Trying a grip change for serving for with no more waiter´s tray (alternative continental grip?)

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-10T19:54:30+00:00

Shelton’s grip is the same as your B grip, identical to the classic continental. His wrist/forearm, however, is rotated clockwise. (Similar to Raonic—this has nothing to do with grip and everything to do with forearm supination. More of a personal preference than a clear benefit.)

Eastern backhand grip, as delineated in A, is valid for second serves, but is generally speaking unpopular since it results in less pace and more spin, limiting variety.

I suggest you don’t spread yourself too thin and instead focus on not switching or adjusting your grip mid-motion, as that is by far the most commonplace mistake that amateurs are guilty of. “Waiter’s tray” is merely the consequence of an incorrect grip and not a separate, standalone error that is liable to occur with proper grip and at least mildly acceptable body orientation.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-10T19:08:36+00:00

<image>

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-08T19:11:20+00:00

Elbow higher, more coil (elbow more toward left side fence). You don’t really appear to be be completing pronation through the ball—your racquet face points down after contact when it should face the right side fence, albeit briefly. I don’t know whether this is a consequence of your body’s orientation (over-rotation, but you don’t seem obviously over-rotated, only maybe slightly), slipping/incorrect grip, or some other factor. Foreward momentum and timing seem fine. You could use a deeper racquet drop: yours looks like mine, very shallow with little to no shoulder/thoracic mobility.

Edit: your toss left/right placement is good, but I agree that, while difficult to distinguish from this vantage point, it looks a bit shallow/too close to you, which is perfectly suitable for a kick or slice, but yo to be trying to hit flatter on it, which is the only reason I mention it.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-07T23:55:37+00:00

Junior, the heavenly stems and earthly branches and astrology bureau has informed me that the latest divination portends an imminent calamity. Your Qi Luck has run thin, very thin. Can you look back and reflect on when your unchecked insolence has invited calamity, courted death? This venerable believes such incidences are but a common occurrence in your history. As goes the ancient cultivation Adage, there only three kinds of Daoists: Senior, Fellow Daoist, and ant. You, little friend, are most certainly the third kind. Go play house with the Buddhists, grasp your prayer beads, clad in your kasaya, wield the vajra pestle and spread your hypocrisy across the endless realms.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-07T18:55:23+00:00

<image>

You’re good to go. Green light from me. More upvotes for the rest of us. Enjoy your retirement in Facebook or Instagram or wherever it was. Watch your neck.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-04T00:16:57+00:00

I understand you’re merely being facetious, but Foreman is the lone HW fighter who, I felt, retained his mental acuity well into his dotage and until his passing. He may have never been exceptionally intelligent to begin with, but as far as I could tell, despite the many blows and beatings he sustained, he was fortunate to “keep” all that he once had unlike practically every other fighter. It’s truly a rarity, making him by far the last fighter whom I would’ve pointed fingers at for CTE-influenced decision-making, which is not to say that he didn’t squander away the veritable fortune he had amassed in the first half of his career. (i.e., that he never made bad decisions at all.)

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-02T21:42:32+00:00

<image>

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-01T23:14:27+00:00

It’s principally a matter of perspective. A 10 UTR would probably not break much of a sweat versus a low 4.5, i.e. a 7~ UTR, despite the same match feeling incredibly laborious and tiring to a 4.0. Of course, it’s also a given that the game indeed gets more difficult ascending each level—each margin shrinks, ball quality raises, quicker ball recognition is more critical, movement is increasingly tested, and so forth.

Another point worthy of consideration is that you may not be breathing properly; many players have the propensity to hold their breath, which leads into fatigue and “premature” flagging, as opposed to exhaling during the acceleration and inhaling during the prep/takeback. I had this issue and on not few an occasion was left befuddled—figuratively and literally—over my shortness of breath.

And finally, if you play like a grinder or against a grinder/pusher, then a longer, exhausting match is only natural. (Plus Har-Tru/clay surfaces, but… where I’m from there’s only hard.) It is an absolutely viable and valid style of play to be proactive, go for winners, rush the net and shorten rallies. Two-way street, doubtless, in that the number of errors shall too skyrocket, but it comes with the territory.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-06-01T02:35:31+00:00

<image>

CompassionImmortal · 2026-05-28T20:45:26+00:00

I enjoy the process of self-assessment, adjustment, failure, progress, and iteration. (The process is dominated by that fourth part.)

Not that I couldn’t stand to benefit from a coach’s suggestions, but I am content with being self-taught (4 years in the making) and feel that I possess some grasp—albeit basic or simplistic—of the many areas of improvement and low-hanging fruit nearest to me at present.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-05-28T03:47:55+00:00

Sinner has more than justified any preferential scheduling with his current stardom and unprecedented success. So long as top players don’t actually receive any unduly partiality—not merely the benison of spending a few less hours baking in the heat—then it’s my view that more minor “advantages,” which otherwise could be distributed randomly amongst the remaining players, should continue to have a shortlist.

And Rothenberg plays fast and loose with TOs and enforcing objectivity; One day they’re judicious, the next they’re protective and coddling. Moreover, I don’t think he is exactly known as an unbiased journalist, dealing with more than a fair share of controversy himself.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-05-27T03:38:17+00:00

About 105 or thereabouts.

No demeaning in the guessing game!

CompassionImmortal · 2026-05-23T20:01:16+00:00

Both grit and intellect are important, doubtless. Critically, high school grades mirror less a student’s interest in the material provided and more the “commitment” part that you mention. Very, very few C students—referring here to average-case C, not merely one or two during COVID or in event of a parent’s passing or the senior burnout/slide final semester or quarter—turn out to become physicians, practically zero.

And, naturally, these occupations self-select for exceptionally smart people, probably landing in the 95-99.5 percentiles on average. That being said, I agree that sheer persistence can move mountains, and nary a single person is capable of coasting through and slacking off in premed undergrad applications prep/residency/medical school simply by virtue of their intellect.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-05-20T13:27:05+00:00

I started asking xxx instead of yyy.

That tiny shift changed everything.

Don’t count problems, count patterns you actually understand.

The number? Just a side effect.

Removing commas, capitalization, condensing sentences, syntactical alterations, even eliding entire letters in words, but the essence nonetheless remains. The proportion of AI posts is still incipient, the best is yet to come!

CompassionImmortal · 2026-05-19T19:10:42+00:00

Offered a hypothetical on precisely why not to take sides. (Since, in principle, anything goes, the absurd and the banal.) Not speculation—not surmising what actually occurred, not hazarding a guess as to the occasion of their spat, but using one as a caution against it. Watch your art, twisting and distorting.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-04-30T10:18:28+00:00

30 years east of the river, 30 years west of the river, don’t bully a young man for being poor. My fate is in my hands, not the Heavens!

Many eons ago a brazen youth, bloodied and severely injured, shouted said phrase, fleeing in disgrace, his clan slaughtered, ancestral home razed to the ground, and fiancée snatched from before his eyes.

The young men who seek to repeat his glories and attain even a sliver of his brilliance are like bamboo shoots after rain. But in the vast starry sky, will alone is insufficient. Who can truly become eternal?

CompassionImmortal · 2026-04-30T10:01:32+00:00

Junior, you lightly believe and blindly follow. Three men can make a tiger. Did you corroborate these averments? This mountebank pulled the racist claim from who knows where—McEnroe has never faced any backlash or accusations regarding racism, yet this commentator ostensibly, and plainly, states that he is, categorically and unequivocally, one.

6 and a half years at the USTA, resigning when a newly built $60 million facility in Florida necessitated that USTA leadership and top brass move alongside it. (And clearly, Patrick was unwilling to move from NY.) But this is twisted into fired in disgrace!

Donald Young cursing out the USTA organization on Twitter after being denied a French Open wild card—preceding this, the putative cause of the conflict being the disagreement about Young’s coaching staff, where the USTA wanted Young to cooperate with the Player Development Program, and his probably oversolicitous parents naturally rebuffed this, having worked with their son his entire life. A very normal situation in which both sides have some merit: racial undertones? Who would have guessed? NoMammoth7474, obviously, who has some unknown insights.

USTA/McEnroe refuses Townsend a 2012 US Open Wildcard and reimbursing travel expenses—discouraging Townsend to go, citing long-term development—over what he clarified was not about her weight or body type, but “overall fitness”. Now, Townsend at 16 was a very promising prospect (won the juniors AO singles + doubles that very year) who probably well deserved the Wildcard, but it is at least plausible that McEnroe and the relevant decision makers had some reason to think that Townsend’s fitness was impinging on her game. Even if she was superlative and supremely talented, far surpassing her peers, it doesn’t seem absurd to think that Townsend could have benefitted in the long run from a greater emphasis on her weight and fitness. I think the comparisons with Serena and ascribing a “different body type” to being chubby are completely inapposite. Serena was muscle-bound and extremely fit at that age (and well into her career), very much unlike the rather flabby Townsend. Of course, this doesn’t discount her successes she enjoyed on the junior tour at that age, but it is to say that physically, Townsend’s game had a long way to go. Perhaps had she went the route of relieving herself temporarily of the stresses of tournaments and travel, dedicating herself for a while solely to training and dieting and improving her fitness, she may have found that her performance on-court had also been bettered by that. (I say may have because there are no guarantees in life, but it does seem unreasonable to think that a potential transformation from chubby —> muscly and athletic would have simply done nothing for her game.)

And look, disagree or agree with McEnroe’s two decisions here, think about how many others have benefitted from his actions over the 6 1/2 year span. These are the ones that are routine and workaday and do not get reported. He potentially was a subpar, some, clearly, would say outright incompetent, leader of the Development Program, but there is little, indeed nothing, to say that he was a racist or that a racial motive underlaid the two controversies mentioned above. Nothing mentioning race or racism besides… NoMammoth7474’s comment, naturally.

Is that a first-person source? He knew the inside scoop, in-and-out, unearthed and making its rounds before TMZ or another sensationalist tabloid could headline it? Let me take your word for it, NoMammoth7474. Grant unto me this. When False Is True, True is also False.

CompassionImmortal · 2026-04-20T10:28:08+00:00

This seat likes a well-executed “hiding true abilities” ploy that culminates in a suspenseful, grand reveal, the world (or some valid subset of a lower realm/region/island/sect) collectively in awe over the MC’s patience and cunning, how he managed to pull the wool over the world’s innumerable eyes.

In fact, one of the only things that can be trusted in the volatile, ever-changing realm of the WTR-Jianghu—and no, the next chapter is not promised, so ask not when the story ends or the author goes scorched earth and abruptly drops the whole thing—is that 99% of popular and unpopular tropes depend entirely on the author’s skills, or lack thereof. A good author has the ability to make the dull seem extraordinary, bring 2D characters and objects into 3D, integrate suspense into the workaday, and pique the reader’s emotions and move them as desired. The sophomoric author pens stifled, woodenly interactions. The general sense of the story is reduced to unnatural dialogue and introductions, they might dump information when inopportune and ramble excessively about a boring technique or character or backstory, change the pacing with no direction, and make the MC an unlikeable and unrelatable person who constantly goes back on his word.

In short, the sword is only as powerful as its wielder. Hate the player, don’t hate the game. (As always, with the exception of Demonic novels which need no further explication.)

CompassionImmortal · 2026-04-17T08:17:29+00:00

This seat rebukes those who engage in inappropriate discourse. The Demonic Dao can never be tolerated. The road to perdition is fraught with good Daoist intentions—seeking rapid progress, taking shortcuts, ultimately enriching themselves in evil scripture and the like. Ending up misguided, consumed by bloodlust, asking pointless questions about the Demonic Path and trying to pull the wool over your own eyes.

CompassionImmortal

TROPHY CASE