A New Year's Serve

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Jacques Pepin Cooking School

If you've tossed too low all your life but just came to realize it, exaggerate. Throw the ball a mile high.

If you've tossed too high your whole life, turn the heat low and simmer down.

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Form a Hoop but Form it Late

A hoop snake doesn't retain its hoop shape all the time, after all. It sleeps, it goes to the bathroom, it pulls its trousers on like all the rest of us.

Oh well.

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Wretchedly Rendered Wrenched Forehand

Eye on the prize and nowhere else. Balance the new shot with beautiful forehands and name it after either of Cinderella's stepsisters if you must.

It builds on present progression.

Early shoulders move the hips slowly and passively out of the way.

But then they fire, wrench, snap, crackle, pop.

Any one of those verbs will complete weight transfer better than all of them employed together.

What snapped? One's mind? No, one's hips.

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Elbow over Elbow Must Go Deliberately Slow

Sort of like, in grammar, possessive its never splits.

Talking oneself into a good serve is anathema but is it an enema?

We bet today on a big hoop with elbows far apart but up higher the hands somewhat close together.

What almost completes the hoop is the direction of the racket itself.

Such a big hoop is formy and balletic and may seem precious, but who cares, if it works.

High enough toss and slowness are the essentials that will permit the rear elbow to rise over the front elbow without the front elbow going down.

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Don't Think that Down Together Up Together Means a Single Speed

In down together the toss hand and the racket tip can, if you choose, indeed fall at the same approximate speed.

But in up together, to keep nice balance, the hitting arm must go faster to go farther in the same rhythm.

Those are cues for the possible attainment of a better serve.

To be perfectly honest, however, the two hands can not go down at the same speed. Not if the "down" is to begin at the same time and end at the same time.

The racket tip, not the hitting hand, is what matches the fall of the toss hand.

So already the racket is going farther and faster than the toss hand and will continue to do so.

Of course one could assign the acceleration of either thing to gravity (32 seconds per second).

If you assign gravity to the toss hand, you'll have to speed up the hit hand.

So assign gravity to the racket tip instead.

Then you'll have to slow the toss hand going down.

Which will resemble the slowness of the initial backswing in golf and seem smart.

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Hoop Shape with Elbows Far Apart Can Apply to both Slow Action and Fast Action Serves

Think I held all night. But I had good partners. The serves weren't as fast as at other times but were high and loopy and effective.

The rule of constancy, I'm sure, precludes using fast and slow motions in the same match.

But that's where I was in my experiments. Toggling back and forth threw the opponents off.

In fast action serves, one can even use a bent arm toss if hand is an ice cream cone. That way one half of the hoop has been pre-formed.

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Roll out the Barrel. We'll have a Barrel of Fun.

You've heard of the Gordian Knot? How about Gordon's barrel?

Since I am playing around with my fast action serve along with my slow action serve right now, I think I'll get to a netless court without taking a string before the football starts this afternoon.

I like the idea of working on both types of serve at the same time. Keeps one from getting too wrapped up in either.

Brian Gordon's barrel, in one of his articles, starts off rotating slowly and horizontally.

Before one's bod has stopped its significant rotation it is whirling quickly and vertically.

Needed: Extreme stance, way turned around. And so much winding back with the bod that the front heel comes up.

Forward rotation then can be perfectly horizontal until the heel has come down. One can toss during this easy forward move.

Enough sprezzatura (https://www.google.com/search?q=spre...hrome&ie=UTF-8) may dictate a palm down Jack Kramerish rather than ice cream cone toss.

Just for the record: Brian Gordon colored his barrel brown. Later he changed the color to orange.

The way to get the most out of my fast action interpretation of this design, it seems to me (for I haven't tried it yet) is to move hips and shoulders perfectly together so that you resemble an orange or brown cylinder.

Now the foot is flat. Now with more sprezzatura, you fire rear leg in tandem with front shoulder straight up.

Front leg helps drive the front shoulder up.

There is conflict between rear leg and front shoulder.

That is the only way I can see of making the in-process-of-leftward-leaning shoulders whirl properly, namely with front shoulder holding steady and rear shoulder spinning over it.

Thinking too much will do you ill since sprezzatura is the main thing.

Reflect however that the front leg drives straight up while the rear leg screws up (take it as you will).

An attacking giraffe, whirling its lethal horns on its long neck, doesn't worry about keeping its eyes still and neither should you.

If you want to do that, reader, you should go with higher toss and slow, rhythmic action instead.

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mmmm Topspin Service Return.pdf

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Bottle, you have restored my faith in my quirky interest in tennis analysis and “I am not alone”. I love your handwritten notes in your Topspin Return of Seve pdf. My wife questions my sanity daily.

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Bottle, you have restored my faith in my quirky interest in tennis analysis and “I am not alone”. I love your handwritten notes in your Topspin Return of Seve pdf. My wife questions my sanity daily.

And she's right, of course. Thanks so much.

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Masturbatory (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/masturbatory), Steve, a Real Onion and Onanista, Gratuitously and Routinely Attacking a Post such as the Present one, Calling it Self-Indulgent when he is the Essence of Self-Indulgence himself. I am Talking about the Writing of Steve Navarro.

In addition, this post is the opposite of self-massage. It is entirely altruistic, designed for other tennis players who hopefully are women although there are very few female readers to be found at Tennis Player.

Girls, to get your groove on you need to become more furtive, and in case you are even one hundredth unsure of what "furtive" means we choose the word "sneaky" instead.

Am talking about return of serve and more specifically return of your serve.

Whoever is doing it needs to be thrown off of his or her rhythm.

Once you have absorbed the core idea of 180-degree separation of the elbows on all serves you can apply this principle to long action and short action serves both.

In fact you must do this in order to gain the level of sneakiness that ever voracious tennis requires.

Think Hsieh Su-wei while eschewing her serve. But use Hsieh Su-wei in your own serve (https://www.google.com/search?q=su+w...hrome&ie=UTF-8).

Now a long one, now a short one. Not in where it lands! No, keep em well-placed and deep. But long in tract like Pierre-Hugues Herbert, short in tract like Roscoe Tanner.

For such short action as his Roscoe had to abbreviate somewhere along the line and you can see this as his racket arm goes up bending then and not later.

Pretty good. But he wasn't clever enough and went to prison.

Let us learn from his example. Never do anything halfway. If one can only become wholehearted in one's desire for abbreviation one shall never get caught.

And when they come with their badges and guns what then?

Throw in a long tract serve.

Do now: A) Think about long tract tomorrow. B) Today, Sloane, don't lower your arms. Just keep them level or however you normally hold them at address.

1) Turn back with everything connected until your heel or toe goes up-- who cares which?

2) Separate bent elbows until they are 180 degrees opposite from one another and lined up with both shoulder balls. You pushed with rear leg before you tossed. The separation is the toss.

3) Serve.

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Judgment of Character as Seen by Another Character in a Robertson Davies Novel

He would be "low-clink."

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Improbable that Two Great Novelists could be So Much the Same, Especially when One is an Expert on Dostoyevsky

I refer to Robertson Davies and John Cowper Powys. For starters, they both are intrigued with Arthurian Legend in a very non-Camelot way.

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Put What with What?

Of course I ask that question too much. Unless you think, as I do, that if you fool around long enough you may find something. Or should I say "stumble" on something? Or did the happy stumble happen because you were determinedly on the lookout for technical inspiration rather than scheduling your next cardio tennis session or playing the game, great as it is, called "What's the Best Shot?"

The idea today: Using the bizarre Tom Okker model of early shoulders, just assign those early shoulders to lowering of racket. The racket, which first was made to face the right fence now starts a loop on one's arm.

But partway through the loop the shoulders take over and rotate down. More specifically the hit shoulder rotates down as much as around while hips get out of the way.

What have I said? Is it bad? Bad if it's got anybody swinging too fast too soon.

The shot is continuous. Its significant energy however begins from low point or maybe partway down.

Now you can crank hips, using the classic idea (Beasley, Budge, Vines) of your hips finishing off the shot so racket POINTS at target-- only a fleeting moment of course if your follow through then continues over yoke or around shoulder.

Okay but what about shoulders as sequential post-hips step in the kinetic chain?

Let it happen. Construct from ground up. But remain open to the unique knees of Okker, too, where lower body stays level or even goes down, and front knee in neutral construction ends by forming a right angle.

It is other elements that come up-- stretching trunk, lifting, twisting arm, aeronautical banking.

Both knees have a different function. Instead of coming up, they press toward the net thus giving your shot effortless pace and weight.

Hey, I've had a knee replacement. There are many elements I want to rise but not my legs. And I certainly don't want merry flight for myself ending in a harsh jolt (or two) .

Note: TennisPlayer says I need to resize the photo I planned to put here. I refer to another time when I was successful in making it appear. It's called "Tom Okker's knees." I'll go looking for it now. Couldn't find it. Too bad. Lower leg ends perpendicular to upper leg. Am describing shape of lead leg.

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Imaginary Conversation

I'm pretty sure that if Pam Shriver and I were speaking one-on-one, we would have a political argument.

But if the topic were tennis, the conversation might be more interesting.

I have decided that the simple point Pam has been emphasizing on TV for years might be more important than almost anything most of us might ever hear.

Her big subject, it seems to me, is whether a serve or a forehand (and other shots too I guess) accelerated or did not accelerate at contact.

Simple ideas sometimes are the best.