A New Year's Serve

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Alternate BULL-BOY and Butterfly Variation of BULL-BOY

How else can one know which is better.

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Serves

Send both arms up together.

Send one arm up ahead of the other.

Send the other arm up ahead of the other.

How do these three experiments compare?

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Coyote and Roadrunner # 998: The Two Hands Stay Close Together Except for a Brief Fountain in Middle of the Serve

"Fountain" is the moment when toss hand finally departs toward net while hit hand finally departs toward rear fence-- a temporary situation after which the two hands come together (almost) again.

Let us follow this plot with due diligence.

As hands drop together a clear option opens up. Maybe the left hand gets to relax but the right doesn't. The right can keep falling thanks to early ISR (internal shoulder rotation). This turn of elbow so that it points upward keeps both hands in the same low neighborhood.

But since slow is preferable to quick in the preamble of any serve, one can instead lag the racket hand (temporize) as arm goes up. This is the second option.

Whichever, toss must be high. If it's not high there won't be time for a good plot. We're doing down together up together here. But instead of thinking that the two hands go up together (even though that is true) think that the toss hand goes up with the hit elbow.

This keeps the arms close like two insect feelers reaching up at the sky. It also keeps the hitting palm severely down. One feeler may be slightly bent compared to the straight other.

The toss was high! This allows time now for hit hand to rearrange itself yet stay close to the toss hand almost as if performing inspection of a different part of it more to the back and lower down. This further allows time for right palm with imaginary mirror in it to shift its evil inspection to Vic Braden's famous imaginary cooties (imaginary we hope) on one's real head.

Once these two checks are complete the fountain spurts. This fountain is as much a fireworks fountain as a Roman fountain. Maybe it is a Roman candle.

Now leg thrust maximizes the ESR (external shoulder rotation). But one doesn't want to get fancy yet. We keep the image of a fountain as simple as possible. One hand goes one way. The other hand the opposite way. One's body thrusts straight up in between.

As we all should know by now from previous attempts at service improvement things get lighter and niftier and more difficult from this point.

To employ conical form, the body rotations have progressed from large circles to smaller and smaller circles until the ball itself becomes a tight circle.

(A single image for all this is a mat unrolling on a table. As that process proceeds the roll grows smaller and faster.)

Practically speaking, what does that mean-- one example please. Well, as arm extends the hand turns out. Following best advice, I like to thrust my forefinger up at the sky while not holding a racket or anything else just to self-explain the next specific and minimal motion to myself. Thumb circles forefinger in a clockwise or curve ball throwing direction.

Then comes big ISR and scrape of ball and bend of arm to form a hoop, i.e., the two hands come close together again.

Key points: The right hand inspects the left hand then inspects top back of head.

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This is who knows or cares what year of "A New Year's Serve." There is no reward for this work other than a good serve and good other strokes.

(I know they are good because an unsolicited and very professional teaching pro just told me so. Of course she may have been sweetening me up in the hope that I will buy some private lessons.)

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Brent Abel on Swing Freedom

"You can have the greatest stroke technique of all time, but if you can't perform 2 simple skills over and over and over, then you can't use that great stroke technique, and the numbers are going to pile up under your unforced error column.

1 - footwork that creates the ideal spatial distance away from the path of the incoming ball so that you can potentially have ... swing freedom.

2 - allow yourself to 'wait' for the just the right time to make contact ... the ideal timing that unlocks swing freedom.

Most players rush that contact moment, get ahead of themselves, and they're actually too early --- a hair too far out in front.

For example, if your topspin forehand is landing short over there --- the chances are you're making contact too far in front and not getting enough contact time.

We tend to rush getting rid of the ball. We're just not confident allowing enough time to let the ball get into 'the pocket'.

So, if you're making too many unforced errors and giving away points to your opponents, then it's time to forget stroke technique for awhile, and instead, get out there and discover what is your unique spatial distance away from the ball AND what's the timing that allows the ball to get into the pocket."

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Serves

Send both arms up together.

Send one arm up ahead of the other.

Send the other arm up ahead of the other.

How do these three experiments compare?

Send hit arm up first, temporizing all the way. The hit arm goes all scarecrow, but at least the elbow got emphatically high while toss arm took a nice snooze down by the side.

Now one adds rowing to the delayed toss to shift the action from one side of the bod to the other.

The rhythm is down together, dead stick for toss arm. If one likes this enough one will not proceed to the two other experiments.

But what have we created? Did we really want to see another Star Wars movie with little pods flitting about like drain bugs?

Stop fighting reality.

The back of hit hand now inspects the toss hand as slow racket threatens to decapitate.

But misses your head altogether thanks to fleeing shoulders and timely fountain spurt.

Leaving serve to proceed with increased stir around and down at once.

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Up Together Replaced by Up and Sideways Together

There is snow on the courts. Will play inside on Friday night, but with no way to tweak the new service design before then-- except at dream level. In fact have been cross-country skiing instead of taking my basket of balls to a court with a piece of plastic tape stretched from post to post and well attached with duct tape at either end.

So here's a new idea for a hitting-arm-to-go-up-first serve. After that unique lift with racket tip pro-actively drooping down behind, and toss hand docile and still and left behind, start to inspect the toss hand with the hit hand before the toss hand arrives at its full height.

In spite of everything, you (I) as server still get to move both hands at the same time.

Hands no longer go up together although they fell together. And managed to stay moderately close thanks to the drooping or temporization. As hit hand now begins to inspect toss hand, they resemble sportive aircraft.

This slows down sideways travel of the hit hand as well-- an added benefit.

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Apology for Post # 3975 with its Allusion to the Butterfly Stroke in Swimming

Easing the Contortion in a Strong Eastern BULL-BOY

Thus we nudge the swim term breaststroke one notch toward butterfly.

Perhaps there is too much idealism is this provisionally revised shot, perhaps not.

I had the forehander swimming backward. Replace butterfly with "fountain" or fleur de lis or butterfly backstroke.

No no, don't do that. Read on instead.

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Re Brent Abel in Post # 3979: Do What He Says without Doing What He Says

Learn personal separation and how to wait ball into pocket.

But don't give up stroke modification while doing this.

Stroke modification is too much fun. So what if it causes you to lose a match or two.

More immediately, your willingness to modify better enables you to meet any stroking challenge.

If as Brent Abel says you're not letting the ball get into the pocket, you have the opportunity to turn your shoulders even more.

So viciously elbow someone behind you, keeping in mind that this has nothing to do with your Type III status since you still will be in the slot-- the slot turns back the same extra amount with you.

And needle the elbow (press the two halves of the arm together near the beginning of this).

And face the strings at right rear fence post instead of right fence.

And extend the arm back along the newly forming slot just as fast or faster than you did before.

And swing with the shoulders while subordinating the hips as your scissoring of your arm melds into your rolling of it with high follow through over yoke or left shoulder.

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Needle Nose Forehands

Daytime is the time for fanciful speculation when one will play at night. Unless one is convinced and determined not to indulge oneself in this way at all.

O Lawdy Lawdy how fanciful speculation can spoil one's game.

Am reading UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe, perhaps the most influential novel ever written though surely not the best. That is why I use the expression "O Lawdy Lawdy."

Could I not show up on one of these Friday nights, just once, with a mind clear of unseasoned ideas?

Amazing how snow can take away one's self-feed time. Especially if one goes cross-country skiing instead.

My chance of untried needle nose forehands working tonight is about the same as happily crossing from one bank of the Ohio River to the other by finding all the connected ice floes.

But I'm going to try some needle-nosery just the same. Think how lucky Ivan Lendl was to groove his while still a boy with all the king's horses and all the king's men of the future Czech trying unsuccessfully to convince him of the error of his ways and to return to the bosom of humanity.

The needle nosed elbow will put the racket way back by the rear curtain.

The eschewing of kinetic chain will put the ice floes in the Connecticut River where I used to live.

The starting of shoulders forward with no stupid pause while one tries to activate one's hips first can finish straightening one's arm automatically. While accelerating the racket into a new arm clench then wipe.

Ivan would finish nicely on balance with racket caught off to left. Not you (I). You will go from mechanical acceleration to more organic arm re-scissoring then wiping with finish over left shoulder or yoke.

If wildly spraying, failing to hit the ball cleanly or to hit it at all, you (I) will return to simple cue of facing strings at right fence.

That happens anyway, just a bit farther back.

Initial success, as with so many other new shots, depends, I believe, on precise understanding of every step along the way before one puts them all together.

Very similar to learning a new language.

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A Ravolutionary Speaks: You're all chewing on a kinetic chain.

And that's why you're not better than you are.

It's bad for your teeth and bad for your tennis.

Me, I eschew the kinetic chain, threw it in the Hudson and Connecticut rivers at Constitution Island-- West Point and Middletown. (-- = 2 copper links inserted by mistake in the 3 chains that went across to stop the British.)

Okay, sorry, I made up the part about the copper links and Middletown, but comes the ravolution I beat you.

Am not there yet but on my way.

I and you too if you care to join us will start our forehands with our shoulders.

We'll call ourselves John Lendlists.

Like Ivan Lendl we'll use a unit turn-- that's starting backswing with the shoulders.

But will start the foreswing with the shoulders too.

Arbeit macht frei! Make America great again! Subordinate the hips!

Yes, use those babies but not first. Achtung! They flow mit den shoulders.

It's a New Year. Give peace a chance. That's all we're sayin.

See Ihnen on der courts.

(https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/09...t-point-chain/)

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For the Tennis Player Who Refuses to Think

I'm right with you. In my needle nose forehand I have one part that is a complete crap-shoot and I'll probably leave it that way.

If it works it will be a miracle.

For orientation, just so we can perfectly locate said mystery, let us review our backswing sequence, glossing a bit as we go.

To start, one lowers racket tip like Ivan or Pete rather than raise it like Roger.

Going loosey-goosey in one's arm creates the needled elbow one wants. But is elbow itself traveling independent of the turning shoulders? I don't think so. Well maybe a little. What would the harm be in adding a bit of elbow speed to that provided by turning bod?

That way we could use the vicious image of gouging a person behind one with combined shoulders pivot and spear throw of the elbow adding up to major damage. A rabbit punch? The thing outlawed in boxing?

But remember, the arm is squeezing together at the same time as if to thread elbow through the eye of a needle. This squeeze has the potential to reduce momentum to manageability.

For orientation again, we refer to the NTA (national tennis association) guideline of Joe Cockersham. Joe's guideline bisects every forehand backswing into two parts although we would prefer one.

First part, bod. But in this special case at the same time spearing as one narrows and threads.

Second part, arm opens out as half of a breaststroke. Well, how much should it open out? As much as feels good.

I propose leaving some bend in the arm, don't you see, so that shoulders, about to rotate, can have the pleasure of whirl-straightening the last bit.

Just before arm scissors all over again. Before arm rolls. With all of this a single train.

There is plenty of crap-shoot at any phase of any tennis stroke, but the crap-shoot I wish to emphasize (I won't say "stress" since stress is the enemy) is exact degree to which arm opens out.

And whether, mechanically speaking, this ploy adds easy, unselfconscious power to the raspy wipe.

Snow outside. No self-feed. Too many people going to parties. Tennis social canceled. Will have to wait for any unveiling until the champagne mixer next week.

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One of the Very Coolest Things about Tennis is that it Teaches People Humility

I refer to myself in returning hot serves. Hot serves are a challenge for anyone but in particular for aging tennis players.

One just isn't as quick, at 79, as one used to be. So one has to be smart. There is no other choice.

Recently I tried to go with the over-conceptualization of playing with four forehands only.

But none of the four worked in returning hot serves.

Don't hit flat forehands, I told myself. Wrong. Flat forehands, abbreviated, were what got the ball back.

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Homework

Study the Doug King, Brent Abel and Tom Stow relationships.

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Here is the Plot: to Stop Driving All Mystery out of One's Forehand

But does this mean that one should drive all logic out of one's forehand? I don't think so. You're going to have, if all goes well, mystery and logic working together side by side.

So where exactly in the sketch I have outlined does mystery reside? At the corner of Bend Street and Get Straight Alley. And in one's mondo or flip too.

But now logic, offended by this diagnosis, wishes more fully to participate and if truth be known to dominate.

Full mondo or half-mondo? logic inquires. As moderator, I think it wise to give logic full rein. Logic as has been demonstrated repeatedly will spend itself.

So we all will listen with many of us quite irritated, but then the bore will be finished, and somebody else can pick up the thread if not mystery herself.

"Answer the damn question, sir, mondo or half-mondo?"

"Half-mondo."

"That would be where wrist bends racket up-- early-- or up and back a bit later, right?"

"Do it early. Just face strings at side fence. That leaves roll-down of the forearm for later."

"What if each one of us decides for himself?"

Also, I silently think, if I've got racket tip lowering during big shoulders sweep backward, I can't ask wrist at same time to lift racket tip-- absurdity and conflict and impossibility that wouldn't feel good.

"The arm straightens," logic meantime continues like a marching army, "then it scissors. Then it rolls."

But how much does it originally straighten in the backswing? There is the mystery. How much whirl-straight will the new improved and very big shoulders sweep be permitted to effect?

Moral: Big smooth shoulders sweep backward. Big smooth shoulders sweep forward. (Fun to do this while lying on back on the floor.) With a couple of arm shenanigans relegated to solo status in between.

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Float the BS 2

Backswing 1 and Backswing 2 is distinction for training purpose only, one's training wheels. Take them off and you have a single movement albeit with floating feel at the end, a tossed spray.

What you end up with is big shoulders turn/sweep back; big shoulders turn/sweep forward; tossed spray in between.

Practice this on the floor on your back, rolling like an itchy horse.

The float is the variable moment when you wait and time, same as for a volley.

Mechanically speaking, wrist cocks and arm finds its desired length.

Count float to 7, to 5, to 2, to 1.

Regardless, what is the rhythm of this shot?

1-2 .