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:
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."
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:
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."
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