A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Orchestration for a Rotation Primary Serve

Note: I think I'll call the other kind a Thrust Primary Serve, but whimsy may be what I'm all about.

Recipe:

Bend and firm knees before you start the serve. Shoulders slowly wind and tilt with impeccable posture maintained from knees to back of neck.

Bow under toss (both heels come up) as front hip forms its bulge toward the net, i.e., "you cock the bow." That gets upper body drawing back from ball toward rear fence while opening chest to ball for a flat serve. Upper body tilts under ball along a line perpendicular to both side fences for a kick serve. Upper body draws back along a line between the other two lines for a slice serve. Chest has opened to the ball, i.e., to the sky, in every case.

One could steepen the imaginary mountain at the baseline. One might help oneself to hit over the mountain by bowing the rear leg even more than the front leg for all three serves. I was going to say Pancho Segura would be a great example of this but then checked his book CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY and noticed that front leg looked more bent of his two legs. Well, fooling around with respective length won't kill you. Hitting fiercely and spinningly over the mountain is the goal here.

Where is body weight at this point? Mostly likely on front foot for flat but evenly distributed for kick and slice.

[bottle]

Crash Crash

In between the ball got seared.

[bottle]

Rephrase (of my Own Stuff)

Any kind of manipulation will spoil the throw. So turn the body against firm, already bent knees. This body turn will include a bulging out of the hip and a determination to climb the mountain on the baseline and a change of linear direction and the toss.

At that point in the continuous, economical motion the arm will start to bend as the bent knees now start to bow.

Hurl the racket hard at the back fence.

Body will have closed it (the racket head) and directed it up past the ball and very hard at the side fence followed by deceleration down and around and up to your opposite shoulder.

The same hurl tries to knock down the back fance and the side fence in rapid succession.

[bottle]

Thanks.

[tennis_chiro]

Racket moving across the ball for second serve

Check the difference in the frames after contact of the ball for Roger's first and second serve

first serve:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/1st_Serve&stroke=RF_1stS_Ad_Rear2_500fps.mov

second serve:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/2nd_Serve&stroke=RF_2ndS_Ad_Rear4_500fps.mov

don

[bottle]

Re # 1089, Racket Tip Away from the Ball or Toward the Ball?

One can see, in reconsidering 1089, that the racket tip starts out toward the ball or as Pat Dougherty says, "Stick the racket in and try to come up this way across the ball."

"Stick the racket in." That's the phrase I didn't understand. All this stuff requires special thought and explanation since it reverses at least one item in our tennis conditioning. (I'm not speaking of workout type "conditioning" but rather the operant or psychological kind that conditions rats, monkeys and tennis players.)

I'm not saying we're all brainwashed, but we right-handers are certainly conditioned to know that when we turn our body forward the hitting surface of our racket will want to open or turn away from the ball, and this becomes an essential part of our conscious calculations or unconscious adjustments.

If we stick the racket in or point it at the target, like Naomi Totka, with the elbow pointed in the opposite direction somewhere on the rear fence, the racket's frame may look as if it's going to bisect the ball. Nothing unusual about that. What's unusual is that the bisection would occur in the direction of the rear fence.

The right-hander's elbow is pointed away from the target with the arm straightening as the shoulders rotate the racket into more of a push on the ball.

One can produce clockwise spiralspin if the flat of the racket is neither too much behind the ball or too much to the inside of the ball.

This is like the clockwise spiralspin caused by a right-footed punter in football although his knee will be pointing forward not backward. (I know little about punting, just hope I'm right about instep contacting the inside of the football.)

Right-handed passers administer the same direction spiral from the outside of the football.

You could say that in the majority of instances when most hackers serve (usually flat or slice or pitty-pat topspin) the racket tries to open or pull round from the ball as the body rotates toward the net. In this serve the racket does the opposite, tends to close toward the ball from the body rotation.

To put this another way, if you don't manipulate the racket, the body rotation alone will change it. It, the racket, will go from tip of frame toward the target (twice!?) to a bit of strings toward the target.

And, as we all agree, I'm pretty sure, the less one has to do, the better.

Maybe I'm dyslexic or just get confused when things are backward and upside down-- but this information, though not the answer to all the challenges in a rotorded person trying to hit kick, seems essential information I've never heard explained before (and so I explain it to myself).

[bottle]

If You Wanna be Happy for the Rest of...

If you're not happy with the way your present service motion is or isn't producing kick, how about letting your body throw adjust to your arm throw-- instead of vice-versa-- for a change?

If one gets a good kick serve, then maybe one can apply the lesson of Camus' Sisyphus to other areas of one's life.

[bottle]

Complexify! Complexify! Complexify!

How high is the arm-squeezed-together conglomeration when it releases in these kick serves?

If there is a sequence between body and arm extension what is it?

You (I) have already suggested that both occur at the same time-- yes, but with stagger?

The elbow moving down during the hammering exercises is replaced by the body moving up-- particularly the shoulder. So the shoulder moves up even after contact. This adds upwardness of arm extension.

The gut-feet system (first gut for power and then hips for continuation and elongation of this power) should be strong but slow so that everything can be accomplished within it. If it stops, i.e., completes before the arm unfolds, you've lost the fight again for maximum upwardness.

This may happen frequently while you acquire this serve.

The idea that shoulders revolve (in two different ways) followed by arm extending like a fireman's ladder from the bed of a fire truck will not be bad if you can make the bed simultaneously rise up through contact as well.

A major idea emerging from the too many ideas is that one of them is particularly bad, i.e., that the racket should arise from one number on a clock face to another.

Since all the ideas must compete with themselves for our attention, why not declare that direction of ball rotations should be the concern, not the racket arc that produces them?

We'd be closer to the nub of the thing, no?

We could maybe introduce spiralspin to the discussion along with topspin and sidespin. Thinking of three different spins on a single tennis ball at once is daunting but preferable to some dumb old clock face.

Make the racket do whatever it must to produce the mix of spins that you want. Much of this will be determined by the facet of the ball that the strings actually scrape.

"Hit the left side of the ball" might be great advice if we knew where the person was standing when they uttered it.

I once asked somebody in these discussions-- Rosheem-- which side of the ball the racket was passing over in fantastic slo-mo video of Federer's kick.

Everybody else may have been thinking left side and "from seven to two" but Rosheem said exactly what I'd been thinking to myself all along, that the strings passed over the upper right quadrant.

Just sit in a chair and use a racket to roll ball in every possible direction in your hand. You can probably account for two of the three desirable spins that way. As for the third, spiralspin, you can, being left brain and right-handed, take your hand off the racket and twirl the ball against your palm.

Then go to a football field where Eli Manning is practicing 70-yard passes.
Wrench the ball from Eli's hand and throw a 70-yard pass yourself. The ball will spiral clockwise. Now practice 70-yard punts, striking the left bottom of the ball with your right instep. The ball will spiral clockwise. Return to the tennis court.

The three spins are, again, topspin, sidespin, and spiralspin. And maybe something-- the ball-- will divebomb left and kick unpredictably right when it hits the court.

[bottle]

I did. #1058 . So how should one spell the name? Sisyphus or Sysiphus? Answer: Sissyfuss.

[don_budge]

From the Absurd one...

Thanks a million Stotty and bottle. Who said tennis players are stupid? Where did Phil initiate this pearl of wisdom, bot?

[bottle]

But don't forget Phil, who brought up the subject in the first place. It is absolutely great having the appropriate passage right here. Thanks, Stotty, thanks so much.

[stotty]

Albert

That make's three of us who are Camus fans then...

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/msysip.htm

[bottle]

Not too bad if I didn't hit them too hard. Got a blister because of having the pinky off of the racket. Not even my lifetime calluses from rowing could protect me.

[bottle]

Racket Tip Away from The Ball

Okay, I go to court now, Sysiphus later, with we, you, they (yes, it's all me) resolving to hit these serves four times as hard as any other.

"Sticking the racket in and trying to come up this way across the ball to get that spin effect happening" at 1:54 shall be the ONLY technical instruction permitted today.

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

But zounds!!! The way Dougherty's elbow is pointing-- away from the target or netpost or somewhere around there-- will bring the racket tip AWAY from the ball, not toward it or across it, n'est-ce pas?

[don_budge]

Albert Camus..."the happiness of Sysiphus".

Note: I've got to re-read the passage in Albert Camus where he talks about "the happiness of Sysiphus."

Professor bottle...Most interesting to cite Camus in your discussion of the serve. I have to admit that when reading your dissertation on the service motion I become quite lost...but that is only in the sense as in when one reads Henry Miller trying to decipher just what it is that he makes of love. You see...I realize it is all about you and whether I get all of it or none of it is of no consequence...ala Miller. Recently I spent a couple of hours on the phone with dear old Dad talking about Camus' Meursault's contemplation of facing the guillotine. His resignation...his indifference...his acceptance of his fate.

I remember my dear old coach talking about being fatalistic when hitting a second serve. You might as well go ahead and swing at it and accept the consequences...that's better than trying to pussy it in and missing or having it pounded down your pie hole.

I cannot wait to find out just what it is in "the happiness of Sysiphus" that has perked your interest. Sorry to interrupt...please continue. Love your stuff!