A New Year's Serve

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Bad Idea of Early Weight Shifts in Previous Post

Keep equal distribution between the two legs (https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...e.outline.html). Click on "Serve Kata Training, Part 2."

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Toss Pull Kick

That's about what the feeble human brain can handle in the way of conscious thought. That or some other mantra to free the unconscious stuff.

These three words however imply to me at least a toss which included the hips going out toward the net. And a pull up on a steel ring hanging from the ceiling or sky. By the left arm after it tossed. With front of the body lifting as weight returns to rear foot.

And a kick from rear foot combined with cartwheel to shake water out of ear combined with engagement with the ball combined with volleyball spike.

And if this isn't correct sequence, study more or don't and go back to the drawing board.

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Contrast

Interesting to contrast John Craig's current article (oral) with this idea in # 3289 . For spin you'd roll, no? For flatter you wouldn't, could add from shoulder toward the net as Craig prescribes. But if going for maximum spin you'd do better not to add forwardly from the shoulder until at contact, no? You could be adding forwardly from other parts of the organism.

You say something, anything, are the least bit provocative and somebody will disagree-- goes with the territory. I am the one objecting here in the case of maximum spin delivered also as a stroke rather than a snap. The roll doesn't want to be too fast. If the elbow doesn't go abruptly forward on its own, the racket head can rise more up than sideways and stay on the ball while pushing it. But pitch will change a lot. (https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...e.outline.html)
(https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...e.outline.html)

Racket will drive from elbow rolling in place or even nudging backward a bit as in a once called "reverse forehand" that finishes behind the neck or with a halo like Rafa Nadal's. What I'm trying to say although this may be a difficult concept to put across: Drive wipe is available to us along with windshield wipe and the two are not the same, with windshield wipe as common sense image too apt to happen after contact.

The flat (or possibly poptopped) shot described by John Craig, different from drive wipe, can be a very good shot. As for windshield wipers, after working on one all afternoon yesterday (been raining around Detroit a lot), I'd like to smash them all although I finally did succeed in bending and fixing the damned thing.

In watching the two videos here I am taken by the advice to whip at side fence before bod seamlessly rotates through. Would you say, reader, that this combination should produce good extension? I would. The arm extension to occur a bit before the whip, a time when it could more easily be called "separation."

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Moral

Bowl the racket tip way out toward the side fence. Then split this energy in halves to send rolling racket head toward net and rolling elbow toward rear fence or at least to stay approximately where it was. (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...e_In&stroke=RN FH InsideIn Rear8 250fps.mp4)

Note (or rather a question): If straight arm, elbow rolls in place? If bent arm, elbow goes backward a bit as it rolls?

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Connection of Dots

The arm, obviously, is straight for a Nadalian forehand (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...e_In&stroke=RN FH InsideIn Rear1 500fps.mp4). This makes the roll on the ball an example of short power, the same maneuver as on a great kick serve though inverted or on a one hand backhand by Justine Henin, who said as she demonstrated by wrapping her strings from under-inside of the ball to back of the ball to over-outside of the ball, "I hit de ball here & here & here."

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Drive Wipe vs. Windshield Wipe

The wipe that drives the ball is entirely different from the wipe that merely brushes the ball thus leaving the bod to provide whatever heft one decides to put on the shot.

One wants heft on most of one's shots, and this does come from bod, but it also can come from non swing like propulsive wipe, i.e., the additive of wipe that all by itself puts some push on the ball.

A good example of this is the reverse forehand of Rafa Nadal. In fact, all of Nadal's great forehands are reverse forehands. The elbow goes backward and upward as Rafa cranks. This sends the strings forward. Imagined contact is from lower left quadrant to upper right quadrant of the ball if you aren't Rafa and are right-handed..

Can one hit reverse forehands without finishing over the top of one's head or behind one's neck? Yes. The defining act is that elbow neither stays where it is or goes forward as part of the wiping action but actually goes backward and upward. This discussion is exclusive of anything the bod does.

Doug King contends that Nadal's serve would be as great a weapon as his forehand-- i.e., one of the very top serves on the tour-- if he could see the "spike" at top as the same as his forehand wipe only upside down.

Okay, there are other variables involved but that to me seems like the kernel of the argument, which is really about what you and I could do but probably won't with our resistance to a bit more understanding of succinctness than we already have.

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Extremely Provocative on Forehand and Serve

https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...e.outline.html

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Speed, Push, Turn

What an idea.

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A New Year's Serve

Can a serve get weaker as one conditions one's ISR to go faster and faster?

Yes if one did not integrate the ISR (internal shoulder rotation) properly with all the rest of one's body contribution.

Doug King does not believe in the proprietorship of tennis ideas. Anyone in his view can take his or anyone else's and treat them as their own.

In fact, if one is not willing occasionally to do this, to go all in with new information, is not one then selling oneself short? The goal is better serving, period, so why won't a serious student of the game try anything?

I'm taken right now with double helix and weight-lifter's two-part lift scheme. (https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...e.outline.html) (https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...e.outline.html) .

I use the word "scheme" in the singular since I think both ideas are part of the same plot.

That would be a serve where body and arm take the racket up one side of the body, perform a transition with the arm to put it on the other side of the body and continue pushing upward with arm extensor until it's time for the body to chime in, I mean chime up again.

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Pliskova could crack a dirty joke right after she wins a match

Or smile or be animated or do something! Maybe interject some pauses or changes of inflection into her English. American Indians sometime fall into the same mistake, the same monotone of words spewing out like grains of barley as many professional tennis players of both genders do. I would like to hire myself out to this specialized market of diffident persons as a drama coach for $279 per hour.

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More Feel as Elbow Settles into Power Pocket

Early separation of the hands (right back from left) can include inward roll of the arm to keep racket tip pointing at oncoming ball.

One half of the power pocket is formed by waiting with a fold in the middle of one's bod, the second by shape shift to tilt shoulders up toward net.

As rotating hips clear toward the net.

The most natural loop of hand settling into the pocket may be a sidearm or even underarm throw including mondo and rod fold forward but while keeping power still in reserve.

I've never hit a tennis ball this way. The possibility is enabled by the new grip (semiwestern in my case). I'd love to build infinite variation in amount of rod fold and precisely where elbow comes into side but will limit myself for now to choice of three different landing spots an inch or two apart.

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Next Challenge

Great. And great for hitting without and with W-wipe. Now to use Doug King's advice-- at contact-- to simulate the catch in crew. He points out that an oarsman buries his blade, which action turns the water into concrete against which he explodes, or more mildly expressed, "pushes," and some have said, "pries."

One needs resistance, in other words, and although the ball creates some, one needs to manufacture more for "hard" contact. But some of the manufacture comes from subtle and soft movement of the hand.

As a senior sweep oarsman and former crew coach I have to say: If I can't run with this advice then most probably all tennis instruction is useless in my personal case. First idea is to start the final push of large muscle groups forward/upward slightly before the hand work has settled into place in order to create the necessary conflict.

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My Job: To Invent not to Imitate, Especially not to Imitate Myself

But I sometimes submit myself to 16th century apprenticeship, which ought to come first.

I'll bring over the wave lift, the power pocket tautening into a power cord, and most of all the semiwestern grip which I now adopt at the age of 76 for some of my shots.

To use Doug King's term, I want to "keep form" for longer. I want to hit the ball way out front with folded forward forearm pointing at the net, for better push and wipe both.

I choose the early hands separation of Connors, Austin, Evert and McEnroe. Evert probably kept both hands connected a bit longer than the other three but that's only a feeling since I'm not about to do a study of THAT. The arms still will form/hold King's hoop though with a shoulders width gap in it.

I want this early separation as in my composite grip more to the side contact McEnrueful and to build upon that now.

I want to initiate backswing with the hand as Dennis Ralston advised in opposition to all the body-firsters. Handbodhandbod is the mantra I developed for myself.

So, to hit a topspin forehand, I take left hand way across which thoroughly turns the bod while keeping both hands level and rising yet separating on the same wave like two different boats.

The slow wave reverses as waves like to do.

The hands reverse too. The left hand goes up. The right hand goes down. At the same time the hitting forearm folds forward. Thus the two hands maintain their constant distance from one another but now are in vertical alignment. The right hand going down embeds itself in the power pocket being formed as hips clear themselves.

But where is the wiggle room in this? Am I finding the ball? Won't know until self-feed. Perfect would be solid body arm connection. Wiser would be to give the arms more freedom than this-- the freedom to move together in any direction even as they depict a new wave.

Contact-- catch and toss-- is the same as in a Doug King forehand. Cranky wipey optional additive works better when rod of arm points properly forward. Followthrough goes where it wants.

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The descent of the racket to be curved to back and then front.

The first half of this action to be free fall followed by folding of the arm rod forward.

This arm work to go through a longer path than that undergone by the larger bod-- appropriate since arm always goes faster and farther than bod.

And if it all doesn't work, so what. And if it does, great.

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What is Left Hand Doing-- Really?

To determine this turn off the sound and just watch the left hand from start to end of the video (https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/m...slowmotion.php).

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Better to Know or not to Know when Shoulders still are Turning Back?

Regardless of the answer, I am curious and want to know-- Faustian behavior for which I may burn. And I say that they are turning back as arm solos back while still up high (which opens the racket face a bit).

The shoulders then don't rotate forward much during the racket drop and simultaneous shape-shifting although they do change from level to backward tilt.