A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Blindfolded Serving?

Ha! The old debate was whether one should stare at a spot in the air and toss to that spot or watch the ball as it goes up, in which case one might get vertigo. I developed the latter habit quite early, and when I tried to change didn't feel comfortable, so I still do it. Or maybe I watch part way up then jump my eyes ahead to where I want to see the ball change direction or begin to fall down. But as you already know, I like upper register quadrants, which suggest more of a coming over, as the book TECHNICAL TENNIS emphasizes even on a topspin serve and as you've been discussing (interestingly). One could also take a cue from pocket-billiards (sorry) and stare at a spot on the ball, never much more than a cue's width from the center. But since it's a tennis ball, not a cue ball, maybe the difference should be more than a cue's width-- dunno. Worth an experiment. Then there are the filmed experiments of Vic Braden, who not only blindfolded his students and assistant pros but had them serve that way while bouncing on a trampoline. And most of them could do it. There was one girl named Angie whom he'd taught to twirl her elbow forward like a helicopter, so she could really fly. But I'm not being critical. I've met Vic and he's great, made me laugh among other things. But that blindfold idea has to be just the opposite of watching a ball carefully. So, as always it's whatever works-- sure to be different on different days-- and tennis is full of paradox. Just did well in a match against a new opponent and don't think I thought about watching the ball at all-- but I was always ahead. It's easy not to do stuff when you're ahead. The only thing about toss I was conscious of was that I was now letting body bend assist the tossing arm per the instruction of my post previous to this one. Maybe a cue of cues is, without overdoing it, to try one or two new focal points (as opposed to six) so as to keep things fresh yet manageable.

[rosheem]

Eyes on Contact Point

Bottle,

I did a quick search through your thread, but nothing turned up.

I was just curious about something.

Have you worked on keeping your eyes glued to the contact point on your serve? Were you always good at it, or did you have to work on it? Or are you not that great at it?

I am not that great at it. When I start to really focus on keeping my eyes on the contact point, my placement, consistency, and spin improve tremendously. I don't know why I don't work on it more. I need to. It amazes me that I ever even get a ball in without keeping my eyes up, but somehow I manage.

When I keep my eyes glued to the contact point, I start to become much more aware of exactly why I might have missed a serve. Usually, I miss long. The reason is that I am combining big upward racquet motion with a tendency to come through the ball too much...because I'm not looking at it and I think the mind makes the racquet come through to ensure I don't completely miss the ball.

When I keep the eyes up, I can really dial in the amount of ball I want to get. It really does fix a number of small little issues automatically.

You have put in so much work, thought, and study on the serve that I'm guessing you've tackled this one, but I was just curious to know your experiences with it.

Thanks

[bottle]

McEnroe-influenced Serve without Looking at Video of McEnroe

1) All the way back with arm and shoulders as slowly as one likes-- shoulders get parallel to baseline.

2) Front hip out to lower straight hitting arm and help raise straight tossing arm (yes, you toss). Weight stays on back foot.

3) Shift weight and rotate hips slowly forward with front leg extending yet staying in contact with court as rear leg comes up. This complex of movement replaces the part of a conventional serve occupied by body bend. The arm stays straight at first then bends comfortably to a right angle. One obvious cue is to lift rear leg as forearm bends up.

4) VUBR (vertical upper body rotation) and rest of serve, kicking backward.

[bottle]

Elbow Level

In a small but significant incident in OPEN, Andre Agassi describes the early French Open final he played against Andres Gomez. According to plan, Gomez was tiring in the later sets. Not according to plan, however, the tireder he got, the more he leaned forward, producing more of a sling-shot effect in his serves.

Gomez may not have been the greatest server who ever lived, but the sling-shot idea seems congenial, and very much one of Rosheem's subjects at the thread "Grabbing the top vs. brushing up the back."

Rosheem also asserts that for hitting good kick, one can put one's entire focus on beginning internal rotation of the upper arm up high-- after most of the arm extension. Which in turn leads to notions of how to pre-load the arm to make this specialized motion go fastest.

Everyone knows by now that internal rotation from the shoulder is crucial (all the best tennis minds say so), but half the tennis players in the world probably think they can make it work through kinetic chain or acceleration-deceleration-- a bit romantic of them. That's why I like Rosheem's idea that the arm takes a solo and then rejoins overall body, which lends weight just as the fast-twisting arm sling-shots through.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ever since Jeffrey Counts introduced to universal service discussion the subject of what I call "tock," I have wondered when one should do it and how best-- with forearm, upper arm or body?

I'm referring to how racket seems to tock to the right of the body in good serves. See Braden: "Scratch the back of the person next to you," or once again watch the new clips of Federer's second serve in the interactive forum.

The part of the arm action that looks like the twisting key in the back of a primitive wind-up man-toy is at right angles to the path along which the ball will depart. The part of the racket tip action that looks like a tock to the outside comes toward rear fence, which means it's on the path along which the ball will depart.

From these parameters, for self-interested reasons, I seek a design which places greatest speed on the high, internal arm rotation over anything else. These experiments in process may succeed by letting elbow twist up a little toward right fence, then throw upward in a separate motion followed by partial arm extension. Today I then found myself adding a little HUBR (horizontal upper body rotation) to VUBR (vertical upper body rotation) in an extreme stance to ensure that racket edge is knifing at ball, i.e., I want the racket tip cocked away from ball before it starts to cut at it. Always, reader, keep in mind that length of this lever shortens by how much the arm has extended by contact.

NOTE: It now seems likely from repeated watchings of the rear view video of Federer at Post #23, interactive forum, that I was fooled by camera angle in the 500 fps clip. Foreshortening and an innocent post remarking on elbow lowness may have thrown me off. I thought Roger's elbow was lower in relation to his body than we usually see. I thought it was sliding down close to body like a Lindsay Davenport serve.

But stopping and starting the video in post #23 does show the elbow to be fairly low. Certainly, the early phase upper arm never gets all the way up to parallel to the court. Not getting up there opposes what much classical instruction teaches. (Federer does get a good toss of the elbow upward, in other words.)

[rosheem]

Thanks, Bottle.

I had some real eye-opening moments in a match yesterday. I'll start a new thread so I don't dilute yours.

[bottle]

Rosheem on Kick Serves

What would be wild would be if this sort of rumination produced something unlike ANYBODY ELSE, but something that a general tennis-playing populace could make use of, as well.

I for one find these ideas very beneficent, whether it's something I think I'm already doing, or something I want to try, just need a little more courage and self-confidence.

When you say, for instance, that "the transition in the shoulder from external to internal rotation is powerful, but not fast enough to generate the right type of action at the top of the serve," I realize I need to return to an experiment I was too ready to abandon.

That transition you describe whether performed low or high is the exact same action. The upper arm twists backward then forward in its socket like an axle in bearings. But if you did it low, then there's less range available up high where we want it. I agree with you and Brian Gordon and Coach Kyril completely on the need for delayed and mighty internal arm rotation up high, particularly when hitting a kick serve.

So, to return to the super-clip of Federer in the interactive forum, let's assume that he is more flexible than I and therefore can afford to give away a little of his backward arm twist just as he drives off the court.

Not I. I can't afford that. So I'm not going to point the racket tip at the left fence so much. I'll just cock the wrist whichever way I'm cocking it that day in conjunction with leg thrust. Then I'll start external rotation from the shoulder and continue it most of the way up the arm extension. The ideal pattern is pure Federer as seen in the 500-frame clip. The racket tip goes this way and that with nothing in between. But if my approximation doesn't work I'll delay external shoulder twist until after elbow throw.

About your employing of arm whip identical to that in a power forehand, here's
Chet Murphy, TENNIS FOR THINKING PLAYERS on increasing the speed of a forehand: "reverse your shoulder action (turn them counterclockwise) while your arm and racket continue to move back..."

Now Rosheem on hitting kick serve again: "The twisting happens last and ends first, within the framework of the bigger motion." I got this from your other posts and have been waiting to find a way to make it work for me. You've given a lot of new clues here. I'm especially interested in your idea that body and arm can become "too connected," that arm should do its thing but reconnect just in time to give weight to the ball.

On the court, this led me to hitting ball just with shoulder twist (and with as little the rest of a serve as possible). Then to say, "This shall be the fastest part." Then to incorporate the conviction in the longest overall and most continuous, gently accelerative service motion possible.

I really began to get some new sounds. Since we have our viewing choice in the forum between real time, in which Federer seems to pause at top of his
wind-up, and 500 fps in which he doesn't, I say go with the slo-mo with only the HINT of a pause. Continuous, long, loose with all focus on abrupt speed and full distance of the internal arm twist-- a hard island in the sea of the serve.

Your ideas are great. Your narrative is worth even more.

[rosheem]

Bottle,

I wrote this in my tennis journal and wanted to see what you thought:

"Use a snapping untwisting through contact to squeeze the racquet from on-edge to on-other-edge in the smallest amount of time and space possible. Pure endorotation will not squeeze the racquet head through a small enough space. It is more of a pure twisting motion. If the hand applies the right amount of pressure on the handle, the handle and hoop of the racquet seem to feel almost rubbery, and it almost feels like the upper left quadrant of the racquet is the last part to fold over through the twisting at contact."

Does that make any sense?

The reason I posted is because you referenced something about a small force over a long distance can produce as much speed as a larger force over a small distance.

In my kicker, it almost seems like I feel one type of force within the other. The untwisting as the entire arm turns inside out, and the larger but slower force of the legs, shoulders, torso rotation which allow the entire framework to rise through contact. The twisting happens last and ends first, within the framework of the bigger motion.

The key for me...and this one is huge and something I continue to work on with every serve....is to understand how to make the untwisting happen naturally, and how to make it that fastest thing that's going on within the motion. The elbow extension and ulnar deviation used to be the faster motions and the source of delayed acceleration for me, and I struggled to get my racquet to finish like it does for Federer. I think it might be due to the fact that creating a snap with wrist flexion (volleyball spike) or deviation (like throwing a stick and getting it to spin end over end quickly...or casting a fishing rod) are pretty natural. There is a tendency for these motions to overwhelm the untwisting.

Using the untwisting as the source of faster acceleration on contact requires an understanding of the pre-stretched/pre-loaded state that must be created to enable this snappy untwisting. One problem I used to have was too much connection with the racquet and the body.

The transition in the shoulder from external rotation to internal rotation is powerful, but not fast enough to generate the right type of action at the top of the serve. I used to try to power everything from down in the shoulder all the way through contact...kind of like pulling an axe over the top to chop some wood. It was hard to get the natural untwisting that way.

Then I started to use that powerful shoulder position at the transition from external rotation to internal as a foundation for the rest of the arm. It's a very, very similar situation to the forehand stroke. If the stroke is TOO connected to the shoulder rotation, you miss out on what happens when the arm is allowed to COME THROUGH the hit.

Anyway...this morning I was hitting massive kickers where it felt like I was holding the big acceleration until I was just barely behind the ball. Because the twist/untwist motion can be executed in a compact time and space, the racquet can be brought quite close to contact and there is a feeling that you absolutely cannot miss.

I love the kick serve.

Mine is just plain nasty sometimes. Sticky. I played a short guy with a continental grip this morning. His returns looked like head-high half-volleys.

Still so much work to do...

[bottle]

Rules are Made to be Broken by Those who Know them

Rule: Toss before or after bend of your knees but not during.

Breaking it: You can toss whenever you think best. If bending your knees while tossing, just bend them slowly. But if you want to break that rule, too, start early and maybe even bend your knees marginally before the hands go down and keep bending them very, very slowly even while gliding forward and then bend the front leg a little more.

It's not what Roger Federer does; but, so what!

NOTE: Start stealing from Roger the micro-instant that front knee is fully bent.

[bottle]

Elbow in, holds, then throws up. Standard Wrist-cocking

Anyone who wants to learn from a good Roger Federer second serve kick out wide will never ever in their whole life have a better self-educational chance than now exists in the Interactive Forum.

Education never happens in an English class until a bumblebee flies through the window. Nobody sees the painting they are looking at in an art museum until a worker falls through the skylight, according to Walker Percy, the late New Orleans area novelist.

The awakening surprise in the Interactive Forum is that the out wide serve that everybody thought was first, hard slice in deuce court, is second, hard kick out wide in ad court, but still match point in Cincinnati.

By now John has the match point up, for anyone to see. And how it complements the 500-frame slo-mo of the same exact serve! You can
go back and forth from one to the other. That's another educational idea. 500-frame shows certain truths. Natural time shows certain others.

Another lesson coming out of this is that there is not as much difference between great first and second serves and their direction as most people believe. Educational articles in this site have expressed that argument before.

I decided to come back here because I would be embarrassed if I wrote four
posts in a row in such a public thread. Since my method or madness, take your pick, is to talk about personal over generalized experience whenever possible, I'll tell you, dear reader, I announced that I was going to do an
experiment in delaying the twisting backward of upper arm.

Well, I did it. The result was negative. Best, I'm pretty sure, is what Roger appears to do in the natural time video. Upper arm twists backward as much as it can with elbow being held low-- from squeezed arm at beginning of leg drive and then the wrist cock blends in. (This all looks leg-driven.) Now racket is away from body, maybe a foot-and-a-half or two feet from right edge of body turned well back, with tip pointed almost straight down. The upper body rotation is almost entirely of the vertical or shoulder over shoulder variety. One sequence: 1) upper arm twists backward 2) wrist cocks 3) forearm tocks while arm halves are glued together but continues tocking (outward) until halfway up arm extension when upper arm starts twisting everything the other way.

For more on all this, if you haven't done so already, I would go to Interactive Forum right now and see everything and read everything too and then contribute-- why not?

[bottle]

Personalized Rotorded Kick, Cont'd

Similar, but with a new emphasis on taking elbow BACK, i.e., wrist inwardly curls racket toward left fence as arm bends to a right angle, and now, instead of circling elbow around toward net, one uses the same smooth contuation in a rearward direction squeezing arm together (completely together or not?) and twisting shoulder rotors down. One really feels like a big league pitcher arched at top of his wind-up-- a position of strength which one can actively seek.

One can slightly continue the compression of all this in what comes next: Drive from leg and elbow swim-throwing forward to the hitting position one has probably already achieved in other methods.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obliterate 50 per cent of the foregoing. Having hand far back is a solidly good idea, but I am returning to "a lot of power in a short space," as in other serves. For me, this means tossing with the racket hand fairly low, then bending the arm while turning in the wrist, and forming butt-scratch with leg extension, which gets elbow up late but where I want it.

There was upward spin but not enough power the other way, in my view.

[bottle]

Liquefaction: Get the Action and the Spelling Right

In post # 311 I suggested that curling the wrist inward as part of bending the arm to a right angle created "swirl." And swirl definitely can be an aqueous term. So, swirl toward left fence and then right fence. Arm bend starts this motion; arm blend and horizontal bringing around of elbow continues it.

For what distance though? For the distance that produces the highest bounce.

I'd love to say you should "swing" the elbow around yet don't believe this is true. Better if the motion remains liquid. One significant difference from many other sub-tour (and sad to say mediocre) serves is that this liquid "half-swing" is actually contributing to racket head speed through the time-force principle.

The racket tip swirls from way back. "A small force applied for a longer period of time can result in racket speed equal to that gained by a larger force applied for only a brief period."-- Chet Murphy, page 59, TENNIS FOR THINKING PLAYERS, in which book section Murphy explains this phenomenon among the most basic known ways of increasing racket head speed in all tennis strokes.

[bottle]

Liquifying the Previous Instruction

What works and should work better and better is, if doing everything as described in Post # 310, one curls wrist inward during the toss rather than assume that position before the entire service motion begins.

This gets the racket tip pointing at left fence during the toss leading to more horizontal swirl as elbow throws (at half-speed) the first 90 degrees while body bends.

There's a bit of "needle-threading" in this section, i.e., the two threads of upper and lower arm combine as if to go through an eye. I'm for staying loose and resisting any impulse to twist upper arm backward during this part of the tract.

The developmental challenge is to preserve most of the passive moves one employs on other serves.

Upper arm will load (or twist like an axle) and elbow will rise higher than it already was-- very much a conventional pattern. Perhaps one also has mastered twist of forearm outward as part of the passiveness. Perhaps instead one twists racket tip outward in first part of arm extension. That discussion is rendered mute. Turning wrist inward helps one better to forget certain things. (Wrist and forearm turned in becomes wrist and forearm turned out through simple, natural inversion.)

Passive compression then can be mostly the same as in other serves with one big exception: The two halves of the arm won't come together from a right angle since they already did that by "threading the needle."

A series of negative experiments in fact led me off the radio beam of post # 310 . They all were about what you can and cannot eliminate from passive compression in the more forward elbow position.

Worst probably was pivoting elbow 180 degrees on a level plane rather than 90 . You want to save the final 90 degrees and make it passive as it twists upward-- I'm quite sure.

[bottle]

A Last Word, I'd Say, If I Didn't Know Better

One quality has so far distinguished my careers as embassy chauffeur, census-taker and server of tennis balls-- the ability to get lost.

In mitigation, I shall endeavor today to pay more attention to just where the elbow is.

FLAT was helped if elbow passively got thumb near juncture of arm and neck rather than behind head (idea from Scott Murphy's TennisPlayer lessons). And if I then allowed elbow to throw upward toward body median.

PURE SLICE (my Pooch Ace is impure-- a blend of slice and flat) also was helped by the "juncture" tip if I remembered then not to change level of elbow, but throw with body, arm and murderous intention toward right fence rather than around.

KICK was nothing like what I envisioned. I encountered a good server yesterday at the court. We did our usual thing of playing points (one guy serves from both courts, then the other guy does the same thing).

Intelligence from my kick serve exceeded the thoughts I then had overnight, i.e., I did certain things that caused him trouble on his returns, and I need to remember them, to continue them.

First, the elbow will throw forward toward the net as if thumb is stuck in the juncture as a pivot point.

Seeing this movement demonstrated, one might get confused and think that it ought to be slow. Just the opposite. Arm extension must occur while leg extension still is happening-- Chet Murphy tip-- with as much of serve as possible fast and linked.

We have to THINK in slow motion, however. The triceps and shoulder rotors now take over, i.e, the racket goes straight up while twisting left and then to right, and as racket head speeds to right it takes the whole arm with it.

But let's back off from these thoughts for now. Think how far forward the elbow gets at point of maximum stored energy in a conventional flat or sliced serve (leg at mid-extension, racket tip at low point for immediate throw).

The upper arm is almost but not quite parallel to baseline. For rough calculation of where elbow should be, alternatively, for kick release, add 90 degrees of level turn toward net.

Such a construction is apt to be weak. And one would prefer generation of energy equivalent to the other serves, thus necessitating re-design.

"It's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you know that just ain't so." -- Satchel Paige

I'll settle for a first experiment now on toss going up as racket tip bends arm up to a right angle, same as in any old-fashioned Lloyd Budge serve.

This bending of arm happens later in most of anybody's good serves nowadays coincident with body press forward.

So, body press forward now is to be coincident with the two halves of my arm
squeezing together, from willpower, this time, mimicking the usual passive reaction to leg extension in which compressing arm finishes loop and then extends in rapid sequence.

But I'm not interested in loading the upper arm-- not yet. That is another difference in the mimicry from the original.

The usual loading of arm takes elbow forward 90 degrees in passive reaction to leg extension.

Everything, in terms of power, is the same, only the elbow is 90 degrees farther forward. In old fashioned slice it turns about 90 degrees; in flat it turns about 90 degrees. Here it turns about 90 degrees. It's just a different 90 degrees.

Does this new 90 degrees cause hand to brush hair forward on top of the head? Yes if arm is relaxed enough so that the centrifugation opens it a bit from the elbow.

Arm will now extend racket straight up from the triceps muscle as rotor muscles spin racket first to left and then to right blending into linear movement of whole arm in that direction.

This design overcomes the rotorded server's endemic weakness of not getting racket tip low enough.

Racket tip doesn't get low but it does go far-- very far at a pretty good clip, thus giving itself space in which to accelerate.

Many thanks to Rosheem for his input (post # 302), which helps a lot in this special adaptation.

[bottle]

High Backhand Slice Revisited

It makes such a difference to know which way the arm ought to twist. Clockwise, NOT counter-clockwise, if you want to hit a sharp angled short crosscourt. (Clockwise if viewed from ABOVE!)

In other words, you carve around outside of the ball, possibly even as racket goes up similar to a serve but in all cases as racket chops back down.

This still isn't going to be clear to somebody. If you carved around outside of the ball on a serve you might get a decent and nicely unfashionable slice. (Helped me and my partner win a big division of a tournament in Berryville, Virginia one time.)

In "modern" serves both pronation (twist from forearm) and shoulder twist (unlike pronation a contributor to racket head speed) help one perform the upward action. Just take these same direction twistings, as they are, and move them over to the backhand side.

[bottle]

Go With, Cont'd

Turn knees back only as you shift weight onto front foot. Then go down on front foot some more just as arm achieves its right angle with hand quite far back and even with base of skull.

Should knees still be going back during the added bend? For a rotorded server, perhaps. The goal is best upward spin.

When, just to think about things, one holds racket in the lowest tip down position possible, one sees that one can gain a few inches more of lowness if knees and hips are still rotating backward just then.

Of course that's not how one serves. The racket tip only squeezes down as part of last instant double move embraced by leg extension. The arm 1) squeezes passively together and 2) vigorously, triceptically extends both while leg extension does its thing.

Should knees still be rotating backward as leg extends? It's an idea.

One wouldn't need to start knees backward as soon as for pooch ace, then, and toss would be unchallenged by body rotation.

Knees to rotate backward through three phases of the serve: 1) weight transfer onto front foot, 2) extra bending of front knee, 3) firing of leg extensor.

That should be enough of backward rotation phases.

On pooch ace serves, the knees rotate the opposite way, and early. I like to think of no pause between the two golfer's rotations whatsoever. You can keep both feet flat or try pulling left heel backward like Jack Nicklaus or pivot backward on the heel (three options). Change of direction can form a complete, natural arm loop. Slowness of the knees keeps toss relatively undisturbed.