Feb

19

Left-handers comprise about 10% of the total population, but I think they account for a greater proportion of the better participants in all sports. The reason is that athletes hone their skills and strategies against the most available fodder, righies. In racquetball, there are some things you should know, that a southpaw intuits in his mirror world of playing against right-handers, to gain back the edge. Sit back and prepare yourself: This article contains both tips and related quirks.

Certain serves and shots work better against lefties. Your down-line drive serve to the backhand becomes a deathblow to the southpaw receiver. I use one spot about six feet from the right side wall to hit a medley of three drive serves off the same stroke motion for deception. The first is a drive right along the wall to his backhand, the second is a drive-Z right, and the third is a drive left that surprises him provided it doesn't come off the back wall before the second bounce. These are really the only serves you need in a serious game against a left-hander, and the usual variation is 50% drive right, 30% Z-right, and 20% drive left, though you can tinker with the recipe.

If you find him scrambling more for one of the serves, raise that ratio. If you fault the first serve, use the Z or lob for the second, unless you're particularly confident about the drives. A final note is that the Z-serve, especially well into the intermediate skill level, is tailor-made for use against a lefty (and vice-versa) because it's simple to strike, allows large margin of error, and gives additional angle due to the extra reach and positioning within the service box nearer the right side wall. Practice until you can hit 9-of-10 Z's perfectly. Vary the Z's velocities and heights to prevent the opposition from forming a rhythm or volleying the return.

Return of service against a southpaw enters a new dimension since your more naturally strong cross-court backhand now pulls the shot hard to his weaker and shorter reaching backhand. (The backhand stretches about a foot less out, or up, than the forehand because it must reach across the body.) The ceiling, pass or cross court kill all work, though fundamental service return strategy advises you to be able to hit the ceiling shot well before progressing to the pass before learning the kill.

In the rally likewise, you can direct cross-court passes with greater margin of error, as long as the ball doesn't rebound off the back wall. When a lefty begins to 'cheat' to cover your cross-court passes and kills, keep him honest with a kill to the other front corner (straight-in or pinch). Cross-court ceiling returns and ceiling rallies are also usually easier than down-line. Try for a spin on the inside of your hit ball that causes it on reflections off the ceiling, front wall and floor to angle straight toward the back wall rather than hop into a side wall. The best way to improve passes and ceilings for use against future left-handers is to drill at perpetual cross-court passes, or ceilings, or mixing the two, against a lefty.

Southpaws, as mentioned, generally come with the foregoing tips already parcel to their game plans due to a past of playing the 'mirror game' against right handers. In course, it will help righties to understand how to better play lefties by imitating the serves, returns and shots that they use against you! I once went against a lefty who lost point after point against my Z-serve to his backhand. Finally, he turned and smiled at me from the service box, and hit the same Z to my backhand, and I was compelled to display the definitive return, a volley. I couldn't serve him another Z for the entire match.

My expertise in writing this article is as a developing ambidextrous player. For the past year I've played primarily southpaw due to an arm injury, and in earlier years entered tournaments right-handed in pros and left handed in opens. I hope to see other aspirants at the first Ambidextrous Championship, whenever that may be.

Why play lefty? Obviously, upon reverting to your dominant hand, you'll start beating lefties more handily, plus there are other benefits: 1) You teach yourself to be a teacher by having to learn strokes from scratch. 2) You're able to pick up more informal games in tapping a new pool of lesser players for competition. 3) Rallies are up to three times as long for speedier, better workouts. 4) It's a fun challenge! 5) Monumental insights to your normal strokes pop up during the learning process. 6) You can alternate hands in successive games to last longer on the court. 7) It's backup if you injure the main arm during a match. 8) You can enter more events in a tournament. 9) It's a way to continue to play while resting chronic inflammation in the dominant elbow or shoulder. Swing away, southpaw!

I was said to have the game's best slow-ball backhand, and when I finally started to believe it, I attributed it to writing extensive longhand throughout life. The backhand movement of the pencil across the paper repeats tens-of-thousands of strokes and lines, using the same fine motor and visual components as the racquet stroke. The first thing I did after deciding to become ambidextrous was to switch to writing mirror image, right to left, to more quickly gain a lefty backhand. The next move was to turn books upside down so that the print flows right-to-left as Arabic, Chinese or Hebrew, and I've read the last 300 books in this fashion. It trains the eyes to become 'ambi-visual' in tracking print, ergo balls, from right to left. This aids the right-hander's backhand stroke, since 80% of serves and shots on the court travel in that direction. Our daily world is seeing so much print flowing from left to right, that you should never again explain away your cheesy backhand with bogus excuses until you've learned to track the ball better from right to left. That can be the solution to your next tournament win. Next, I wrote 1000 pages of an autobiography Catman Keeley: The Adventures of a Lifetime on an upside down monitor, like the one I'm looking at now.

Least you think there is something odd about any of this, I wish to advance that Leonardo da Vinci kept journal notes in mirror writing that his peers called 'secret code' to prevent theft of ideas. I rather think he just wanted to balance aspects of his life. Da Vince was many grand things, and foremost an anatomist who must have understood the premise for visual balance from his dissections. Mammalian eyeballs removed from their sockets are as ping-pong balls with muscle attachments about the sphere causing it to turn and twist, plus a colored iris made of muscle, and a lens with muscle attachments for accommodation of vision. Seeing is as much lifting weights as curls and presses. If you read only in the conventional direction of left to right, the eyes become muscularly unbalanced and will trace moving objects such as balls weakly from right to left.

The other profits from reading and writing backwards include greater stamina (in turning the book at 30-minute intervals from upside down to right side up), relief from eye, neck and back strain due to prolonged reading or writing, writing class notes that no one will want to borrow, coding, and reading the newspaper simultaneously from across the table with your mate.

 There's sufficient ado over left-right brain dichotomy to make Leonardo roll over in his grave, however the classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is worthwhile. I once offered to teach (where I was also coaching racquetball with the methods) a college course on The Art and Science of Mirror Reading and Writing but was thwarted by the dean, so I may write a serious book with the same title in mirror print that comes with a mirror bookmark for transition. I presently sub-teach middle and high school, and write assignments on the black boards in mirror image, causing the girls to use their compact mirrors to read to the rest of the class until they're all fluent in a week. Wonderfully, most middle-school students turn books upside down and read immediately, high school females typically do the same, but males stumble over words. Male athletes are more persistent at the task in believing that it helps them see a baseball, basketball, etc. better. The principal summoned me to his office once to ask why so many students about campus were observed reading their texts upside down. I explained the benefits of the habit for sports to the chief, an ex-boxer and wrestler, who asked for a personal lesson on mirror writing.

I'm a proud self-taught dyslexic who often sees 'tixe' and doesn't know where to go. An eerie thing happened one stormy night a few years ago while reading in a coffin lined with electric blankets to make a comfortable bed. I was teaching myself to read via an optical-quality mirror Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and came upon the passage of 'Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum' that's written in actual mirror image! I bolted straight up and shut out the light.

Am I right? There are many tips and related quirks in this essay to combat the plague of left-handers, while paradoxically encouraging you to become one. By now, it's evident that playing lefty is a new frontier that many will realize, that writing mirror image is a first step in that direction, and further that reading upside down aids visual tracking. Now the best southpaws march in. .

The All-TimeTop Ten Leftys:

1. Cliff Swain – Six-time world champion.
2. Mike Ray - World Champion, smooth and consistent, with the best overhead.
3. Bud Muehleisen – The first world champion, and great all-racquets athlete.
4. Brett Harnett – Two-time Pro Player of the Year, and hit almost as big as Swain.
5. Steve Serot – Power southpaw in the days of slow balls, who finished #2 to Brumfield.
6. Craig McCoy – A top pioneer pro with stylish and smooth strokes, similar to Mike Ray.
7. Bruce Christansen - His lefty power serve took out Brumfield at one pro national.
8. Kane Waselenchuk - The young Canadian is talented enough to move up the list.
9. Mike Guidry - A top singles and doubles competitor for over a decade.
10. Steve Mondry - Great forehand, and carried Hogan to two pro doubles titles.


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