A New Year's Serve

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An Awfully Big Discussion For Never Having Heard A Word About It

I'm sitting here fiddling with my racket and specifically changing its pitch by 45 degrees this way and that through the use of thumb and middle finger over and over.

Maybe my friends wish I would go away on this subject but I won't. This is loose grip argument carried another step.

As the idea of mondo or flip slowly became more prominent in talk about the forehand in tennis, a long while went by before Eric Matuszewski of Princeton broke the phenomenon down into a pair of simultaneous elements-- wrist laying back and forearm opening the racket from a previously closed position.

Well, I'm a crew coach, i.e., a coach certified in another sport where people twist some instrument. And I want to add some finger action to the mix.

Why? For more ease and fluidity in hitting the ball. And for smaller, more efficient strokes.

Postscript at least a week later: A person wishing to try this need only learn half of it-- the part about adding to the closing of the strings by retracting middle finger over thumb. During the mondo, if hand remains relaxed, the handle will naturally return pretty much to its accustomed place. A goal of this: More delicacy for subtle variations.

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Reader, Do You Enjoy Your Stepafore?

What, you did not convert? Are you mad? Why is a right winger such as yourself constitutionally incapable of cheating to the left? Just what was it in your upbringing that caused you to dislike the H.M.S. PINAFORE?

Exactly at what age did you become a fat head Ted? He is a Communist, I tell you.

No convert is more passionate than a very recent one, and that would be me. My sailing became clear in the instant I realized that my Stepafore was better than my Federfore.

Immediately I knew that Fat Head Ted had a head that was fed with fatwood if I didn't know that already.

But wait a minute. Fatwood is good and old and almost petrified. The kind that comes from the Georgia sea islands is orange umber and smooth grain and splits with a single tap of the smallest hatchet.

Fatwood is loaded with resins. All one needs is a single piece and a single match sans newspaper or twigs to light one's fire.

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Building on a Breakthrough

Who thinks timing of progress in stroke production will ever be even across the board? If one feels for some reason that one's slice serve out wide is beginning to sizzle, one should apply the same drive train to one's repeatedly feeble topspin serves.

The logic of this says to ignore advice to place a shopping cart against front hip to prevent forward rotation. How about not varying from the basic motion of one's best serve but rather work on body's position relative to the tossed ball?

So, with better topspin/kick serve the goal, turn around more in initial stance and crank the hips but stop them almost immediately as one does to hit one's best slice.

Where is the elbow? Back. Where are the shoulders. Parallel to the baseline. How is arm going to approach ball? From left side rather than from right side or behind.

I am an old seaplane with propeller BEHIND the engine. Or, if that's too strange, a swamp buggy or whatever simple image might result in cleanly scraped buzzsaws.

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Skunk Tail Variation

Two of many possible variations from Rosewallian skunk tail preparation to hit slice with full understanding that backhand often is hit from beginning positions different than that-- by Ken Rosewall or anyone else:

1) Forward hip action straightens arm and opens racket way to inside for a level swing right through the ball.

2) Forward hip action straightens arm and slightly opens racket barely to inside of what will be a descending path (Karsten Popp model in videos shown in Tennis Player article on his backhand).

Popp's skunk tail slice chops unlike the speedy 1) but is less steep than the typical backhand slices of Federer and Nadal.

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Loosen Up, Guys And Gals-- Especially You Rotorded Ones

The extra meaning of the expression "hump your wrist" is not wanted but the extra motion implied is.

We've worked hard in recent posts to add some looseness to our serves and to identify with precision the extra finger action we most desire.

A serve can go up, down, up, down up and down, right?

Does racket tip move an extra amount within each step of this scheme? It can.

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Protean Tennis

Don't play like the pros. Play like Proteus.

Proteus was a maritime god back in days when people thought that change was important enough to give it a name, i.e., its own god.

With Federfore influenced by Radek Stepanek on one side and Stygian Backhand developed on the other, one can easily modify one's hopping, waiting position for every ground stroke, which sounds like messing with some foundation after the house is already built.

I challenge that premise. One can cheat over to backhand any time one wants, and protean players have done so any time in tennis history they knew their opponent's next shot was coming to the backhand, particularly in the case of a first serve.

Of course if the server noticed this different wait position he might go to forehand at the last second.

This way, the receiver might elicit the forehand for himself that he wanted.

One assumption by receiver might be that modified Federfore with Radek Stepanekish backswing made him more economical through a low, wide, unified, finger-assisted backswing.

I barely know how this will work since my method is aways to write first, go to court for self-feed second with pre-planned doubles third.

On backhand side the racket can at least sometimes start almost parallel to the baseline.

(This instruction was kept vague on purpose.)

Whereas before, on Stygian Backhand, one used a flying grip change to take one to that approximate position, one waits there now with forehand grip.

From forehand grip one uses one's flying grip change to either take the racket slightly upward for the totality of preparation for a Stygian Backhand or to the skunk-tailed version of Rosewallian Slice.

In either case, an entire step in usual preparation-- lifting the racket after flying grip change-- has been excised.

This allows one to become slower, smoother and more deliberate in all that comes next-- a good way to play tennis.

Because of cheated over position, a very fast serve to forehand now becomes likely. Volley it. Fast: flip and step. Medium: Short version of regular forehand. Slow: Regular forehand.

When actually playing, reader, how soon do you think you (I) will abandon one's accustomed waiting position? Where will racket point? Same place as usual? Is cheating over even a good thing to think about? You don't believe so, reader? Then don't do it.

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A New Finger Fulcrum In Serves

Racket can lie in yoke of forefinger and thumb all the way from address in the serve. Address would be pointing racket and raising it with both arms a little to initiate rhythm for a gravity drop.

Racket handle can in fact maintain contact with the hand in four places throughout address, fall and wind-up.

They are 1) ring finger 2) middle finger 3) base pad of the index finger 4) yoke of index finger and thumb with pinky to stay off of the racket altogether.

During Totka's Hammer regardless of what the very good thing that Naomi Totka herself does, is, the racket slips off of pad at base of the index finger for purchase at a different part of the yoke as middle two fingers pry out.

During the wrist and fingers' blend coming off of the ball the handle returns to its first contact point on index finger's base while remaining settled in yoke.

This means that clench is performed by two fingers only-- middle and ring.

But a far greater force than any offered by the two fingers is superimposed along the same line by the natural brake that occurs when arm gets straight and can't detach itself from rest of body although it tries.

What, according to this continuing dialectic, is the direction of the forcible hammering action that tries to detach one's arm?

I've read instructors' descriptions that placed it directly overhead as exemplified by the image of hammering a nail into some ceiling.

Not far enough back, say I, preferring to target a full moon on a diagonal behind me.

Isn't that where toss is going to be anyway if I arch it over my head while keeping it lined up with right net post?

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Topspin/Kick Serve: More from Tom Avery

A new conclusion on kick serves after re-watching these Tom Avery videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRqd903rIFQ

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Tom+Avery+on+Topspin+Serve&FORM=VIRE3#view=detail&mid=0BD39652024E93E3D2380BD39652024E93E3D238

The strings must barely miss ball and keep going in the same surgical straight line BEFORE they turn to the right.

Questions: How (A) do they do that and how (B) do they best accelerate while doing it.

Hammer to put strings on ball with strings pre-set just right—to where leading rim barely misses the ball. (Needed: purposeful misshits to demonstrate that your quest is in the neighborhood of good results.)

Totka’s Hammer though fast is now permitted to put strings on the ball.

Blended finger and wrist action is permitted to take strings off of the ball in the same line.

Pronation and horizontal body rotations are now relegated to AFTER blended wrist and finger action coming OFF of the ball.

Is this information important? No, crucial. Tom Avery makes the good argument that most people can only learn a very effective topspin/kick serve through the patient mastery of baby steps one after the other and over time.

One needs the same approach, in my view, even to UNDERSTAND a good kick serve, which for some people due to weird temperament comes first.

There are no doubt other ways to hit a kick serve, but in this system, which I have arrived at through my own physique and experience, pronating on the ball causes ruin. As does applying the wrist and fingers blend before or coming up to contact.

To end on a positive note, one will accelerate the wrist and finger blend if contact is properly behind one and Totka’s Kick has forcibly straightened the arm so that the racket tip has nowhere to go but up (with brake-induced effect—due to straight arm—now producing added natural acceleration, i.e., whiplash).

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More About Finger Action In Two Different Sports

I once overheard a USPTA pro give a tennis lesson to his pretty wife. What he said to her was something he didn't say to just anyone. "It's not what you actually do, it's what you think you do."

Any repeat reader of this thread should long ago have concluded that what I think I'm about to do in a given shot is the subject in tennis that interests me most. "Too much about you," some critics have suggested. All right but with a possible spill-over since readers like anyone else must occasionally stop and reflect and plan the content of their shots.

In crew the feathering hand's finger action used just after the oar pops out of the water is delicate but fast. The finger action used just before the catch, by contrast, is delicate but smooth and slow.

Some crews-- the Williams College women in a headwind come to mind-- have done themselves in by rolling up too soon or TOO SLOW starting this action over their shins rather than ankles.

A tennis thing to understand particularly for seniors who might like to reduce their forehand loops is that closing the racket face in backswing can involve forearm, wrist and fingers-- all three-- and be quite slow.

And the same economical technique reversed must exist during mondo which always is fast.

I'm good when any tennis player including myself keeps fingers relaxed without more thought than that.

But I do see the option of using a little actual finger roll in both directions as a way of creating new shots by doing less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRqd903rIFQ

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Using Finger Additive More In Forehand And Serve

Can one afford to wait to decide which finger arrangement to use once one has decided to go the increased use of fingers route? Maybe if one plans to play and study tennis for 200 years.

Not that well known tennis teachers have never discussed the role fingers play in serve, forehand and other strokes. Good information can always provide a shortcut. I just think I'm finding some new wrinkles although my means of discovery sometimes approaches big mess. I'm looking for creative mess.

A friend of mine in Virginia used to say, "A perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life."

If one's tennis world was perfectly in order, one would get one's technique down at two years old and never ever change a thing.

But that is not how tennis or life works at least for me.

My first attempt to state a good finger fulcrum for serving was thumb on one side of handle, second joint down from tip of middle finger on the other.

My revised view is thumb on one side, pad at base of index finger on the other.

This leads to:

1) Shorter amount of finger-produced racket tip fall

2) More feel of a backward surgical incision during which the handle no longer rolls in hand to close strings a little

3) The same add-on of racket tip lowness that a rotorded server desperately needs (through handle sinking into yoke of forefinger and thumb).

4) The addition of strength to hammer snap by inclusion of index finger to blended clench. Three fingers rather than two can now clench toward palm. I'm leaving pinky off of racket since that gets racket tip an inch lower or more.

5) A longer total lever since pinky is off of the butt rim.

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No Title Kicker

Raonic's second serve is hit behind his head (behind and to left).

One can not be Raonic and still hit ball at that spot.

One can even be a rotorded person and hit ball from there.

If one can hit good flat and slice serves by quickly stopping a horizontal-hip-rotation-dominant serve, one should explore similar stoppage in a VERTICAL ROTATION serve with NO HORIZONTAL ROTATION COMPONENT to it until after contact when such component becomes necessary for a followthrough close to that of any other serve.

If one watches slow motion film of the baseball pitcher Justin Verlander, one can see that he stops body rotation with bent left knee but even pushes back a little which is extension in front knee but nothing like the Jordonair tennis serves of the present age.

From a coil where front heel rises on toes I now want to drive that foot flat to form a brace.

That means I won't shift any weight on toss but rather save it. For when I need it.

And that "when I need it" is body-toward-net component in my kick serve.

Body-toward-side-fence component (total body arch and unarch if you want to call it that) loads and supplements the "Totka's Hammer" I discussed in #1826 .

Rotating horizontally from back foot would be easy. Don't do it. Skate weight (linear) through left heel instead.

And bust with the hammer. Go all out with this combined motion (extension from elbow and upper arm rotation) which perhaps is the rotorded server's one hope for subsequent wrist, finger and forearm motion that will produce significant kick because of transmittal and increase of energy rather than complete generation of it as if nothing happened first.

Slower and late compression of arm are ingredients. The middle two fingers only pry out during the hammer (the tomahawk), which only loads AFTER the leg thrust (an idea from Geoff Williams). Load and unload, over and over, with the last load and unload ("whiplash") very late and fast.

All of which can be done with Raonic's contact point behind head.

Last night, a 22-year-old lefty with a booming kicker recommended that I, a righty, hit wide slice or flat (with slice) on all first serves from deuce to deuce court in doubles because of the "natural movement" he noticed in these serves when we played four games of singles.

A helpful idea. But when it's time for the kicker I want it to work and think it will better than at any previous moment in my "rotorded kick" quest.

A rotorded server, I think, over time becomes afraid to twist his upper arm forward with the vigor he needs-- because he sees himself immediately losing all significant upwardness of spin. He may generate the racket head velocity sufficient to produce significance but never does thanks to poor vector for that spin. So, if he is like me, he starts exploring inferior tricks.

Upper Arm Rotation (UAR) is UAR whether the racket is going upward or sideways or both.

Playing with fingers now becomes the significant factor in achieving the upward vector that has become so long lost.

Common sense is required however. One can shorten the loose motion shown in the three linked Barnabian photos (see 1812 Overture, "Stealing from a Contrarian-- One takes what one wants!-- The Cuckold's Serve"). Do the exercise as Barnaby does but shorten the motion somewhere-- where?

Which end of the loose finger motion is more important to a rotorded server? The end where racket handle slides into yoke of forefinger and thumb-- no?
So abbreviate the other end by aligning racket tip higher up than usual at beginning rise of the two hands to initiate one's rhythm. If you previously tried loosening of fingers during your serve, perhaps you never got handle down into the yoke at all but stopped it with pad at the base of index finger.

START NOW with handle on pad at base of index finger. Loose motion as middle fingers open can now take handle into the yoke. We've bought into the loose fingers free motion idea but made it minimal and put it where we most need it.

I hope that all of this is not too dense. What I wish to stress: All out hammer but a hammer that opens out the middle two fingers. Followed by simultaneous clenching of fingers and ulnar deviation and true pronation (from the forearm only but if some UAR was still getting into the act that would be okay, too).

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Try, Rotorded Server, Totka's Hammer Followed By A Smoosh

Terms:

Rotorded Server: Tight in shoulder, can't get upper arm to twist backward enough. He doesn't have enough play there for a long runway followed by abrupt change of direction toward the right or outside.

Totka: See previous post, probably two up.

Totka's Hammer: A blended opening of the arm from completely bent to completely straight combined with Upper Arm Rotation (some people would call that a throw as in "throw the hammer or tomahawk or racket with as much arm as possible"). If the rotorded server uses such UAR as part of getting racket up in the air he won't have any of it left to line-drive the ball higher as he abruptly changes racket path out to the right. The racket tip's path will start down too soon-- horrible. So let's employ opening and closing of middle two fingers in cuckold serve formation with pinky and index finger lower pads off of the racket from beginning to end. One needs to work this out in a place like this rather than on the court. Different things get worked out on the court. Actual pronation (twist from forearm only) will occur simultaneous with clenching of the middle fingers which is blended with ulnar deviation. One vigorously hammers the arm straight first so that these three simultaneous events will mean something. But where did the fingers pry out? In middle of Totka's Hammer. Previously, one pried out fingers passively from body rotation. Fine. Works well. But only for contact on back or outer edge of the ball.

The Smoosh: Already described it. Simultaneously, the wrist not depressed or even morose deviates toward ulna, which motion is multiplied by clenching of fingers and aided in positioning to inside of ball by pronation of the forearm.

Double Jackknife or Archer's Bow (doubled if you like): The main direction of twanging bow is toward side fence. But rear shoulder can be rising toward net at same time.

Followthrough specific to this different kick serve is formed by horizontal rotations of shoulders and hips delayed until now and which permit racket to clear front of body.

Degree of Difficulty Here : Considerable. So let's go for irrelevance. Is this possibly Mexican proverb true? "Beautiful horses always love mules." And does it apply to Radek Stapanek?

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Thumb And Finger Additive In A Forehand

I'll now assign 3.5 grip preparation additive to thumb and strong middle finger rather than to thumb and little finger.

That information may not be of interest to you, reader, but if you have a 3.5 grip and would like to adjust pitch with a bit more sensitivity, I can't see how you would go wrong with subtle finger action.

Every forehand has some kind of a design behind it, and the player ought to think if not talk or write about his various tweaks within that design.

The wrist opens THIS way while the forearm rotates THAT way. The thumb and middle finger rotate the handle in same direction as the forearm rotation, with all these actions perfectly gradual and simultaneous and occurring after start of the unit turn-- from point in time where opposite hand comes off of the handle.

One certainly doesn't HAVE to use finger roll in this way. But it's an option. I see wrist opening THIS way and continuing to do so not just in backswing but during the mondo which is part of the foreswing.

The forearm and middle finger can reverse action in mondo however and without destroying stability or power or racket head speed within the shot.

What comes after mondo or "flip" in an ATP Style Forehand?

Spear (before wipe). So one has time for these two additives (retraction of middle finger over thumb and then forward thrust of middle finger over thumb).

Today I hit a high forehand this way when the opponents were expecting a low one. I simply think the finger addition makes for new subtlety of feel and choice, but then of course one of my 27 jobs was as a crew coach.

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Bloopy High Bouncing Serve And Lob Aim Points

Am playing early morning doubles twice a week in a new seniors group on freshly re-surfaced indoors Har-Tru. They are the strongest players I've consistently been with in a long time and they invited me to join them. I'm grateful. What fun.

But I still want to perfect the soft serve that hops above the receiving opponent's shoulder.

Mine jumps quite high but not sky high which means it's apt to get clobbered.

Some factors I've identified so far that taken together might make the subtle difference in this serve to complement a choice of harder serves: A higher and perfectly placed toss with more drop to it, a 10-degree alteration of pitch around the time of contact, a designed landing point nearer the center of the service box, i.e., a more cagey ball trajectory diving into that box...and all factors in the service action that could produce more whiplash i.e. more racket head speed without hitting too much through the ball.

"The higher the top, the steeper the drop."

Eventually, I should think, one might devise specific aim points in the air just the way one sometimes does in hitting a lob when one remembers them (I almost never do), which would be either directly above the net or directly above the opponent's head.

Those are established aim points for lobs. The similar aim points (similar but not the same!) for deuce and ad bloopy topspin serves might startle one by how radical they could be. Starting from high, Naomi Totka hits a rising line drive from which the bottom suddenly drops out. This shot sure isn't a lazy parabola.

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

Landing ball purposefully short of service line is a new working idea for me as I imagine it would be for many other persons if they even heard of it. In lots of other serves that would be a mistake.

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Yikes! I'll not go there.