A New Year's Serve

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Advice for all Tennis Writers

There used to be more left-handers, according to Leonard Shlain, the late surgeon, scholar and anthropologist.

One bit of evidence is the number of cave paintings drawn by somebody's left hand.

As the number of left-handers continues to shrink, so too should the number of tennis articles in which the author says, "A left-hander would reverse everything I just said, haw-haw-haw, with right foot instead of left pointing at LEFT net post this time, by golly."

Since the best communication occurs when a listener, student or reader fills in the most important detail himself, and since many left-handers are dyslexic anyway, they love inverting tennis information for themselves and do it routinely without help.

Similarly, I, who am right-handed and just slightly dyslexic, sometimes can better apprehend video of a performing tennis player if he is a southpaw.

Just assume everybody is right-handed. You'll waste fewer words. Life will be sweet. The reader will feel less weary. And you'll probably be right.

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Pooch Ace Go With

My best serve right now is pooch ace out wide (deuce court) or down the center (ad court). Unbeknownst to me, it has become faster and faster. I don't know why and needn't find out (Post # 290). What I do want is fast kick off of the same basic start.

Go back with slow knees but not forward with them (i.e., don't rotate them forward, only backward). The two serves are identical to this point.

Go forward with hip leading and finish the transition to front foot by bending knee more, now throw upward from left foot (quadriceps and triceps). Trust the quadriceps to overpower the triceps thus providing the linked sequence you desire. Straightening body, sometimes called "cartwheel," must remain subservient. If this move becomes too prominent a step all of its own, it separates the quadriceptic from the triceptic work, thus hopelessly interrupting flow of the throw and its building energy.

The knees start out fairly bent, like a golfer's. If they're too straight or too bent, they and the hips they control won't rotate properly (Boomer, and Ledbetter ripping off Boomer).

As you rotate backward in this "go with" serve the front knee should naturally start to thrust forward, thus providing a good transition to hip-led travel to front foot. Why lift the heel yet, however? Save that for final go down on knee and hurl the racket handle straight upward from ball of that foot.

From ball of foot to contact will be a straight shot. Racket is to go up the longest possible straight runway (Chris Lewit). You must have learned a wrist and arm twist combination that will work or maybe could learn it now.

The original backward turn of the knees, preserved, will, along with arch of whole back but primarily in mid-back region, provide more racket tip lowness.

Both of these serves start from an extreme stance.

One recurring, unanswered question in these posts is which is better, spaghetti arm, triceptic throw, or a combination of both. In pooch ace, with its third phase all out circular throw of the elbow, one wants spaghetti arm. In pooch kick, one wants a "fire the extensors, baby" throw.

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Backhand Development Continuance

Have been re-reading TENNIS FOR THINKING PLAYERS by Chet Murphy. He suggests putting a few wrinkles in the wrist. That translates to my particular case as locking it as I've been doing to start the rip-- but doing so a bit less to form a slightly more narrow lock-- which melds well with the previous idea (#304) of adding a bit of slow swing to my second machination of twist.

Such slowness says to me, "Just call this whole part of the tract 'feeling for the ball.'"

A generalized idea, yes, but with specific details one soon can forget through committed practice.

Believing in an idea is half the battle when you know how many of your ideas have let you down before.

Besides tennis, I'm interested in history-- especially when I can relate to it with my hand. "You may carve your serves," John M. Barnaby said. "Don't carve your serves," Chet Murphy said. Between them was Timothy Gallwey, who wrote INNER TENNIS and THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS. I've always felt that Gallwey was rebelling against his college coach, Barnaby. And Murphy clearly was rebelling against Gallwey, whose books were so popular that they infused American tennis with a nebulous quality it still may not have escaped.

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BH Ongoing Development

is such a trail that I wonder why anyone would want to follow it unless it were for the moral of TRAIL, i.e., learn how to trail-blaze and establish your own trail and then follow it to see where it goes.

I started with full swing one arm backhands like Don Budge or Roger Federer, abbreviated them to half-swing numbers more like John McEnroe and was pleased at the improvement.

I added my own rolled wrist straightening from sweep oar rowing, then sequenced it into roll of full arm to find the ball-- far superior, in my view, to the one-handers which use that same roll while hitting the ball instead. Boris Becker had more roll while hitting the ball; John McEnroe, characteristically, less-- he had already used that roll, earlier, as part of preparation rather than perpetration but with plenty of penetration.

Eventually I felt, conceptually, like straightening the arm a little farther back-- just because this felt good and might produce even more power. At the same time however I started missing a few more shots, which made perfect sense since I was swinging hard from farther back rather than feeling my way right up to the ball.

The solution would appear to be extending arm while rolling wrist straight exactly where that feels good but then add a bit of non-forcible whole arm easing swing while performing the whole arm roll-- which uses the old idea of a train moving slowly out of a station before turning on the power.

My acceleration then starts with an opening of the wrist straight along the
swing trajectory followed by a clenching of shoulderblades together. This method puts me on outside of ball and results in less racket head tract from
impact onward compared to the other one handers I see every day.

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Merci

Thanks. I'll try each of these ideas in my attempt to complete the exploration. I definitely was brushing the hair where there is hair.

[rosheem]

That description is similar to the feel I get on my second serve. Maximum upward racquet head speed is a good thing to shoot for. I think of it as throwing the hand straight up while using the other components of the motion to fling the strings through contact for the out-to-right acceleration.

One thing there is more of on my second serve is racquet lag. Not for extra speed, but to get the strings to move straight up the ball. The natural tendency is to swipe across the ball, but if the hand is thrown up while the lagging head is still catching up, by the time contact occurs, the strings can go more up instead of across.

Another point...for me, anyway, is to maintain the hand alignment so the hair can be "pushed forward and to the right" on the top of the head instead of allowing the palm to open, which would be more like pushing the hair from the neckline up the back of the head.

Another key feeling for me is that the harder and faster the hand is thrown in the upward direction, the harder and faster the rotation must be at the top of the stroke (maybe you could call it a flexion/pronation hybrid move) to ensure there is still a sensation of swimming over the top. This is the feeling of torque or opposing forces.

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Curled Racket Serves

What you are willing to try must have intrinsic worth. That means the idea could be lousy; still, it's an idea. And not all pros and players give new ideas in tennis their proper due.

The idea under consideration is best expressed in a tennis tip from TennisTeacher.com :

"Imagine that you put your hand above your head, with the wrist bent inwards, looking at your palm as if protecting your head from the rain (with your index finger pointing to your left), then moving it slightly forward and mainly to the right (for a right-hander), and finishing with your index finger pointing to your right, with the wrist still bent inward.

"Another analogy would be pushing your hair forward and then to the right.

"What is remarkable is that the player accelerates the racket head more in the second serve than in the first serve, but across to the right rather than forward. And the more he accelerates the more spin he gets, the more the ball goes into the service court, and the more it jumps."

The most jump I've generated in this method occurred when I used a simple knees-back, knees-forward sequence to:

1) cock the wrist behind me, pre-loading the upper arm.
2) Released upper arm twist simultaneous with front leg thrust
3) Kept upper arm twisting hard as triceps exploded arm way out to right
4) Remembered the part about keeping grip looser even than on a first serve
5) Took it easy, going for harmonious rhythm without muscling anything too much even through triceptic firing clearly is pure muscular discharge
6) Adjusted toss, contact point and elbow level to ensure an upward racket path at impact
7) Used extreme backhand grip in addition to curling wrist inward at outset of serve
8) Payed with the HUBR/VUBR ratio for most effective upward RHS (HUBR equals "horizontal upper body rotation"; VUBR equals "vertical upper body rotation"; RHS equals "racket head speed").

Serving this way is NOT a lousy idea. I've witnessed these serves working: In some cases the hand almost grazes the head. A distinguished member of the Wake Forest University women's varsity, from Russia, appears to use this method on first and second. Me, I want it as an option for second only. Then again, I am a "rotorded" server, which doesn't imply anything about the human mind although some would disagree. "Rotorded" refers to inflexibility in rotors in the shoulder.

So, can a rotorded server incorporate this provocative idea from Oscar Wegner, which gives up a primary late instant contributor to racket head speed in the first serve studies by Brian Gordon, viz., wrist flexion? Will it work? I think so although best response is still sporadic and I haven't mastered it yet.

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More on the Serves of Lloyd Budge in TENNIS MADE EASY

No pivot of front foot or movement of rear foot on his slice and kick serves as of contact. Yes, pivot of front foot on his "flat" serve. And the pivot brings dead leg around. But front foot has settled on its heel again by the time that zombie leg, slightly in air, reaches the ball at same instant the racket does.

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New Conclusions on Old Age Rotorded Serving

Unexpectedly, I found myself playing against Saleem, a cut-shot artist from Montreal and Lebanon, who clearly wasn't bothered enough by my first serve.

It's not a bad serve, just a little mediocre, and definitely employs leftward leap if not great leftward lean. I asked myself, "What really is the use of the modern leap and left foot landing if you don't get far off the ground?" I combined this thought with the maxim: "Old men shouldn't jump up in the air." And advice from one of the Vic Braden acolyte teaching pros who accompanied Vic to Winchester, Virginia, and who, after observing the airborne footwork on my serve, asked simply, "How do you hit the ball?" That wasn't enough for me, however, since I like to combine information from a variety of sources sometimes before I make an important decision.

As the lob kick second serve I recently developed after three decades of trying came in most part from periodic study of the fly leaf of TENNIS MADE EASY by Lloyd Budge, I decided to consult that book once again.

There's Lloyd, on the cover, showing the easy kick that carried him and his partner to the finals of the U.S. Open, Forest Hills, where they lost to Lloyd's brother and Gene Mako in four sets.

Somebody-- perhaps a writer at the old magazine "Tennis World"-- called TENNIS MADE EASY one of the five greatest instructional books ever written.

Remembering that, I looked now at the sparsely chosen photographs inside. Trying to divine a whole stroke from one or two photos is a far cry from running the videos at Tennis Player, stopping them, reversing them, repeating them, perhaps even counting frames.

What you see is mostly in your imagination. Is this a bad thing? Depends on your imagination.

I was struck this time by Lloyd hitting flat (two photos) and slice (one photo).
The toss was WAY out to the side behind the baseline in both cases. And for flat, Lloyd didn't even follow the old "Tennis World" rule of drawing a straight mental line from left leg up right arm to the ball.

Nope, at contact on page 81, Lloyd's racket is vertical, which seems text-book. But his extended right arm is well outside his extended left leg, and his right leg has moved up with his revolving body under the ball, an airborne peg-leg on the move. The extended left foot, which went up on its toe to help passively cock the racket tip downward has already settled on its heel again.

I have noticed that his brother, Don, of whom many more visuals are available, did that, too.

Works for me.

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The Moral of Delpo

If you crack your wrist straight through every shot, you may win the U.S. Open; but, you also may hurt your wrist.

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The Voice of Barnaby

The chop I seek is a carved serve in reverse, and since few people carve their serves any more, the knowledge with which to hit it is extremely difficult to come by.

If you want to experience tennis ignorance (don't know why you would) put "How to Chop a Kick Serve Return" in a search engine and see what you get.

The most solid piece of advice I could find, from my old favorite talk place, "Talk Tennis," is DON'T DO IT: THE BALL WILL FLOAT.

However, John M. Barnaby addresses that problem in his three books. He suggests maybe putting the thumb flatter on the back of the handle, or otherwise fiddling with grip until solidity is achieved.

We know this shot can work, spectacularly, because Pancho Gonzalez did it again and again. He is even reputed to purposely have let the ball get high on him for more acute angles.

John M. Barnaby writes, "The high backhand return of service is another spot where the ability to slice is indispensable. The racket must be cocked straight up above and outside the ball, then must carve around the outside of the ball and down across the striker so the follow-through is low on the right side. The lower edge of the racket must lead around, down, and through. If one pivots by rotating or swivelling on the ball of the right foot as the shot is played, so the left foot steps out to the left as the shot is finished, the ball can be carved for an astonishingly effective crosscourt return."

[bottle]

Chop Return in Ad Court, Cont'd

Why not use LESS GRIP if that will send ball farther to the right?

That would be big knuckle on 1.5 .

With hand under strings, keeping wrist concave would also send ball farther to the right-- a nice addition.

The normal method of closing a backhand through INCREASING GRIP seems more applicable to a horizontal or diagonal racket and may be irrelevant to this shot.

When you're chopping with racket tip cocked way up, less grip means balls that fly farther to the right.

With arm bent also, you can key racket tip upward easily. But how powerfully would you want to do this during what reasonably ought to be the delicate part of the stroke? More power would derive from keeping elbow stationary and keying the racket tip up; I'm advocating the opposite-- LESS power at this part of the tract. Why not move both ends of the lever at the same time then, i.e., slant lever from tip of racket to bent elbow-- tilt the whole contraption for control.

Then, accelerate down back of ball in precise direction of target.

Is this movement perfectly vertical or with just enough slant to contribute solidity?

The pitch must ultimately be determined by amount of upward spin on the oncoming serve.

The ball is trying to jump up off of your racket but you force it down with your chop.

For every punch there is a counter-punch, so is this it? Are we considering all the known opinions on this subject as we develop a new, more effective shot?

Are we answering every question and questioning every answer?

Me, I'll try leading with the bent elbow, pulling the racket down with the butt rim, hoping to do absolutely nothing that will mess with the arrow-like motion of the racket length. Simultaneous push from the gut should help the elbow head fly true. How about a little straightening from the elbow? Yes, but "little" is the operational word. Next, arm can finish straightening under/after contact to help finish the stroke.

But we haven't discussed body. I see a bent-arm take-back embracing a diagonal step-out. And racket tip keying down as body rears up. Racket then keying the other way as high body holds still. Shoulders pressing forward then during contact and opening in the follow-through.

The worst that can possibly happen, same as always, is the whole thing prove ridiculous.

[bottle]

The Cossack's Chop

When the cossack split open the 26-year-old Sandor Petofi longitudinally, was the arm holding his saber straight or bent?

Considering how wonderful Petofi's poetry is (there's an umlaut over the "o" in his name incidentally)-- especially a mock epic poem called "The Village Hammer"-- this has to be right up there among the most senseless and wasteful events in world history.

For purposes of tennis technique, however, I grant myself detachment from the horror of it all and immunity to anyone actually ambitious enough to learn Pancho Gonzalez's stock reply to high kick serves to his backhand.

The people of Hungary, by the way, turned Petofi's beautiful wife into a pariah for not waiting a full year before she re-married.

May a chop be considered a swing? If so, it's a short swing that hits the ball and then opens out.

But WHAT makes it open out? The direction of the elbow, which points slightly to the right.

I'm now prepared to say that the quickest way to spoil the stroke-- to engender inaccuracy-- is to straighten arm through the chop. You probably will never get the same result twice, at least I didn't.

I've considered this stroke without much luck in acquiring it for many decades by now.

I sit here with the three books of John M. Barnaby spread out in front of me, open in each case to the pages where the scarce, pertinent visuals exist.

In the first and best photo sequence, in RACKET WORK, Barnaby himself hits the ball a foot-and-a-half above his head with a straight arm. In ADVANTAGE TENNIS he hits the ball barely above his head with a bent arm. In GROUND STROKES IN MATCH PLAY, it's not the charmingly dwarfish Barnaby who's doing the chopping, but a strapping youth with racket outrageously, tremendously high, upper arm more than parallel to the court, whole arm slightly bent. From that we go to finish position with racket down low out right and left foot having drawn forward. Since there is no impact point for us to study, we have to imagine it.

So it's back to the Barnaby contact points. What do they have in common? VERTICALITY OF THE STRINGS.

The implications are huge. The hand is UNDER the strings. Contact therefore
is relatively close to the body. And hitting this shot at the lower altitudes won't work. And there's no need for an intermediate arm swing after contact. The chop can transform directly into the body turn. In RACKET WORK, the strings go right down to close to right side of right foot and in front of it before ending more rearward and to right.

There seems a chance that there is no separate movement of the arm after the chop if you don't count extension. Body turn then and direction in which elbow points would be all that created the final arm position.

The arm relaxes straight-- from elbow at least. Am not sure about wrist.

Dropping balls and keeping arm bent till under contact is the only route I can see toward initial development of this stroke. (Eventually, you'll need to practice with someone who has a really good kick serve.)

If the bent arm were straightening down on top of ball, the racket orientation would be diagonal or horizontal, but the two photos of Barnaby himself at contact have THIS in common: The racket orientation is VERTICAL.

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Modification: Slight Retreat from one Goal

I have to be happy with a 50 per cent return on post # 291 . Although I have in these chop experiments broken the ball outward on both sides, I can only do it consistently from the deuce court.

Doesn't matter. I got the Federfore. Then the one-hand backhand I like. And finally the kick serve. And once the girl after three years of trying. So I can get short cross-court chop in the ad court as well.

Wow, what a simple shot if you accept it's from arm only, with body staying closed, but with a little push from the gut.

Contact shall be directly in front of the body almost as if you're performing heart surgery, starting with the sternum. But maybe that smacks too much of medical soap opera. So how about you be the Russian cossack who killed Hungary's greatest poet, 26 years old.

You'll probably need a full eastern grip-- whatever it takes to get the precise downward chop. Sandor Petofi won't thank you.

Racket to swirl 90 degrees from open to edge on. That means turning the elbow down as arm extends, but do both easily. I want the tip to go up before it comes down, but not have to come down too much, which could upset timing. Maybe call the whole easy swirl "preparation for surgery."

The shot can be hit anywhere from waist level on up. Another name for it: "high backhand." There are other kinds of high backhand, I know, but anyone who masters this shot will find it useful for more even than returning a good kick serve.

During the "swirl" I just talked about, how fast should the racket go? Not very. You feel for the ball. Then when you're ready to hit it you employ John M. Barnaby's combination word: "PLUSH." You pull with the racket butt straight down while you push from the stomach, i.e., while keeping body edge on, you bow a little to adjust solidity.

Now you've chopped the ball, so what would be best to do next? Keep pulling the racket butt sideways to your right-- a different feel. You're pulling the racket butt still but maybe not from the rim.

When racket has circled right just let it continue, to pull body around and bring up your outside foot, which feels good.

If racket tries to come up, you didn't properly absorb the excess energy.

If you wound up to hit the ball a foot or more above your head, and you're an uptight person, you might circle with the racket at a still high level. Easier, however, would be just to let it fall as it goes round.

The End.

[bottle]

Can You Throw Your Elbow Backward?

I can't if I'm throwing hard. If I'm throwing easy, however, I can, and there's nothing to it. Well, throwing hard, I CAN, but the elbow is too close in over the head for the consistency of an effective serve-- and maybe your shoulder dislocates as Vic Braden demonstrated with a plastic doll in one of his old videos.

Such closeness of elbow overhead is not a problem if you're just schlepping the racket tip straight up into the sky. This may mean taking the fire truck ladder image quite seriously.

The ladder is on the back of a fire truck, and the overall image is what works-- not a left-brained correspondence of each ladder section to a strictly defined section of your serve.

I am however permitting myself one such correspondence here for purpose of explanation-- but only because I now know I can then put the whole lob kick serve back together again. The correspondence is between a rising section of hydraulic ladder and your elbow going backward. "Hydraulic" might not be the perfect expression. Neither is "hard throw." Something in between, perhaps "fluid toss," is more precise. The kinetic energy of the rising elbow is indeed important, even though this energy is slow and blended with the even, "felt" rise overall.

At this point I can only describe a bit of style I've developed for all serves through various influences and repetitions. It's not the common prescription of getting tall before the knees bend-- example: Roger Federer. The knees start bending earlier with extreme slowness even a tad before the hands descend for the toss. The knees keep right on bending through everything that continues, which includes a shift onto the front foot. The knees bend so slowly that they don't compromise the toss. And the front leg is still bending as the low arm finishes its formation of a right angle (tilted).

Front leg drive then passively inverts the elbow and squeezes the two halves of the arm together and cocks the forearm starting everything straight up to the bottom of the ball.