A New Year's Serve

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No Temporizing

For Option # 2 in the previous post, one can just load the arm farther around
as elbow goes reflexively up. I'm squeezing both halves of the arm together but also cocking the forearm out now as I've done for most of my serving life. Then forward body rotation can open the arm passively out toward a right angle. In this serve, if elbow throw (something conventional tennis instruction doesn't emphasize enough?) and triceptic extension then occur simultaneously, the vectors of each will fire at right angles to one another.

This is untrue (or less true) of flat first serve, where elbow throw and muscular extension are more in the same direction. And to add a little slice one only need pronate a bit less-- this slice serve can be close to identical with the flat, unless one wants contact a bit farther back in the swing for some upward spin, too.

Frankly, I'm frustrated with the immediately previous experiments where I was slowly manipulating arm to a right angle (no matter how I did it, from outside or inside) before I threw. I just want the body to do that work rhythmically and passively and be relaxed. Those serves didn't feel as full and robust as they do now, maybe just because I've served from a fully compressed arm position for many years. The idea of delaying arm throw a little while shoulders go, however, might be something new or recycled I brought away.

Anyway frustration isn't always bad, gave birth to the Roddick serve when he
was a teenager. In addition to his many accomplishments Andy should be given credit as a great inventor. So should Ivan Lendl for his forehand. Coaches were enemies to the originality in both cases, I've heard.

So which will it be today-- basics as if we're at week one or follow the geniuses? I may not be a young man, but I feel like one when I consider the following statement by Emerson: "The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is."

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Racket Coming from More Around to the Left

Acceptance of one option among many on a drop-down menu sets up a new drop-down menu.

Get first service working as in match with Shelton the Speedy, which became necessary since he was creaming everything else. Then, remember? A few days ago you (I did) hit one good slice from the same formulation? Fat, slice, fat, slice, kick.

Bend arm completely. Do you realize there's a way now to extend arm passively to a right angle in a direction you've never even thought of in all your experiments? That would be after elbow rises reflexively. From there, twisting upper arm before throwing it, you could still send racket overhand toward the net but don't. This will involve not only keeping elbow back as you twist it but actually drawing it a few inches toward the rear left fence post. Any twist of upper arm, no matter how you do it, can also be considered part of the total throw.

Now you do the double-firing of elbow and triceps. What happens? Choose one:

(very fast kick serves)
(serves into bottom of net)
(lousy serves characterized by dismal, downward spin)
(elephantine timing)
(a new computer)

Never mind the above. I came back from the court with three serves for the next match.

1) Flat. Catapult of body can passively open arm to a right angle

2) Spin, involving a small bit of temporizing elbow that winds racket around toward net before you let it go. This twisting motion can help passively open arm to right angle and should lead to a serviceable second serve for now-- at least I'm not playing Shelton.

3) Dennis Ralston type slice (that stays low). This is a high maintenance shot requiring extreme accuracy against a great return of serve.

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Andromeda Galaxy Serve

From a conventional, gravity assisted drop you start spiraling the hand, first inward then outward and snap the arm straight.

You then have these options among quite a few.

A) Throw elbow from right angle which passively extends arm rest of the way.

B) Throw elbow from right angle and fire triceps all at same time. The sudden change in speed of arm extension can surprise the countering muscles that want to slow you down.

C) Toss higher to allow more time. Compress two halves of arm completely together during the press and leg extension, in more conventional manner. Fire the elbow to passively achieve a right angle in noodly, i.e. purposefully spaghettied arm. Stop the elbow and fire triceps the rest of the way.

D) If C) worked try opposite idea from same preparation. Fire triceps to achieve right angle before firing elbow to spaghetti (verb) arm straight the rest of the way.

E) Similar to C) or D) but let the catapulting body straighten arm to right angle. Throw elbow then to passively extend arm half of the remaining way. Fire triceps then to complete the extension.

Just played three sets against somebody who is younger, stronger and faster.
Good thing I beat him a lot when he was younger. That would be Shelton, the wizard of the drop-shot in Winston-Salem, North Carolina who now has the full game to go with it.

Option B) was the only one I could get to work against him, and there only on first serves.

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Service: Opening outward to a Right-angled Arm rather than Compressing Inward to it

Why should distance the arm opens out to the right angle matter?

The FACT that the arm can open out to a right angle in a "stir-the-pot" serve is more important than the amount it does so.

With this little piece of logic in hand there is no reason to squeeze the two halves of the arm completely together any more. Still, though, one can squeeze to less than 90 degrees-- 80, 70, 65, somewhere in there.

The opening out to where you fire the arm will assure that it doesn't try to compress again at a very late date.

It's a different kind of arm work. I'm still experimenting with it obviously, but am generating more constantly upward spin than I usually get so long as I don't hit hard. I'm almost ready to recommend this inversion of usual throwing method to all rotorded servers, at least as something to try in what has always seemed too much of a gloomy, forbidding and even impossible situation.

The feel now is of elbow first rising reflexively, as in any good serve, but followed immediately by a more pro-active toss of the elbow up/forward/inward to region of the eyes.

The throw of the elbow, which can be as nifty or vigorous as you want, replaces the old triceptic burst I was using.

Since the arm is already extending slowly and yes from muscles, it can fool countering muscles and centrifugate passively as fast as only spaghetti can do.

I'm hopeful that if I keep tossing the ball first with the hand and then with the racket so it clears the net by about four feet that in a short while I'll be able to add power while retaining the same clear contact and upward spin.

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Straightness of Bowling Motion in a Federfore

In previous explanation I inadvertently used the term "straightness" to mean two different things in one sentence. To clarify then, "the straight arm bowls straight."

But it isn't close to the body. In fact, it's "far___out" (a sixties expression). Your natural inclination, with hand so far out, might to be swing roundhouse at the ball with body, arm or both but with no bowl at all. I know because I did it for several years.

One might think of bowling with hand at such a large separation, implying confidence, in the following way: Draw a circle. Then lay a ruler on the circle so the edge intersects at two points. The line between the points is desired bowling motion (slightly down and slightly up). But don't go all romantic on yourself and think that you can simply rejoin the circle after the second intersection point.

No, your hand goes more sharply up to the left than that while your racket head cuts a neat slot in the air up to the right.

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Tweaking Mondo in Federfore

FROM: Straightening of arm and laying back of wrist and rolling down of forearm all at once, followed by "slow bowl"

TO: Straightening of arm and "slow bowl" followed by unified layback-and-roll-down and continuation of bowl upward.

ABOUT THE TERM "SLOW BOWL": Taken by itself, it would imply to me a vertical motion of straight arm close to the body-- what one sees and does at a bowling alley. The straightness, not the closeness, is what I'm trying to communicate. My personal opinion, by the way, is that once shoulders have stopped rotating one way, they start rotating the opposite way with a small stop in between-- there is minimal delay (only to about a third of arm extension).

ABOUT THE TIMING: I use a five-count when tweaking some stroke. Number one then is lifting both hands while laying the wrist back halfway. Number two is continuing to lift hands. Number three is separating the hands, closing the racket, pointing across with left hand to complete huge final portion of shoulders turn. Number four is smoothing the waters with left arm as right arm gets straight.

Number five is hitting the ball although I've already used the "slow bowl" term as part of this. Well, slowness is relative. The real acceleration comes from a sudden 90-degree change of hand direction with strings rolling semi-passively upward from forearm in a perfectly straight direction somewhere toward the right fence.

People who want to talk about past segments of the kinetic chain slowing down just here are the ones who are being too left brain. Actually, everybody should want to use both lobes of the brain in balanced fashion while playing tennis at all times.

Obviously, if being a bit technical is nevertheless okay, the racket can't unfurl in a perfect frame-formed straight line if the shoulders are constantly pushing it around. Should we worry about that, though, or just think about it in a slightly different way?

Maybe we should go here with Luci "outside-of-the-ball" Awl of Radio Wimbledon. This announcer has all great tour players hitting the outer edge at all times. And the body is providing weight in one direction, the tennis writer John M. Barnaby might say, the racket head providing spin in another.

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Something Makes the End of these DBBH's very Comfortable

It is the combination of the arm bending at the elbow and the wrist becoming concave again.

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Don Budge Type Backhand Maximum Topspin

Budgian backhands afford good opportunity to hit flat (but with a modicum of spin for control) as well as to generate greater topspin. For that, try twisting racket head down in tandem with front leg bending as front foot settles (think of the old Vic Braden sit and hit drill). The minimum hand swing from contact may be preserved, but to bring strings up to ball one can twist straight arm in tandem with forward hip turn and leg extension. This idea of keeping things in tandem is different from other types of one-hand backhand, where the sequential steps can sometimes seem harsh. And don't forget to roll the wrist straight even as you twist the whole arm; then, unroll the wrist in the followthrough same as for a flatter shot.

Personally speaking, I like to roll wrist straight and firm it up a big farther before the ball when going for the more heavily topspun shot.

However, a fair question is whether this topspin if coming as innovation is better than what some senior, say, may already have had. One has to remember the pathetic portrait Frank Deford drew of Bill Tilden, who was so wedded to the idea of innovation that, apparently toward the end of his life, he wasted energy in trying to add an extra hitting step to his ground strokes, thus unnaturally diminishing his tremendous game.

The shoulders turn rather than hips turn variation is what wins this argument for me. Any innovation has to be worthwhile for a seniors player if it suddenly gives him a new minimalist shot with out-sized result. This Don Budge type variation with slow, pendulous upper body swing feels like something good in pocket-billiards.

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Triceptic vs. Septic with Spaghetti for Dinner

Tennis may be a simple game, but how simple is real improvement in playing it?

What works best for me is a complete yielding to my own obsession with technique, combined with a conviction that no one person is ever going to be sufficiently intelligent to grasp any set of fine points within a given stroke on a given day.

This leads to a belief in a revolving loop as in a sanding machine—a conveyer belt with different years and names of stroke attempts embedded in the grit.

So, if one didn’t master commensurate with one’s athletic potential the Don Budge backhand in 1952, one waits until the subject comes naturally up in 1968 and perhaps again in 1980. In 2009, one is re-reading the part of Don Budge’s memoir where he recommends a big knuckle on bevel one, which is even milder than the grip his protege Vic Braden espouses (big knuckle on bevel eight). This leads to a rolling of the wrist straight, firming up for contact, reversing back to its original concavity during the followthrough. Coincidentally, the stroke finally begins to percolate.

Similarly with the Federfore, one may spend years figuring out exactly how mondo works with a paucity of articles available on the subject, whose authors are reluctant even to give this clear phenomenon its tour-ascribed name (“mondo”).

And in serving for a rotorded person (rotordedness being the opposite of Andy Roddick’s double-jointedness in his shoulder rotors), I have found some guidance from the outside but all in all an indifference and insufficiency, which still again means figuring things out for oneself.

My biggest question, I guess, is which is better—to extend arm with the triceps or to employ the musclelessness of a spaghettied arm, keeping in mind the challenge may be different depending on degree of bend in the arm first.

From re-reading C.M. Jones, THE MAKING OF A TENNIS CHAMPION, I have decided that a healthy distance of hand from the body at start of service acceleration is absolutely crucial to establishing desired racket head position and speed.

This means that even the rotorded server, so apt to be neurotic about making sure to point his racket tip down at the court, should open up the arm to a right angle before
really letting it go. Mark Phillippoussis does it and so should he.

When obsessing along these lines, one may discover a day when the serves suddenly start flying into the bottom of the net. Perhaps the reason is that the arm is suddenly getting straight much faster than ever before. A few minor adjustments and...

Well, to do it, one can accelerate the super-relaxed right angle, i.e., the elbow, from the shoulder forward and inward with a very fast motion that multiplies from the speed of one’s body rotation.

Double-jointed servers like Roddick and Sampras may twist the upper arm, axle-like, when it is parallel to the court—how will the rotorded server ever know for sure?

He, too, will twist the whole arm, as well as the forearm, so racket tip flies more toward the right fence. Both those twists will occur when the racket is high. That’s the difference.

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Learning Progression, DBBH

Vic Braden demonstrates two different kinds of rotational movement in his famous book, TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, and the video TENNIS OUR WAY
made with Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe.

In the book, Braden's backhand emphasis is on hip movement combined with lift from the legs. In the video, the emphasis is on shoulders movement or UBR (upper body rotation).

In the book, as you would expect, along with visuals there is a lot of verbal explanation and even story-telling, as Braden describes a trip to South America, where he found a leather-maker who fabricated a special holster that enabled him to hit backhands from the hips alone.

In the video, as you also would expect, he demonstrates backhand body rotation with a minimum of verbiage, only it's the shoulders that are turning this time, and from the waist up. Should one get mad? Or simply say, "The world is complicated?" In this video Vic demonstrates how the shoulders stop and the arm continues.

In a Don Budge type backhand, I would suggest, one can do either thing or both but probably not at the same time; however, I like to write from my own experience-- someone else's will be different.

Part of my primal tennis experience definitely is reading TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE, the central image of which is the young Vic Braden watching Don Budge hit backhands through a hole in a Chicago wall (think Pyramus and Thisbe) while Don's whole body keeps coming off of the ground.

Right now I see these three of many options:

1) Simply take an easy cut at the ball "without flailing at it like a .050-hitting pitcher" (DB from DON BUDGE: A TENNIS MEMOIR).

2) Add some mustard but hold the pickles, I mean "turn the hips marginally before the shoulders" as Ted Williams said.

3) Don't turn the shoulders at all. Do it all with the hips, combining this rotation with lift from the front leg, then let the arm go.

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Rowing Option in DBBH

In rowing correctly on the water, you drive legs, body and arms all at once. A sequence then naturally occurs since legs overpower back which overpowers arms.

In rowing in a Don Budge backhand (something he probably did once in a while), the motion seems intended more to generate position than power, WITHOUT the above mentioned legs-back sequence, at least in the beginning.

In fact the front leg gently compresses as the back comes up rather than fires as part of a double-barreled shotgun as the back tries in vain to come up.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DBBHFront2.mov

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DB Backhand Algebra

Was Ted Williams a goose for over-analyzing hitting mechanics? He is generally regarded as the most aggressive batting coach that ever lived. He came up with a pretty good personalized swing, I'll say, but which came first, the swing or the directions? I don't know. Don Budge, on the other hand, never over-analyzed anything. He didn't even analyze his own strokes as much as his older brother Lloyd, who taught him to play tennis, or the tennista writers Talbert and Old, or his coach, Tom Stow, who tweaked every aspect of Don's game except for his backhand. But Don Budge modeled his backhand on Ted Williams' lefty baseball swing. So, was Don Budge a goose? I don't think so. But there is room for over-analysis in tennis even when it came through baseball. It may have produced some good result.

Whatever one thinks, if one decides to emulate the DB liquid uppercut, one will not find the information one needs in the tennis literature of the past without using some algebra, i.e., employ suppositions the same as trying to learn from the most non-baseball-like, pingpong-slam-like Federfore. Budge backhand: Not talked about enough and therefore kept in code. Federfore:
Outside conventional coaching knowledge and therefore kept in code.

All the people mentioned so far, however, are tremendous sources of information, as is Stow student Jim McLennan, who has spoken of getting the wrist straight to hit very natural backhands. You slowly get wrist straight in the early part of the stroke while you are swinging with both shoulders, thus rolling the racket from open to square (me talking now). The wrist then firms itself just the right amount while you are hitting the ball. The wrist then becomes concave again if you read Lloyd Budge the same way I do. You go from concave to straight to concave every time you hit this stroke, which makes it "free-wristed" and more pleasurable than a Swiss watch action whether Federer or Wawrinka. And, as Talbert and Old tell us, it is non-accelerative. It is extraordinarily easy to aim, too. My regular opponent loudly rued this right away. And, if you want, you can add a Bradenesque (and Budgian) leap into the air, caused by a combination of leg extension and the Sunday punch swing working together, although you should probably delay this leaping aspect until much later.

Best of all, to achieve ridiculous simplicity, you can take bent arm back at waist level (count 1), straighten arm (count 2), twist straight arm or just start rowing sideways with body to lower racket tip (count 3), slowly rotate the shoulders to the ball (count 4), and let the arm go (count 5).

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Mondo Backward a Little

If you agree, in your Federfore, that you'll start the arm acceleration by bowling with both ends of the racket, there remains another interesting change to make.

That is to mondo backward a little so as to make the bowling motion longer.

In other words, as you pivot your racket up on a still elbow, the racket is well out in the slot.

It will remain so, but as the arm attains full length (part of the mondo, which all in all, is a pretty complicated motion) not only will the forearm come backward a little as simple function of where the elbow is pointing, but elbow itself can move a few inches backward toward the shoulders line, which just then is swinging around.

Elbow never goes behind the shoulders line, thus staying in the slot, but it does get close to it.

This gives you more of a bowl up and out toward the ball before your hand and elbow veer left as the racket head rolls up and to the right (i.e., it unfurls with little muscular twist of either kind-- from forearm or shoulder rotors-- and now becomes a semi-passive act).

P.S. Do always mondo but don't mondo backward like this all the time-- particularly to produce a short-angled crosscourt forehand. The option seems
very good for most down the line shots but for some deep crosscourts, too. An option is what it is.

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Underwhelming Answers

Right. I didn't think so. The problem is too much for His Puniness, the human mind. Please never wonder, dear reader, why I write so much. It's because the thoughts I require won't come from anyone else.

Today I think I'll try "to stir the pot," i.e., accelerate all right hand travel until the two halves of the arm press completely together just as I toss.

Then I'll open the arm out to a right angle during hip jut and added compression of front leg.

"In other words you'll end up in the same position as someone who kept his right arm straight for the toss and then bent the arm to a right angle," a debater might say. "So isn't this wasted experiment?"

Perhaps. But it's "bending the stick the other way." And any time you do that you never know. And extension rather than compression of the arm to a right angle also provides a naturally opportune time in which to twist the forearm out. And all this will occur as shoulders tilt back. Hand motion will joint this tilting backward instead of countering it for a change.

To the court: Similar results but with a different feel. Some serves probably went twice as fast. More errors than usual but worth pursuing. A lot of this seems about when to open the racket out. One can keep palm more faced down when one is using such early arm compression-- but it makes me think one's better off opening the racket out early, even down by the knees during the drop if you opt for late full arm compression, i.e., the mind proceeds through opposites.

Another choice is keeping the palm vertical-- turned neither down nor up-- something I've probably done for too long.

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Length of Runway

Servers wanting to lengthen their accelerative runway may squeeze the two halves of their arm together without realizing they just have countered their goal.

This is not to say there aren't remedies available, but first the server has to acknowledge the creation of a new problem. For when the racket is behind your back and you completely fold up your arm (or rather fold it down), you bring your hand in too close to your body.

I'll leave this thought right there for now. Opinions?