A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

How Much Self-Authorization is Healthy in Tennis?

If one tries too many different things one might end up a lousy player like Hana Mandlikova, who, as everybody knows, only won the U.S. Open once.

Reading a full book written by a player who stresses the game's fundamentals over its gimmicks can be an amusing experience.

The book I'm thinking of is DENNIS RALSTON'S TENNIS WORKBOOK, 1987, which comes with a complete section of blank self-evaluation forms, the first question on which is "BALANCE (is it smooth as I hit the ball? Am I on balance after I hit the ball?")

WORKBOOK is full of down-to-earth stuff like this but also is deeply revealing of the biases and personal philosophy of its author-- the reason I bought it.

The bias of any accomplished tennis player (and this guy certainly served his apprenticeship at number one) probably starts with grip.

The rap is that Ralston learned everything he knew from Pancho Gonzalez and later from coaching Chris Evert Lloyd. He himself however is a continental grip player, great at the net. I just think this grip and that net proficiency inform the overall outlook, especially one point which he stresses over and over again, sometimes in an unconscious way.

Don't step out and put your weight on the front foot too soon (opposite from what Peter Burwash has always taught). Hold weight instead on rear or outside or "prop" foot to use the Tony Roche term. To keep weight back on a neutral stance shot Ralston even suggests putting the toes down first (mistakenly taken on popular level to indicate indecision) and then pivot hips from behind so that foot gets flat. In such a swing there can be hips rotation with both feet flat before the rear heel finally comes up. And the shoulders never separate ahead of the hips as in kinetic chain evangelism. Is there then a save step, a slight replacement step with rear foot as in one scenario outlined by Welby Van Horn? Saw it in one of the Ralston photos.

So much saving of weight on back foot is provocative philosophy to which we add very upright stance on all shots with no bowing forward and shoulders kept level. No "banking" as in Van Horn. No hunching forward as in a Gonzalez forehand. These observations are my own, are what I see as implicit. Ralston certainly would never disparage Van Horn and especially Gonzalez who mentored him and with whom he lived at an important time for both.

But his (Ralston's) game is different, and on some service returns he even advises one to get the arms going before the body. Let's react: HERESY! WHAT HAPPENED TO UNIT TURN, OUR ROCK OF AGES?

So even in a book on basics, especially in a book on basics, if the author is any good, there is provocation in spades, and the provocation is greater than when somebody consciously strives for it.

Everything is on the level of suggestion and thus very powerful. I'm not saying Dennis Ralston does the following on every shot: but here is an implicit thought to contemplate, something to aspire toward if you yourself are wild enough to want real adventure and don't always wish to hit the ball the same way.

Arm first on backswing with body chiming in. Arm first on foreswing with body chiming in.

[stotty]

Incredible film and photo...

Incredible photo. I didn't realise rowing built up such fine legs in men, clearly it does.

Incredible film....absolutely loved it! I watch a film like that and wonder if any of those men are still alive. Wonderful, natural athletes long since forgotten, by most, one would have thought. I know nothing of rowing but found the atmosphere of the race truly, truly amazing. You sense there was much at stake.

[bottle]

Rowing and Tennis: A Preview of "Boys in the Boat," the Film

hockeycoach was the forum member who most expressed an interest in whatever commonalities there are between rowing and tennis. He's gone! I nevertheless proceed.

Since I recently gave in these pages an imaginary tennis lesson to the late Bill Stowe, author of ALL TOGETHER and stroke of the 1964 Gold Medal eight-oared crew, here is a photo of that crew with Stowe the first tall guy on the left (https://www.flickr.com/photos/thehap...356/?ytcheck=1). The scrawny looking coxswain, Bob Zimonyi, much older than the other guys, defected from Budapest, Hungary to the Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia.

I've tried today to post the Tokyo final from that year, wanted in particular to see if the crew kept their arms slightly bent at the catch as Stowe recounted in his book; however, that film is less widely circulated than other Olympic footage, perhaps because the race was run at night.

The 1936 film is much more available. The film-maker, Leni Riefenstahl, was as Nazi as she was good. This film gives a good sense of the excitement at the core of the current best-seller THE BOYS IN THE BOAT. The Germans were supposed to win. There is a thematic correlation to Jesse Owens track performances and the famous tennis match between J. Donald Budge and Gottfried von Cramm, with Adolph Hitler personally calling von Cramm just BEFORE that match to put some pressure on him and then sending him to the eastern front when he didn't win.

Here, Hitler is in the crowd. The U.S., with his help, got a lousy lane assignment. The race was won by a yard. The film is all about the German crew until the U.S. wins.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HunZsKugJmY)

[bottle]

The first fascination in my case.

[gzhpcu]

Been searching all my life, the endless quest... That is part of the fascination of the game...

[bottle]

Further Assessment

Also, I never had any game. I'm just finding some game right now. How my physique stands up to the new game is another question.

[bottle]

I'm nothing like this. My devices, like yours, are internal.

[gzhpcu]

[gzhpcu]

That's right gzhpcu…everyone else is living in the past. You are the only one who is smart enough and cool enough to be hip, up to date and in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8

Yeah…rock 'n roll was better years ago as well. Oops…there I go again. Living in the Past.

Very perceptive, you got it right...

[bottle]

Cut the Wire Technology

The phrase "cut the wire," reader, should immediately conjure up for you a huge one-hand topspin backhand, but if it doesn't, well, shame on you.

Me, I've got a small one-hander in which I keep front shoulder down. "Cut the wire" wisdom applies neither there nor to my slices. Simply put, the racket head speed comes from other sources.

But on the biggie I'm now about to institute, I'm going to alter my thought pattern, such course correction lying at the heart of all significant tennis stroke change.

Long, long ago there was a small green book, "the Arco book" that contained John Newcombe's and Roger Taylor's serves, Virginia Wade's forehand and Evonne Goolagong's backhand.

It was a riffle book. You riffled the pages like a deck of cards to animate each one of these four shots. A small bit of text in the margin explained the huge amount of tension created between Goolagong's shoulder and her hand before she suddenly released her racket.

Forget the image now of a waterfall, I'm thinking. A waterfall conveys too much tranquility.

Yes, the racket coming down behind the back does appear in free fall. But tension must build between shoulder and hand at the same time.

For "tension" defined we go quickly to Google: The tension force is the force that is transmitted through a string, rope, cable or wire when it is pulled tight by forces acting from opposite ends. The tension force is directed along the length of the wire and pulls equally on the objects on the opposite ends of the wire.

Next step: Identify the "ends." Front end is the shoulder pressing forward from hips rotation underneath. Rear end is you, the tennis player, holding hand back as arm straightens at the elbow. My new idea, heretical or not but certainly not a thing of the past, shows itself as exhortative or coxswain's command:

Cut the wire.

[bottle]

On Tennis Stroke Invention

I figure it's difficult, and tennis players don't like difficulty, and so they say stuff like "Don't think!"

[bottle]

Seems like she is not the only one living in 1939....

That's right. My father was living then too. AND SHE IS MY MOTHER!

[don_budge]

Living in the Past…Jethro Tull

Seems like she is not the only one living in 1939....

That's right gzhpcu…everyone else is living in the past. You are the only one who is smart enough and cool enough to be hip, up to date and in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCyC1dZiN8

Yeah…rock 'n roll was better years ago as well. Oops…there I go again. Living in the Past.

[gzhpcu]

Seems like she is not the only one living in 1939....

[bottle]

Yes, extremely relevant (the year I was born).