A New Year's Serve

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Pierre-Hughes, not Victor Herbert

Pierre-Hugues Herbert, the 2016 Wimbledon and 2015 U.S. Open doubles champion, takes his arm way back straight to begin his service motion. This is good method for any Braden-style palm-down serve.

One can bypass slow-down or stoppage in trophy position in favor of continuous motion but still need that original scope, i.e., considerable distance between hand and back of head for what happens next.

That would be a squeeze together of the two halves of the arm along with inversion of the elbow to create a 180-degree runway up to ball along right side of bod.

Every serve should use the full 180-degree range no matter one's flexibility. If this has to place elbow unhealthily close to one's head and bod sobeit. Maybe one can be lucky then and never hurt oneself.

I am for aiming knife-edge of racket close to right of ball for a flat serve with a little slice on it, knife-edge close to left side of ball for flat with a little kick on it; more to left for kick serve, more to right for slice serve.

If one hits a wimpy kick serve, it could be that knife edge was not close enough to left edge of ball when one finally humped wrist to tilt from left; maybe too the contact was too low.

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Rob his Brain or not?

One California player who is famous for his one hand backhand said this: "Regarding the wrist, I feel as though my wrist is flexed back as it approaches contact (at the bottom of the backswing and just before contact) and then rotates upward to a convex position at the top of the stroke...

"The racquet is actually used to create resistance and more tension in the shoulder...creating more speed once the larger muscle groups overpower the resistance..."

A dyslexic person might confuse convex with concave here unless he realized that concave upside down IS convex.

But if one accepts the above passage as wisdom and wants to apply it to a one hander in which arm extends gradually and late, he might accept the classical image of a swordsman about to draw his sticky implement from its sticky scabbard.

Arm could be straight then or it could be bent, right? I do bent because that works well with my slice and I seek constancy of method for both it and my topspin drive.

Another big design choice is among early and middling and late hips pivot.

I can see scapular retraction (think of clenching your shoulderblades together) as prime contributor to straightening of the arm during which wrist rolls to convex thus taking striings up quite steeply, and incorporate all of this in an arm from the shoulder lift along with extending legs up the same steep line to extremely high followthrough.

Finally, a big factor is body turning inside out during all this to take front shoulder from low to high.

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The Hunchwrist of Notre Dame

A member of the men's team at Notre Dame, number four I think, after reading Chris Lewit's book THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE, employed hunchwrist technology in his kick serve, which decision led him to defeating his corresponding opponent at Indiana University.

He found that he wanted to come at the ball with a straight wrist from right side of the ball.

His vigorous tilt of the wrist then sent energy in roundabout direction rather than downward as it would have if his wrist had been laid open to begin with.

A seamless transition from tilt to pronation and ISR (internal shoulder rotation) enabled his success.

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Against WIMBLEDON the Movie

Haven't got it.

Am still working on it.

The biggest challenge in tennis.

Can't imitate-- not when every model one chooses possesses a different flexibility.

Must therefore create.

Can't look forward to the ease and complacency that one will feel stepping up to the line.

That's far in the future. Or close in the future. Or not in the future. Eliminate the third possibility unless you decide to accept it.

Intractable problem. What does one do? Throw ideas at it. You only need a single one to come through.

And remember your one singles opponent who had a palm-down Pierre-Hugues Herbert takeback way way back, who made it all the way to the club final on his first serve.

And then in another tournament after his first serve went sour played me.

I don't think I said anything, just emoted great respect for the speed of his missing first serves.

He quit tennis. So the rumor went. But I can't believe either that or that I was the cause.

But I did beat him.

Because he didn't have a second serve. Well, why not? He had the right takeback.

Maybe. But I'm going to ensure that mine has a bit of lift in it, a shallow swoop down and up as part of both hands winding around and passing bod turning back.

A post down together and up together baseball windup au Vic Braden.

And a curvy, funky palm on edge toss no matter what anyone says or thinks.

And immediate continuation of the curving toss into a clench back into one's gut. Toss and clench as single motion. With clench to stop the forward hips rotation shooting energy down one's front leg through the court surface into the magma at the earth's core.

Which implies that hips rotation did happen even though one would love to rid oneself of it for this one particular serve.

No, hips rotation by now is essential part of my serves, even attempted kick. Which means bod must start turned way way around thus cleansing this serve of all disguise.

Maybe one can normalize stance at last moment and hit a slice or flat serve instead.

So elbow gets high, as high as one wants it, and this attainment of the heights is immediate.

Next the arm has looped with elbow high to the outside. Famous tilting of the wrist is incorporated in a slight tomahawking from right to left as right leg prepares to kick high toward right fence.

But where oh where is contact? Not too far left.

Suppose none of it works? Well, one can take pleasure in having eliminated chain pull, the grasping onto the steel eye of a big eyebolt bolted to the sky, the super-glue of one's toss hand stuck on a high shelf.

Though one will not have won the men's championship and Kirsten Dunce as in the film called WIMBLEDON.

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Another Idea to Throw at the Hardest Stroke Acquisition in Tennis

If Chris Lewit is as smart as I think, then tennis instruction as a whole is pretty dumb, or maybe it just missed a great opportunity to teach people better kick.

Here is what Google offers when one requests Hunch Wristed Serves in Tennis:
https://www.google.com/search?q=hunc...hrome&ie=UTF-8

These pictures might help a little, but one needs more information. Lewit's TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE is the best source I can readily find, but even there I need more information specifically on precisely when best to tilt one's wrist.

So meanwhile I plunge ahead with my own experiments, placing the hunch during contact, shortly before contact, a little of both or behind the back.

Today: behind the back. If I can get to the court a second time. Otherwise, I'll have to wait.

From Pierre-Hugues Herbert type palm down extreme takeback with arm straightened and high, rotate bod Braden-like into folding arm. But add wrist tilt right then. Of all positive tilt additions, this might be the one that feels most natural, while allowing one to proceed with one's normally attempted kick.

I believe that one's stance will have to be turned quite far around, to allow hips rotation that would be a bad idea in higher profile modes of kick.

Addition of wrist tilt as part of formation of natural loop can press racket tip ahead of where most likely it has always been. This will ensure strings coming at left side of ball with no other basic alteration.

Can't wait to try this. Hope springs eternal for booming kick.

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The Four Tennis Player Articles by Chris Lewit on Kick

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ick_page1.html

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/chris_lewit/constructing_the_kick/constructing_the_kick.html

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ck_part_3.html

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/chris_lewit/kick_serve_part_4/index.html

For whatever reason, I'm having trouble with two of these four links. The titles are correct but half of the links aren't. Simple solution: Go to "Classic Lessons" section of this website and get all four articles to come up that way.

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Grip for Kick and Maybe All Serves

I'm in a downtown Detroit school. My students are being tested for their reading ability in a computer lab. Because of humidity, the school will close at noon. We just had a "soft lockdown." I've already prepped for the one class I will teach this morning, which is scheduled to run for two hours. So much for the intellectual superiority in the world achieved by France when it shortened its class period to 40 minutes according to the poet and cut-shot artist in tennis Ezra Pound.

Time to write a tennis post.

Should a person of advanced age change his serving grip? Probably not, but i will anyway, just to see. Lifelong experiment is what I am about.

I work from the Tennis Player kick articles by Chris Lewit.

IIndex knuckle just to right of first pointy ridge. Base knuckle of same finger just to left of same pointy ridge. Bottom two fingers bunched. Top two fingers spread.

Report: Went to the court and tried it. And then reverted to my old grip, which is almost the same as what I use for volleys and backhand slice. Not that the Lewit grip wouldn't be better for many many players. Me, though, I'm not flexible enough in my inner shoulder (ski racing accident?) and feel that I need the extra racket tip lowness that happens when handle easily settles deep into cleft of hand.

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Crazier Backswings and Wider Choice of Charter Schools

The same basic shot, topspin serve or attempted kick, can be hit as bod rocket vs. arch-the-back.

Present form will permit a great slowdown accompanied by steeper, higher down-and-up of hitting arm only. One should try different nadirs. The backswing cannot be too slow.

The form is slow rotation of bod accompanied by slow rotation of both arms around the rotating bod and therefore going farther.

Bent left arm always travels level whereas the hitting arm describes a myriad of shapes-- everything you can think of.

Around more, around less, round more on the drop part than less, in in, in out, etc. With no possibility left unexplored.

One is looking for more effective serves, obviously.

Similarly, in being a substitute ELA teacher (the term "ELA teacher" is popularly presumed to be better than "English teacher") one soon discovers in Detroit, Michigan that every day-long sub teacher gig includes an invitation for long term sub work. The big thing is passing the TB and expensive FBI fingerprint test.

One therefore should experience maximum variety before locating a place where one can feel most effective.

Me, I seek a school in which, if I have to teach a two-hour class and I have 20 students, and there is an interesting choice of books lying about, and we have already done writing and reaction to the writing and I say, "Now we're going to have free reading time," 20 students will walk over to the shelves and pick out a book and start reading it.

Not three students and the teacher, as happened yesterday, with 17 students deciding that this was playtime.

The book I chose to read was CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS by Rudyard Kipling.

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A First Windup to Try: Hands Start from their Usual Position of Being Together

Right hand then clears left by five inches.

Oscar-haters could love this since Oscar hates the influence of baseball on American tennis.

Now the two hands start moving at either constant or widening separation.

Backward knee and hip rotation chimes in at a time of your own choosing.

Hitting arm goes back and up any way you want, in little arrhythmic curliques, if you like, or perhaps in some type of smooth arc or straight line. The toss hand can get ready, too, with unexpected direction or movement. And computers can stop putting a red line under "curliques," which is a perfectly good and correctly spelled word.

Report: Didn't like the extra five inches in which to get nervous. Right arm can go down with gravity or assisted by gravity though as left arm does nothing. Which still opens variety which was the idea. I believe more possibility opens up with a baseball pitcher type windup than with traditional down together up together form despite the serenity that so much gravity offers-- sorry.

Also, I found the tip that seano reported on in the discussion he has been having with John in "Questions for Me" section to be useful for someone like me. At least when I tried to have elbow higher than hand at reversal point for internal shoulder rotation I immediately got better serves.

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Is the Ellie-bam the same as the ELA-bam?

Stay tuned, radio viewers.

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Change of Direction?

When I get tired of working on my serve, maybe I can think about the following:

We are great fools. "He has spent his life in idleness," we say. "I have done nothing today." What, have you not loved? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. "If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do." Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all. To show and exploit her resources Nature has no need of fortune, she shows herself equally on all levels and behind a curtain as well as without one. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.-- Montaigne

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Instrument

But a tennis racket is a stringed instrument. That is why Welby Van Horn did not encourage his students to use string dampeners.

Nor is there anything more remarkable in Socrates, than the fact that in his old age he made time to take lessons in dancing and playing instruments, and considers it well spent.-- Montaigne

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More Feel in the Wrist

Down and up together serves have advantage in their use of gravity for repetition and solace, but at the same time are a bit mechanical.

A student of the game is too often apt to be trying to figure out when and how much to alter his wrist.

I therefore propose a baseball windup serve in which the racket starting from on edge position opens gradually but never to its full range.

This is a serve in which the wrist may tilt all in a rush-- at contact.

Thus, in the windup and even into much of the forward action, opening of the wrist is spaced out as much as is humanly possible, in other words is extremely gradual and slow.

And, in the contact, the wrist tilts (flexes) as abruptly as possible, thus joining with the abruptness of pronation and ISR right then.

The methodology of wrist is therefore "nuclear" to use the Mark Papas term.

And yet the nuclear explosion is a controlled one.

Controlled by amount of opening and closure.

Should wrist tilt even be happening at contact?

Those are other questions (and experiments).

Wrist tilt, incidentally, is a special procedure used only in such serves as kick, topspin and topspin slice according to Chris Lewit in THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE.

At least one separate caption writer on the internet has wrist tilt happening before contact and then ulnar deviation happening during the contact.

I, because of all the expressed variety in this topic distrust everyone and go with my own service experiments (which again I barely trust, the correct attitude for experiment as taught in science classes in college).

One place where people go wrong, I feel, is near the bottom of the behind-the-back racket drop.

Racket tip lowness is born of dynamic conflict between leg drive and the shoulder and forearm.

What did I just say? "Shoulder and forearm." Not wrist. When you add wrist into the equation you introduce a joker card but this isn't canasta.

So, perform any wrist adjustment-- forward or backward-- independently, I say, and be conscious enough of it to order precise amounts.

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Post Mortem: Straighten as You Go One Hand Backhand

I only hit three topspin backhands in the three sets of the whole evening but all three were winners.

So, two questions with possible answers: 1) Why didn't I hit more? Stupid, I guess and 2) What was I doing that was different?

Don't really know, do I? So don't know and don't tell and be happy and keep on doing it.

But that is the method of someone else. Me, I am a student of the game. I take as much pleasure in figuring something out as in winning the set.

(Sorry, my doubles partner, but that is the truth.)

And in figuring something out, I frequently go off in a new direction and lose whatever I started with.

Soon I will be at my twelve cracked, overgrown hard courts, the only person in the world ever to use them.

(I don't count the few people who, while taking walks in Rouge River Park, Detroit, come in one gate and go out another.)

The plan:

1) Build uniformity into the flying grip change so that in either case-- slice or topspin-- the wrist is straight if you look down at it.

2) Start building tension in the shoulder as part of the unit turn and step-out and flying grip change.

3) Realize that the unit turn does not affect the quality of the flying grip change since it takes both hands back equally. But both things are simultaneous.

4) Keep arms bent through the flying grip change.

5) The shot will be a topspin backhand, and you now can glom into the tremendous feel of a John McEnroe topspin backhand in that you like him will deal a playing card though from less curl of the wrist than he.

I don't remember when he curls his wrist or furthermore when he straightens his arm, but the topic here is meyouI, not he. He appears to be having a good life.

6) Like McEnroe, you get to do a solid (connected) lowering of the racket even though you have a different grip. Wrist will be slightly curled-- that is the point. And forward hips turn will lower the two bent arms. And you will continue to build conflict between your shoulder and your core-connected hands. And your wrist will transform from straight to slightly curled. So do all that now.

7) The front shoulder turned down as part of the unit turn. Did I say that? I guess not. It will stay down for slice, come up some for topspin. McEnroe's shoulder comes up for topspin-- has to if forward hips motion takes the rear shoulder down. But in the case of either slice or topspin one often won't have to take the racket back so high since one's tilting bod will place it where you want.

8) We're fast approaching a mystical launch ramp where we won't be, in spite of ourselves, so aware of what we think is going on. The arm now is able to rise steeply because of what the wrist will do, viz., become concave. Only concave will be convex because of roll of the arm.

9) The followthrough will be high, very very high, almost as tall as the top of a Chris Lewit one hand backhand.

10) Among the many accomplishments of the pulling left hand: It first changed the grip and then changed the wrist.

11) The change of wrist from straight to a bit curled was very subtle. More crucial, perhaps, is the continuing build-up of tension in the shoulder. The two hands are also involved in that.

12) The arm straightened through the forward swing. Was this abrupt or gradual? Gradual would probably be better, but I am determined not to think so much about whether scapular clench or other swing elements contributed to this task.

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Refinement of Baseball Type Windup

It's refinement if the serve improves, meddling if it worsens.

Racket is perfectly on edge as the two hands go level a bit faster than the bod rotating back.

But the right hand goes a bit faster than the left hand too. One way or the other the separation between the two hands grows.

The right hand should not circle beyond the shoulders line. Which predicts that if one keep racket on edge it will go up.

"Aha," you might say, "a down and up serve." How about level and up. With up a short piece of tract. The easing arm goes naturally up after it finishes getting straight.

Much can be hung on this subtle transition. First and foremost, the slow bod gets to reverse direction sans pause. The arm bends at the elbow but with slight pressure on the racket to close from elbow staying back. The parabolic tossing hand lifts and goes down and clenches into your middle as one smooth move.

The total serve gradually builds speed. The rear foot pressure (pressure but not "drive") thrusts out toward net but down front leg too without compromising the tilt it simultaneously puts into the bod.

Could front leg be bending a bit right then to grow the downward force? Quite a trick that. The falling toss hand lends a bit of downward weight. The forward rotating bod (going faster now) sends its force downward by splitting the upper and lower bod.

The strangest characteristic of this serve is that the gentle forward rotation of the shoulders, initial, becomes part of the parabolic toss (from edge on palm in my case).