A New Year's Serve

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Snaky Coil as Developmental Cue

A developmental cue, it seems to me, is a cue that gets forgotten once the development is assimilated.

Snaky coil will happen back toward the rear fence in a serve that starts with a level takeback.

The hips and shoulders reverse while keeping that sequence in both directions.

During forward hips rotation the up-till-then level traveling arm rises while tilting racket toward the net.

Anatomy, not willpower causes the bending turning elbow to rise.

If bod were not rotating forward, the arm and even the hand would go around it a bit more.

This is a delicate and crucial part of the serve. One might almost think of an oncoming something snagging itself in the crooking arm.

But hand doesn't go farther around since slow forward bod rotation cancels that out.

As sum of the little motions the hand stays stationary but rises.

One should enjoy having all forward serves initiate from the same known place.

Options during the hand rise include wrist 1) keeping flat, 2) tilting to max to left, 3) tilting a little to left, 4) opening back toward rear fence which some people would call "extension. The term "extending the wrist" confuses me however so I refuse to say it.

A certain strangeness can be good if it helps one remember something. The elbow could be thought to push the hand or to pass by the hand. In either case the hand always rises to the same spot straight above where it was.

Note: I realize that any wrist adjustment will change the locus of the hand. Roughly though that locus stays the same.

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Achtung, Rotorded Servers, Bring Back Das Kabelgewirr Arm (Spaghetti Arm)

Rotorded servers have a hölle of a time. Maybe dey need new rotors in the front veels of dere car and a new rotor in den little cave in dere internal shoulder. I suspect, reader, dat you have stubborn adhesions und kurz drive belts in dere.

Everybody knows where LP (low point) should happen, next to recht beine, nicht wahr? Well, for purpose of this experiment I haff decided to unknow dat.

I vant a higher low point where arm twisting vun vay starts to twist the udder vay, and am not at all sure dat earlier achievement of vun's normal low point, however feeble an attempt dat ist, helps.

So I suche zum total squeeze of the two halbiert of the arm-- one of few good resources a rotorded server has-- not to happen until der big reversal, at which point hand vill try to be lower than den compressed elbow.

Try dat, rotorded servers, and report back with no expectation by jedermann.

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Achtung, Rotorded Servers, Bring Back Das Kabelgewirr Arm (Spaghetti Arm)

Rotorded servers have a hölle of a time. Maybe dey need new rotors in the front veels of dere car and a new rotor in den little cave in dere internal shoulder. I suspect, reader, dat you have stubborn adhesions und kurz drive belts in dere.

Everybody knows where LP (low point) should happen, next to recht beine, nicht wahr? Well, for purpose of this experiment I haff decided to unknow dat.

I vant a higher low point where arm twisting vun vay starts to twist the udder vay, and am not at all sure dat earlier achievement of vun's normal low point, however feeble an attempt dat ist, helps.

So I suche zum total squeeze of the two halbiert of the arm-- one of few good resources a rotorded server has-- not to happen until der big reversal, at which point hand vill try to be lower than den compressed elbow.

Try dat, rotorded servers, and report back with no expectation by jedermann.

Nope, not enough zip. The rotorded servr needs his runway to start at the lowest point he physically can achieve from a high arm..

He needs his final 180 degrees of racket length turn up up upward path to the ball to include ESR and ISR (and ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and any other alphabet soups he can think of, Wheaties too, the breakfast of champions-- Popeye does it with spinach).

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Disappeared Forehands

It is not often that good forehands get replaced by better ones.

And I am fond of three of my old ones, the Ziegenfuss, the McEnrueful and the Half-Baton.

Why even bother to describe them again? They are gone.

But could one of them make a comeback? I doubt it. The McEnrueful certainly was very good for low balls.

But so are the Federfores and Ellie-bams used interchangeably but especially the Federfore.

I see the Federfores as having many elements the most crucial for me being the spearing that happens simultaneously with the turning inside out of the bod.

Once spearing is accomplished one can properly fan the racket, use full baton or propeller, make angles sharper more consistently than ever before, deal with low balls by using the fan mechanism without much bod, deal with high balls by fanning racket to above level with the court-- for contact.

And the Ellie-bam also keeps evolving ever into a harder-hit shot.

I don't think I'm laying down excessive theory or wishfulness here but speak experientially.

Once one fully grasps the gradually straightening arm concept, one can slow the arm first part down farther and speed up the delayed pivot. First arm part begins to feel more like a catch.

Best, the two shots can be hit with same strong eastern grip and same tilt in loop toward the side fence. They can aspire to same separation and contact point.

Finding ideal contact point is worthy of an open-minded quest by anyone.

It might be an inch farther this way or that way than one thought.

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O Rotorded Ones-- Eliminate all ESR from Your Triceptic Blast

Put the ESR (external shoulder rotation) first before that quick triceptic extension.

Make ESR into a positioning and loading rather than kinetic tool.

A good boxer utilizes a short punch mixed in with ISR (internal shoulder rotation). So be like him in some respects but not in others. Manny Pacquaio's palm inside his fist turns from vertical toward horizontal.

My last service experiment was so negative (# 3842) that I can imagine a jury of peers advising me to conduct no more experiments ever.

Acceptance of this sickly biased viewpoint however would be neurosis rather than science.

Immediately here one can see that full wrist tilt, if employed for a kick serve, now becomes kinetic in that the tilt coordinates with the entire combination of triceptic blast and ISR. The ISR and the the wrist tilt now go in the same direction, hence the coordination possibility. The tail end of the tilt then may even happen on the ball (though how could one know without a maximum frame-per-second camera).

Any positive result to this experiment will be due to light rather than heavy racket work zipping upward.

The arm loading section of the serve, still quite far back, can include pre-loading of the ISR, i.e., the shoulder tries to rotate internally while it still is rotating externally.

Everything is calibrated toward racket head speed, not racket head heft. When racket head heft happens, it is lugubrious flaw in some attempted but not fully achieved tennis serve. Heft comes properly from the bod.

Another idea is to toss early so that upward force from front leg combines with inversion of the elbow to thrust racket tip farther down.

This service design is big departure-- precisely when to toss will need to be worked out.

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If you want to make Sharp Angles get away from the ball.

If you want to grow up to be a big big man, get a little dirt on your hands.-- Maori song

It may start with volleys. You could have noticed that your stab volleys, taken way out to the side with a fully outstretched arm can be the sharpest volley angle you ever hit.

Part of the reason is that when hand is far from core it curves around more. Test this premise with the "spear" part of a forehand. "Shine a flashlight at the ball," says Nick Bollettieri-- the same idea. The racket butt points at the ball with good result.

Wait a minute. If you crowd the ball while pointing the stick end of the racket at the ball and spear with independent arm movement at the ball, you won't get racket around as far as if you keep racket butt angled at the ball but swing from the shoulder in a circular path to the outside.

I am very taken with Tim Mayotte's generous advice in the current issue to all tennis players on the subject of tightening up one's unit turn. He loves to see very connected unit turns in which arm movement is reduced to nothing or a minimum. And knows that without this economy the ground stroke is not going to be good.

He believes that anybody can go in this direction and feel immediate improvement.

I gladly accept this advice which once again leads me to wonder just how much connectivity vs. arm independence should exist in any ground stroke.

And so, in a mimed forehand using real racket but imaginary ball, we "shine our flashlight" at the ball while crowding it.

The racket is still rotating around the body, just in a more vertical direction which holds tip farther back while opening up the strings.

Compare this with similar arm independence but in a curved path to the outside. Compare the two likely contact points for aim that will occur when racket wipes or twirls or acts like a small plane propeller.

Racket tip gets farther around with bigger separation, right?

But how connected can one of these forehands be, i.e., how much independent arm motion before the easy twirl could we eliminate?

I see a down the line forehand working well out of that formula.

For a sharp crosscourt off of same rough footwork, however, some independence of flashlight might be called for.

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Just Spinning it in

Proposed Gift to the Rotorded Servers of the World

Energy Wedged into the Ground

Service Tried First Gently to See how Knee Replacement likes it

Service Cartwheel Eschewed

These new ideas could not come at a worse time--during the day before a night when one deeply wishes to hold serve.

One squashes ideas however at one's own peril. Get in that habit and you don't have any.

The desire infusing the proposal is for more upwardness of serve even when that exigency seems thoroughly impossible.

We have been, it should be said, creeping nearer to experiential possibility with small changes and steps.

Level takeback at shake hands distance from core becomes bedrock. To cement it further, one actually does shake hands, the one with the other through the racket. Which is another way of saying that one's two hands stay together through the very solidly connected first phase of the takeback (or takearound, if you prefer).

Now, with on edge racket still parallel with court while continuing back, the vertically palmed left hand performs its parabolic toss.

Now, in a single constellation of movement, the rear leg skates bend into the bod while sending bod around a bit, while elbow rises, while arm which had become very straight now bends, while whole racket and arm arrangement actively tilts forward, while crooking elbow appears to ready itself to catch something.

The rear heel has risen. The tossing arm has continued its non-hesitant path into pressure down into the ground and clench back into the bod.

The essence in all this however lies in what the two legs do, in how they oppose one another with dissimilar drives.

The rear leg skates one's gently rotating butt out toward the net.

The front leg immediately counters by straightening with vigor, by braking, one could say, on a hypotenuse back and upward toward the rear fence.

Leg straightening as always becomes part of the total bod straightening as in the mantra "Fire the extensors, baby."

Can one successfully drive all the straightening along the same backward vector slanting upward?

Can the slantwise leg, body and arm extension continue to drive one's energy, wedge-like, down into the ground?

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS ALL THE TIME.

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Horrible serves last night. Back to the drawing board. Ground strokes went horrible, too, despite a pretty good hit before the competition started. The two things that were working were backhand slice and some volleys. At least I didn't have kidney stones like one of my partners. Finally I reverted to my McEnrueful, a forehand I had sworn I wasn't going to hit any more. Then my other partner and I won the last set 6-1 . I guess the moral of the story is that you should never eschew a forehand that you can hit softly and which is great for service returns.

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Backhand Exercise that may be Crucial to Full One Hand Topspin on Backhand Side

The hands go down and grasp opposite thighs, right over left. One shoots them up in the air as high and powerfully as one can. Body, legs and arms will be involved.

This gives some indication of how right arm can rise without being the whole story.

The arm from close to rear hip will pull racket butt toward the ball first then rise more steeply than in the exercise.

The wrist will unflex and extend the opposite way during the throw up at the sky. The arm will roll at the same time. The combination will increase racket head speed in frame direction while also getting racket tip sharply around to compensate for the lack of any such turn any time there is a maximum of steepness in any stroke.

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A New Set of Strokes to Replace Old Bad Ones

Forehand:

1) Budge-bam replaces the Ellie-bam, which previously replaced the Beasley-bam. J. Donald Budge greatly respected Ellsworth Vines and the pace he could generate, in fact attributed a win over Fred Perry to the superior pace that he and Vines maintained in a match played shortly before.

Both Budge and Mercer Beasley, Vines' coach, used the same exhortative in their instructional materials, viz., almost throw the racket directly at the target to give yourself good dwell and follow through.

Vines however ultimately rejected Beasley's behind the back preparation in favor of launching his ever straightening stroke from out in the slot.

And Budge's forehand altogether rejects the gradual arm straightening used by Beasley and Vines both. His arm already is substantially straight and at good distance out thus requiring him or any player to do one less thing.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ennis/part_02/)

To my mind the Ellie-bam and the Budge-bam are the same flat shot, with the difference that Budge's arm is already quite straight with elbow out from core at all phases of the stroke (I repeat myself on purpose). The cue to separate hands when racket is pointing at 45 degrees to net is key. One thing I take away is that unit turn with both heels turned is by then completed and flows into further turn of the shoulders connected to left hand pointing across over solidly planted legs.

2) Grigor Dimitrov variation of the Federfore replaces my own variation. Of especial note is that Dimitrov not only raises racket tip early like Roger Federer, but does so to the inside of Federer, so that racket butt points slightly in direction of right fence.

Why would one do such a thing? My idea is that the move allows one to pull the distanced racket farther back with hand on the throat before the two hands separate. Also, dog pat then beomes a smooth chop out and down and back into the mondo.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...5%20240fps.mp4)

Instructive as well: Forward hips turn occurs earlier than in a Budge-bam. Forward hips turn in a Budge-bam or Ellie-bam is delayed to last possible instant and can even determine where the ball goes.

I see this early forward hips turn as essential in turning bod inside out and slanting shoulders down at ball in most Federfores.

Backhands:

1) Flat backhands can be hit with level shoulders throughout-- one less thing to go wrong.

2) Full topspin backhands can be hit with downward tilt of shoulders ending in upward tilt of shoulders with gradual arm roll combining with curled wrist gradually turning inside out.

Serve:

Oh yeah, the serve. Down and up together with the up part shallow and extending far back behind one's neck. Hand to stay behind neck even while approaching neck to form orthodox trophy position, i.e., with racket perfectly on edge directly above the hand.

From there the wrist can tilt to left a little or a lot or not at all in which case it may open back toward rear fence.

All of these serves carry the delay of a point up at the sky no matter how long or brief (mine wants to be very brief). They generate more pace for me than the serves I have recently been playing with.

My main thought in saying this is that the serves are coming from farther back. Also, they go faster-- one can tell, and I am ever hopeful that my opponents will too.

It is easy to think that ISR is something exotic that happens only in kick, topspin and topspin slice serves.

In fact, it happens on all serves, even end over end tomahawked serves.

If when one opens wrist post trophy one also squeezes arm while knifing elbow forward a little, one can line up perfectly behind a slightly rightward toss with no loop at the bottom whatsoever.

If one then uses the same form without laying back the wrist one will have invented low slice to complement one's topspin slice.

To summarize, from classical trophy position, one can tilt wrist and racket path to left. But one can directly tilt projected racket path to right as well. In either option a full squeezing together of the two halves of the arm can occur.

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Further Exploration of the Budge-Bam

The comments under the Tennis Player article are extremely useful to someone who wants this shot. We learn from the sharp-eyed intelligences there that 1) wrist layback is mild and 2) there is some backward and forward arm roll characteristic of the shot.

Additionally-- and get over your foolish habit, reader, of caring about whom any tennis technique knowledge comes from-- the burst of acceleration at the end is primarily due to delayed hips pivot.

In his book HOW TO PLAY TENNIS Mercer Beasley even includes a photograph in which one can't see the racket.

Beasley attributes that racket's invisibility to fast hips pivot.

Next of several questions: In the article's repeating video (furniture one), how does racket get to ball before the pivot takes over?

From independent arm motion which will work? Nope, not if you study when left elbow disappears around the bod.

So backward and forward supernumerary shoulders motion duplicates itself.

The shot is extremely connected and solid like a good baseball swing.

All the arm does if it does anything is roll a bit this way and then a bit that way.

And footwork in at least one of the videoed forehands defies usual thought about sequence of foot pivots.

Inner foot pivots first then outer foot pivots as part of the prop step.

ONO, THAT CANNOT BE. THE TWO FEET PIVOT TOGETHER. OR OUTER FOOT PIVOTS FIRST, INNER FOOT SECOND JUST AS I LEARNED. AND JESUS LOVES ME BECAUSE THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO!

Well, it's time to relearn a few things without necessarily giving up what one already knows.

To mondo or not to mondo: that is a good one.

Mondo works in this shot, but the shot could be even better if one simply takes a bit of mild wrist layback as part of combined first move.

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Slow to the Ball; Fast from the Ball?

I'm talking about my new spondee forehand, my Budge-bam, the smoothest tennis stroke this boy has ever launched.

Why I had to wait to the age of 78 to acquire it, I never will understand.

I'm just propped here on my back, listening to the coolest jazz possible, tripping on the excellence of a shot I haven't even hit once yet in a match.

Here it is-- just look at it. (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ennis/part_02/) Unit turn to 45 degrees to the net and then the shoulders continue in point-across supernumerary turn.

You can reverse the rhythm of the extra bit of turn back to the ball and then pivot.

A wait position with both hands probably a few inches extra in front of one's bod helps the feel of a long, slow lever.

And then if you get a little bored hit a Grigorfore to enjoy Grigor Dimitrov's inward rake of the racket head at the top of a big loop.

But I'm looking at the J. Donald Budge forehand on another day and therefore am seeing it a slightly different way. Between the backward and forward motion, the racket head falls a little-- the true demarcation point.

It's all smoothness but accelerating smoothness from that point onward.

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How Bad is it to Notice Things?

To hit a Budge-bam as in the second video down, do you want to lower hand the way J. Donald Budge does?

In other of his filmed forehands here, the hand stays virtually at a single level. Something always comes down but usually it is just the racket head.

The strokes seem so level. So the exception here-- down with hand and racket head to the ball and then up again from the ball is notable.

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Countering One's Wimpy Ground Force

Figuring out how to deliver more downward pressure through one's feet ought to be easier in imitation of a simpler forehand like that of J. Donald Budge.

The language of Tony Roche could be useful. He speaks of a "prop step" on both sides of the bod.

When one props then, one should make sure that more than one's body weight goes down.

Same thing on the step-out. Not a good idea to be light on one's feet just then. Better to take a hearty step that squats extra weight into the ground.

Third, as transverse stomach muscles bring racket to ball the hips can still be closing a tiny bit. Again, this sends more than one's body weight down.

While assuring essential delay of one's pivot.

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Backhand Exercise that may be Crucial to Full One Hand Topspin on Backhand Side

The hands go down and grasp opposite thighs, right over left. One shoots them up in the air as high and powerfully as one can. Body, legs and arms will be involved.

This gives some indication of how right arm can rise without being the whole story.

The arm from close to rear hip will pull racket butt toward the ball first then rise more steeply than in the exercise.

The wrist will unflex and extend the opposite way during the throw up at the sky. The arm will roll at the same time. The combination will increase racket head speed in frame direction while also getting racket tip sharply around to compensate for the lack of any such turn any time there is a maximum of steepness in any stroke.

There is tremendous use of legs in this description. And I don't think one should abandon the wrist motion included here just because some conservative players think that wrist is intrinsically unreliable. Sure, some risk is involved, but one can have other backhands in which this unique use of wrist ultimately sending hand ahead of the rod of one's forearm is excommunicated.

Here are three other ways to make oneself more diverse on the backhand side: 1) raise rear shoulder like a wave then lower it simultaneous with hips turn. When one shoulder goes down, I have noticed, the other one goes up; 2) hit the drive with shoulders level; 3) hit the drive with front shoulder kept down like Virginia Wade. I feel that this method of Wade squashes the swing to make its path more inside out.

To return to the interesting subject of slightly curled wrist next turning inside back (everybody agrees this is "interesting" even though they advise against it as sensible occurrence before or during the ball). A thing though that worries me is that in their response they never indicate that they have apprehended the full wrist movement, just speak of curled wrist and not the whole rest of the movement combining full arm roll with hand easing forward ahead of the stalk of one's arm.

"Easing" is a word that I now add to the overall description in an effort to reduce misunderstanding. The wrist itself doesn't add any power, only different positioning. And the total wrist movement from flex to extension (the latter a horrid but scientifically consistent term) must be very gradual to work. So gradual in fact that much but not all of it occurs after the ball.