A New Year's Serve

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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.

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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]

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.

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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 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]

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]

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.

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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.

[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]

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).

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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.

[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.

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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.

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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).

[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.