A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Fluid Five-count in Evolving the Serve you Want

Why five-count. Well, try three if you prefer (Vic Braden-advocated) or maybe an older idea: 1,2,uh,3 (for a total of four). The main idea of counting to five from a ground stroke bounce came from a public statement by Roger Federer about what he did when he needed to settle his nerves. The tennis pro OW recently suggested that counting to five was what Roger forgot in the fifth at Melbourne this year. Then it turned out through Justine Henin's coach that she did the exact same thing for nerves. Overly legalistic types of course go bananas over what the words "the bounce" means. Do they mean before the ball hits, when it hits, or afterwards? Probably all three-- just in different circumstances. OW liked the idea so much he applied it to other strokes as well.

I see 5-count as something, if accepted, you make up yourself and ultimately forget when you're NOT nervous. Since I'm always messing with or refining my serve, I've had to make up new counts frequently which I don't mind at all. I've said, I know, that 5-count ought to start with the toss; but, why should there be a rule? When starting from toss doesn't break the service tract into five even timing snips, I might start from somewhere else.

Right now, with my present spin-off serve I start with Tiant/McEnroe-body-straightening-and-outthrusting of arms turn, which only happens after linear rock along baseline establishing front leg as a 2by4 with arms by the two legs and rear leg comfortably bent.

[bottle]

Next Questions

Is the racket accelerating as it comes off of the ball? And how does best acceleration work anyway? Should it be gradual or sudden? If one of these options works for you one out of every three hundred serves perhaps you should try the other.

If SUDDEN, then where should the last delay occur-- the relative delay which triggers greatest acceleration?

This is very much a matter of personal interpretation.

I'm trying to do it by taking it easy in third helicopter and by calling bottom of this a helicopter of its own. Forearm muscles turn the racket tip out to trigger the rest of the serve.

This worked well for me today, we'll see about tomorrow.

[bottle]

The Full McEnroe

Nobody will believe it-- especially my opponents-- and since I'm a right-hander and um, don't volley quite as well...but, yes, it is a five-helicopter serve. Just a matter of changing a function from one helicopter to another, and coming to an understanding of where the Tiant/McEnroe turn occurs, later than I thought.

Let's go through a serve one time more. (Since it's never the same serve why not?)

Start bent over from hips with hands together and legs relaxedly straight. Using a linear action lower the back heel, thrusting the hips out. Front leg turns into a strut-- it might as well be a 2by4. Back leg bends a little, easily taking the weight-- important. Back to the beginning. Body starts along baseline by itself. Then both hands, still linked, drop as a yoked pendulum. Then the arms separate. Tossing hand goes to inside of front leg. Hitting hand ends about four inches distance from rear leg. The two hands are by the two legs. Everything in this paragraph needs to be practiced as a single unit for a short while.

Now comes the Tiant/McEnroe turn as the body straightens to slightly past 12 o'clock and both arms swing out to balance one another like a tightrope walker's baton. The hitting arm rows faster than the current, the tossing arm bucks into the current, moving in one sense, staying stationary in another.
Tossing arm ends up on a line with the two shoulders or even netside of that, slightly behind one's back. Because hitting arm is going with the rotation (and exceeding it) it doesn't have to go far. From where the hitting elbow ends up (almost but not quite behind back again) when arm folds it will seem to carry racket forward, up and back in a semicircle. That is my second helicopter, though.

First is the arm turning out as you toss, which involves acceleration of front arm, which turns inner lip of hand horizontal at release then resumes verticalness.

Third helicopter is going to start folded elbow up and inward to level of shoulders line, with forearm turning out here rather than during firing of the triceps, as before. This action is punctuated by the body skating onto front foot and thrust of front leg.

Fourth helicopter is now a speeding gnat more than a helicopter-- sorry, the helicopter got shot down. Subtraction of forearm cock from this step purifies the triceptic throw at right edge of the ball, as seen by somebody standing directly behind the server.

Then comes the fifth and final helicopter accelerating strings over the outer edge of the ball in the exact same direction as arm fired.

Upper body rotation and catapult happening in inverse proportion to each other start as leg thrust concludes and continue through contact for follow-through and landing.

Now we'll see if I can do it, and if I can, whether I can maintain it-- there's a lot to go wrong.

[bottle]

Refinement

Better not to drop the tossing hand. Why is that movement necessary? The two Panchos both made the big point that it wasn't. But Pancho Gonzalez nevertheless did lower his a bit no matter what he said. Pancho Segura didn't, just tossed from where his hand was, at least in his illustrated book Pancho Segura's CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY.

Not dropping it will be one less thing to do. The hitting hand then can leave the tossing hand still (though rising a bit from body motion) and glide down from it a little (though this is done with the two of them already quite far apart).

Then one can go into the first helicopter as part of the toss.

[bottle]

The 5-helicopter Serve

People who think this one ill-advised, will, I hope, compare it to our policy in Afghanistan (50,000,000 new helicopters). But even people who think the idea here good enough to try will have to understand that they must first perform the Tiant/McEnroe body turn followed by two parallel dive-bombing arms before they start a 5-count, with all 5-counting in a serve, whatever its shape, always starting with the toss.

Forget all warlike rhetoric (if you can). The reason for slightly falling hands is that, even though old folks like me need a gravity-assist young folks could use one, too.

Turn the body and drop the arms, which started fixed, straight, high and far apart. And as the arms drop the body comes up. So maybe the hands as a result of the combination appear to stay level with the court. I don't know.
I'll fool around with best serves the only criterion.

Now, decide what kind of helicopters you will purchase. (I just can't get out of Afghanistan, can I?) Real helicopters? Toy ones? How about the kind where a spring-loaded gun shoots a plastic rotor up in the air?

1) Without over-conceptualizing about whether to use five toy helicopters or one doing five different things (veering down, here, there, up, there), start first count by turning dropped racket out as you toss (arm and racket as helicopter).

2) Fold arm completely as your body bends like John McEnroe (arm and racket as helicopter).

3) Spin folded arm inward and upward to level of shoulders line, but understanding that this particular twist embraces two different body moves:
A) compressed body skating out on front foot and B) firing of front leg (which never wants to be an all out effort).

4) Compressed arm now fires from triceps as forearm fires racket 90 degrees more to the outside this direction having been just established. This helicopter is most like the one shot from a toy gun.

5) Big internal rotation on straight arm past the ball.

Play tennis. It may be all you can do. Drop the numbers and accelerate the whole single wriggling throwing motion from toss through contact.

[bottle]

Results Not Good Enough on Third Day?

Return to imitation of JM. Everybody can look at a video and easily see the nature of his body bend, but a detailed comprehension of the straightening preceding that may not be come by so easily.

One key (to my speculative mind) is that the straightening starts in feet before rest of the body chimes in. In shortcut all this must happen at once.
With JM the body continues to straighten as the hitting arm swings back.

Beyond this, the toss rhythm is very different: Someone might do better with one than the other. Shortcut Serve: 1,2 where 2 is the toss. JM serve:
1,2,3 where 3 is the toss.

[bottle]

Beaks and Tweaks

1) Turn nose naturally back with body, but turn shoulders under head at the same time.

2) One can toss with motion stopped or going forward-- I'm sure I do both. Maybe someone should try tossing with weight still going back.

3) Call conventional serves "girlie throws" just to make yourself feel good.

4) Since elbow is moving fast and uninhibitedly with twisting of it accomplished already and out of the way, be aware of upper arm attachment to shoulder which means ELBOW RISE HAS TO BE RADIAL. So which radial path upward will work best? One that curves to the outside and comes in-- no?

5) The continuous motion idea of arm halves pressing together and then proceeding as unit while you force elbow to stay low necessitates a turn. The shoulder rotators will cock racket in a slightly new direction.

6) As you move out onto front foot cocking your shoulder rotators arch your shoulders back to either side of your spine. You'll probably never find a more natural time/place to do this.

7) Don't uncock the shoulder rotators until you're on the ball.

8) If you have the capacity to perceive these tweaks as pieces of a puzzle that is coming together, you will be right.

[bottle]

Continued Motion as Wisdom in the Chicken-elicitor Serve

Yes, this serve brings out the chicken in people.

No one will try it.

To them I say "Buk-buk-bukkety-buk."

Actually I'm happy to keep it for myself.

Personally speaking, though, I'm always willing to try anything in the way of some new (or returning) new idea of a serve.

There's even Ken, the fellow in Swaims Grocery who decided that Patrick McEnroe was a more beautiful tennis player than anyone on his Davis Cup Team. (Did Ken confuse Patrick McEnroe with Patrick's actress wife?)

Poor Ken. Wincing, he couldn't follow the five simple steps I delineated for him, and this was first hand, real life, out loud with facial expressions, hand gestures, beer, noise and all. So I got up and showed him and the other patrons. The needle on the collective galvanometer barely budged.

The motion was too simple, not theatrical enough.

If however someone is trying it, work on vertical palms and the transition from counts three to four.

Three is where you bend your arm deeply as you bend your legs deeply.

Because you twirled your arm open while it was otherwise still solid with your body just before that, the hand and racket now come up in a crossing direction that doesn't feel bad.

Just keep this direction going after the two halves of your arm have squeezed together to start the racket head down.

This squeezed arm clock-like motion occurs precisely as body weight, low, is gliding out on the front foot.

All your effort to get the racket head low when you had a high twisted elbow in conventional service effort is repeated here.

The difference is that you keep the elbow low, don't let it come up a single inch. The tip therefore can't go down far. But you're still looking for a good stretch.

Other likely areas for tweak are, at address before movement, distance of hands apart, original placement of hands, level of the two free-floating hands respective to one another.

One "feel" secret in this serve is that the slow-rocking Tiant/McEnroe backward rotation substitutes for the downswing that many people use before they toss.

[bottle]

Off of the front foot, at least if you're John McEnroe, Pete Sampras or Roger Federer. There's a little shift toward the net right after the knees get bent but before they get straight again.

Nadal, though, he's not a platformer-- he gets both legs together for double-thrust from a pinpoint stance.

Some platformers like Brenda Schultz-McCarthy and Justine Henin may use both legs on second serves more than on first. Henin pivots front foot back on its heel-- on a second serve-- but pivots same heel forward a bit on toes for first serve! McCarthy, a great server in her own right, advocates both legs for second serves and front leg for first serve in one of her instructional articles available through a simple Google search of her name on the web. For a first serve, she says "get weight WAY out on the front foot."

Of course the term "weight shift" itself is slippery since it does continue during body launch, JD, as your post suggested. But I'm fascinated with the little move while knees are still bent. It's got me on all serves launching off of front leg like McEnroe even though I've modified his serve to make it easier. By the way, I think that people should use full leg drive in rowing but not in tennis.

I don't mind the idea that you shift slightly forward during the toss, more during the bend, and still more on leg and body move.

[lgvargas]

Bottle-during a platform stance what is the proper weight shift as you toss the ball and launch your body upward towards contact. Is your weight primarily on your front or back foot? Also, how does McEnroe and Nadals serve differ regarding their weight shift?

[bottle]

An Educational Shortcut

When I said that making adjustments to slow motion is easier than to fast motion, I should have added that adjusting a static or stopped pose is easiest of all.

I'm "chuffed" (a British word meaning full of elation and enthusiasm) about the new serve, which starts with both arms straight and far apart, and, aside from a John McEnroe-like rocking forward from toes of back foot and then shifting the heel back down relies exclusively on Tiant/McEnroe baseball-pitcher-like
rotation to achieve all of my or anyone's I should think pre-toss service objectives with each hand in the exact right place (even if you have three).

Although the question of whether to use this serve all the time is interesting, another major aspect is that it reduces all elements of the overall serve to a manageable unit easier to comprehend and adjust.

Moreover, one does so little to prepare that one can, if one wishes, add the slightest of hitting arm travel to the active turn thus changing which edge of the ball one will strike, and possibly though not necessarily affording a bit more rhythm as well.

You've reduced early arm motion so much-- to nothing if you want-- that now you can put a little back.

These discoveries certainly make me question my previous bent arm address if not reject it.

A compromise possibility would be to start with straight arms about as far apart as Chris Evert held hers, then start slowly drawing hand back to wherever you want before ever going into the Tiant/McEnroe tilt-upright-and-turn.

None of these variations will alter the basic feel of the serve. You can use them in other words to drive your opponent to distraction.

A big factor is a grip of the ball and a grip of the racket (mild continental) that keeps both palms vertical or faced a little down with strings perfectly on edge. The balancing verticalities allow for maximum arm control even with hands apart.

To summarize: Serve from body turn only. Serve then from arm and body turn. Then arm then body turn. Then arm then arm and body turn. Try all of these variations and others from bent arms and hands together at address. Need there ever be a hurry before you toss? You have time-- all the time in the world-- so why not use it? And no one will ever understand what the hell you are doing-- in fact the standpoint I have written from all along, but which, by now, I would hope makes perfect sense.

Just watch the movie Groundhog Day. It's all there.

Elation seems unlikely to produce one's best tennis, but slightly chuffed may, and in fact I did win my match this afternoon.

[bottle]

Making a Lowbow Throw Work

The people who love to hate my letters will be glad to hear I threw one out. In fact I always throw out many more than I post.

I decided today that since I'm expending energy to separate my arms, why not just start with them apart the way Chris Evert used to do, only more so.

That way I can employ the Tiant/John McEnroe turn, still keeping the palm of my tossing hand vertical to start, like McEnroe (then it gets horizontal as it releases the ball and immediately becomes vertical again). I think that vertical palm like palm down, still leads to McEnroe/Tiant feel, something which palm up orthodoxy can never achieve. John McEnroe and Boris Becker and Jack Kramer before them are guys who fooled around more with palm and could toss well from farther back.

This arms-far-apart serve may look funny but retains increased control over racket when it is behind the back and allows one to perform the same other functions previously discussed.

And, it's easier to make fine adjustment to something that's going slow than to something that's going fast. Then maybe you can switch mental gears and apply the adjustment to your longer, fuller motion. So you try different distances between the two hands at address. "Hmm, think I'll try this one with less UBR and more catapult (I view these two basic motions by now as corollaries in inverse proportion to one another and always to be administered simultaneously). Hmm, a little kick. How strange."

But watch the films carefully to see how far out from his body John McEnroe's elbow is once he's compressed together the two halves of his arm.

Once you are in the arm and knees compressed position with center of gravity shifting to front foot, turn your elbow while keeping it down. The films may make you think it's going up but don't be fooled, its going up a little later.
Simply keep the elbow slightly out from the body and in one place but twist it so the racket tip comes down to form a second head somewhere behind your human head.

The throw-- or my throw at least-- wants to initiate from there with racket tip as low as one can get it in an arm contruction of such weird uprightness. Watch the films to see where McEnroe then makes contact-- slightly to the side of the shoulders line rather than directly along it, no? ("in front," some would say).

How effective will such study be for you? I don't know. I do know from long ago strength testing of my straight right arm by a far out chiropractor that the slightest variation in movement vector is as big a determinant of strength or weakness as the sequence of sugar bag, rice bag and possibly voodoo doll she kept setting up next to my shoulder as it lay pressed down against hard steel.

The new arm-apart serve is good enough to be distressing. It's more economical, certainly, and elicited immediate comment from the bicyclists
pedaling past, but do I want to give up on what I recently achieved? Right now I'm using both addresses. And the differences in rhythm ought to unbalance an opponent-stranger at least for now.

New count:

1. Use slow baseball pitcher's turn to bring arms into perfect position for both of their jobs.
2. Toss while slowly twirling racket open.
3. Bend arm completely.
4. Lower racket tip to form a second head behind your human head.
5. Hit.

[bottle]

Modifying John McEnroe for a Slightly Different Toss System

Don't anyone get mad. This is science, all sweet science.

Term: Luis Tiant turn: Luis Tiant, an extremely effective Cuban pitcher 1964-1982 for six teams in the American and National leagues. On every pitch he turned his back on the batter like McEnroe.

We may ask, "What made John McEnroe decide on his pre-toss Luis Tiant shoulders turn when so many subsequent servers wait until later to start the turn if they do it at all?"

We may also ask, "Why would I (Bottle) want to modify McEnroe's excellent serve, even in imitation, when all such previous attempts have resulted in ignominy?"

Answer: "Because this particular modification doesn't deteriorate the serve so long as the imitator remembers to turn his shoulders like McEnroe/Tiant even though his tossing hand is not on the racket."

The Substance: Instead of turning shoulders and racket together in a single unit like the start for a forehand, one takes arm around to almost parallel to the baseline as he performs his Tiant/McEnroe turn instead of performing the two acts in sequence.

Result: A person can then toss while FEATHERING; i.e., while twirling the racket open in place or during minor relocation of the arm. And a current physiological axiom holds that the less you do with your hitting arm while tossing the smoother your toss will be.

Note: Taking both hands up a little at address and then dropping them is a nice touch for starting this motion.

[bottle]

To the Private emailer

You are correct. Having (or stealing) the time to perfect one's serve and one's art is a tremendous luxury. Contrarily, of course, one can try to subsist on nothing but sour pickles.

[bottle]

Another Solution to an Intractable Problem

If I or you or anybody wanted to develop more smoothness in a John McEnroe-type serve, he probably could by turning his racket out at address or as it goes by his rear knee or as he folds the two halves of his arm together.

He then might have an experience similar to mine where a minister taking his early morning walk (I believe his name was the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale) said, "I think your serve is looking better than it did several months ago."

True no doubt, but, a serve is defined by what the ball does after it bounces, and my better opponents were creaming the hell out of it, so I then changed it-- quickly, again and again and again.

Yesterday, I became mad at myself, saying loud enough for other people to hear if they wanted, which they didn't, "Stop tossing too soon, Bottle!" not realizing that all I had to do was speed up the right arm after the two hands separate.

The reason for all of this was to explore the look of video one in the Stroke Archive. There, John McEnroe tosses as he feathers the racket open in place, which gives the appearance of a hitch. And hitches are ugly. No minister would want one.

To confuse the issue (a good idea according to most American tennis players), in other videos John McEnroe appears to toss just before he opens the racket face. But that's what I have customarily done myself whenever I wasn't keeping my palm down to perform the Vic Braden curlicue, so what fun was there in that?

(The great tennis writer John M. Barnaby, by the way, long ago rejected palm-down continuity without using the name "Vic Braden" or the word
"curlicue." He said, in RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS, page 64, "many people fall into one trap that can cause a lot of trouble: they turn the striking face of the racket in (towards them) as they drop the racket, instead of opening it out. Experimentation will show that turning it in gets you all twisted up the wrong way and makes it necessary to untwist as part of cocking the racket (the next motion). This results in a lot of funny-looking twirling of the racket...it is POSSIBLE to serve this way, but it is...much more difficult to learn and keep in trim later. All readers are urged to turn the face out as the racket is dropped so that the cocking of the racket is the simplest
possible motion.")

So, returning to John McEnroe, who does open out, when should one toss? Slightly before or during racket feather-- wherever in that likely-to-blend-later
but sort of rough area that feels good.

Here seems the place to ask, "Why should John McEnroe be a model for Bottle's serve?" Well, experience is the best teacher, and in the Crooked Run Racquet Club, Front Royal, Virginia where I belonged, there was a psychologist with a McEnroe-patterned first serve that NOBODY could return. He therefore made it to club champion in doubles but in an early round of the singles drew me. His first serve was missing the court more than usual. And his second serve was exceptionally weak. And I wowed every first serve that went in sometimes by employing a hundred below zero body freeze. Like any psychologist, he bit on this, trying for more and more. I think he viewed his eventual loss to me as so ignominious that he quit the sport forever-- if so, I am genuinely sorry because he had a great first serve and was a nice guy and a promising player.

For me, who has had huge trouble learning the universal kick (because of earlier sports injuries I believe), John McEnroe, who had a bad back, is all about a second serve alternative. His brother Patrick McEnroe, captain of the Davis Cup team, certainly has conventional kick. When Davis Cub was most recently held here in Winston-Salem, one observer who manned telephones for the tie (not I but a bar-mate) thought that Patrick McEnroe, in practice sessions, was a more beautiful player than Matthieu, Gasquet, Blake, Clement, Llodra, Roddick, the Bryan brothers, or anyone.

This makes me ask: Didn't John McEnroe try at some point before he was 15 to hit conventional kick serves? And didn't someone tell him that his topspin slice was good enough? And isn't there only the slightest difference in his method between first and second serves? And isn't simplicity in tennis always an advantage?