Selective Knowledge

Once you've lived some place any amount of time, you gain familiarity with it. I've lived in Tennessee, hmm, maybe 10 years full-time, then part time another 2 years (mostly summers). I know the local area that I live near pretty well, though nothing much more than about 10 miles out.

For a while, I knew a few places in Ithaca, and then the places in Maryland near the University.

I probably know only a few other places somewhat well, but nothing beyond that. Google Maps added this street view idea, but until they have live video down every street you might imagine, it won't get close to approximating living in a new place.

Imagine you're interested in moving to San Francisco. Imagine you could get on some game or program that would let you drive, during rush hour traffic or during normal traffic from a place you might live to a place of work. OK, maybe you can skip through the real-time hassle of waiting in rush-hour traffic (which really should be named no-move-hour traffic). Then, you'd know the ins and outs of San Francisco before you even bother to move. When you get there, you'd have a familiarity that would otherwise take some time to develop.

Coming back to Tennessee, I knew of three places to play tennis. Well, two. There used to be this one place very close by, with lit tennis courts. Then, it went under disrepair, with grass growing everywhere. Those courts were eventually torn down and replaced by a baseball field. That left the high school courts, which had its courts doubled from 6 to 14 (more than doubled) and the one across town.

I hadn't played on those courts since I played a tournament when I was maybe 14. I don't think I played there with my friends. There are maybe 10 or so courts there, but more importantly, there's a tennis wall there. As tennis walls go, it's OK. It has a reasonably height, maybe 12 feet high (it should be 2-3 feet higher, but I quibble), and maybe half the width of a real tennis court. The surface is at least a tennis court surface rather than a blacktop surface.

There are two sides to this wall, one that faces a street, and one that faces some shrubs and bushes, where tennis balls can easily get lost.

The side facing the street at least has a fence to make it harder to hit it on the street. The other side, much to the lack of wisdom of the city, is missing a fence. Even a short fence that blocks the shrubs in the back, or having the shrubs dug up so tennis balls wouldn't get lost would be a great help. I spent some 15 minutes searching for a ball in the foliage. What a pain.

My latest goals are two fold. On the forehand, as usual, I am aiming to strike the ball more in front of the body. This, I suspect, is the new thing that both Federer and Nadal do, but it takes a while to train the body to want to hit that much more in front. I've been trying to do this for several months now.

In addition to meeting the ball in front, I'm still trying to keep the angle of the wrist and forearm at 90 degrees, and to use the full arm in the motion, and to use body rotation, and to keep the body relaxed, and not to clench too hard, and to be able to hit very slowly, reasonably accurately.

And one more recent thing. I've been trying to get my right foot to lift so I am on my toes at impact. This was a recent piece of advice I saw on a video. At first, I wondered, what difference would that make?

But then I thought about it some more, and I was thinking, what happens if I don't lift? Then, my right foot stays planted. When it stays planted, there's a greater inclination not to rotate the torso of the body. So that little bit of getting the right heel off the ground at impact allows you to rotate the torso more easily, or more precisely, it doesn't act as an impediment to rotating the torso.

Now, I know that's a lot of things to do, and I also forget to move my left arm parallel to the baseline too, but over time, I remind myself of this or that, and slowly, all the pieces come together.

I feel that when I'm not getting much power, it's because I shorten my stroke and hit a half-stroke, and that leads to a no-power shot. I'll have to pay attention to myself to see if I do that or not, but that might explain why I have issues.

I used to think hitting against a wall was kinda useless, because it wouldn't simulate a real person. And while that's true somewhat, I believe if you can hit against the wall, it will certainly not hurt your strokes, and probably will benefit. You could argue, for example, hitting against a ball machine doesn't help much because the ball machine stays stationary.

It may move the ball around, but if you hit down the line, the ball machine doesn't respond from that position.

Even so, because it hits so regularly (unlike real people), you are likely to improve a lot quicker against a machine than otherwise. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't hit inconsistently. The burden is solely on you.

And, for the first time in a while, hitting against the wall didn't force a lot of blood into my forearm making it to stiff and painful to hit the ball.

The other thing I'm working on is a transition to a one-handed backhand. As I've mentioned before, I used to hit a one-handed backhand, though that was like 20 years ago. Still, I was OK at hitting it, and it took me a long time to get OK at hitting a two-handed shot, as I made mistakes that I had no resource to correct (no web at the time, and certainly no tennis web resources like Fuzzy Yellow Balls). So I continually made mistakes with no one to suggest improvements. It's a slow way to learn.

The reason for such a big transition is because I feel I can hit a bit harder with a one-hander, and it seems more fun to hit it than the two-hander. This means I've totally abandoned (well, mostly) hitting the two-hander. I still read up on the shot just in case I decide to go back.

I still have yet to record my shots, but I hope to do so Sunday. I need to read up more on my camcorder and see what it can do.