A New Year's Serve

[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.

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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.

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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.

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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]

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]

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]

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]

Ulnar Distraction in Serves and Forehands

Oh, sorry-- I meant "ulnar deflection."

[bottle]

Surprises in Every Progression of Designs

Once one decides that one won't live by the old maxim that "creating a new tennis stroke is very difficult," and in fact believes that point of view makes Rob and Susie very dull middle-agers indeed, one may be signing up for unexpected spills and thrills.

In searching for the best kick serve available to oneself, one may discover a new form that could apply across the board to one's other serves as well.

Maybe one had no thought in mind of changing one's flat and slice serves, was perfectly content with them, but still wonders if the new form might improve them if not improve them beyond belief.

That is where I am with my new stop the body and keep the arm going and then reintroduce the body serve discovered in posts # 1884-5 .

Final determinations will be made from doubles play on both hard and soft courts. I'll choose, I promise-- whichever serves work best. But it would be nice always to start with the same radically turned around stance and Boris Becker like toss which lifts from fairly deep behind one and goes to left but very much forward-- on EVERY serve.

All three serves employ a natural twiddle of middle finger over thumb to ensure that racket frame stays on edge whether the edge is snicking around from left or is rising more straight up at the ball. I see the twiddle as essential additive to my continental grip that doesn't affect its natural and one would hope habituated and developed musculature. That may seem provocative but is a sound idea reinforced by those who know: Every grip in tennis uses its own set of muscles.

Second serve: Humps wrist as twiddle occurs as arm lifts from full compression one quarter of available range and winds back an extra amount.

Flat serve (a first serve only): Keeps wrist straight as twiddle occurs as arm lifts from full compression and winds back an extra amount.

Slice serve (a first serve only): Same as flat except that the elbow was placed slightly more forward of shoulders line than in second serve or in flat serve. This slight difference can most easily happen as arm creates its "black hole" or transient moment when its two halves are most closely pressed together.

Stopping the body for arm transition creates stable serves, it seems to me. If I ever decide these serves aren't powerful enough, however, I'll return to previous system in which hips whirl immediately after load on rear leg and the springing over the top of shoulders builds tension against arm beginning to throw in opposite direction.

During easy first part of that one, the arm does not compress completely closed so soon.

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The Answer to # 1885

During the end of fully compressing one's arm (bringing its two halves together) one should load on one's rear foot if one is looking for constancy.

Then one pauses for a beat while arm does the machinations explained in # 1884.

The extra beat corresponds to bringing the foot forward in a pinpoint serve. Platform stance however is the ticket here, along with a different interpretation of transfer in which one keeps the weight back for a long time. And since one isn't moving one's rear foot, one is doing less, and therefore-- please forgive me for asserting this-- is superior.

This serve is answer to the kick-hungry rotorded server's quest for long runway in a second serve. The new runway isn't vertical but rather is a shallow spiral in which the shallowness is helped by hand slightly rising as arm continues to wind back during what I call the transition stage.

[bottle]

How Important is the Active Design and Orchestration of One's Shots?

Not very, some would say, and "Just go ahead and hit the same old boring shot."

Sorry, that is not my temperament although it might be my tactic on a given day.

Getting orchestration just right may not be of crucial importance and could be the game of "perfecto" that W. Timothy Gallwey objected to, but James Galway, the flutist, did not.

Major and continuing emphasis on orchestration is loads more fun than 12 hours of stretching, 10 hours of clinical psychology, four hours of push-ups, two hours of quarter-mile laps and three sets of The Nifty Nine, a bevy of special exercises the U.S. Naval Academy once foisted upon its program for the accreditation of rowing coaches.

Crew is a sport that actively seeks perfection, and I don't see why tennis can't be, too. A big difference is the huge variety of effective shots possible in tennis.

[bottle]

Backhand Slice through Double Roll

Review the cusp-- the point where second roll in this one hander stops and roll-less sweep (some might say "follow-through") begins.

What happens when ball is hit during the second roll? After the second roll? Precisely on the cusp?

By "what happens?" I mean how does the ball fly and what does it do after landing on the opponent's side of the net.

Perfect knowledge of all three possibilities would delineate one's choice and command, i.e., make one a better player.

Hitting ball on cusp undoubtedly happens to anyone staying with these double rolls for long, but who is perfect enough to do it every time?

The other two outcomes-- hitting before and after cusp-- may be perfectly known.

[bottle]

Building on the New Kick of # 1884

The new design at least created good sizzle, and sometimes the sizzle had its upward component. The session included light snow. I restricted myself-- with difficulty-- to hitting this one shot.

I'm thinking now however I'd like to try compressing the rear leg as arm finishes its own compression instead of during the stuff-filled transition I outlined.

The physiological question this raises is an old one. Is it better, in serving, to go down and come up immediately, as in jumping, or to go down, pause, and then jump or whirl or whatever it is one wants most to do (whirl in my case).

The fact that one is going to whirl more than jump might produce a different answer, so I'll need to experiment more-- nothing new about that.

[bottle]

A New Kick Serve (but sometimes it bounces low-- very low)

Down and up to full squeeze. The down and up however was out to right, not to behind the body as in other serves. But the body was way turned around from the start-- so much that some could say the racket is behind the body-- not me, I wouldn't say that.

Now a transition happens, in which the arm one-fourth extends, the back leg loads, the fingers twiddle to turn frame more on edge, the wrist humps, the handle drops into yoke, the arm winds back farther slowing down since it is already trying to whirl the opposite way.

The elbow stays in alignment with the shoulders throughout a quick but low spiraling round-a-bout decapitation of the ball. Otherwise one has spawned a decel.

[bottle]

Use Volley Preparation For Volleys Only

You (or at least I) set the strings where you want and wait and wait and wait. But the ball is coming fast. So you wait and wait. You stop time.

On full ground strokes (remembering that there will be instances when a volley-like reflection or deflection will prove best choice), one wants more arm work before the contact.

The finger-feather option I have been propounding enables a last minuteness of selection as never before.

Just on one hand backhand preparation, from continental grip for slice one can twiddle to outside to hit flat with same mechanics. For topspin one can use the same skunk tail (vertical racket) but with an eastern backhand grip which would only tip off the most perceptive among one's opponents. The unity in this new one hand system is worth that risk.

For topspin, the loop will be twice as deep as for slice or flat-- a good thing if as Elliot Teltscher once opined big loop is essential to sufficient one hand topspin racket head speed.

From skunk tail, I see finger twiddle to the outside happening during the waterfall to simulate the hitting action of a more extremely gripped backhand while drawing on the musculature the player has most likely developed and is used to.

The purity of this tall fall will also enable ease of wrist straightening to whatever pitch setting one desires, i.e., fingers and wrist will dial together.