Mystery of Jack Kramer's Toss

[bottle]

Service Ladders

Like anybody else, I would prefer to hit a beautiful serve or see a beautiful serve over reading a lot of words on either subject.

On the other hand, the education editor in me thinks that the ability to describe one entire service cycle aids development of a service "ladder."

You just have to understand that what you said yesterday is going to change.

A service ladder to me is a way of learning opposite to the prescriptive.

To be sure, one derives prescriptions ("do this, do that!") but from one's personal foundation of failure and success.

Ironically, this long haul approach sensitizes you to a far wider frame of reference than most tennis players even know exists.

Does one find the ultimate serve (Sampras, Roddick, Pancho Gonzalez)?
No. The process of improvement, however, keeps one going forever.

Right now my serve looks nothing like the model I saw in a bookstore yesterday. (Okay, I lifted the CD from the new book for two hours and
then returned it-- nothing like the sex laundering crimes of Spitzer much less the torture crimes of Bush, Mukasey and McCain but a crime nevertheless.)

That serve has both hands go up together and then drop to both sides of the body. The racket then stays still during the toss, then creeps vertically up the back like a slow-moving, reversed waterfall.

It's a good serve that works pretty well even for me, the kind of dead stick approach used by Andy Murray's brother to win mixed doubles. But it's nothing like Bea Bielik, the former NCAA champion, with a slow sweep sideways, or Sasha Kulikova, the present similarly number one player at Wake Forest University, who starts with wrist turned in to the max and performs an ever-shrinking tight, abbreviated loop which then opens out into a huge pinpoint serve.

The Kulikova (ACC player of the week the day I studied her beating the number one, also Russian, of Indiana University) goes moderately fast and doesn't break in any specific direction after the bounce. It just kind of buzzes there loaded with spin, and nobody seems to get a clean hit on it.

My own serve right now starts with both hands going up together in a baseball pitcher's windup. The shoulders then revolve back 30 more degrees from hips and gut as hands descend, still linked-- this entire pre-toss movement just cannot be too slow.

Toss then goes up as open racket continues down on same shallow path already established.

On count three I start a basically level small forward rotation in the hips as arm bends to a right angle and hips go out toward net a little and head goes
back toward rear fence a little. I want the added leverage of hand far back and spinning with total body rotation, first horizontally and then vertically.

Romanticism may be rock hard common sense here; I am taken with the moving barrel animation presented in this website by Brian Gordon. I don't want to embroider this idea but do love to explore it. My experiment-- one in seeing serve in a slightly novel way perhaps-- is not conceptually to build everything on legs drive but rather apply legs drive to the transition from hips rotation to gut rotation and more end over end total body rotation (similar to the complex alteration of spinning brown barrel in the animation).

While all this is happening (in a single count) I see the arm reflexively folding together and the elbow knifing forward and the forearm winding back an extra amount all at a surprising low level. If this is very quick (simultaneous with leg thrust) the elbow, still under the shoulder, can allow the arm to start extending in a very natural, passive way during the subsequent cartwheel.
Did the two halves of arm bounce against each other? Maybe-- this can work.

What I personally get for this effort is a late low point for racket tip (where
"low point" is defined as that instant where racket points downward the most regardless of its level).

Similar to a Federer forehand where racket comes close to the body and then goes out again before acceleration, as if it had remained on the perimeter of the swing the whole time, this long lever serve picks up where it left off.

At least one fixed idea seems ready for shattering. The would be stopping the shoulders with opposite hand.

If one believes in the fantastic, altering 3D barrel, why stop the rotating gut at all when it just is going to help one generate more upwardness of spin?

Similarly, why get the knifing elbow high? Why not save final elbow lift until arm has already started the passive part of its extension?

If you save elbow lift this late and rotate the shoulders line up too, you give yourself longer upward acceleration before the racket divebombs.

What you want to stop is not your gut but your head, to end the cartwheel. You do this by fixing your head and staring up at the ball. You do it during the change of direction (COD) brusque muscular extension of arm at right fence. If you don't stop the cartwheel you lose control and generate downward spin-- miserable.

I don't believe in turning the wrist in like Kulikova, however-- at least not this week.

I take wrist and forearm action instead from C.M. Jones, Tennis: How to Become a Champion, Trans-Atlantic Arts, 1968 .

"Place your arm on the table so that the flat front of your wrist is fully on the surface. Raise the forearm slightly (No, don't do this!-- Bottle) and ascertain how much backward and forward wrist movement you can obtain. It will not bend back very far and forward movement is not very extensive either, 45 degrees or so just about covering the entire range of the movment.

"Now try moving the wrist from side to side. There is a valuable increase in the range of movement, the arc in my case covering about 90 degrees."

Do both things in other words.

[bottle]

Knifing the Elbow

To under the shoulder and forward from it a bit during double-legged (double-barreled) shotgun blast; in other words, a little higher than previously thought to change the way it (the elbow) points but still under the shoulder.

Note: the god of simplicity deplores a lot of different motions to raise the elbow.

So-- knife it once bringing halves of arm together to where you want it-- then add a bit more elbow rise not until the final muscle blast.

[BrianGordon]

Bottle-

Thanks for considering my barrel - it is my favorite graphic - it was also the trickiest to create - BG

[bottle]

Next Rung-- Increase Scope (as of a docking line from a ship)

Brian-- you're welcome.

___________________________

In one practice session (solitaire), first I perimeterized my modern retro forehand. This meant leave the hand back and don't bring it into the body so much, but rather let the early body rotation bring the racket around to where I want it. All the same stroke moves remained only miniaturized.

Next I perimiterized my serve exactly the same way-- stopped knifing the elbow so close to the body. I wanted to knife it just as much but way back this time and found that given the inflexibility of my shoulder rotors I had a pretty unsmooth and awkward, horrible-looking gross little movement back there. But do appearances matter? How about a good serve? The problem was somewhat remedied by (consciously winding forearm to max and loosening fingers) at an exact moment of arm work that is supposed to be completely reflexive.

The British tennis writer C.M. Jones used a cosine equation to predict 16 per cent more power.

[bottle]

Right Scapula toward Center of Back

Some tennis players advocate pulling both shoulders back for the serve; e.g., Virginia Wade. This posture is especially good for women.

Me, I just advocate pulling the right shoulder back a little. I got the idea from Greg Papas. You don't want to do it too much or your arm might get behind your shoulders line (McEnroe-Yandell Syndrome).

Whether to do it is a small question. Maybe you'd prefer an extreme of loosey-goosey. For people with tight rotors, though, it makes good sense by allowing them to lower the racket tip a bit more. But I don't see why a play-doh man couldn't do it, too.

The bigger question is when to do it. I tried first to do it on leg thrust, to add a bit of useful motion back behind me.

I found more controlled serves if I did it earlier while slowly bending arm and body (and in my case slowly rotating flat-footed forward a very little with hips as head-and-shoulders bend back). The ratio of forward to backward motion for me in my particular platform is 1 to 5 . There is some sideways component involved, too (1 to 1).

[Bungalow Bill]

Some tennis players advocate pulling both shoulders back for the serve; e.g., Virginia Wade. This posture is especially good for women.

Me, I just advocate pulling the right shoulder back a little. I got the idea from Greg Papas. You don't want to do it too much or your arm might get behind your shoulders line (McEnroe-Yandell Syndrome).

Whether to do it is a small question. Maybe you'd prefer an extreme of loosey-goosey. For people with tight rotors, though, it makes good sense by allowing them to lower the racket tip a bit more. But I don't see why a play-doh man couldn't do it, too.

The bigger question is when to do it. I tried first to do it on leg thrust, to add a bit of useful motion back behind me.

I found more controlled serves if I did it earlier while slowly bending arm and body (and in my case slowly rotating flat-footed forward a very little with hips as head-and-shoulders bend back). The ratio of forward to backward motion for me in my particular platform is 1 to 5 . There is some sideways component involved, too (1 to 1).

Somewhere in your "blah, blah, blah" I am sure you are saying something. Or you are really lame to think someone is actually reading your stuff.

[bottle]

Perimeterizing Modern Retro-- Part Two

O eeek, it's Bungalow Bill. I'm shaking in my boots. He's exposed my nothingness once again. This is personal devastation. But I've got a really good backhand now, Bill, and I'm ready to teach it to the world. Raise both
hands a bit as you run to the left. Raise the back shoulder a bit and rotate
body forward as you spear toward left fence post with hand to the outside and strings low combined with a slightly forward body tilt. Rip with your scapulae as you roll up over ball (these two things complement each other). You can release full energy and yet end up with your strings still facing the target as Poncho Gonzalez advised.

But, dear readership, we're not here today to discuss the backhand or Bill but rather the modern retro Bottled forehand, which has become steadily more perimeterized and therefore more effective. There is no pleasure greater than subtracting something from a stroke. I've propounded, as early hips slowly bring upper body around to ball: 1. mondo (laying wrist forward from handle) 2. clocking handle up over strings 3. moving unit out a bit more toward right fence. Cut number 3. The increased perimeterization supplies all the long leverage you need.

Now let's go for a similar big improvement on the serve. Of course we regressed when we tried to scapulate during the bend. Since hips had
already started forward, we were temporizing, but that's science, baby.
The solution is elementary. Scapulate the right shoulder as racket goes
down on its pre-established slight incline. Another way of putting this
is to be more circular with the racket.

Scapulating on the toss means you're now free to move the elbow with the hips, which unifies the feel of the whole serve.

Toss, solid elbow, twisting elbow, solid elbow, firing elbow

1 2 3 4 5

scapulating elbow, solid elbow, twisting elbow, solid elbow, firing elbow

elbow1 elbow2 elbow3 elbow4 elbow5

You want these five feels: loose, solid, loose, solid, loose.

[bottle]

More on the Attack

Bungalow Bill: Unless you're severely limited in shoulder rotor flexibility, you have no more bidnis in my bailiwick than an American in Iraq.

But, you could be curious. So, know that a non-Oscarian friend who works on the tour has called you a "cut-shot artist." Although I believe that term elevates you too much, I do want to keep this discussion on a high plane; so, rather than blow my top, I quote here from the huge "Memoirs" of Edward Teller, one-footed father of the hydrogen bomb, whose ultra-conservatism I don't think I could have stood, but he was Hungarian and we would have found commonality.

You will either glean from this passage that you are a "workaday" engineer and apply Teller's sentiments to tennis or you won't.

Also, I wonder: Could you have had a ride on your surfboard so ecstatic that you henceforth saw the rest of life as ka-ka?

"I would guess that a hundred thousand really competent men in the field of applied science could improve our production by an amount somewhere between ten billion and one hundred billion dollars per year...

"The reason for the shortage is that applied science occupies a position of no man's land between pure science and engineering. The pure scientists look down upon it as an effort that is boring and unworthy of a person who is interested in basic truths. On the other hand, our engineers are trained in a traditional manner emphasizing the use of handbooks and the exploitation of past experience rather than discoveries. The pure scientists underestimate the great intellectual stimulation that one can derive from working in applied science, and they are wrong in assuming that pure research is intrinsically more valuable than applied research. On the other hand, the workaday engineers fail to recognize the most eminently practical values that recent basic discoveries can generate."

[bottle]

For the Rotorested, the Rotorded, and the Huddled Masses

Loose, loose, loose, solid, FIVE!

The first three looses may be entirely individual, so I won't discuss them here.

Count four (solidly moving elbow at a healthy separation from body for good leverage), however, is cartwheel with some upper body rotation thrown in. You might think that cartwheel IS upper body rotation-- well, it is and it isn't-- so you would be sadly mistaken.

I like to assign three speeds to my hips (1) and gut (2 & 3) rotation and then forget about it.

The big question is what produces the biggest whoosh of one's racket after one's head gets still, and I am tired of being open-minded about this.

You do what works best for you, dear reader, and me, I'll do the same.

It is, in my case high-fiving Manute Bol, who is running toward the net close behind me and above me. He puts out his left hand. And other running giants would work, too, if big and friendly enough, maybe John Isner. The feeling is like passing the baton in a relay race only higher.

I hope you, reader, can at least appreciate the bizarreness of this concept of count five-- you can yell "FIVE!" which covers arm straightening, which includes complete reversal of palm and recovery led by opposite edge down to your left side. Throughout the cartwheel you kept your arm fully coiled but totally relaxed so as to fool it. The head stopped.

You release all the accumulated energy in your serve into full-out firing of your triceps.

Incredibly fast, this, but we've got to slow the film down. To say you're "extending your arm" is correct but sterile, and you could be muscleing
(heavy and relatively slow) instead of throwing (light and exponentially quicker).

An early tennis book prescribed the Heil Hitler salute.

More modern tennis books have prescribed high-fiving someone in front of you.

And now, I, Bottle, say high-five Manute Bol running BEHIND you.

What does this mean? That you hatchet-rim the edge of your racket up at the ball the first half of the time. Hammer, meat cleaver, all the same but understand, this is only ONE-HALF of the job.

In the second half you turn (pronate) the racket TO THE MAX with both shoulder and forearm (simultaneous). Better not to think about the difference in these sources except for this: As you twist your elbow you change the direction of triceps driving the leading edge. Keep the edge
accelerating past the ball and backwards, driving to the high point or
slow point (yes the racket finally slows down but not till here-- it accelerates all the way to here).

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Knife at the ball but slap Manute's hand behind you. Slap his hand HARD. The throw is accelerative and all from the triceps driving edge ahead to backward slap.

You hit the ball in the middle of this single acceleration.

Note 1: Ninety-eight per cent of tennis books seem to advocate getting the arm straight before pronatalia. I think I read one book, decades ago, that suggested the arm could still be unbending during contact. I tried it. Didn't work. Now it does.

Note 2: The triceps of elite college players were anesthetized yet they still served well. Comment one: The muscles weren't cut. Comment two: It helps not to be elite.

Note 3: No one has ever spoken of pronating the shoulder before, but I saved using my shoulder rotors just for this, and what shoulder is doing
here is similar to what forearm is doing-- that's why I call it "shoulder pronation."

Note 4: It is interesting to speculate that the conventional cue to high-five someone in front of you might inhibit a lustier pronation that would generate contact with left edge of racket and fully accelerative departure of strings from ball.

[bottle]

Summary

High five backwards is from the triceps whether it's anesthetized or not.

Hammer a nail into the ceiling then unscrew a lightbulb from the ceiling?

Too logical, too literal, too sequenced and slow.

Keep all power on the leading edge. Accelerate it all at once.

1 toss-- loose
2 bend-- loose
3 kick-- loose
4 cartwheel-- solid throw of elbow
5 hammer multi-directionally and recover left

Be really fey about # 5, sort of like slipping a punch but with looseness of
grip one of the prime ingredients; this is the only way to fool the resisters.

So don't muscle it-- THROW IT-- all the difference in the world.

[bottle]

Handbook Schmandbook

The rotorded lad still hadn't achieved upwardness of spin. His experiments in differing arm length before C.O.D. (Change Of Direction) were unproductive.
He could a see a look of fishiness in his best friend's blonde eyes. Going to church with her was out of the question. "You're as incapable of real transformations as the president," she said.

All that was left for him was nineteenth century American boy's fiction. So he set arm length before C.O.D. at fifty per cent once more and headed for the court. He was as full of rage as the teen-aged Andy Roddick was when he invented HIS serve. This they had in common.

First he eliminated any forward hip motion before leg thrust. "I'll bend as far back as my flat-footedness permits," he thought to himself. "I'll start with hand incredibly low. I'll keep the upward machinations well behind my back. I'll fully use my cartwheel but minimize it. I'll hammer at the back fence. I'll even snapstraight my wrist at the back fence. My arm motion will make a backward pointing tent. My elbow will fly forward and upward and inward as I pronate. My contact will happen above my forehead."

A not uncommon contact point. How he got there, though, would be unusual (a trip down Maple Avenue and then a funny diagonal up Oak). And Manute Bol would be running close behind for the high five-- Manute's left hand facing front fence, the lad's right hand facing the back fence.

Zing!

SELF-COMMENT AFTER THE SESSION:

"Zing!" Don't you wish. Not so bad, though, if you wait to straightsnap the wrist until you're coming off the ball. Also, don't minimize your cartwheel. You can toss farther back but cartwheel cerebral cortex to under the ball. The upper body rotation which then occurs beneath your still head will put racket slightly behind the hitting shoulder-- the only contact position that ever generated upward spin for you (i.e., me).

[bottle]

Where to Go All Out?

In the service section of “Think to Win: The Strategic Dimension of Tennis” Allen Fox uses the word “violently” twice.

Number one: “As the power action begins, the shoulders are rotated forward violently, flinging the arm out from behind the neck by centrifugal force. The shoulders should rotate in excess of 120 degrees. During this process the arm must be relaxed. A loose, passive arm creates no resistance as the shoulders throw it forward.”

Number two: “As you start the power action, concentrate on hitting up on the ball by driving up with your legs and violently snapping your wrist.”

In the rest of his rather full description of service action Fox never uses the word “violently” again. On leg drive, for instance, he suggests that if body comes off of the ground it does so from total action rather than full-fledged double-barreled shotgun blast.

Most people, it seems to me, use too little legs rather than too much. A senior sweep oarsman playing tennis, however, could break both feet his first day.

In the sequenced photographs that Fox uses of John McEnroe, one can see that Mac has taken approximately one half of his violent 180 degrees of forward shoulder rotation before his legs have extended.

As Fox points out, Mac drives off of one leg, so most people are better off around 120 degrees, which permits them to use both legs (which as Brian Gordon shows us, provides
hip rotation along with the essential vertical thrust).

Using both legs helps most people control direction of their serve, Fox says, pointing out that McEnroe is an aberration (Okay, he calls him a “genius” but I don’t want to do that today).

In watching Roddick and Blake all afternoon (Davis Cup—and what a steady, genial pleasure it is) I looked for, among other things, start of shoulders, i.e., upper body rotation in advance of leg thrust and thought I saw it in both of them, but not in the upcoming Frenchman P. Mathieu who nevertheless has a great serve and great everything.

As to snapping the wrist, this second use of the word “violently” suggests a number of ideas.

First, for most people wrist snap is wrist snap when this simply isn’t true—there are options; e.g., one can follow natural hinge of hand, or move hand at 90 degrees to that motion across the bumps at the end of the two bones in your forearm. A third extreme is turning the wrist severely inward then frisbeeing it out: e.g., Sasha Kulikova of the Wake Forest women’s team.

Closeup photographs of Mac and Fox during this second violence show some depression in the wrist-to-hand joint. They turn wrist out to start but just a little, in other words, and this too can happen passively as the result of something else.

The palm faces neither sky nor ear but in between.

Braden said palm should face ear as hand flies by for considerable spin. Perhaps the Mac/Fox wrist is a good compromise of spin and pace.

Violence of wrist snap implies a blast of triceps extension by end of arm looseness, also tightening of grip and reconnection to body mass and straightening of wrist connection for the subsequent pronation which Fox says one is better off not talking or thinking about.

Any athlete wants synchronization of all the elements his body has to offer. To know that there are two areas where one should maybe let it all hang out, however, making the rest work better, seems invaluable to me.

[bottle]

Serving Speed Movie of Davis Cup Tie in Winston-Salem, NC

I couldn't see whether anybody tossed with palm down like Jack Kramer. Some may have had thumb on top of the ball.

And every server from France and the USA except for one put the ball halfway up the wooden backstop at the end of the fast court in Joel Coliseum.

That guy, Andy Roddick, put it with regularity over the backstop and into some canvas, except for a few that bounced even higher up into the crowd.

In spite of this, Michel Llodra, losing in straights in the first match, had almost as many aces. How? Essentially by possessing one sure left-handed serve that he could judiciously use whenever he wanted-- it's not his fastest but lands halfway down the outside service line and then bends out and bends some more.

I saw an old teaching pro in Virginia once who had this same left-handed slice and did tremendously well with almost no other weapon. And Bob Bryan's
breaks pretty hard, too, but goes a little faster, lands a little deeper and therefore isn't quite as horrid.

In the doubles, though, which we lost, Bob aced cleanly once an inch beyond Llodra's racket tip. The rest of the time unfortunately Llodra had complete choice over where to put these forehand returns.

In the singles, this same Llodra serve pulled Roddick so far out and so far in that by the time Andy got to it, and also considering the residual spin, he had one choice of which Llodra was thoroughly aware-- to bang it down the line.
Andy nevertheless carried off this threading-the-needle half a dozen times.

The truth is, all the Americans played great and deserved victory at a time when there appeared to be friction between Guy Forget, the French captain, and Richard Gasquet over the severity of Gasquet's blisters (and Tsonga of course, with a meniscus lateral tear flew back to France before the tie began-- eight weeks recovery for me, six weeks for him).

My first observation (and hopefully not too annoying) is that when you have doubles teams of roughly even ability, and both teams consist of a lefty and a righty, the team that puts its forehands on the outside is being smarter.

This is where the Wimbledon champs have beat us twice now-- in the ad court. And what's the point of having identical twins play for you if they won't switch up at least once in a while when things are clearly not going well for them-- haven't they, hasn't Captain Patrick McEnroe read William Shakespeare? With Melissa Errico as his wife he'd better.

Anyway, it was the only one of the matches we lost, the best of which was Blake-Mathieu, in which Blake faced two match points at the end of the fifth, with Mathieu serving. Blake clearly decided he'd had it and went for one. Mathieu may not even have had time to blink and lost the next point, too.

In Mathieu's reverse singles match with Roddick, he didn't play half as well. Not only were his great service returns absent (which against Blake got sharper and sharper as the long match wore on), but he made unforced errors that just weren't present against Blake.

The consolation match, which everyone thought would be anti-climax, was a closely contested three-setter between Blake and Gasquet, which Blake won-- how to put this-- with better attitude. This time Gasquet was the player who seemed glum.

In addition to the tremendous talents these two players demonstrate in tennis, they constantly showed what great athletes they would be in any sport, Gasquet with soccer, Blake with baseball.

Gasquet used his feet to direct anything loose to ballperson headquarters. Blake threw unerring pegs the length of the court. Most players, I believe, use their rackets.

But there was an incident halfway through that I'll never forget. A ball went up in the crowd. "C'mon, c'mon," Blake said. "Put it right here!"

The person with the ball made a nice throw. Blake, holding his racket by both rims, hit a home run with the handle into the crowded upper deck and-- believe me-- the Joel Coliseum is huge.

[bottle]

Upward

Learning ladders for the rotorded continue even beyond Davis Cup. The effort for upward spin with pace first took me way out front-- a bad idea for me although I've seen it done. Time then to bend the stick the other way-- build the serve to the rear with racket tip centrifugated around just in front of your head. That idea dictates hand well behind the head (almost a racket length).

For the rotorded person (someone with restricted rotor motion) who refuses to accept the mediocrity of downward spin, everything in the tennis serve is conspiracy: Wrist snap? More downward spin. Cartwheel? Same. More leftward lean? Same. More out front? Disaster. Higher contact point? Yes that helps but only a little.

A low slanting takeback helps plus "the radical notion." That would be humping the wrist (rather than cocking it) to form a right angle between your forearm and your racket. You might think a continental grip does this for you already but you would be wrong. The continental gets you about 120 degrees. To get 90 degrees, one humps the wrist or turns the hand inward. (See Oscar Wegner). One can do this either at address or in the middle of the service motion one already has.

Proceeding then in numerical fashion:

1. Keep the 90 degrees!

2. Rotor release and extreme upper body rotation (UBR) together can finally extend the arm passively but big time as Brian Gordon suggested to me in one of his posts. Once I decided I was retorded, however, I eliminated pre-load and release of the shoulder rotors altogether in my desire for upward spin. This was the wrong thing to cut out. Better to eliminate early cartwheel; i.e., to keep the head back (toward rear fence) and sideways (toward left fence) throughout the huge double throw from gut and shoulder rotors, letting both naturally open the passive arm in an upward direction. Keep the head still until you can't any more.

3. Keep elbow in a slightly rotated upward but still low position through this.

4. Keep the 90 degrees! This is the key to a powerful serve in which triceps extension replaces wrist snap of any kind.

5. Slice serve (short) works with this method, too, but is low percentage at least for me since motion is opposite from direction of serve.

6. Use the 90-degree serve for all deep placements to corners and into the body in both courts. You might call it a triple-centrifugation serve. Two of the centrifugations, simultaneous, occur at a low level. The third, from change of direction, occurs above the head.

7. Late windup of upper body (as arm slowly bends) preloads gut at the best time.

8. Don't be a spoiled brat about tennis instruction: Your job is to take from where you can-- nothing less and nothing more. It is highly unlikely that any one source will ever fit your individual needs.

9. Develop a short slice serve that does use rotor release and traditional
cocking slightly outward and wrist snap but has no subsequent pronation in it whatsoever-- possible because of slow but very smooth racket head pace.
I use the carved slice model with paveloader finish, from which point it is mimed backward in small but progressive increments which tell one how much to turn (carve) with your whole arm. You start with racket paveloaded behind you with lower edge leading (just the opposite of a pronated finish). Swish the racket back and forth in two-foot motion, turning it to desired finish position. Then try four feet, five feet, six feet, from contact, from before contact, to see how much to carve. Then add a tennis ball to the equation and thank tennis author John M. Barnaby for the intelligence. I train this serve wristless to the worst outcome possible: A soft sitter in the wide corner of the opposite deuce service box. Then I add a bit of wrist snap to make the same serves land where I want them (halfway to a third down the outside service line). I can't see a reason for looseness of arm or explosion of triceps or leg extension-- just all service elements including gradual muscular extension of arm in single simultaneous blend to paveloader finish.
The wrist snaps only at contact of course. Everything else is attenuated-- the whole point of the backward miming. UBR, for instance, ends by moving
hips so your stationary back foot comes up in balance on its toes. And one keeps head perfectly still throughout. There was just the slightest of backward bends and higher arm preparation than usual to begin. I still like a low elbow position after body has twisted it. I forget who's a better dart-thrower, the one who holds elbow stationary and extends arm from there or the one who lets elbow rise as she throws the dart. But this is tennis and I prefer raising elbow from low right during attenuated arm extension in this short, slow and spinny touch shot.

Okay, so that's the big exception-- not a 90-degree serve at all. The main entree in this whole serving meal requires extreme closed stance to maximize
contribution from the gut and shoulder rotors (denied no more). The 90-degree angle of forearm to racket must be insisted upon right past contact.

The first licensed violence in this serve comes simultaneously from gut firing and shoulder rotors twisting the upper arm. Both act together to centrifugate the passive, squeezed arm to half or three-quarters of its length.

You then authorize yourself to discharge your triceps with all of your might, which whirls the racket tip up and over the ball like a frisbee.

Why such speediness of whirl? Because when you fire gut and rotors in such a big way the butt of the racket ends up flying toward the net. But your elbow is pointed in a different direction, toward right fence. Sudden change of direction, given looseness, causes major acceleration. Triceps explosion replaces the wrist snap. And with one less link to deal with you have better odds of full transfer of service energy.

The biggest simplification anyone can make to any serve, however, is a toss that bends the arm during its upward motion. That means you don't have to master bending your pointing arm as part of the overall motion later, and makes no difference to power production as far as I can see.

Of course my serve has become increasingly rotational (in the sense of
"horizontal" rotation), with leg drive completing halfway through somewhat like John McEnroe.

[bottle]

Just One Idea

A new taller serve-- speaking of what the ball does-- wants to apply principles taken from the Dennis Ralston slice article to the down the center (DTC) serves in deuce court and out wide serves in the ad court both for a right-hander.

The other corner serves which Ralston demonstrated have obviously led to huge improvements for numerous readers. People who have totally different windups and tennis philosophies have suddenly found themselves going consistently wide in deuce court and DTC in ad court as never before.

Ralston and the films of him only said a few things. Besides, he's about my age (only two and a half years younger). He should get a prize for philanthropy. I now want equal results the other way.

So, as shoulders reverse their rotation I hump my wrist instead of cocking
it slightly outward. This preloads shoulder rotors in a new direction which indicates where racket tip will go next. Assumption: an identical toss as for the slice.

Same as for that shot, I keep head still and send elbow around and ahead of slow body rotation out toward the palm tree. That palm tree in the Ralston article first film clip has become a permanent fixture in my inner eye.

Okay, so the first difference was winding hand the opposite way. The second is extending arm lightly from triceps and shoulder toward palm tree while turning traveling elbow outward so it points somewhere on the right fence. What does this do to racket? Swings it left like a helicopter blade.

Proportioning racket head travel up and past the ball into three equal thirds,
I have now taken the first. The second third is vigorous extension from the triceps. The third third is grazing an imaginary wall in an even more upward
direction (something one can practice with a real wall or fence).

The third third is greatly helped by the slow early UBR (upper body rotation). That in addition to all the movement the arm by itself was able to generate means there is plenty of UBR left with which powerfully to help strings rise in the desired straight surgical incision as legs extend.

To review, the elbow slowly circles and extends toward palm tree as leading edge of racket swings round without hitting your face. The arm is then quickly extended (mostly but not exclusively from triceps). Some might call it a natural throw that produces an excess of energy. Your arm, smarter than you and wanting to avoid hyperextension pronates, placing racket strings in a new and still more upward mountain path. Here it is that contact is made.

Right edge led racket up. Left edge leads it down.