A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

A Tale of Six Baskets

The first and only basket I ever bought was milky green with frail struts no thicker than coat hangers. It didn't hold many tennis balls, and if its lid was too loose you could bend the edge tight with your bare fingers.

At least it could pick up balls, like any other tennis court basket; next was same style but heavier and bigger, jet black and given to me by a USPTA pro whose house was getting cluttered and, who appreciated my not always successful ferocity when I attacked his passive but solid English opening in chess.

I lost both of these baskets, along with skis downhill and cross-country, and boots, poles, etc. when the marriage broke up and I shrank all possessions down into two suitcases and moved to Hungary.

The third basket also involved divorce. A kind woman, a former tennis player driving past the court, saw me practicing my serve with balls out of my tennis bag. "You're wasting too much time picking up balls," she said as she plucked her husband's hi-rise 75 out of the trunk of her car.

That was my first table-type basket, and I thought I'd never need or have another. I work on my serve more than other people, however, and this means frequently coming to courts as the only human being.

Which means, in turn, that I get blue knitted scarves, water bottles, old rackets, and all other personal belongings left behind if I choose to take them home rather than hang them on the fence-- always a moral decision.

Unless the goods are half in, half out of a big trash barrel. At such a moment the intention is clear, and this is how numbers four, five and six came into my life.

They all were huge, heavy table baskets, rusted, and I hoisted each one. They felt made out of cast iron. One was forest green, one racket cover yellow, the third a snowy white coming apart and two thirds down in the barrel.

Green and yellow were standing primly next to the barrel with only a few loose struts, and those mostly at the top. The lids were much too loose, which made think the owner didn't know what he or she was doing. I took them home, emptied my 75 balls into one and then the other on successive days.

Repairing the lids was easy if you had two vice-grips. Briefly, I contemplated going to a welder for the loose struts before I settled on cord and twisty-ties.

Having a huge, heavy basket only half full of balls is an interesting trip, to use the lingo of the sixties. The basket is so heavy that a frail person couldn't heft it. But you can pick up five balls at once easy just by placing the thing on top of them and letting its own weight descend.

When you turn the long handles down into long legs, it's not too stable, probably from when it served for target practice-- a perfect match.

[bottle]

Groupthink: Chip Return Gonzalez Style (Not)

"The power of the general will is enormous-- to resist it is much harder than people think-- and we are all marked by the times we live in." -- Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Osip, persecuted and destroyed for a poem in which these four words about Joseph Stalin exist: "his cockroach whiskers leer."

Any tennis subject seems trivial compared to the fate of Osip Mandelstam, Afghan peasants, or an American war protester-- but the same principle of fashionable group acceptance, where everybody has thought Stalin cool or at worst harmless, still may apply.

The most difficult shot in the game for me to learn has been kick serve. Now that I have one, most difficult becomes return of a good kick serve. Whatever the best players do, I don't see them dropping a dying bird sharply crosscourt to inside the short T as Pancho Gonzalez is reputed to have done.

Is such a shot even within human capability? In his writings, John M. Barnaby thinks so. The first step is acquisition of a conviction that the only way to adjust pitch on the backhand side-- to put a lid on the ball-- is through change of grip, i.e., turn hand farther and farther over on handle until you get what you need.

I won't attempt a full explanation here of this most complex of shots. Best would be to read Barnaby himself in the old book GROUND STROKES IN MATCH PLAY, USTA Instructional Series. There's nothing like Barnaby's passage on this subject in any other tennis book I have read except for RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS or ADVANTAGE TENNIS: RACKET WORK, TACTICS AND LOGIC also by Barnaby. Then, however, I think it would be interesting to consider two drawings in TECHNICAL TENNIS, Cross & Lindsey, a more recent book.

postcard.gif

The words in my drawing are mine, but I believe in them. For chop (or chip, which is same thing), the usual instruction about hitting outside of ball for sharp crosscourt can be reversed. You may or may not get desired spiralspin, which would make ball break outward after its bounce very nicely, but at least in the attempt you won't hit a short ball that breaks fatally toward center of the court.

The ad court requires more turning of every kind for the right hand player. You need to gradually turn shoulders as you chop, I believe, keep racket at a constant distance from body for constant pitch, gradually move arm to right as it chops, keep wrist concave until after contact, stop shoulders so both ends of racket keep chopping at same speed through contact, bow slightly at waist from instant that shoulders stop.

[bottle]

Pooch Ace

This serve goes for surprise out wide in deuce court or down middle in ad. From a very full, closed stance, it employs a golfer's knees turning gently backward and forward in coupled sequence to loop the arm almost unconsciously. At end of forward knees turn, shoulders turn in a horizontal way faster than the knees went. Then arm goes also in a circle and faster than the shoulders went.

Do shoulders stop to accelerate the arm? I don't think so-- for the arm then might proceed too uncontrollably. The serve is more "smooth, smooth, accelerate, accelerate": That seems to work best.

[bottle]

New True Cues

SLING WITHOUT SWING: First Part of Backhand. If one has implemented John McEnroe's advice to keep elbow in and no longer is about to let it fly too soon like Greg Rusedski (in McEnroe's opinion), one may be ready for a new cue, this one from Billie Jean King: "Always know where the racket is." Or did she say, "Always know where the racket tip is." Whatever she said, make it your business to know where both are.

A main principle of my backhand drive design (described in full earlier in this thread) is to find the oncoming ball with the hand and then hit it with the strings. If one simply gets the arm stretched out toward left fence, with a straight (flat) wrist, one can hit the ball quite well. And practicing this can help one slow down the transition in the slightly longer version. Note the seeming pause in the middle of McEnroe's stroke. That's the transition I'm talking about.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/modern_legends/johnmcenroe/mac_backhand/mac_backhand.html?MacBHShortCourtLevelRear.mov

In other extremely short backhand systems I've read described, one gets the racket going from the shoulder just a bit before turning on the power. I'm thinking, provide corresponding starting motion with wrist instead. Change wrist from flat to concave. Sounds like a service return to me or playing on grass-- something I've never done.

For a normal backhand, I've got a bent arm action twisting racket down one way and then out the other as arm straightens with concave wrist getting rolled flat by forearm before whole arm rolls a little.

I see four pretty fast counts to get racket to end of that sequence, in position for the starting motion. You're really slinging the racket around a lot without swinging it. The hand in fact moves very little, remaining slow to find the ball for a second time. The overall stroke rhythm is 1234 f-five.

FEDERFORE MAINTENANCE. Because of the chill on all outside tennis in North Carolina, I've pretty much had to work on serves only. But when I then did hit with somebody, I didn't generate enough spin on the maximum separated version where Roger makes impact way out wide toward the right fence. From concentrating-- before the lay-off-- on the medium separated version where Roger's wrist mondoes backward and down during contact, I temporarily forgot my own mountain trail analogy for the wide shot, where mondo occurs earlier to permit wrist and forearm to unfurl the racket tip straight out to the side. That's how I get a lot of spin (someone else may do it differently). You're climbing a mountain up a zig-zagging trail. You find a shortcut or half broken out path that takes you straight from your trail to the switchback above. In maximum separated Federfore, this translates into a bowl down before the strings roll up. In medium separated Federfore, bowling action only goes up.

The tract to low point doesn't change for either of these forehands. The difference is in where speed starts-- at low point for medium separated shot in which you hit more through ball. Speed starts before low point for maximum separated shot going down for scrape past ball. Timing doesn't change, mechanics do.

An omission that can compromise both of these strokes is to forget to twist the hitting forearm outward, up top, as left arm crosses in front toward right fence to fully wind the shoulders-- a split infinitive with a big purpose.

FOREHAND VOLLEY. U-shaped arm driven by shoulders with just a little downward hand action is the most solid volley I've ever come by.

BACKHAND VOLLEY. The following filmstrip of Bob Bryan is the simplest I've ever come by (in my shopping efforts). He speaks of sticking this shot. That means hammering it, sideways, I believe. But he only does 45 degrees of sideways hammer, not 90. And his arm is bent. The free movement comes from relaxed shoulder. He only straightens arm for a low volley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDk0r-t6Lxs&NR=1

[bottle]

Short-arming a Serve

In my initial advanced age tournament, my first round opponent, a veteran teaching pro, explained why I won the first set but he the next two. "You were getting your arm straight on your serve," he said, "but then you stopped doing that." I have been extremely aware of this point ever since. Getting arm straight has been the imperative for ALL serves at ALL times.

But, "Rules were made to be broken by those who know them," wrote John O. Barnaby, the college coach of Timothy Gallwey and five decades worth of other Harvard University varsity players.

My short arm awakening happened 27 years ago, and now I'm ready for another, only with an opposite conclusion. Because my new fire ladder serve plus new knowledge that wrist flexion along with shoulder twist but not forearm twist (this known as "pronation") is a prime contributor to racket head speed, has changed everything.

The ladder to which I refer is the type with sections folded neatly together on the back of a fire truck. Hydraulically, the ladder is able effectively to snake upward, though with no especial speed or power. This is what my lob kick serve, finally mastered only four days before my 70th birthday, feels like. Elbow inverts with arm squeezing together and then racket goes up from way low to very high all blended and smooth and extensive.

There isn't the delicious rasp there is in the same serve hit by Brent Abel (video at post # 279) but the ball trajectory is extremely high, the ball lands
very deep, it has enough upward spin to clear the crossbar on the opposite fence, optically speaking.

Well if that works, and you know how, from Jeff Greenwald type serves, to extend triceps from low inversion toward the back fence, what would happen
if you tilted the whole runway backward and forward a bit? Instead of going straight up to the bottom of the descending ball, the racket might pass forward across the upper left corner.

All I can say is that the weather is very cold in the South, which keeps most North Carolinan players inside. A 75-year-old, however, not a Yankee like me, came by for a pick-up hit the other day and grumbled, "What's all the fuss about? You move around-- then you don't get cold."

Today and other days, however, he didn't appear. And my regular opponent, the real reason that both this new partner and several others now, myself included, hit the ball pretty well, is recovering from having a lens put in his left eye (yikes!). But when no one is around, you can invent best. Just ask Andy Roddick if he was in the middle of league play when he invented his teenage (and present) serve.

So I've tried many things, passively extending the arm, using triceps part-way, extending all the way from triceps, holding the bend, throwing the elbow, not throwing the elbow, etc., etc.

With the fire ladder serve, after low elbow inversion, arm extension and shoulder twist keep taking racket up and up and you hit ball as high as possible near tip of racket.

With the bent arm, what works best for me is 1) keep some arm bend, but fire the shoulder twist and wrist flexion simultaneously as always. (Pronation happens at same time but slower than shoulder twist and I'm not going to worry about it any more.) And 2) don't fire the elbow but keep it solid with rotating body.

Before I make my final statement here, I must clearly ask, how can bending the arm possibly be good? Well, it changes the angle of racket beneath ball, which is what a player of limited flexibility in the shoulder, lowlier than Sampras and Roddick, has always wanted.

I've already told the story, I think, of my former doubles partner, a complete beginner who mastered a kick serve his first week. His brother never will in his entire life, guaranteed. Me, I needed 28 years. I hit some kick serves, sure, but didn't master them.

With this bent arm serve, one can use a continental grip if one wants-- it needn't be more extreme than that.

And one can make the ball jump about as high as fire-ladder method, but it will travel through the air a bit faster. The trick appears to be to treat it as a first serve, knifing right at the ball for as long as possible rather than coming to it from the left. In this fashion, you can hit softly upward.

The great irony of this, however, is that if you employ the inverse proportion rule for upper body horizontal rotation and upper body vertical rotation (the more of one the less of the other), you get hard, fast kick from more vertical, and hard, fast kick slice from the more horizontal-- not what I was trying for but I'll take it!

These serves are not quite as fast as my full arm extension serves but so what? They're useful.

[bottle]

Slugging a Chop Serve

Everything in modern serving is about coming over the ball. So, fire the whole subject-- give it its walking papers, at least in the case of one archaic serve.
Archaic is good since people haven't seen it in a while, at least not if they aren't archaic themselves.

Use a semi-open stance, almost as if you're going to hit a semi-open forehand. Wind back, wind forward, wipe down the back of the ball. Low toss? No problem. Jack-knifing the body? No problem again. In fact, jack-knifing the body is advisable (since you don't have to stay tall), and so's a low toss.

But don't jack-knife while developing this shot. Just wipe down. Maybe you can start with a full head of steam developed from swinging up and down before you meet the ball. If you carefully read the heavy duty sports scientists Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey in their book TECHNICAL TENNIS, you'll see that they like up and down swings-- early-- even when you're hitting over the ball.

Ball goes in net? Open the racket more for wiping down. Goes long? Keep the racket openness right there but add the body jack-knife.

In a good jack-knife, butt goes backward as shoulders go forward for the greatest push a human being can deliver to a tennis ball, just as John O. Barnaby wrote in RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS.

[bottle]

Bopping your Wrist on a One-hand Backhand

I am a person who is always looking for a new kinesthetic cue. They say that Tom Watson is the same way in golf, so this is not necessarily a recipe for disaster.

The more I play with a John McEnroe type backhand only with heel of hand on pointy ridge at 7.5, the more I realize how much more compact I'm becoming every day.

Keeping the arm bent as you take it back, stepping...keeping the arm bent as you simultaneously lower by virtue of upper body straightening and racket tip keying down-- did I already say the next thing I'm about to say here?-- with arm still bent-- makes you very compact indeed, almost as if you're on the face of a medallion with a motto along the bottom: "PERFECTLY PROPORTIONED JOCK."

You may disagree, may always disagree, but the next thing is pure Oscar Wegner, is "feeling for the ball." One of the items the misunderstanders don't get is that Oscar has you still adjusting hand to the ball at a moment that seems much too late but isn't. Then you are on your own about how you're going to, in a continuous motion, take racket back and bring it forward to touch the ball. That's right. Oscar wants you to invent. How unusual for a tennis instructor!

In my case I'm going to use my port-side feathering motion from shell-boat racing fifty years ago (three Dad Vail national championships for emerging collegiate rowing powers). I slowly roll my wrist straight as I extend my arm, then roll the whole arm a little more, then return my wrist to concave before I hit the ball with a big rabbit punch.

This last independent motion of the wrist-- the return of it to concave-- is the bop, bop, re-bop of my backhand. And it's a large addition. Not only does it get the racket tip around as never before, and with seemingly no physical effort, but it is a zero at the bone sensation that is a distinct marker in the continuous motion.

So, when I'm pantomiming without a racket (I'm doing it right now with my pen), I wave my arm around in front of me-- or so it would look to a beautiful woman sitting up next to me in this bed-- but each time I bop with the wrist it's a DTL, a DTC, a deep CC, a short CC. Do I bop with the wrist at different points in the stroke circle? Sure. Why not? What's the advantage of altering the basic structure of the stroke? You might make the next shot but miss the one after that.

[bottle]

Lob Kick

is no good if it doesn't land deep in the service court. So it pays to practice with targets and send some of your mortars too far, on purpose. A beginner mastering this shot has to realize that its apogee as well as its spin determines height from the bounce. And ask, Why does apogee turn into perigee, too close to the center of the earth? Why does ball land deep or in the middle of the service court? The higher trajectory shot BOTH lands deep and bounces higher. These shots flirt with disaster. An inch or two difference can determine whether the easy serve is a forcing shot or a sitting duck. And they could work better on one day than another. Fast kick or fast anything interspersed with them might work through surprise. But for getting closest to the net on a serve and volley, how can one ever improve on a deep, high lob kick?

[bottle]

Year-end Wrap-up

How often does one know if emulation of some filmed model will lead to:
A.) something one can do?
B.) personal invention within the new form?
C.) a stroke better than or equal to one's others?

Beyond a skimpy article or two, there is no convincing literature on this subject. When people report at all, they report their biases or if we're lucky their personal experiences.

I remember a period of ten years when the corner of Virginia in which I played was full of elbow-led back-swing forehands sprayed in all directions by strapping youths imitating Ivan Lendl in all but accuracy. It is said that the example of Fred Perry's ping-pong-type ground strokes sterilized British tennis for three fourths of a century. Borgian clones other than Vilas didn't fare well until Rafa: Imitators of Chris Evert did better.

John McEnroe's serve didn't help me but his backhand did. Can one draw a clear moral from all such inconsistencies? I'll take each case individually, thank you, finding little in common from which to generalize. The serves of Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams proved especially useless to me.

The conservative forehands of Roger Federer, however, are another story, the way to learn them extraordinarily easy. That is to buy a copy of TECHNICAL TENNIS: RACQUETS, STRINGS, BALLS, COURTS, SPIN, AND BOUNCE, by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey, Racquet Tech Publishing and turn to page 135 before or after watching all available videos. One convenience is that more videos of Federer exist than of any other player.

The TECHNICAL TENNIS drawing on page 135 is full of racket trajectory information and acceleration indicators, along with such various figures as incoming ball, 29 mph, departing ball, 96 mph, racket tilt forward 8 degrees with racket head rising at 31 degrees at impact. This last figure should definitely be compared with the old 65 degrees that Vic Braden used to advocate. His book was called TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE and this is the future.

I haven't wanted to master the 29 varieties one can see in Roger's forehand, but have found three useful categories of my own Federfore. First is the page 135 species in which wrist is going backward and forearm rolling down (mondo) as strings impact ball to catch it a little. Second is a shot where mondo is a bit earlier allowing counter-mondo to unfurl racket way out wide toward right fence-- with an occupational hazard that wrist and forearm may send racket toward net instead, spraying the ball. Third is like first with a comfortable set-up neither too close or too far away, only with early mondo and counter-mondo straight toward the target, inspired by consistent wrist action observed in the videos of Juan Martin Del Potro-- speedy but high risk and possibly unhealthy* forehands.

In serves, after 30 years of trying (due mostly but not entirely to inflexibility in shoulder), I developed a constant lob kick that clears cross-bar on opposite fence pretty much every time, something I can finally live with. I plan to serve with more variety than most players, something that will prove both good and bad (and fun). Right now I'm working on a Jeff Greenwald imitation from the continuous filmstrip that opens the December issue of TennisPlayer.

You can see that Greenwald's passive melding together of two halves of the arm looks like anybody else's, just is much lower. This creates opportunity for very pro-active throw up to ball by a more back door route. The triceps can start this action before the elbow even moves another inch. Then the elbow, muscularly thrown up, passively straightens arm until you're ready for snap which is primarily a combination of wrist flexion and shoulder twist. I'm saving most of pronation, i.e., forearm twist, for followthrough after impact. The thing perhaps to note is that although there are passive elements in this serve, you are always using some muscle group or another big-time and can therefore feel like a real athlete.

Near end of one of three practices on these new serves, I shifted from my continental to a more extreme grip with heel of hand on panel seven. I find this latest bunch of experiments interesting and conducive to serving hard.

* The word "unhealthy" usually requires translation. Sometimes it reflects concern for the human race; much more often the speaker hates you and thinks you will remain unhappier if you don't learn the particular "unhealthy" shot.

[bottle]

Second Observation about Filmed Serve

To reach Jeff Greenwald's low, 90-degree arm position, you've got to open out the racket tip. Because racket is close to body this opening out can't happen by itself. But the way Greenwald does open out seems notably natural. He takes racket tip around toward back fence while he squeezes the two halves of his arm into the right angle, a bit more snake-like motion than conventional servers need. Then the two halves of the arm passively meld their last bit together to initiate his triceptic throw back toward the rear fence at beginning of the racket head's rise.

Points to note: Racket gets close to body. Then it gets even closer to body before flying out toward back fence, thus creating a far superior route up to the ball than any motion which travels in a straight line. Admittedly, I don't have much "scope" available to myself and perhaps Greenwald's technique is
for elite servers only.

I'll know within a minute or two of arriving at the court whether I'm on the beam or not.

[bottle]

Increasing Service Tract behind you

Jim Kacian, haiku book editor and former tour player, described how a bunch of pros would be practising on adjacent courts when somebody tried something new. Immediately, the experiment would ripple through the group. Everyone would try the new thing before returning to his accustomed stroke.

This suggests that top players are thespians with their eyes all over the place, experts at mime like Novak Djokovich.

So when a lesser player sees a film of Jeff Greenwald serving as in the TP December issue, and notices arm work different from his own, should he imitate it? "OH NO, YOU MIGHT HURT YOURSELF!" True, but you might hurt yourself if you don't try it, too.

"Squeeze the two halves of your arm together," Ivan Lendl suggested in HITTING HOT. But look at where Greenwald does that. Down low in his power position rather than up top as body pressure lifts the elbow and loads the arm. By then Greenwald is already firing his triceps.

So, in my kick serves I can hurry the upward components of my arm action and belly (verb) more swing farther behind the body, something I'm eager to try as soon as the present rain stops.

[bottle]

A Septuagenarian's Response to a Tip from "Dr. Jack"

Thank you, Ochi. Season's greetings. Since my ideas appear to me in the most undisciplined way, much like Joan's voices, I must tell you that I've been suddenly influenced by the part of the filmstrip several posts ago where Brent Abel was showing us lousy slice as opposed to great kick. I thought it was tremendous slice! And then I remembered that Dennis Ralston doesn't get racket tip very low when hitting slice, and Abel doesn't either, so I tried it. Everything goes in a wide circle-- knees back and forth like a golfer,
upper body whirling for a short bit but you stop it and let arm continue, then blend in knee extension and a step toward the net. And you can just toss
out anywhere to the rim of this big circle. I tried a toss along the baseline! Worked fine. Pretty close to your 5 per cent. We'll see. I want one of those overheads. Yes, Riggs, cleverness, deviousness, showmanship-- one reason I like Ron Waite, who wrote that he broke his thumb and had to devise a special serve during the healing, chose Eastern forehand grip and semi-open stance, big step forward in the middle, low toss and downward swipe of the strings for something skidding and unorthodox that people hate. Ron Waite wrote that he now uses this as 80 per cent of his first serves even though his thumb is healed. The idea of having step-forward serves along with leftward-leap-and-kick-back is a return to younger days and appeals to me very much. Also, a return to Eastern forehand grip is so unfashionable that it has to be good. Charlie Pasarell pointed out in MASTERING YOUR TENNIS STROKES that a few serves hit with Eastern forehand quickly restore zing to serves hit with hand more turned over on the handle.

The tip: When trying to spin the second serve, let your wrist snap. Don't try to pronate excessively. Your elbow and shoulder rely on the pronating action as a follow-through mechanism to decelerate after impact. If you try to force the pronation, there is no follow-through and tendinitis could result. (Page 171, HIGH TECH TENNIS by Jack L. Groppel, PhD)

The response: "Pronation" is independent twist from the forearm. And shoulder twist is from the shoulder. Make shoulder twist and wrist flexion into one move* which you can call your "snap" if you want. And relegate pronation-- or most of it-- to after the contact since, besides Groppel's WMD warning about it, pronation is virtually useless in generating racket head speed according to the most recent update to his research by Brian Gordon (a PhD or will be).

* Simultaneity of shoulder twist and wrist flexion is illustrated by three photographs on page 87 in THINK TO WIN by Allen Fox, PhD.

[ochi]

Greetings!

Yo, Bot, since you are now into your new phase of severe slice serving, here's something to try, if you have not been doing it routinely -- have someone hit you a high lob, and when it is bouncing high, arch backward and take a lonnnng swiping swing across the back of it, using a backhand grip and plenty of shoulder turn while facing about five degrees toward the baseline, and see what happens. Surely, you have seen Federer and others do it. The arcing of the ball back across the net can be astounding. I once hit an especially good one that seemed headed to the left of the guy at net, and then it veered way to his right, landing in the deuce box, and he exclaimed, "Jesus!"

My point is, this might be an overlooked key to the serve you are developing. It is one that I imagine the great Bobby Riggs used. (BTW, have you read his autobiography? What a story, what pix -- Riggs playing suckers for five grand while wearing hipboots, holding an umbrella, running around benches, leading a baby elephant on a leash! Our kind of guy! If only we were anywhere near that good.)

I wish you a very happy 70th, and a steady flow of new ideas.

[bottle]

"Kick Until They're Sick"

Hah! Nice post. Getting around on a 1HBH is largely what that shot is all about, as Bungalow Bill, A.J. Chabria and Ed Faulkner have always told us.

My personal news is that I've got my kick serve down (I mean up) four days short of my seventieth birthday. Just took one year from the time of declaration. It's an extremely annoying mortar hit from behind the head, somewhat like Ron Waite's (post # 270), the video called "Kick Until They're Sick."

The grip is milder than his, however, the stance much more extreme, the genre platform rather than pinpoint (with less to go wrong), but exactly like Ron's, it consistently bounces higher than the crossbar on the opposite fence if I only can remember a few simple things-- even when I'm using old balls (whoops!).

It's far from the best of the four kick serves presented in post #270, but who cares? Nobody ever said I had to be able to bounce a ball up into the seats at Joel Coliseum like Andy Roddick, the only player among the combined American and French Davis Cup teams in Winston-Salem who could.

So what, if anything is there to be learned from my excessively difficult thirty-year-long experience, again in learning? First, ANYONE can hit a kick serve if he or she will just get their orientation right. It's to hell with all well known cues about how to toss, for me, other than my own, which is to toss in a line through head and the net-post even if the ball is behind. That gives me a road sign to keep me from getting lost in the vast city-scape above my skull.

Second, don't hit the ball hard. Use the sky instead. Lob the ball twice--on the toss and the hit both. Watch Brent Abel hit topspin serves-- a perfect model for sound and trajectory of the actual hit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gWAww8FSes

But when tossing get high point directly over the head-- higher, higher, and even higher than that. Then let it come down and crowd you a little as Tony Roche always said to do.

I realize there is high, soft, annoying kick, and a lower, faster variety. When I'm trying for that I'll use my more extreme grip. But I have plenty of fast serves-- they just tend to stay low. Their lowness will no longer bother me if I have soft, high kick that will work not only as an option but as my staple serve for many matches.

[Bungalow Bill]

It's going toward a smooth, confident move that I can mime while I'm lying on my back in bed or walking down the street. Although I spent time trying to figure out exactly where John McEnroe rolls his wrist, I couldn't-- sometimes he seemed to do it earlier, sometimes later. Which is fine. I have decided to roll mine in unison with my extending arm and then continue the roll with full arm. Just then my wrist will re-open to concave.

Is there sequence in this final, sharp corner? A little. The full arm starts its roll, providing most of the desired turn. But almost immediately the wrist brings the racket tip around a bit more to outside of the oncoming ball.

So, what's the timing of this? Well, one has a choice: Place the whole arm roll with opening wrist for two fleeting movie frames, as I suggested before, or place the arm turn with the simultaneous slow forearm roll, wrist straightening and arm extension that preceded it.

One can cue the action either way and eventually end up through repetition with something good that is both and neither. If all the rolling feels like one linked move, you then can use wrist snap as trigger of the vigorous swing.

Somebody will want to know: Why does Bot talk like this? Well, I saw a chance to become more specific.

But I continue to believe like other critics that all discussion of tennis technique is either too detailed or not detailed enough, including mine.
All one can do is try to get things right.

lol Bottle, you never cease to amaze me. Seems you are talking to yourself now?