A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

My Emotional Allegiance Must always go to The Rotorded Server since I am One

That means total commitment to getting the racket as low as it will go despite one's inflexibility of shoulder.

It means a change of focus from the best information we ever will receive since that information is designed for reasonably flexible players.

The flexible player, it seems to me, has enough ESR available to use some of it to help lower racket and other of it to take racket out and up to pro drop whether this last move is motion-dependent or not.

The rotorded player on the other hand needs all the ESR and forearm supination and wrist extension he can muster just to get the racket tip low.

Things that ideally happen in upward path must, for him, happen in downward path.

Which means that, as rear leg fires to create forward rotation quickly melding into torso twist, abduction/adduction of the elbow takes racket up through pro drop and happens right then.

[bottle]

Rehearsal

Three things happen before the legs fire:

1) Toss
2) Separate
3) Bend.

Toss, separate, bend = MANTRA.

Nope. There is now minimal extension of ha downward on "toss." And minimal flexion upward as elbow sails backward to form a theatrical pirate's sword. And the bend we're talking about (there will be more bend contributing to the racket lowering) is not just of the arm but of the body. The 2) and 3) of the previous iteration have combined into this new mantra:

Toss, separate, lift-off.

[bottle]

Immediate Future

All these experiments are preparation for a series of others to determine optimum pre-abduction/adduction elbow level for a single individual-- me.

One must feel at ease with the service biomechanics one wants before elbow level experiments can mean much.

In discussing the great baseball pitcher Satchel Paige, analysts used to point out that his arm came at the release from different angles compared to a normal pitcher in whom this angle was apt to be a constant from pitch to pitch.

Brent Abel warns against thinking the elbow level one sees in any other player-- Federer, himself, anybody-- is necessarily optimum for you.

The heart of arm work, in my present view, is a transition from abduction/adduction to passive arm snap.

The ISR that sport scientists from all over the world laud so much as prime contributor has to be a given.

It has to work properly.

Then comes another requirement: the adduction to passive arm extension (snap) that happens first.

[bottle]

Over the Top Exclamation to Give you the Yips

Subject here: Combat training to deal with those who utter an exclamation at your overhead contact to give you the yips.

This is cheating, against the rules, in the manual.

You don't cry out just as somebody hits a golf ball either, not if you are a decent human being.

Not everybody is guilty of this crime and some just don't know better. A few however do it entirely on purpose. They may even lurk among people you play with a lot.

When it happens and if I have muffed the shot I am apt to mutter to myself, "Well, he talked me out of that one."

I used to think the best remedy would be to change direction and make a hole through the criminal.

But you can miss that way too. Better to ignore him and go in the originally intended direction.

So what to do? Get out on the court with a friend and have him make a noise just as you hit. Have him sigh ironically in appreciation of the wonderful smash you are about to hit or cry "Wow!" Or "Yikes!" Or "Tadpoles!" Or anything of his own choice.

In a tournament you could complain to the director unless you didn't want to be a complainer.

The secret could be to go past the project of thick skin development to actual delight that someone wants to cheat you in this way.

Look for the interruption and never miss the shot. Enjoy it all the more because you expected it.

[bottle]

How Much Does Technical Information of Any Kind Get Typically Misunderstood?

A lot and not just by me. It blows my mind that one can go back to written instruction one has studied countless times and read it-- now-- in a radically different light.

The Pancho Segura serve is laid out as nowhere else in the 1976 book he wrote with Gladys Heldman, PANCHO SEGURA'S CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY.

This is a man whose credibility should be great with one before one even begins to read.

Even the dedication impresses:

This book is dedicated to Jimmy Connors, Howard Schoenfield, Stan Smith, Erik van Dillen, Barry MacKay, Ken Rosewall, Lesley Hunt, Beth Norton, Tom Leonard, Tom Kreiss, Butch Buchholz, Alex Olmedo, Antonio Palafox, Tracy Austin, Laurie and Robin Tenney, Fernando Gentil, Ricardo Icaza, Jeff Austin, Sally Greer, Shelley Hudson, Spencer Segura, and Cynthia Lasker, who were among the pupils I coached-- and who brought so much pleasure to their teacher.

A friend of mine the playing pro teaching pro and American haiku editor Jim Kacian once described what sitting next to Pancho Segura at a tournament was like-- a steady stream of insights some of them not complicated at all-- "approach shot down the line and knock off the volley."

One wouldn't look to Segura for backhand wisdom, I think, unless one had a two-hander, but everybody knows his forehand was genius. His serve is enough of a curiosity to be of natural interest, I believe, to anyone.

In spending several weeks of trying to adapt it to my own use, I now realize, I've been holding on to some inhibiting habits from other models.

His rock and roll serve starts with weight on the front foot and both arms stretched out unconnected to each other toward the net.

This initial drawing embodies a profound observation by the other Pancho, Pancho Gonzalez, that one doesn't have to do the typical ta downstroke before one's toss if one doesn't want to.

As weight shifts to back foot ta goes up from where it started and ha goes straight down so racket tip is close to the court.

But weight a minute (pun on purpose). The momentum of ha coming down continues into distancing from core up into the brandishment I've talked so much about.

Easy momentum does rock and roll to give you something fluid and rhythmic to build upon.

[bottle]

Front Heel up, Both Heels up, Rear Heel down

Easy momentum does rock and roll to give you something fluid and rhythmic to build upon.

So weight goes slightly back on the toss. ("Rules were made to be broken by those who know them.")

That can be true and yet the backward shift to place racket plumb down can be very slight.

The demonstration to this is that both feet are now up on their toes.

A warning about this is not to pause the racket in plumb position but rather use its momentum to start ha out to brandishment with a bit of acceleration added in.

As this happens the rear heel can lower to court or just short of court.

Observe the delicate balance combining with the full movement of all this.

Getting up on toes requires super balance; you have no choice.

But ta, having stayed aloft, comes initially down a small amount to balance the ha in a symmetrical backward and forward stretch.

I continue to blinder my attention to the first four frames in the book and depend on inspiration to cover the next eight frames.

I'll see if I can scan at the library and put the first four frames up here. I had more success with that kind of endeavor when I used to have a computer that was primitive.

How far apart should legs be arranged to start one of these serves?

Not far at all-- evidence that its lateral movement, considerable, is about to be converted into vertical movement.

[bottle]

Immense Cleverness

I try to step outside of myself now. "How silly of Bottle to praise something he hasn't even tried yet."

Maybe.

On the other hand one can start from the premise, in serving, that when one goes forward one extends from the toes all the way up through the bod to whatever happens next.

Correspondingly, when one goes backward, one loads the rear foot. One can see the rear heel flatten in the rock-step of the Pancho Segura serve.

But this transpires at the end of backward travel.

At the beginning of backward travel the rear heel actually lifts. What's that about?

The toss. One obtains a powerful assist to one's straight levering ta from the ankle upward somewhat like a Muhammad Ali jab.

Brent Abel on seniors champion Paul Wulf's old age: "He's figured out how to play the game."

Well, isn't that what we're all supposed to do?

"All of this is too involved and technical, it seems to me."

Well, boring people deserve to be bored.

[bottle]

Segura Serve (first four frames).pdf

[bottle]

Reader, I Hope You Clicked on the Above Link

And clicked on "open" down to your left. The four drawings should come up.

It appears to me, that, no matter what Pancho says under frame 2, the hips are moving slightly forward to raise left heel even though upper body is prying backward.

Sooner or later weight will start to settle on rear foot-- I'll only find out when I try this serve for the first time at our weekly mixer tonight.

The answer to the weight question may be different for me than for somebody else.

In the next of 12 total frames, the not included number five here, the arm is pictured as completely wound up inside of itself with wrist straight or even curled a bit.

Thus the racket tip from frame four will have rotated a full 180 degrees down to low point.

With upward rotations to follow in the sequence that Brian Gordon has recently outlined for us.

[bottle]

Re # 4703 (visual)

Frame three: The racket face is opened out.

Frame four: The racket face is a lid over player's head.

As in any serve where strings open out, one must ask which when is best. (At address? By right shin? Farther up?)

One may also ask how the maiden voyage of this imitation went.

Holds early perhaps from the novelty of the thing along with breakdown in the form of clobberings at crunch time.

Does this indicate that one should give up? My understanding is that there is no give up in tennis. There certainly isn't in rowing, my other sport.

Some previous alternatives to this pattern may produce excels rather than decels, but, basically, are mediocre enough to justify the experiment's continuation.

Was ist da zu verloren? What is there to lose?

[bottle]

Changing Perspective: No Time to Quit Now

We (I) search for the Kaizen that Doug Eng and Aunt Frieda talk about, the small thing that might make a big difference.

Also, today is another chance to bore my reader who says I bore him, the guy who every time he reads another installment of A NEW YEAR'S SERVE raises the counter an extra notch. His Super Sunday reading may take ANYS from 62,517 to 62,518 .

Lord knows he has bored me enough. A big difference between us however is that I will admit that he does not bore me all of the time.

I would bet that if one pored through all the posts at ANYS one would find something about the mechanics of snow shoveling, keeping in mind that Detroit has just been colder than Mount Everest and The North Pole. Donald Trump, are you reading this? Mount Everest and The North Pole have just been warmer than Detroit.

Today, before the Superb Owl party down in Ron's man-cave for tennis players only, I offer two new flourishes, kerfuffles or departures as I sniff for the Kaizen scent. That's one too many of a new idea, but Superb Owl Day (https://www.google.com/search?q=supe...hrome&ie=UTF-8) is a day of American excess.

1) Within the Segura frames, be realistic about what happens when a server who has served one way for eons now tries to serve another way as I did against fierce opponents at the gentle social on Friday night.

First, the feet did whatever they have done for decades and will continue to do.

Second, the two arms extended like insect feelers could not produce a seamless toss. My ta had to down-stroke a few inches thus spoiling everything.

I therefore propose that the serve start with both hands linked on the left hip, that they then straighten toward the net, separate and float...before one arm goes up at the same speed that the other goes down.

2) Brian Gordon is so good at saying what comes first, is essential, the main thing, the sine qua non, the game he and his students always play called probation.

So everything else pretty much if not a kerfuffle is a flourish, e.g., in my disquisition I have put mistaken emphasis on abduction/adduction.

But, a tennis bloodhound is always snuffling for Kaizen which could be anywhere.

And so, the minor gloss of 20-degree closure of racket right of brandishment will become a major feature of my pre-Superb Owl armchair serve.

For, 20 degrees of initiating pre-leg ESR should put more arm fold into the actual drop and certainly has never been tried so early before.

One may even resume a little ESR as elbow winds up?

It's all about desire.

[bottle]

Supernumerary ESR or ISR on Superb Owl Day

One has to be a free thinker. If I am master of my own serve, as I think, I must do exactly as Chris Lewit advised in the three sole words he ever shot to me.

"Don't give up."

And the not giving up may be a physical thing although I doubt it, or a physical and mental thing combined, or a mere matter of solving Rubik's Cube.

I start from, to quote from my immediately previous post, "the minor gloss of 20-degree closure of racket right of brandishment to become a major feature of my pre-Superb Owl armchair serve."

Then I look again at frames three and four in post # 4703 and frame five in the Segura-Heldman book and see something different.

And conclude that Pancho Segura takes his racket down behind his back with ISR and arm fold, building pressure from latent ESR which, releasing, combines with arm extension at the elbow to form a far deeper toward rear fence pro drop than any present day known touring pro.

All of which helps Segura achieve his trademark contact in which his airborne legs, trunk, arm and racket form an exclamation point.

!

[bottle]

Brent Abel has Many Accomplishments

One of them, however, is that he solved the problem of bottle not being able to email his self-made videos to his friends.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJ...vn9t_6IPKi7Jlw

[bottle]

"A Growth Mind-set"

Ordinarily I don't like self-help books, but I highly recommend THE DANISH WAY OF PARENTING by Jessica Joelle Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandahl for its emphasis on "a growth mind-set."

Never praise anyone for their intelligence. Praise them for the work they do that can improve their intelligence.

What makes Denmark the happiest country in the world?

[stotty]

I read Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau many years ago and loved it. I liked The Social Contract too...."Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains".

Many things he wrote still hold up today.