Thursday, July 7, 2016

The three fingered tennis grip increases accuracy of shots by 10%

My tennis theme about a grip in  which the pinkie is cured up underneath the butt of the racket.  That pinkie provides both and active and passive coiled spring effect which allows a 40% increase in  the torque applied by squeezing the grip from different angles.

Proof:'

Take your racket in  your dominant grip and place your forearm on  your knee and lock it with your sub dominant hand.  Swing the racket in a short circular pattern using the hand.  Measure the circularity of the racket motion.  Switch to three fingered grip, repeat.  The rack head has nearly constant radius of motion, almost 50% more consistent than the misshapen  oval described with the standard grip.  

With the hand providing 20% of the ball energy, one can see a 10% accuracy improvement.  The three fingered grip is a very accurate articulated ball joint, and it adds nearly an inch of racket length.  

Try this, stand at the baseline and try to chop the ball just over the net, use drop feed.  Try this with both  grips.  

The evolutionary advantage of the pinkie is the basket shape, the little finger completes a basket with the palm up, allows us to carry a hand full. No other standard sport uses this effect, except handball.  Even baseball pitchers leave the pinkie aside.   But the tennis three fingered grip use the pinkie to its natural advantage, it makes a basket for the racket butt.  Three fingers should be the standard grip in tennis, and all tennis should be one-armed run and shoot.

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