A New Year's Serve

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Ever Learning and Inventing

People my age who switch to pickleball are supposed to have more fun but I don't believe it for a second.

Two examples, both from the backhand side, reveal the likelihood of sudden pleasure arriving on the scene if one sticks to the "eternal growth" route.

From seeing a film of Ken Rosewall backhand slice taken when he was 19, I decided to skunk tail the racket like him.

But in other films made ten or twenty years later Ken takes his racket tip back lower although a loop remains out toward the rear fence-- just a smaller and quicker one.

From nothing but curiosity I explored both options, then discovered distinct advantages to both and ultimately kept both.

This makes me wonder if the steeply descending one hand drives of Becker and Edberg shouldn't also be balanced by occasional reversion to more conventional looping that changes racket plane in transition.

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Passive Hands, Active Hands: the Continuing Story of my New Serve

One won't have to entirely invent a new toss. ta can drop a bit from the high start position while straightening. ha meanwhile eases back and up while squeezing together a small bit. All this is driven by the squishing grapes dance step down below.

Now the hands get active, plenty active.

ta in fact performs its quick weird parabola to place the ball and point skyward, about as assertive as one can get in this life.

As ha balances this off with equally vigorous movements that include a needling together of the arm.

What was a distinguishing feature of John Isner's serve? The way John's arm clung together through drop and pro drop, making the behind-the-back portion of the serve more succinct than that of other servers.

One can steal this feature if one wants without doing anything else like John.

Note: All thoughts of a body break at the hips have been eliminated except for one. Now there is a sway back and a sway forward coming from legs and feet.

The exception, still remaining, is traditional thrust of leading hip toward the net, only it's small and happens now as part of active leg thrust.

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#4654: Straight from Imagination or Semi-conscious and Almost Dream

And yet it pretty much works. At 30-15 I might throw in something old style with down and up motion and lousy spin simply because I served that way for so long. The surprise in most cases is good for a point.

What I discovered today in brief service solitaire is another opportunity "to bend the stick the other way."

I have had in mind that the best way to interpret one of Brian's spoken points is to get forward vertical rotation going with a back foot push but then to add to it with forward bending from the hips. Where did I get that last part? It's what I thought I saw a red stick figure do from side view in one of the article animations.

Well today I let myself rely on rear foot solely for the slight somersault while pushing the front hip out toward the net, something most servers do in preparation for a serve, not in execution of the serve.

I felt in other words that I was kicking bend into the bod, always a good feeling and the result seemed good too.

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Re-cue ISR in Ongoing New Serve

High address.

No lowering.

Fiddle fiddle until ISR feels strong again.

Pull the string on the toss, i.e., clench the two halves of the arm and open the two clavicles both.

It was said that Pete Sampras could touch his chicken wings together.

It was said by Mark Phillippoussis that he Mark could arch his back through his whole serve.

Easy with the left leg to get the sway agoing while creating a bit of independent momentum in the arm.

This initial move can include a slight pulling in of the hands.

Employ next the multitudinous muscle of the toss.

Rules were made to be broken by those who know them.

First rule is never to bend the knees during the toss.

I won't. I'll just bend one, the rear one.

Second jailbreak: bod re-configures but doesn't move forward during the toss.

Front leg to stiffen more than drive.

PASSIVE, ACTIVE, SMOOTH, JERK (snap the wet towel), ACT.

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"Effortless Effortless Effort" Sounds like a Chant Describing the Whole Serve but is Nothing of the Sort

It is instead about as far as I could think last night, with a larger question behind it of why I do what I do. Why do I write about a serve that is idiosyncratic? One should only write about serves that are generic, right? So that everyone can relate to them? But I thought all serves were idiosyncratic.

"Start with an individual and you end up with a type. Start with a type and you end up with nothing at all."-- F. Scott Fitzgerald. (It's amazing when you can't find an idea that important in Google, when Google shows itself to be intellectually bereft.)

"Schematic schematic" could be a guide to the whole serve again but only while one learns the rudiments.

The time will soon come for organic departure: something feels better than something else so you do it.

Waggle waggle is entirely schematic. One waggle is backswing, the other foreswing, with both mirroring the other.

Okay only if you introduce some distortion into the mirror.

No waggle anyway. Before a John Newcombe serve, yes, but not just before my serve where the waggle is in the backswing.

In the ever emerging form of my new serve the first word "effortless" refers to squishing grapes with my left foot and is effortless as dance.

How much of a correspondence should one want between this little dance step and top register elbow ascent on a straight slant?

Not much, the correspondence is only for a short while. The body sways backward. The elbow without effort sways backward and upward. That's it but identifies overall action as a momentum based serve.

The next "effortless" is coiling on the back foot combined with torso twist and the considerable effort of the toss as ha elbow continues muscle-driven now on its continued straight slant path upward while deliberately coiling into a cruel needle.

As I already tried to suggest, this is as far as I can think when I am out there. But I am on my back writing with a number 2 so will go on.

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The legs fire (effort) thus forming a natural loop (no effort). The body bends at the hips, which image I can in no way reconcile with a rustic cart's wheel.

And torso twist somewhere between effort and effortless chimes in to passively take racket tip to right yet at almost the same time adds equal positive force to elbow lift which has to be lightning fast, i.e., one of the most active elements in the whole serve.

Time to re-think. What are the most muscular elements in the serve? 1) the leg drive, 2) sudden elbow lift, 3) what happens after passive extension of the arm (ISR and ulnar deviation and straightening of the wrist).

Does any revelation immediately emerge from this run-through? Yes. The muscular effort of the toss is matched by the muscular effort of the ha elbow continuing on its upward straight slant path while one's bod is headed down.

Also, one needs to throw balls using the same motion as much as possible. The purpose of the throws will be to make the late elbow lift succinct and abrupt.

Want to re-think the whole serve one more time? You don't, and neither do I but so what, the whole action is a syrupy arabesque punctuated by the sudden throw of one's elbow.

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New Tripod to Arrive on Wednesday

Why do I bore you, reader, with that announcement?

Because I might soon have available for you film-derived information that will transform your service into a murderous weapon.

I'm on the track!

I'm holding serve against the same people who were beating up on it just a week ago.

The next logical step will be to learn by the time I'm eighty a left-handed serve since my left shoulder and elbow are perfectly normal according to the standard for any human being.

And if I can hold serve from the left side, using the motion I am just in the process of inventing for my trick shoulder on the right side, everything and I mean everything will have extreme relevance for the wide public.

This will be like an ad for "My Pillow."

In the meantime there is a tennis social at our club tonight.

I plan to arrive early and work on my serve.

Every tweak right now makes it better as my frail kyak glides onto an upper Congo full of crocodiles.

(POPULAR ZIMBAWEAN GUIDE WITH WIDE KNOWLEDGE OF ZAMBESI CROCS SWALLOWED HEAD DOWN BY HUGE ONE IN UPPER CONGO)

Address to be higher. As Pancho Gonzalez pointed out a long time ago, a good toss can come from higher up although that isn't exactly what he himself did.

The fact is, if both hands are on the racket, you won't have as far to go to get your normal ha shoulder and elbow up high for early placement.

This will be like an ad for little pills that will put an utter perk on the enzymes in your bell. (I'd use the word "belly" instead of "bell" if I liked it any more than "body" over "bod.")

Well, when we have all our terms straightened, we can proceed to checkout.

The form begins with a reversal of sequence used in the forward or better upward part of the active serve.

If one somersaults from leg push behind center of gravity and slight bow from the hips on the foreskin, then one does exactly the same only with everything reversed on the backskin.

With torso twist coming close behind to help with the toss.

We will be able at last to answer the age-old question of how, in a momentum-dominant serve, the racket head should go down.

From passive squeezing of "the two halves of the arm together?" From passive ESR? From both?

Both? Not really.

One starts with an inspired body-guided waggle-- a grocery bag with three balls in it swung in a pendulum from fingers only back and forth.

One strives then to duplicate the utter passiveness of this with over-shoulder movement of the arm.

I thought at first the elbow should independently go up first then down then up and held serve with that.

Now I think elbow should just slant gradually up as backswinging bod sways down into torso twist.

Will see since I've never done that. Arm can be close to needled early so as to maximize loose range of ESR.

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Waiting

While waiting for my next tripod to arrive I need to take to heart the visual lessons revealed by film so far.

First, not only must my shoulder relax but my elbow too so that the old expression "spaghetti arm" will finally learn to suffice.

Second, I need to see a full squeeze together of the two halves of the arm. Right now I think it's happened when it hasn't. Well, can it be passive or will there then be too much that is passive in the serve?

Envisioned is a raising of my trick shoulder housing as front leg extends and a slight lowering of said shoulder as the rear leg compresses.

The pattern must imbue both the actual serve and the pre-serve waggle that illuminates it.

As racket lowers, torso twist and toss and slight lean backward from the hips chime in. The structured arm must get all loose right then.

Is there new heresy here or not? A tenet by which I have lived and died in all tennis matches is that bod must travel forward during the toss.

But actually, it's just some part of the bod that needs to take the forward trip, probably the hips. If upper body is moving backward lower bod is moving forward and hence is something else not to think about.

The rear leg fires to reverse the vertical arrangement of hips. Because the front leg is firing too, rear hip rises up over front hip.

Which sends a nice message up the rest of the bod.

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Treading on Grapes

Amontillado 2019, Chateau de Lestad.

You're out to develop feel for the hips, specifically hip movement in the vertical dimension. As I read this, one leg straightens while the other bends. Do we want some variation of the Pancho Segura rock 'n roll serve or not?

So, arm stays very bent while springy legs provide the body impetus for easy racket momentum.

Front leg bends-- no grapes squished there. "But I washed my feet. They're squeaky clean!" As you straighten front leg grapes indeed get squished. Now to squish with the other leg. That's the beginning of the forward serve action.

In between the very bent elbow slowly winged up and even down. Why not? The coming down will prepare for great abduction/adduction in the opposite direction.

Toss needs to be high so that you get a good angle on the ball with significant upward component.

One prefigures all this with well thought out waggles.

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Nah. An Experience with Manunkind.

Too fancy. I knew after the first ball I didn't want to do it.

But looking at film in the coffee shop afterward, I saw that the same elbow problem is persisting no matter what I do. Somehow I will always find a way to get the elbow low no matter how I start. I am nevertheless determined to conquer this problem.

I was so mad that I went back to the court for a second session. It was then I realized I had left my Chinese tripod, my most prized possession, there the first time and it was gone, somebody got it, probably the sassy looking kid who watched one of my lousy serves.

It's not that they don't go in. They all go in. Things would be better if I double-faulted once in a while. It's that they get clobbered.

Raising elbow of right arm first before the serve starts is one option. Turning the stance so far around that the action has to go up over the head is another.

Another thing that might be wise: Go on line right away for another tripod. The good one I had is advertised right now at Amazon for x dollars with several dollars for shipping for a total cost of x.

One might think, since I just turned 79, that I am getting Alzheimer's, but on the other hand I have been absent-minded my whole life.

(https://www.google.com/search?q=trip...hrome&ie=UTF-8)

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Never Underestimate the Difficulty of Doing Something New in Tennis

But don't be abjectly fearful about it either.

How about lifting both hands together like a baseball pitcher?

And then lowering ta just a little to give it a bit of rhythm...

While ha goes back almost entirely from bod movement.

How much should one's waggle ape this beginning motion?

Only in feel, not in appearance, is my first thought.

One can use an existing habit if one is definite in one's mind about when to abandon it?

If I'm right about that, then why shouldn't I pick the waggle that is most extreme in form? I won't be holding a sturgeon-killing plastic garbage bag with three tennis balls down at the bottom, but I can sway the two hands apart to create a modicum of momentum.

Twice backward and twice forward to rejoin the hands for immediate transition to a higher level.

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1/1/19 Report

Power train good but elbow not high enough, hence serve too much to side and not up over head.

So, bent arm rise of ha now must be adjusted close to head to get it up there.

ha first ta second.

Adapt this change to new power train.

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One has to enjoy this stuff; otherwise one can't do it, i.e., ever get the positive result one has always believed possible.

How cold the empty netless courts with only one person out upon them. How glum the overcast gunmetal sky although one's camera will film one in bright technicolor.

Next door people playing pickleball. One person wanted me to do that. That would have taken care of me. I no longer would talk or worse write about tennis.

No, no, I love being the only person using this huge tennis facility, waiting carefully for this day when the wind is light enough not to blow over my Chinese tripod.

But the result! It should have caused deep depression just as before. Mencinger: Once a habit is established it remains.

But no depression, not this time. I simply must lift ha before ta while keeping ha bent and bringing it close and high above my head.

There is relief in knowing exactly what one must do.

There is one day left, 1/2/19 before the next indoors play.

The challenge will be to match the different racket work to Mencinger's waggle.

What problem in that? I'll do it right here right now right next to my computer just as soon as I finish writing this.

Lower bod and hip rising over hip and a little break at the hips exactly the same. Torso twist exactly the same.

Minimal rocking back and forth to form the arm and bod waggle that in each little cycle will prefigure one's bod behavior in the big cycle still the same.

The difference will be that the ha will not first straighten and next bend.

That is two things less to do.

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Mencinger the Messenger's Waggle Applied to ForwardBodRotation-TorsoTwist Sequence of Brian Gordon

Tomaz Mencinger believes that the main link in the chain is the hips, that the hips need to coil and uncoil, and that rec players don't even feel the hips.

And I believe Tomaz Mencinger.

I therefore propose a special waggle to begin every one of little u-i's serves. (Thank you, E.E. Cummings, despite your prejudices and bad politics, for giving me that name and also the word "manunkind." Ask Google, anybody, if Cummings was a black poet and you won't get a straight answer.)

And so, the waggle, the waggle.

Lightly holding the racket by its butt rim in three fingers, gently press with the left hip to start leaning bod toward rear fence. I also think there should be miniature contribution from body joint that also can be called "the hips" and miniature extension of one leg. The hips go one over the other rather than around. You squish grapes.

The detail here is more graphic than most persons will want-- I don't care.

Next repeat the same motion only forward with everything reversed.

Keep rocking in the free world.

To conclude each backward waggle combine torso twist with bending of arm from straight to a right angle.

If the new waggle-dependent serves don't immediately work revert to keeping ha bent through its take-up starting marginally ahead of ta's take-up since that is how I turned my serve around on Saturday from failing to hold to winning at love.

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Is This What I Think or Something I have Imagined?

I refer to the ritualized rocking motion of his arm that John Newcombe uses just before he serves in this video of the 1971 Wimbledon final.

Is the motion to develop feel for increasing momentum in the Tomaz Mencinger way or merely to loosen one's ha or both?

I'll post the video here and then watch it again.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI-zHsPvtTw)

Newk doesn't do it on every serve, but when he does, I think I see involvement of body and arm together, which could signify a supremely provocative waggle and the answer to my question as "both."

One thing for sure: There's less pause in Newcombe's motion than in Smith's. The backward momentum flows directly into the forward momentum which could be one reason Vic Braden was so taken with it. No value judgment is implied. Both Newcombe and Smith are great servers. I'm simply trying to see what is.

But, having read this, what do you think I'm going to try the next time I serve? Always, in my view, what you yourself are going to do next is more interesting than what somebody else, even a Wimbledon singles champ, does.

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Great to see Frew McMillan. Strange ball toss he had, the way he 'shoved' the ball up like that.

My guy John M. Barnaby, in his book RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS, was not afraid to present a toss like that. He likened it, I think, to a reverse push-up.

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Tic-Toc: Coming up on Midnight

Here is the exercise that can utterly transform the feel of John Newcombe "high elbow early" and that, I would assume, of other types of serve as well.

(https://www.feeltennis.net/secret-effortless-serving/)

Acceptance of pacified core movement is key. Or in Bill Tilden's thought as summarized in my own words, "You can sweat and haul and lurch and groan, but it won't do you any good, and you really need to whip your arm around (over) your body, which can only work if it comes from overall timing and not muscular strain at any one point along the way."

My wish is to combine Tomaz Mencinger's feel with snapping of a wet towel to kill airborne horseflies at an Ohio swimming pool with Brian Gordon's melded sequence of forward body rotation with torso twist.

To do the latter, it occurs to me, there should be the same sequence in the backswing first.

Hence body lean and torso twist backward, then body lean and torso twist forward, but with everything minimized.

Perhaps however the goal of supersonic racket head speed is too high.

If a big bang were to happen, great, but a slightly lowered expectation dictates the gradual build-up of momentum that Mencinger demonstrates.

One can still have the excellent serve necessary for the gritted-up uniglo courts that nearly everybody plays on nowadays where a good serve is not much different from a weak serve.