast in the Jungle," a short story by Henry James.

Whether Fenimore, recent descendant of the rich man James Fenimore Cooper, the father of Natty Bumppo and founder of Cooperstown, and Henry himself ever got to play tennis is not precisely known.

The time frame for that may not be good. If Henry and Fenimore had BOTH lived a bit later, they could have played tennis together in the United States. If they had lived earlier, they could have played tennis in Russia on Count Tolstoy's court.

One thing is sure. Natty Bumppo had many other names including "Leatherstocking" and "Deerslayer." He was a white woodsman among Indians in the first growth forests of upper New York state and to the west.

Bumppo was played by Daniel Day Lewis in a film made from Cooper's many novels which most literary historians agree invented the American western.

Another sure thing is that every word written by Cooper was avidly read in Europe and America. Everything Cooper did in fact turned to money. The only professional sports connection here though, other than deerslaying as "sport" and sustenance, is to baseball since Cooperstown, N.Y. is where baseball's Hall of Fame is.

Sophisticated and would be sophisticated youths in this early American era loved to cross to Europe to soak up "culture." This phenomenon lasted for many generations maybe even through today.

Very doubtful it is that Henry and Fenimore played tennis, but if they did, Fenimore didn't know about dogpat, mondo and wipe, and Henry certainly couldn't hit the short angles.

Perhaps this was the source of Fenimore's frustration and Henry's grief.

[bottle]

Yup, and it will work if one wants to go so simple as short slap of a slap shot blending into solid turn of the shoulders on slightly slanted spine.

[gzhpcu]

That brings back memories: I used the word "clobber" as a kid, haven't heard it in ages...

[bottle]

-u

-~ to -u . That's evolution. Eventually, I suppose, I'll go to UDrawIt if this obsession continues.

Now that I'm looking at -u I'm not too impressed. -~ shows wrong shape for the ripple but overall proportion of the two halves of the glyph seems very good.

Perhaps one should think of a gentle depression in ocean. And use a bit of space to make this reverse swell feel good.

Hand goes a few inches toward right fence. Then turns sharply onto path of oncoming ball, making a very shallow arc down and back up to level of the - .

What one really wants is feel of wanting to clobber the ball as racket goes up the backside of the reverse swell.

You won't actually clobber from that point, just feel as if you're about to. The hand plunges down to mid-point between the shoulders (and out a bit from core body-- think golfer).

The shoulders then, at the top of flat back set at a pitch toward right fence, rotate to clob.

("Clob" is not a word? Does that matter if one gets the idea?)

[bottle]

-~

Reader, don't be frightened by the glyph unless your opponent has one in his forehand repertory and is using it to pick you apart with consistency and accuracy.

If you've embedded one in your own game, draw it slowly as you approach the ball.

The glyph is rebellion against huge waving about of the arm as one is trying to get some place.

Remember that many teaching pros refuse to teach a complete beginner a loop on the understanding that loop will come later. If only they could realize that a loop is loopy period. (But perhaps this opinion of mine is just a passing mood.)

Note: A glyph is a glyph because it conveys information nonverbally. The closely related hieroglyph is known for difficulty of decipherment. To achieve our goal of perfect communication here either at inceptor or receiver level we can start with -~ and 1) lop off the beginning tail, i.e., the first part of ~ that one sees when reading from left to right, 2) center the low point of what remains, 3) rotate the u thus created by 90 degrees and make it shallow. Once one has done this one can understand that one is dealing with a "u" but a very shallow and standing up "u." One should turn a sharp corner from "–" to the shallow "u" while moving to the ball. Verdict: minimal motion offering maximum feel.

[bottle]

Street Direction for McEnrueful Backswing

Middle Road to down and up is better than Slant Drive to Obtuse Goose Lane and up.

Don’t ask why. It just is.

Here are ten McEnrueful backswings in hieroglyph. If I could easily rotate the ripple on the right by 90 degrees I would.

-~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~

The ripple also is screwed up here in that it seems to go up before it goes down—no good, do the reverse and remove the tails from the ripples. You (I) want each ripple to go down simple before it goes up. We can do that out on the court as if the curves are a miniature swimmer doing the butterfly or a squirrel crossing the street.

Ten pipe cleaner sculptures to represent this might be the answer once one figured how to make them stand up.

The up part of the ripple motion though very minimal creates the feel of lifting racket to hit a slap-shot—crucial for the zen of what comes next.

Of course one could just take the racket horizontally around in the traditional Traceycakes backswing as if carrying a cone so the ice cream wouldn’t fall out—girly and picturesque and not providing the same amount of masculine feel.

The dash represents a few inches of sideways (horizontal) travel. This can be accomplished with both hands together or in free flight. Together is one place where one can make a dial adjustment by putting bent and slanted thumb on 7, 7.5 or 8.5 . I used to have classical eastern forehand available too (8) but did not find it interesting enough compared to the other three choices.

[bottle]

Body Angle with Hand Equidistant Between the Shoulders

I can only discuss one stroke at a time. The evolving McEnrueful slap-shots hand forward. Now the chest is on the ball.

In the midst of recent experiments I've thought stuff like "Get the arm to plunge. Then blend in the body turn (which includes kinetic chain theory and other arcane information that people love to get distracted by)."

Fine. But I thought the body turn combined with Rory McIlroy's 30 degrees of body angle or Ellsworth Vines' 40 degrees of body angle or Roger Federer's 20 degrees of body angle would continue to take the racket down before bringing it back up again.

Not so. Once the hand is equidistant to either shoulder, it will stay right on the hitting ball and may even go slightly up as hitting shoulder goes down.

After that the racket will definitely go up.

[bottle]

Not Another Edit!

Ono, I didn't want this to happen. It makes me sick. Probably makes you sick too my good reader. Because you never could follow anything I had to say only read me for my style.

But my literary style has led to my tennis style, don't you see, and both include a lot of editing. Hmmm I'm not so sure about the word "editing" at the end of a sentence. Something about the rhythm-- just doesn't sound good.

My forehands yesterday were magnificent. Granted, I only was hitting them from self-feed, with no opponent. I probably would not touch them if I'd already had the knee replacement I need. But a needy knee means you don't move as well as you used to, so on those occasions when you succeed in reaching the ball you would like to put it away. Or at least force a weak return that you can pick off.

Yesterday, I started to take the racket several inches to the right to get to Middle Road, then bowled mildly down and up.

Ridiculous! If you're going to feel for the ball that way, feel for it a bit farther back. Take Slant Drive. The racket can go down as it goes to the side. Then take Obtuse Goose Lane, poorly named since it goes straight up.

Saving time is what this is about.

[bottle]

God "God damned, this is not tennis, this is a mockery, our courts are not a playground." It pissed them off so much, I did more of it, and I think it worked well. Give your player room to grow and think.

Unbelievable. I am understood. Where do I go next?