A New Year's Serve

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One great thing about the way Vic Braden taught serving is that it gives players a second option for creating a long runway.

The two options as I see them are vertical dimension and horizontal dimension runways.

Some servers like John McEnroe and Pete Sampras are able to combine both options in every serve.

Players who can't get racket low enough however can still get it around enough.

And still will use some verticality in the upward administration of this serve.

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To Try: a straight wrist topspun forehand with Ziegenfussian delay of forward bod rotation.

If you love design experiments as I do you will seldom turn down the chance to reverse bod to arm sequence whenever you have come up with a new stroke.

You don't have to stay with the reversal but you do owe it to yourself to try it.

How the experiment will work: One will start with same wind up as for the other bolo punch forehands.

But, after the added take back of shoulders while arm extends downward one will delay the shoulders from performing their forward rotation.

Shot will be all arm in the middle.

Then shoulders will chime in to give the follow-through more room in which to go.

At that point you will roll the arm while tightening the fingers.

With the energy of this most likely to take racket past the ball rather than through it.

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Don't Band Penguins and Tennis Players

You can tell, I guess, that I've been to the Detroit Zoo to the "Penguinarium," so named by Anne Parsons, CEO of the DSO (Detroit Symphony Orchestra).

It is an incredible display that includes along with a large number of penguins in all parts of an intricate habitat a wrap around film that puts one on the deck of Ernest Shackleton's ship The Endurance in 50-foot waves.

Some of the small penguins seem to like to slide along the glass that separates them from the largest crowd thus putting them at eye level with small children.

A lot of these penguins however have red bands at the base of their flippers.

Here's an article on banded penguins (https://www.theguardian.com/science/.../2011/jan/14/1).

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It is not just Any Bolo Bunch that is so Transferable to Tennis

It is this guy's bolo punch, maybe not even the bolo punch of Kid Gavilan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk).

Set up immediately in the one power position for the two primary forehands.

One uses one's mondo in one's manifestation of the video-taped stroke. Another way of putting this is that one includes the flip one already has.

The mondo or flip however is only for flat shots in my view.

For shots with more topspin to them I favor relaxed fingers to begin with and a retained flat wrist along with determination never to hit through the ball same as on a serve.

The accumulated energy, i.e., imminent racket work is all directed past the ball to the right of it for a right-hander.

The bolo puncher's last instant added modicum of turn back of his shoulders is especially well suited for creation of the necessary angle.

And a unique sequence of arm straightening (while shoulders are still winding back) then shoulder bowling down then arm declaring its independence then arm rolling PAST not THROUGH the ball.

We are told that an independently lifting arm can combine with one's windshield wiper to generate more topspin but I have worked on enough old cars to believe this cannot be true. At the base of any windshield wiper there is a corrugated nub (your arm) against which the racket (the wiper) is set at a right angle.

This has to slow down one's potential racket head speed.

If wrist remains straight for a rasping contact the racket can turn faster and in a different direction past the ball.

That saves one's body to provide weight or not.

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One Can Attend Seniors Day at the Detroit Zoo to Hear the Keepers Discuss Senior Animals

So what if it's raining. I'll just receive more of the attention.

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My Imagination Fooled Me When I Was Lying Down

It is the throat of the racket, not the thumb, that can rest on the fisted fingers, on the middle section of the fingers to be exact.

Those fingers can be sandwiched between the racket and the held ball.

Different rackets have a different design of course. For me racket will have to be held a bit forward of what I am used to, with ball arranged a bit closer to the handle.

This could seem like too big a change but probably isn't. I can see how part of the racket, the base of the bifurcated part, can rest partially on the ball.

Whatever the other changes, the "ice cream cone" now is formed right in the beginning, not during the action as before.

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Evolve, Evolve It. Pretend you are a theosophist obsessed with Darwin, a mad inventor able to compress a million years of change into a two-day sequence.

Starting from post # 4170, play from high initial position only with bent arms. No reason to be uncomfortable unless you grew up in the Puritan Tradition.

And if that is true, give a great shake now to the Pioneer Tradition.

The first iteration had you bending toss arm from initial straightness. Now it's bent to begin with.

The hit arm meanwhile can comfortably extend exactly as it has been doing for a month from a lower position.

Another difference is that separation of the elbows stage can play with setting of one's ice cream cone hand.

Two-prong point at the net can be exaggerated and grotesque, particularly the ice cream cone or Hungarian hot dog, where hot dog, mustard and all the condiments can threaten to fall out. The cone or lengthwise-speared bun can now be on its side threatening to drop even more than horizontal-- dangerous enough.

Now, as the upper bod arch takes elbows out, the toss hand can lag, staying more or less where it was.

The result is still some tilt toward the net but not as much as an instant ago.

The cone or hollowed bun now is aimed for a slightly more forward toss no matter how else that toss may arc.

The hands, I can now see as I mime all this on my back, can rest one on the top of the other.

Straightness of toss wrist makes a bed next to big knuckles for thumb to rest on probably at an angle.

Attention to comfort makes something new a lot easier to do.

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Insanely Better Toss

A kindergartener saw me miming it. "What are you doing?" he said.

A good question.

Already, I changed the when of my toss. But to change the mechanics of it? Do not contemplate that choice, murderer!

Well, Bottle, do you want an inanely better serve? Then do it.

Employ a wait position that is insanely high. Too much of any service motion is about getting the elbow high. So start with it high. And keep it high, thus eliminating one of the many insane problems.

New insanity can include the way you tilt your ice cream cone toward the net..

The way you point racket tip toward the net too, holding both arms straight. For a two-prong point.

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Peanut Butter Jar Lid See See

1) You keep shoulders level.

2) You set up slightly to outside of shot.

3) You take ball in front.

4) You use a sit-and-hit, the details of which are:

A) You put weight on front foot as soon as possible.

B) You do this by combining forward hips turn and neutral stance step-out.

C) You straighten arm fully coincident with the step-out.

D) You extend arm DOWN.

E) You don't wind shoulders back any extra amount or very much in the first place.

F) The hip turn starts while foot is in the air and concludes with foot on the court.

G) The hip turn, forbidden from issuing power, is a slow dance step used to achieve perfect balance on front foot.

H) Now comes tightening of the reverse-threaded peanut butter lid.

I) Follow-through is a natural "wherever-racket-wants-to-go-after-this."

With all my recent emphasis on such exotic machinations as reverse-threaded axle bolts, combined with inverted strokes and reversals (forehand to backhand thinking) one well might surmise that sooner or later one will compress one's fingers only to discover that one has diminished racket head speed rather than increased it.

Not so. Doesn't matter whether more of hand is rolling over or under the racket stalk. Compressing the bottom fingers adds horizontal movement to the racket tip every time.

To see that this is true, one can hold a pencil like a tennis racket and make it twiddle.

I do have to admit, though, that some fulcrum points for thumb and forefinger look better than others.

Have I tried even one of these specialty shots in competition, in a hit, in self-feed? Not yet. That is why I am willing to bet they work.

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Peanut Butter Jar Lid Topspin Ground Strokes

This is a matter of connecting dots. If someone buys into post 4163, which is all about straight wrist composite grip volleys on either side, and the motion of rolling racket open combined with a bearing down of the bottom three fingers produces a newly succinct crispness, would not that person immediately want to apply the same cleverness to the most opposite thing he can think of, a topspin ground stroke?

Again, one needs to contemplate the old Volkswagen vans with front axle bolts on either side threaded in opposite direction.

Despite one's different grip, the threading can remain the same as for the volleys since now one is tightening the lid rather than unscrewing it.

The hardest thing to understand about all this may be that tightening one's fingers to produce only one inch of extra racket tip travel is a huge change to any shot's direction along with speed of its strings' scrape.

I apologize, reader, for suddenly introducing an idea that could upend everything you love and to which you are accustomed.

I apologize to myself on the same ground. In fact, my prime antagonist has averred that my only reader is I-- a Nazi propagandist's lie-- but on the other hand he is correct that I do write for myself.

Have I tried these inverted peanut butter lids? Not yet.

All is theory and speculation here then.

But what if it all works?

Wonderful? Disastrous?

Please join me, reader, in anticipating how a topspin forehand now will feel.

The shoulder, kept level for a see see, will now plunge downward same as in one's bolo punch flat forehand.

And shoulders will rotate at murderous pace.

One meanwhile will stiff-arm like a raunchy halfback breaking loose from the opponents' secondary in American football.

This arm straightening, though toward front, will also go decisively out to the side.

So think of this sequence: Elbow straightens then hand straightens with wrist kept straight throughout.

Elbow straightens then fingers clamp combined with a closing roll.

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Report from Competition

Can a leaf move a branch, thus reversing all kinetic theory of fast-moving sap rising up the tree trunk? Possible too.

If that's true, could the force of the racket roll actually increase the force of the arm as it spirals up around you?

If so, should one's arm roll, reviled by centuries of tennis instruction, complete itself just before contact?

Or should one bet the house on unpopular roll coincident with the contact?

After Self-Feed: Bet the house on high trajectory forehands intended to land deep. Complete the racket roll early for a see see, at least for now. And crowd ball in that case but hit it way out front for the separation from bod you want.

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Bolo Punch Forehand

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVgDc8TXnk)

Arm starts acceleration while shoulder winds back. And shoulder reversing then drives down as well as around.

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Too Much Freedom > Too Little Freedom

In present iteration of the serve, the racket has all the time in the world to go back and up or back then up or up then back and end in a hundred different places to start the toss.

Remembering what one tried becomes of utmost importance. With so much freedom one needs specific things from other days with which to compare.

Today I'll start with a consistently rising spiral that's going to take the racket way way back but also high enough to face palm down with no artificial twisting from you (me).

And the tendency is always to toss too soon.

So I shall create a very organic and identifiable cue to tell myself the last moment in which to toss.

A stretch that thrusts out the chest while pulling the two elbows apart is what I propose-- while not allowing this to compromise the linkage of immediately reversing bod whirl.

Leading to this situation: Hit arm is still straight. Toss arm is still bent but its elbow just started a slinging motion slightly toward the net while tossing hand lagged behind to stay where it was. The toss hand is an ice cream cone or Hungarian hot dog. Turn it upside down and the ice cream or hot dog will fall out of its hole along with mustard, relish and onions.

The hit arm meanwhile is very straight (I repeat that). You look like you are ready to hurl a stone over the top of a barn but in fact you will do nothing of the sort. The energy will go straight up while bod presses this vertical throw to slant it a bit forward.

The body has not yet turned back nor inverted nor run along its little track toward the net.

Those three actions are integral to the toss along with a fourth and more. When you separated the elbows you left just a bit of room for elbow to go around a tad more so that both elbows now can line up with both shoulder balls.

The toss and bending of the hit arm are complicit simultaneity.

But they don't happen until the elbows have gone out.

The delayed-until-then shoulders turn back while the ball is tossed!

As shoulders next reverse their direction, the spaghetti arm has nothing to do but form a natural loop which you never ever should think about.

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Report from Competition

New bolo punch forehand: Entirely positive.

Straight arm and wrist topspun forehand taken out front but wide to the side: Tremendous in self-feed but mediocre in competition, requiring more work.

Did a gremlin creep in, some nasty atavism, an attempt to use radial deviation instead of straight arm and wrist roll? It's possible.

Can a leaf move a branch, thus reversing all kinetic theory of fast-moving sap rising up the tree trunk? Possible too.

If that's true, could the force of the racket roll actually increase the force of the arm as it spirals up around you?

If so, should one's arm roll, reviled by centuries of tennis instruction, complete itself just before contact?

Or should one bet the house on unpopular roll coincident with the contact?

[bottle]

Stuck Peanut Butter Jar Volleys

This cue is much more than a funky image. (https://www.google.com/search?q=funk...hrome&ie=UTF-8)

The thing is, the image is tactile more than visual although it is that too.

And combines two disparate tactile imperatives that need not be desperate.

One tells one's slightly loose fingers to slightly tighten their pressure. And whole hand and wrist to screw the peanut butter lid off.

One can easily climb from that educational plateau to the next by remembering the old Volkswagen vans where one front axle bolt was threaded one way and the other the opposite way.

Many an amateur mechanic couldn't wake up to this conundrum and so torqued the front of his van into nemesis.

It's ancient history, belonging in the category of sunken lobster boat and other catastrophe best forgotten.

So go with peanut butter jars instead.

Thread one jar one way and the other the opposite way. The right-hander turns the lid counterclockwise to unscrew a backhand volley. He turns the lid clockwise to unscrew a forehand volley. The finger pressure particularly from the bottom three will naturally increase in both cases.

The combined move produces a succinctness that can be mimed with or without a racket.

And we're always told to make our volleys brief, right? And crisp.

Whatever else you do, you're now learning to drive the lower rim of your racket thus opening the strings.

And can strike the volley at a contact point which is a tiny bit farther back.

And change a blocked volley into a sticked one by virtue of having just brought the racket tip an abrupt albeit small amount around.

More pace, more solidity, less pace and more spin when you want it-- all part of the same package.