Mystery of Jack Kramer's Toss

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The Blind Alley of all Blind Alleys?

The great effort to get racket tip low-- the huge emphasis on perpendicular drop can lead anyone to smudge the two basic types of arm windup.

In the videos of Chris Lewit manhandling small infants through promising patterns of topspin serve, the two halves of the arm are always in alignment. The elbow twists up but the racket remains directly below it.

In the videos of Dennis Ralston hitting low slice out wide, the arm squeezes only to eighty degrees, and the upper arm stays parallel to the court, and the forearm winds back (or back and down if you are very flexible like Pancho Gonzalez or Pete Sampras).

The two methods could not be more different, and any attempt to combine them is dementia not to mention Dementieva.

Shouldn't tennis instructors articulate this? I think so. They could save the world lots of grief.

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How an Old Guy can Develop a Pretty Good Kick Serve

1. Ignore any young person who says it can't be done.

2. Decide that attention to detail, when it comes to stroke design, is just as important as Yoga stretches.

3. Read all "kick" articles at TennisPlayer and anyplace else.

4. Put the two words "kick serve" in a browser.

5. Read all the articles; watch all the videos. Try everything.

6. Re-read any article by Brenda Schultz. She leads to more longitudinal kick with knees parallel and one straight, strong line from knees to hitting shoulder, which is kept back and low for longer, with a great emphasis on springing everything way up high to maximum extension, and with upper body rotation, so essential in other serves, delayed until after contact.

This doesn't mean there can't be forward travel and cartwheeling as part of the spring to the sky. Head movement will occur but can be minimized by standing in front of a mirror and raising and lowering shoulders to reverse their tilt without it affecting the head!



3.

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Schultzy Kick

That would be Brenda Schultz-McCarthy.

You want to feel the force of quads and ankles straightening the entire body from the knees. If you kept back straight and went down on knees and ankles with heels rising and pelvis thrusting toward right fence you simply reverse all this to explode into the sky.

The back holds, doesn't contribute (but holding is a challenge of its own).

Then triceps fires arm straight on a slightly backward slant.

Then the wrist straightens and turns with all force-- everything from toes transmitted through the yoke between thumb and forefinger. (Total arc of
strings to contact here-- about 90 degrees-- and the motion continues out right of course.)

As racket scrapes shuddering ball and finally becomes perpendicular to the court, the upper body rotation is permitted to begin.

The racket gets way back thanks to shoulders being turned 45 degrees more than hips.

Keep shoulders where they are
1. past contact! and
2. until body and racket tip have obtained classical straightness from toes all the way up left side of body to Jupiter!

Those of us who, despite serving a lot, still produce sidespin that goes in a slightly downward direction may chronically be failing to get the racket far behind toward SIDE fence while still remaining strong.

Anyone can develop some kind of topspin but will it be ferocious?

The best way to get the racket back is to wind the shoulders and then leave them there (I think). Instead of relying on gut muscles for basically horizontal, rotational propulsion as you may do in flat and slice serves, you catapult your long lever from knees to shoulders. The legs can do it and do it alone.

To think you are reaching (extending) as high as you can by lowering your head out of the way is absolutely ridiculous. Much better to keep your head up and reverse the tilt of your shoulders internally. Among other things the contact will be six inches or more higher. (But yes, the head will move a little-- see Kuznetsova).

Serving from one's knees as recommended in the online article on kick by Schultz-McCarthy and Juan Nunez may have special relevance for this type of serve. For, what elements are absent? You may think since you are on your knees that you're only using half of your body. It wouldn't be true. Your body, kept muscularly straight, can pivot freely back and forth (down and up) from the knees. Compression and extension of the legs then is the same rough idea as when you're standing up.

I'm at a point with my own serve where one more degree of upwardness would make me happy, and five would make me more happy than that (notice that I didn't use the word "ecstatic").

Self-instruction: Go back on the web (type "kick serve" in browser) and check out the bearded guy. His racket is WAY back. There's an ocean of space between it and his gross body. So, how is it way back, and does this matter?

Toss certainly does matter (notice that the 11 o'clock reference point is determined with body straight, not bent back yet). Toss, however, isn't everything. The strings need to be way left of and below the final position to which the toss will drop.

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Learning through your Ears

At dawn last week I was working on my kick serve when a state championship in thirties doubles arrived and kicked me off the court. I hung around. The officials asked me about my quixotic project. Every person on the full courts had an effective kick serve, but one official directed me to the best of them all (in his correct opinion), and I walked along the fence to watch the dude from close up-- pinpoint stance with slight pause at bottom of compression and symmetrical thrust from both legs. His ZING was a virtuoso percussionist's scrape not muffled by clunkiness as in the kickers of some others. How to work from this musical example to my platform stance? Start with feet close together, I decided, and forget about bowing (Boeing) toward the net altogether-- easier then to compress lower on the legs. So, for high, looping kick from platform stance:

1. Bring legs close together before you even start.

2. Go down much farther. This takes shoulders slightly tilted from toss but almost level to left.

3. More legs but keep them under control unlike rowing where with all you got you should jump for a moon on the horizon. This takes shoulders farther to the left.

4. Do a small jack-knife as in diving while keeping shoulders in same almost level arrangement. This takes shoulders straight up but not to right.

5. Shoulders can now revolve internally in a boxer's punch for more body and tract extension to add to arm getting straight, so long as everything is still going up behind your back. For contact the shoulders can revolve externally as well (that would be where head moves a bit to get out of the way).

6. Abandon these numbers and devise new ones, probably but not necessarily a five-count. The final count is a matter of Zen Buddhism: a total discharge from hand, fingers and wrist with all the energy you've got toward a moon straight overhead. Concentrate on this one part of the serve (ZING) so that it marshals every other detail.

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Return to a Past Lesson

And then, for fast kick, go back to Sampras, relying on TP article “Radical Torso Rotation,” page 2 . This puts legs farther apart again, but doesn’t undo any of my recent power ideas (I believe). It’s just the addition of ease and pop.

Luckily for me, I picked up the Sampran turning of front foot parallel to baseline from a study of Justine Henin’s kick serve (but she doesn’t do it on her first serve—why not?) In any case learning this small heel pivot takes from five minutes to a practice session. You only have to decide you want it.

I probably absorbed the lesson of radical torso rotation years ago, but with marginal flexibility, you don’t easily get what you want (so listen to the Beatles’ record), and the greatest progress may come all too gradually and very late if at all. Part of the experience of unrelenting quest is that old lessons come back.

My favorite two paragraphs from the TP article:

“At the contact point, this rotation has continued until the shoulders are at about 45 degrees to the baseline. This means the shoulders and hips are still moving, rotating through the motion at the same time the racket and arm are moving from the drop position to the contact.

“This is in complete contradiction to the theory that holds that the body rotation should actually be complete with the shoulders parallel to the baseline before the racket moves to the contact.”

I’m a little worried about the reliance on front leg thrust that comes with Sampran 150 degrees of body turn. McEnroe, at 180 degrees, is the prime example of this according to Allen Fox. Personally, I’m very sure I want to use both legs equally, at least to kick. About 120 should accomplish this kind of serving for a non-genius, Fox estimated in his book “Think to Win.”

How different it is to achieve low point from both leg thrust and up to sixty degrees of rotation than from leg thrust all by itself. One can, of course, try anything—a very good feeling.

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Kick of the Moment

What may have helped most:

60, 50, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110...

which is degrees of conceptualized hand rise during the catapult from a low elbow position (like Djokovic) with all the numbers under 90 representing a BACKWARD path of arm including rise of ELBOW toward the rear fence.

Note: Some people (wimps all) use the word "cartwheel" in tennis, so demure compared to my "catapult," but I may have Turotte's Syndrome so don't worry about it.

Note 2: When I place my palms together with vertical hands in front and bend them to the left I get 90 degrees in the left wrist. When I go to the right I only get 75 degrees. When I was a teenaged skier I schussed an Indian burial mound in Ohio and hit a clump of grass, breaking my right forearm in two places. I've always wondered if this might be part of the reason for insufficiently intense upward spin in my serves. The dead Indians in the Mound did it.

Jerry Wampler, the teaching pro at Stonebrook Racquet Club, Winchester, Virginia, was alleged to be able to put a ball in the opposite service court and bounce it over the far fence.

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Federian Shift-back or Sampran Heel Pivot for Kick Serve

A person who has done three billion heel pivots may view these actions as less interchangeable than I do. As a timing tic, though, they’re the same. The pivot’s done with the left leg. The shift-back is done with the right leg, which moves in unison both with the right-hander’s weight and his racket. Anybody could make the change with a few hundred repetitions. Intellectually (that adverb eliminates most players), the big thing to understand is that these finessing moves are not just personal mannerism of Pete or Roger, but address basic mechanics and more important the generation of “feel.” My main source of information is my daily service session at dawn. That’s why I believe what I’m saying: That for better kick a server (or at least a limited flexibility server) should use one or the other of these two methods.

At the same time I understand that something’s wrong if I can conduct a full service session every morning when every other morning would be better. In other words, I haven’t been putting enough strain on my arm.

With the step-back, however, the racket can almost float into position. Or as a girl recently said in a bar: “Up, spaghetti arm, hit it.” A certain zen then becomes possible, but with the last bit of arm extension (triceptic) contributing to ultimate wrist snap, and with guidance taken from this letter found on the web:

“You need to do 4 basic things to hit an effective kick or topspin serve.

(1) Place your toss more to your left (for righthanders).
(2) At the same time, place your toss further back—almost over your right shoulder (again, for righthanders).
(3) Accelerate/snap up as you pronate your wrist with great energy. This serve requires great effort because you are brushing the ball (taking less of the ball) and lack of racket acceleration will result in a spin serve that has no pace or “jump.” You must generate maximum ball revolutions (rpms).
(4) Your follow through on this serve is to your right—not across your body to the left.

This serve also requires a great deal of practice to perfect. Hit hoppers of balls daily until you get the “jump” action this serve must have. It’s well worth the time and effort to perfect this serve. In Team Nationals last year, I won more points with this serve than any other. I would recommend you practice both a hard topspin/kick serve and a high looping topspin/kick serve. Both have value and the combination will keep your opponent guessing and off balance.

Good luck & have fun!

Zorro”

This description, to my mind, is precise. I therefore draw attention to Zorro’s use of the bold key. He says, “Accelerate/snap up as you pronate your wrist with great energy.” The word “with” is not in bold. The snap up therefore is what’s done with full zen, not the pronation.

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Where this String seems to be Going right now

The instruction on toss that most teaching pros deliver nowadays is uniform and authoritarian rather than emancipatory.

Vic Braden, that great gyro, takes a lot of hits from current tennis players simply because he's said a lot in his long life. His is the fate of anybody who develops individual opinion and is able to express it.

Braden argued for thumb down tossing like Jack Kramer. At the same time he gave his listeners the option of ice cream cone and palm up.

The faddish affection for palm up tosses now would exclude such interesting characters as Ivan Ljubicic and Boris Becker.

I see this string, given Ochi's title for it, as a place for mine or anybody's most speculative thought.

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Retracting the Landing Gear in Second Serves

To continue the narrative of a boy lost in the forest, one can develop even more feel in a kick serve by stealing Roger Federer's way of combining BOTH elements recently mentioned-- backward step AND heel pivot.

One amusing aspect of assigning Roger as your model for anything is that any two videos are apt to show two different things. On the other hand these variations may be small.

So, in one video Roger moves his back foot a lot while keeping his well turned front foot still. In another he starts with back heel up on toes. That heel goes down as front toes go up and pivot, and the legs bend with the whole action nothing if not rhythmic.

Contrast with Djokovic keeping both feet flat to begin with, rocking back as his front toes go up but then not pivoting them at all. Down goes that foot with a lot of lateral travel under the ball during his knee compression-- but of course he's traveling toward the net at the same time, and as his front leg fires his back sneaker drags, possibly leaving some toe rubber.

Both serves get the hip well out toward the net, the direction of catapult, with arm going more to right.

What really interests me today is that both servers, after front leg thrust and most of their catapult (combined with upper body rotation) still have not left the ground to any great degree.

The real take-off only happens as arm extends simultaneous with legs compressing for a second time (think retraction of landing gear).

In Djokovic's case the second legs compression is so extreme that his front leg may form a full right angle in mid-air.

No wonder he lands so far into the court.

If you want to look for other contrast-- this in the educational sphere-- think how the uninitiated (that would be anybody who has not yet mastered his kick serve) often suffer from the misconception that good servers leap as high and as powerfully as they can.

A new consciousness of catapult and arm extension and legs retraction challenges the proposition that legs do the main work at all in hoisting the server's body into mid-air.

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Al Dente Fig Newton

Change the paradigm.

Do whatever it takes to correct in the three or four of Chris Lewis' checkpoints that currently are imperfect, but do so hopefully with one marshalling act.

From fully wound position initiate a three-part unified body takeoff: (1) drive from one leg (platform stance); (2) catapult including UBR; (3) retract landing gear.

At same time institute a two-part unified, Malivai Washington type whipping wrist snap: (A) from low elbow position throw the hand backward on about a 60-degree line to instantly create a longer and more sweeping and higher percentage lever, to put more distance between hand and the back of your head, to passively raise elbow, to passively compress arm and send passive hand well beyond that acutely twisted position still on its 60-degree backward path and centrifugating outward into wide orbit through passivity in your arm. (Is this enough repetition of the word "passive" to connotate al dente cooked spaghetti arm?); (B) with full Zen Buddhism fire the last bit of arm extension (triceptic) to put delicious fig Newton into your all-out wrist snap.

Obviously I am a Djoker, but a joker on a quest, too. The supination to supranation may seem impossible until you realize that the UBR (upper body rotation) component of your catapult can twist your forearm out; the centrifugation of passive arm extension may seem impossible without Brian Gordon's inspired use of shoulder rotor muscles (sorry but I just don't have enough extra racket angle to give any to the Salvation Army) because the backward arm extension quickly goes off-line from what the gross body is
doing-- however, all you need is a LITTLE backward passivity: Once the arm achieves obtuse angle again you are all clear to fire from the triceps with all you got.

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Streamlining Backward Arm and Hand Glide

Regulate speed of arm travel so that the elbow turns over low by your SIDE and hand keeps going up/back on about a 60-degree line with spaghetti extension driven by simultaneous catapult/UBR. This finesse buys time-- i.e. makes you less hurried at the key moment when passive arm extension is ready to explode.

All that remains then is to hammer the ball (first serve) or hatchet up its edge (second serve) with a loose and oily wrist.

The people who criticize a certain bullwhip-acquiring tennis instructor including the instructor himself should try this method. The word "whip" CAN be solid instruction. It's not the only way to serve but a very good one, based on the muleteer's look and sound of Mal Washington's serves rather than some typically hackneyed paralysis of every moving part. Does anybody really want to be the centipede who thought too much?

To get this serve to crack, though, you almost have to fool nature. The hand only thinks it's going backward/upward on a 45 to 70 degree line, but if you run arm action by itself this will be true even through the wrist snap.

The addition of body action then creates the ideal contact point we all know from pictures just then being reached by the arcing toss.

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What's Personal, what Universal in this Approach

I start my serve with both arms bent and a slight lifting of the linked contraption upward.

Then it comes down straightening left arm for the toss and separating right arm for what I have described.

The arm gets straight but immediately bends again.

By starting the elbow twist so early (by the side) I force the palm down but the palm keeps going to triceps time.

This is what I do and all I know right now.

(Just got back from the court.) Immediately, new questions arise. Do I really want elbow to turn so soon? Won't that be my arm performing the turn rather than the turn being a reaction to gross body? Maybe. But at least the gross
body effectively extends the spaghetti arm maybe for the first time. So one
can adjust elbow, maybe even up high or at a middling point until gross body
impels everything. Or is this an important question? All that matters is what works best.

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Djokovic's Non-pivot

looks like something a skier would do only in reverse. He is milking the area between hips and shoulders for maximum elasticity while giving himself one less thing to do. Golf instructors tell people to rotate their hips backward less if they want to draw greatest strength from the gut. Anyone (Federer, Kuznetsova on second serve) can generate the same elasticity with the pivot but has to do so after the pivot-- because the pivot releases stored energy.
And anyone therefore can achieve the same body position they reached with their pivot by simply starting with foot more turned around. This is what I've
done with my front foot (decided to keep it still), but now I'm re-setting the back foot from where it starts as part of the motion. I don't know of any other rock that affords so much feel but would listen. On the other hand Djokovic keeps that front foot in a pretty conventional position, resulting in
big total body turn when he's up in the air.

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Saturday Lesson

Most great servers nowadays appear to be leaning forward into the court but with level shoulders and wingspan when they start their spring.

Err to more than level rather than to less than level every time. Err on both sides of level, not on one. The search as ever is for the ball that kicks most.

Review of previously explored linear idea: After racket first lowers it can go backwards through arm curlecue and passive arm extension to muscular arm extension and oily hand action still on one rising straight line.

This motion is elegant for its simplicity. (It all goes backward!) And will prevent the lost server (anybody given the natural complexity of the service motion) from thinking something like, "I'll take the racket back and then forward for contact just over the bone in my forehead."

No, the arm action can go only backward with gross body entirely responsible for a decent contact point (with variations of CP possible of course).

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Short-circuiting the Djoker

By being lost, which one can only do with a clear destination, I have now seen most of Budapest, an extremely beautiful city. The snakelike experiment of taking the racket on an only slightly rising straight line with elbow curlicue built in along with spaghetti arm tract followed by triceptic strike, all backward, has led to another experiment along the lines of Novak Djokovic.

He’s Serbian, not Hungarian, but assumes the extreme trophy position which Vic Braden mocked mercilessly for thirty years. Poor Vic: He earned a lot of money and respect and stimulation of everybody, but a few of his opinions, a bit on the clear side, came back to haunt him.

Novak the Serb may be as limber as any tennis player alive. He therefore seems the worst model possible for the rotor-impaired. What, though, if he has brains along with his mimetic prowess and flexibility? Could anyone not pick them?

Conventional serving likes fixed elbow level probably with upper arm parallel to the court before racket twists down. An exception would be Lindsay Davenport whose elbow goes down before it goes back up.

Novak carries this idea lower. His straight arm sails way back and then bends, coiling so low that his elbow brushes his side.

When I tried it I held service games but was shaky on others, and the next day resolved to make a change while preserving the far around compressed coil.

An abbreviated version was easy to devise since I start with arms bent anyway. They do get straight but not for as long. There can be about a foot of low level right hand travel during which left hand tosses.

The future for this genre of serve, abbreviated or not, then becomes working out the revised arm throw now that you’ve authorized yourself to move your elbow a great deal more in all directions then ever before.