A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Fear Not the Deadly Mondo

"Mondo" means "the world," i.e., something that is feared by many people.

But it also means to crank the racket downward from your forearm in the middle of a forehand, and maybe to lay back wrist to the max at the same time.

No one is quite sure about this-- whether these actions should be done SIM or IN SEQ or NOT AT ALL.

Or whether they should be done during contact to turn your racket into a flipper of a pinball machine the better to kind of catch the ball while you fling it with your body.

Or whether you should do it early and get it out of the way like Federer.

Such confusions are partial explanation for why tennis instructors almost never use the term (I've only heard it used by one other tennis instructor, but he assured me that pros on the tour say it all the time).

And why wouldn't they? Do they have time or inclination for elaborate, left brain explanation of things? No, give it a name and be done with it.

Of course, many instructors would prefer that the term not exist in the vocabulary of any student of theirs, period, believing as they do that such
recklessness would ruin both the student's forehand and the student's life.

And the students themselves are apt to be complicit. "I can't do that," one said to me the other day.

"Sure you can," I said.

In any case, naming a fear diminishes it.

The great thing about all the denial is that I seem to be one of the few tennis bloggers anywhere who ever uses the term. I've even got one forehand where the mondo is SIM, another where it's IN SEQ. (A fair question: if IN SEQ, which of the two sequences?)

The authors of tennis technique articles, when they deal with the subject as they inevitably must, invariably use tortured, sequential explanation in accordance with their left brainedness, preferring 34 words to the one word, which would be "mondo."

Since I'm the person who uses this term most, I figure I can make up the rules. Here they are: Can be a noun or verb. Can be capitalized or not. Can be IN SEQ or SIM. Can be tried in different form at different places in the stroke.

[bottle]

More on Video Frames Experiment

What can I say? I'm always in search of some cue that will prove a tried and true way to spark up a given stroke.

The telephone number 99559 was an interesting experience in Fedeforis, but now I want to try 99945, where the third nine combines hand separation, racket closing, arm straightening, leg thrust, hips turn and mondo of forearm.

The 4 now will represent a simultaneous bearlike swipe of right arm and maximum cranking of shoulders from transverse muscles of the gut and passive bending of wrist from conventional Eastern layback to maximum physical layback (possible only with a VERY loose grip).

The 5 will represent a dramatic change of direction, i.e., a roll of racket head from one width below ball to one and two-thirds above it combined with the very beginning of arm scissor. This blended action taken together can prevent the lower edge of the racket from going into retreat during the contact (another kind of stroke). I am allowing an extra frame or two here after all the acceleration for deceleration of racket into the upper left arm.

[bottle]

Dial-a-Forehand

99559. This is the telephone number if I want to call Roger's forehand. Nine frames to lift racket while laying back hand to conventional Eastern position.
Nine frames to keep lifting racket (the easiest part of this total 1.2 second cycle-- a good time to take a siesta but also to begin aiming at the ball). Five frames to start hand separation, close the racket head, complete backward upper body rotation by thrusting left hand across. Five frames to start lowering from unturning upper body but then to step on the gas with outside leg and mondo down full from forearm but not yet let the wrist bend backward to the max (this is the most difficult part of the cycle with so much going on including much forward if slightly delayed upper body rotation suddenly retarded by left arm folding in along with aligning of racket butt with ball at great, confident separation producing "feel"-- with all of it happening in only five frames). Nine frames to scrape the ball in one accelerative action at start of which the wrist reflexively bends a little more. The strings will be going forward from the hand at contact, not backwards as in other subsets of fedeforis.

You could say you point at the ball three times-- once with left elbow when both hands are still on racket, once with left hand from closer, and once from racket butt at end of the mondo. Triangulate, like a surveyor! Why not?

Okay, Sir Bottle, if this is such a great telephone number, containing at least three examples of pointing finesse, exactly when does the acceleration start, a question which has puzzled the heads of famous tennis schools? Consider the following videos:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_arm_action/rf_fh_arm_action.html?RFFHInsideOutArmActionRear4.mov

Get to end of mondo. And then click two times more. Look at the racket! It’s warped, isn’t it? The strings appear to have bent forward from the handle because the racket speed is greater than the speed of the film.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/roger_federer_09/rf_forehand/rf_fh_arm_action/rf_fh_arm_action.html?RFFHRunningArmActionRear2.mov

Get to end of mondo. Then click one time more. Look at the racket. Same thing! All this makes me say that finesse ends with the mondo, which is precisely when acceleration, consisting of two seamless parts, non-wiper
and wiper, gets to one racket width below ball and one and two thirds racket width directly above it and finally crosses the body for a poised landing on your left foot.

The perennial question about Roger's forehand, re-phrased here, is what arm action produces the warp speed? Which way is the arm faster-- pushing out or pulling in? And which way is that arm healthier when colliding with a hundred-mile-per-hour ball? And what are some good images to express the pulling in? 1. Hand running along a fence. 2. Hand running along a glass wall. 3. A sliding glass door. To hit inside out you could turn the glass door until it was more perpendicular to right corner of the opposite court. And on a cross-court you might feel that you are pulling in toward yourself. Such ideas-- anathema to so many American teaching pros-- require different amounts of upper body turn by the end of the mondo, yes? You pull with the arm as hard as you can, including a scissoring action from the biceps started before you got to the ball. How can this happen any other way when the shoulder housing is already extended-- at the end of your hugely confident racket separation toward the right fence? There's no where else for the shoulder housing to go except sideways, driven by the muscle on the outside of the top of your upper arm.

The hand of course, stays bent back. As abruptly changing direction hand whips sideways, the strings fling through and up. Your head could do more than remain still as a golfer's staring at the ball. It could actually be moving to the right as hand whips to left. That's a very neat idea I've never been able to arrive at by myself.

[bottle]

Hyper-hope for the Rotorded?

The following discussion should be fun, dear reader, and I hope you have the knowledge/experience and sense of irony you'll need to enjoy it.

(Irony seldom works on the internet. I am aware of this.)

My favorite tennis pro to mock is Jack Groppel. Why? Because whenever an ordinary tennis player speaks of "laying back the wrist," Jack Groppel says the wrist is "hyperextended."

To me "hyperextension" is a medical term for something painful. But, to provide Jack Groppel with the benefit of every doubt (and in fact my ultimate goal here, higher even than to praise him, is to learn from him) we may give the Greek prefix "hyper-" its English meaning of "over." Now the term "hyperextended" can mean the laid back wrist is past extended, i.e., past straight and turned over, i.e., laid back.

By the same logic, if the hand is bent to the extreme the opposite way, is it not still hyperextended, using Groppel's definition? With hand bent either way, the forearm should also get turned out in the "external" direction (yecch yet again) as in a Federer forehand or any good serve. Yes, we're saying this is true for any kind of service wrist layback or service wrist lay-forward.

"You always make things too complicated, Bottle," I can hear my left brain critics say. "No, you oversimplify," I reply in my left brain way, "you're giving me vague street directions, not simple ones."

It's mano a mano, a stand-off and not as interesting as what Jack Groppel himself has to say in TENNIS FOR ADVANCED PLAYERS, page 136 :
"Using three-dimensional cinematography and an electronic device for measuring angular change, it was observed that wrist hyperextension did occur as the forward swing was begun. In addition, the wrist flexed from that hyperextended position through impact. It seems that elbow extension from the backscratch position, forearm pronation, and wrist movement occur at nearly the same time. To determine when each action takes place and how one contributes to the other would be near to impossible."

Since service to me is either an upsidedown roadmap of Budapest, Hungary, or a complete language such as Swahili, Finnish, or Magyarul, you KNOW I am receptive to this statement by Jack Groppel.

But what I personally wonder as a result of my ongoing autologue here at TennisPlayer is whether the part about flexion "though contact," i.e. past contact (and elsewhere in this book section Groppel does make it clear that this indeed is something he means), also applies to "hyperextension" of the wrist the opposite way, as in the serve of Sasha Kulikova on the women's varsity team at Wake Forest.

In other words, would the rotorded player, i.e., anyone less flexible than Pete Sampras, have a perhaps improved chance of generating upward spin if she were to keep hand turned in (just the opposite of if she were about to skip a flat stone on a flat lake) and were still whirling trailing edge as she came off of the ball?

One might develop a new cue: Round nubby wrist bone still extending out to right after contact, and hand whirling partway open in reinforcement of forearm pronation with both happening just as left hand crosses to stop upper body rotation and thus fling arm edge-on directly forward into the ball.

[bottle]

More about Autologues vs. Purchases of Extra Tennis Lessons

This post is dedicated to Roger Federer, who did okay in the Madrid Open. Think carefully, Rog, about this idea everybody is bandying about of your purchasing a top-of-the-line coach. Not only could that be expensive (and your Swiss half must be pretty tight) but you should include yourself in the sweepstakes. Yes, think deeply about purchasing yourself.

The truth is, every tennis player alive must strike best balance between external and internally provided advice. There is danger in either giving away one's identity or in relying too much on one's own breakthroughs and mistakes.

This latter approach works well so long as one KNOWS when one has made a mistake. A mistake uncaught may quickly multiply others.

Katie Lomb warns explicitly about this in POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES (she mastered 16 of them)-- the best education book I have ever read-- personal, idiosyncratic and immediately useful. While advocating "autologue," much easier to control than "dialogue," she knows how easily one can get off the track.

[bottle]

Adding Finesse

Katie Lomb makes the distinction between the words "monologue" and "autologue" in her book POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES."

An autologue, like a dialogue, can help one get outside of oneself. In fact, it is an imaginary dialogue, an essential tool in acquiring new languages. And the tennis serve, most intricate of athletic motions, certainly does qualify as a complete language whether Katie Lomb refers to it as such or not.

She doesn't, but does refer to a specific move in world class ice skating. For my example here let's take a triple lutz, which if I tried it, I say very obviously, would be a triple klutz. You see someone perform it and think to yourself, "How beautiful, how easy, I can do that." But you can't. The only way you possibly could would be to break it down first into manageable parts. Your decision to do that would initiate an autologue, i.e., a conversation with yourself to help you toward mastery of the new language.

Similarly, I have only known one ACC basketball coach, and he died suddenly two years ago, a relatively very young man. If I had said, "Skip, should one mess with the technique of one's foul shot if it isn't going in?" I have no idea how he would have replied. He might have said, "Let's see it, John. Mime it." He then might have said, "Change it." Or perhaps, "Don't change it. Stay with it. One day it will start going in."

Anybody who has read these posts knows that, left to my own devices I would try one hand, two hands lopsided, and then propelling the basketball with the point of my elbow.

There are some commonalities in the two serves I have most recently described which I perhaps need to stress. First, both start with body bent over, hands fairly high, arms bent, right hand turned in. The hands and racket stay connected for part of their drop but then separate to comfortable positions like two different eggs being laid.

Upper body then straightens while turning back as racket turns out and left arm goes up tossing past the ball. The combination of right shoulder movement (up and in) and twisting arm (out) takes racket head a good ways toward rear fence with no other effort by you. And what is body weight doing? Well, it's not going back. But many players and coaches are passionate in insisting that it be going forward. Not yet, I believe. The weight is pausing, in transition. It is between going backward and going forward.

Finally, although arm compresses to a right angle as one way or the other it goes back, it compresses again as part of the quick actual serve (throw) as legs and body and everything else finally release. It can do this in one of two different ways (again) which will send the racket in basically different directions.

[bottle]

But, if you're Going to do That, why not This?

Still working with the design where you turn elbow down while tossing, how about a simplification of subsequent take-back to remove all sequence from it? What was the sequence doing there anyway? Could its only purpose be to show that you should have been a lawyer? The important thing is to throw from a position where your elbow is maximum distance away from your body.

New take-back: As body bows and starts forward (or simply goes down straight on the knees in the case of adapted Ralston slice and then starts forward), the turned arm goes back but starts bending to its skewed right angle soon rather than later. Everything is simultaneous and spread out-- the wrist bend from one extreme to the other, the slowly flexing arm, the elbow smoothing back.

In this inside to out move you go directly to throw position. The racket won't come in to same place from a straight arm as before. Which is better? Only one way to find out.

All these speculations open up from revolving the elbow down somewhat during the toss. (Yes, grip will be a determinant of how much.) Arm twist will now be largely out of the way, hopefully making it less of a joker factor.

Another factor, perhaps unforeseen and nautical, is that the choices presented require different lengths of outrigger at a time when balance (or precision of slight imbalance) is crucial. Compare the feel and potential in these two different serves as well as the immediate results?

This comparison, which pits full take-back against abbreviated take-back, must be interesting since A and B put the arm in the exact same place and configuration every time.

The modern discovery of myelinization (the accretion through repetitions of insulating brain goop around a pathway increasing neuronal transfer from 10 feet per second to 100 feet per second) seems a clear argument for specialism and never changing anything if you want to be a good tennis player.

Unless, of course, you value variety for its own sake in your game. At 69, I expect good days and bad days, and in this case am authorizing myself to use either wind-up at any time I damn well please.

[bottle]

Bend the Stick the Other Way

Reader, use ctrl+UNDO for counter-wind in upper body. It led to premature separation of hands and mediocre serves in my case, and you probably didn't try it since reading is primarily an abstracted left brain activity-- unless while reading you know how to cross the corpus callosum, over to where the good stuff is if you will only mediate it a bit.

Returning to address at post # 86, try turning the hand severely in (which earlier than ever before, perhaps, will wind the forearm out-- the inversion about to happen may make this confusing but stay with the subject). Winding forearm out is now finished for the whole serve. Then lower hands, rocking back.

Next, leaving the arm where it is so that it will be simply moved by whatever the right shoulder does, slowly turn the elbow and humped wrist down which opens palm to the sky. You will have to decide how much. Reader, by doing this you will never in your life take a more anti-Braden stance. But don't be angry with Vic Braden. Be grateful to him for giving you something solid to rebel against. Everything in this paragraph, including straightening of the upper body while turning it back, occurs during the toss.

Then, while slowly bending back the wrist, smooth the straight arm away from your body. The wrist, I believe, should start and complete its work during this section of straight arm movement only, i.e., go from humped one way to cocked the other all while racket is rising on a single slant. You're bending your knees and probably forming a bow in your body at the same time. Just when you really start to rock toward the net, bend your arm to a skewed right angle (rather last-minute)-- there isn't much more to do from there than hit a serve loaded with pop.

Except maybe contemplate these quotes from great Hungarians, first Katie Lomb, who mastered 16 languages and authored POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES, new edition 2008: "The knowledge you obtain at the expense of some brainwork will be more yours than what you receive ready-made."
And Dezso Kosztolanyi, writer and poet of the early 20th century: "It is boring to know. The only thing of interest is learning."

I have now finished THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN WORD AND IMAGE, by Leonard Shlain, a dense (in the best sense) book which took me a full six months to read.

I now understand why written tennis talk and analysis brings out extreme meanness, i.e., the hunter-warrior in everyone. Such activity is thoroughly left brain, but here, too, is the opportunity to cross through the corpus callosum and into the ancient human storehouse of complete images.

[bottle]

Refining the Motion

The bigger news is always when you can eliminate something, thus adding to your brio.

Wrist straight at address, racket neither open nor closed, upper body counter-wound, arms bent, body leaned over.

Slowly and smoothly whirl body down while also whirling hands from shoulders and elbows to the outside. (Count one.)

Toss, continuing to whirl upper body but straightening it. Racket arm adds to whirling body's momentum, i.e., slowly slides ahead of it as far around as you want (count two).

Arm now bends and keys over still elbow as forearm winds racket out and hand hinges it down. (The hand motions are simultaneous and identical to Mondo on forehand.) The arm gets poised, right-angled but keeled over for two different kinds of throw. The total image of arm and whole body in fact is that of a coiling, aiming snake whose head is in the left of racket's sweet spot fairly near racket tip (counts three and four).

[bottle]

Bielik-inspired Slice

We've never fully understood what happened to the pro career of Bea Bielik after she won the NCAA singles championship and advanced to the third round of the U.S. Open, where she lost to Justine Henin after almost taking the first set 5-7 . We did read a pre-U.S. Open newspaper interview in which Bea wanted to become the number one player in the world. She became the manager of a large tennis club out on Long Island and Monica Seles's doubles partner in team tennis where both represented New York city while drawing upon their displaced Hungarian heritages. (At some point in world history more Hungarians lived outside of Hungary than in it-- in Yugoslavia, in the U.S. and everywhere).

It is the sideways element in the Henin/Bielik service motions which now fascinates me. And, although it was a while ago that I observed Bea serving in the Wake Forest University Indoor Tennis Facility and my photographic recall could be weak, I'm not making things up when I say that Bea's preparation is slow, roundhouse and unbelievably long.

"You describe player characteristics," the basics urging Nico Mol of Holland has pointed out, as if my anti-Spartan and anti-training camp mentality is somehow wrong. Do I sound defensive then if I say that despite advancing age my kick and pace are improved and so it's time, without Bea's direct help which might be expensive, to adapt Ralstonian slice to huge roundhousedness? This particular challenge does not seem difficult.

Modern toss uses straightening and turning back of upper body to assist in lifting the ball up-- so there you are, upright like Dennis Ralston (See TennisPlayer article "Perfecting your Slice"). Why spoil this? Don't!

In bend and travel stage just stay upright and sink very slowly down on A. both feet or B. rear foot. Neither twist your head nor move it backward or forward. Twist the upper body horizontally toward Ralston's palm tree beneath a still gaze. Load shoulder rotors through keeping right angle in right arm. Fire both rotors and triceps though you may be starting from what for you is the normal halfway point in arm extension. So although we are straightening the arm very fast we can still use left arm to stop the upper body rotation before the arm gets completely straight. I prefer the extreme version of this left arm stoppage taught by Charlie Pasarel in the old tennis book "Mastering your Tennis Strokes" in which the two arms form an X in front of your chest-- you can balance your landing just as well as somebody retrieving their left arm and sticking it out again, the added complication of which may exist for suspect reasons of fashion only. The sudden stoppage flings the arm on arm hinge at the shoulder toward the net. Fire remainder of the triceps and hand muscles toward palm tree as you send your head forward, finally, allowing it finally to twist, as well (which usually means that the hips are powering through).

Similar tossing two feet into the court can now see your head follow the ball in one type of serve and stay back to let the hand follow the ball in the other.

You need good thrust in either case to avoid injury by freeing up the feet.

[bottle]

Turning Forearm Out

One of the many challenges with using words to describe anything in tennis is that you always leave something out; nevertheless, I think that people should try-- in fact I find such attempts indispensable-- especially if the listener/reader is someone other than oneself and is a knowledgeable tennis player.

The basic concept of Post # 86 is simplification of the racket drop because of one's desire for subsequent quick extension of arm from the triceps muscle. Luckily, the early cocking of the shoulder rotors does not seem to impair their function for a fast slice serve hit well out in front. One can have the best of both worlds then.

Omitted: Turning out of the forearm. This can happen simultaneous with wrist cocking open and arm bending to a right angle that leans toward left fence. It puts racket tip to outside of right arm through most of fast arm extension as in a Federer serve. It lengthens the already long imaginary line parallel to the net but behind you which you can draw with your racket tip.

[bottle]

Learning a Principle of Serving from a One-hand Backhand

For years I didn't swing around properly on my full loop one-hand backhand, couldn't consistently hit the acute angles I wanted. The solution was to get the racket over the left shoulder and keep extending backward and downward with both hands. This created a trigger, i.e., a residue of bend in the right arm with which to separate out of the left arm. Trigger as beginning of forward swing immediately blends into upper body rotation and arm swing sideways which virtually squares strings to the target. It's a fluid action which becomes easy and quick, and it happens before you've even applied the power (which can come from a blend of clenching shoulder-blades together with arm twisting of frame straight up).

What I want to take from this is the idea of a minimal trigger. Having pursued the Justine Henin serve pretty far, I want to go a single step more, i.e., don't operate with the feel that racket tip is coming up like a skunk tail behind me as part of my hurtling toward the ball. This is certainly workable, but I would prefer to emphasize sideways rather than forward racket work at this point.

Sideways does make sense in a Henin-type motion. During the toss you feel as if you're smoothing the racket a short distance straight back. But then it starts to cross (all the same motion if you really think about it). Now the arm begins to bend, and yes, it will do so to a right angle, but why shouldn't you take it beyond the upright (skunk-tail) position? If you've been straightening wrist why not keep going with it until it's cocked, i.e., laid open as happens in a forehand? At the same time you may key with the upper arm, i.e., while maintaining good separation, you can use shoulder rotors and wrist to draw the longest line possible sideways behind your head with your racket tip.

What I'm saving here for racket drop is not much: a clenching together of the two halves of the arm combined with a slight rise of the elbow.

[bottle]

Forward Momentum in the J. Henin Second Serve

My loose pinky is back on the racket but not there to stay all the time. If this causes a new strand of myelinized nerve connection, good-- I won't get Alzheimers as soon as a more monotoned person. Hana Mandlikova should have a long and happy life since she has too many tennis strokes.

There has to be simple pleasure in discovering how something clever works.

The Federer serve is famous not only for its effectiveness but for its conventional notion that as straight arm bends to form a right angle the knees bend and travel toward the net.

The Henin serve separates knee bend from knee travel more distinctly. As straight arm winds sideways the knees bend weight onto both feet.

(Or you could keep all of your weight on rear foot if you wanted.)

As straight arm bends to form a right angle the knees travel low and pretty fast toward the net-- a different feel with a certain simplicity.

The legs fire in two different directions and at two different speeds because of their two different loads. The player throws the racket down on the legs drive and up on vigorous-to-the-max body rotation which the left hand quickly brakes to snap arm forward on its hinge into the ball.

Remember this snap on one serve to make another snap coincide with it on the next.

That would be a snap toward right fence, and both now will happen together as a super snap.

There is much hips turn on this serve but not much separate horizontal upper body rotation before contact and a lot of catapulting of head and shoulders though without jackknifing the body very much.

Without being or wanting to be an expert on the following two alternatives, I think to hit a good kick serve one must either block the hips or block the upper body but not both. And blocking the upper body through countering with left arm is an old idea.

The rhythm of this serve is down, toss, wind, bend, THROW-- or onetwothree four-FIVE. "Wind" and "bend" are subtle and slow like the top of a good golfer's backswing. "THROW" is very fast. It has to be. The hand, starting behind neck, has to go all the way down and all the way up and all the way down again and across to your follow-through in a single beat. Hard then to think about anything at that point. Maybe we shouldn't, ever.

As far as small hand movements are concerned, they, too must be anti-intellectualized, i.e., kept right brain; but they start before arm is straight and end with acceleration off of the ball AFTER contact.

My conclusion from reading theoreticians on this snap-combining-wrist straightening-and-forearm-pronation is that there is consensus on where it ends-- slightly after contact-- and disagreement on where it should begin--at start or at end of arm extension? Neither, I say. Start it with arm still partially bent at the point where left arm puts on the brake.

Try half, 3/4, 2/5, 9/10, any fraction of arm extension you can think of until you hear the noise you want.

[bottle]

All these Things about one 2nd serve by Justine Henin

1) She tosses as far out front as Dennis Ralston (two feet over the baseline) but when she makes contact her head (left temple) in in line with the ball in backward-forward dimension.

2) So, to do that, she travels like mad (hip out ahead and then she fires it even farther ahead with her back leg before front leg is even straight).

3) The finishing of front leg thrust brings the freed back leg up to it and there is considerable catapult (body rotation in which head moves).

4) Toss is from hands still together-- one goes up, one back.

5) Then, instead of achieving the right-angled arm during full bend/travel common to many servers, she BOTH takes straight arm around (a couple of feet maybe at the hand) and starts bending it then completes this full arm bend as rear leg fires. At this point she is closest to a Leaning Tower of Pisa in side-view. Of course there is leftward lean as well-- another thing. Again, the toss starts early followed by sideways movement of straight arm before it starts to bend.

6) She sticks the landing with BOTH legs flying in opposite direction.

7) Am still not perfectly confident of what she does with wrist; here, she appears to get it straight on the tossing takeback.

8) Something you (I) may never have realized. The bent arm aims first at rear right fence post but extends at ball. Without any kind of body rotation rear fence post is where the edge of the racket would go. With quick body rotation, whatever its nature/combination, the elbow/racket edge now points on a 45-degree angle at the ball. Not flat strings parallel to net or pure edge perpendicular to net but in between equals 45 degrees. Bend-straighten, bend-straighten-- 90 degrees, 90 degrees on the "straighten." This is illustrated in the Chris Lewit articles as well, by the young left-hander using an elastic to build strength in his triceps muscle. The body turns ninety degrees each arm extension.

9) I'm going to pen this before I see it in video to determine if I was right or wrong. Justine pivots on her front heel for a second serve, on the ball of her front foot for a first serve. So when does she pivot on her heel? I say it's during the toss. Right/wrong? RIGHT about when she pivots on heel. But she pivots later when using the ball of her foot. Heel or ball-- you can't generalize about first and second serves as I just did. She uses either method on either a first or second serve.

10) One key to upward, rapid, dreamed of totally consistent silk-tearing spin for me personally is to get little finger permanently off the end of the racket.
The time has come.

[bottle]

Add Cobra Coverage (one of the most unpleasant programs in the world)

Am still working on serve number three to go with:

1) Federal Convention
2) Ralston Slice.

First we add cobra to bottom of the racket drop, and do so quite close to the body during the toss. Think Marion Bartoli, Jamie Murray, Jack Kramer for a rough look.

Individual progression, a kind of jazz riff over days and weeks, has us already with hand turned in, but it coils down farther (the "cobra," according to Ochi, one of the characters at this website).

Now, on bend/travel, we draw both hand and elbow away from the body, coiling the elbow completely (some would say "scissoring" it but not I with my Cobra tennis shoes). The combined motion is cobra coverage, only pleasant this time, and more like a copperhead coiling for a low strike along the ground.

Forget all snaky things in what happens next. The squeezed together arm, trying to break its bonds, turns back on shoulder rotors which fight to fire in opposite direction every inch of the way. The body IS FIRING of course.

Does hand centrifugate to outside of arm as rotors and triceps finally release at great speed, or do you keep hand to inside until arm is straight?

You can do either, but if you maintain hand to inside, you can finally fire racket in the continued tomahawk throw way out to right-- with that simple image including your pronation of a certain nature, i.e., pronation that doesn't flatten the angle between arm and racket.

Pronation by itself doesn't add significantly to total energy. Pronation assisted by a tomahawk throw is something else.

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

One who writes as often as I, especially with the right hand, i.e., in a mean and temporal, overly analytical, left-brain way, must always ask whether my accusers are correct, "that he is intoxicated with the sound of his scratching pen," as the philosopher Leonard Shlain has said of the 16th century prelate John Calvin.

No, my pen is smooth and silent, and I know for a fact that I am not prolific.

One must always ask, however, "Am I being crazy enough?" then, "Am I being too crazy?"

A slightly open racket at address and slightly bent arms fall in the category of arbitrary decision-making.

Should one try, alternatively, straight arms? I did but returned to what is most comfortable for me.

Should one, again at address, turn hand in more-- couldn't one get extra cobra that way? Yes, but why change the setting you use on other serves?

I tried first forcing tip straight down during the toss; then tried not altering the wrist at all until I was drawing the racket head up and around-- snakiest of the experiments but truly unpredictable.

Then tried mild turning of racket tip in behind body (again during the toss), which led to a spate of consistent serves-- a good start in all matters of eternal flux.