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Clash of the Titans

The Australian Open is a funny event. Held in January where folks in the US and Europe are in the middle of winter, the Australian Open is held in Melbourne in the blazing sun. More than any of the other Grand Slam events of tennis (the French, Wimbledon, the US Open), the Australian Open (AO, for short) has surprise finalists.

Last year, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga came out of nowhere to reach the final beating Rafael Nadal en route, then the world number 2. The year before, Fernando Gonzalez of Chile made the finals. Players like Rainer Schuettler, Arnaud Clement, Thomas Johannson (who won), Marcos Baghdatis have reached the finals in recent years. If these names don't exactly roll of your tongue, no worries, mate, it's typical of the AO.

Men's tennis is usually a game of the young. The best players often blossom by 18 or 19 if not younger. Boris Becker won Wimbledon at 17. Mats Wilander won the French at 17 too. Pete Sampras won the US Open at 19. Rarely does a player who has been toiling on the tour blossom at 25. The exceptions are maybe someone like James Blake who, at 28, plays as well as he ever has. He's had a slow rise to top 10 and it's more a testament to his physical prowess than anything else.

So how did Fernando Verdasco suddenly play so well at 25? How did he push world number 1 Rafael Nadal, a guy who he had never beaten to 5 scintillating sets?

Although Nadal and Federer are known to be some of the best hitters in the game, it's rarely pointed out how mentally tough they are. Nadal, in particular, rarely has bad patches where he gets impatient and just lashes out. He's a disciplined player. What helps is just how tenacious he is. He continues to fight, to hit great shots, to run down balls that you don't think he will. As Verdasco said in the interview afterwards, Nadal makes you win the point several times.

Both players, however, are mentally tough and it explains why they are numbers 1 and 2 in the world. They rarely have bad lapses, which means they are always competitive.

There are players that hit a ton. Players like Tomas Berdych, who pushed Federer to 5 sets, or Ernests Gulbis, or even Fernando Verdasco. These players often lack in the mental toughness department. They get frustrated or nervous when they get down. They can't sustain a level of excellence it takes to win at the very top.

In principle, that's good for players like Verdasco. Verdasco suffered from several things that prevented him from moving to the top. First, his serve wasn't so good, especially his second serve. Part of that was nerves. He played an awful Davis Cup match that he won. Good that he won. Awful in that he was so nervous, he made lots of bad shots. He was only saved by his opponent playing just as bad.

Second was fitness. Verdasco's generally pretty fit, but to play at the best levels in tennis, you must be able to run all day. It means that today's players are less likely to have the longevity of players from the past where running shots down was not as important to the game as it is today. Almost every top player works very hard on speed and agility drills and fitness to run hours, especially in a tournament as hot as the Australian Open.

Most people felt, for a variety of reasons, that Nadal would win over Verdasco. The reasons were simple. Nadal had never lost to Verdasco. Nadal had had easy wins up to this point. Some felt Verdasco was just a weaker version of Nadal and Nadal simply did everything better.

I, however, did not think that. First, Verdasco's serve looked good against Murray and Tsonga, his two previous opponents prior to playing Nadal. The serve is key. With it, you win cheap points. Nadal returns well, but you can never underestimate getting a few free points off serve.

Second, Verdasco hits pretty hard. He ran both Murray and Tsonga ragged with his power hitting. Indeed, once he played Nadal, he hit nearly 100 winners in the match. That power works, even against Nadal. I felt his pace would help out.

Third, he beat Tsonga. It's one thing to upset a top player like Andy Murray. The great Roger Federer beat Pete Sampras in an early round at Wimbledon only to lose to Tim Henman in the next round. Time and again, a top player is upset by a lower ranked player and that lower ranked player bows out meekly to his next opponent.

This didn't happen to Verdasco. If anything, he looked more impressive against Tsonga, who was laboring in the heat and humidity to keep up with Verdasco.

It turned out to be more than correct. Verdasco opened up with a first set win in a tiebreak where he took an early lead. Basically, neither player had a whiff of a break point.

In the second set, Nadal had one break to win 6-4, and people felt, well, Nadal's going to roll. Indeed, Nadal broke Verdasco. But Verdasco broke back at love. Then Nadal broke again. And here's the surprise. Verdasco broke back again. They stayed even til the tiebreak where Verdasco made a few errors and Nadal took the tiebreak.

With a two sets to one lead, conventional wisdom says the better player would then take over and win the fourth set, often easily. The weaker player generally concedes he's given the best he's got, so that is that. The better player gains confidence, begins to hit more freely.

Except things didn't go as planned. The fourth set, which I saw none of, went to a tiebreak and Verdasco took that set rather unexpectedly.

In the fifth set, Nadal served first. Normally, this is an advantage. It means, once you get close to the end of the set, that a break by the player serving first automatically wins the set. A break by the trailing player means the leading player still has a chance to break back and tie.

Verdasco struggled to hold serve to 4-all. After ekeing out that win, he reached 0-30 on Nadal's serve and even got a look at a second serve which he promptly dumped into the net. 3 points later and Nadal had held serve and it was 5-4.

At this point, Verdasco serves and gets to 0-40 after some errors and a double fault. He then plays two aggressive points at net to get to 30-40. He misses the first serve, then, the second serve, well, it goes short. People said he choked. He served four double faults the entire match, two in the final game, and one at match point.

Will Verdasco take this victory as a stepping stone to a better future? Only time will tell. His game and mental resolve seem much better and if he can continue to play like this, he can be a solid top ten player.

Not bad for a guy of 25.

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Review: Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is a film of the "World is Flat" era. Although Bollywood films have been around for years, they were beginning to register in the brains of Americans perhaps in the mid 90s. I had heard of such films from 1991 or 1992, but it probably took Americans until 1995 or so to get some idea of Bollywood films. Roger Ebert wrote about Bollywood when he went to visit India some number of years.

With a large number of Indians in the US, the advent of freely available video on YouTube and the like, Bollywood films are at least somewhat accessible in the US. I remember a few years ago, some company, I think DirecTV made a commercial with a guy sitting and dancing in his seat to a Bollywood film when the actor in the film stops acting and says "This is awful! You should be watching an action picture or science fiction!" and goes on to suggest DirectTV before continuing on with the dance. I thought that was particularly obscure, though very funny, tapping into a phenomenon few Americans were aware of.

India's impact in the popular imagination has come courtesy of the Internet age, which has meant a transformation of the world in so many ways. For example, the increasing access of the Internet to well-educated Indians has opened up the world to India, and this means more than entertainment. It also means access to software.

The open source revolution would not have been half as successful without the Web, which allowed you to get to the software. The computer revolution not only transformed the US, but it meant other countries could get involved, and thus was born, merely a few years after the browser, a huge Indian IT industry and the well-known call centers.

Slumdog Millionaire taps into all of modern India, though it focuses on a side of India that few people, including Indians, have seen depicted in Indian films. Most developing nations seem to go through a phase where film becomes extremely popular. At one point, Taiwanese were the most avid filmgoers. Eventually, film is replaced by television and the quality of television goes up, while films become less escapist fare and deal with topics that are more artistic and less wildly popular.

The common Bollywood film is escapism (Bollywood, so called, because its center is in Bombay, thus Bombay Hollywood, or Bollywood, for short). Due to the strong traditions of song and dance in India, infused through centuries of tradition, most films have their Austin Powers like moment where the lead actor and actress dance and "sing". I say "sing" because singing has been a tradition, and you don't let actors and actresses (a la Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter) do their own singing. Oh, no, that won't do.

Although the trend in American musicals, however rare they are now, is to let the actors do their own singing, when musicals were popular, it was common to dub other singers. Julie Andrews apparently sang for Audrie Hepburn in one film. In this case, though, it was one singing actress singing for a non-singing actress. In Bollywood films, singers whose faces never see the light of day, but whose name are well-known, e.g. Asha Bhosle, voice over famous actors who are asked to act and dance, but not sing their own songs (just as most actors would not play their own musical instruments).

There have been films set in India before, but usually, in stereotypical views of India, or from a mostly Western viewpoint, or from the long past.

Slumdog Millionaire explores the seedy underbelly of huge cities, termed "metros" in India, where large numbers of the extremely poor live in slums.

Interestingly enough, the film focuses on two Muslim brothers, Salim and Jamal. Jamal is the ostensible hero of the film, who is on the verge of winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?. The film, as most people know, is told in flashback, as Jamal explains how an uneducated slumdog knows the answers to very difficult questions, and each answer reveals a dark period in his life.

You can appreciate the accuracy of some parts of the film if you know a bit of Hindi and have visited India. I was in Mumbai about two years ago, and there are kids who come to the taxis begging for money. I was told that if you have a baby, you would get even more money. The average well-to-do Indian is as unmoved by this experience as we are when we see beggars on the street. Americans are typically shocked, and want to give money to the poor Indians, which they are more than happy to take.

One of the scenes involves a child who sings well enough that his keepers decide to blind him purposely so he can fetch even more money. I will say I didn't see any blind child beggars, but I could see this happening.

Roger Ebert notes that these kids (Jamal and Salim) are scam artists and convince foreigners to take their shoes off so they can steal them. However, what he doesn't know is that various temples (like the Taj Mahal) require all visitors to go barefoot, with their shoes held at a central area and picked up at the end of the day. The idea, I believe, is more out of respect for the area much like Asians prefer you to remove your shoes before entering the main house.

You can hear terms like "chai walla" used in the film, which basically is a tea guy. Jamal works at a call center where he delivers tea to employees. When you have a country of a billion people, keeping them employed is a big issue, so small services like delivering tea to IT employees is one way to do this. It's considered a lowly job which is why the host of the game show makes fun of his background.

Mumbai is well known for dabbawallas. These guys pick up meals from the wives, lunch boxes called "tiffins" (apparently a British term, but like many British terms, only preserved in modern Indian English), deliver the meals to their husbands and return the boxes after lunch. The efficiency of delivering these meals for low cost to many employees is considered a marvel of logistical efficiency. These guys are also called "tiffin wallas" which means the "tiffin" or "lunch box" guy.

Knowing some swear words also helps. Sprinklings of "mother chod" or "chutia" (which is motherf*cker and c*nt) respectively add to the roughness of the film, something that again, would probably not be seen as much in Bollywood films which are generally family entertainment.

The film opens up with classic films by Amitabh Bachchan, who is India's most famous actor (at least, in Bollywood). His son, Abhishek, married Aishwarya Rai, called by 60 minutes as the most beautiful woman in the world. Unlike their Hollywood equivalents, movie star weddings are generally for life. There's no Elizabeth Taylor, seven marriage equivalent, in India where divorce is still practically unknown and where arranged marriages are still quite common.

Funny enough, Slumdog Millionaire does follow a convention of Bollywood films which is the main characters are in love. As much as arranged marriages are the norm in India, it doesn't make for good drama. Parental involvement with children is still huge, and one way it often manifests itself is through arranged marriages. Jamal pines for Latika, his childhood sweetheart.

I give credit to the casting director for finding little kids, especially the one that plays Salim, that resemble the adult version. I'd almost believe they cast the kid first and found a comparable teen to play the adult role.

Although a film set in India, there are Western touches, including Danny Boyle's very visual eye. He also portrays Westerners who are sympathetic to the slumdogs. This comes from an understanding of how the West perceives Indians (as tourists).

Boyle had music done by A.R. Rahman, a famous Bollywood compose, compose music for Slumdog.

The film ends in a Bollywood dance scene, though clear the actors are not dancers. This is done with the casualness of average people doing dance, which leads to a kind of realness, and is perhaps the cleverest way to keep an audience sitting through credits (for those that hate to do credits).

Ah, so the film itself. Well, I had basically known the outline of the plot. Although the visuals are stunning, the history interesting, I just couldn't get into the main story. It probably doesn't help that Dev Patel is only OK as an actor. Also, the idea of using Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as the conceit was, I dunno, a bit too cute.

Even that idea is a commentary on the international spread of ideas. That show, along with Big Brother and American Idol (which was Pop Idol in the UK), have spread throughout the world. Using this show is a sly way to comment on this phenomenon.

I'm currently listening to Jai Ho, the song used to accompany the dance sequence at the end. It's interesting how they decide to let the woman sing in a "lower" voice. Bollywood songs have women sing in falsetto to sound even younger. It's so commonly done that I'm sure the average Indian doesn't even think that the women are singing so high. Admittedly, all the men sound alike. You never hear a gruff voiced or extremely baritone man sing a song in these films. This is one fallout of lacking singer-songwriters. Singers sing, and songwriters write song, so it creates generic sounding singers and songs.

So the film was good and gives a view of India I has only barely seen, though perhaps more aware of than those who haven't visited India. However, I had a tough time getting fully engaged in the story of Jamal's longing for Latika, since she is something of a weird distant memory, a little bit like Anakin's longing for Amidala/Padme.

I'd give it about a B, I think. Worth watching to give insight into India, and I'm sure some folks will love the way it ends.

Birth of a Nation

Barack Obama will be sworn in at about noon today as the 44th President of the United States of America.

It's a ceremony to be sure. Despite the economic times, much money is being spent to make sure this is a ceremony people will remember. People say it's the worst economic times since the Great Depression, but the depression has unemployment rates of 25% and another 25% were partly employed. The US is maybe 7-8% unemployed right now, which is high, but not like the Great Depression.

I was talking to an elderly Indian (from India) who felt that the significance of Obama being the first African American president was not that great since, in his mind, blacks and whites were pretty much equal now. Even if that were so, and it's hard to claim that for a variety of reasons, it's still significant that an African American is being elected given that none have been elected before.

The funny thing is this. Everyone knows he has a white mother. Everyone knows he was raised by his white grandparents. His father abandoned him. But many whites and even many African Americans look at Barack as African American. He simply has the facial features of someone African American, even if his values were shaped as much by growing up in white America as the next person.

Obama has, of course, embraced the African American culture. He moved to Chicago. He married someone with strong ties to Chicago in Michelle Obama. He joined an African American church before he left it. But it is as much an adopted culture as anything.

In the end, does it matter? Obama embodies this notion of unification of white America and black America, but he was elected by mostly ignoring the issue of race or to emphasize his white roots, given that he visually appears black.

And even if he is half-white, does it matter? As long as we perceive him to be African American, then he is.

One fascinating aspect of his Presidency is how he used Abraham Lincoln as inspiration. He started his campaign in Springfield. He took a train ride from Philadelphia to Washington much like Lincoln. Perhaps there's a bit of irony that it was Lincoln who was in far greater danger of being assassinated on his route to DC. We have reached a time where most people wouldn't even think of it, though I suppose it only takes a small number to carry out such a nasty act.

When FDR assumed the Presidency, he reassured Americans through radio, then a brand-new technology. In those days, citizens still respected the Presidency, and they were reassured by his words. These days, Americans are far more savvy, so far more cynical. They aren't swayed as much by words, and often feel a dissenting voice is their right. And this means conservatives! Bush would have been happy if he could have squelched dissent much like old time Soviet propagandists.

It's funny, but as well read as Obama is, surely he's read the Lincoln-Douglas debates with two candidates running for the Illinois senate (although Obama won, and Lincoln lost). In these debates, Lincoln was accused of being sympathetic with slaves and blacks which he vigorously denied. He felt that, in the forseeable future, blacks would not stand equal with whites.

Now that could have been political talk designed to get him elected. He could have changed his mind over the years as he became President and was President. But at least at one point in his career, he wasn't that noble person, that mythological figure. Obama knows, of course, that Americans view Lincoln as a myth and know very little about him.

Despite the accessibility of the Internet, the desire to read about Lincoln is far less than reading the latest installment of Harry Potter. We prefer to think of Lincoln as the man that freed the slaves, the President that presided over a Civil War, as Honest Abe, and finally as the President assassinated by a Southerner.

Would Lincoln have thought, some 145 years after his Presidency that the United States would have suffered a Great Depression, the civil rights movement, and elected a man born of an immigrant would be President? Perhaps he would have.

But we don't have to dream that. On the day after Martin Luther King's observed birthday, it's reality.

Idol Worship

American Idol starts in two phase. The first phase is the judges go to a select number of cities and listen to a bunch of performers. They get to go to Hollywood.

The performers usually fall into three categories: good to very good, not quite there, and awful.

You would like to believe that everyone that falls into good to very good gets to go to Hollywood, but I don't think that's the case.

For example, if you tried out, and you were an opera singer, a professional one, for that matter, and sang opera, out you'd go. Sorry, this is pop singing, not opera. And to that extent, folk singing is usually out, country singing is tolerated. Basically, your best chance to get in, for lack of a better phrase, is to sing "black" which means a lot of vibrato and extending out notes for a while.

Black singing is, in fact, so popular, that it has defined singing, at least, diva style singing. Thus, Celine Dion or Justin Timberlake, two fairly white individuals, sing in this style.

You aren't going to get people singing like Sufjan Stevens to make it on Idol.

Furthermore, there are folks that simply don't look the part. Every contestant that looks, for lack of a better word, inbred, i.e., not sexy, and indeed, far from sexy, has a bad voice. Why is that? Isn't it possible that one of these folks who don't look the part has a great voice?

It's possible, but I bet they never show them on TV. They don't want to admit to that kind of bias. Here's someone that's not attractive that would get voted out because looks matter and yet they have a great voice. Why don't they show these folks? Because they'd look bad, that's why.

So American Idol prefers that we laugh at these individuals who look and sing horribly, and implicitly tells the rest of the world that you have to look good, otherwise your talents are meaningless.

And that's a sad commentary about American Idol.

But no one much seems to care.

Clothes Make the Man

I was listening to NPR this morning and there's a buzz about what Michelle Obama, the new First Lady, will wear to the various inauguration balls (yes, plural). The fascination by the fashion industry and indeed by the average Jane means Obama must make her decisions wisely. She can't be too flashy, nor too expensive. She should exude class.

Men rarely run into this problem. The tuxedo has meant that most men can look pretty much alike and so therefore no one cares what Barack Obama will look like. It's interesting no one has pushed this concept so men can break out of the rather rigid mold.

But I don't want to talk about the clothing of the new President nor his wife. I want to talk about my own clothing.

Yesterday I donned a black long sleeve pullover of some sort with dark blue, let's call it black, pants. Black and more black. I was criticized by a co-worker for using a uniform color scheme throughout.

He recalled an incident when he was merely in the sixth grade and his fellow rugrats chided him for his lack of fashion couture. Ah, those 11 year old twits, thinking fashion when they should be worried about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or perhaps their multiplication tables. This made such an impression on his impressionable mind that he is now hyper-sensitive to this basic "rule" of clothing.

Most people have no problems with this, especially guys. They wear blue jeans and probably lack too many blue colored shirts. So it always contrasts well.

Indeed men's clothing are often so bland that the variations occur above the waist, where jeans will often suffice every day of the week.

And so it goes.

Working

I just caught a Subway commercial where they sing some tune about five dollar meals. In it, they show three men dressed as construction workers singing it. They alternate with two women who sorta look business casual as they sing their song.

Normally an ad I wouldn't think that much about.

But I did think about it.

Why construction workers? It's an occupation that has comedic values but also an occupation that is thought of as masculine (construction guys always seem to have overweight fellows, which may contrast with the healthy eating Subway prefers). In short, comedic and masculine.

Why not doctors or lawyers or whatever? Doctors have stereotyped clothing, but maybe people don't feel enough kinship with doctors. Lawyers don't have anything particularly lawyerly. Judges do, and that could be amusing.

Women? They didn't pick a particular occupation for them. They seemed to be singing in a mall in a business casual dress, something you might expect a secretary to wear, but nothing that screams out a particular occupation.

Why's that? There are a handful of occupations that have distinctive women's outfit, such as nurses and nuns. Why did they decide not to pick an occupation for these women? And why were they a bit thinner?

All these things have to be going through the minds of the advertisers. Why have a men-only group and a women-only group? Once you have three men, then one of them has to be African American, but the other two should be white. These decisions aren't made on a whim. There are rules for all of this stuff.

All from a Subway commercial.

The Pendulum Theory

I was at the tennis wall today trying to hit my backhand and finding, wow, couldn't seem to do it. A tennis wall, for those who are curious, is merely a wall that is very tall (one hopes) and has a line painted for the net (one hopes). It is used in place of hitting with another person or a ball machine. There aren't many good walls around, but I live near one. Hitting against the wall has many problems, but the one advantage it has is it's not a person. Therefore, you don't have to worry about irritating the person as you practice a shot yet again. You have time to sit, reflect, contemplate.

My purpose for being at the wall today was to work on my backhand. Although it may not be that obvious, there's more than one way to hold a tennis racquet. If you were to grab a racquet as it lies flat down, palm first, you would be holding it in a semi-Western grip (most likely). If the racquet were sideways so it was sitting on the edge and you put your palm on top of the racquet, then that would be an Eastern backhand grip.

I had been using a grip called the Continental grip, not so much because I wanted to use that grip on my backhand but because I was already using it for sliced backhands (this is where you hit a ball with underspin) and volleys (balls hit without bouncing, very close to the net).

I looked at a video Saturday night and either misunderstood it (very possible) or disagreed with the way they suggested I hold the racquet which might be described as a Western backhand grip. This grip is so rarely used for the backhand (sometimes it's called an extreme Eastern grip) that the name Western backhand is not that enlightening.

The Western backhand grip is actually a Eastern forehand grip flipped over to be used as a backhand grip. I realized I was holding it roughly in this style, and it felt awkward.

Once I figured out how to hold an Eastern backhand grip, I began fiddling with how my thumb should be placed. A racquet grip is usually just small enough that the thumb and index finger jockey for the same space. There are several ways to deal with it, and eventually I figured out how it is (roughly) done by players like Federer and Gasquet.

Anyway, the point is, I had changed my backhand grip and I wanted to try it out on court. The problem was that it felt awkward. Worse still, I was gripping it way too tight. Tennis is about staying relaxed, so I knew I had to loosen the grip some more. But I couldn't swing the racquet properly in a mini-tennis drill against the wall. It just felt wrong and I had no consistency.

Mini-tennis is when you hit tennis between the service line. The court has several lines. The two far lines parallel to the net are called the baselines. Halfway between the net and the baseline is the service line. If you play between the service lines, that's mini tennis.

Mini-tennis is meant to teach you to hit very softly while still practicing good technique. The idea is if you can hit the ball this softly with good technique then you should be able to hit faster balls with good technique.

I knew one problem was that I wasn't taking my racquet back enough. So I recalled some lesson that suggested that, and it helped a little. Now today was a sunny day, and on sunny days, I can see my shadow on the ground, which is a poor man's mirror. The shadow lets me see what I am doing in enough detail that it provides useful feedback.

So I began swinging the racquet a bit like a pendumlum. Back, forth, flipping my wrist at the nadir of the pendulum swing, so that when the racquet was reached the apex on my left side, the back of the racquet (where I'd hit my backhand) was facing forward (away from me), and when the reached the apex on my right side, the other face of the racquet (where I would hit a forehand with) was facing forward (away from me).

I figured this rhythm of going back and forth in this manner would help my mini-tennis drill. I would swing forward to the wall as part of the pendulum, then as the ball went to the wall, I would start to swing the racquet back the other direction. That's the pendulum in the other direction.

I had just watched a presentation at TED, an organization that invites smart, engaging speakers to talk about interesting topics to other smart, engaged audience members. In this talk, Steven Strogatz talks about how, despite the increase in entropy (i.e., disorder), there is also a strong tendency towards order or synchronization.

To demonstrate this idea, he took two tiny metronomes, two bottles, a pamphlet, and placed the two metronomes on top. Although they were out of sync to begin with, the motion of the metronomes were synchronized by the surface. Here's an example with five metronomes getting synced up.

Anyway, that thought was in the back of my mind. The body wants to synchronize against something, and this pendulum idea would create that synchronization.

To be fair, I do have some idea how to hit a backhand. I don't know if this idea would work out that well for someone completely new to tennis who hasn't built up a lot of the muscle memory of hitting a backhand.

I decided to apply this to the forehand. However, with my forehand, I wanted to work my body more into the shot.

Too often, beginners in tennis think of tennis as a shot that is hit by the arm. They don't know how to get the body involved more. The reason you want the body to be involved more is momentum, and that of a physics variety. Momentum is mass times velocity. When you swing the arm, you may have great velocity, but you don't have great mass since the arm isn't very massive.

Now I've tried to figure out ways to get the body more into the shot, and it's been partly successful, though awkward too. My shots look very stiff, and tennis is, as I've mentioned before, about staying relaxed.

One way to stay relaxed is to do twists. To get an idea of this, put your feet about shoulder width apart. Put your hands on your hips. Rotate your shoulders and hips so that you face to the left. To do this comfortably, when you face left, you should lift your right heel up so that only the point of the right toe is touching the ground. The right foot should have rotate some so that the shoelaces point left.

Then, twist so you shoulders and hips cause you to face to your right. Your right foot goes from being on tip to being flat. Your left foot comes up on tip. Just go back and forth several times. That provides the pendumlum action.

Now add the racquet to this. As you rotate right (for a right hander) get the racquet to point straight back. As you rotate left, hit a windshield wiper motion. The whole body is involved in this motion. The shoulders, the hips, the feet, and the racquet. By practicing this pendulum motion, you are incorporating your body into the shot and it's done at a nice relaxed, repeatable fashion.

And that's my pendulum theory of tennis.