A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Lewis and Clark Delayed Trick Elbow Iterations, Continued

The lynchpin of these serves is elbow stillness during the UT of DTUT.

The toss arm and the racket tip go up together while the elbow remains still, bending in low position.

The body cantilevers (segments) in direction of the side fences at the same time.

The economical form of this motion is simultaneous toss and press.

Legs drive with cartwheel is permitted then to counter a very elastic rise of elbow which because of human anatomy must raise and lower the hand at the same time.

Very important it is, I think, to establish this lynchpin/launchpin to discover the proper dropdown menu for what one may discover next.

Is this a plot just to deal with bottle's freakiness? Yes, but which might have wider application for other persons. Who knows or should care right now?

I try to solve my individual problem first.

Well, no one has suggested exactly where one should situate the elbow on the DT of DTUT formula. We already postulated that it be low.

Explore now the foremost possible elbow placement. Have no idea if that will lead to something of further interest, but It will dramatically open the racket face.

So many modern serves but not Federer's start from open racket face at the address. Mine doesn't either but now I get to explore open or square racket dynamics through radically different direction for the elbow bend.

I immediately see ten variations. How much did racket tumble open in DT of DTUT and, again, exactly to where did elbow come down or down and back?

Imagine the different feel of diagonal elbow rise driven by legs, cartwheel and some hips twist off of rear foot very much in a countering movement.

Live dangerously, Bottle. Stick elbow into side and feel it roll as racket tumbles open.

Next bend the arm.

Next abduct the arm.

Next adduct the arm.

One certainly ought to hit far fence on the fly.

[bottle]

Terms

Abduction: Arm moves away from body.

Adduction: Arm moves toward body.

Using the example of jumping jacks which we did for some weird reason in preparation for crew, as arms go up toward the sky they first move away from bod then back toward bod.

The arms then move away from bod and toward bod as they go down.

A return to Latin roots however indicates that these movements can be more loosely defined. They don't have to happen in the vertical dimension.

Away from bod or toward bod, that's it.

[bottle]

More on Ten Years in Tennis

The poet and tennis player Ezra Pound was, in the words of one literary biographer, "a cut-shot artist."

The poet and tennis player Richard Wilbur compared the writing of a sonnet to a drop-shot.

But it is the poet and tennis player Theodore Roethke who seems most relevant to my present serve thanks to a statement he made about "ten years."

Roethke's "ten years" is nothing like Malcolm Gladwell's "ten years" which is the ten years that the tennis world swallowed.

Gladwell himself comes from a literary background, his father William Shawn the editor of The New Yorker, his mother Jamaica Kincaid, a writer of extremely poetic prose.

Despite that rich personal background, however, Gladwell chose Sparta over Athens when it came to his tenet that tennis is typical of all tough disciplines.

Train train is one Gladwellian message. And never change anything. If you change even the smallest thing you must put in ten years more or 10,000 repetitions whichever comes first. Okay, I'm being a little glib. But maybe Gladwell deserves it.

Roethke's ten years is more congenial though a bit wistful too. If you have spent ten years making something, i.e., in coming to a full understanding of it, you cannot expect that other persons will understand it right away.

That is how I feel about the "rotorded serve" theme I have written about so repeatedly in this thread.

First, I remain unconvinced that the majority of tennis players are more flexible than I although the best servers most definitely are.

Just as Justin Gimmelstob once complained to the world about Pete Sampras' double-jointedness. (Justin's lament in my own words: "Oh why wasn't I born that way?")

I see a persisting class system in tennis no matter how tennis has changed.

Anyway, could it be that a player has little chance of synchronizing his leg drive with his racket drop if his ESR is small?

So what should he do If he wants to continue in the game? The apparent answer is develop a pitty-pat serve.

Against this I rebel since ESR (external shoulder rotation) ought to be able to happen either when racket is going down or up.

The double-jointed players seem to have ESR to spare and can spread it out in both places in the overall tract.

For anybody else, I think, the closer ESR is to ISR the better.

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

A given in this discussion is that there is excitement in progressing design. I am scheduled to play in 25 minutes but probably will not do as well as I should because of three design changes in the last 24 hours.

And frankly, I let myself get so excited about them that I couldn't sleep despite remembering that the last time I didn't sleep was a tennis disaster.

Also, although I was able to practice two of the designs I will have to try the third for the first time in actual play-- not an ideal situation.

"The shot you practiced is the shot you play with," said Stan Smith.

But his wise advice is not for me. To me, since progressing design is the most exciting aspect of tennis, I always go with my most recent thought.

So, with stance and everything else oriented toward side fence, I'll spread out the bending of the arm. And won't be in a such a hurry to see it fully bent with both halves of the arm pressed together.

But the racket can first bend up solely from the elbow.

Then both elbows can lift.

Then legs can drive to finish the squeeze and the lift even as they pitch one's head slightly forward.

Then ESR, finally available as sharp adjunct to torso twist can move the action ahead to ISR along with everything else that must go on.

Note after playing: It took me a first set to stop being stubborn and realize that the down together up together serves were best of the different alternatives I set out for myself. And one of the opponents during coffee said my serve was living proof that a serve needn't be fast to win points.

Well gee, I didn't realize it was THAT slow. But who is to say that easily produced serves won't become fast later?

And I just realized that the pressure of play along with the switching back and forth prevented me from serving exactly the better way I did in practice.

[bottle]

Oh Oh Here Comes the Next Idea and So Soon too. Why can't it Leave me Alone?

Because the next idea might/might not be even better than the last one.

Instead of folding the arm in a DTUT just pause the ta (tossing arm) down low while ha winds up from elbow?

Now the compressed arm winds up as shoulders lean in same direction to add strength to the toss.

Perhaps the elbow should not go all the way to high physical limit but rather leave itself some play to oppose the leg drive.

Legs drive from start to finish opposes racket drop from start to finish but no one spelled out exactly how the racket should drop.

Except for Brian Gordon in the article where he shows opposing arrows encircling the humerus.

None of his research subjects however were rotorded. None worried as much as I need do about spending ESR too soon.

Finding how much if any of the newfound and considerable elastic elbow rise should be accomplished slowly before legs drive complete the rest and meld into torso twist is the new challenge.

[bottle]

Report

Trick Shoulder Serve

On down of DTUT the ha barely clears bod.

On up of DTUT the ha completely compresses.

On leg drive and hover the compressed elbow, cochleate, climbs way above the shoulders then opposes torso twist to produce the limited ESR that a rotorded server can claim.

TERMS: bod=body; ha=hitting arm; DTUT=down together up together; ESR=external shoulder rotation; cochleate=snail-like; rotorded server=a tennis player who can't twist his upper arm axle-like very far backward in its socket.

Very easily produced. Better direction of spin. High ball trajectories. Turn front foot even more than Isner's. Rock on a 45 degree angle to and from right fence. Serves were a bit soft but not all of them. The elbow, despite what I thought, probably throws (twists robustly forward) a bit to accumulate energy along with torso twist for the sudden straightening (arm snap). This total service action seems like a keeper for me and may in time produce, if not nonreturnables, a goodly number of weak returns.

[bottle]

Trick Shoulder Serve

On down of DTUT the ha barely clears bod.

On up of DTUT the ha completely compresses.

On leg drive and hover the compressed elbow, cochleate, climbs way above the shoulders then opposes torso twist to produce the limited ESR that a rotorded server can claim.

TERMS: bod=body; ha=hitting arm; DTUT=down together up together; ESR=external shoulder rotation; cochleate=snail-like; rotorded server=a tennis player who can't twist his upper arm axle-like very far backward in its socket.

[bottle]

Skunk Tail

In backhand slice.

In backhand drive.

In service act.

Explore.

Backhand slice and drive, yes; jury still out on service act.

[bottle]

Skunk Tail

In backhand slice.

In backhand drive.

In service act.

Explore.

[bottle]

Re #4572

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide1.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide2.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ActionRear.mov)

In two of these three backhands there is double-clutching, i.e., the racket goes up to a certain spot, then goes up a little more before being force-fed forward down. In the third that doesn't happen. Click on all three to see if you can make the distinction. Then preserve the distinction for extra option if you take the shot all the way to play.

As timing, I see the double-clutch as replacement for all the circling that happens in most one handers. Big and out to side in Lendl's. Small in first Don Budge backhand in the stroke archive. Huge and way down around hips in an Evonne Goolagong.

Not for Becker. While hundreds of other guys are doing all that stuff Boris goes ahead and clubs the ball.

[bottle]

Is a Crazy Cue the Super Glue that Holds Some Performance Together?

Very likely.

Certainly is true in theater.

So why not in tennis?

In golf, no less a personage than Tom Watson once stated that he was apt to make up a new cue even in the final round of some major tournament.

That's too late but it worked for him.

So yesterday I made up two cues, one relating to skunk tail slice, the other to John Isner's serve.

The service thought(s) were effective for a while but sputtered by the end of three sets.

Despite my not always holding serve my three different teams all prevailed. The Friday night social is the device I use to measure my personal progress in tennis.

And the reason for a great evening was my re-institution of skunk tail slice.

More specifically, I used the fulcrum images of a teeter-totter and baton twirl (post # 4570).

These backhand slices absolutely sizzled, barely cleared the net, skidded when they hit, could fly very deep or not, were virtually nonreturnable.

So now I want to use "forearm middle place fulcrum" in service structure as well.

We westerners don't see hundreds or thousands of people doing Tai Chi every day in city squares.

And because we are overly logical, we'll place some fulcrum at a joint or end of a limb rather than in its middle.

Lesson: Most people with decent backhand slice of the flattish genre claim that it came from Ken Rosewall of Australia. I make that claim also but from the nineteen-year-old Ken Rosewall.

[bottle]

Can a Person and Should One get Angry at Tennis Instruction as a Whole?

I do. Specifically, why didn't someone tell me that Boris Becker's backhand is different from other backhands, that he doesn't lower it behind his back, just chops (straightens) and rolls toward the front?

Ivan Lendl's backhand was a great backhand. A whole association of Connecticut high school tennis coaches could not return a single one.

Still, I prefer Becker's for its simplicity.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide1.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ctionSide2.mov)

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ActionRear.mov)

[bottle]

Isner

Does arm move on the toss? Am asking if it (ha) moves independently of the bod, which is rocking parallel to the baseline more than turning backward. The rocking in fact could be defined as knees sliding at the right fence while shoulders slide at the left fence.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...r%20500fps.mp4)

So, is John's right arm affected by this lower bod-upper bod linear segmentation? It has to be, with bod providing a minimized bit of turn to upward travel of the still straight arm as well.

But, back to the original question. What I see is rather mechanical motion morphing into something more organic and snakelike that concludes with elbow retracting toward back fence to line up with the shoulder-balls-- an almost exhilarating baseball pitcher type feel.

So that's part of the inner workings. With answer to the broad question a yes. If arm never "aired the armpit," to use Braden's immortal phrase, the racket in this video would remain a foot lower and a foot forward of where it is when ha starts to bend.

[bottle]

Revise, at least for this Evening, the Fulcrum Point in Skunk-Tailed Rosewallian Slice

This order predicts a shift of one's thought from wherever it is to the fanciful level of cue.

The entire forearm from elbow to fist-- with a perfectly straight wrist-- becomes a teeter-totter.

So where does this piece of one's anatomy, this dry bone with no distinction made between radius and ulna, teeter? Where it totters. Most simply bisect the distance between fist and elbow and keep this discovered point well in mind while making the shot.

The racket will no longer fall into level parade behind the rising elbow as it did for one magnificent early morning drop-shot.

Neither will the skunk-tailed strings simply sink to level the way they probably did years ago.

The strings will sink. The elbow will rise. The 90-degree transformation will split itself between these two simultaneous acts.

Say "Look, Mom, I be a twirler of batons. But I don't twirl from my fingers, I twirl from the middle of my forearm."

Behold what this does to both elbows!

[bottle]

Ear to Ear Permutations

I play tomorrow and just was doing self-feed today. Along the ear to ear line of the previous post, I found interesting the notion of immediately raising hand to ear level. Then, instead of consciously dropping racket head, raise the elbow in beginning of the forward swing.

This brings racket head into line so that everything proceeds along a curved horizontal line from ear to ear.

I am of the school that accelerates forward swing at the elbow thus getting arm straight before contact but not swinging a straight arm the whole way.

I say that since to my mind these are the two basic categories of backhand slice-- bent arm getting straight or arm being straight all the way.

[bottle]

Bring Back Skunk Tail for Ear to Ear Doubles Backhand Service Return, Flat Sliced

In writing about skunk tail tennis I realize that I abandoned it some years ago and for no good reason other than that Ken Rosewall seemed to abandon his in the progressing videos of his backhand made over the decades.

Wouldn't it be wise never again to completely abandon any good shot no matter how one's game wants to evolve?

Now that the people who frequently play against me serve exclusively to my deuce court backhand, which they certainly never used to do, it's time to re-introduce the old skunk tail flourish to that side.

I see a good new orchestration coming into play: Don Budge modicum topspin deep drives for young persons who make the dumb mistake of not coming in on their serve alternated with skunk tail slice also hit deep alternated with crossed dinks if they do come in to stop my early seizure of the net.

And for older persons, many on the cusp of their low seventies (me, I enter the high cusp of the seventies in December), if they too choose to stay back, don't just drive the ball deep while coming in. Dink with a lower tip to begin crossed sidespin to the short alley while coming in.

Bill Talbert in THE GAME OF DOUBLES IN TENNIS gives an 80-year-old as an example of a server who doesn't come in on his serve and therefore is worthy of the deep shot treatment but I'm finding this true of many 70-year-olds too.

Use a higher percentage of everything mix is all I say here.

The traditional advice (Talbert) is to save dink returns for serve-and-volleyers.

No longer true but never rely exclusively on dinks. The good old guys will eventually get to them after the bounce if exclusive dinks from backhand side is what they anticipate.