A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Racket Work, not the Kinetic Chain, is the Key to Tennis

Nico Mol thinks our conversation is over, but it will never be over, not even if neither one of us ever writes another word (which seems unlikely).

Tennis contains such basics as movement, reaction time, recovery and yes, kinetic chain, but KC is much more instantaneous-- and dare I say it-- "electric" than the lucubrations of those who worship it.

In the book RICK ELSTEIN'S TENNIS KINETICS, which I bought because I was in the middle of a torrid, hip-waggling love affair with kinetic chain at the time, the author hardly writes about actual kinetic chain at all. He showed a photograph of a boxer throwing a punch and then moved on to kinetic "cycles" of hitting a tennis ball followed by economical recovery to middle of one's possibilities and doing it all over again.

One thinks of the late John Updike's "fast-moving sap" (golf was the subject) and of ground force starting up the leg of Muhammad Ali. By the time it reached his shoe, the jab was delivered, as was his opponent, so why even think about it?

Nico's assessment that I am discussing "characteristics" of great players is accurate but doesn't distinguish between personal tic and stealable style-- that instant where all tennis basics converge in spare detail.

At such moments the tennis genius is more simple-- much more simple-- than the beginning player or certainly his instructor.

My real answer to Mr. Mol is in Post # 50, entitled "Follow Tangent to its End," although I didn't have him in mind other than keeping the entire instruction down to three words.

The same day I wrote that post I took it out on the court, for the very first time, and had a day unlike any other.

"Change back!" my opponent said.

This is why I recommend that other Federfore believers try my same prescription and write a report (although I realize there is nowhere for me to go but down).

In fact, I hit after the match with a heavy top-spinner, and although my forehand remained improved, it stopped being spectacular.

I am not a great athlete, and I am 69 years old, but an experience is an experience (and sometimes, face it, you can't hide it, you want to say "NYAH!!!!").

Every forehand I hit in my match with The Partridge was a clean winner.

Hands, point, tweeze, baby.

[bottle]

Enough McEnroe; Federer Now

When I teach tennis lessons, I stick to the basics and go slow, realizing that to do anything else would be criminal unless of course the student is a great player who is completely open to change (but how often does that happen?).

Me, though, I'm not a great player, and therefore, when I'm working with myself, anything goes-- absolutely anything.

A modern historical idea in tennis serving is that John McEnroe developed radical, platform-type stance because of his bad back, which innovation led to modified versions by Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Justine Henin, Svetlana Kuznetsova, and a few others but with most tour players bringing up rear foot instead for pinpoint launch.

I prefer platform. Surprise, surprise! Even lesser players are permitted to have a tennis philosophy and valuable experience and their own preferences. Greater players and hotshot teaching pros should learn to accept this. And-- I insist on this-- the lesser player may eventually come up with something new and valid simply because he's always trying to do so, and mechanical discoveries, as NPR's Tom Magliozzi has pointed out, "are always sheer luck."

Okay, so in my serving talk before I got sidetracked, I was dwelling on McEnroe's Tiantric turn. Federer has a similar though smaller turn, and he's not moving the nub of it, i.e., his head so much while he's performing it. And, since he has a gyroscope in his arm, he can start his toss while his shoulders are still turning back.

Not for me. So I start both arms down together and turn this into a small body turn before the toss. Works great. Also, when you ape Federer, you can be more upright at the start. Best, he keeps his racket on edge, neutral-- employing no real palm down stuff like Vic Braden or opening out of strings like John M. Barnaby or John McEnroe.

When you think about it, this neutral racket makes easy the task of keeping elbow-separation-from-body maximal and in line with both shoulders.

That's very good for a server who can't roll back his shoulder rotors very far since he'll nevertheless get the advantage of longest possible lever ("good extension").

I'm now recommending FOR EVERYBODY-- no, sorry, JUST FOR MYSELF-- the retention of one right-angled arm serve for slice wide left (from a right-hander), utilizing whatever shoulder rotors play that one has. If one can bounce a short overhead over adjacent fences it would be a shame not to apply this skill to at least one serve. (Note: "right-angled arm" doesn't mean
it won't extend for contact.)

On most serves: triceptic extension from two halves of arm briefly clenching is manifestly better for the rotorded server.

The exception is this wide slice. Watch the model videos of Dennis Ralston. He doesn't get the racket tip low at all. And IT DOESN'T MATTER. Because YOU WANT THE BALL TO STAY LOW.

[bottle]

Follow Tangent to its End

The same three-worded instruction, "hands, point, tweeze," seems applicable, with these complex actions attenuated over four beats same as before.

The difference, however, will be in content, not form.

If "hands" meant slightly lifting the two connected hands equally, this is no longer true, with left hand now to do more work, in fact flipping racket over right hand, so strings, at head level, face the right fence post.

During second beat, "point," the left fingers will leave the handle with less distance to go before they maximally turn the shoulders. At same time racket will continue its already started twist, in fact closing more as arm extends on a high, level path.

Third and fourth beats correspond to the high-speed Federer's racket, perfectly closed, descending like milkweed.

[bottle]

No Way

Sorry, but I don't accept your characterizations, and if you want short sentences maybe you should try a simple sport. Everything I'm doing does have to do with FEEL. It also has to do with first-hand experimentation on the court, not tired, received notions like "kinetic chain" unless you invented that one yourself. In "Rick Elstein's Tennis Kinetics," Martina Navratilova said,
"I never think about the kinetic chain."

[nabrug]

Dear Bottle,

If you want real answers. Please ask short questions which I can answer in a short way.

The mentioned website and the video could have given you a reference model for the kinetic chain in the service which will give you the FEELING. Than in the second phase you can fill it in with the caracteristics you find at Tennisplayer. In general the caracteristics will not give you the stroke. (I mention this because I think you only think in caracteristics and not in the feeling and I am not interested in loose caracteristics).
Besides that we could have had a model in which we could communicate with each other. (By the way McEnroe is doing all the essences described in the video in his own way. Nothing more, nothing less.) Now it is very hard to do that.

I don't think there is a super service or a super FH. I think there is a proper kinetic chain and physical ability.

Nico.

[bottle]

Going with the Tangent

Nico,

I'm still on my forehand tangent because I'm not "just" amusing myself, but think of myself as a teacher, and want to make a connection with someone who has said he can understand neither my language or my thought.

Since you are a teacher yourself, you should at least be curious about this essential method, which is, "throw out the lesson plan."

My subject is a new year's serve, i.e., a serve which is better than the others that one person-- anybody-- has ever tried.

My premise, however, is that the best tennis strokes share a certain duration and rhythmic base.

You wouldn't have to have understood a single word I just said if you realized that "Bottle is trying to put something across, and it has to do with Roger Federer's forehand."

That's right. I broke that stroke into five counts which I then named and next explained. You wouldn't need the names and certainly not the five descriptions or any Dutch or English at all if you had studied the high-speed films of Federer on this website and could do the whole thing with your racket out on the court.

But now I pull the rug out from under you again (you will have to be willing for this to happen).

Take just the first three words of the description, "hands, point, tweeze," and assign them a four-count. Everything else-- the hit-- becomes "FIVE!"

This moves you closer to the Roger Federer of the UTUBE videos where he is playing Fabrice Santoro-- any one of which is the most incredible display of movement, economy, and impact that I've ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS7Gw19v4DY

Any of these Federer-Santoro movies ought to be enough to convert any film buff, to make him less pusillanimous and once and for all stop inflicting his students with the double-bends (Webster's Collegiate: "a sometimes fatal disorder that is marked by neuralgic pains and paralysis, distress in breathing, and often collapse and that is caused by the release of gas bubbles in tissue upon too rapid decrease in air pressure after a stay in a compressed atmosphere...")

[bottle]

Expensive!

No, it costs money, Nico, so I'll stick to the apprenticeship method. I wonder, though, if Vermeer learned to paint from a video. Of course, although I'm not as bad at tennis as you (and many others) think, I'm not a Vermeer on the tennis court either, and my big gains all do come from videos-- mostly those in this website. You see, I am a very visual person.

This business of language, though, does bother me since I may be teaching writing courses in Europe this summer. Visual imagery by itself is not enough. We need verbal, kinesthetic cues, as well, if tennis is the subject.

Just try and keep the words sensuous and simple, with your students, whether you're speaking English or Dutch.

That's what I'm trying to do with the above description of a Roger Federer forehand. Try following it-- maybe you or one of your students can hit like Roger!

FH: hands point tweeze Mondo arm.

You're right-handed and the ball is coming to your right. You lean with your head and simultaneously turn the same way, pushing off the foot nearest to the ball. Your arms are solid with your body and out front as you move like a crab. Whether you've managed to splay your outside foot or not will affect the shot.

At the bounce (approximately) you do "hands" (count one). This means that both hands lightly lift the closed racket independent of the body thus giving one a feeling of freedom.

On count two you "point." Surely you know how dramatic this can be in the theater. You do it with your left hand. You point all the way across your body at the right fence, which winds back your shoulders farther than in the old days when you kept left hand on the racket for the same purpose and sent it toward the rear fence. But what is your right arm doing? It's opening the racket to neutral position up by your head (with "neutral" meaning neither closed or open but on edge).

Count three, "tweeze," again refers to left arm. It's straight, right? So if you smoothly swing it around a small amount, keeping it straight, it resembles one leg of the tweezers from a medicine cabinet. But if like my Hungarian ex-girlfriend you hate medical imagery and may prefer nautical-- and Roger has called his forehand "modern retro"-- well, how about using the classical image from fifty years of tennis magazines: Your left arm "smooths the waters."
I'm arguing here though that a straight arm calms the waters better than a bent one. Ar at least smooths MORE water. But if both arms are pulling part, and are becoming tweezers, well, they're un-tweezing or tweezing in reverse.
Anyway the right arm gets straight while closing the strings again during this.

Count four, "Mondo," is an international term from the Pro Tour with World implications. This is when the wrist simultaneously turns down and turns back (opening half way to neutral), killing the racket head speed just as Roger pushes off and cranks his body mightily. It allows one to be vigorous before contact and practically caress the ball at one and the same time.

Success of any stroke, however, is determined by how the strings come off of the ball. Sideways movement of "arm" (count five) achieves this in two ways-- remaining straight through contact or scissoring at contact. In either case, the most powerful sideways movement of the arm possible slings the laid back, laid down racket up, through and across the ball, causing a ferocity of mixed spin.

[nabrug]

Nico, if I hadn't read your post, I wouldn't be answering it right now. Obsessionally (if you call that fun), I'm more interested in intermediate to advanced, however, than beginning to intermediate. I nevertheless am interested in everything about tennis and will check out the source you gave and thanks.

It is not that I don't want to read them. But because of the language barrier and your way of thinking I get lost after two sentences. I am sorry.

Strange, I am always more interested in beginning to intermediate principles. There is a much higher percentage to be gained over there. I always hope to discover that I miss a basic essence so that I really can improve.

Don't let you get fooled by the title though. From the Steven Martens video yo can derive the 6 basic principles of the kinetic chain which will never change until you are a pro. Part of it I explain in the open letter to Kyle Doppelt in a new thread.

I really hope it will help you.

Nico Mol.

[bottle]

Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)

Introduction toss travel loop flange accelerate.

If somebody didn't understand one or more of these terms, he could 1) make up his own or 2) ask me what I mean.

Each of the six terms, for as long as I keep it, will translate into a single paragraph.

That would be for a John McEnroe type serve, but I'm doing the same thing for a Roger Federer type FH and RF type BH.

FH: hands point tweeze Mondo arm.

BH: up back round round up (elbow stays at one level and setting-- if it were the pointer on a compass-- for the middle three counts).

[bottle]

Who's Not Reading Whom?

Nico, if I hadn't read your post, I wouldn't be answering it right now. Obsessionally (if you call that fun), I'm more interested in intermediate to advanced, however, than beginning to intermediate. I nevertheless am interested in everything about tennis and will check out the source you gave and thanks.

[nabrug]

To be honest I don't read your mails. But if you are really looking for essences of the service I suggest you read the following article at:

http://www.tennisicoach.com

<<<<Technical development of the serve for beginners to intermediate - Steven Martens Video 51:44 Video>>>>

It helped me a lot in creating a movement reference for myself but also for my students.

If you only post your posts for the fun of it (which can be legitimate) than consider this post as not written.

Nico Mol.

[bottle]

Toss

If one gets this far, one has the chance to improve one's toss with determination always to lift from the same spot. So, the two linked hands drop the racket to vicinity of the rear leg (and "The racket is where the weight is"-- Stan Smith).

If you then say to yourself, "I'm going to keep my tossing hand right here," you can, but you'll have to move it in all sorts of interesting directions to compensate for Tiantric turn, like a ferry boat coming into its slip against a cross-current.

The shoulders are turning, your head is rising, your hitting arm is drawing round ahead of the shoulders way back for a big wallop.

Using Timothy Gallwey's most basic idea of learning or changing by simply observing what is going on, visualize respective placement of both arms and level of the tossing hand. In fact, there is some angle from trailing shoulder to racket, and this angle widens as the shoulders turn back, which can take the tossing hand down. But your head is simultaneously going up. The net result can be a hand that stays exactly where it was.

I do think that John McEnroe's vertical palm is much better suited to far-back-beginning-toss-position than the conventional (and bromidic) palm up that nearly everybody uses nowadays. One exception: Ivan Ljubicic.

To challenge this premise get your palm facing up at sky and ask, "In what precise direction does this hand want to toss the ball?" For me it's up but
toward the rear fence-- no good. With no Tiantric turn before toss however one can barely get the ball to go where everybody wants-- in a double trajectory out toward net and back toward body core. Maybe this is good since everybody is always tossing on the edge of their physical capability and therefore knows how arm ought to rise.

McEnroe, tossing from farther back, uses the clever trick of tossing with palm vertical, opening it for release, and immediately returns that palm to vertical.

[bottle]

Balanced Landing Far into the Court

As we supposedly strive for admission into the John McEnroe Society, Ted Turner says, "Oh, that's a nice necktie. When that one wears out, you should buy another one just like it."

McEnroe himself-- he's mum. But we don't care about any fraternal or fictional society of journalists and past broadcast moguls.

We just want John McEnroe's weight transfer, and like the earnest students of the game we are, we get fooled by the direction the knees point, the butt crack points.

Core travel (think hips) shall be in neither of these cantilevering directions but straight ahead at the target. Once the knees are equally bent you go-- from back foot through deep compression (slow) and travel out onto front foot (slow) and up the ladder (fast) and down onto the surface of the court (slow).

[bottle]

Tennis Technique as Opinion

One makes a discovery. Two days later another replaces it. Special taste and patience are required for this. Obviously, it's not for everybody. No need to blame people for trying to live sensible, well-ordered lives. Me, I'd sell my soul for my greatest possible serve and maybe have.

The John McEnroe serve wind-up: Linear, circular, then linear again. I think I dentified two different thing he does in the films: 1) lower his arms to both legs and 2) lower both arms to the same leg (rear). I prefer the second option but both are linear moves.

With both hands still on the racket and by the rear leg, one can go into Tiantric Turn (told you I'd sold my soul). Reference: Luis Tiant, the Cuban baseball pitcher.

The rear leg is comfortably bent. The front leg is propped, which works the gut muscles as you smoothly turn your shoulders with your head coming up.

During this bizarre move the hitting hand can add distance to the turn while the tossing hand stays pretty much where it is, perhaps moves out two inches.

I've talked about tossing while twirling racket open but did I ever mention that the front leg stays propped (a straight 2by4) for part of the toss? Don't think so. That knee bends at ball release and now has the same bend as the other and then both bend a lot more (this is linear, probably toward the net post-- but in any case with a forward component). Do knees simultaneously go countervailing backward? A little, but the main thing you see in the films is hips traveling toward the net, and only from knees bend, which then blends into a skating of weight straight toward the net and out on the front foot.

[bottle]

Weight, Vectors and Toss

Just what I don't need to be thinking about on match day. Oh well, I clobbered the guy last time, "gave me a lesson," he said. Today is as good a day as any for my comeuppance.

So knowledge-- give me more of it. Just hope it doesn't slather and dribble down my face. Most of the ideas come in the night anyway. The person who is writing this has little to do with it.

I've now discovered films where John McEnroe doesn't lower his tossing hand to the inner thigh of his front leg but considerably to rear fence side of that. And films where JM keeps his hands together all the way to beginning of his Tiantric turn. And films where his body weight and racket draw back toward rear fence rather than along the baseline as I suggested. None of this has meaning outside of the learning structure I've set up, the actual context of these posts, almost like a neuronal pathway.