A New Year's Serve

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Must be why your serve sucks.

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I could do without her.

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"Avoid Decels": No Commentato, She

Every time Pam Shriver uses the word "decel" to describe what went wrong with the serve we watched together, she gives a one-word tennis lesson to whomever had their television set turned on just then. In this case, one word is worth a thousand images.

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A Good Serve is on the Way

That's right. One good serve in the midst of others.

Once this good serve is established, it shall multiply. That hasn't happened in the past other than for a game or two but this time everything shall be different, a change of paradigm like spring ice-out in a northern lake.

Should I continue with my complete flaring out of racket at bottom of the first drop? I think not. That design was for a scapular adduction dominant serve, the blueprint for which I have abandoned.

In fact, there shall be no scapular adduction at a critical moment and scapular retraction shall be preserved past contact. Just as shoulders rotation from the gut will be delayed until past contact. "Stay closed!" the great baseball pitcher advises.

Reader, we all know that I am one of the few people on the planet who talks about the two scapulars-- retraction and adduction-- but upper body rotation? All sorts of people talk about UBR. And Brenda Schultz McCarthy said to hold it till past contact so I shall.

This cobbling together of what various people have thought and said, if those people are the right people, is just as good a pathway to fine serving as any else. But I'll have to do a lot with hips, what with my sciatica and rheumatism and erectile dysfunction and all.

I'll take taladafil for the ED but substitute forward hip rotation for younger dudes' rocket blast from legs straight up into the stratosphere.

Wise maxim: OLD MEN SHOULD NOT JUMP UP IN THE AIR.

Flare out of racket head at bottom of first drop is not a bad idea. But let's spread the flaring to beginning of the tomahawk.

Why? Because Totkan tomahawk and internal arm rotation are continuum. When serving this way make sure that upper arm twists to do the work as Naomi Totka's does in her demonstration of hammering or tomahawk (or throwing a tomahawk or old tennis racket over a fence).

Another way of putting this is when you flare the racket out, no matter where or how little or much, you start to pre-load the upper arm.

And top muscular performance of the upper arm is so essential to what we want that we might consider injecting it with taladafil or anatabloc (I am not serious!).

Viagra, vigor-- same idea.

Wind up the arm, slightly opening (flaring the racket) the whole way. One ends up with arm all coiled and racket head a smidge inside of elbow. Throw then from the shoulder, i.e., use forward twist but no adduction of any kind.

The tomahawking of this, i.e., the keeping of racket on edge until it has practically cloven the ball in half will blend naturally with what we tennis wonks seem to have to so abysmally call "internal arm rotation."

Tomahawking and internal arm rotation are one and the same, and this fact carries huge implication. But let's look a bit more closely at the idea of keeping racket on edge . Better to say for a smidge more of accuracy and pop that slightly open racket face naturally closes as it tomahawks so that it only gets perfectly edge-on very near the ball before flying abruptly to the outside.

I bet all my marbles on this serve before I've tested it because its internal rotation of the arm and its tomahawk are one and the same thing, offering a more economical arrangement than anything tried before.

Note: Michel de Montaigne and Mark Twain, many hundreds of years apart, were thoroughly disheartened that taladafil had not been invented and marketed during their lifetimes.

Well, as a writer, my first interest was in fiction, my second in tennis prose. Next fallback, plan C, for which I am available, is a series of ads for taladafil far exceeding any presently on television or even in parody form on Saturday Night Live.

First item, a period piece, will carry a superimposed title in large Gothic print:
THE RAGE OF 'TAIGNE AND TWAIN. The second ad will start with the character Popeye's use of a corncob in the fiction of William Faulkner.

Note 2: Come to think of it, flaring out of racket can better begin after the first part of the Rory McIlroy backswing (arm gliding ahead of shoulders only rotation). This will create more succinct upper arm twist pre-load though still spread out enough to be effective in the case of rotorded servers.

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Tomahawk Development

Am I disgruntled? Why not?

Go to 3:11 in this video for more tomahawk development.

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

It's a full squeezing of two halves of the arm together, but the squeeze is early in establishing racket edge on to ball.

Did I contradict my recent posts? Then like Walt Whitman I contain multitudes.

Note that racket frame is edge on at beginning of Naomi's 3:11 demonstration and still on edge at the end of it.

I am supposed to be an over-analytical person but would like to point out to you, reader, the figure eight pattern of Naomi's service motion in this clip. And what is over-analytical about a figure eight? Nothing! A figure eight is almost as right brain as a butterfly or hummingbird.

Here's more Dougherty on a similar serve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKCBJXdkjf8

In reviewing both of these videos I think I see most of the core rotation as having concluded by the time the tomahawk gets underway.

The super slow motion sequences show that-- for me-- better in the Naomi than in the Sany but maybe that's due to different cinematography.

I'd like to think that most of the core rotation IS concluded for purposes of developing more precision as racket edge snicks close to ball almost cleaving it in half.

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Tomahawk, re # 2310

Easier and therefore better although any such change will probably give rise to niggling problems which in my case just haven't had time to awaken yet-- my fingers are crossed.

I have re-upped my membership card in the tomahawk religion.

Questions related to my certainty that better serves result when on edge frame gets very close to ball before opening out to complete internal arm rotation:

Arm cannot be entirely relaxed if you preserve the right angle in it close to contact, no? You would want it to turn to spaghetti just there and nowhere else, no?

You want the simplest motion to form the right angle and this could come from flaring racket at bottom of the first drop, no?

You would want added motion to form the right angle from closer in toward your head if you kept palm down and/or had bent your arm completely, no?

You might want to do what you are most used to, no?

You might opt for simplicity even if that weren't habit, no?

Tomahawk can be uninhibited since it is just the first half of succinct but complete and very fast internal arm rotation, no?

Too much arm bend or put another way too much straightening of relaxed arm offers compromise to the tomahawk ideal, no? Even though you've sat in the lounge of a racket club and quietly listened to a convincing speaker assert that some server out on the court could squeeze the two halves of his arm more completely together with great effect, no?

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On Experts

I have ordered the Welby Van Horn/Ed Weiss book, i.e., have put my gardening money where my mouth is.

That said, I don't care how brilliant any tennis coach is whether dead or alive-- they need to be challenged. As all authority must be challenged. Otherwise, we may as well go to church. Or if that sounds too harsh, reader, simply recite this mantra every morning:

"I am a little pitcher. Please fill me up."

My persisting questions about every coach and physician are, "Will this person give me what I need? And will the best stuff come out during our little conversation?" The only expert I never question is a plumber.

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Build Then Compare and Choose

Build a serve with these main features:

1) Scapular retraction is held through the hitting area and only turns into scapular adduction after contact.

2) Arm never bends to more than 90 degrees, not at any point in the serve from beginning to end.

3) Pre-load of upper arm occurs during scapular retraction.

4) One tomahawks passive arm straight thus turning racket head out to right.

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Compensation

Compensation for not developing a great serve through words: People who don't use words but still don't develop a great serve (Category C).

Great serves are the result of an aberration in the genes of cavemen.

Personally, if I don't use words I won't even beat the members of Category C.

So here are some words.

Good serves are largely about when the arm and racket go down in connection to something the legs do.

Will try today, if weather is good and other duties or pleasures don't interfere, to get to a court and apply common sense to elements previously identified.

Does this sound like starting from zero, a rebuilding of serve from ground up? I hope so. That is the way I like to feel before every serve.

So, in my Chubbily Checkerly round and round you go version (since my physicians point out that I have lost weight) I shall speed up the entire motion but not the arm so that forward hips and shoulders rotations shall both have started as scapular retraction occurs as twisting upper arm pre-loads.

But here is a quote from the first post in the present configuration of this thread: The active tomahawking can passively straighten a spaghetti arm for sure accelerating it faster than any other way.

On the one hand, in first and most recent posts both, I see a role for spaghetti arm. On the other hand, I arrive at two different ways of straightening that passive arm. So am I going forward or backward in my thought and who cares? The more important question is which method of straightening the passive arm is better, internal rotation of the arm just then i.e. "the tomahawk" or acceleration-deceleration of the elbow with internal rotation of the arm starting later specifically about halfway up in the relaxed arm extension.

The correct answer, determined through self-feed experiments, may not achieve greatness but will make A HUGE DIFFERENCE in how one chooses next to configure this serve.

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Up Up Up With One's McEnrueful

No answers here, just detached observation of a changing forehand.

(A stroke that isn't getting better all the time is getting worse all the time. Compare this to Stendhal: A love that isn't getting better all the time is getting worse all the time.)

Some other prominent versions of the no opposite hand on racket to help one's unit turn school contain elements of down and up bowl but not to the extent of John McEnroe. What backswing has ever been more relaxed than this?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_forehand/mac_forehand.html?MacFHRunningCourtLevelRear.mov

So use that backswing, reader, if it's the best. At least fool around with it even if you don't adopt it later.

A few points about Australian grip. That would be bent thumb feeling pointy ridge 7.5 in the case of me, a right-hander.

With such a grip there has to be roll forward for square contact out front. Here are some choices for producing that roll: 1) Produce it at beginning of the forward stroke 2) Produce it shortly before contact continuing it into the followthrough 3) Produce it evenly from beginning to end 4) Overproduce it at the beginning so that racket naturally opens up so long as contact is out front.

These choices persist into "immediate up" backswings as well. I would go exclusively with McEnroe's simple down and up backswing except for one reason: Concealment for a Federfore which should always start high.

The idea of concealment for low level tennis is exaggerated but useful SOMETIMES.

To set up the Federfore variation use immediate up McEnruefuls for a while. Or reverse the process by giving opponents a diet of Federfores before socking them with an immediate up McEnrueful.

Note this important difference however between the bowl back and immediate up McEnruefuls.

Bowl back gets racket closer to inside of the slot. And inside of the slot is where one wants to be. So take the immediate up version to inside of slot (a bit of an overhand arc). There is no down and up but equivalent length backswing path.

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Cooking Spaghetti Just Right

Some service instructors endorse spaghetti arm, some do not. Some of those who do don't possess enough conviction to convince anybody of anything.

So which is it going to be, spaghetti arm or muscular extension from the triceps? A person could live one's whole tennis life switching back and forth. Well, what do we think at this moment? Anaesthesia of countering muscles to astonish the triceps by suddenly removing every obstacle in its way? Anaesthesia of the triceps itself thus creating true spaghetti arm? No al dente today.

And what was the nerve block used in the distant experiment in a sport medicine doctors' suite somewhere? Should we bring a doctor himself to the court along with the placards from his wall declaring his degrees? Have instructors from our club knock down some tennis student and pin her on her belly while the doctor injects the back of her arm?

Have the instructors bring a big hypodermic needle to the court and do the injection themselves? The question then will be which nerve block to use. Surely one with an impressive name. Anatabloc, they say, can cure warts and sebaceous cysts, and if you pulverize the pills and add water you can boil eggs. So let's inject Anatabloc whether that word appears on John Isner's hat or not.

The true spaghetti arm that tennis players are sometimes allowed to believe in requires one to be loose, loose and then looser. A science teacher in Virginia told me that if I tried to make my arm extend faster I would make it extend slower.

I think now he was right, but why didn't he convince me for life so that I never had to think about this subject again much less waver back and forth?

But one does want one's arm extension to be "motion dependent." Which means that the muscular elements just before the event had to convince. To hell with people who won't convince. Let's get our own muscles to convince the extending muscle or muscles not to convince.

Pretty convincing, reader, right? We convince our kinetic chain to admit scapular adduction into its chain letter.

Fine, even dandy, but we've got to pre-load upper arm-- surely we all agree on that. And scapular adduction is muscular, so there we are.

We can't do the active and passive at once, can we? Have one part of the arm be muscular while another part, simultaneous, is not? I think not, so I guess that the pre-load must come first, during the scapular adduction, and the arm extension be so fast that one doesn't lose one's pre-load, i.e., one's cookies.

I know, don't think, play tennis, be a dumbass.

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Balanced Aggression: McEnruefuls and Federfores

Freedom from the shoulder is what I envision in my McEnrueful slap-shots. With that forehand or even with the Chrissie-and-Jimmie (though a thing of the past) just swing the arm by itself, reader, and once you've learned how to do that add a vertical stripe of Muhammad Ali jab from the foot.

That replaces the Ziegenfuss, which was all about extending followthrough by saving shoulders till late. The new stroke will be close to the Ziegenfuss yes but slightly different since shoulders turn in the middle. They don't turn at the end. They don't turn at the beginning. They blend into the middle. "Blend" sounds good but I suspect there is independence of arm both before and after the column of kinetic chain mid-stroke.

This said, I must confess that I know little about slap-shots, having hit only one in my life. When I was a hockey defenseman I only used wrist shots and scored seldom maybe never in a season. I could skate backward pretty well though.

The one slap-shot I hit was unsuccessful in that the ice floe I was standing on ungrounded and floated out into the shipping channel of the Connecticut River, a twice-told tale. I jumped in the water, swam to shore, caught pneumonia. The slap-shot was unsuccessful.

Now though I am having success rolling racket tip forward while whanging the ice. The success appears to be a contact cleaner than ever before. With Australian grip the racket can be square by contact-- no matter which way it got square-- combined with a swing more through the ball at least for me than in that thing of the past the ever curving Jimmie-and-Chrissie.

Ergo, I shall use a new forehand orchestration: McEnruefuls and Federfores.

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SIM and SEQ: The To Be Or Not To Be Of Tennis

This comes up everywhere, in other sports too.

So, in a supported serve where one resembles a hunky baseball pitcher finding better things to do with his energy than to lug his body weight up into the air, one works with grounded torques.

Does body still rise? Does a bicyclist push with his legs?

Suppose he is a sciaticat with arthritic knees. Which hurts him least: bike or walk or hops? Answer: Keep order of the questions.

We are more or less saying here-- aren't we?-- that serves before the rule change were more horizontally rotational, and the best of the modern innovators, either McEnroe and Sampras or their coaches, preserved and added rather than replaced.

So, believing the ancient cry we heard from an adjacent court: "OLD MEN SHOULDN'T JUMP UP IN THE AIR!" we ground ourselves and Chubbily Checkerly twist like we did last summer: ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND WE GO.

With what serving elements however and are they SEQ or SIM? Up and down hands kept together = SEQ. Continued lowering of racket arm combined with rolling pitch adjustment = SIM. Rory McIlroy straight backswing = SIM. Hips turn and legs bend under side fence oriented limbo stick and arm bend and retraction of the scapulas = relaxed and SIM.

Before proceeding, reader, get all this right since even by dance class standards it is a lot.

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Slap-Shot Progression

We found a more sentient flat shot ground game when we decided, at the age of 74, to index or thumbnail our grip system, abandon most of our forehand loops, broaden the use of down-and-up backswing, reject the keeping of opposite hand on the racket in favor of early pointing across.

As important as any of it is commitment to the progression ideal with its "no answer at any time" just growth of variation of a theme.

Thus, today in advance of the tennis social tomorrow night, I'll self-feed some early roll slap-shots with eastern grip (bent thumb on panel eight and separated from bottom three fingers by one centimeter).

Early roll? What sense could that make? A lot so long as one doesn't permit it to infect one's no frill shot.

The progression here grows from acceptance that the longer slap-shotted McEnrueful is working pretty well so why not re-apply its scheme back to thumb on panel 8 rather than pointy ridge 7.5 ?

The shot as in slap-shotted McEnrueful is lifted a smidge more behind one to allow room for the early roll.

The question then becomes how much to roll. As much as in the McEnrueful. But that will close the strings to transform them into a thin knife similar to the one the author Alex Waugh used to use on the top of his egg cup. Fine. Now one can swing uninhibitedly with no rolled adjustment. With contact point out front, the strings will open naturally to square.

The opposite thought is the low ball that Chris Evert discusses in her great instructional video. One can crowd that ball, bowl forward down and up, adjust roll forward for square contact, finish over the shoulder close to the head-- reader, do you see the difference?

That shot produces more topspin than Evert hitting a waist high shot. If ball will bounce waist high and one wants more topspin however one can hit the Federfore.

Federfores should benefit from abandonment of loop in other (still flatter) forehand shots.

The slap-shot motif with its 45-degree hitting whack is quick and compact and all zen but tai-chi smooth too.

The preparation for these slap-shots which really aren't slap-shots can be down and up for rhythm and consistency or theatrical just up.

One halves the rising path one backswings for the just up shot to start one's dog pat, thus creating a better Federfore.

Am I delusional? Certainly not! Most loops are showy and superficial. This loop has been defined by a common sense parameter of timing brought across from the no loop forehands.

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Slimy Sliding Words

Begone thou slimy words each one a small wrench in the fluid works of my still unrealized dream.

Wait a sec. Slimy wrenches will slide.

Perhaps. Or not.

Palm down serves: Vic Braden and Welby Van Horn. Palm up: Jack Barnaby and Ed Faulkner. Palm down for more control and palm up for more power: Paul Metzler.

Agnostics can go far with Metzler, far enough even to invent a mechanism that allows them to explore all territories including the demilitarized zone between the conflicting armies.

Palm up first off of a Rory McIlroy backswing. All the experiments will start with a Rory McIlroy backswing. Caroline Wozniacki has moved beyond Rory but not the rest of us. I mean to say I like his backswing.

Hands up, hands down. They separate with the racket rolling as desired.

Right arm circles round side of second wall of one's gorge.

Right shoulder circles round side of second wall of one's gorge.

With arm and shoulder slumming and summing in sunny cooperation and arm moving ahead of shoulder, one easily and quickly reaches the gorge top.

Now the legs bend as hips continue the rotation backward while easing under an imaginary limbo stick toward right fence, not toward net as when one served some newfangled way.

In this as in related move of the arm the goal is to put strings behind the neck for longer than when they flew out to the right contacting ball on its outer edge.

"Related move of the arm": loosey goosey bending gradually along the baseline who knows how much just when.

With impeccable logic scapular retraction now begins since this process will take racket farther behind the neck.

Getting racket so far behind shoulders line might be a flaw in some other kind of serve but not this one.

Tossed ball has created a structural post round which the two scapular retractions can revolve.

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Part Two, The Forward Serve

As one might suspect, forward serve begins at the ground.

Not having any wish to fight body weight and fly we simply keep naturally separated feet in place and rotate hips fast.

If front heel came up, it clunks down now. That sounds like unwanted lowering. Left knee straightens however at the same time.

The left leg's extension is greater than the left heel's sink thus creating net rise.

But what has the arm done meantime? Maintained solid connection with the shoulder.

The whole shoulder is moving however, in abrupt throw.

Some would call this scapular adduction and I am one of those persons. Scapular adduction yes but from one side of the body only. Left scapula remains retracted.

Now the elbow has stopped. Now the transverse stomach muscles fire. Now the racket is flying up to the outside of one's hand and in tandem with it as if one's hand is tracing a tall building in Atlanta and one's racket is a capsule clinging yet shooting up.

This is fast-- much faster than any elevator in Atlanta-- as fast as an ALTA serve at 4.5 level (Atlanta no Lawn Tennis Association).

Very fast internal rotation of the arm begins now.

Hoping for an ace, let us leave this happy serve right there.

Note: My sympathies have always lain with the vast ranks of the rotorded more than any other subset of servers. I opine therefore that as Atlantan capsule does its trick in racketry-rocketry the upper arm pre-loads and no time else.