A New Year's Serve

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Big Conclusions on Rotorded Kick Serving

1) One can do it even though one's shoulder rotors aren't as loose as Sampras and Roddick.

2) ATA (air the armpit), carefully examining five or more options on where best to do this: A) on the down of down-and-up straight racket arm movement, B) on the up of down-and-up straight racket arm movement, C) on the bend of arm to a right angle, D) on the inversion of elbow, E) on two or three or all four of these options. Spread the ATA out, in other words.

3) It has been suggested that the rotorded server needs to get his elbow higher than other servers, higher in internal arrangement. Taking elbow BACK, however, can get the elbow just as high, only through external, more perimeterized movement which would be A) VUBR (vertical upper body rotation that moves head and sometimes is called "cartwheel"), B) HUBR (horizontal upper body rotation around still head with minimalist amount in any case determined by degree of stance), C) A slight veering of head to left to get it out of the way and raise elbow that last tiny bit to late upper arm verticality.

4) Having put a new premium on getting elbow back rather than up, be solid, i.e., maintain a rigid connection between arm and body for at least part of the post elbow inversion route to verticality (with "verticality" being defined as that part of kick serve where upper arm is perfectly vertical or perpendicular to the court).

5) Chain chain chain (Aretha). Just as the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone, one can work on a motion where VUBR precedes HUBR. Is that provocative and therefore worth saying? Yes, since some experts prescribe the opposite, HUBR before VUBR or both at same time. Get the head still near contact, say I. Have solid arm and body connection, then a little independent motion of bent arm, maybe, then extension and all the rest.

6) Go ahead and think about all this. Don't be a non-intellectual wimp, i.e., somebody who refuses to think about anything if it's complicated.

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Kick Serve Commonality and New Cue for Absorption Federfore

The great kick serves have this in common:

The upper arm points straight up at the sky and is perpendicular to the court.

But how does it get that way? Ah, exactly, and that's what we should work on.

Doesn't having a clear goal help, though?

New cue for absorption Federfore: Using the pivot point just before base of thumb drawn on page 54 of Crosby, Stills and Nash, i.e., TECHNICAL TENNIS by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey, come to an understanding that racket butt turns forward as strings turn backward during collision with the ball. Buddhists and Willie Mays wannabes can concentrate on the strings going backward, aiding the natural absorption of the strings. Type A persons however will have more fun just spearing with that inch or two of racket butt. The result should be exactly the same. Psychologically speaking, macho men such as myself prefer doing something pro-active, i.e., move something forward, never move anything backward. One might be suprised at how aim improves. But no one should be fooled into thinking this is the only kind of Federfore there is. Crosby, Stills and Nash don't even seem aware of the other types in which strings may be the only shock-reducing agent or if hand is involved, it's playing a smaller role, might be shearing, say, which is neither going backwards or forwards but sideways or upwards or both.

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Saturday Practice after Friday Match

Drawings to keep coming back to:

postcard.gif


The drawing on the left is topspin and sidespin. The drawing on the right is topspin, sidespin and spiralspin. The two arrows are supposed to be parallel. The arrow on the right is higher on the ball, that's all. Is the racket face more closed, too? No doubt.

Thinking is bad. Everybody knows that. So let's think. Bad is fun.

We've decided to hit topspun serves with a balanced combination of wrist flexion and shoulder twist. The wrist flexion will be of the uninhibited type that straightens the wrist and then bends it with knuckles toppling over. The shoulder twist will be of the uninhibited type that, axle-like, rotates the upper arm within the shoulder socket.

So where should the elbow point in maximum wind-up? Forward, backward, upward-- some exotic combination of these? Good questions. Some famous baseball pitchers have had just one favorite elbow position, but Satchel Paige, most immortal of them all, had a plethora of them.

An elbow pointed straight up is both farther back and will whirl the racket in a slightly different direction, with all such considerations deeply affected by stance, respective amount of HUBR, VUBR, leg drive, etc.

But that's enough thought. Time to go to the court. I recommend one of the old fashioned table-top baskets, heavy as could be. You just work on your motion, hitting one serve after another as if you don't have a care in the world. And you do this enough that all the neighborhood kids see you coming and wonder once again what kind of a nut you are. It seems like a placid existence. Some thought to the previously mentioned elbow positions, however, may turn out to be a good idea.

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Upside Down Golf Swing

(And Other Fascinating Sub-Topics of the Pursuit of Ideal Tennis Serves)

Bill Mathias, former 65's national champion on clay and grass, used to say, "I have just discovered that arching the back is the source of all power in the tennis serve."

What an essential joke! Tweaks of motion and thought should be lifetime and maybe are eternal.

TECHNICAL TENNIS, by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey, contains a picture of a golf swing next to a tennis swing (page 36). I want to say their book is by Crosby, Stills and Ted Nash, but that would be a mistake. Nevertheless, the tennis physicist Howard Brody of the University of Pennsylvania has a big hand (and the Foreword) in it.

This comparison of tennis to golf swing is only a small incident of half a page, I am happy to say. And any tennis idea, like ideas in other fields, comes on fast, takes over for a minute, then fades.

So the inverted golf swing idea will help someone, viz., me for a day, and then I'll be better off if I can forget it.

For fun, however, let's try to hold on to this idea a little longer as if it's dwell in a ground stroke, let's say for a day-and-a-half.

Wisely, Crosby, Stills and Nash don't show the arm extending in their composite drawing. That would be too complicated, and the reader of their book would close it and slam it down hard. Clearly, however, it is the folding and unfolding right arm of both golfer and tennis player that is being discussed and not the famous straight left arm of any excellent golfer.

That understood, the focus is on delayed wrist snap, on keeping wrist cocked, on building up as Edna St. Vincent Millay said in discussing something else, until "you can't stand it any more."

This kind of release is more intelligent than any human being one knows, dear reader, starting with oneself, and SEEMS to contradict all the teaching pros who advocate twisting of the whole arm over wrist flexion.

It's Brian Gordon's figures that keep the two things in balance. In his dissertation on elite college players, apparati were attached to different parts of their bodies.

And in the area of contact, i.e., from just before the ball up to the ball, the main factors whole arm twist and wrist flexion were seen, statistically speaking, to make a roughly equal contribution to racket head speed.

So, does roll occur in the golf swing contact in addition to the wrist straightening? Definitely!

The analogy holds up pretty well.

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Transitioning Back and Forth Between Cilicas and Full Turn Serves

The difficulty in mastering Cilicas for this server is in re-tooling loop. But once one has reverted to an old down-together up together tossing system but with arm pinching early, he's ready to put the elbow on a slanted pathway down and back to start a different-shaped loop.

In THINK TO WIN, Allen Fox, using the example of John McEnroe, suggests that extreme turn of the shoulders is a basic way for anybody to generate more power with the trade-off that the person only gets to push with one leg.

Fox wrote THINK TO WIN a long time ago before the advent of the new platformers-- anyone who like Sampras, Federer or Henin doesn't bring up back foot next to front foot and then start lift-off with both.

There are a lot of both kinds of servers around by now, effective platformers and effective pinpointers. McEnroe, however, turns his shoulders even more than Federer or Sampras, and I don't see what the big hangup is about anybody using that back injury inspired extreme design again.

As far as McEnroe himself has been concerned, at least at one point in his seniors tour participation, he didn't believe one could take the racket around far enough-- with body and arm both, hence his need for a lesson recorded in Tennis Player about what happens when one starts arm from TOO FAR around.

The way I'm trying to realize extreme turn serves (maybe not the simplest) is learn to serve somewhat like Marin Cilic then add more shoulders turn.

Or learn to serve with more shoulders turn then add the far around deep-tall loop of Marin Cilic. Since I've come to believe that HUBR and VUBR (horizontal and vertical upper body rotation) are corollaries in inverse proportion to one another like judgment and sympathy in drama or fiction, I'll try this approach in my eternally evolving service motion today.

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No Taking it Back to the Manufacturer

Will a Toyota Celica accelerate wildly, all by itself? If so, that's what I want.

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Using one Serve for Confidence to Develop Another

I'm sensitive on this subject because somebody important in tennis may have accused me of "taking a step backward" when I developed my Pooch Serve.
The ol' Pooch, however, doesn't come just from TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE by Vic Braden and from watching Dennis Ralston's video-laden slice lesson here at Tennis Player. No, my father, editor of the old large format golf and ski heavy "Sports Illustrated" magazine had an unusually upright golf swing like Sam Snead. My father regularly interviewed top tour players during rounds on the golf course and had a metropolitan handicap of 2, but he only lived to 54 . He sold the name "Sports Illlustrated" one time to Time-Life Inc. for $100 and sprang for one golf lesson for me. The teaching pro in Lakeville, Connecticut got me using my knees as never before. Would I want to give up that little knee trick just because I'm a tennis player?

I'm not in favor of lifting heels and bringing the back one in on forward swing like Jack Nicklaus-- just in case someone besides myself ever wants to try the Pooch. Nope, feet are flat as pancakes. It's just a little backward then forward roll of the knees to activate a natural loop same as a golfer before roundabout throw takes over.

From the deuce court Pooch Ace is quick and effective, flaring out wide. Down the middle, however, it's mediocre, sits up, says "Blast me!" That doesn't mean I don't use it down the middle for its sneaky quickness for surprise. Similarly, when I get my Cilicas working just the way I want, I'll occasionally try a first serve Cilica out wide.

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An only Slightly Agonizing Re-appraisal

And now I see a completely different thing! Well, not completely. But the shift and extension has started before the elbow has drawn all the way back and down. And HUSKING-- the forcible payoff of arching one's back-- is the device that finally lifts the upper arm to fully perpendicular to the court:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/marin_cilic/mc_serve/mc_2nd_serve/mc_2nd_serve.html?MC2ndSDeuceRear1.mov

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Cilcic Imitation Cont'd

1 2-3

1) the toss to the top
2) elbow and front knee and left arm and the ball drop and both knees slightly shift weight toward the target (all is simultaneous)
3) the serve

I don't think this serve is as perfect as Federer's or has the amount of body rotation built into it that Sampras' does. For some of us, however, it may be do-able. I know I didn't think so as recently as last week and said so here.

One feature is the larger loop behind the back caused by briefly lowering the elbow before it hurls all the way up to top of the head.

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Cilcic Toss

Most tennis thinkers agree that toss is the most important part of anyone's serve. And developing the right-left arc endemic to top tennis is particularly hard for players who grew up tossing straight.

How are they to do it? By tossing more from the side, along the baseline? That's an option. Marin or Marian Cilic achieves his rainbow trajectory another way.

If one watches all the video in TennisPlayer of Cilic tossing, one will see that his arm goes into the court up above the net. Furthermore, his wrist starts bent down, straightens as it turns counterclockwise, then bends again, upward, with all of this occurring during release (slightly before, during, and slightly afterward).

Above, Cilic's arm like that of many famous servers turns clockwise, but the ball is already gone so I don't want to concern myself overly much about this.

The big question is whether the wrist flourishes will help some average player achieve the rainbow toss more easily, and the answer is yes.

The fear factor, of course, which too many coaches are sadly eager to install, is that someone won't understand the basic concept of smooth toss from the shoulder and will flip the ball up (and never to the same place twice). But rules were made to be broken by those who know them. Even the majority of mediocre players learn to toss from the shoulder, and the wrist flourishes being suggested here are additive, not substitute.

Another interesting aspect of Cilic's toss is that from front and rear views the tossing arm seems to go up first, and the hitting arm start later but catch up and pass that tossing arm.

This interpretation however neglects the right angle between the two arms. I have concluded (painfully of course) that Cilic's toss is the classic down together, up together. But if I'm wrong or slightly wrong, great! People should fiddle around much more than they do with precisely when they toss in relation to the rest of their serve. I got that from re-reading TENNIS FOR THINKING PLAYERS by Chet Murphy.

Roughly speaking, however, Cilic is down together, up together while camera angle from front and back wreaks havoc through optical illusion.

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"Shoulder will Dislocate" Solved

One rotorded server-- not myself-- blogged that in his failed attempt to generate sufficient upward spin he brought his upper arm closer and more vertical until it lay nestled like a security blanket against the side of his head.

This, he found, was an inefficient, even ridiculous position from which to throw. (I'm sure he was haunted by the spectre, however, of Steffan Edberg's vertical upper arm and extremely fine kick serve.)

Vic Braden, in one of his early VHS service videos demonstrated the same position. He used a plastic doll, bringing its elbow closer and closer to its head until-- POP!-- the whole arm broke loose from the rest of the body like a brittle twig.

Marin Cilic, however, does the same thing and yet his arm doesn't fall off. Why not?

Before twisting his upper arm violently, he husks both shoulders forward, a subtle yet vigorous and health-restoring move.

This husking helps stop rotation too for anyone who is an acceleration-deceleration junkie. It prepares the way for elbow to spin yet spin in one spot. Best, it appears to work, at least for today.

I've spoken about basketball (hook shot). How about skiing now? The whole serve feels like an upward flying slalom course.

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Cilic Kick (Cilcic)

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/marin_cilic/mc_serve/mc_2nd_serve/mc_2nd_serve.html?MC2ndSDeuceCourtLevelFront.mov

The final part of the hook shot (of the elbow) gets the racket tip so far out to the right that it creates a PHENOMENON in what's coming next, which is HUSKING with both shoulders and arms that 1) brings racket edge to where it looks to cleave the ball in two. Not from directly behind and perpendicular to the net, however, but rather to the left of the ball and looking at it on a 45 rather than 90 degree line. 2) and at the same time the arm extends. I see a hatchet like movement in this HUSKING, a sudden throw of both shoulders and elbows so must speculate that this part of extension is spaghetti arm.

The arm comes so close to straight that UAT (upper arm twist) will be compact, i.e., the left edge of the racket will spin around more than the whole racket head wag around.

This is a more nuanced explanation than one usually gets: Twisting up smoothly like a hook shot out and in (without elbow yet going forward but headed straight for your temple) morphing into HUSK which takes racket snicking diagonal wise left and right up toward ball (in and out one might say this time and therefore symmetrical to the preceding out and in of the hook shot).

If this all works as projected here, the final snap-- a 50-50 mix of UAT and wrist flexion will become more concentrated and compact and aided and abetted by immediately preceding quick racket movement already in desired direction.

Wrist straightens during the HUSKING. It flexes during the UAT (completely)... it therefore might be straight at contact. Wrist flexion same as UAT sandwiches the contact before, during and after.

HUSK now appears the most crucial section of these serves. It moves elbow in. It extends the arm to almost straight. It extends the wrist to straight (but wrist won't stay straight).

The ultimate lie in tennis and in life: Be a good boy and you'll have a great serve. One has to figure some things out first.

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Reflection

There is no generalizing about anyone's serve-- not if serve is the most individualized shot in tennis.

Serve is pretty individualized in volleyball, too. Some volleyball serves are so much better than others. And some aficionado may think he knows the reason. Ha!

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Stealing from Cilic

The following serve, in imitation, doesn't work for me although I would very much like for it to.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/marin_cilic/mc_serve/mc_location/mc_location.html?MC2ndSAdWideCourtLevelRear.mov

Despite the great body tilt, I still don't obtain enough upward spin (too much restriction in the shoulder rotors). There's compensation, however, for such experiment. In one of my more individually tailored serves, in which my shoulders get parallel to the baseline, I can create better tilt early-- at toss release-- by bending the back leg till heel goes up on toes like Cilic, instead of doing the same with front leg as before.

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Pooch Ace Serve Turns into a Rottweiler

One simply has to navigate from relative success. I'm a guy who fools around with a lot of different ideas. Do I want to go on with this approach? Yes. But if one of the ideas suddenly starts working better than the others, I'd darn well better go with it, especially in learning good service, the most trial-and-error part of tennis.

I invented Pooch Ace as a kind of change-up but right now it's becoming my staple serve. It's easy motion easy to produce, for one thing, spinny and fast for another. The challenge is to make it as effective down the center (deuce court) and out wide (ad court) as other alternatives.

Its inception was the service chapter in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE by Braden and Bruns. But I use a very extreme stance for all of my service experiments. That means more happens behind the back and I don't hit as far out front as Vic Braden originally advised.

Today however I re-read the TFTF service chapter for the first time in many decades, disregarding my old notes a-mouldering in the margins, and discovered what I feel are some great insights, e.g., there is a natural place where the wrist snaps most naturally, and it's possible to structure any serve with horizontal motion coming round before the arm goes up. (Not what one ordinarily sees with all the shoulder over shoulder rotation at the higher levels).

To this I add some of my own evolution of this particular stroke: a slow, slight double rotation of the knees to activate the natural palm-down loop, then horizontal upper body rotation just a little faster, and then a hearty throw of the arm upward and out which is a lot faster.

My conscious awareness probably ceases there. Which indicates, I think, the old theory that pronation is biological protection of the arm. But I'm no longer innocent: I know that real power comes from upper arm twist, not lower arm twist. But I'm not particularly aware of this happening-- in this particular serve. I am extremely aware of a loose, well-lubricated hinge-like snap of the wrist when it happens on the ball producing the best serves. My grip is not eastern backhand but continental, best for such "endorotation", to use Rosheem's term. Unless endorotation means a half-gainer into an urn or the grave.

From the science in a new book, TECHNICAL TENNIS, Lindsey and Cross, the ball stays on the strings for considerably longer than I was ever led to believe. Does that change everything? Of course.