Study These Strokes, from Bo Keely

March 18, 2011 |

Cliff Swain, charming and unlikely, is the greatest racquetball player in history, in viewing all the champs from '70-03. I watched him dismantle Hogan with these strokes the way Hogan dismantled the field. He is the only player who, though they never met on the court, would control both Brumfield and Niederhoffer. At my best, I would have scored 10 points/game.

Cliff Swain is from Boston, learned racquets on the long (maybe 30') outdoor courts. This is one reason for dominance, the court, like a slow squash ball, demands stepping to volley shots. Plus, the increased distance was helpful resistance training to a young arm. He's extremely coordinated. I watched him closely for hours at practice and tournaments during '03. He's slight, 5'10'', 170lb, mesomorph. The grace provides power– that, as I talked about in the swing tutorial. He generates more force than anyone has every applied to the ball in the split-second '3-5 frames' the strings are on the ball. His strokes, despite the photos, is relatively effortless compared to the rest of the champs. He's the one who stalks the ball in slow motion (due to coordination) around the court, and plants to intensify per muleheisen's rheostat for the setup and swing… then it's back to slow motion til the next setup. It's v. animal like, something between a gazelle and big cat. When I watched he & Hogan square off for a money shootout with many rallies of matched force- you recall no one in history overpowered hogan- except Swain's stroke for strokes were 20% less physical with 10% more pace + weight on the hit ball. It's one of the handful of times that I've been agog. As for Swain, I fibbed: at my best, I would have stood a 50% chance of beating him given my best day repeated forehand wallpaper serve scraping the right wall to his backhand. Swain trained under Mike Quinn, also from Boston.

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