A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Furniture Seventeen for Easy Topspin (again)

Wrist and forearm received good attention in forum discussions of forehand flip, but not "scapular retraction," which is equally important in keeping the racket butt spearing or flashlighting toward the ball.

General information, in other words, wasn't good. Similarly, if a tournament playing kid said (as happened to me yesterday), "I don't understand anything about how to make topspin," the instructor might take her to the net where both of them would practice upward movement with strings of racket pressed against the strings of the net.

While that is a very good exercise, the student might come to think that strength of upward lift was the important factor and shortly thereafter start showing up at the courts wearing an arm brace.

Neglected (in her understanding) would be the instruction to "press" the strings against the strings. For that's where nifty wipered topspin comes from if I have correctly understood the ATP forehand articles.

Furniture seventeen in one of these articles (the first or second) is a video in which butt of racket is sent ahead toward ball with racket handle moved only by thumb and forefinger. The racket tip comes last instant round and slightly upward all by itself. With more hand on the racket, the article suggests, this little movement converts to an even more upward direction.

Note: Scapular retraction must precede scapular adduction but isn't a mechanical set piece that you should forget the better to rely upon it-- at least not at first. All different directions of scapular retraction are possible, the main choices of which are down, up or back, so a short period of actual thought and choice-making could be in order.

One might intuit that "down" is the most interesting of the choices. Not in the forehand I have in mind. That one uses "back" to engender slingshot ahead toward the ball and net.

Position of arm (quite far forward!) and hinge in wrist (the wrist is a hinge as don_budge often says) then conspire for easy conversion of "forward" to "upward," which done properly (see the movie "The Knack" starring Rita Tushingham) will happen all by itself.

[bottle]

Forward Knifing Elbow on Serve?

Although prolonged thinking about technique can profoundly damage one's tennis game, it can, obviously, expand one's stroke choice. But would that even be a good thing? No, "just hit the same old boring shot." Yes, "variety is the spice of life" (Tilden). Stay open to these opposing viewpoints, say I, but tend toward one's own personality?

A distinction in shoulder movement I drew up for myself decades ago is just now leading to questions on what position arm ought to sling from on the hitting side of the body in both serves and forehands.

For purposes of conversation, call hitting side of the body "the slot." Exactly to what positions within the slot then should arm backswing to create novel relationships between shoulders line and line of the upper arm once it's attained correct height?

Should these two lines-- upper arm and shoulders line-- always be the same line? Why do some good serves have upper arm out front and pointing more toward the net? If shoulder ball position doesn't affect the scapular retraction--scapular adduction (slingshot) mechanism, what's wrong with elbow in a more forward position? And how is all of this affected by stance and degree of upper body rotation away from the net?

Well, I've always thought that upper arm lined up with shoulders provides greatest leverage. When one is engaged however with different spin possibilities, I don't see why other relative positions aren't valid as well.

[stotty]

Canon and canoes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLATEORaB_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJgl2K4E

Interesting videos.

"You can't shoot a canon out of a canoe" I liked that one.

[bottle]

Tanner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLATEORaB_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJgl2K4E

[bottle]

Chuck it Ball Launcher

We've been dog-sitting Pawley, a big chocolate gray Lab Retriever. He came with a ball launcher, which is somewhat like a back scratcher, but is also somewhat like a tennis racket. At first I found I just wanted to snap the ball down at a hard surface and watch it bounce high enough that Pawley would catch it. Gradually however I incorporated the full service motion and sent the ball up over the garage and trees and the old Ford tennis house next door. It was time then to fetch another ball.

[bottle]

Narrative

That Jiggly Goerges hit the dropshot. What a dropshot! High and close to the net and broke poor Aggie's heart.

Julia, Julie Goerges, Julia Gorgeous Jiggles-- just what is the best name for this fast-serving, type I forehand stunner?

[bottle]

Snake Strike Aspects of the New Serve

The tour player I came to know best hated any talk about kinetic chain, preferring to say, "I am a snake."

He found kinetic chain discussions to be "cartesian thought," which had something to do with the French philosopher Rene Descartes thinking too much in straight lines.

Geometrically straight lines in tennis, I decided, had to do not only with weaker tennis technique but with the left brain hunter-lawyer's preference of setting a specific goal (death to the mastodon, one point five million in compensatory damages) and then setting up the tactical step-ladder for getting there, and God help one if one missed a single rung.

Fine, excellent, good scheme-- but what if the mastodon had already lost his wool and evolved into a smooth skin elephant?

So let's go with snakes, even older, and roller coasters which aren't very old.

Considering roller coaster from a snake's point of view, we're extremely aware of every vibration, which attracts or repels us or both.

We're better off going with attraction and totally becoming a snake-loving tennis player.

We allow ourselves to be fascinated with the two gravity drops that initiate our two connected loops. We buy as much time for each of these gravity drops as we can.

The racket falls, we accelerate back. The racket falls, we double-coil forward.

And strike.

[bottle]

Reverse

Not enough is written and filmed and spoken nowadays on the subject of whirligig serves in which the leg drive is late and only amounts to several inches and the server never leaves the court. He may go to prison if his name is Roscoe Tanner but does that mean these serves should be discredited?

Reverse the speed gears hypothesized in # 1208 . Shoulders won't go fast then slow. They'll go slow then fast then slow.

Perform figure 8's where racket drops then you accelerate it (down) then you lift the upswing by leaning slightly backward as you toss. This first drop and acceleration and rise is a roller coaster. Yeah, hips go out toward net. Try to hear the whir of the cart's wheels against the tracks. SLOW, WHOOOSH, PUT-PUT-PUT ALMOST TO A STOP.

Now you start a new loop, smaller, with gravity drop again. Very little happens just then other than arm starting to bend more together from its right-angled position so this is a good time to relax. In fact, relaxing is essential. The racket starts to fall parallel to one's shoulders with complete ease.

Now you double-rotate the racket, but deliberately, not fast. "Double-rotate" means that the torso slowly rotates but so too, simultaneously, does the upper arm, turning inside out and getting racket tip to the right edge of the body as low as possible.

Precisely at the end of this action, which might otherwise be described as scapular retraction, the two legs can drive upward a few inches to stretch the elastic of your slingshot just a bit more.

Now torso and slingshot fire.

Since the best serves are kick serves and I'm always in rotorded mode (no cartwheel, thanks), I want to keep nose and chin up, i.e., head still.

Well, I wouldn't want to be upright or uptight since I'm a child of the sixties. The head could move sideways at last instant to get out of the way of the vertical swing-- what would the harm be in that?

Sideways but not forward!

[bottle]

Rip Slice, Hip Slice, Rolled Slice and Barred Slice

Hit first five with arm passively straightening on ball. Hit the sixth with arm passively straightened before the ball.

1) Rip slice. Backswing to where you would see a ring on your middle finger. Gently launch racket barrel toward net while keeping bend in arm. Rip shoulderblades together (scapular retraction). Result: sidespin backspin.

2) Hip slice. Exactly the same as 1) except that the abrupt change of direction is caused by delayed rotation of the hips rather than delayed clenching of the shoulderblades. Result: more backspin in the mix.

3) Rip and hip. Same as 1) and 2) but do both at the same time.

4) Same as 3) but fire shoulders simultaneously with hips and scapulae, i.e., slash the ball with everything you got.

5) Rolled slice. This shot is imitation Steffi Graf. The racket tumbles down the front of the stroke.

6) Barred slice. A barred bird or a barred stamp can have a black line through each wing or across the face. A barred backhand however is a backhand in which the arm is swung or punched forward while straight. In keeping with the other slices here and also with my one hand topspin backhand drive, I'm using hips to passively straighten the arm followed by inside out movement on a mildly downward path. The arm work can be slow, just as it can be on the upward spiraling drive version. "Don't flail at the ball," the original Don Budge used to say. Swing easy then. And I've been almost perpetually wondering, Does a slower barred swing go through the ball more since the movement is from the shoulder ball? Is movement from the shoulder housing (scapular retraction) more apt to cross the ball? Is the idea of both movements at once viable? Who would know if he'd done it? Perhaps these alterations could be achieved through simple messing around with speed and exertion of the arm swing combined with different angles of outgoing shot.

[bottle]

Everybody a Dom When it Comes to Tennis

"Jeez," as Anastasia Steele might say. Or "Oh my." Or "Gee willikers."

Just got back from Sleeping Bear Dunes Park on Lake Michigan.

All I know is that the backswing described in # 1209 is one delayed move in which both hands rise to slightly lift the racket and the right arm extends from the elbow to set it down (this before the solid swing flip)-- and does feel like flowing water and leads to the best feeling forehand I've discovered.

Is such personal discovery ever useful to other persons/another person? I don't see why not. But perhaps the other person would have to have actively fiddled with Federfores for more than five years. Perhaps not.

http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/12490-fifty-shades-of-mitt-romney

[don_budge]

Water and Roger's backswing...

Water is genius. It' so simple. It has no taste which means any bugger or living thing can drink it. How genius is that!

The comment about water is either an accident or sheer genius in itself. Water...like common criminals and Roger's backswing seek the path of least resistance. Knowing Stotty it is no accident...he is a bit of a sly devil.

The most complex thing about it is...is when we try to emulate it in it's entirety without understanding the physics or the metaphysical process. You and I ain't Roger but it is the backswing that I teach...incrementally.

[stotty]

Roger and Water

That's simple backswing. But Roger's is complex backswing that doesn't take any more time. It goes slightly up (both hands rise) and immediately goes slightly down (the right arm extends from the elbow).

Just because something funny is going on doesn't make it complex. It's actually very simple. The greatest shot in the history of tennis must have simplicity. I define simplicity (at least in most respects) as how quickly the player can produce the shot under duress. Roger can pull out a great forehand in any circumstance imaginable. It's genius.

Water is genius. It' so simple. It has no taste which means any bugger or living thing can drink it. How genius is that!

[bottle]

Ease

Quoting somebody without getting the words exactly right can be pretty bad, but our TV is off right now.

A lot of people are complimenting Roger Federer in the twentieth cycle of criticism then praise.

My favorite is Andre Agassi pointing out that in a sport of incredibly hard hits Roger is always figuring out how to play with less effort.

[bottle]

Movement on the 2012 Wimbledon Ice Floe

We secured agreement among Google, AOL, Amazon Metrics, Federal Drug Administration Enemies List Division and Apple Cores, Inc.

This combined research produced two billion pages of printout, all of which we studied carefully before shredding it and leaving a single question.

How many times did the top players slip or even fall down and how did this affect outcome? Federer, Murray, Djokovic, Nadal?

[bottle]

Roger's Forehand Backswing: As Interesting as I Think?

All any of us can do, to be most authentic, is draw on our own experience. And while I never was good at golf, the time I outdrove an entire seaside community was due to one natural feeling backswing.

The fact that my father then outdrove me is irrelevant to this discussion since he was a very good golfer.

In obtaining my mail order certification as a teaching pro, I learned that Joe Cockersham, founder of the Waxahatchee Texas National Tennis Academy (NTA), considers "backswing" to be a small, downward hook of hand and racket that occurs after one's unit turn.

That's simple backswing. But Roger's is complex backswing that doesn't take any more time. It goes slightly up (both hands rise) and immediately goes slightly down (the right arm extends from the elbow).