Lessons

When I was 13 or so, my mother enrolled in me in local tennis lessons. They were held for two weeks, five days a week, for an hour each. In those days, it was probably quite cheap to get lessons. I'm sure it was about 20 dollars each for my brother and me to get lessons.

They were group lessons. The first year we were taught by some guy named Jay, I think. He had learned tennis at the Dennis Van der Meer camp. He was the guy who gained some notoriety coaching Billie Jean during her match against Bobby Riggs and became a contributor to Tennis Magazine. He thought he had boiled down playing tennis to a certain few key steps and if only you'd practice that, you'd get good.

In hindsight, he taught in something of a classic style. My first racquet for that class was an old wooden racquet that my dad had bought used, and we had another one that seemed like a cheap K-mart brand.

At the time, the two-hander was still something of a novelty. Despite some very high profile two-handers, Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, and some lesser players like Harold Solomon, it was still slowly making its way to tennis instruction. So I was taught to hit a one-handed shot. My brother read an article on Gene Mayer and how he hit his two-hander on both sides, and adopted that style for some time.

The following summer, we took lessons from Dave and Arnel. They were, at one point, on the tennis team, but had recently gone to college, and saw this as a summer job, teaching kids to play tennis. Dave was a good looking guy sort of the Mark Hamill type and Arnel seemed Filipino, and was there to assist and hang out.

I don't recall if we took lessons after that. Basically, after the first year, I was pretty much self-taught, which turned out OK in hindsight, but not great.

Although I learned tennis in the early 80s, I was trying to learn what was termed then and now as "modern" tennis, which meant a loopy forehand, open-stance shots, and so forth. I remember playing videotapes of Mats Wilander and Bjorn Borg (in an exhibition, no less) trying to imitate their shots, and later on, trying to imitate early Agassi. I tried the Lendl forehand.

What I didn't realize then was how faithful I was to their shots, which was, in hindsight, not very. Early on, I learned to hit pretty good topspin on my forehand, but switched to a two-hander, and could never get good topspin on that shot. I would hit a slice backhand too.

One thing that was a little unusual was that I liked coming to net and hitting drop shots, even early on. It didn't hurt that John McEnroe was on top, and had deft shots.

For many years afterwards, I took no more lessons. I wasn't sure who I'd take them from, and they would have been pricey had I looked.

A coworker of mine whose wife had just joined him after finishing her degree wanted to learn tennis with his wife, and they had signed up for lessons in DC at the site of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic where they have a semi-public court, where there's no membership, but you pay for the use of the courts.

I took lessons with Dale who looked a bit like Ron Paul. Dale taught a kind of tennis as exercise style for advanced players. He offered very little instruction. The idea was to go and do drills and essentially get in shape to play tennis. My tennis only improved incidentally, mostly through just playing.

Around Thanksgiving of last year, I took a lesson from Joel. He taught in this holistic manner. Throw the racquet at the ball he would opine. He would suggest that the racquet wanted to move in a certain way, and you had to be free and relaxed.

I didn't take another private lesson until January when I decided to take one at Cabin John with a guy named Mike. Mike was a youngish Asian dude in his early 20s. He was a bit more technical about what he wanted me to do, rotating my shoulders more, etc. He seemed a touch dispassionate, I seem to recall.

Then I didn't take lessons for a while, a few months. I heard about these high schoolers that would teach lessons at about half the cost of normal lessons at public courts. So I took three or so lessons from a guy named Sharat, who was finishing up his junior year in high school.

He was a pretty chatty dude, talking about how to hit the ball. He favored teaching you to play mini-tennis, suggesting that good technique comes from being able to hit the ball well when you are hitting in slow motion. If you have bad technique hitting slowly, you'd have bad technique hitting quickly. He was reasonably good, but still I felt something missing.

By this point, I was reading Fuzzy Yellow Balls and Essential Tennis. I knew Ian said, on his website, that he had private lessons. Although he was a bit of a hike from where I lived, it was still under an hour to get there. I wasn't sure what to expect, but so far, he's given the best lessons so far.

He's able to offer advice in the "modern style" dealing mostly with using the core more to his shots. He's able to observe strokes then offer a simple idea here or there to focus on one problem at a time. I've tried teaching tennis, and I find that I get nitpicky on all sorts of things. In the end, the person doesn't listen so much. Some of the advice I've heard before, but I didn't know to apply it to my own game.

A lot of tennis is surprisingly non-intuitive. For example, most people think of tennis as an arm sport. Apparently, if you play other sports like baseball or if you box, you find that you need to use more of your body if you want to get good power. The arm can get pretty strong on its own, but it can do even more if you coordinate it with your body.

There's plenty of players that don't turn their bodies when hitting shots. This turn helps add power to shots, but it takes a bit of coordination to do. I've been working on that more, since I used to not do it. I'm sure there are still issues with how I hit shots.

With volleys, I used to never cross-step to reach a volley nor turn sideways to hit. I'd frame the ball but never knew how I was doing it. I'd use too much hand motion trying to hit a ball and get no pace when I hit shots.

I understand these aren't intellectual endeavors but physical ones. And they're costly to learn these lessons, but they are rewarding too. Intellectual tasks require discovering the unknown often with little assistance except your own intellect. Learning tennis is trying to solve a problem to which some people have solutions to (at a price, to be fair).

Few things in life have answers as pat as tennis. Although it's taken some work to find someone to offer good lessons, it's been worth it so far!

WristAssist

So I finally broke down and decided to buy a WristAssist from SquareHit Tennis. This is a device that looks like a wrist brace (sorta like what you might wear if you broke a bone in your forearm).

Here's the idea. A lot of players "break" their wrists when playing tennis. No, I don't mean literally break it. What I found out, a few months ago, was that the racquet and the forearm should be at about 90 degrees. Some players play with the angle nearly straight (i.e., 180 degrees). Some move from a 90 degree, and try to flip their wrists on impact. Now, in reality, that does happen (that is, there is a kind of flipping, of a controlled sort, happening).

The device is a wrist brace with a cord attached to the throat, that forces this roughly 90 degree angle.

The first thing I noticed, when wearing it, is that it is a pain to wear when it's hot. You sweat all over, and the brace gets wet too. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it feels very constraining. For example, with this device, it's hard to bounce a ball and pick a ball.

Having said that, the idea is use the wrist assist for maybe 10-20 minutes, then play without out it, hoping that, even without the wrist assist, your brain and body will react as if it had it on, and hold the wrist properly.

I let Shrini try it out, and thought I thought he hit better with it, and controlled the ball better, he found it terribly constraining, and couldn't wait to get it off.

I wish there was some kind of quick-release, that would allow the cord to be removed easily, and reattached easily too. I'm not sure how you'd do it, but that would make it a little more comfortable.

Overall, is it worth it? Um, I don't know. I think it is a useful tool. It won't work miracles, but it will make you more aware of how your wrist should be, and while it's pricey for what it is, I think it was a reasonable purchase, that is, the device is useful.

Mirror, Mirror

In a famous Star Trek episode, Kirk, Uhura, McCoy, and Scotty are sent to an alternate universe where there's an empire, including a goateed Spock, and Chekhov (do you know there's a tennis player named Pavel Chekhov--no really!).

But that's not the point of this blog entry.

Of course, it's about tennis, as my blog used to talk about interesting stuff, and now it's mostly about tennis.

A little while ago, I bought a mini-DV camcorder. This was a difficult decision, because frankly, unlike digital cameras, there are lots of different mediums to pick from a camcorder. Should I get a DVD format? Or a hard drive? Or use the mini-DV cassettes?

Fortunately, I found a website that suggested mini-DV was at a good price point. Cheap, yet high resolution. I found a Canon camcorder for less than 250 dollars (the ZR-950) to be specific.

The goal was to record myself hitting tennis balls, and see where I could improve. One problem I ran into, rather immediately, was that the first time I used it, no one in my family (except my brother who wasn't in town) plays tennis. In particular, I couldn't have someone rally with me.

This meant I had to feed myself the balls. Since I had six tennis balls, I did this six times, from three different angles. Side on, from the front, and from the back.
I recorded this on Monday. I didn't look at the video until last night (Wednesday).

All I can say is that I'm surprised I hit that way. Shrini felt that it didn't matter how I did my windup, as long as I hit OK. I suppose, but no pro hits my way, and I figure that at the very least, I should try to look like most good players look, and see if that helps or not.

This is one of the major reasons I got a camcorder. The way I hit and the way I think I hit are two different things. Without something to look at, I would not make any changes to the way I hit. You could argue that many of the things we do, in particular, drive a car, rely on seeing what we're doing, and then making small adjustments to make sure we are on track. These adjustments are in reaction to what we see.

Similarly, without a good way to tell what I do, I don't realize what I'm doing, so I don't know how to make appropriate changes.

But now I do. Next step is to download the video to the computer and look at what I'm doing more closely.

Sliced and Diced

I really should have called this entry "Wrong Footed".

Oh before I tell you what that's all about, I was watching this old, old match between Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver. Most people recall that Laver played in the 60s. But his career lasted long enough that he was still playing in the mid 1970s, and Borg started getting attention in 1973. So there was still some overlap between the two men, and they did play one another.

During the match, Pat Summerall, veteran sportscaster gets to play the tennis noob. Once upon a time, tennis commentators, especially on CBS, felt their audience had no clue about tennis, so they had to explain every little thing. The other pro commentator sounded like Pancho Gonzalez.

Summerall asked the "dumb" question "What does it mean to wrongfoot someone?". Pancho dutifully replied that it meant to hit the ball behind them as they are trying to go to cover the open court.

I can only imagine how this would sound if this were college football. What is a flea flicker? What is offsides? What is false start? What is holding? You could go on and on and on, because there are a ton of rules in football. Tennis, by comparison, is pretty simple, or at least, far less numerous.

Anyway, lately, my slice backhand has been rather poor. I come too much underneath the ball, and it lacks pace.

Now, when I worry about a stroke, I generally think from the waist and up. It didn't occur to me until very recently (today) that maybe my legs were the problem. As I was trying out my 1HBH, I knew I had to cross my front (right leg) in front of my left leg creating a closed stance.

I had not thought that this stance would be needed for the slice backhand too. I suspect that I was hitting my 1H sliced backhand with a neutral or even an open stance.

Something I can try the next time I get out on the court.

The Backhand

Suddenly, as I write "backhand", I have a flashback to Vic Braden, as he would utter "fore-hond" and "back-hond", which sounded vaguely Canadian.

Lately, I've been trying to master the one-handed backhand. I use a two-handed backhand, and have used it for a long time. However, I used to hit a one-handed backhand, when I first learned the game. If I were coaching (and were I a capable coach), I'd start someone with a one-handed backhand, even if eventually, they learn to his a two-handed backhand.

Although I've come to understand the two motions are very different, I feel the one-handed backhand serves as a good foundation for any backhand. By one-handed backhand, I should point out that I'm talking about a drive or topspin backhand, rather than a sliced backhand.

Why am I trying to learn to hit the one-handed backhand? I know a few folks that are trying to hit the shot as well, and the one-handed backhand, much more than the forehand, seems to give people a ton of trouble. In particular, many people find it really hard to control the racquet face.

Either it opens up too much (it angles upwards) and the ball hits the opposite fence, or it goes into the net. With the forehand, the error almost always seems like the player hits way too high (and uses too much arm).

OK, let me go through the one-handed backhand, even though I'm not particularly good at it.

First, I want to point out a common mistake that happens on the forehand. This is the wrist-forearm angle. As in the forehand blog entry, I want you to stand up, arms stretched out wide, as if you are a cross. Thus, your outstreched arms form a line, from the tip of the fingers through the shoulders to the other tip of the fingers.

Now imagine holding a racquet this way, so that the line formed is even longer.

Notice there's no angle between the arm and the racquet. (That angle being about 90 degrees).

Wrong!

The key to the serve, volley, forehand, backhand, is maintaining an angle, and keeping this angle throughout contact.

There are at least two more mistakes that occur when hitting the backhand, and they come from a reasonable idea. The more moving parts, the more you can whip the shot (wrong!).

In particular, some people when hitting a backhand, hinge at the elbow. That is, the elbow is bent, around 135 degrees and sometimes as severe as 90 degrees. The thinking is that as the ball approaches, the arm will straighten out during impact, thus giving another degree of freedom to really whack the ball.

While this is a good idea in theory, and might work with a robot arm, the human arm is likely, in the process, to absorb some shock from the ball, and thus reduce the power. Furthermore, even if you don't reduce the power by luck of good timing, your chances of hitting a repeatable shot is lowered.

Having said this, somehow, in racquetball, people appear to be far wristier with their shots, but even there, I don't think they use the bent-to-straight elbow much.

Second mistake is not using the left arm (for a rightie) much. The left arm plays a much bigger role in hitting a backhand (and even in a forehand) than most people realize.



Pay attention to Roger Federer's one-handed backhand setup. He creates a squarish "U" pattern with his arm in the first frame. That is, his upper arm (from elbow to shoulder) is at right angles to the forearm, which is at right angles to the racquet itself.

Now I know that I said your elbow shouldn't bend, but that's at contact. This is setup.

In the second frame, Fed has raised his racquet higher (and still, he uses his left hand to hold the racquet).

In the third frame, he drops the racquet behind him (notice his eyes, focusing on the ball). Again, he's still holding the racquet with his left hand (it's being obscured by his body), but the elbow is nearly straight now (not quite).

With only six photos, you miss a lot. An ideal photo study would have maybe 20 photos covering the same span of time. 6 photos really doesn't pick up enough details.

Basically, as the ball gets closer (after the second frame), Roger's arm begins to straighten out (not fully). The elbow is no longer 90 degrees. Meanwhile, his left hand is starting to drop the racquet behind his body.

The racquet drops to just above waist height, but is parallel to the ground, with his arm somewhat straight. His right foot is crossed ahead of his left foot, so he is in a closed stance (that is, right foot left of of his left foot, if you're facing the net).

As it gets even closer, the arm begins to drop down to waist level, again, with the racquet mostly parallel to the ground behind Roger. His arm is even straighter now.

Finally, Roger will begin to flip the racquet from behind him, to in front of him, with the butt briefly slowing (unlike his forehand), and impact the ball with the racquet aimed slightly down (for a higher ball).

There's a ton missing between the second and third photos.



In the fourth frane, Fed's arm is straightened out. There are several points to make. First, when he hits the shot, the wrist and forearm are at 90 degrees. Second, the plane of the racquet is perpendicular. Third, his racquet is basically parallel with the ground. Fourth, as he his the backhand (there aren't photos to show this, unfortunately), his arm rises up, and so the racquet moves upwards (towards the sky) and forwards (towards the net), all while the racquet stays parallel. This motion is kept until the ball has been hit, and for sometime afterwards.

Keep the racquet parallel as long as you can, moving up and forward for as long as your arm will allow. You want to be underneath the ball before impact, in the center at impact, and above the ball (were it still nearby) after impact.

The last two photos appear to be reversed. The last photo should be the shot he hits next, and the middle photo where Roger finishes. Notice that he has hit a very low forehand, which is why he's crouched to the ground. If you watch Roger's backhand in full motion, you'll see his backhand is far more elaborate (big follow through) then is pictured here.

Also missing is a picture where the butt of the racquet points to the ball.

Here's a video showing his backhand, alas a little faster than I'd like:



Roger has a monster follow-through, by the way.

To end, I want you to repeat this with me.

If you hit the ball long, you've opened the face of the racquet. If you hit the ball long, you've opened the face of the racquet. If you hit the ball long, you've opened the face of the racquet.

That means, the racquet face is pointing up, even if ever so slightly.

Indeed, Roger often has the racquet face tilted down, ever so slightly (and it is slight).

Several wrap up points. First, 90 degree angle. Second, arm straightens out sometime when the racquet his behind his back. Third, racquet is parallel from behind his back to when he hits, with the exception of a brief moment where it dips just a little as he is about to make the forward motion (getting topspin). Otherwise, it stays parallel behind him, just before impact, just after impact, and only after the ball is long gone goes he bring it up and back behind him.

The Forehand

I'm going to link three videos from Fuzzy Yellow Balls, also known as FYB. FYB is a collaboration between Will Hamilton and Adam Sieminski. Will is the frontman of the videos. He presents the material and does the talking. Adam handles the photography, and is behind the scenes. You also see Frank and Oliver, who serve as additional examples, but don't have speaking roles.

Here are the links:
Step 1. Pivot and Shoulder Turn

Step 2. Shoulder Turn

Step 3. Swing Forward to Contact

Although Will, having played college tennis, is far more skilled than me, there are a few things he doesn't point out, which I'll add to augment the videos.

First, I want to point out perhaps the most common "error" in tennis, and it affects forehand, backhand, and volley.

To illustrate the idea, which is difficult in text, I want you to do the following. Stand up, with your arms to the side at shoulder height. If someone were to look at you, you'd look like a cross. Now imagine holding your racquet in your dominant hand and having that racquet also point to the right, thus making your arms seem another two feet (plus change) longer.

Notice that the racquet is an extension of your arm. In fact, some people like to point out that pros act like the racquet is an extension of their arm.

But that's all wrong.

Pros create an angle between the racquet and their forearm that's almost 90 degrees, and this angle is maintained pretty much from the time the begin to swing their racquet forward.

There's another thing a lot of pros do, though I don't know how important it is.

Pay attention in the first video to how Frank prepares his forehand. His racquet face is tilted down before he begins to take it back. If you look at Safin, Monfils, Federer, and Djokovic, they have the racquet pointed straight up. Thus, if their racquet were like a mirror, and you were facing them (the net would be at your back if you stood between the net and the player), you'd almost see your reflection in the racquet.

Frank, meanwhile, points his racquet mostly down, so the mirror would reflect the court.

The purpose, I believe, is to get the player to think about the 90 degree angle between racquet and forearm.

The second thing that Will does, but doesn't point out (he may do so in another video), is what happens to his non-dominant hand. Since Will is a lefty, the non-dominant hand is his right hand. For me, it's my left hand.

The left hand is used to cradle the throat of the racquet. By having it there, as you pull the racquet to the side, you will turn your shoulders.

The other point I want to make is in the third video.

This is the swing up to the hit. Again, Will demonstrates it, but I believe it's not quite said out loud.

You want to rotate the body just as the racquet is dropping down. Your arm is going to be very relaxed. As you rotate (counter clockwise or to your left for a rightie, and the opposite for a leftie), the racquet is going to move in the opposite direction.

To illustrate this (again in words). Imagine your arms out at your side with the racquet point out in your right hand, like the cross I mentioned earlier. Now imagine rotating counter clockwise (to your left). If your wrist were relaxed it would begin to bend backwards, and the racquet would start to bend backwards as well.

To give a better illustration, imagine you were holding some streamers or a thin strip of cloth about three feet long. As you turn counter clockwise, the streamers would be following your arm, but behind it. Although a racquet is rigid, you can think of it doing the same thing.

The torso turn from sideways to the net, to facing the net initiates the middle part of the swing. As you drop the racquet down, your body should rotate, causing the racquet to drag behind you, and then you should begin to pull your arm forward as the ball gets closer to you, as a reaction to dragging it.

That is, initially, as you rotate, the arm is relaxed and the racquet arm is now trailing a bit, but as you continue to rotate, you will begin to pull your wrist forward and accelerate to the ball.

Most pros, for a very long time, have the racquet at a 90 degree angle. Another way to picture this is to aim the butt of your racquet to the ball. Even pros back in the day (Chris Evert) who hit flat strokes, did this. The butt of the racquet is at the bottom usually with the company logo at the bottom.

You want to point the butt of the racquet towards the ball, and start to accelerate the wrist (and butt) towards the ball. Meanwhile, your torso is still continuing to rotate.

At some point, when the ball is near, your arm will cross in front of your body, and the racquet will quickly move from pointing to the back fence to pointing to the side fence which means the face of the racquet is now parallel to the net.

This is starting to be part of the windshield wiper movement so many pros use. You want to initiate the windshield wiper motion as the racquet is starting to go from pointing to the back fence to pointing to the side fence, and continue on, ultimately with your forearm in front of your body, and eventually the racquet wrapping to the left side of your body.

Will has pointed out to me that the windshield wiper movement is not tacked on at the end, but initiates a bit earlier so that it flows naturally.

Let me summarize a few of the points I've made:

• Imagine the racquet is like a mirror. With the aid of the left hand, you want to show your opponent his or her reflection. The racquet should be held in front of you, slightly to the right (for a rightie).
  
• As you turn the shoulder, your non-dominant arm will move across the body parallel to the baseline. Will points this out well in the video. This emphasizes the shoulder turn.
  
• Eventually the mirror that you showed to your opponent begins to move to the back fence and reflect that (Djokovic in particular, likes to do this). The racquet head from the first three steps goes from about head height to a little above head height (your head, that is).
  
• Then, the racquet begins to drop down from behind, and starts to point face down.
  
• Before the racquet is all the way down, start to rotate counter clockwise.
  
• Your relaxed arm will start to drag behind.
  
• The butt of the racquet begins to point to the ball, with the racquet and forearm at 90 degrees.
  
• Begin to accelerate the racquet butt towards the ball, again continuing your body rotation.
  
• As you accerlerate and turn, the ball will be fairly close, and the arm will start to move forward and arc as part of the windshield wiper movement. The racquet is still basically at a ninety degree angle (actually closer to 120 degrees), but because your arm (and in particular your forearm) is starting to point forward, it still manages to contact the ball perpendicular.
  
• Continue the motion until the the racquet ends up to the left side of your body. At this point your shoulders will be pointing somewhat to the left. Note that your feet will have to adjust to allow this entire movement to take place.
  

Key things I feel I've added. Major point is the 90 degree wrist angle, and the torso leading the swing of the racquet as the racquet swing reaches the bottom, and also the butt pointing to the ball. Minor point is holding the mirror to your opponent, and keeping the butt pointed to the ball for as long as you can, before starting the windshield wiper movement. Finally, relax, relax, relax.

Like I said, Will's videos are fantastic, and learning these strokes is really hard, and requires a lot of element come together in concert, and lots and lots and lots of practice.

Face and Vase

There's this famous optical illusion, where you see two profiles of a face in, say, black, and a white vase. It's the positive and negative space.

Today, I both took a lesson and gave a lesson.

Last night, that is, Saturday night, the day, which had started off rainy and gloomy, a day I spent driving to Reston, taking an advanced Ruby course given by Chad Fowler and Dave Thomas that lasted until 4:30, which then gave way to a few hours of sun. When I got back up 270, I spent some time hitting against the wall.

Adam told me about the handball walls at Cabin John. Handball appears to be like racquetball, except that instead of four walls and a ceiling, there is just one wall, the front wall. This wall is about the width of a tennis court, which is apparently 27 feet wide. However, what's key is the height. The wall goes up about 15 feet high.

Tennis walls, if you can find them, often don't extend to the ground. Often, it's up maybe a foot or two from the ground, and extends maybe 4-5 feet above the "net" (it's just a painted line). Clearly, such a setup is meant to be low-cost.

Due to the lack of popularity for handball, these walls make better tennis walls than real tennis walls, with the only problem being the lack of a line demarcating the net. Although it takes about 15 minutes to get there, I like to play there since few people seem to use it to practice tennis (when I went there this morning, three guys were practicing kendo).

I called the guy up about the lesson, and it seemed like he had just woken up, so I delayed the lesson for half an hour. That was good because it allowed me to hit against the wall for more than the 15 minutes I would have had otherwise.

The problem, I find, when hitting against a wall, is that my arm gets engorged with blood, due to repeatedly hitting the ball at a pace faster than I would hit against an opponent. I need to hit a few, then rest a few, otherwise my arm because like a rock, and it's painful to boot.

During the lesson, Sharat and I went back to playing mini-tennis, with the goal of getting me to slow down my shot, and hitting it relaxed. His point, and it makes some sense to me, is if I can't hit the ball relaxed hitting it slow, then I'll be even more tense when I try to hit it hard.

Since I had been practicing this shot somewhat in the last week or so, it was better than it was before. It was such a good thing to think about, I decided it was worth taking a second lesson.

This time around, we hit from the baseline, and I was hitting more of the wrap-around forehand that you see Federer hitting. The one suggestion I was given was to not use so much wrist on follow-through, that my arm needed to follow through too.

Now, this is the kind of advice that I know because I stare at a lot of tennis video, but is really helpful, because while I may intellectually know this, I can forget this when I actually hit.

The funny thing is that I've played tennis longer than Sharat has been alive. Obviously, the quality of my tennis training has been rather inferior to his. In particular, the tennis advice you could get from more than 10 years ago didn't hit all the advice you can get now. In any case, during the last 10 years, I hadn't learned that much about tennis. Only in the last 6 months or so have I started going back to relearn tennis.

Sharat's approach is based on Wegner's approach, which is to reduce the number of things a player thinks about so they can focus on hitting and relaxation. My personal approach is very technical. I want to know where my arm, legs, waist, etc. are supposed to be. I look at videos a lot.

But videos can be deceiving.

For example, when Federer hits his forehand, he has this one odd movement. At one point, his racquet is faced down. To visualize this, imagine standing between Federer and the net, looking at Federer. When his racquet is face down, it points not quite to the fence.

If you were to draw a line between Federer, yourself, and the net, that would be parallel to the sideline. His racquet would point a little to your left of that line.

As Federer moves his arm forward, the racquet starts to point to the right of that line. It looks odd, and I was trying to imitate that little movement.

It took me a while to realize why this movement is there. It's not that Federer is changing the direction of the racquet. What's happening is that he is opening up his shoulders (i.e., moving from being parallel to the sidelines to parallel to the net).

This rotation of his torso causes the racquet to move backward, in that Newtonian, every action has an opposite reaction, effect. Once you understand that, you realize he isn't purposely moving it that way. His body rotation is causing this motion.

I only realized that on Friday.

Anyway, after the lesson, where Sharat gave me some advice on serving, I headed to College Park to teach Jeff how to play tennis.

Jeff is not an athletic sort. The extent of his athletic skills is basically ping pong. He prefers anime and video games.

Ironically enough, I thought he might make a better person to teach tennis because he wouldn't have all these other sports skills that would interfere with him learning tennis. Staney, for example, has played cricket and table tennis. He has a peculiar way of holding the table tennis bat. When he started tennis, he combined the two together.

He hit his backhand like he was playing a cricket shot, and he played his forehand like he was hitting a table tennis shot, most notably, sticking his index finger straight up on the racquet.

Jeff appears to make the kind of errors many beginners in tennis make. In particular, he tends to "arm" the ball, that is, hit the shot with his arm, rather than use his upper body. He tends to stop hitting after he has hit the ball. He tends to come underneath the ball, causing the ball to sky upwards.

Now, Jeff is an intelligent guy, who has a degree in computer science and finishing up a law degree. However, being intelligent works the brain. The body reacts differently. To learn a sport, you must train the body to move in a way that is not intuitive.

And, for most people, their body will not react the way they want it to. You tell them to hit the ball a certain way, and they hit it completely different. For a sport like racquetball, it doesn't matter. That's the kind of sport that you can have the worst technique in the world, but can play it competently and enjoyably.

Tennis, on the other hand, requires a lot of training. If you play, say, squash, you might translate the skills over. I've seen people who play table tennis that manage to translate the skills of hitting. Even people who play baseball don't do so badly.

To teach Jeff, I had him play some mini-tennis, which is where you hit from service line to service line.

Here's the issue I had. First, if I teach him part of the stroke, then he's likely to just master that, get it ingrained into his head. Therefore, I would have to teach him to add something else to his stroke, and he has to unlearn the first thing I told him, and learn the second thing I told him. The longer he spends hitting one way, the harder it is for me to try to reteach him. A video would be ideal.

Jeff had this tendency to hit the ball up, and after my short drills, he had a tendency not to pull his racquet back to the fence, so I had him shadow-stroke the shot, plus I had him finish with the racquet face pointing down. This seemed to, for the most part, help him avoid flipping the racquet up so it would sky upwards.

For the most part, other than hitting the frame of the racquet, he did all right, hitting a shot that didn't look horrible, and a motion that looked reasonably acceptable. For less than an hour's training, it was decent.

I noticed that I am far more technical when I teach someone, trying to get them to correct this shot or that shot, hold the racquet this way or that. It's a contrast to the way Sharat teaches. Now part of that is impatience on my part.

Jeff isn't that serious about learning tennis, and so I would very infrequently teach him how to play. He's likely to forget everything I said (or at least, his body is), and I'd have to go over it again.

Now, I'm sure, if I were to ask Jeff how long it would take him to learn a musical instrument, he'd say a very long time. It would take a lot of practice. Indeed, one might argue that, at least to a first degree, it's easier to learn to play a music instrument than tennis, because the instruction is there already. What's hard is to master the difficult songs.

But what is similar is the amount of time it takes, and the time it takes to learn how one should hit the shot. That kind of commitment is hard to get from folks, which is why most people learn to play sports when they are young, when they are willing to spend insane amounts of time. As an adult, they'd rather spend their time in other ways. I've only met one adult who was this kind of insane learning to play tennis, and got to a good degree of proficiency.

It probably says something that he studied martial arts and learned about discipline and body awareness, and applied these ideas to tennis.

So, that ended the day, when rain fell, and I had both been the student and the teacher.

Lessons in Love

Ah, yes, a tennis pun.

In this case, "love" referring to the score of zero in tennis.

Yesterday, I took a tennis lesson. This was my third lesson private lesson I've taken. Because the price of a lesson is generally pricey, I don't take a lot of them. I took one around Thanksgiving, which was like 60 dollars, then one in February or March which was like 65 dollars, and finally one yesterday, at 30 dollars.

The most recent lesson was arranged through "Serve It Up", which was founded by two high school tennis players that wanted to make a business of teaching tennis cheaply, or at least, by normal standards. Figuring that most people might not trust someone so young, the idea of cost cutting seems interesting.

When I arranged my first lesson, I asked the guy what his teaching philosophy was. This is just vague enough that if he didn't have an answer, he might not know what he's doing. He said he follows the Oscar Wegner method. Oscar is an Argentine player who feels he has the answer to hitting a ball more naturally. For example, he says that hitting a ball is like catching a ball and throwing it across your body (not realizing, for example, that not everyone can catch and throw a ball).

Now, the first lesson I had was with a guy named Joel. Joel is more holistic. He believes that the racquet has a natural way it wants to move, and that you swing by throwing the racquet at the ball. He doesn't want to get too deep into any mechanics. He feeds a lot of balls.

The next lesson I had was with Mike. He had more technical aspects to cover, and again, plenty of drills, and like Joel, mostly at the baseline.

Sharat started differently. In particular, we went with a mini-tennis drill. Mini-tennis is when you rally from service line to service line and eliminate about half the court. In order to hit in the short court, you have to hit softly. I've always found that really difficult on my forehand, but in hindsight, it's an interesting drill.

One could argue that if it's hard for you to hit softly, then hitting hard might have some unnatural hitches too, that are prone to break down under pressure. He wanted me to slow my motion down so that I could hit this drill, and to be honest, I probably didn't quite get there in that lesson, but at least, it got me thinking.

There were several funny moments. I'm sure Sharat had phrases he wanted to use but couldn't in front of polite company (meaning me). When I was going to hit the ball, I was supposed to caress the ball. He want to provide an analogy like "caress the ball like you are...". You are? You are what? Making love to a hot chick? He probably had some idea like that, and his brain told him "uh, can't say that". There were other times I felt he wanted to say something like "hit the s**t out of the ball", but didn't.

What was unusual, and this might mark a little inexperience on his part (and a lack of a lot of balls) is that he talked a lot. By far, he talked a lot more than either of the two guys I took lessons from. I could say that more than half the time was spent him talking to me, at least, it felt that long. I'd wonder if there would be some complaints, given that most people feel they pay for hitting rather than listening.

Having said that, I'm willing to give him a chance. He assumed I'd be taking a lot of regular lessons with him (I'm sure he sees the money potential in having me take lots of lessons) and for now, I'll play it by ear. Since my forehand is the issue, he's taking the approach of working on just the forehand, and that's a little unusual. Given that his price is about half what I'd get elsewhere, I think I may stick it out a little longer to see where it heads.

A few other notes. Wegner is more of a hands guy than a feet guy. He thinks too many players worry about their feet, and wants players to think about how they hit the ball, and just let the feet do whatever. Even so, Sharat wanted me to get closer to the ball so I don't get out of position. I do find myself stretching out to hit balls, especially on my backhand, and that I don't move forward or back to the ball like I should.

He pointed out something I just recently noticed myself. Most players prepare rather late. Although coaches tell you to get your racquet back early, getting it back to early creates hitches in the motion (I'm sure I blogged about that recently). He suggested I hold the racquet (using my left hand), longer than I would feel natural.

He also noticed I wasn't hitting through the ball so well, which is another issue I've been having. He had this idea of hitting as if there were several balls on a skewer, and trying to hit all the balls on that skewer. The idea is to keep the racquet moving forward rather than lift up too much.

Finally, he suggested I hit more in front of my body.

It's funny, but I think he believes most people really want to hit the ball hard. Not everyone does. I have several people I play with that almost universally want to do this, that if they don't hit hard, they feel they aren't getting what they want out of tennis.

They might tell themselves "I don't just want to get the ball over the net, I want to hit it hard". And they do hit it hard, and they get it in more often than not, with power. But they lack consistency. I suspect what happens in that case is the ball approaches them differently and they alter their motion in such a way that the mechanics of hitting changes, and the ball's path is wrong.

One guy, for example, always wants to hit where he skims the top of the net, clearing it by inches. Jimmy Connors was good at doing this, but still, you want to clear the net by 2-3 feet all the time. I would say he needs to clear the net, and yet, hit shorter, because he overhits all the time.

Having said that people who hit hard should learn to hit with more control, and not worry about hitting hard (a hard proposition for most people, who find blasting the ball cathartic), I suspect really good players learn to control their hard shots rather than hit their soft shots harder, that it's easier (in theory) to learn control than to learn power.

Anyway, we'll see how these lessons proceed. It's given me food for thought, which is good.

Wait and Move

I find, more often than I'd like to admit, that I am trying to hit a stroke, usually the forehand, and have little power.

There are two mistakes I think I'm making. First, although there is an emphasis in tennis on early preparation, I think it actually helps to wait as long as you can manage. If you prepare too early, you might partly swing, then have to wait, then complete the shot. This robs you of any power.

By holding the shot, you can then do your full swing, which should give you decent pace.

The second piece of advice I read recently was to be slow to prepare to hit a shot, especially on the backhand. Don't rush the shot, especially if the person is simply hitting a standard groundstroke.

Recently, I've found, due to the a modification I've made to my backhand, that I not only hit it harder, but now I'm getting some spin on it. I won't say I'm clobbering the ball, but it now pops a little more than before.

Seeing spin is kinda tough because the balls aren't two-toned. I wish Penn would bring back the two-toned balls. You used to be able to see the spin better. It was half-yellow and half-orange, and was really nice for tennis. Sure it looked a little strange, but I think it was far better than the normal yellow balls. And because they look so unusual, it's a lot easier to track.

Which reminds me, why is it most tennis balls are only number 1, 2, or 3, with the vast majority being 2 or 3? You never see 5-9. Which is sad, because with 1, 2, and 3 being so common, it's easy to mistake your set of tennis balls for someone else's.

I write some of these tennis tips on my blog not so much to help you, gentle reader, who may not even play tennis, but to help myself, by recording my observations. If you are helped out, well, good for you! I don't mind passing on the information.

Obsession

In an classic Star Trek episode named Obsession, Kirk sees a cloud monster that killed most of the crew that he was a part of when he was an ensign. When Ensign Garrovick, the son of Kirk's then-captain freezes and is unable to kill the cloud monster, Kirk blame Garrovick much as he blamed himself 11 years earlier.

Kirk is so determined to kill the monster that he is willing to let people who need critical medicine risk death, so he can chase the creature down. McCoy accuses Kirk of being obsessed with something that has haunted him since youth.

My current obsession is figuring out the Federer forehand. I could have picked any other forehand. Agassi has a nice forehand. So does Nadal. Although Federer is pretty amazing, you can't say his forehand is as dominant as say, Lendl's forehand during his prime, or Agassi at his prime (I'd put Becker's and Sampras's forehand up there too). Even so, people are so in love with Roger Federer and his apparently effortless mechanics, that they've taken a lot of pains to figure out what he does.

I have to admit that I'm in this camp too.

For weeks now, I've been looking at his forehand trying to figure out what he does. Occasionally, I'll get on court and feel I am doing the right thing, and occasionally, I feel I'm regressing back to my old ineffective style.

A while back, I noticed that Federer hits his forehand more in front of his body than most any player I know. Lately, though, I haven't given it much thought. I went back to the article by John Yandell in the latest Tennis magazine and saw that he made a point of how far in front of his body Federer hits the ball.

Then, I also recall something mentioned in a tennis lesson I had with a guy named Joel. Joel's a big fan of the idea that the racquet wants to move in a certain way, that there is a natural motion. Although this sounds like animism in the biggest way (i.e., even inanimate objects have a spirit), there is something to be said about this idea. He claims you should throw the racquet.

I've been thinking about this idea in relation to the Federer forehand. One thing you notice, if you stare at the slow motion video is that his hand accelerates a lot, once the racquet has reached the palm-down stage. How does he accelerate so fast?

I think one way to visualize this is to imagine holding a spear, and throwing it sidearm as hard as you can. This spearing is a kind of "throwing the racquet" idea. The only caveat is that you don't let go of the racquet. You hold the racquet as long as possible, and at the point where'd you have to release it, that's where you go into a windshield wiper movement, partly because your arm can't go any further out.

By thinking of it this way, you end up accelerating the racquet very quickly, and furthermore, you end up having the racquet far in front of the body. You want to time it so that you "spear" the ball when your arm is as far in front as you can reasonably manage.

I've yet to try this idea on court. I realize that this is also timed with body rotation, wrist laid back, and so forth, but I'm hoping this is the final piece of the puzzle.

In the end, I hope, much like Kirk, I can finally put this obsession to rest.

Seeing is Believing

I believe it was Aristotle who once proclaimed that heavier things fall faster than lighter objects. So sure was he of this idea that he didn't even bother to try it out. It made sense. Why bother? While surely someone else of less import must have noticed the fallacy of this claim, it was Galileo, who famously put this claim to rest.

Although this is nowhere near the import of a test of gravity, I find that I give advice in tennis without actually seeing people do it. The latest advice that I've given that's basically wrong is the the arms come up together. That's not entirely untrue, but it's not entirely true.

What most pros do is this: the left arm tosses, and the right arm comes up, and waits. While waiting, the server eventually bends his knee. It's only after the ball has reached its peak that the player begins to move the racquet down in the back-scratching position, and move up.

So while it isn't exactly, left arm goes up, then wait, then right arm goes up, nor is it both arms up simultaneously, it's more like like left arm and right arm go up, but right arm waits until toss is complete, before moving on.

Lessons in Tennis

After taking the time to relearn tennis, I've learned and possibly relearned a few things.

The first lesson I learned came from observing beginners. Most beginner tennis players assume that the racquet is an extension of the arm. For now, forget the racquet head. Imagine that you are holding a baseball bat. Now, hold you arm straight in front point forward so that your arm is shoulder height and parallel with your shoulder. It's as if you are telling someone "Go forward".

Now imagine you are holding a baseball bat, and the bat is also pointing forward, so that it doubles the length of your arm.

Most beginning players hit that way. The racquet is straight with the arm.

No good player does this. They hold the racquet at a 90 degree angle with their arm.

And this applies to nearly all strokes. Backhand, forehand, volley. In particular, I realized I wasn't hitting this way on my forehand, and I have to, lately, remind myself to hit with the 90 degree angle.

Related to this lesson is that flipping the wrist doesn't buy you power. Two-handed backhand players often flip their wrists to get more power. It seems to make logical sense, and yet, it doesn't happen. Instead, the torso plays a role when hitting a backhand, and you want to keep that that 90 degree angle.

Indeed, the angle is so important that Brad Gilbert, former player and coach to Andre Agassi, has been hawking a product that keeps this 90 degree angle.

Second lesson. It's not all arm.

Hitting often requires your legs, and your torso. Most people swing with the arms, never realizing the torso (i.e., your chest, your waist) can provide additional mass and stability to shots. For me, I don't turn my torso enough on my forehand. I end up thinking all arm, and not enough torso.

This lesson didn't dawn on me until I was watching a slow-mo video of Roger Federer for the umpteenth time, and I noticed where his shoulders were pointed when he hit the ball. Indeed, most pros have their upper bodies turned toward the net (and more), with their racquet still pointed at the fence, before the arm comes forward and hits the ball.

The torso leads the arm, and the arm waits a long time with the racquet pointed backward, until the ball is right up to the player with the torso parallel or past parallel before the racquet goes from the racquet pointed back (or the butt of the racquet facing the ball) to the racquet pointed parallel to the net.

Indeed, I think I've been having this issue with my forehand as well. In addition to forcing myself to think about the 90 degrees, I had been recently thinking of the idea of "dragging" my forehand. Some experts have said this is how you should visualize the forehand, so that the racquet only faces the ball at the last moment.

But I just realized by moving the torso, I don't have to do anything with my arm. It "drags" along for free from my torso alone. Now, that isn't entirely true. Just before impact, I need to move the wrist so that it begins to flip in a windshield wiper motion, which cause the racquet angle to increase to about 110 degrees at contact.

On the forehand, I'm also trying to force myself to get more sideways to the ball. I think, in the past, I'd basically face the net the whole time, and let my arm do all the work. The lastest thing I'm doing is to use my left hand and hold it on the throat to force myself to turn my shoulders around. I used to never do this, which meant my shoulders didn't turn as much as it should.

Lesson three. Let your arm relax.

I watched a YouTube segment on hitting the ball naturally. The idea was to hit the ball with 2 or 3 fingers, not using your other fingers. Because you don't have much support on the racquet, you have to swing in such a way that the racquet doesn't fight you, and this allows you to swing more freely. This applies to the serve as well. Most shots in tennis require a degree of relaxation.

This relaxation helped on my backhand where I would not be so relaxed, and ironically hit a weaker shot. Relaxation helps you hit a faster shot.

Lesson four. Follow-through matters. I was watching a beginner hit a ball, and they stopped hitting shortly after the ball was hit. This creates a racquet path that can vary quite a lot. A good follow through helps provide momentum through the entire process. I believe Vic Braden is wrong when he says follow-through isn't important, because it is.

Lesson five. Aim.

This is a lesson I don't think about much because I aim, but I see it's a huge problem for beginners. Most beginners are content hitting the ball hard, and have no particular place that they are aiming to hit. In particular, because I see some players who fall in love with hitting the ball as hard as possible, they hit the ball deep (meaning out) all the time.

There are several drills I'd work on. First, if every other shot is heading long, then aim for the service line. The service line is very shot, I admit, but if you hit it too long, you are in a good spot. Learn to hit the ball short, so you can control depth.

In addition, pay attention to the height of the ball. Ideally, aim about 3-4 feet above the net. If it's just skimming over the net, it's probably too close. Now, to hit 3-4 feet above the net and hit at the service line, you have to sacrifice some power, which means you hit more relaxed and slow down your shot.

I know. Players, especially male players, love power. They feel they aren't getting the most of their game if they don't hit hard. I'm not saying you should never hit hard, but you need to play more in control, before worrying about power. To play power properly, you should really learn topspin, and get more spin on the shot.

In a nutshell, hit shorter, hit higher, hit more relaxed, and stop hitting really hard, but still feel that you are making a full swing.

I'm watching a match between Nadal and Davydenko, and many of the shots land only halfway between the service line and the baseline. Keep your shots shorter. You'll find your game improving.

Lesson six. The serve is hard.

I'm working on my knee bend lately, and having that coiled up before starting the rest of the motion. While I do that, I'll be regressing backwards for a while, but thats OK.

So on my checklist of things to work on.

1. Rotate more on the torso on my forehand so I use the torso to get my arm to drag, while keeping my angle at 90 degrees.
   
2. When slicing a backhand, make sure the elbow is straight before impact.
   
3. Bend my knees more while serving
   
4. Learn the "C" movement on my two-handed backhand, and be relaxed until impact.
   

How We Learn

I stole this title from a segment by one Tomaz Mencinger, and yes, it has to do with tennis, though this particular blog entry does not.

I used to teach programming. To be an adequate programmer, one that can write some program that does something, you need to think methodically. You need to be able to reason about how a program behaves, and be patient enough to figure out where your assumptions have gone wrong. Indeed, if programming teaches you anything, it teaches you that you makes lots of assumptions, many you don't realize.

Code is a harsh mistress. It does exactly what you tell it to, and nothing more. Any assumption you make, whether you realize it or not, is being expressed in code.

The kind of thinking you need to code is one that is logical, organized, and able to do things given the tools you have available to you. You might think of programming as eating with chopsticks. If your not Asian, then eating with chopsticks is awkward, and it takes a while to eat this way.

Even the comparatively simple eating with your hands is not so simple. Most cultures that eat with their hands have rules. In particular, they almost always eat with their right hand, because the left hand is unclean (basically used for hygiene given a lack of toilet paper). This creates interesting skills, including the ability to rip flatbread using one hand.

Once you can think in a certain way, then coding is second nature, and it's your patience and cleverness that matters. You work at something, and if that doesn't work, you try something else. You question your assumptions. Why does this fail? What am I doing that might cause this to fail?

There are people who can't seem to get their heads wrapped around this idea of organized, disciplined thinking, and can't get around being able to discover an aha moment, and being patient enough to try a bunch of things. Generally, they don't become good programmers.

Lately, I've been trying to teach some folks how to play tennis. And this has made me think about how tennis is taught. While I'm generally analytical by nature, I realized there's still a lot about tennis I don't know, even though I've played for 20 years (more).

Tennis requires physical coordination. Given that our bodies are creatures of habit, it can be very hard to train the body to do motions. I think it's analogous to learning math. You have to learn how to prove things, and you have to understand what makes a good proof, and what makes a bad proof, and that takes a while, because good and bad proofs look the same to beginners, and so beginners think people are just making stuff up when it comes to proofs.

It takes a while to get to this way of thinking, and many people never do.

Learning physical habits is, in my opinion, even harder.

I've been trying to tell Stan how to hold his racquet during a tennis serve. To be fair, a tennis serve is one of the hardest shot in tennis to master. It involves a lot of unnatural movements, and it takes a long time for the body to learn to coordinate what is a myriad of activities, from knee bends to wrist pronations.

I wanted Stan to learn to put the racquet behind the back as if it were a sword in a scabbard held on the back. Despite this, he would resort back to taking the racquet back the way he normally hits it.

I recall, once upon a time, when I was in college, and there was a dad, trying to teach his son how to play table tennis. He went over to his side, and had him shadow stroke the "correct" movement over and over. Once we went to his side of the table, and served the ball, the kid simply went back to the way he hit before, despite having been taught the "correct" way to hit a ball.

Body coordination is really hard. Your body has certain habits it gets into. To tell the body to do something else can be tough. This is that mental leap that, in my opinion, is similar to learning how to do math.

Except, with math, you can be completely rational, and force yourself to be organized about your thinking (I know that math also requires an aha moment, but being organized with the information also helps).

With physical mastery, you need to make the body repeat the action over and over and over again, until it becomes second nature, so you do it without thinking.

It's a lot like learning to drive. Initially, there are lots of rigid rules you follow, but eventually, you know what to skip and what to pay attention to.

Learning tennis, on the other hand, requires a huge number of skills, and it's easy to learn the "wrong" way to do things.

I'll give you an example. David has this smooth fluid motion for his serve, but the stroke isn't really "correct". Since the serve is so hard to teach, I want him to do something far simpler. Get the racquet behind the back, toss the ball up, and then hit it.

The problem? He's so used to his completely elaborate motion, that he can't force himself to do just part of it. The left and right arm are so used to doing certain things, that to break this normalcy creates a huge amount of awkwardness.

Stan has a differently problem. Where David can more or less raise his hands together, Stan tosses the ball with one hand, then strikes with the other hand. While some people have very high tosses (Ivan Lendl and Steffi Graf, to name two), this two part motion (toss, then hit) is not something most decent servers do.

I also tried to get him to hit an abbreviated serve. He too had big problems trying to hit that abbreviated serve, since he was used to hitting a full motion with his right arm.

Both people would be served (no pun intended) by having video taken of them. I think the would be surprised that they change their motion when hitting.

I find that fascinating. You tell a person to do X, but their inclination to do Y is so strong, that they do Y, but think they are doing X. A video would clear show them that they are doing Y.

Perhaps that's one reason I spend so much time learning tennis. We learn by imitation, but imitation is really hard. It requires very powerful observations, and it requires a kind of physical mimicry that most people lack. This means, much like learning how to program, it takes time to learn how to play a sport, especially one that requires as much coordination as tennis.

Evolution of a Game

OK, so this is yet another tennis blog.

I've been trying to adjust my game for the last few months. I've been working on imitating a Federer forehand. Since Federer has a one-handed backhand, and I don't (though I do slice the backhand), I don't imitate his backhand. Finally, I just try to hit a better serve.

Sometimes, you reach a kind of mini-epiphany when playing, a moment where all of a sudden, you figure out something.

That moment happened to me on Saturday while playing tennis on a warm afternoon. Just as I was wrapping up a session of tennis, I decided, just for the heck of it, to practice my serve.

Instead of hitting the same topspin serve I had been hitting, I decided to toss the ball low, and then really snap the wrist down. Teachers of tennis claim that the wrist doesn't snap, that it pronates. Pronation is a tough concept to explain, even if you've played a lot of tennis.

But the wrist snap visual is actually quite useful, because it makes you really accelerate the racquet right at the moment of contact. When I think I'm snapping down, I'm sure the racquet is mostly perpendicular to the plane of the court.

The second thing that helped my serve a bit, other than the mere act of practicing it, is not to get the racquet in the classic back-scratching position (something, by the way, that's really hard to teach), but instead to have the hitting face of the racquet point to my back, making wrist pronation even easier. This was a tip I picked up watching a Oscar Wegner video.

My two-handed backhand was improved mostly by following the advice given in Hi-tech tennis. In particular, it helped me point the racquet down on take back, but more importantly, to turn the arm and shoulder to the ball, while leaving the angle of the racquet more or less the same and then following through. Most people have a shaky two-handed backhand because the tip of the racquet moves a lot, and they swing too soon.

This website suggested being restrained up until the point of contact, and that relaxation seems to get a lot of pace, surprisingly enough.

My forehand has had the most issues. Imitating anyone's stroke is a lot of work. You are watching a snippet of video over and over, and trying to find how you can hit the stroke the same way, and that's tough, because so many factors go into it, from the plane of the racquet, to when to take the racquet back.

I've gotten to the point where I think I'm getting kinda close to what I want to hit. Part of it, surprisingly, is keeping the racquet face down pointed to the right fence, then kinda whipping my forehand forward.

I think, the next step for me, is to learn to "lift" the racquet and turn the torso at the same time. I'm still having an issue hitting with power and also hitting it crosscourt. Oddly enough, my chop forehand is doing reasonably well, and I end up resorting to it, when I return serve.

Still, I think I'm having to work on torso turning and doing the windshield movement correctly.

So, overall, my backhand seems much better, as does my serve. My slice backhand is starting to feel decent, though I still need some pace, and my forehand is improving, but still not where I want it.

The Fed Forehand

I've been watching the slow-mo videos of Roger Federer at Hi-Tech tennis. Pretty good stuff.

I was also watching Will's lessons on the forehand at Fuzzy Yellow Balls (FYB).

Here are a few observations I've made.

Once Roger starts to make his arm come forward, his arm is fairly straight, his wrist is bent back, and the racquet and arm makes roughly a 90 degree angle. If you draw a line through Fed's shoulders and to his arm, they almost form a straight line.

The key, I suspect, to Roger's (and many other pros) power is that they use their bodies in the shot. Thus, the entire torso spins and the arm comes along for the ride.

As Roger's shoulders becomes parallel with the baseline (he starts more than perpendicular, to the side), the 90 degree angle he had been maintaining up til then becomes relaxed. He starts to basically flip his hand forward so the 90 degrees becomes more like 110-120 degrees. He does this mere moments before impact, about 1-2 feet away.

It looks like he is starting to move his palm forward to add that little bit of wrist flick to the shot. However, rather than flip through the ball, Federer does the windshield wiper move and moves the arm in a forward-ish rainbow arc until the racquet ends up on his left side.

Note that I haven't even talked about Fed's legs. He's leaned down on his right leg and straightens up on impact. He bends down more than most players I've seen when making this shot.

I would say, in order to master the Fed forehand, you want to imitate his upper body first, than work on the lower body once the upper body motion is satisfactory.

It helps, if you get the chance, to practice in front of a mirror, so you can see what you are doing. Shadow stroke a bit, and you will see if you are doing the right thing.

To me, the keys to the Fed forehand are: making sure the arm and racquet are 90 degrees with the wrist laid back, making sure the shoulder and arm are moving together, as you move forward. Once your shoulders are parallel, begin to flip the wrist forward to impact, and begin the rainbow arc, until the forearm has flipped to the left side of your body.

Again, something I need to try out on the court.

Picture Perfect

The latest trend in improving one's tennis strokes is recording yourself.

Camcorders have become really cheap these days. You can get a decent one for just over two hundred dollars. But the real question is what kind?

You have mini-DV's which are like videotapes, then mini-DVDs, DVDs, and hard-drive recorders. You have standard definition and high definition. It's really hard to pick.

Fortunately, I found a site that made a suggestion, which was to go with mini-DVs. The reason was two-fold. First, the cameras are cheap. Second, they produce good resolution video. The other formats apparently aren't ready for prime-time.

They even suggested getting one of the Canon ZR series which allows shutter control. So that's probably what I will do, and see how I fare.

Learning Modern Tennis

I played Adam two weeks ago. I told him I was tinkering with how I hit my strokes. He replied that, at his age, and how often he plays, he's content with the way he hits his shots. There's no arguing, outside a big serve, his strokes are effective, and that this allows him to simply play. The nirvana of sports is to reach a point where you simply play. Your body already does what it should do.

Being vaguely dissatisfied with my tennis strokes, I find myself wanting to modify the way I hit.

It's interesting seeing how, what I read 20 years ago, has changed.

Here's a simple example. The two-handed backhand. Once a novelty, three players made the two-handed backhand fashionable: Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, and Chris Evert. Of course, there were others hitting with two hands, from Cliff Drysdale to Harold Solomon to Tracy Austin.

When I first learn to hit the two-handed backhand, I read something interesting. The experts said "you should hit a two-handed backhand like a one-handed backhand, with the top hand there for support". This thinking influenced me quite a bit. It has some advantages, especially if you have to let go of your left hand, and slice the shot. However, if you're able to flip the racquet some, you can adjust the grip, even at the last minute. You can even use your left hand to adjust it for a slice.

As I've mentioned before, there are a lot more resources on the web, and that has revolutionized how people can now learn tennis. This wouldn't be so intriguing if tennis wasn't so hard to begin with.

For example, the single hardest stroke to master in tennis has to be the serve, and yet it's the most important. The serve involves a toss, knee bend, body bend, wrist pronation. You literally have to practice this over and over and over again. But when you're by yourself, it's hard to see what you are doing wrong, and because of that, coaches make a pretty penny teaching tennis.

Yesterday while playing tennis, I decided on a whim to do something different. I tossed the ball lower, out in front, and then snapped the wrist. People tell you that this is the wrong motion, that it's not a wrist snap so much as a pronation, but there is still that aspect to it. That addition really put a lot more pace on my serve. The result was quite a bit flatter, to be fair. Indeed, even as I was snapping, I found I was still hitting my serve long, and so I really had to aim down.

Now, in reality, I'm not aiming down, but my mentality is that I hit up and think it's not up, and so when I hit "down", I'm not really doing that at all. My brain just thinks it's down based on years of tennis.

I find myself watching slow-motion of Roger Federer, and imitating that. Of course, you can only imitate so much. He has a lot more physical talent than I do, but beyond that, even as you watch in slow-motion, what do you pick up? You might be, say, staring at his feet, and how he lines it up, or how his arms are positioned, but be unable to tell how loose he's gripping the racquet, or just how fast he's hitting it.

I'd focus on Fed's arms, and realize his feet were doing interesting stuff. There's this constant back and forth. I'd see something, try it out on the court, then go back and see what Fed is doing, and realized I missed something.

One of the better sites for watching pros hit their shots is Hi-tech Tennis. They have a lot of videos, though the angle and quality isn't always that good (players get chopped out). But what is good is the ability to pause the video and single step forward and back to see what's going on.

Again, I should point out that it can be hard to see things. For example, how much does the pro cock his wrist? How much does the shoulder play a role? How much does the hip play a role? How close should the ball get before you swing? All of these are hard to tell when you watch video.

The next step, I believe, is to start recording my shots.

Topspin Sports

I was recently checking out this tennis website called Topspin Sports.

It seems rather gaudy to me. Filled with ads, the pieces of advice offered are mostly in text. With something as visual as tennis, having pictures to illustrate the concepts is important, and yet, time and again, tennis books often resort to words to explain.

Video is particularly useful. I've found another side called "Hi Tech Tennis", and they have one rather unusual feature. They allow you to pause a video, and single step forward or backward. That is actually quite useful when you want to see what is going on. I'm thinking of subscribing to that site.

But Topspin Sports? Ack, that site needs a lot of work.

15 Minutes

I've been blogging a lot about tennis lately, I admit.

And I am planning to do more of it, even now.

But, wait.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to write about tennis for the masses, you needed some sort of credentials, you need an agent, and you needed someone that was willing to publish a book for you. Furthermore, you need professional help from taking photos, to editing your text.

This made it difficult for anyone to provide teaching material for tennis, or for that matter, anything else.

The bar was set pretty high to provide information to the masses. And let's not talk about getting a television program on tennis education.

These days, however, for the cost of a computer, a video camera, and editing equipment, anyone with suitable knowledge can now produce videos for mass consumption. A computer might cost anywhere from 500 dollars to 2000 dollars, the video camera anywhere from 300 dollars to something exorbitant.

Beyond the basic knowledge you are trying to convey, you need to learn how to shoot and edit video. Depending on how much special effects you need, there might be more work still.

Then, you need a website to host your content, and some knowledge of how to layout webpages.

As daunting as that sounds, a technically savvy person can do all of this reasonably cheaply, and put the stuff on the web.

Which leads me to my next point.

The best tennis instruction, short of personal instruction, is out on the web. It has many strengths not found in books. First, with video, you can see what's going on. Second, if the person has done their homework, they are going to provide you a lot of interesting information.

I've been flipping back and forth between watching Tomaz Mencinger's tennis videos, which are aimed at the complete beginner, and the somewhat more advanced videos by Fuzzy Yellow Balls hosted by Will Hamilton.

Tomaz and Will take two different approaches. Tomaz tries to simplify the process, by breaking down strokes into easier parts, and using visualization to help you figure out what's going on. He comes up with really clever ideas, such as the "checking your wrist watch" to teach wrist pronation.

Will, on the other hand, has analyzed pros, and looked for commonalities. Rather than simplify the motions, he goes through, in meticulous detail, how and when to do everything. To contrast, I bought a book called Go Tennis with an accompanying DVD. It is rather light (by comparison) on content. While the strokes look modern enough, there are lots and lots of missing details, both of which Tomaz and Will cover in their respective ways.

For example, Will talks about feet position, arm position, how the arm should look, how the shoulders should appear, how to raise the arms, what the arms should look like. Indeed, to explain the serve, Will must break down the serve to 12 steps, each video, about a minute long, and full of information. I'm trying to digest all of this and trying to think about how I can bring this with me to the court.

Five years ago, this information wasn't freely available, nor at the kind of quality that's available now.

Sadly, some teachers feel they have the secrets to tennis, and want to charge and arm and a leg for it, thus perpetuating the idea that tennis should be for the rich. I don't entirely begrudge the desire to sell information for money, but they shouldn't begrudge me for looking at low-cost alternatives.

My point, simply put, is that such resources were, in the past, really difficult to produce. It was out of the reach of so many people that those folks who have talent to explain tennis (or anything else for that matter) were often ignored because they could never have done this.

While the cost of producing these videos is not that cheap, it is cheap enough that all you require, beyond your experties, is a good video editor, and a good webpage designer, and a place to host it. It's true that few people have the domain knowledge to use those skills for anything useful, but those who do now have a reasonable outlet to convey information.

Right now, I'm loving both Tomaz's videos and Will's videos for many reasons. They are informative, in a way not seen before in books or on TV. They are cheap (Fuzzy Yellow Balls is free and TennisMindGame is under 40 dollars). Furthermore, both are apparently readily accessible. While neither are famous, this lack of fame works to the advantage of the lucky few who make an effort to talk to these folks.

As people produce such content, will we, as a society get smarter? I believe that this kind of instruction is the tip of the iceberg, and the web will have much more to offer, once clever people put their minds and their talents to work.

Fuzzy Yellow Balls

There are a lot of tennis instruction on the web these days. Many purport to tell you how to hit like the pros--but at a price. Depending on who provides the material, that price can be exorbitant, using a fee per month structure to access content.

However, there is a free site out there that has pretty solid content.

By the title of this blog entry, you might have guessed the website's name. Fuzzy Yellow Balls.

OK, so the name of the website is a double entre, suggesting both, real tennis balls, and something a bit more anatomic. The website is mostly hosted by a guy named Will Hamilton, and as luck would have it, he coaches right near this neck of the woods in College Park.

For a free website, the production values are amazing. It combines graphics, with Will standing in front of split screen, to overhead shots. In addition to the instruction available (did I mention that it's free?), his points are pretty insightful, meaning it's a step beyond the kinds of things you'd see at other websites.

Where, say, Tomaz Mencinger's site (TennisMindGame) is focused to beginners, and offering advice on how beginners can hit shots, Hamilton's site presents material at all levels, and points out all sorts of interesting things.

And he's a huge Transformers fan. Gotta tell Jeff about this guy.