A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Got to have Maybes

Can't be a scientist or an artist or even have a good serve without maybes (curiosity).

Maybe my toss in a pendulum serve became high and not too bad but trouble persisted with ha.

Try the pendulum down-together up-together again. Keep ha bent throughout.

But add the last two-thirds of the motion I demonstrate here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sci-u6KtsLo). That would be more rise of elbow and a bit of ESR to raise the racket tip as body furls.

To reach one's self-made films put this hieroglyphic in your url box: www.youtube.com/user .

Replaced now: level travel of the elbow in favor of a pendulum.

[bottle]

Mountain-climbing

The filming of # 4741 led to low-elbowed disappointment to which I shall subject no one but myself.

But I shall return to the imperatives of # 4740 and film that experiment.

If then, in watching the film, I see progress, I'll share that new film with anyone who cares to see it.

Not that higher more leftward toss and higher hitting elbow would in themselves constitute the drama required in great film.

There is, however, a bloody story here going on.

Yesterday's level travel of the elbow, replaced today by pendulum, shall if all goes well be replaced tomorrow by a 45-degree upward slope succeeded by a 90-degree cliff succeeded by 30 degrees of ESR.

But I just want to do, out on the court, with all design having been completed right here in this room right now.

The linked hands are to draw slightly down to left side, next sling up to the right before separating into their two upward functions.

The legs and body shall extend, settle, and extend again.

If this design doesn't put more of my serve behind my body nothing else ever will.

[bottle]

Haven't yet been to court. There still is time to revise any foolishness out of the design.

The word "sling" is questionable although the racket path implied may not be.

Both hands may slowly take the racket up. Tilden's great principle of serving is that the arm (the arms in this case) goes around the bod. The bod itself turns as well. But is not extending, not yet.

How far do the two hands travel up their 45-degree slope? Can't be long in view of the pending toss.

The separation of the hands is the toss. And the rise of ha-elbow up a cliff. And the first extension (gentle) of the legs.

Now happens the first of the two gentle ESR's accompanied by compression of the knees to thrust out front hip and load rear foot.

The racket head winding up to vertical carries a modicum of inertia.

[bottle]

This is Social Commentary, not Politics

Someone on Quora asked "Why do many British people not like Donald Trump?"

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote this magnificent response:

A few things spring to mind.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour, and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a bully's sniveling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

1. Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
2. You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: 'My God… what… have… I… created?’

If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

[bottle]

Report

On a day when I was not playing well, I mostly held serve with the unique motion described in #4743 .

How and why is it unique? It's so unique to me personally, that, I never hit anything like it before in my entire life.

Furthermore, I had no chance to try it out before taking it into competition. That any serve could succeed or partially succeed in that circumstance against tough competition may indicate, aside from novelty, a strength of basic design.

But I don't have to toot its perceived excellence since I have a lot of doubles matches scheduled in the upcoming days-- the truth will be revealed.

For now I want to address three not previously broached issues.

1) The toss is delivered over the head on a mild slant toward the net from ice cream cone hand configuration with ta kept bent. The slow two-handed to one-hand transition creates other momentum but toss momentum too in that the toss is all in a single plane.

2) The Tennis Player subscriber lovati4 has raised concern about integrating the significant time required for the total package of leg compression and extension into one's service motion. Well, my argument is, strip the motion down then even if that means an abbreviated wind-up, something one normally does not like.

3) lovati4 has also discussed the physical musculature needed to decelerate the racket near its wind-up apogee. That sounds to me like a pendulum motion in which the racket falls at 32 feet per second per second and then accelerates upward at a faster clip. Again, that is a pattern I choose to circumvent through a stripping down of the whole motion.

The new serve at #4743 appears right now to provide more ease in achieving one's timing goals.

It is not a probation serve but rather a continuous serve simply because that works better for me.

The third of three successive though linked racket rises-- bent arm keying racket tip up to vertical-- may be set at 45 rather than 20 degrees for maximum coordination with compression of the legs.

When our snow melts, I shall film.

[bottle]

Idea

Women can do something that men can't. And that one thing makes women stronger than men.

[bottle]

Getting the Amounts Right

Some think that, after you've found a good design, you should stick with it forever and ever, and for the much bigger part of tennis, listen to the daily conversation at Gold Ball Hunting.

Not me. I think that, once you have identified the proper elements in your service motion, you should work on getting the relative amounts of them right.

[bottle]

Serve for an 80-year-old. I invented it while I was 79.

Left elbow, right elbow, load.

We have the scheme.

So now we (I) look for any cue that might abet it.

The command "left elbow" isn't bad. It refers to the part of the serve in which both hands are on the racket. The left hand on the throat pushes the right elbow up. The same motion begins the liquid toss.

The command "right elbow" isn't bad. It separates the hands away from each other and places the racket tip at 45 degrees to go to reach TDC (top dead center).

The command "load" isn't...well, you already know I think I'm on to something here. Humeral twist keys racket tip 45 degrees up at the sky. The racket screws up while the knees screw down.

This serve is just another dance step. If you like it or need it then use it.

P.S. I made a video to go along with this post but apparently don't have enough data in my phone right now to upload it, may have to wait for a new billing cycle in a couple of days.

[stotty]

Good writer that Nate. That's the best piece I've read on an exhausted subject for quite some time. He shows a lot of intelligence and has a style all of his own. He's different.

[bottle]

Good writer that Nate. That's the best piece I've read on an exhausted subject for quite some time. He shows a lot of intelligence and has a style all of his own. He's different.

Agreed in all respects. My video called SERVE FOR AN EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD, by the way, seems to be uploading and supposedly will be ready in another hour. One of my videos was watched five times, the other 15 times. So I tell you because I think you might want to be one of the five.

I don't understand why more people will read one of my posts than watch one of my videos. I thought a picture was supposed to be worth several words.

[bottle]

A Favorite Video from Nine Years ago

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is53xJBJlYA)

But I don't remember the sound being this bad, and I thought a dead bird fell on the court.

[bottle]

SERVE FOR AN 8O-YEAR-OLD--the Continuing Story

There's one guy who couldn't return it at all, not one of them, but he was overly affected by its novelty. It's a good serve but not that good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXRUWubs0-E

And I want it to keep changing. Might get worse, might get better. I want to keep at this book, I mean serve, with successive drafts until I'm sure it's getting better, then I'll quit all promiscuous invention right then and just play doubles matches with the thing and tune into the running conversation at "Gold Ball Hunting" for all other aspects of tennis while I'm ahead.

Whether ta is bent or straight or somewhere in between doesn't matter to me right now so long as I get the arced toss I want.

And the scheme in the video is nice and simple, I know. One elbow, the other elbow, and then keying to vertical as the body screws down-- hate to abandon something that clearly is working but am apt to anyway in the hope of evolving something even better.

I've been starting with both hands drawn around the left side of my bod. Make that starting point a bit higher. And abandon the three-part pattern so carefully worked out. It can be two parts or maybe even one part instead.

ta will go down on a straightening elbow just as in a pendulum serve but in an outward direction and with no pause will swoop up over the head. At the same time ha will temporize. That's right. The hand will go down as the elbow goes up.

Now comes the key action of bent ha to get the forearm vertical. I'm not in total agreement with Nick Wheatley's article just re-posted in the forum by don_budge. You all know how I love don_budge and Nick Wheatley too. It's a great and tremendously useful article but I'm not with Nick on the subject of off vertical ignition place. That in my view is for a probation serve. And the racket tip then slowly clocks to vertical at which time the serve takes off.

But 80-YEAR is continuous. So I want the right arm in its form of an Allen wrench to clock a long way to 12 a.m. as the knees bend to distribute the shoulders backward and the ass forward.

[bottle]

State of the Topspin Backhands (SOTBs): a National Address

Be just as quick and willful as Becker or Edberg in driving the racket down but do so with a lowering of racket tip to the inside and a probably invisible roll the other way and a finish up and forward from the ball with both ends of the racket traveling at the same speed.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA)

Exception. To take the ball off at service line (crosscourt short angle): Using a slightly shortened backswing just roll the racket forward like Becker and Edberg and keep rolling from contact.

[bottle]

Nature of Reality: One New Dance Step Leads to Another

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTDKjA2ObVo

Let's try giving ta a backswing untouched by the romanticism and time loss of a gravity drop. All that 32 feet per second per second can be replaced by a simple arm squeeze. Hence ta, starting bent, bends a little more. The elbow then lifts ball while passively straightening arm which sets ball into a right to left arc above the head.

ha meanwhile enjoys the same little squeeze since both hands are on the racket at the same point.

One would like to think that as ta tosses, ha inverts/temporizes/sends elbow up. Sadly however linking the motions that closely presses strings into ta.

So the following rhythm is needed: From the double arm squeeze, ta does nothing for a split-beat while ha barely straightens to a right angle thus freeing the two arms from each other.

Next, as toss goes out and over, the elbow of ha inverts to the high level required by any rotorded server.

But racket won't be properly aligned with the keyed, Allen wrench like forearm. So wrist needs to flex. It can immediately extend back to straightness thus lending feel and slowness of momentum to the raising of the forearm to vertical as the whole bod coils.

This present series of new serves is mostly based on reduction of moving parts. But two moving parts-- wrist flexion and extension-- get put back or injected into this particular serve thus adding feel to the humeral twist of forearm upward.

And with more feel comes a better chance of coordinating racket drop with leg drive.

[bottle]

Count One of Two is Divided into Four Sub-species

New scheme. Do not film. Too early. Get to a practice court. That is a necessity.

a) Rock forward while right elbow rises over left elbow as hinge so that racket shaft is parallel to court.

b) I hate the next image but strive to achieve it anyway. The top of a missile silo opens as one rocks back on rear foot. Hand with palm facing right fence has circled behind the neck.

c) Toss.

d) Arm folds for cootie check as knees and bod settle/re-configure.

Count Two (the hit) explodes. Legs and torso twist drive as needled ESR spreads between lowering racket and sweeping its tip out to the right.

There appears only one way to maximize a limited range of ESR. And that is to fold arm early for a cootie check on the back of one's head.