A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Crazy Slice

From # 1889: "Stopping the body for arm transition creates stable serves, it seems to me."

Well, they were stable. And they got creamed (on Har-Tru). So it's back to the drawing board, and to the repeating video of Nadal (second furniture down) in this article:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/mystheavyball/john_yandell/spin_rates_axis_of_rotation/

The camera angle is very interesting. As Nadal starts to throw upward he looks exactly as if he is going to hit the ball with the non-hitting side of his strings.

Internal arm rotation occurs only then in this slice serve. And my new plan is to really nail down my own slice before I make the small change in axis that will transform this shot to kick.

Perhaps, reader, you would prefer that I keep talking about Nadal. But remember that we live in a celebrity-saturated society-- a fact that works against anybody coming up with sensible choice in any subject.

I'm going to start with another one of my "stable" serves which feels simple and rhythmic and gave the geezers I played with all summer a constant fit-- even the better geezers among them whom I'm playing with now.

Somewhere along the line however these top geezers (one of whom is the seniors doubles champ of Grosse Pointe) began to catch on. Was this their using of their considerable smarts or some change in the serve? Both. As the serve became more facile and I could lay it in the court all day every day, it literally lost the edge one can so easily see in the video of Nadal.

What does "edge" really mean? That, as Tom Avery says, the frame comes at the ball and barely misses it at the last instant. A question now. You don't, in practice, frame some shots occasionally and produce spectacular mishits off to the outside? Well, maybe it's not that you are physically a freak or a wreck but that your working idea is wrong.

So, a lot of my recent notions now require abandonment. Not extreme stance and Boris Becker like toss-- those are working fine. But the arm work. The new simplicity check says that wrist will be straight or even a little concave rather than humped, i.e., convex when looking down from the sky.

Traditional use of straight or slightly cocked wrist, in other words, and not unfurling from inside although I will always retain that as contrarian possibility.

Finger twiddle remains too but occurs just as body loads on rear leg (as arm squeezes closed its last little bit to the throwing place, the spot in the total tract from which I some while ago decided my serve would be all throw).

There's no transition from this spot which in my case is just before the two halves of the arm completely squeeze together, only a relaxed but attacking throw.

Hand comes up to inside of ball by two inches. Racket comes up directly under the ball. Hand then gets out of the way to put strings two inches to inside of ball just before contact. Too much detail? Then go with this. The arm whirls. The rim barely misses the ball.

This serve needs to be sufficiently crazy-- some would say "uninhibited."

[bottle]

A Big Man's Serve

In website discussion-- at "Common Dreams"-- about who is wise and who isn't, a man by the name of Atomsk wrote:

I think it's being drunk on one's own "intelligence" that precludes one from being "wise." That's, errrr, my own experience at least...Not that I'm...

We then went into a discussion of Samuel Johnson, the leading man of letters of the British eighteenth century, and I wrote,

One quote of his that certainly could apply to the modern internet: "Easy writing makes for curs't hard reading."

Atomsk wrote:

I only read Boswell and some Johnson from Gutenberg.org, but I can't help but like the guy for some reason. Funny as hell. Damn that British "wit" always charms me, from Swift (well he has his own touch maybe because he's Irish? but still I think very similar) and Johnson through Chesterton and Shaw to Stoppard.

Not only was I amazed at the tone of this-- when most on-line posts are reflexively contentious-- but I immediately wanted to apply the ideas of Atomsk to tennis writing, tennis instruction and tennis thought.

And, as I continue to read SAMUEL JOHNSON: A BIOGRAPHY BY JOHN WAIN, I'm coming to realize that Samuel Johnson may have written faster than anyone who ever lived. Doesn't that contradict his idea that easy writing makes curs't hard reading?

Well, writing isn't just the physical act of writing, it's the thought and experience and struggle that happen first.

As far as my serve goes, here I am at the point where I say, "I think that most instruction on serving in tennis is predicated on considerable flexibility in the shoulder that permits a player-- from the position in which his elbow is lined up with his shoulders-- to get his racket tip very low."

This creates what Chris Lewit has called "a runway" up to the ball long enough for sufficient acceleration of the racket head.

But what happens if the player wasn't born with that flexibility or somehow it was taken away?

He counters this. There are proven means. But maybe he can't.

Then, I believe, there are alternatives.

My idea, hardly brilliant but reflecting the view of a spelunker whose headlamp has just illuminated a fourteenth skeleton lying in a heap is that there has to be a way out.

I'm pretty sure that it's in "learning" or releasing behavior from one's ancestral alpha-female cavegirl to throw from a different place than when the racket tip is at its lowest point behind one's back.

[bottle]

Would it Help to Know What Actually Happens in a Kick Serve?

Speculation is not bad. It is a wellspring of science. Or a way of acquiring, i.e., taking to heart better, more solid knowledge than one started with.

A tennis example: One could speculate that since a pre-bounce modern serve (called flat, slice or kick when in fact all three are the same thing) is a combination of major sidespin, major speed and minor topspin, it jumps up and veers sideways.

Simply untrue, according to the research behind the Tennis Player article SPEED AND SPIN IN THE SERVES OF SAMPRAS AND RUSEDSKI.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/mystheavyball/john_yandell/speed_and_spin/speed_and_spin.html

The ball veers sideways before the bounce and then rises straight with multiplied but undiluted topspin, the sidespin having been erased.

Answer to title question: This knowledge might not help but certainly won't hurt. To have a clear view of what one is trying to do is always an advantage, no?

[bottle]

Picking Bill Tilden's Brains

The time has definitely come for a reconsideration of the Tennis Player trove of Bill Tilden serves.

First, his serve doesn't look like Roger Federer's. Yet it was considered best in the world. How the four clever French musketeers figured it out sans the help of Alexander Dumas pere and fils is still a mystery.

The question is not whether as Gene Mako said Big Bill hit one at 150 mph but whether the serve was good enough to beat all the homophobes in the world.

Just kidding. Everybody knows or should know that homophobia is a form of ignorance and arrogance, the usual combination. And Tilden was very good on the weakness of arrogance in tennis. He expressed his views both in writing and out on the court.

Pancho Gonzalez and Don Budge like great or good players of any era treated him with due respect.

A more interesting question than just how good he actually was, to my view, is are there elements in his serve that ordinary players could use-- specifically rotorded servers who comprise the majority of servers in the world.

Also, I wonder if serving like him would put less strain on the front leg than serving like Federer and Sampras (if one could).

In viewing these serves, it is important to note that they occurred before Vic Braden dressed himself up as a stegosaurus laced with slats that revolved according to the logic of the old song "Dry Bones" to illustrate progressive segmentation in the kinetic chain.

Emphasis therefore ought to be fresh and different, in accord with Tilden's written POV that the best serve is a loose but whipped throw from relaxed shoulder rather than gross body wrenching and lurches.

So, do the hips turn in this sequence? How about the shoulders?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeSide.mov

Hips and shoulders turn at the same time, I would say, not in sequence and not to impart energy to the ball but rather to supply good position.

I could be very wrong-- just ask my ex-wife-- but it seems to me that any gross body contribution of energy starts from a small standing jump right in the middle of the serve.

Tilden really gets the arm a-going all by itself, maximizing wrist and forearm by humping and straightening with all in natural throw.

The hips and shoulders meanwhile are turning forward while basically doing nothing.

Meanwhile the legs compress and extend with no pause in between-- the small standing jump.

The shoulders, activated by the legs, fly slightly up and over-- the real body in the serve, I would not be the first to suggest.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServe.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeSideTight.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionKickRear.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionSliceRear.mov

It is fun to try the little standing jump-- my front leg despite grim prognostication has healed that much-- but I prefer exaggerated turn around and stopped hips to take all so important shoulders up and over.

Very wide stance in addition to very turned around stance affords better braking with the front leg.

Most important, I feel, is coming at the ball with edge of the racket foremost in such a way that it opens to just miss the ball. That's why I add middle finger over thumb inchworm like action to forearm supination for a total change of 90 degrees in pitch.

This view propounds enveloping the ball. Speed of frame is always directed into the ball at an angle and never sideways across the back of it perpendicular to an imaginary line drawn to the target.

[bottle]

Application

Held serve every time in switch-off doubles this morning even when partner muffed easy volleys and overheads-- because I was willing to try my version of Tildenesque serves.

Maybe this success relative in life was due to the simple radiation given off when one tries something new.

Or maybe trying to serve like Tilden, the arm going about the body rather than tangling in the body is solid. Certainly Dennis Ralston thinks so in his Tennis Player article on hitting slice serves although discerning this feature in watching videos of him may be difficult for us/some/me.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/famouscoach/denn_ralston/developing_the_slice_serve/developing_the_slice_serve.html

Despite the Ralston example of low bounce on opponent's side of the net, I feel ready to hit my slice serves with a bit of topspin (which enables wider placement) and to declare that all of my serves ("flat," "kick," whatever, are really slice serves only with different combination of major pace, major sidespin and minor topspin in which subtle variation of upwardness in racket travel determines all).

Edge first and forward into the ball as arm spins strings inside to outside.

[bottle]

Postmortem

"The shot you practiced is the one you play with--" Stan Smith

So why did you (I) miss your (my) last kick, so Tildenesque?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionKickRear.mov

Was your racket butt, 56 clicks in, pointed one foot and a half to left of where the ball would be? The strings, if they were cooling the right rear top of the human head (although I believe they are behind), should face-- their pitch should-- about 45 degrees down at the court. That is, a perpendicular drawn from the middle of the strings would slant down 45 degrees to the court.

Right-hander's MOO: Put the strings on the head with racket butt pointing one and one half foot to left of where the ball will be. The strings, closed, face 45 degrees to the court.

Now move the whole apparatus slightly backward toward the rear fence.

Now work on whole swing to achieve this freeze point.

Now hit serves without the freeze.

*****************

Re-trace to second paragraph.

Actually you didn't miss-- that's just a way of speaking-- but you delivered a pussy-cat that sat up and shouted to your opponent, "Crunch me!"

So ask yourself: how smooth do you want your whole contraption? Extremely. Let there be nothing rough except for the final snap which is-- primarily but not solely-- a burst of upper arm twist.

How about the triception that turned your forearm throw at the side fence into a long arm throw at the side fence? Good for analogy to a communications satellite forced farther out. Was that happening at the same time? Probably not. Were you too concerned with circling the edgy racket head out to the left at first? While you tricepted to the right? Some things going to the left, some to the right. How confusing!

Yes. Accept.

Can you think of other opposites? Watch the video. Check out the leftward lean. As it counters the rightward triception. And note the rising shoulder. And the parallelism that occurs when body tilts left as arm throws to right...the racket moves up to above where the forearm was but stays parallel to that remembered image of where the forearm was.

Finally, Bottle, are you still settling on the rear leg as if to clobber the ball-- a worse and worse idea as you turn 74 ?

Better to keep rear leg straight like Tilden and collapse the front leg a little as weight glides forward then bend both legs (front for a second time!) for the very small leg rise so immediate.

That needn't hurt your arthritic front knee. Nor will it harm somebody's replacement.

All that's in the future.

The shot you practiced is the one you play with.

[bottle]

Better Backhands Hit with a Continental Grip

"You can hit your backhand with any grip you want."-- Martina Navratilova

Well, tennis is a personal and individual sport, and I want to hit my one hand drive backhand from the same slow skunk-tailed preparation that has caused all the other geezers I regularly play with to suddenly start commenting on my backhand slice.

"I fear it, John," one left hander told me and for no good reason since we will play again, "I don't even want to hit the ball over there."

Pretty nice words for the ears of somebody who doesn't talk a lot (I just try to write a lot), but who, when he does talk, can cause a person to rise from a dining room table and never come back again.

She was blaming the bankruptcy of Detroit on black people, I believe.

She has since told Hope that Hope ought to kick me out of our house.

Whatever it was I said, I'm proud of it.

It was Henry Ford who brought all those awful black people north to the auto industry, right?

As you know, reader, I'm big on oblique, spontaneous and almost inadvertent remarks by anybody such as the quote by Navratilova posited above.

Or Brian Gordon's on court advice to the New York Times reporter to keep pointing across on his forehand until his hips clear away.

For a matter of months, Steve Navarro and I experimented with imitations of the John McEnroe drive, he in Sweden, I in Michigan, he with the help of an old Swedish teaching pro.

Half a year later, I'd like to know what Steve thinks about that double-blind experiment.

Stotty, also in this forum, got me to change my grip from McEnroe 2.5 (big knuckle on pointy ridge) to 2.0 (big knuckle on second slat).

That's a huge change but what isn't in tennis.

Stotty didn't give reasons, just said the 2.0 is better (without using that numerical system), and it was Stotty, so I believed him.

Then, recently, I added a modified feather from six million repetitions in crew. Now, from skunk tail, I straighten wrist with a bit of roll from middle finger pushed over thumb if I want to drive rather than slice a backhand.

Moreover, I'm apt to break my needlessly self-imposed rule to keep my shoulders level on all backhands. No, if I want to draw middle finger over thumb for what starts to look like a really feathery and bloopy slice that will set up horribly, I can lower the front shoulder and aim for the bottom of the net and the ball, venomous, will skim the cord con brio.

Similarly, one can hit a fast, double-rolled backhand with sufficient topspin and direction, a shot that fascinates me with its absolute straightness of wrist as opposed to the freakish hump of Ashe or McEnroe.

[bottle]

Getting the Racket Back Fast vs. Smoothness of Backswing

Well, if you can get the racket back too slow, you can get it back too fast. You wouldn't want to forget everything you learned about smoothness of backswing in golf if tennis is golf on wheels, right?

I like the way the great players seem to have a couple of different speeds happening at the same time as they rush to get to a far ball.

This ground stroke footwork is fast and economical, but the arm is not in a rush even when the player is.

I figure that slow beginners have conditioned their teachers since beginners do need to get fast. Intermediates, however, might need to get faster or slower. As for experts, who knows other than what we see? Disengagement of speed of feet from arm.

The key point here is not being overly influenced by teachers who have become too schoolmarmalady. The principle is not my pal. The principal is my ple.

Initial turn of course is as immediate as one can make it.

[stotty]

The time has definitely come for a reconsideration of the Tennis Player trove of Bill Tilden serves.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServe.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeSideTight.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionKickRear.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/billtilden/billtilden_sa.html?BTServeArmActionSliceRear.mov

Three things stand out when I view Tilden's serve.

1. He hits the ball before it reaches the apex.

2. His quick and minimal knee-bend.

3. His throwing arm never fully extends.

Did he ever hit a 150 mph serve? Certainly there would be no chance of Bill doing that with modern balls. Back in the day, balls were supposedly much quicker (and had a plug in them according to Frank Deford), so who knows.

[bottle]

Bigger Orchestra Until More Is Less

"Same swing, different grip gets the ball over the net." -- Martina Navratilova

Equals experiments for the sentient among us. Have you (I) ever tried a Federfore (some would say an ATP3) with a continental grip? Report back.

Have you (I) ever tried a down-and-up forehand au John McEnroe but with a 3.5 grip? Report back.

Lieutenant Escher reporting back. The results of these two experiments, surprising me, led to others. Reader, do you have any strokes that you have not yet tried-- keeping pattern identical-- with a different grip? I can wait until tomorrow. But if you haven't done this by then you simply are not curious enough.

[bottle]

Three things stand out when I view Tilden's serve.

1. He hits the ball before it reaches the apex.

2. His quick and minimal knee-bend.

3. His throwing arm never fully extends.

Did he ever hit a 150 mph serve? Certainly there would be no chance of Bill doing that with modern balls. Back in the day, balls were supposedly much quicker (and had a plug in them according to Frank Deford), so who knows.

Maybe the plug came out and the ball got jet-propelled.

[bottle]

The Physiological Benefit of Skunk Tail Preparation on a One Hand Backhand

I noticed that John Evert used this idea in a recent TENNIS MAGAZINE article on backhand slice.

The article was mostly photographs, not words, but those photographs depicted a nice skunk tail-- racket head straight up over hand.

The grip being promulgated was eastern backhand, which would mean contact farther out front for same racket pitch by someone using a continental.

Correspondingly, the skunk tail was farther forward in relation to the body.

If you've been listening, reader, to my recent assertions about thumb and middle finger as whole new grip adjustment device (the silence is deafening), you may be curious as to whether you too could hit a flat-wristed drive that just isn't the same without the inchworm adjustment.

I believe that my belated bringing across of finger additive from my rowing experience has added a whole new dimension to my tennis-- perhaps unfortunate occurrence at 73-4 in a finite life.

But, in the abstract, how can more fingers be bad for any tennis player if this doesn't compromise his or her essential looseness of grip?

Small adjustment of fingers does not mess with strength of arm-racket connection or with a conditioned stroke pattern as much as over-adjustment of wrist would.

Anyway, I'm big on transient skunk tail, a great pose that is athletic and balanced and right out of Tai Chi.

[bottle]

Whirligig vs. Coiling Snake

A whirligig, according to my dictionary, is a child's toy having a whirling motion.

That's something I think of when watching the films of Bill Tilden's serve.

It's hard to identify just where the mechanics end and the organics begin.

Today I hit a basket of serves with the weather at 20 degrees, then crossed a large parking lot to a place in which to caffeinate.

When I returned to my car parked next to the best backboard in this Michigan city, I remembered the section of Kyle LaCroix's current TP article about his practice of serve and volley into a wall.

After half an hour or more of this, I found myself coiling on back leg a bit later than previously-- now just as wrist humped like Tilden's.

That led to improvement in rhythm for all of my serves.

[bottle]

How to be More Selfish

Or do I mean how to become more self-interested?

Instead of buying Christmas presents for others (or "for udders" as Andre Agassi would say) watch the entire page of music videos at Tennisplayer. This will take several hours and will give you such an experience that you will never be the same depending on how facile you have allowed yourself to become in tennis thought over the years.

A kid new to tennis would probably miss 99 per cent, but any geezer will immediately recognize the delayed arm bend in Pete Sampras' backhand that aficionados of the game have eternally discussed.

And will have added to his store of indelible tennis images for later return.

I want to dwell now however on one video, BACKHAND LIBERTANGO.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/music_videos/backhand_libertango/backhand_libertango_large.html

My sort of friend in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, CLARE FADER, sings this song even better than the chanteuse in the video, first because her French is better and second because her elocution is better and third because her voice is better and fourth because of the way Clare plays with the clearest moment concerning the womanizer/ladykiller/pimp, the words for which are "eyes that chill me to the bone."

My eyes were never able to chill Clare to the bone, but Clare is the author of countless wonderful songs, the most famous of which is ISLE OF SUMMER, the best song ever written about Montreal.

It wasn't just my shortcomings as a pimp that alienated lovely Clare but the fact that she knew that I knew just how good a song writer, band leader and performer she was. She couldn't bear it! There is a certain percentage of people in the world who cannot stand success.

So before we even could have a date, she moved to Goteborg, Sweden with an executive at Volvo, Inc. and started another band in Sweden this time.

Next they married. And returned to Winston-Salem. Where they went into Real Estate.

"Going into Real Estate" is what my first tennis teacher the famous haiku editor Jim Kacian used to say about journeymen, whom he would call "beautiful animals" on the tour.

As one of them, though self-taught, this former doubles partner (alphabetically) of McEnroe and Navratilova said that on a certain day some little thing would go wrong in journeyman tennis technique.

And because the journeymen couldn't afford a coach, they would quit professional tennis and go into Real Estate.

[bottle]

More on BACKHAND LIBERTANGO

One might think I'm criticizing BACKHAND LIBERTANGO, which in fact I love. But who were the coaches who taught these women their beautiful backhands? And were there men among them? And among those men were there any with cold, reptilian eyes capable of chilling the player to the bone? Yes, was there "zero at the bone" as Emily Dickinson wrote?

And always, I think, it is important to realize when something has been sanitized, in this case the line "home with anyone he wants." The politically correct but inferior substitution: "home with anyone who wants." That misses the whole point about the overwhelming power of this Oberon-like shaman or pimp-- the very quality that makes him so scary. One might as well abolish Halloween (or dilute or sugar it to death).

Having Vic Braden apologize for Pancho Gonzalez' social transgressions was perhaps Jack Kramer's way of keeping Pancho scary but I doubt it.

Anyway, a tango is all male: That is what our dance instructor said to Hope and me as he played LIBERTANGO on his boombox. The basic step: Slow-Slow (four beats), tango or quick-quick (two beats), close (two beats).

One could travel the length of a football field this way, always keeping the butts low and speeding in the direction the macho male was looking with his reptilian eyes.

If however he wants to get to the goal posts really fast, he can transform the basic into a swooping promenade with striding long steps interpersed with quick-quicks that may preserve the basic 8-count structure or not but always keep to the music with the woman going backward to the end, i.e., to the rhythmic "tango close," i.e., to sex.