A New Year's Serve

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On-Line Invention

Invention mania is carrying over from my tennis to my swimming, from swimming to parallel parking and how to crack an egg.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're obsessive?" Plenty of times. The person who's told me most however is I myself.

And I wonder if one pursues some subject to its logical ends, as a matter of conscious choice, if that's true obsession, a subject I certainly do know something about in my novel THE PURSE MAKER'S CLASP in the Amazon e-book store. The obsession there: One Hungarian woman and through her by extension all things Hungarian.

My favorite essayist, Michel de Montaigne, believed that the Hungarians he knew pretty well (since the century just before was the time of the Hunyadi Janos--King Matyas father son combo!) were a warlike people, and I would say once and forever.

Montaigne believed in marriage for the purpose of bringing up children but thought romantic love was terrible in that it limited one's freedom.

No, this swimming thing (admittedly Hungarian, too) is different from obsessive love: First off, I just plan to dabble in it, use it for non-impact workouts with no "total immersion" although that does seem a physical impossibility.

My point is that I've noticed that some of the most basic ideas implicit in swimming, just as in tennis, never get expressed.

I've seen a pretty good sampling of the swimming videos on YouTube and wonder about the subject of two-beat kick, about how it is taught.

I understand that you're supposed to kick downward every time your hand and arm reaches full extension-- then and only then-- but to learn the feel of this, one is helped so much by realizing that because of already accomplished body turn the kick is not "down" as advertised but is on a 45-degree angle, first one way and then the other.

In tennis, I'm thinking that today I'd like to try a kick serve with no scapular adduction included until after contact, but rather scapular retraction to reinforce the power of last instant change from knifing frame to glancing strings.

The way I propose to go about this is a big slow helicoptering of the elbow forward to initiate the final throw.

This no doubt will prove an idea even worse than romantic love.

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Golden Retriever Opts for Quick Start Ball

Daffney, a golden retriever staying at our house tried and failed to pull a Penn 3 tennis ball through the bars of my serve basket.

Quickly, however, though howling all the while, she identified a Quick Start Ball in the mix, and because this brightly marked one was soft, was able to pull it through.

She then dismembered it, ready for Wimbledon.

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My Interpretation of the Roscoe Tanner Serve

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

Pretty much so:

The head pitches forward, but only AFTER you have hit the ball.

But I'm interested in platform stance-- for me-- no pinpoint. Will this work? Yes.

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One More Thing to Try on Serve

This will be disruptive.

And probably counter-productive.

As with so many excursions, the question is, Can you come back to where you started?

Michel Berta, writer, painter and French instructor at the North Carolina School for the Arts, would assign one of his students to remember where he started just as he embarked on the excursion.

In the form of invention solitaire I've developed, however, I must remind myself.

And I like my old fashioned rowing shoed double-leg kick combined with linked body rotation and scapular throw.

Can I return to this oasis after my frivolous trip? Only with great concentration, i.e., lay down a snip of colored thread or a good bookmark.

The basis of creating old fashioned rowing shoes in which the soles of the feet (flat here) are fully supported, is clever bending and rolling of rear knee with front foot coming back to flat through retracting heel.

But if one is going to let anything retreat in a hip turn-- which may or may not be temporization-- why not do the experiment big, i.e., start with rear leg straight.

Now, instead of keeping front leg bent for subsequent thrust, screw it straight as rear leg fully bends and rolls the opposite way.

That (Bonnie Raitt, do you play tennis? Are you reading this?) ought to give one's stomach muscles something to think about.

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Sometimes I am, e.g., yesterday finally became a distance swimmer (at 72) by hanging all the little movements of good swimming on body twiddle.

By that I mean you transform the whole body into a kyak or single needle and then roll it from side to side with nothing in between.

Got most of this from videos on the internet. Question, Google, something like "efficient swimming technique."

[stotty]

Most simply, the knees and shoulders sequence, in which hips rotate "marginally ahead of shoulders,"

I never knew this...just tried it in front of the mirror...you're right!

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Knees, Shoulders, Slingshot

This progression is taking me ever closer to the down and up swing I've always wanted.

Down and up? Someone questioned me. Just get the racket down. Then swing it up.

Sorry, a golfer doesn't do that neither does Federer.

Most simply, the knees and shoulders sequence, in which hips rotate "marginally ahead of shoulders," to quote the precise words of baseball slugger Ted Williams, will take the racket downward in our Federian tennis stroke, down to the flip.

The implicit Roger Federer forehand philosophy, which I would argue created Nadal, Djokovic and anyone striving to hit "the ATP forehand" nowadays, edits off big circular backswings behind the shoulders line (think Jiggles Goerges), but still contains an inside-out component to be neglected at one's own peril.

Viewed from behind, solid part of swing starts on left side of slot. Flip occurs in middle of slot. Contact (residual shoulders rotation plus slingshot) occurs on right edge of slot.

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Knees, Shoulders, Flip, Slingshot-- Nah

Knees, shoulders, slingshot-- is better.

Because the combination of knees and shoulders, performing passive scapular retraction, helps protract one's spear or flashlight (the flip).

Let's edit any time we can.

Besides, it's halftime of the Olympic gold medal basketball game and the United States is only one point ahead of Spain.

A good time to edit, if you ask me.

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Credo

They often call me Speedo but my real name is Mr. Earle.

Oh, sorry, I've been watching Olympic diving again.

The rowing was really sad. NBC hired some lady who talked too much. She must have rowed in the engine room of some really dumb crew.

A theater major she definitely was not. And conveyed little excitement about what was passing in front of her eyes.

By the time of the men's eight final she had so thoroughly anesthetized us that I hardly felt the fourth place finish of the United States even though we were the defending champions.

In tennis, I have only one thing to say (today). I don't believe in golden nuggets of tennis information, only in tennis learning progressions. One out of ten of these progressions may be really good.

P.S. In philosophy, the road-runner always wins. In tennis, the coyote always wins. In politics...never mind.

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About Golf on Wheels

Hey, when I finished second in the Fenwick, Connecticut Long Drive Contest, one needed exceptionally straight drives—more even than if the residents of the Borough of Fenwick had decided to hold the event on their Scotch modeled golf course. Instead, one aims along a thin stripe of waterfront, swinging from the end closest to New York city. Insurance people from West Hartford prefer summer homes close to the water; therefore, the lawns in front of their houses are slim. Sliced drives splash right into the Long Island Sound. Hooked drives break windows on the left.

To hit my solid drive, I started my downswing with my knees, not with my knees and hips. This is a semantic distinction, I know, but have decided that semantics are everything in the instruction of sport.

And so, in the imitation Roger Federer forehand or “Federfore,” I have to say, once you have lifted hands up and extended arm backward and slightly downward to establish solid connection, start body forward from the knees rather than thinking about your hips which are going to turn anyway.

Knees, shoulders, flip, slingshot.

This imperative, unopposed more or less in the Tennis Player forum, does not preclude subsequent movement of anything and only refers to four initiations within a smooth stroke or swing.

One should have noticed in late Federer, e.g., in his seventh capture of the Wimbledon championship, his increased reliance on running crosscourt forehands in which his legs don’t extend as he hits the ball, rather in which he stays close to the court like Miroslav Mecir. If the ball is high, though, he does spiral upward and even flies as high as he finds necessary.

When I say, “Knees, shoulders, flip, slingshot,” I mean rotating knees that either don’t spiral upward or do.

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Farther Out Yet

And more over the top. No, more under the bottom.

The goal: Body design in which the bent rear knee is lower than the bent front knee. With both feet flat. And with necessary kinetic rotation (some) of hips forward having just occurred.

Trying out this prescription for serving disaster or perhaps not is easier than I thought.

Using the double gravity drop described a hundred times here and elsewhere by now, one counter-rotates front knee up on front toes.

I started with both knees bent and both feet flat, so rear foot still is flat. Now I bend my rear leg just enough more so that front foot flattens again but with front knee holding its bend and the rear knee having descended a bit beneath it.

The key: Both feet flat once again.

This is what I always wanted. Both feet in old fashioned rowing shoes in which the entire soles are supported.

Now you'll obtain enough ground force as you "fire the extensors, baby."

Transverse stomach muscles as well as scapular adduction should contribute and, "What do you have in your arm today?"

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Just an Idea

This is just an idea. Which like so many ideas ought to be dismissed. It builds however on what has preceded it including the muttered utterance of my very good opponent Gary Rogers that he should keep his weight on his back foot more. He had just hit something he didn't like-- a rare miscue-- and he successfully applied the lesson he learned right away to a second serve not significantly different in intent from his first.

"Keep the weight on the back foot longer." One wonders, did the advice pertain just to him? How about to what I'm doing right now?

If I keep weight on back foot longer, combined with medium bend low golfy action, i.e., "full feel" knee and hips with no spiral upward, will I not then authorize better travel under the ball like Stefan Edberg characterized by no pitching of the head forward?

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Screw the Screw-Jack

I'm very impressed with screw-jacks from my summer working on the New Haven Railroad. Three box cars derailed in Guilford, Connecticut. The Old Saybrook crew raised the corner of each one, then made a slim tower of wood blocks to hold things steady, next made a second tower of wood blocks on which to place the screw-jack to repeat the process until the box car was level. Then with nothing but shovels we filled in everywhere with dirt. And laid down new railroad ties. The spikers attached new rails.

Later, in Virginia, the Washington politicians who ran their SUV's halfway off the road would go back to their dachas to telephone the token liberal living on High Knob Mountain (no viral cell phones yet). Somehow the word had gotten out that I knew how to use boards and snow to construct a new road out over a cliff. I guess you could call that "respect."

I on the other hand just remember the acrimony and hysteria of family members in the vehicle shouting at each other with everybody giving too much advice, although I will say, they left me alone to do the work.

Oh well, it won't happen again. Not until Thornton Wilder's glacier reappears from his play THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. There won't be any snow in Virginia because of bad karma from deniers of climate and everything else among this group.

But you can see how impressed I am by boards and car jacks, am a bit overcome by the romanticism of a good screw-jack. Realizing this, I've decided to go with the strict Ted Williams delineation of hips then shoulders instead.

The overall service motion has become smooth and quick enough for this concept to mean something.

From second gravity drop one can wind racket to edge of body while slightly whirring the knees and hips and continuing to draw hitting elbow away from upraised tossing elbow.

In some great serves the racket continues to wind outward into the next phase of simultaneous firing of legs and gut.

Will scapula fire then, too? Yes and no. It will retract a small extra bit and then slingshot the other way.

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Dog Tool Serves

I freely admit to being heavily influenced by
1) Partial replacement of Detroit auto industry by dog-sitting services for one percenters living in Grosse Pointe.
2) A film of Don Brosseau adjusting (increasing) downward acceleration right after first gravity drop by one of his students.
3) Old-fashioned idea of keeping hips canted upward for as long as possible with chest open to sky.
4) This video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJgl2K4E

Starting with 3), I wish to begin my serve with my feet quite close together and turned way around, knees bent. Since I am 72 with leg problems, I only want to exceed my body weight by one third. But I have to ask, Won’t using hips to screw body straight into the cement generate ground power akin to no fool oarsman’s double leg thrust with no twist in it at all? One might think of a screw jack used to lift one corner of a derailed box car.

Assuming the effectiveness of that along with diminishment of health risks through sensible if obvious measures, I need to figure out exactly how I do want my hips to rotate forward. I can see front knee and hip staying over the foot as leg extends. Conversely, I can see back hip stay low and travel around (far) with help from ankle and toes to take it ahead of back foot.

My idea: Keep the cant. Some will say I’m speaking of language. Sure. But I’m also speaking of body tilt.

Now the dog part. The chocolate lab we baby-sat for eight days came with a four-foot instrument designed for slinging a tennis ball (see post # 1219). I required six sleepy days to realize that the monster handle on the thing was monster encouragement to a real tennis player to use a frying pan grip. This tool needs new design in other words. But a right-handed player who owns one can for now (before I file for a patent), turn the fat handle sideways in his hand so that the half moon that grasps the ball points ball toward left fence.

From there, this serve is a simple matter of learning not to throw downward or forward but rather to launch the ball up over garage and trees. Accelerating the racket downward right after initial gravity drop—like Don Brosseau, I found—helped most.

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Furniture Seventeen for Easy Topspin (again)

Wrist and forearm received good attention in forum discussions of forehand flip, but not "scapular retraction," which is equally important in keeping the racket butt spearing or flashlighting toward the ball.

General information, in other words, wasn't good. Similarly, if a tournament playing kid said (as happened to me yesterday), "I don't understand anything about how to make topspin," the instructor might take her to the net where both of them would practice upward movement with strings of racket pressed against the strings of the net.

While that is a very good exercise, the student might come to think that strength of upward lift was the important factor and shortly thereafter start showing up at the courts wearing an arm brace.

Neglected (in her understanding) would be the instruction to "press" the strings against the strings. For that's where nifty wipered topspin comes from if I have correctly understood the ATP forehand articles.

Furniture seventeen in one of these articles (the first or second) is a video in which butt of racket is sent ahead toward ball with racket handle moved only by thumb and forefinger. The racket tip comes last instant round and slightly upward all by itself. With more hand on the racket, the article suggests, this little movement converts to an even more upward direction.

Note: Scapular retraction must precede scapular adduction but isn't a mechanical set piece that you should forget the better to rely upon it-- at least not at first. All different directions of scapular retraction are possible, the main choices of which are down, up or back, so a short period of actual thought and choice-making could be in order.

One might intuit that "down" is the most interesting of the choices. Not in the forehand I have in mind. That one uses "back" to engender slingshot ahead toward the ball and net.

Position of arm (quite far forward!) and hinge in wrist (the wrist is a hinge as don_budge often says) then conspire for easy conversion of "forward" to "upward," which done properly (see the movie "The Knack" starring Rita Tushingham) will happen all by itself.