A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Exhortative

I'll try not to repeat myself except for the cootie stuff.

Use the second person pronoun and order that guy about whether first-rate poets approve or not. (I am still influenced by criticism received during an Irish poetry reading contest at Wake Forest University ten years ago when I was in the running for the big prize.)

If something feels awkward, put it in the address. I just started serves from a high still box. A box? Well, whatever you want to call an irregular pentagon with uneven sides. (Left elbow points down with racket parallel to court.)

To quote from previous post: "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."

Well, one can rock back and forth all one wants with arms and racket in the static five-sided shape.

Next one can take elbow around but start squeezing it proactively and almost immediately for the imaginary mirror's cootie check.

The ta meanwhile can take whatever kind of a backswing/downswing it wants, maybe a small circular move.

Now the toss goes up marginally ahead of rear leg push.

As arm squeezes to a needle the bod loads down on rear foot. (My stance just got wider to move rear leg thrust farther behind center of gravity.)

At risk of repeating too much, the delayed ESR can now be spread between racket lowering and sweep of its tip out to right.

These were better serves than mine in competition last night although other contestants said I played well.

There won't be much in common between a serve like this and that of John Isner although one can perhaps copy his long tract of needled elbow to good effect.

[bottle]

After a lousy night of serving, I went to outside court and did something which seemed pretty much to work.

Now I try to figure it out.

My rotordedness, I have recently concluded, indicates a largely palm down serve. As of today I would say "a severely palm down serve" starting from high two-handed address with strings parallel to net.

During the Vic Braden phenomenon there were some constants in his first book then others, his correspondence, his videos, his conferences and "tennis universities" and most of all the huge jamborees he held all around the country with acolyte teaching pros helping him.

The first video I ever saw had Vic standing with both feet on the baseline as he twisted his broad shoulders back then abruptly changed their direction to facilitate a natural loop.

"Nice easy hundred-miles-per-hour serve," he would say each time you re-played the video.

Seems very different from any serve seen now on the tour or illustrated in a lesson from Tomaz Mencinger or Brian Gordon.

But might be the best alternative for a rotorded server, i.e., a server with short drive belts attached to and wrapped around the bone in his shoulder cave.

I can remember somewhere in the Braden talk the idea that one could consciously speed up the helicopter like palm down whirl to one's inside. Well this is what I'm trying to do now while working at the same time to develop upward component.

Most tennis players have heard at least some of the many criticisms leveled at Vic. For somebody like me, however, the title of his initial book may deeply apply right now: TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE.

[10splayer]

Hmm, still working on the old serve huh? Isn't your arm bout to fall off? Might want to think about picking up the pace on this whole improvement thingy.

[bottle]

Hmm, still working on the old serve huh? Isn't your arm bout to fall off? Might want to think about picking up the pace on this whole improvement thingy.

No, I hold contempt for complacency. I hope never to be satisfied. Now if I were about to play for a Gold Ball I wouldn't mess with my serve. But I'm not. And I do not understand at all where you're coming from. Do you conduct the rest of your life this way? (As don_budge has pretty much indicated, one dig deserves another.)

[10splayer]

No, I hold contempt for complacency. I hope never to be satisfied. Now if I were about to play for a Gold Ball I wouldn't mess with my serve. But I'm not. And I do not understand at all where you're coming from. Do you conduct the rest of your life this way? (As don_budge has pretty much indicated, one dig deserves another.)

No, just saying this thread was started in sanskrit, and there doesn't seem to be much improvement. Perhaps a different approach is in order. Just thinking out loud...

[bottle]

Oh, just go back through a couple posts then and watch the movies. No Sanskrit there. Just ideas or arm movements that could be improved, it turns out. (Just watch cartoons on Saturday morning, too. You'll be all right. An alternate suggestion: Learn Sanskrit. It will expand your mind.)

There was a 6'10" Lithuanian basketball star at Wake Forest before Chris Paul and after Tim Duncan. His coach, Skip Prosser, had him teach him one new word of Lithuanian every day.

This should have ensured a long life for Skip but didn't. So I abandon any serious thesis here.

[bottle]

Three Cups of Bertrand Russell

"The distinctive feature of the unintelligent man is the hastiness and absoluteness of his opinions; the scientist is slow to believe, and never speaks without modification."

When Bertrand Russell had, by his second wife, a first child, a friend accosted .him with, "Congratulations, Bertie! Is it a girl or a boy?" Russell replied, "Yes, of course, what else could it be?"

Francis Younghusband on Bertrand Russell's equanimity:
"Apparently the way to really enjoy oneself is to be full of dark forebodings and expect the worst; then if the worst actually happens it is only what one had expected, and if anything less than the worst occurs one can be in uproarious good-humour."

[bottle]

Steady on or Eureka!

I choose "steady on." This method has worked well for me in tennis discovery and for my crew in eight-oared rowing: 29 strokes per minute compared to the 32, 34 or 36 of Penn, Cornell and ten other crews from both coasts and the country's middle in a three-mile race. One has to know some Aesop.

Ease of production should figure in the personal service design that one hits upon and ultimately develops. It's good to be spurred, I guess, if you are a horse with tough flanks, but all in all it's better not to be rushed. You don't want to build up lactic acid.

A sit-down movie is so easy to do now and here it is. This is certainly better than a lie-down movie. When you lie on your back, your arms are in wrong relation to your bod.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M51ulza_to)

[bottle]

Toss Higher

Make more time for coil of bod and arm. The serves I hit were too abrupt where that is supposed to happen. Recorded but am not yet ready to show a recording. It seems that one can adjust toss (upward) in one pattern of serve, but when the pattern gets altered, even if only a little bit, one must learn the toss all over again.

[bottle]

Probation Serves from Different Starting Points

Strings on head, left shoulder, back. under right ear-- why dismiss anything? You won't if you empower yourself to be interested in the various possibilities.

Ice cream cone structure for ta can produce new options. If one is able without spilling to carry two drinks in either hand through a crowded room one probably doesn't need the crutch of both hands on the racket for starting address.

Today I want to start a probation serve not with racket tip raised but with it drooped as far as it can naturally go down toward right fence with ha bent and its elbow held high.

What one will have done is maximize the amount of ESR available to one. People especially who are stiff in the rotor, who know they can't twist the humerus as far back as they would like should be careful to turn the stick (the humerus) in the opposite direction just in order to know the range of ESR available to them whether that ESR is in the right/wrong place or not.

And then, from the "droop" position I propose, ask, just how much or little of my ESR do I need to raise racket tip to a reasonable place for the start of my leg drive?

Could one throw in this way? Probably. Serve in this way? Probably.

[bottle]

ha: Brandishment in a Probation Serve Requires Effort; Natural Droop none

ta: Put effort into finding best starting height for the toss, the height that encourages a slight downswing and rhythmic heave into rainbow trajectory. I vote for straight arm to do this today.

ta: Will do its thing first.

ha: Will do its thing second

ta and ha: Despite the strict sequence will work together.

ha: The best ha movements are ESR with a bent arm, ISR with a straight arm, passive straightening of the arm between ESR and ISR, the pro-active short jolt of rising elbow to produce that straightening.

ha: The droop place is too far right of head to do good, so one can reel racket in by needling the two halves of the arm.

The racket next works down and to the right. To do this however the elbow twists rising in one slot then jolts to the left of that slot to accelerate ha straight.

When palm fires, to be effective, it grazes the right ear.

ha: All other arm movements, used before for positioning, to be extracted and deleted from the equation.

[bottle]

Report

Mostly held with this probation serve never tried before in either competition or practice. I believe there is variety available in where and how one hesitates. Brian Gordon has told us a lot, but one of his simplest ideas is go to a probation serve for working on sync between body going up and racket going down. Switching back and forth between this phase and fuller windup phase may take forever but so what? The switching could pay off soon, too-- how can one know? Better to be a little dumb about it? It's great to have such a solid program in mind for when one is dissatisfied with the serve one has. And everyone should be dissatisfied in timely fashion? There isn't a serve in the world that can't improve. But there is a time and place in which to make it happen-- of course.

[bottle]

Elbow high: Now you won't have to get it high. Elbow needled. Now you needn't needle it. ha completely relaxed. Now you won't have to relax it.

I fool with my probation serve and see many more possible wait positions than most people imagine.

Leon Trumbauer, a doubles opponent and partner, says that my erratic arm positions and waggles unnerve him. That has to be good, but, how long will it last since Leon is very smart. Leon will catch on. Whatever I do must embody some basics that will persist beyond a novelty sure to wear off.

Anyone who tries a probation serve abbreviates. Well, would it be a sin to abbreviate the abbreviation?

The next time I get to a court or should I say work my feet down through the snow I want to try all three items described in the emboldened title of this post.

To properly coil the bod, it seems to me, one needn't cue with anything that ha does.

Just let ha do everything you want to form address and then let ta take over the task of cueing the body coil.

So where at toss is the body weight? And what is the body/bod doing? Staying still? Moving forward? Moving slightly forward? Will work that stuff out later.

ta goes down then up releasing the ball and coiling the bod.

Just as body coil finishes, the needled arm keys racket upward five degrees.

Rear leg drive takes over from there. That is the plan.

[bottle]

Vampire Serves

How about doubling the length of one's toss in a probation serve? Because one doesn't start with both hands linked on the racket, one's ta should be free for a bunch of experiments, could jiggle or lift and lower a couple of times before lifting again, could backswing way up to the left then bowl down into a transition into one's normal toss.

Similarly one might decide that the BENDING of ha should be given humanoid status and declared a villain henceforth to be banished from one's tennis.

There would in other words be NO BENDING just BENT.

Given the excess of Anne Rice vampire novel spin-offs, we might then declare the elbow a vampire but a nice one.

Compressed elbow to spin tightly but fully in the same rustled space within a coffin.

Too much snow may make a trial of this scheme difficult.

I nevertheless shall make my attempt while hoping that a unified 180-degree inversion will deftly have taken elbow

1) down

2) to right

3) upward to combine with torso twist to drive ha straight.

[bottle]

Sanskrit 101

ha = hit arm

ta = toss arm

If you cannot grasp this distinction, you'll never have a good serve.