Mystery of Jack Kramer's Toss

[ochi]

One of the forum posters recommends that the toss land near the heel of the forward foot; and I have read that one should toss a little to the right for more spin; and I have read that pros nowadays toss parallel to the service line. I can handle all that, but not the far-out advice of the great Jack Kramer in an old video that I came across, "Complete Tennis from the Pros, Vol. II." Placing his racquet on the court, extended forward from the front of his leading foot, Kramer demonstrated what he considered the ideal toss for a baseliner -- the ball lands 15 to 18 inches from the tip of his front foot, onto the center of the strings. He added, "Toss two to two and a half feet in front" if you're going to net, especially in doubles. Few players know, or recall, that at that time, a server was not permitted to leave the court with both feet while serving. Kramer went on to explain, "The more you lean into the serve, and still maintain balance and control, as Roscoe Tanner does, the more pace you're going to get on the ball." But he was urging a hell of a long lean! How did he and Tanner and Charlie Pasarell (also on the video) manage to do it? And what is the value of their examples today, particularly for the legion of good recreational players who do not jump, and never will? Videos made since jumping was permitted show the leg thrust of top servers propelling them well up and into the court, but that is of little value to to players who manage to get in only four to six hours per week of court time. For them, the extreme leg thrust would simply add a major variable to their service technique, one that adds only 10 percent more power. Should recreational players ignore the advice of one of the best players of all time, or can we derive something from it?

[johnyandell]

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/jackkramer/jackkramer_sa.html?JKServeBHVFront.mov

What Kramer advocated and did may be different things. Look at this clip from the Stroke Archive and see where you think the ball is going to land...

The toss has to place to ball at the very front edge of your body-roughly the nose at the time of contact.

I wouldn't dismiss the legs quite so readily. It's not necessary to bend like Pete. Every player should have a bend that's natural for them. However far in front you can explode is how far in front you should, and how far in front you should toss.

[ochi]

Thanks, John, that clarifies if for me. As for leg thrust -- I used to go up three inches, just did, not trying to. Then, six years ago, I split the meniscus in each knee and lost that vigorous thrust. Maybe I'll get it back. If not, I'll have to be satisfied with a sort of knees pump. A hard-serving friend showed me how well that can work -- how less can be more. He had a Zen-like little pump that resulted in hard serves and great consistency. As for Jack Kramer, I'd still like to know how he views the radical changes in the game, and bet he chooses Federer as the best role model, at least for aspiring pros and college players. But who would he pick for middle-age club players? Santoro? Grosjean?

[bottle]

A more Rotarian Serve?

Oh right-- meniscus. Did you have arthroscopy? The knee guy and his physical therapist both claim that after two weeks my left knee is a lot sounder than it was, and it only hurts because it's healing. We'll see.

Did you hear the one about the doctor who came to net in a match and put a stethoscope on Bill Tilden's knee? The sound he described was of loose nuts and bolts rattling around inside a crankcase.

I've always wondered if some of the height or "hangtime" that modern servers enjoy is due to what the racket is doing over their head.

Note: all present and former oarsmen think they have the strongest legs in the world.

If a person of any age wanted to build up leg strength, a Martin trainer,
Alden sea shell or Concept 2 ergometer might be the way to go.

[ochi]

Yes, I had both knees 'scoped -- 15-20% snipped. Waited way too long, which resulted in unnecessary extra damage from months of inflamation. I bought a simple "Rock & Tone" contraption to build my quads back up, and continue to do daily range of motion exercises, and always will.

Good story about Tilden. Operations before arthroscopy meant a very long recovery time, so I guess he just put up with pain.

Not sure what you mean by hangtime.

[bottle]

Thanks

By "hangtime" or a serve with long hangtime I'm thinking of modern service
motions in which the player seems to be up in the air almost forever. The
following post will address the subject further. Airborne dynamics, whether
in tennis serving or a basketball jump shot, have got to be different from
when everything is on the ground, and more like being in water.

I'm thinking a lot about your "three inches," especially in view of our parallel
scoping experiences-- though mine so far is only in the left leg.

I think I damaged it several years ago with one stroke in which I was
trying to achieve "leftward lean" by kicking arch into my spine like a
Gullickson brother. It was a very bad idea, first, because I am not
a pinpoint server, and I was trying to rotate and thrust all at the same
time--result: torn meniscus.

Listen, I spotted your unique voice immediately when I went through the posts the other day. I'm a believer in restaurant discussions or anywhere
off the court where people speak from their natural enthusiasm, not trying to
indoctrinate or even to teach--result: they often do teach.

The following is going to seem excessive to some people if they even try to read it, but I don't care. I experiment all the time--my main pleasure in
tennis--and something recently happened for me, and I have decided to try
and describe it.

[bottle]

Put Cartwheel in Rolodex

A cartwheel doesn't roll fast enough. Use Brian Gordon's image of a drawn bow releasing instead, but don't get too attached to it since there is more to this subject than meets the eye.

Alternate title for this post: Is Dementieva just Bad at Street Directions or are the People Giving them to her to Blame?

This post is dedicated to people who can't lower a right angled forearm even to parallel to court, much less than to beyond parallel like Sampras or Roddick. Despite the limitation they can serve good as hell-- trust me-- just so long as they haven't read the J.P. Donleavy novel "Wrong Information is being Dispensed at Princeton."

You ask, Am I suffering from Turotte's or Asperger's? Probably. It's the shock of new discoveries, don't you know, combined with the familiar feeling that I should have engrained these items before. As Egotism said of the serpent in his bosom in Hawthorne's short story of similar name, "It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"

Reader, may we now discuss the whole serve backward from the moment at the beginning of the followthrough when racket tip is pointed down at the court? Let this occur to the left of the right-handed server's right hand, looking out from inside of his head, if you choose to follow me. Now, how
did the racket just get there?

Count Five: Wrist and Forearm Whollop

By a combination of old-fashioned wrist snap and forearm pronation simultaneous and in exact same direction. Practice it with a slow and small but murderous and vicious loop, slamming the ball down at the court so it
bounces across the net to an opponent you don't like. Doing this is important. You need to get the feel of a loose, old-fashioned, whippy wrist.
Yes, the wrist unbends. No, it doesn't bend again. Call this total action count five.

Count Four: Spring up from Legs and Release Bow while Cranking Upper Body a Horizontal Amount of 60 Degrees and then Lowering Left Shoulder toward Left Hip as Upper Body Cranks another 60 Degrees

Sounds complicated and is, but understanding can be simplified if we abandon the clear tendency of some pinpointers to kick bend into the body; and, rather go to a more air Jordan type of body dynamic. Early ascent from a platform stance is advised. Lift-off can be almost purely vertical. Always, the two legs thrusting must provide airborne rotation, too. The farther apart the legs the more rotation. The closer together the legs the more pure (i.e., higher) the verticality. Unbow immediately when you feel maximum pressure in feet. SNAP the shoulders forward as you SNAP them around. Use such violent commands of Allen Fox in his old book "Think to Win" since this is good for the spirit. Incorporate more recent theories of leftward lean into this system although one could see the lean (rightward lean) even then in the sequence of John McEnroe's serve presented by Fox. Think of the upper body as thinner in one direction than the other (you will be correct). Unbend and bend along the thinner and constantly revolving direction. Think of starting a new bow at right angles to the first if you must. In other words violently squeeze the left shoulder toward the left hip in second sixty degrees of upper body rotation. Take your choice of two different and excellent cues: A. Contract all muscles in thin front edge of body to unbow and rebow in a new direction; B. expand everything on back edge of body through the total 120 degrees of horizontal snap. (McEnroe used 180 degrees, as Fox explains, but this meant he could only drive off of one leg with the implication of less control for imitative players.) Using the first cue, the second, or both, or neither, you should now be ready to coordinate horizontal and vertical upper body snaps. If lower body reacts to this incredible double-whammy, I shouldn't be surprised but don't want to think about it. The front shoulder, spinning, will rise and dip. The back shoulder, spinning, will rise and rise. The arm, reacting to all of this, can first rise loosely from low, cocked position so that thumb without racket would dig into joint of neck and shoulder; passive arm can continue to the perfect wristing position, which is to right of arm so that you can slam wrist and forearm to left. (The way to go is almost surely to twist racket out to right as elbow rises to shoulders line.
Braden: "Scratch the back of the person next to you." Then as arm is flung straight keep racket to right side of arm, sort of like an elevator on the outside edge of a skyscraper in Atlanta.) You well might ask, "What is a little guy like Allen Fox doing talking about snapping down on the ball?" Well, he does. One of two more things: This whole count is about snapping out a spaghetti arm with the double upper body hook. Just keying on back shoulder, you can feel like you're slamming upward (Burwash: "Hit up, snap down").

Count Three: The Bend

Hand can be very low. The forearm can bend up to make a right angle as knees bend deeply with just the hint of a hip turn onto back foot.

Count Two: The Toss

Weight can be neutral on back foot; i.e., not going anywhere, as left arm bends at elbow and elbow then pushes ball up into the air without spinning it. I am sure hand position figures a-plenty in such an unorthodox, short-armed toss. Holding ball like Lubicic, with back of hand more or less parallel to net, and with just a slight lip of last two fingers available for propulsion seems to arc ball to where you want it, above your nose and out front a custom amount. At the same time the hitting arm straightens and shallowly descends more, palm up; the racket started open and continues to be open for simplicity's sake. The 30 degrees desired amount of backward, horizontal upper body rotation already occurred, so it won't screw up the toss.

Count One: Hands Forward and Up Together, then Down Together

This rhythmic motion fully transfers weight both ways. As you come down revolve the upper body the desired 30 degrees. Flat feet ensure a good stretch of transverse stomach muscles but a person up on toes could achieve the same goal through willpower.

The reason I prefer this serve over all the others I've ever tried-- at least for a few days-- is that it puts its focus or zen on a loose but muscular and all-out wrist whollop. Also, it never really fires the shoulder rotors (unless they contribute to the wrist and forearm snap). Firing shoulder rotors earlier may be a super option for Sampras, Roddick, or any player, who, by birth, has extra racket angle to give away.

[bottle]

This Serve: Refining the Cues

One can hold up arm and racket to show self exactly where one wants hand and strings at contact, while understanding that during the actual serve the arm will not be this close to ear. The straight arm will rather be lined up with both shoulders.

Head rises toward ball then veers sharply left.

Left arm, if bent after toss, will barely move left with hips during body and right arm bend, then fly fast down into left side from violent double axis body movement alone. The only independent left arm movement, then, is drop down and toss itself.

Front shoulder, the top tip of a bow, rises from body bend (the drawing back of the bow). It then rises more with legs explosion but almost instantly dips hard left because of early upper body angle followed immediately by the double slam left.

The vertical axis changes fast while the upper body revolves around it fast.
That is the main characteristic of this serve.

The old image of linked skaters "snapping the whip" becomes accurate and relevant again. (How many people have actually done this? I have, obviously with others. It's amazing.)

Propelled by legs, the right shoulder rises and continues to rise sharply left as you hit up (all fast).

If you do everything fast enough while still timing it the loose arm will start straightening from centrifugality alone-- then will be violently flung the last bit straight and beyond into loose but vicious wrist snap.

Twisting racket tip down to left of right hand leads to an economical finish. It also gives a person of limited backward rotor looseness (i.e., most people) more tract to hit up on the ball. Crosswise strokes afford longer bear swipe to put grizzly power into the shot.

[bottle]

Adding Whip

I don't think that the nerve impulse that drives horizontal and overhead body rotation is very different. Maybe one's nervous system just thinks that one is propelling his right shoulder as fast as he can. The two different kinds of motion are easily combined in other words, which is maybe good argument for this type of serve in which core action, though far from racket, flings the arm straight.

So how then can we take this serve from good to great? I thought of a bunch of experiments applying the two kinds of rotation in different proportion and sequence. Rather than assigning different percentages and degrees and getting all mathematical, though, I settled on the cue that shoulders be a little more closed then perpendicular to target line when the head then veers sharply down left.

The idea is to do what the two or three anchormen do out on the ice to whip a line of linked skaters so that the last person separates at breakneck speed.

They take three or four small, rapid steps sideways and dig in their skates.

Aspiring servers often dream of cracking the whip. And some tennis instructors actually possess bullwhips, while some good servers don't believe this phenomenon possible. But if vigorous motion is ocurring in one direction and the source of it is drastically altered in a new direction a loose, whipping arm becomes real.

However, what part of the arm whips? The wrist from the wrist joint? If that were so the wrist would go right up over the hand-- unworkable because of coming down too fast.

It's arm at elbow joint then. Arm may just get straight. Arm may get straight and fly sideways a bit. Personally, I can't see the subsequent wrist action as passive though looseness of grip certainly will help an ideal contact.

[bottle]

Serve Finish

The following extremes are real people, with names: In the first case a late starter developed a good topspin serve his third week playing tennis and proceeded to win tournaments. In the second case the player won a decade's worth of state championships but never could develop a good topspin serve-- not in his whole life.

For people in the second category, who have trouble hitting up on the ball-- or if they can do so, never with great pace-- I'd like to recommend the following: A serve which whips the whole arm and racket right to left from a continuing power source at body's core. Thinking of the serve this way may prove more productive than dwelling on kinetic chain or any impractical because unfocussed theory involving clodhopping, micro-analyzed sequence. I've tried to discuss an alternative whip serve, as best I can, in this present spate of posts.

Today I'd like to point to an ideal finish position that helps the other stuff become reality. That would be a balanced left foot landing with right hand on left leg and racket pointing at left fence and right foot kicked back (and quack!).

That's an ending for the whole serve, but it's an ending for the whip, too.
What then is the best beginning of the whip in terms of feel? I think it's a slight drawing back of the head toward rear fence as the knees and right arm bend and the body bows to about 30 degrees beyond vertical.

Every good serve is going to have a pronounced body bend, of course, with some formed by more slow hip travel on a line toward the net.

Me, I want some of that but not too much, since I envision equal weight on both feet just before lift-off. Best cracking of the whip then, through repetition, can become a simple quest for perfect timing of head veer down left.

After developing this serve, if you're still curious, you may be interested (perhaps once again) in exploring serves in which abrupt 90 degrees change of hand direction now goes to the right, with racket tip finishing to right of right hand and pointing at right fence-- before returning to a more conventional finish back on the left side. Opposite to the serve described in my posts here, you'll have to rely on arm muscle for this, won't you?

[bottle]

So what does Jack Kramer have to do with it?

Everything. He is the man who introduced palm-down method into the lexicon of toss. The significance is not that palm-down is necessarily better, but that a person can toss palm up, palm down, palm to side, palm on an angle. Even to say this, however, doesn’t cover the possibilities. Consider the ice cream cone toss of the late Vytas Gerulaitis, where a few fingers are clenched under the ball and the whole hand then flowers out. In other aspects the best tossers are individualized as well. They bend their arms more or less and in different ways. A perfectly straight arm is too
mechanical, no? Every person must find what best works, and is all too apt to put a ceiling on their game from insufficient curiosity.

By now I’ve proposed two very opposite serves in this present disquisition, both employing five counts. In a boneless serve one does best to employ an extra-closed stance though not as much as John McEnroe. One can go up on front foot and then down on back foot completely wound having lowered both hands (1); toss and take open racket down farther on a shallow slant
(2); bend the arm and knees forward while cocking your head a little farther back (3); kick and double-rotate the body up and then down left to first raise elbow and then finish straightening the loose arm (4); snap wrist and
forearm sideways and finish balanced with hand on left knee (5).

My second offering (but not my second serve; both motions can be used effectively for either first or second serve) uses high, minimal arm preparation, extensive delay of arm but not body, and very brusque discharge of muscular energy toward right fence. One can go up on front foot and then backward onto rear foot completely wound having lowered only the left hand (1); toss while taking open racket back level on still bent right arm (2); move sideways toward right fence on bending knees while keeping weight entirely on right leg. Go so far that full body arches on both sets of toes. Let this body motion invert the racket and keep your arm compressed while you flex your forearm out. You may feel as if you’re winding up to throw a rock. The right knee starts the direction of this throw (3); fly the racket forward like a paper glider with double rotation of the body only and nothing too fast. You zigged toward right fence with your knee. Now you zag toward net onto bent front leg. Next you will zig toward right fence again with the throw (4); your best natural throw has astounding result because of the slight momentum that the racket already had combined with a loose hammer grip. You try to get as close to the ball as you can for the 90 degree change of hand direction. The racket head changes direction by 270 degrees with the assisted pronation. The front leg extends late as part of this overall throw (5).

The first serve I described is hit with a straight hitting arm. This other serve, also deceptively powerful, is hit with arm still unbending. If you throw a rock as far as you can, is your arm straight or bent at release?

So where do some of the ideas for these serves, certainly my own and developed during recuperation from arthroscopy, come from? The first is influenced by Allen Fox, the second by Oscar Wegner.

[bottle]

POD (Progression of Design)

The second type of serve is more in progress than the first, although I plan to use both when I resume play in two weeks.

With almost every day that has passed, the right arm preparation has finished sooner and sooner.

Now I'm going up together with two bent arms-- that hasn't changed-- but right arm is whirled and compressed and even cocked (I think of the verb "stirred") immediately from the high elbow position, as tossing arm drops naturally down.

My desire is to prepare hitting arm in its "frozen" and yet utterly relaxed, quiet position as early as possible and yet still be rhythmic.

Cocking the hitting hand behind the neck takes longer than dropping the tossing arm. One could slow the tossing hand or speed up the hand-going-behind-the-neck to get everything more together.

Personally, I think it better to drop the tossing arm naturally then pause a little as everything else catches up, then toss. Oh, there might be a little
transition to the next stage-- maybe the forearm turning out as knee travel toward right fence begins. The most import rule here, certainly, is to keep everything malleable and open to slight modification once the basic structure of this radically different serve is understood. One obvious experiment I won't have run until tomorrow morning: Start coiling the racket before dropping left hand to toss.

[bottle]

Earliness and Rhythm: one Solution

Some of my first ideas produced erraticness due to hurriedness of the "stir."

But hands are together on the racket to start every serve with arms slightly bent. Waggling the racket up and down a few times like bouncing a basketball before a foul shot can make the last upswing still more a part of the whole serve.

The two hands can go up a final time with the right hand then separating and bending the arm (all one motion) with weight still on front foot.

The tossing hand hovers until best separation for purpose of timing has occurred. Then it drops with 30 degrees of backward upper body rotation onto rear foot same as always.

The two arms are in synch since the right arm has less to do.

One can add to upper body rotation by clenching right shoulder blade back toward left one. This leads to minor adjustment of initial stance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That was the expectation; here is the reality. If you are a right-hander who has been playing tennis for some time, once your left hand feels itself rising and separated from the right hand, it will toss and there is nothing sensible that you can do about it. Making the toss hand hover is out of the question.

Better to go with the flow then. Take both hands up together. Start stirring with right hand while you slowly lower the bent tossing arm a very small amount.

Contrast this small amount with tossing arm in the earlier serve described here, where hand comes all the way down on a straightening arm.

By "stirring" I don't mean soup in a shallow pan with a ladle. That would be two-dimensional. Instead think of yourself underwater and stir in all directions-- vertical, horizontal and everything in between.

Toss with arm straightening out, and do everything else as described before.

I am horrified to report that I now have a toss in which the arm bends (serve type A or boneless) and one in which the arm straightens (serve type B in which the whipping action is caused by abrupt change of direction in hand
rather than head).

I have cheerfully decided, however, to accept my fate.

[bottle]

Hold the Mayo

Hold the holding of the compressed arm still, too, except when you are first discovering this serve, or maybe if you want to renew it.

Stir the racket in every direction, adjusting the body weight to this full motion and betting everything on it. The stir is simplified by starting with the racket open. This is an escape from the palm down whirligigging complexity first sprung on us by the career breakthrough book "Tennis for the Future."
That is not criticism of the authors Braden and Bruns, but recognition that almost any idea sooner or later is supplanted by something else. And what is the book's title? Brilliant. How can anyone fault it.

During the loop (the stirring)--DOUBLE DOUBLE BOIL AND TROUBLE--the weight goes pronouncedly back, sideways, and forward. Coincidentally, the loop goes back, sideways and forward while going down and up, too. Does elbow rearrange itself slightly forward and upward from the body as Brian
Gordon advocates? To be sure.

The 90 degrees of changing hand direction (the vigorous muscular arm extension that helps whirl the racket by 270 degrees) all at once takes the
strings through the ball, across the ball, and up the ball.

Now Brian Gordon, in his new article, has vigorous arm extension occurring at halfway point in the upward swing. Those with big right angles in their arms for a long tract, in my view, would be in correct position to do this at any time. Those with the two halves of the arm pressed together, like me, would
rely on centrifugality to straighten the noodle arm somewhat first-- before
the big mind and muscle throw sideways.

In the minimalist serve here, the muscular power of the arm starts with arm still squeezed. That means persons with limited flexibility in their shoulder rotors (most people) have at least a chance to produce upward spin. That also means, with vigorous triceps extension occurring at this earlier time, that,
there is less danger of hyperextension.

In the fully airborne serve, Gordon suggests, one probably wants to train oneself to bend the arm right after contact like Sampras to protect it.

In my boneless, Allen Fox influenced flat serve with a little slice, I don't want to do that (so maybe I'll wind up at the orthopaedist again if I totally succeed in big-time snapping of the whip by last instant head shift left).
Everything now is going cross body easily to the left, however, and feels very natural and relaxed and balanced with no muscular extension of the arm at all.

When I return to airborne left-to-right late muscular experiments, I'm going to start the extend-bend precaution regime.

In fact, I don't think people are grateful enough to the people who can tell them new things about serves.

[bottle]

How the Restricted Server can Achieve Upward Spin with Pace

It's harder to revise than to get something right the first time, but I must go back to Post # 12 to find the correct starting point for the serve I'm going to propose here.

The speed of backward, abbreviated loop must, initially, be quite fast. One could avoid this by starting this right hand STIR before tossing arm drops its small amount.

Tossing arm won't like that, however, and tennis is better learned by feel than thought.

So send weight forward and both hands up together. This can be achieved with no waggles or bounces or preamble or fiddling around ritual at all. You can just pick up a ball from the court and do it.

Up together-- it's a rhythmic hitch-- then let bent left arm fall its short amount at gravity's rate as the right arm, also bent, stirs down and around and over head making racket barely clear it. It seems like a lot to ask but ask it.

And all the action of this single hitting arm move has not concluded yet. As the strings almost graze your head, with very loose grip, gently hump your wrist to lower the racket an extra amount. Since the racket is going sideways a bit at left fence this will work out. Bending hand inward from arm, JUST THEN, will lower the racket, not take it sideways.

We're still working on an initial move to accompany the simple drop of the tossing hand and it's huge! It has to be fast, like quickly winding up for a throw to first base. But it has to be smooth, too. And weight moves onto back foot at the same time. Body and arm work together but arm is probably doing more than one ever imagined.

Best not to worry about exactly when the upward toss (perhaps bent-armed) should start. The HAND will tell you. The weight is now back and you have achieved two of five counts in thinking about the serve-- to learn or refresh--if the serve breaks up well for you into that number of sections.

On count three the forearm turns out (cocks or "you scratch the back of the person next to you") as right knee bends.

On count four your arm, weakly convoluted as never before-- slowly, ever so slowly-- extends partway toward right fence which takes the closed strings on a pretty straight line somewhat left to right toward the ball barely skimming the top of your head again.

What else is achieving slow but sure racket momentum toward the ball? A little horizontal rotation from the gut. A little vertical rotation from foot to head.

At last instant, just before racket edge meets ball you complete arm extension by firing hand hard toward right fence-- a 90 degree change of direction. Front leg assists. The strings of course, thanks to your loose grip and shoulder rotors and forearm muscles and general good behavior, rotate by 270 degrees. You hit pretty low through the ball, with leading edge opening to barely miss it and let the trailing edge do the work.

Somewhere within this pattern, as you try slightly different elbow positions and adjust overall timing and distribution, there are lousy learning serves to be had and a few booming, uninhibited kickers, too-- maybe one the
first session, seven the second, two the third, nine the fourth.

The downward spinning serves are fast and stay low, giving some returners trouble, but one should hold out, with stubbornness, for a high expectation.