A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

A Day Later

Forward windmill looks like a good way to get feel for fullest possible drop.

As to the various slow twist combinations on the way down and up, I'm still open to them all, which is to say I'm continuing to try whatever I can think of.

A brief catalogue: in then out, out then in, neither, in then out then neither, out then in then neither, neither followed by out then in, neither followed by in then out, out or in during the loop, out then neither then in, more open starting position, more closed starting position, etc., etc.

It's fooling around. It's questing for what's simple and works.

The only criterion is consistently good serves at a level higher than one's current possession.

Note: In a recent episode of "Fuzzy Yellow Balls," Will Hamilton criticized the Tin Henman serve for not getting racket up on edge enough (at top of backswing). But Vic Braden has always emphasized keeping palm down so that you can form a natural loop. So who in the world can elucidate this overall subject, keeping both viewpoints in mind at the same time? But if Hamilton is right and one should get racket on edge, then can one go BEYOND racket on edge? That is what I saw when I looked at the forward windmill clip for the first time. One way or another-- perhaps as a result of his starting position-- the guy gets palm up before arm then bends during the loop. Does this increase lowness of the drop because of a greater twist of the arm necessity just then?

Maybe it's all, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" And maybe not. Perhaps this search for better serves makes perfect good sense. What do people think of "snake then spaghetti" serves or should one stay away from that?

[bottle]

Twist, Twist

Thanks very much, Mr. Budge. The posts are flying. I wrote this one between
Phil's and yours.

The article Phil just embedded is extremely useful, but I'm wondering if I really like the windmill in the last video, and the consequent palm up just before the fellow bends his arm.

My bias may simply come from where I am in my own current progression of experiments (excitement!).

Never mind about me, however. Anyone, i.e., Phil, I, and other rotorded servers, should faithfully do Don's figure eight exercises-- and the different pieces of them each with its own separate video.

Not that anybody should take any of it as ex cathedra prescription but rather to absorb the feel Don talks about along with his overall principle of slowly moving racket against the hand as if they are in a slo-mo contest.

Don's first exercise, in fact, has a player standing with racket on his right and faced up. He then turns the racket (and palm) down as he pulls the racket behind him to his left. He then turns palm up as he takes racket back to right, repeating and building speed along with confidence.

I'm all for the confidence, but I'm reversing the order of the exercise when I incorporate it in a full figure eight or real serve.

Will Don care? I doubt it. Not if he's interested in feel and principle rather than the letter of some nonexistent law.

Palm can turn in as racket goes down. Palm can turn out as racket goes up. Why do this? Because it feels great.

Note: The amounts of the little twists are to be determined by the player himself.

[don_budge]

Literally swinging...

Today I decided that turning the racket slightly inward toward closed during the down and slightly outward toward open during the up might prove a very natural-feeling option, and put the racket at the same desired vertical pitch at top of the backswing as anything else.

That's a beautiful way of putting it...bottle.

[gzhpcu]

Both Don Brosseau, in L.A., and Steve Navarro, east of Goteborg, have impressed on me the need for an extreme length of take-back on a smooth down and up serve.

This is also what John advocates...

Look at the excercise at the end of this article...
http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...e_2_01_06.html

[bottle]

Re # 647: Why I Like this Particular Twist-Twist So Much

It increases the feel in down together, up together. It enables one to develop a more subtle top to one's backswing similar to golf. It follows the Virginia Wade idea of using enough gravity to swoop the racket up to where one wants it with little or no effort.

In other words, the racket can accelerate naturally going down and decelerate naturally while going up, with twisting racket head in the two different directions assisting in this process.

Finally, three options open up: 1) Use the increased sensitization of hand and racket to time bending of arm with bending of body in a continuous-racket-head-travel-serve, 2) Just bend arm a little, pausing racket then while body bend continues, 3) Bend arm way early like Virginia Wade in synch with toss. She then would keep skunk-tailed racket poised for a maximum amount of body bending time to help her deal with any vagrancy of toss, as Pancho Gonzalez asserted in his admiring TV commentary on the thirty-year-old Wade's defeat of the decade younger Martina Navratilova one bright day at Hilton Head.

[bottle]

Long and Smooth

Both Don Brosseau, in L.A., and Steve Navarro, east of Goteborg, have impressed on me the need for an extreme length of take-back on a smooth down and up serve.

Don's figure eight exercises at YouTube have provided a kind of revelation-- that one can lengthen and further smooth-- over whatever it was-- "the down" or "the up" or both or any tract of racket travel in any serve.

I love this idea of racket head moving past hand and have been marching with it through a string of personal experiments which hopefully haven't been too elaborate. Today I decided that turning the racket slightly inward toward closed during the down and slightly outward toward open during the up might prove a very natural-feeling option, and put the racket at the same desired vertical pitch at top of the backswing as anything else.

[bottle]

Pendulum Motion of the Serve

The subject of this post is limited to first video in Cross article (post # 645, probably the one before this one).

Two points.

1) The elbow and shoulders line are scrupulously connected (one less link therefore to worry about-- which link if it existed would weaken not strengthen the serve).

2) Let's translate fractions or percentages-- incomprehensible-- to ratio, which is closer to ATHLETE-READY.

Thus, elbow roughly preserves its compressed configuration for 70 per cent of its path up to the ball. Arm then extends in next 15 per cent of pathway. And starts twisting in final 15 per cent.

Translated to usable ratio, fire elbow for three out of four counts and split the final count between arm extension and arm twist.

Don't quantify the last instant change of direction from forearm motion to ulnar deviation. This happens too close to the ball to permit anyone that self-indulgence. You either produced great spin or you didn't.

[bottle]

Torture

Okay, I've now brought over the second Rod Cross article-- http://twu.tennis-warehouse.com/lear...lependulum.php -- over from "Racquet snaps the wrist on serve." I have now read a bunch of Rod Cross essays but nothing like this one. A person can thoroughly admire science and still be oppressed by too many numbers and charts. The oppression is most apt to occur if the reader is passionately self-interested and on the make for items he can put to use that day.

The best feature of this essay is the film strip of the young woman walking.

The second best feature may be the statement, "Less wrist action can actually generate a higher serve speed." This intelligence may lead to a phase one and phase three of acceleration, as introduced in the earlier article, but in which the waggles, though similar moves, are of differing degree. Only in phase three will racket butt dig significantly into one's hand.

The third best feature is the comparison of tennis stroke mechanics with data from double pendulum experiments.

The late John Hawkes, novelist and best writer at Brown University, examining the language of Buckminster Fuller, found it to contain deliberate obfuscation.

As one of my older sister's boyfriends, who had just driven to Northampton, Massachusetts from far away, once shouted from the rear of a huge lecture hall at Smith College, "LOUDER, FUNNIER, DIRTIER!"

[bottle]

Re # 642

The Stanislas the Manislas backhand may be a very natural shot to hit once a person has taken the trouble to understand it, but there may be one part of it that requires sheer willpower and many repetitions to adopt.

That is recovery to waiting position same as Rafa Nadal does on one of his reverse forehands-- there are curlicues of tract in both cases through which one returns the racket to where and how it began.

[bottle]

Knotty Physics Applied to All Strokes

This article by Australian physicist Rod Cross, http://www.racquetsportsindustry.com...the_serve.html, is intended to apply to tennis, baseball and golf. Within tennis, Cross relates his ideas to service and forehand (in this article), but I certainly want to see if they add to other shots as well. Both Don Brosseau and I have found the need to read and re-read the article. Don helped me interpret how Cross's second phase of acceleration, centripetal force, may work in a serve (See Racquet snaps the wrist on serve, post # 12, "You have to try simple exercises to feel it.")

Forehand application, despite Cross's warning that it will be "different," seems easy to try, especially in reverse forehand, where deceleration of the forearm,
Cross's phase three of acceleration, is more than half of what this shot is about.

Within my own present bag of tricks, that's a shot that begins like a standard forehand hit by David Ferrer but with no attempt "to get the racket back early."

The well wound shoulders turn forward, the bent arm whips backward and forward to catch up. While it's doing this, it can employ the Cross thesis for even more pop.

What are the steps? 1) mondo and waggle backward, 2) waggle forward, 3)smash around ping-pong-like with the forearm, 4) waggle forward again to stop the forearm and 5) finish behind one's head on hitting side.

What makes this easier to understand, I think, is that the two waggles forward can be same motion, reproduced. The world is complicated, however, and I was the one, not Cross, who said that. The second forward waggle is counter-intuitive. You get better wrist snap by waggling FORWARD to produce forearm deceleration since butt of racket digs into your palm. No one knows for sure whether this little backwardness actually retards the forearm or merely is the signal for you to make everything work.

To summarize, I'll have a waggle waggle with a centrifuge in the middle and a halo on top.

[bottle]

Manislas Restoration of Forehand Grip

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide2.mov

I can't say that the little restoration move seen here-- where Stanislas the Manislas Wawrinka lowers his racket head before bringing it up in forehand grip-- is apparent in every video of him, but I find this phenomenon interesting nevertheless.

Because of the rearward racket high point, after contact, the recovery is apt to feel different than in other single hand topspin backhands that one may have tried.

[bottle]

Big Backhands (Aw, They're WAW)

You've heard of the Wardlaw Imperatives? Well, here are the Manislas Delays.

Swinging shoulders on a slant keeps them from coming around too much too soon.

Do they come around some? Yes, and powerfully. Is wave imagery appropriate to this? Yes again. Golf pin, broom or golf club threaded through the elbows behind one's back is appropriate imagery as well.

Raise back shoulder like a rearing horse in the maritime imagery of Stephen Crane. The wave crashes as the shoulders level out. Swing your broom handle.

Are knees and hips involved in this? Heart and soul. It's all one powerful, golfy motion. And golf, for equal effort, doesn't get the hands around as far as baseball. Down and up keeps the concentrate of stored power in a certain area for longer-- the first of the Manislas Delays.

The second is the arm itself. It, too, is kept back. Swing the core body only.
Arm is in check.

The entire forward action (gasp!) is a single motion. As shoulders become level they rotate on a level plane. Golfing shoulders become baseballing shoulders all in a single breath with no hesitation or holding back-- swing for the right field stands.

At the same time swing all out with the straight arm. There's a step in this arm swing in which both ends of the racket rise at the same rate, but the overall is full out, heart and soul, the measure of which is Stanislas Wawrinka's arm reaching its high point BEHIND HIS HEAD.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide5.mov

[bottle]

Adding Snaky Coil to One's WAW Modeled Backhand

There's no use in my regret for saying something glib about raising the racket in a WAW type backhand: "To hell with taking the racket tip high and then winding it back more later, which creates unnecessary downward component just then."

Upon further reflection, this is exactly what happens, particularly in this video which I embedded in post # 637 :

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/stanislas_wawrinka/sw_backhand/sw_bh_center/sw_bh_center.html?SWBHCenterNeutralStanceSide4.mov

I'm sure some people find irritating my habit of saying something over, but any true English teacher believes in rewrites.

And I wonder if tennis shouldn't proceed by revisions as well.

Timothy Gallwey and others thought the inner game he called "perfecto" thoroughly objectionable.

But maybe, just maybe, the world has yet to see its first number one tennis player who never imitated himself-- somebody who persisted in exploratory madness long enough for it really to matter.

From all reports, Jack Nicklaus has been that kind of golfer.

WAW begins his backhand by turning his shoulders. Now the racket tip is up. It goes back farther, close to the body because 1) his shoulders are turning back, 2) his elbow is sliding past his trunk, 3) his arm is extending at the elbow to the most comfortable position for a snakelike strike.

The slow (and ominous) smoothness of the upright racket tip going back just has to be impressive.

This is a great, relaxed and effortless way to hit a tennis ball, one could argue, well beyond my or anybody else's anguished talk.

But language is double-edged. It can take a person farther away from something good or farther toward it.

[bottle]

From a Friend

Bot, thought you'd be interested, and think I might have mentioned this a while back, before I took it further. A few weeks ago, I added weight to my gel Radical OS -- two strips of lead tape to the end of the hoop, a lot more lead tape around the handle, under the grip above where I hold it, plus heavy soldering wire around the butt, under black tape. I liked it. Took it to the PO and had it weighed. 11.8 ounces (it had been 10.4), not as heavy as some of the Kramers we used to use, and nowhere near the 16-oz. antique racquet I have. The other day, I hit two bigtime returns off second serves, without even trying. A decent netman didn't react at all. Stability is better, too. Any time I play lousy now, I know that I must not blame the racquet.

I tried two other racquets I'd weighted, but not as much, and they felt too light. The additional weight is really negligible, but I'm sure most players would say, "11.8, are you kidding? That's a club."

The Tennis Warehouse forum's equipment category includes a Heavy Racquet Club, 12 oz. and up. Interesting posts from nuts like you and me. Maybe I'll go up to 12 someday. If I don't like it, I can peel it off.

RH

[bottle]

Wrong Information as Usual

Recently, I've seen some statements I can't agree with: 1) Technique: There's not much to it and 2) Straighten your arm gradually into a one hand backhand.

As far as 1) tennis technique goes, if you don't change your mind several times in the course of a day, you're not doing your job.

The advocates of "don't think" and "learn by feel, not mechanics" attack people like me, not understanding that we aspire to higher shots than they themselves have.

Any romantic who follows the "feel only" approach is too left brain-- why wouldn't feel and thought go together as much as black and white or up and down?

The assertion that a technician takes longer to arrive at something good than a natural jock or dancer who can see something once and then do it, does, however, hold some validity.

But how often does the jock aspire to something higher than he already has?

There's a real advantage to being a lesser player-- the chance to experiment more, to be creative. What is there to lose? An added pleasure may be genetic-- a primal enjoyment of the intricacy in tennis for the sake of intricacy and problem-solving themselves.

Personally, I'm rather fond of the auto mechanics I've known and always look up to them so long as they don't cheat people. And I've never seen them fix a car with a single look. Usually, they open the hood, sometimes even the trunk.

As to 2), straightening arm into a one-hander, Brent Abel says it and so does Mark Papas. So do I for my personal slice.

At the French, Roger Federer, known to straighten later than other players, hit a down the line topspin winner. This shot was so dramatic that the camera then slowed it down for us. Roger got his arm straight in time for plenty of long arm swing.