A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Exploration

Subject: Baseball pitch kick serves. Save all internal UAR (Upper Arm Rotation) until middle of the arm's total curlecue.

Don't fire upper body at net but at side fence along with AS LONG A SAND AS IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

So what will provide the forward tilt motion (the 6 to 10 degree racket arc change coming over the ball or hitting down on it that major sport physicists report is one contributor to generation of spin)?

A bit of body cartwheel toward the net made to blend with the upper body catapult toward side fence.

Since catapults are violent and cartwheels are not, starting and continuing cartwheel before and after catapult may prove wise.

To provide desired racket pitch forward we also could include a very slight bit of arm motion also in direction of net (though most of arm motion is directed toward side fence), but perhaps that isn't necessary.

I'm thinking I'll try down-and-up-and-lowering of racket before I apply BUAR (Backward Upper Arm Rotation) to the arm cocking for throw.

Coincident with BUAR: Lowering of weight on back leg.

Hips then rotate horizontally to be braked immediately to catapult shoulders toward side fence.

I would like to think of no sequence at all between total body and arm motions at this part of the serve.

All is smooth throw toward the side fence combined with the three factors taking racket 6 to 10 degrees toward the net, which are 1) sideways motion of arm slanting just a bit toward net, 2) rear shoulder cartwheeling over front shoulder, 3) UAR (Upper Arm Rotation).

If one contemplates 3) too much, one may surmise that if the racket had been slanted forward from the beginning, the UAR would take the racket tip down before it suddenly goes up in motion somebody might call "shoe-horn."

Such is not the case. The tilt is smoothly applied throughout the body throw at side fence.

The questions and answers recently discussed in the Tennis Player forum still apply despite the old-fashioned baseball pitcher's form being pitched in these serves.

The question posed by Ralph: Are serves more effective hitting up or down on the ball? Answers. bottle: "Both. (The obvious doesn't bother me.)" Stotty: "Sorry to put the spanner in the works. In the case of the Federer clip...you're all wrong. It's neither upward nor downward. It's dead level." don_budge: "Up and over for spin...up and around for slice. You may make an argument for down for a cannonball or absolutely flat serve. Up and out for a kick." dimitrios: "Indeed some people I see serving tend to give the impression that they're "coming over the top" of the ball a bit more; others I've seen especially those with a toss that's not much into the court but closer to the baseline-- show what seems to be a more upward swing motion, which incidentally produces a serve with greater spin." bowt: "all players hit the ball down. Go look at the video in high speed." Stotty: "I think the argument may be a pointless one." dimitrios: "If we're talking about 'feel' here, what is it we'd like to get the student to feel re the serve and its swing path?" ralph: "Right now I believe that one should be exploding up into the ball and letting the down on the ball happen naturally." bman: "I use the phrase reach up to snap down." tennisplayer: "The racquet face may be facing down a little, but it should be moving up (even if just a little bit) during contact." klacr: "This rabbit hole can go deep...With adults, I take them to the side of the court where we have a canopy that rises over a table, chairs, a water fountain and shelving units. I have the adults play catch with me over the canopy...If they throw it (the ball) forward it will go under the canopy, not over. They tend to get it quickly." don_budge: "typical tennis stuff...arguments are always inconclusive."

Accepting don_budge's last answer, I next ask, "In a baseball style kick serve, can internal UAR be slow and long enough to begin while arm still is compressing itself?"

[bottle]

Applying The Big Consideration And Being Correct About It Too

The big consideration: 10,000 hours or 10,000 repetitions whichever happens first or something like that to master anything. Comes from Malcolm Gladwell, the son of William Shawn or was it Wallace Shawn and the writer Jamaica Kincaid. I'm sure that there is inaccuracy somewhere in my information, but I wasn't in the bedroom with whatever couple conceived the little lad Malcolm and am too lazy on this Sunday morning to do on-line or other research.

The fact is that William Shawn was editor of The New Yorker Magazine, and that was enough for the sports writers of the world along with their followings whoever that might be.

So, if you were a tennis player naturally reading stuff on tennis, you immediately knew that you should never change a thing in your game, and it would be a good idea, once and for all, to declare that your first lesson and first year in tennis were perfect, in fact were good enough to infuse your entire life with remarkable perfection.

Of course if you grew old somehow, and some cracks appeared in your myelin sheaths you could consider inventing a new stroke or two to put a fresh layer of thick, goopy whitewash around your neuronal pathways.

Not that I don't accept Gladwell's premise. Hyperbolic repetitions are the cat's meaow so long as the person doesn't become a jaded motherfuck.

In my urging that you, respected reader, use more inchworming finger action in your forehands, I need to cite some math, for what if in your previous life you weren't a senior sweep oarswoman or oarsman-- could you learn the added finger action I prescribe anyway? I don't know. I have no idea of your educability much less dexterity. An old dog, supposedly, can't learn new tricks and maybe is better off with the old ones.

But take a strapping young lad six foot five inches tall and 195 pounds heavy and just entering college. He makes the first freshman boat and rows four years.

Here is left side of the essential equation:

120x25x300x4x2

120 is the number of minutes in his daily practice. 25 is average strokes per minute. 300 is the number of days of his collegiate practice. 4 is the number of his undergraduate years. 2 is the number of times per stroke he feathers his oar, using his fingers to a lesser or greater extent.

Right side or answer = 7,200,000 feathers.

If the guy then took up tennis later in his life, would he not be a complete sap if he didn't draw on that huge number of reps?

[bottle]

More Finger Action on Backhand Side?

Well, if more fingers is working on the forehand side, why not?

I refer to the twiddling that unit of thumb and middle finger can produce in any backswing.

If on a forehand you want to close your strings a little more without resorting to such stilted device as raising your elbow or using a larger and more convoluted loop, you can merely slide your thumb beneath your middle finger. Or retract your middle finger like an inchworm over your thumb. Or do a little of both. Post dog mondo (or flip) will restore pitch to where it normally is but perhaps with subtle difference. The goal of more feel is achieved from light turn of the racket without going all mechanistic and dumb on yourself.

It is a deep regret of mine that every tennis player in existence has not previously been a senior sweep oarsman or oarswoman. In the sport of crew, we learn to feather an oar at first through a blended combination of wrist and forearm producing diagonal roll then add finger action in subsequent years as we become more confident.

The opposing fingers most commonly used are thumb on one side and pinkie and ring working together on the other. I have told how our seven-man Marshmallow Basketball, an engineer, one day was sprung out of the boat by his oar when trying to feather with his pinkie alone, an example of full and classic "catching a crab."

In tennis, I've found most luck with using middle finger-thumb combination instead, leaving the last two fingers to help regulate tension of grip probably around time of mondo.

So how is this going to work in a one hand backhand? Well (the writer puts down his pencil and picks up a tennis racket), it isn't. Not if he is going to use a flying change in which the fingers of his hitting hand fan out before they re-grip.

It would only work for a player who waits for every stroke with backhand grip, and I'll not go there except to say that the middle finger would push instead of retract to close pitch an added amount.

Of course one can do this after a flying grip change if one has time. Speaking for myself, I doubt that I do, so will simply set racket how I want it during the change.

[bottle]

Wawrinkan Waterfall Rejected

Steffi Graf-- she is another player who gets the racket way up in the air and soon. Along with a towering toss. The big racket waterfall in her motion, not to be confused with the earlier down-and-up of herself or a player like Wawrinka, certainly has worked for them, developmentally speaking, but doesn't mean we have to imitate it.

When I try such a waterfall, still striving for baseball pitch form rather than the basketball leaping layup that is all the rage and all the age, I find I can confuse the opposition for a serve or two. The bigger question though is whether such different to me acceleration is easily occurring exactly where I want it or am I hitting what Pam Shriver calls "decels."

I was on a better tack when I took to heart Vic Braden's statement about finding success in baseball pitch type serves through having a large number of his students accelerate their accustomed arm work.

If I do that while balancing on back leg I can save compression of that leg for very late-- perhaps when racket butt starts up to ball or just before.

I don't want to act too soon in fully compressing the halves of the arm together. Which would lead to straightening the arm too soon. Or reverse the upper arm rotation too soon. Or straighten the wrist with ulnar deviation too soon. Or assist this deviation with finger clench too soon.

In fact, I can implement more "lag" in my serve a lot of different ways in this particular form, e.g., still be stringing archer's bow of the body as hips begin to quick-rotate forward.

Personally, I find helpful the distinction between first and second serves made in the following video-- especially the idea of a quicker, shorter, more violent (and again more delayed) upper arm rotation, which in one second restored my first serve cannonball which had taken a long vacation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnMolTSCUqo

Kick serve arm twist is seen in this video as milder and longer despite the violence/vigor of other things going on-- the word "brush" is used. More then of a "he tosses rather than hurls racket" if we are permitted to isolate arm work from certain body work which does happen to be quite violent or vigorous just then.

A congenial verb offered by the old Hollywood teaching pro Al Secunda (who would work with the stars): "to SAND."

"Sanding" is productive in its connotations: Not too much pressure or too little and just the speed to produce friction in the precisely desired amount.

[bottle]

Wawrinkan Waterfall (Cont'd)

In a Wawrinkan Waterfall Serve the racket may drop at the natural rate of gravity (32 feet per second per second) and climb up the opposite side of a ravine at smooth man-made speed taking its speedometer setting, what ever it is, from the regularity of the initial drop.

Now the racket topples to vertical or or past vertical or past vertical a lot or through the hint of a pause depending on the player's interpretation of his Wawrinkan imitation.

Does Wawrinka plunge his racket the second time it goes down, i.e., accelerate it faster than the speed of gravity following the topple?

Seems likely. There's nothing easy in this part of Wawrinka's serve. The finesse part is in the down-and-up through topple. The exertion part is from then onward.

Certainly this is not the only way to serve but is well organized.

[bottle]

It's raining, so I probably won't be able to try this today, but I'm now thinking, at least as my experiment's starting point, that I want to settle on rear leg as the racket still is coming up.

That would mean a firing and immediate braking of hips as the racket tip topples over to start immediate conflict between plunging racket and rising upper bod.

Will play with different speeds of this racket "plunge" and will change anything in a nanosecond if all doesn't seem exactly right.

Note: I saw another post here before it was deleted. It was accurate and fine, referring to a much earlier post which I at least partially had in mind. I don't forget much when it comes to serving suggestions.

They are always welcome.

[bottle]

Working With The Wawrinkan Waterfall

Rotorded supplicant pushes through the creepers. Above the dense green canopy of treetops a cloud of white mist. And the roar, the throaty roar, and there it is, the 600-foot drop of Wawrinka Falls.

The cold mist clings to his face and bare chest as he slips off his backpack and fumbles it open to extract his racket.

He has brought only ten tennis balls, five each in the two front pockets of his navy blue shorts, so he'll have to make these baseball pitch style kick serves very good.

But how will he know how they bounce? He won't. Not if they land in water. Or if they only reach the boulders and rubble at the bottom of the abyss, which he can not make out clearly through the mist anyway.

Strange, unpredictable bounces then. Kind of defeats the entire purpose of the exercise. One won't be able to tell anything.

He perches on the edge of the cliff and squeezes the first ball in his left hand.

He tosses with the liquidity of his slow gravity-assisted down-and-up. As the high racket tip barely topples over he settles down on his rear leg, fires his hips, stops them abruptly to send his chest up with the racket plunging and curling throughout.

But he has slipped. And tumbled over...

Note: Old guys who have played tennis for a long time let you know if you have done something good. If you didn't do good, they rarely say anything and just take the point.

[bottle]

Wrinkles in Wawrinkan Serve Contemplated More

The serve of Stanislas the Manislas Wawrinka has much to recommend it and probably some wildness to avoid.

I see unusually sharp differentiation in speed in this continuous one-- slow motion to top of toppling backswing then everything goes fast. If a serve has five gears Stan shifts once from first to fifth.

The big attraction for a rotorded server such as myself is a growing feeling that one can usefully employ tight little circles in the area of the contact to generate racket head speed in an upward direction, that applied lateness of arm compression can work in a big way that could possibly be the break-through one has long sought.

The body weight one can put on the ball in a baseball pitcher's version of this serve seems good-- not too little or too much.

Arm work however may still feel more like a toss than a powerful throw.

That is why the huge fast drop or tall waterfall built into Wawrinka's serve has to be of interest-- not necessarily to copy but as signpost that whatever loose motion one can add to present achieved mechanics may transform "toss" to "lusty throw."

[bottle]

On Serve: Arm or Body to Provide the Racket Tilt into the Court?

Answer one's own question department: If both provide the tilt neither will have to work as hard.

But I don't like this instruction in the case of a kick serve since I think that all zen of the arm should be directed at side fence.

Tilt in that case is to come from the bod, at least in my serve.

[bottle]

Quote from don_budge:

I don't buy into Dougherty's discussion about disguising a kick serve either. The disguise is not about whether or not it is going to be a kick or a slice or a cannonball...the disguise is decidedly in the placement. I never gave a second thought about disguising the spin but always kept my placement intentions a secret.

That is an iconoclasm, liberating for a rotorded server or anybody else too, I should think.

So, your pre-serve stance announces that you're going to hit a kick serve. Big deal.

The kick serve first and second is the mainstay of good doubles and many instructors have their singles players do nothing else also-- well, maybe for a couple of years.

The above philosophy of don-budge aka Steve Navarro certainly offers more attainability for a large number of players.

But I'm a rotorded and self-interested one, and once again here is where application comes down TO ME.

I've frittered years trying to develop kick from the conventional stance that works best for me in delivering flat or low slice or weak top.

From now on, if you're on the other side of the net and you see me line up in a conventional stance, expect flat or slice.

But if I'm turned way around-- I mean WAY round-- you're about to get something else and can be good with that.

The next big question is toss. We want repeatability, right? So use same toss. The only difference is that front shoulder is turned way around. The same toss therefore arcs forward and to the left like Boris Becker's toss.

Exact same amount of backward body rotation will enhance repeatability too.

So, having once and for all given up deception of service type in favor of deception of placement-- on ALL serves-- not too much else will be of significant variance.

The exception will be in time of greatest arm compression. Very late to deliver kick, with shoulders already flying UP.

The central premise of my baseball pitch serves is rapid forward rotation of the hips cut off almost immediately by the bracing front leg.

On a kick serve, I can see no reason to make the hips rotate around anything but a vertical axis since shoulders are about to fly upward anyway (and then downward).

How much should they come over?

Well, one knows from study that the strings come up to the ball but also turn over on the ball to the tune of about 10 degrees of arc.

Sport scientists discuss this 10 degrees over the top of ball. The best regular doubles partner I ever had, 6 foot 6 inch and pretty near tops in New England like his three kids, frequently mimed the ball and racket up in front of him to instruct his contact to happen at correct racket tilt.

My question: Does it matter whether arm or body applies the tilt?

I go with body for now.

[bottle]

Nice. Thanks. Another way of putting it and probably accurate about what actually happened. Who cares about the set which we won 6-1 ? It was the best shot I hit in 10 years.

[stotty]

Suppose you are returning faster and faster serves from the ad court in doubles and all is going well. You are keeping your backhand returns low and deep and just a bit toward court center with sizzle, but would like to hit a short angle into the alley.

Dissipate the follow through as you strike towards the alley...deft stuff.

[bottle]

A Paradox In Double-Roll Slice

Suppose you are returning faster and faster serves from the ad court in doubles and all is going well. You are keeping your backhand returns low and deep and just a bit toward court center with sizzle, but would like to hit a short angle into the alley.

So, you shorten up. Wrong. You miss the shot.

That return might work if it were simple and elegant enough like a stripped down reflex backhand volley and less like your full, double-roll slice.

Still, the twin rolls have been working the best of all attempted returns.

The answer lies in a longer initial takeback to make time for both rolls smoothly to occur.

[bottle]

Just A Bit More

These two remarkably informative posts taken together make me question my cyclical course over the decades of trying to master "a Don Budge backhand" although I have invested enough psychic energy in the project to stay with it just a bit more.

My 200 Tour Dunlop is at least a bit heavier than the other rackets I pick up.

And when I self-feed this way actually with a similar feel though lighter racket, an old Wilson Hammer 5.2, I hit some really nice shots.

Then I try the same shot against much younger kids and probably am late. (Opposing netman in doubles loves it.)

But Rosewallian Slice is doing wonders for my confidence (please see next post), and from everything I can understand, there is a big overlap between Don Budge and Ken Rosewall when it comes to ground stroke technique, especially slice backhand technique (although I will always wonder about their respective grips).

The mutual idea of a very flat shot with a modicum of spin for control (no matter the kind of spin it is) seems very important though never the whole story.

I'm thinking that for more topspin on the backhand side I'll return to my Petr Korda model. It was working great! Why did I abandon it? To make room for a new spate of Budgian experiments-- the only reason.

When however I say it "was working great" I should add that it is far from being as accurate as my slice. What I know is that if I use it sparingly, it gives some pretty good players trouble no matter where it lands.

This shot-- The Sorta Korda-- all at once takes racket back far and low (but not around) and therefore is a-rhythmic.

There is a lot of barrel in it, i.e., pulling on a rope or spearing with the handle similar to the "partitioned" spearing in Gordon's ATP Style Forehand.

Later Note: I am re-discovering or maybe realizing for the first time that "A Sorta Korda" can indeed be a rhythmic backhand lending itself to immediate flying grip change (a very quick backswing) followed by racket tip winding to inside as arm gets straightened by the hips-- everything flowing into everything else and not "a-rhythmic" as I suggested for a second-- I don't know why, perhaps because I was actively studying the very rhythmic Don Budge backhand or rather what still is known about it.

[stotty]

Actually Gardnar Mulloy would know better than I. Lee Tyler told me that he and Tom Brown would hit when Don was in town and have dinner as well. Gardnar, still clear as a bell as he nears the century mark, surely played with Don a great deal.

But as I remember it as a teenager who was prone to partying a good deal even as we were training some six hours a day at the camp the stroke was pretty flat. Whether he spun it under or over it was what you would call a heavy ball...it knocked the racquet out of your hands if you didn't square it in the middle of the strings.

Keep in mind that in those days...it was wood and gut. His racquet was particularly heavy with a 5" grip. No leather...just the wood with some rather small grooves longitudinally up the handle for better gripping. Exaggerated spin was not yet the technique and it would have been impossible with that kind of equipment.

The best way to put it is in his own words...it was the most natural stroke imaginable...the racquet just seemed to roll through the ball. But the whole game was like that. His whole game was like that. Natural. Just like the wood and the gut. It's interesting...many call his backhand the best shot in tennis ever...not just the best backhand. Just as many say the Pancho Segura two handed forehand was the best shot in tennis ever. But you always have to remind yourself that it was done with a wood racquet...that changes the whole conceptual frame of reference. You simply cannot compare it to the shots of today.

I remember one day musing to myself here in Sweden after some practice...feeling pretty good about my self. I was the same age as Mr. Budge as when I knew him...58 or so. I was wondering to myself...could I have competed with the old boy with the way that I was playing. But then I had a reality check...and I realized that I was playing with 100 square inches of graphite.

Once I asked him if he would hit a few balls with me and he said, "Why sure Steve...go and fetch my racquet in the ball room." I will never forget that there were four frames lying there on the bench and I grabbed one of them and held it in my hand and just gazed at it and taking in the immense beauty of his blunderbuss...his trusty wood tree of a racquet.

It may of been slice. It may have been flat. Whatever it was...over or under...it was a modicum. Just enough and not too much. It was perfect. Mr. Budge's backhand.

I hope that I didn't disappoint.

It's a rare day when you disappoint, don_budge. The shot you describe is much what I thought it would be.

I recently bought one of those "grooved handled" rackets you described, at an antiques auction. I bought it for just £3. It has a fish tail shaped handle too. I took it to the club and gave lessons with it for over a week. I let my more curious students have a go with it so they could experience 1930's tennis. I agree there is very little scope for spin with such a racket, and its limitations are significant compared to modern rackets..."night and day" as Rick would say. My model weighs 16 ounces and is head heavy. I found the best way to hit the ball is flat but slightly underneath...like Don Budge seems to be doing in the clip. This seemed to provide the biggest sweet-spot and the most venom. I found topspin, other than a very modest amount, very difficult to achieve...and the least effective game style for such a racket.

It was an eye-opener for me to use such a racket. It's a long way behind the wooden Wilson Jack Kramer I used when I first started playing tennis. So you see there is wood...and then there is early wood. A significant amount of engineering went on in the wood years too it seems to me.

I love bottles thread. It provokes and jolts my memory here and there....