A New Year's Serve

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Removal of Backward Hips Rotation: One Less Moving Part

. Return to Brenda Schultz-McCarthy and Mark Papas (http://www.revolutionarytennis.com/fineprint.html) with crossover from other relevant sources

. Immediate implementation of archer's bow on the toss, which will fly one foot higher than before.

. Start with weight on rear foot, arms bent, racket pointed at net post or even more to the side. The body, upper and lower, faces the side rather than target. The feet are roughly parallel, not splayed very much. The arms both get straight at beginning of the down of down-and-up. The tossing arm drops to leg.

. During down and up of the straight arm toss the front hip will actively protrude all the way to the baseline to turn whole body into an archer's bow.

. "Down and up" of the hitting arm really means the arm flows down and back and up to ATA (air the armpit position, which is lower than it might be due to tilt of the shoulders).

. A farther pushing by rear foot of front hip across the baseline by several inches as rear shoulder winds and stretches around the posted toss arm as hit arm bends to some semblance of trophy position. The two hands come toward one another to create form above the head.

. Straightening of leg, bod and arm with emphasis on extension between groin and sternum to create "leapfrog" rather than "cartwheel."

. Teardrop shape lowpoint of racket tip drop.

. There is no ESR or ISR or any other encumbering alphabet soup during all-out psychological and physical and loose but pro-actively fast and throw-like extension of the arm. One keeps racket on edge for as long as possible for aerodynamic reason and others.

. Total attack mode then from racket drop to nuclear wrist, which penultimate and concentrated snap is many things rather than one.

. Opening of shoulders comes only after contact. That's what Brenda said some place else.

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Compact Version

Now with everything else AMAP remaining the same, the two arms only straighten to 90 compared to 180 degrees. Pete Sampras never seemed to straighten his hitting arm early, only on way up to the ball. Whoops, this was a mistake in perception (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ActionSide.mov). You can see in the video that Sampras straightens then bends but never then squeezes both halves of the arm together like Ivan Lendl.

Sampras' shoulder is/was uncommonly flexible, so the rules of advisability are very likely different for him.

Still, why accept anybody's insistence that a full service motion better helps legs get racket tip lower than abbreviated motion does?

That may be true or not. All I am saying is one should find out for oneself.

Try archer's bow serving both full and abbreviated version then choose-- why not?

Abbreviated might be good for an aging player. Or perhaps if, like the tin woodman, his rusting joints are getting sticky, the fuller motion will give him more needed smoothness and rhythm and so keep him holding for longer.

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Start Attack from Middle of Body (Groin to Sternum) and Let the Energy Radiate both Up and Down

Well, this is worth a try. A different idea than concentrating on leg or arm drive although the attack being described here is all a single drive no matter how you cut it.

From groin to sternum is a thrust or elongation-- the technique that Alexander the Great so loved to talk about.

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More Attack

Lightly throw the elbow instead of lugubriously stretching it upward.

Everything that happens in the lugubrious inversion (the twisting of the elbow upward) must still happen as part of the light throw.

The only difference will be in how you cluster things. If you can't perform the inversion at higher speed with leg and all other help you will have created a clusterfuck.

Practice this more aggressive attack by starting in an open forehand stance, at the baseline (and) from low toss for now fire line drives all the way into the opposite fence.

Remember the mantra "speed, push and crow?" Well, it applies better now.

But once you've mastered the long line drives don't make the mistake of replicating them in your serve. That same energy must go UP.

(If I sound pedantic here, I apologize. Simply put, I am talking to myself.)

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Correction, Reality and the Nature of Same

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

In this second serve ad one can see, if slowly clicking, that the two halves of Sampras' arm do squeeze together.

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TSLTTMMABD

"The stupid little thing that might make a big difference."

Note that it's singular. So don't try to pluralize it. If you've got another TSELMABOD, wait to try it until tomorrow or better next week.

Today, let's temporize the racket head at bottom of the gravity drop.

I've been all over the place on this one. Palm down, palm up, palm rolling from down to up or square to up, palm slightly open the whole way, palm down the whole way leading to racket head momentum which can then open the racket face to where you want. Recently I've tried to keep racket square (on edge) at all times, which requires ongoing attention and adjustment.

So screw that.

Since I want maximum gravity assistance in the cause of constancy, I will start with both hands high, maybe even over left shoulder with weight on rear foot.

But here's the tselmabod. The racket face will be slightly open even when it's high.

Seems like all the tour players start with open face nowadays but never tell why.

So I give my own reason: to temporize at the bottom.

Gravity speaks. The two arms can drop as natural as can be. And the straight hitting arm can easily swing up to low web position-- a position where the fleshy web under your shoulder has opened out.

Right then as racket morphs from drop to back and up a bit is the time to temporize to square. Just let the racket head go slower than the hand. Now the strings won't have any momentum in the backward, forward or sideways direction, and this should equate to better balance and a more upward-oriented serve.

This also should put to work the hand, a good thing since a less mechanical and more sensitized hand will control squeeze at elbow and anything else the elbow does from then on.

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Use Flying Grip Change to Edit Out Built-in Stupidity in One's Iterative Backhand

An iterative backhand is simply a backhand that is always changing and therefore has a story behind it.

My composite grip McEnrueful forehand is part of optional one-grip system in which the wrist is flat compared to what it used to be. Wrist is flat on fast forehand drive-- a rope-- and is flat on backhand slice.

Well, if wrist is flat for backhand slice, why should it not be flat for one's backhand drive, too?

I made this discovery some time ago, but to implement it used needless sequence in first having depressed wrist and then straightening it as racket descended behind me a small amount. (All my backhands including most backhand volleys are scapular-driven with arm gradually but proactively straightening from the elbow all the way to contact, which formula can on occasion produce inside out swings.)

The idea here is never to make wrist depressed, i.e., concave when viewed from above.

Now thumb tip will still be on a different pointy ridge than for slice but with the same straight wrist.

It could be that really good players don't make as big a distinction as other players do between backhand slice and backhand drive. Read in full the autobiography of J. Donald Budge if you don't believe this.

"Your backhand is really coming along," Ken Hunt said to me at the tennis social on Friday night. In the whole Midwest, Ken is ranked third among players over 80 despite being at the upper end of the 80 to 90 spectrum.

We got to play together for a single set which we won 6-1 . Then we started a second set in which we could do nothing right before Sara Sessions, the activities director for Eastside (indoor) Tennis Facility, Detroit, came out with a new chart for different partners.

The let-down was due to old-age weariness against young opponents but who cares?

"Your backhand is really coming along," Ken had said. He knew the backhand he was discussing was slice backhand but didn't make that distinction.

Have I tried flatter wrist from the outset for drives yet? No. Will this change work? Has to, it seems to me. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't.

(And it does.)

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If Goran Invanisevic Extrudes, Does He Intrude First?

Put another way, can Goran telescope his trunk in two different directions every time he serves?

Or, rather than sway his upper body much away from the ball, can he contract it before he extends it?

This may be hard to see but we shall try.

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

The implication, if there is any truth here, is a decrease of cartwheel in favor of more extrusion ("Fire the extensors, baby!") in one's own serve.

P.S. We'd like to know the exact best way to extrude the bod from groin to sternum. I speculate that protruding the belly before sucking it in might help.

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Ascribe one Magical Property to Left Hand in a Mark Papas Serve

As the late Mark Papas teaches his revolutionary serve (at RevolutionaryTennis.com), he urges his students to post straight toss arm up at the sky and revolve hitting shoulder around the post.

But I may have squandered this opportunity with too low a lifetime toss.

To compensate, I divide the toss into two parts, pre-release and post-release, with turn of the hand to start from release.

First one can turn the hand using wrong method-- just turn the hand-- and then do it the right way through upper bod facilitation, i.e., hitting shoulder to revolve around posted toss arm and shoulder.

This authorizes your little twisting hand and wrist to turn the whole upper bod like a door hinge.

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20-Minute Afternoon Nap for Four Hours of Extra Energy-- Detroit Radio Baseball Announcers

But Detroit still lost the game to Oakland in bottom of the ninth for the second day in a row.

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Disappointing it is

Disappointing it is, when the serve one has been pursuing turns out less effective than some of one's previous serves. That sounds negative. So consider the following statement near the end of John Cowper Powys' 1120-page novel A GLASTONBURY ROMANCE: "No philosopher has yet appeared who has realized as it should be realized, the creative power of the human mind."

A certain amount of unhealthy dismissiveness attaches to the air we breathe and the water we drink and certainly to the words we hear.

Only a kid, Andy Roddick, gets to create a really good serve. But I don't believe it. Doesn't a lifetime's experience count for anything?

The serve propounded by the late Mark Papas at his website REVOLUTIONARY TENNIS appears to have everything going for it: Closed shoulder, closed hip-- mantra for a great baseball pitcher as well as a promising tennis player.

Tossing with backward hips rotation established entirely through one's static sideways stance however may be too conceptual a notion. For one wants always to be a snake. Backward horizontal hips rotation if not extreme can writhe easily into backward vertical hips rotation-- where lead hip goes out toward net to good effect.

Maybe one did this before but now can do it more organically.

I therefore propose that small backward hips rotation occur to keep things simple with weight entirely on rear foot before one moves into the archer's bow forward energizing toss of Mark Papas.

Further, there is a way to retain Mark's essential design yet at the same time draw on the untapped power between shoulders and hips to create a second snake. One does it by starting with stance adjusted way around.

The second snake starts with small horizontal movement (but of the shoulders this time combined with bunching of the stomach) which melds into the vertical body extrusion of The Alexander Technique.

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Offset or Core-Turned Shoulders?

A first question pertaining to the new serve is whether to turn one's shoulders from one's core or rather from one's extended toss arm used as a long axle.

Toss arm centered this way certainly leads to more leftward lean of one's forehead but does one really want that now?

I've tried not shifting the toss arm once it is up but with limited success. I try now the opposite idea-- turning shoulders will shift toss arm, while up, a short distance to my right.

This latter approach will work better with simultaneous protrusion of one's stomach thus shrinking body length for the big thrust it seems to me.

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Things You are Better off Not Knowing (Tennis Instruction is Full of Them)

From MANUAL OF STRUCTURAL KINESIOLOGY, Thompson and Floyd:..."as a person stands from a squatting position, in order for the knee to extend, the femur must roll forward and simultaneously slide backward on the tibia. If not for the slide, the femur would roll off the front of the tibia, and if not for the roll, the femur would slide off the back of the tibia."

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We Need, I think, to be More Clear about our Forehand Differences

A forehand in which the racket loops down and around and behind the ball with elbow held back until the final body shove can be plenty effective. One feature is that mondo occurs right during the shove for more absorption of the ball. The windshield wiper built into this stroke occurs after contact.

Conversely, a forehand in which mondo occurs earlier as racket descends in a "dogpat" uses its wiper right on the ball while retaining the same delayed but great body-and-arm extension.

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Must Be True

Since nobody disputed it. Encouraged, I add on to the same thought: No reason to get the racket tip far back for a shove forehand. So I now cut the amount of that in half.

Conversely, on a shove-while-wiping forehand the racket likes to point at rear fence (or more? Will have to look into that). Pointing at ball with racket tip-- if you believe in that-- would incorporate this pointing at rear fence in a big swirl.