From Pierre-Hugues Herbert's Serving Display Against Novak Djokovic
Nobody ever tried harder than Vic Braden to steal pitching mechanics from baseball for the serving masses in tennis, sort of like Prometheus' gift to mankind of fire.
Vic Braden developed one Luis Tiant pitch where the server turns all the way back to a friend standing by the rear fence and says, "Hi, how are you" before continuing with his serve.
The rear leg driven and rotorded me accepts the Luis Tiant model (think John McEnroe and the Paris Open's young Frenchman, Pierre-Hugues Herbert) but wants nothing lazy at looking-at-back-fence moment other than the arm.
As for the hips, they're already firing at that point. The hips are firing as the arm just finishes its assumption of a right angle or whatever angle works best (please note that I did not use the expression "trophy position" and therefore deserve a Nobel, Pulitzer, MacArthur or Booker Prize).
Why such late assumption of throwing bend?
Because, right after hips fire comes the biggest gross body surge of power possible and I live in Grosse Pointe.
This design pits maximum body surge against further cocking of the arm, shoulder, scapula, wrist and maybe even fingers.
And the racket tip doesn't stay down, to put things mildly. Some used to say that racket tip was a paint brush dipping for an infinitesimally brief moment into a paint can, but then along came more recent instruction about turning racket tip out to the right, which forever spoiled traditional simplicity and unifying image including "backscratch."
The service engineers are right of course. (They are always right. Just ask them.) So turn the racket tip out toward side fence as part of the on-the-fly cock and immediately fire the tomahawk.
P.S. An area for added kick serve exploration is finger movement right on the ball, keeping in mind that science dismisses new possibility as much as it creates it and usually more often. Feathering technique from crew however must be applied-- as experiment-- in view of Steve Navarro's having his serving students make their strings follow the contour of the ball.
I've always wondered: Does modern emphasis on internal arm rotation put too much trailing rim on the ball in the case of all but the most skillful of servers?
Note: Standard objection in tennis to all talk about hand manipulation at contact always identifies the brevity of actual contact (say three or four thousandths of a second) without explaining that the manipulation could start before and continue afterward.
Nobody ever tried harder than Vic Braden to steal pitching mechanics from baseball for the serving masses in tennis, sort of like Prometheus' gift to mankind of fire.
Vic Braden developed one Luis Tiant pitch where the server turns all the way back to a friend standing by the rear fence and says, "Hi, how are you" before continuing with his serve.
The rear leg driven and rotorded me accepts the Luis Tiant model (think John McEnroe and the Paris Open's young Frenchman, Pierre-Hugues Herbert) but wants nothing lazy at looking-at-back-fence moment other than the arm.
As for the hips, they're already firing at that point. The hips are firing as the arm just finishes its assumption of a right angle or whatever angle works best (please note that I did not use the expression "trophy position" and therefore deserve a Nobel, Pulitzer, MacArthur or Booker Prize).
Why such late assumption of throwing bend?
Because, right after hips fire comes the biggest gross body surge of power possible and I live in Grosse Pointe.
This design pits maximum body surge against further cocking of the arm, shoulder, scapula, wrist and maybe even fingers.
And the racket tip doesn't stay down, to put things mildly. Some used to say that racket tip was a paint brush dipping for an infinitesimally brief moment into a paint can, but then along came more recent instruction about turning racket tip out to the right, which forever spoiled traditional simplicity and unifying image including "backscratch."
The service engineers are right of course. (They are always right. Just ask them.) So turn the racket tip out toward side fence as part of the on-the-fly cock and immediately fire the tomahawk.
P.S. An area for added kick serve exploration is finger movement right on the ball, keeping in mind that science dismisses new possibility as much as it creates it and usually more often. Feathering technique from crew however must be applied-- as experiment-- in view of Steve Navarro's having his serving students make their strings follow the contour of the ball.
I've always wondered: Does modern emphasis on internal arm rotation put too much trailing rim on the ball in the case of all but the most skillful of servers?
Note: Standard objection in tennis to all talk about hand manipulation at contact always identifies the brevity of actual contact (say three or four thousandths of a second) without explaining that the manipulation could start before and continue afterward.
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