A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

A New Finger Fulcrum In Serves

Racket can lie in yoke of forefinger and thumb all the way from address in the serve. Address would be pointing racket and raising it with both arms a little to initiate rhythm for a gravity drop.

Racket handle can in fact maintain contact with the hand in four places throughout address, fall and wind-up.

They are 1) ring finger 2) middle finger 3) base pad of the index finger 4) yoke of index finger and thumb with pinky to stay off of the racket altogether.

During Totka's Hammer regardless of what the very good thing that Naomi Totka herself does, is, the racket slips off of pad at base of the index finger for purchase at a different part of the yoke as middle two fingers pry out.

During the wrist and fingers' blend coming off of the ball the handle returns to its first contact point on index finger's base while remaining settled in yoke.

This means that clench is performed by two fingers only-- middle and ring.

But a far greater force than any offered by the two fingers is superimposed along the same line by the natural brake that occurs when arm gets straight and can't detach itself from rest of body although it tries.

What, according to this continuing dialectic, is the direction of the forcible hammering action that tries to detach one's arm?

I've read instructors' descriptions that placed it directly overhead as exemplified by the image of hammering a nail into some ceiling.

Not far enough back, say I, preferring to target a full moon on a diagonal behind me.

Isn't that where toss is going to be anyway if I arch it over my head while keeping it lined up with right net post?

[bottle]

Protean Tennis

Don't play like the pros. Play like Proteus.

Proteus was a maritime god back in days when people thought that change was important enough to give it a name, i.e., its own god.

With Federfore influenced by Radek Stepanek on one side and Stygian Backhand developed on the other, one can easily modify one's hopping, waiting position for every ground stroke, which sounds like messing with some foundation after the house is already built.

I challenge that premise. One can cheat over to backhand any time one wants, and protean players have done so any time in tennis history they knew their opponent's next shot was coming to the backhand, particularly in the case of a first serve.

Of course if the server noticed this different wait position he might go to forehand at the last second.

This way, the receiver might elicit the forehand for himself that he wanted.

One assumption by receiver might be that modified Federfore with Radek Stepanekish backswing made him more economical through a low, wide, unified, finger-assisted backswing.

I barely know how this will work since my method is aways to write first, go to court for self-feed second with pre-planned doubles third.

On backhand side the racket can at least sometimes start almost parallel to the baseline.

(This instruction was kept vague on purpose.)

Whereas before, on Stygian Backhand, one used a flying grip change to take one to that approximate position, one waits there now with forehand grip.

From forehand grip one uses one's flying grip change to either take the racket slightly upward for the totality of preparation for a Stygian Backhand or to the skunk-tailed version of Rosewallian Slice.

In either case, an entire step in usual preparation-- lifting the racket after flying grip change-- has been excised.

This allows one to become slower, smoother and more deliberate in all that comes next-- a good way to play tennis.

Because of cheated over position, a very fast serve to forehand now becomes likely. Volley it. Fast: flip and step. Medium: Short version of regular forehand. Slow: Regular forehand.

When actually playing, reader, how soon do you think you (I) will abandon one's accustomed waiting position? Where will racket point? Same place as usual? Is cheating over even a good thing to think about? You don't believe so, reader? Then don't do it.

[bottle]

Loosen Up, Guys And Gals-- Especially You Rotorded Ones

The extra meaning of the expression "hump your wrist" is not wanted but the extra motion implied is.

We've worked hard in recent posts to add some looseness to our serves and to identify with precision the extra finger action we most desire.

A serve can go up, down, up, down up and down, right?

Does racket tip move an extra amount within each step of this scheme? It can.

[bottle]

Skunk Tail Variation

Two of many possible variations from Rosewallian skunk tail preparation to hit slice with full understanding that backhand often is hit from beginning positions different than that-- by Ken Rosewall or anyone else:

1) Forward hip action straightens arm and opens racket way to inside for a level swing right through the ball.

2) Forward hip action straightens arm and slightly opens racket barely to inside of what will be a descending path (Karsten Popp model in videos shown in Tennis Player article on his backhand).

Popp's skunk tail slice chops unlike the speedy 1) but is less steep than the typical backhand slices of Federer and Nadal.

[bottle]

Building on a Breakthrough

Who thinks timing of progress in stroke production will ever be even across the board? If one feels for some reason that one's slice serve out wide is beginning to sizzle, one should apply the same drive train to one's repeatedly feeble topspin serves.

The logic of this says to ignore advice to place a shopping cart against front hip to prevent forward rotation. How about not varying from the basic motion of one's best serve but rather work on body's position relative to the tossed ball?

So, with better topspin/kick serve the goal, turn around more in initial stance and crank the hips but stop them almost immediately as one does to hit one's best slice.

Where is the elbow? Back. Where are the shoulders. Parallel to the baseline. How is arm going to approach ball? From left side rather than from right side or behind.

I am an old seaplane with propeller BEHIND the engine. Or, if that's too strange, a swamp buggy or whatever simple image might result in cleanly scraped buzzsaws.

[bottle]

Reader, Do You Enjoy Your Stepafore?

What, you did not convert? Are you mad? Why is a right winger such as yourself constitutionally incapable of cheating to the left? Just what was it in your upbringing that caused you to dislike the H.M.S. PINAFORE?

Exactly at what age did you become a fat head Ted? He is a Communist, I tell you.

No convert is more passionate than a very recent one, and that would be me. My sailing became clear in the instant I realized that my Stepafore was better than my Federfore.

Immediately I knew that Fat Head Ted had a head that was fed with fatwood if I didn't know that already.

But wait a minute. Fatwood is good and old and almost petrified. The kind that comes from the Georgia sea islands is orange umber and smooth grain and splits with a single tap of the smallest hatchet.

Fatwood is loaded with resins. All one needs is a single piece and a single match sans newspaper or twigs to light one's fire.

[bottle]

An Awfully Big Discussion For Never Having Heard A Word About It

I'm sitting here fiddling with my racket and specifically changing its pitch by 45 degrees this way and that through the use of thumb and middle finger over and over.

Maybe my friends wish I would go away on this subject but I won't. This is loose grip argument carried another step.

As the idea of mondo or flip slowly became more prominent in talk about the forehand in tennis, a long while went by before Eric Matuszewski of Princeton broke the phenomenon down into a pair of simultaneous elements-- wrist laying back and forearm opening the racket from a previously closed position.

Well, I'm a crew coach, i.e., a coach certified in another sport where people twist some instrument. And I want to add some finger action to the mix.

Why? For more ease and fluidity in hitting the ball. And for smaller, more efficient strokes.

Postscript at least a week later: A person wishing to try this need only learn half of it-- the part about adding to the closing of the strings by retracting middle finger over thumb. During the mondo, if hand remains relaxed, the handle will naturally return pretty much to its accustomed place. A goal of this: More delicacy for subtle variations.

[bottle]

A Tremendous Difference In Kick Serve Concept

Here is the element in question: Totka's Hammer as seen at 3.16 in the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

And here is a germane question about it: If Totka's Hammer consists of extension from the elbow and upper arm rotation, which is primary and which subservient to the other.

I hope to derive the answer at a tennis social tonight.

[stotty]

Here is the element in question: Totka's Hammer as seen at 3.16 in the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

And here is a germane question about it: If Totka's Hammer consists of extension from the elbow and upper arm rotation, which is primary and which subservient to the other.

I hope to derive the answer at a tennis social tonight.

Would love don_budge's thoughts on the girls serve. There is a lot of rotation here...kind of like McEnroe but without the stance.

[bottle]

I'd like to hear what Steve has to say on this serve, too.

To try to answer my own last question, I'd say that in hammering a nail, triceptic extension probably dominates upper arm rotation, but upper arm rotation dominates in Totka's Hammer, at least in her demonstration of it at 3.16 in the video.

It's one's best throw (Tilden saying to throw a racket in a field). But is the arm still bent when racket contacts the ball? I guess so if we are seriously to take Pat Dougherty's description of total Totka hammer as "compact."

I simply love this video, which I've always thought the best of the zillion on kick serve I've ever seen (though any day I may change my mind through a great suggestion from somebody else).

Someone might ask why, Bot, are you repeatedly watching a video of this 15-year-old? Because I want to steal her serve, and each time I watch I see something different.

I'm especially intrigued by Dougherty's miming with the elbow at the point in the video where he says, "She's trying to come over the ball like this." With the clear implication that this is not what actually happens.

In fact one can see the whirligig start in one direction-- almost on a perpendicular at rear fence-- and then shift halfway through to a path more slantwise toward side fence.

Loose wrist humping up as arm goes up and front foot turned more than toward net post at the address are other notable features.

And all the body rotation that Stotty emphasizes. Totka's front leg may go from bent to straight to bent again but I sure can't see it. It is the rotational elements that predominate.

Me, I want to start the hips fast and then quickly brake them so that everything else goes fast as in my best slicers.

I believe Pat Dougherty when he says that like Naomi, if I put in the time, I'll get it.

I choose to believe him over the persons-- quite a few actually-- who say or think I'll never get it.

Was down love forty in good doubles last night when I started hitting kick serves both first and second and won the game.

My version of Totkan kick is not perfect but coming along.

[bottle]

Naomian Kick

Synthesis...(in Hegelian philosophy) the final stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, in which a new idea resolves the conflict between thesis and antithesis. --don_budge

I try to make this my method. Also, I write first, second go to the court with a basket of balls. I'm not about to change now. Will the following serve work? I expect subsequent alterations.

Get the elbow out from the shoulders as a prime goal in this particular version of a kick serve. (ATA, i.e., "Air The Armpits" -- Vic Braden.)

The arm has become compressed, ready to throw.

Throw the racket at the rear fence.

Know that opening arm will only get straight some time after contact, and that there will be a maximum of easy wrist movement throughout as in the fey serve of Bill Tilden.

Reader, you've probably been advised in two contradictory ways to let immediate followthrough be characterized by:

1) a straight wrist. 2) a humped wrist.

Go with 2) in this particular version, but with the further understanding that the powerful "internal rotation of the upper arm" that everybody talks about was mostly used up as you threw at the back fence.

Exercise: Face the rear fence while throwing the racket as if to let it go-- from still partially bent arm-- in order to crash it into that fence. Imagine a vertical slot in the fence where a tomahawk went through.

The Body

is coordinated with this arm throw. Hips rotate violently but are immediately braked by a right-hander's left foot.

This changes the racket head path away from perpendicular to rear fence to slantwise at side fence.

The fingers additive-- optional for some slice serves-- has been largely subdued. The pinky finger is back on the racket.

The arm only completes its straightening after scraping a ghost ball up and to the right of the real ball.

[bottle]

Three Balls in the Sky

Why have one ghost ball when you can have two? For a kick serve I am thinking Hamnet for the first ball (real), Horatio for the second (ghost), Gertrude for the third (ghost).

This design is all about wrist and the classic exercise of using a racket to roll a ball up the opposite palm-- then snap sharply off of it toward side fence to give the ball some forward roll as it skitters on the court.

How is this going to work in my present construction? Well, the wrist is to hump as arm first goes up and unhump as part of The Totkan Hammer. This last movement, though faster, corresponds to rolling the ball up the palm and gives one a better chance of JUST MISSING with leading rim.

This whole interaction will be with real ball Hamnet, named for the real son of William Shakespeare conceived with the real Anne Hathaway and who died at the age of 11 methinks from bubonic plague.

Snapping off the ball will take the strings up and slightly forward to Horatio while straightening the wrist not to mention the ulnar deviation involved.

We're talking macro-motion however or at one swat three flies, the second of which is obviously higher than the first and third.

If wrist gets straight for Horatio it has humped again by Gertrude.

[stotty]

Yes...be great if don_budge checks in to review the girl's serve. Is she rotating a little too much? Most girls can't pull this off.

I'm watching Djokovic v Herbert at the moment in the Paris Open. Djokovic doesn't rotate that much...Herbert certainly does. That boy can really serve...rotates like Sampras...Wow! Shame about his forehand. He'll be consigned to the bin if cannot improve that shot. Djokovic is swarming all over Herbert's forehand as I write.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

I'd like to hear what Steve has to say on this serve, too.

To try to answer my own last question, I'd say that in hammering a nail, triceptic extension probably dominates upper arm rotation, but upper arm rotation dominates in Totka's Hammer, at least in her demonstration of it at 3.16 in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

And all the body rotation that Stotty emphasizes. Totka's front leg may go from bent to straight to bent again but I sure can't see it. It is the rotational elements that predominate.

[don_budge]

The Moment...in spite of itself.

I'd like to hear what Steve has to say on this serve, too.

To try to answer my own last question, I'd say that in hammering a nail, triceptic extension probably dominates upper arm rotation, but upper arm rotation dominates in Totka's Hammer, at least in her demonstration of it at 3.16 in the video.

It's one's best throw (Tilden saying to throw a racket in a field). But is the arm still bent when racket contacts the ball? I guess so if we are seriously to take Pat Dougherty's description of total Totka hammer as "compact."

I simply love this video, which I've always thought the best of the zillion on kick serve I've ever seen (though any day I may change my mind through a great suggestion from somebody else).

Someone might ask why, Bot, are you repeatedly watching a video of this 15-year-old? Because I want to steal her serve, and each time I watch I see something different.

I'm especially intrigued by Dougherty's miming with the elbow at the point in the video where he says, "She's trying to come over the ball like this." With the clear implication that this is not what actually happens.

In fact one can see the whirligig start in one direction-- almost on a perpendicular at rear fence-- and then shift halfway through to a path more slantwise toward side fence.

Loose wrist humping up as arm goes up and front foot turned more than toward net post at the address are other notable features.

And all the body rotation that Stotty emphasizes. Totka's front leg may go from bent to straight to bent again but I sure can't see it. It is the rotational elements that predominate.

Me, I want to start the hips fast and then quickly brake them so that everything else goes fast as in my best slicers.

I believe Pat Dougherty when he says that like Naomi, if I put in the time, I'll get it.

I choose to believe him over the persons-- quite a few actually-- who say or think I'll never get it.

Was down love forty in good doubles last night when I started hitting kick serves both first and second and won the game.

My version of Totkan kick is not perfect but coming along.

Yes...be great if don_budge checks in to review the girl's serve. Is she rotating a little too much? Most girls can't pull this off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

For reasons of my own...I found it very difficult to watch this video. But there is one moment that made the thing palpable or even palatable...it occurs at 3.16 in the video. This is a nice way of illustrating a point.

But regards to analysis of the girl's serve or Pat Daugherty's demonstration the video left a lot to be desired. I guess that I am spoiled by the way we work things out here on the forum.

With regards to the girl's motion...once I got over the part that she was nearly naked I decided that I still was unimpressed with the state of her motion which is not to say that she doesn't have potential. It is only that Pat thinks he is doing a much better job than he is. I am somewhat unimpressed with his work here as much as he likes to hear himself talk. He is a typical tennis coach these days...part snake oil salesman and part pimp. He's pimping the serve. More window dressing than substance.

There is something decidedly out of synch with the young lady's motion but with the camera moving all over the freaking place from this angle and that and most of the angles not showing her whole body and structure it is impossible to pick up on just exactly what it is that doesn't suit my eye. All I feel is that this motion is very off key compared to what it could be potentially, considering the considerably naked body we have to work with. It appears to be a good specimen too. From all appearances. Nice legs, firm buttocks and tight breasts. Come on...am I the only one that notices these things.

I had a girl in my program last year who came dressed to play tennis like this and it was a distraction to say the least. It is poor taste and immodest...but in lock step with modern times. Madonna playing tennis. Don't mistake me for a prude or anything like that as I am a great admirer of the female form...hell I am sort of an honorary Doctorate in Gynecology (I have translated 30-something Phd midwife research papers here in Sweden plus there is my "private practice experience"). But there is a time and place for things and the time and place for her attire is probably a strip bar or at least the beach or something of that sort of venue.

From what I can gather from the video...the girl has a great body and loads of potential but too much is being made of one and not enough of the other. The one redeeming moment of Pat Daugherty's work comes at 3.16 of the video. Thor's hammer throw...bottle managed to pick up on that while pretending not to ogle the little sweet things finer assets.

I don't buy into Daugherty's discussion about disguising a kick serve either. The disguise is not about whether or not it is going to be a kick or a slice or a cannonball...the disguise is decidedly in the placement. I never gave a second thought about disguising the spin but always kept my placement intentions a secret. In fact...I will go so far to say that by tossing the ball up with the intention of disguising the kick serve from any other serve he is doing his little Hungarian tennis_student a disservice. It is impossible to disguise the motion of one from the other by manipulating the toss placement while maintaining a fundamentally correct service motion. I don't think that I ever see little Miss Hungarian Hard Body ever finish out to the left of her nubile figure...which is where a true kick serve does finish.

licensedcoach is right on the money about the physical attributes of the little princess too. She has a great physique to work with purely in regards to her service motion but there is something a bit askew with the picture. Something about the position of her arm, her backswing, her footwork and her rotation. The picture as it is now is less impressive than her potential. I just wish that the stupid camera would stay still long enough in a good position to communicate what a camera communicates best. This seemed more like a panoramic perspective of Stacey's butt.

But maybe that was the point all along. The motion isn't all that good to advertise so why not give the viewers an eyeful of some eye candy and maybe they just walk away saying to themselves, "isn't that Pat Daugherty something". I would really love to see Jiminy Glick interview him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rK_1xGp7cg

On a slightly separate tact...bottle, one of the hallmarks of a great server is to be down love-40 on their service game and still have the wherewithal to pull it out. Nice going. Why not kick the first one in from time to time in the first place...the disguise is in the tactics not in the motion itself.

[bottle]

Wow, don_budge-- you don't disappoint, do you? For more about Hungarian bodies and proverbs ("You go to the doctor when you're dead"), read THE PURSE MAKER'S CLASP, novel, by John Escher.