A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Underhand Minimal but Looped Knife Stab

See See Commitment: In close, out front, set up to outside, straight wrist, lift don't roll.

Commitment is key. One can know that one's wiper would work yet still reject that.

On these grounds: The wiper would work less often. The wiper depends on fully laid back wrist. One would therefore need to set up with everything turned too far around toward the target.

[bottle]

Shrill Voice's Great Advice on How to Prepare for the Big Final

Do everything you do very well all day.

[bottle]

Desired: Forehands that combine forward arm position with backward (turned around) bod.

This has become a creed with me.

I am still influenced by Brent Abel's approving view of senior seniors national champion Paul Wulf as a man who started late but "figured out how to play the game."

In any case, I have found some new relative success by eliminating the custom of extensive arm work between backward and forward bod rotations.

Which paring away invites natural comparison with dead stick to spring stick in billiards. Does one draw one's pool cue back then stop it then shoot it forward? Or is the drawing back and shooting forward a single unified action?

The sport scientists speak of "stretch-shorten cycle" which is confusing enough to be impressive.

Applications include the upper arm twisting backward while trying to twist forward thus creating a build-up of conflict followed by a whooshing release.

But why not apply the same design principle to the thin stripe of flesh between belly button and hips?

Just have hips turn to the max. (Did the right-hander not only splay right foot but make sure left heel lifted dramatically up?)

And was racket tip still tilted toward the net at that point?

One needs to maximize hips turn and belly turn and resistance to the belly turn while minimizing the amount of distance the arm goes back.

How far forward can the racket be?

That is a subject to explore.

[bottle]

With two balls in hand perform ten figure eights. They will never have felt so economical and neat.

For #'s eleven and twelve throw two tosses into the whirligig.

Stop.

Reflect upon what you just did.

Serve a basket of balls.

Stop. Do something else.

[bottle]

The Big Question

Is, I guess, whether the racket tip gets lower in this serve than in more conventional motions where most likely there is a down together up together pattern before the real action begins.

Me, I think racket tip lowness or the lack therof is the same, but that a conjunction of low racket and summing forces is easier to obtain when one has a whole lot more time with which to play.

The extra time comes from the late toss but even more from the combining of toss and wind (long "i" as in Long Island).

This brings about the chance for more control since so much less is happening.

I could be right, I could be wrong, but I've got the right to sing this song.

In my new motion there is a specific move intended to deal with a specific handicap, a congenitally dropped shoulder.

Look at this person in the posture line. The left shoulder is square but the right shoulder slopes down.

Pam Shriver, with the same malady, never obtained the topspin component she desired for her otherwise great serve.

I've tried everything within the conventional mode of serving.

In lifting the shoulder housing to the normal human level before I really start the serve (if toss is the true beginning of a serve), I seem to have allayed if not solved a couple of other problems too.

The first of these is shoulder flexibility, the second a wish never to hop on a knee replacement.

One tries a bunch of different motions if one is serious. (Reader, you may substitute the word "crazy" for "serious" if you wish and I won't object.)

And maybe one gets lucky some day not with the same bang as Andy Roddick the teenager but still pretty good.

I think of Vic Braden's whirligig, that video where he keeps palm down while torquing his shoulders in opposite direction in rapid succession, then thoughtfully reflects, "nice 100 mile per hour serve."

Which whirligig forms a very rapid and completely natural spaghetti arm loop.

I've returned to this model from time to time across the decades but believe it was never destined to work for me unless I could find a way to produce the same fast whirligig in a more vertical plane.

That is what the new serve seems to do. And while I don't notice a huge new surge in power I do notice along with a higher outgoing ball trajectory more ease and pinpointing of placement.

Whatever I'm doing is more fun than some little voice nagging in my ear all the time, "Toss higher, Bot."

[bottle]

Took a day off on Saturday to recover from so much tennis on Friday night. So today was really first work session on the new serve. Found I liked pre-toss at a couple of different speeds. And liked coordinating the toss with bend of the arm. But this worked best when not just bending at the elbow but drawing back upper arm a bit at same time. The two actions, you could say, constituted a "coil," very reminiscent of throwing a ball some time long long ago.

This is most result from least motion. Seems like it's going to save energy since one does about half as much. And I personally have always thought that easily produced motions make return of serve pretty difficult.

[bottle]

Nice Long Track for the Hips to Trundle Along

This track is long at both ends.

So we've got the track established just the way we want it.

Time then to work on the verb that takes the hips along the full length of this track: (https://www.google.com/search?q=trun...hrome&ie=UTF-8). Remove any connotation of noise.

This is not the usual serve where you toss and then wind under the ball.

The toss and the wind are combined into a single step.

Somebody may not like that. It is nevertheless what I have come up with.

The trundle is part of the toss.

Winding back is part of the toss.

The steep racket work going down and up is in stark contrast with the width of one's action at its base.

[bottle]

Report

I don't know. The new serve is so interesting that even fallen sinners without a fallen shoulder may wish to try it.

Before I go into that detail however let me pick up on the narrative already started. The Detroit schools charter and public alike took a week off and called it Spring Break.

Snow happened four times during the week.

That gave me, a guest teacher, a cold week in which to re-tool my unsatisfactory serve.

My forum antagonists sein Steve, sein 10splayer and sein 1alexander accuse me of personal arrogance and surreptitious gender change and worse pretty much all the time.

Regardless, I ignore their taunts and in fact offer them a great new serve as their own begins to fizzle.

My true fear was not of anything these three guys might say but that all the neighborhood courts would be filled with the South High School of Grosse Pointe tennis teams.

Not to worry. Those boys and girls were drinking margaritas in Cancun. So I had all 12 courts to myself. (I'll check on that number later.)

The wind however was such that the balls were arrayed along one fence. The heavy iron gate kept blowing open. But the wind nicely pinned my hat against the chain link until I could pluck it off.

************************

The serve starts with weight on back foot and butt protruded like that of Pete Sampras at the rear fence.

That however is where all similarity ends. And could even be viewed as embarrassment if one were of a mind like sein Steve, sein 10splayer, sein 1alexander so deeply into that stuff.

Embarrassment would seem too much what tennis is all about. People were discussing the decline of attendance at our tennis socials.

Well, in my case there is not just the embarrassment of possibly losing (though loss failed to happen last night) but tardy revision if one is the kind of person who constantly tinkers with his serve.

This was no tinkering but overhaul.

Slowly and smoothly the right arm steeply rises backward and upward toward the roof. The left arm can stay as and where it is (a new development since last night). One has to decide at what o'clock on the path of the big hand one will slightly straighten one's other arm (the small hand) into a mimicking arc to start one's toss.

The hips to glide from rear fence toward front fence as part of the toss in which one's hit arm finally bends and one's whole bod turns inside out.

"Create the illusion of imminent motion in a still object."

That is a writing assignment but could be a serving assignment if one is willing to call a tennis serve an "object."

(Jane Birkin, designer of the Birkin bag: "I like to be an object.")

But there will be new changes-- I know this from experience. And each will humiliate. By demonstrating how wrong and stupid one was.

Accept and go on. Invention is humbling. Accept accept.

[bottle]

Brainstorm on Thursday Apt to Destroy all the Good Work Put in for Test on Friday

Yes, you can't train brainstorms to happen in a timely fashion. Try to do that and you probably won't have any at all.

Start serve as described in 4137 but with butt way back toward rear fence like Pete Sampras. Which eliminates ONE WHOLE STEP!

This is probably self-instruction-- for myself only. But so what? Does that make it less valid?

No, and it's going to be fun to feel the racket go up on a steeper path than the hypotenuse of a triangle I described before.

But I doubt very much these serves will work in any other way than the one I practiced all week. And that serve, too, won't work as well thanks to the new feeling that I ought to be doing something else.

The solution: Aim for the cardio warmup and tennis social next Friday rather than for the social tomorrow night. But do the drill and play tomorrow and have fun, because you never know.

Well, I'll have two serves to test, one I only tried in pantomime and without a racket.

(Hey, Bottle, try some of these serves with your eyes shut.)

[bottle]

Use Hit Arm to Develop New Figure Eights

They won't be the same as whatever you did before. Make sure the toss arm goes down and up the way you want.

After a while, throw a toss into the continuous motion and serve.

More figure eights then with toss only mimed and no ball release.

Another serve.

Etc.

Figure eights, for all else they do, would be a good time to drill holding toss arm up after the tossing if that is the best idea.

But perhaps such a hold is no longer necessary now that that toss occurs one beat later.

[bottle]

To Spite All Naysayers

"No wight has the power to break us."

"Can Elizabeth bring herself to kill a rival?"-- Phillipa Gregory

Sein 10splayer has asserted that I don't have meaningful "aha" (or Eureka) moments in tennis. Does he really believe this? Or is it that he is deeply into mind games like the person who owns him, sein Steve?

Steve owns 10splayer. Trump owns Steve. Putin owns Trump.

And this is why Steve, 10splayer and Donald all three have "sein" affixed to their names. "Sein" means "his" auf Deutsch. Also, sein Steve likes to watch old episodes of "Seinfeld."

Assume the image of two tree branches at same level 90 degrees apart. Now lift the hit arm straight up. "Air the armpit," Vic Braden used to say. This exercise indicates where you want the serving arm to be, however lift it there another way. Take it up the hypotenuse.

Now the thrust back of the hips can work both arms passively, pushing the rear one up higher, the front one low (downswing for the toss). The arms do nothing in this great second stage of the new serve. The bod does everything.

New Serve as it Evolves

Toss arm at first need not go down. It can straighten a little but never get fully straight. While at the same time the hit arm does get straight. Next, hip bulges toward rear fence. That diminishes my earlier image of two tree limbs set 90 degrees apart unless one can imagine one of them as almost stiffly straight while the other retains some gnarly bend or the hint of an elbow.

Toss then is from one's ice cream coned hand. The toss arm is still bent and won't get straight. Whether it compresses more during the toss I don't know. If so, a small amount. Everybody wants a parabolic toss which just is starting to come down when you scrape upward at the precisely desired contact point.

It's practically impossible to have an even remotely accurate discussion of anyone's serve without mentioning their physical shortcomings.

That would be first in my case severe rotordation in the shoulder joint that never allows more than five degrees past vertical with axle for this the yardarmed upper arm perfectly parallel to the court (ski accident).

And second a dropsied, lapsied or fallen shoulder like that of Pam Shriver (from birth).

"Rotordation" (my neologism) is a subject teaching pros don't want to discuss. John Yandell had a small bit about it in his book VISUAL TENNIS. The player could get his elbow so high that racket tip then would point down at the court in spite of itself. Yes, but upper arm would be so far above the shoulders line that all hope of straight Sampran shoulder-line-to-arm connection for power would be gone.

To address the challenge of my fallen shoulder I ATA (air the arm) right away. This turns the shoulder into a normal shoulder whether weak or strong before I do much else.

"Try and try.
You'll succeed at last."-- Jimmy Cliff

[bottle]

Late Bump of Hip toward Rear Fence Worked Well

I guess it got the body writhing in the correct way.

[bottle]

Brief Description of a Serve

Yesterday's service used gravity which was good but did so too soon.

It is Spring break for all the Detroit schools: one week in which to retool.

A work order: Preserve and exaggerate invention while restoring traditional straight arm toss please.

Both arms to separate and straighten on a level path until they are extended tree limbs set 90 degrees apart. Turn backward at same time a portion of the total backward turn one will use.

Drop front shoulder and raise rear shoulder. But drop front arm and raise rear arm at the same time while keeping both straight.

During upward half of the toss reverse tilt of the shoulders while winding them farther back.

The palm down rear arm is permitted just then to bend at the elbow as part of a deeply exaggerated fall.

But it is more backward turn of the shoulders even as they reverse their tilt that sets up a speedy because unconscious whirligig.

Two blended reverses are what contribute to spaghetti arm racket head speed: reversal of tilt and reversal of horizontal rotation.

The shoulders tilt differently three separate times.

I can't see turning shoulders, stopping them, then continuing the turn.

The turning therefore cannot be long and gradual enough.

I furthermore can't see sliding hips toward net without sliding them away from net first.

Pursuit of this tactic could lead to shape of a gorge: steep on one side, level in the middle, steep on the other side.

Report: a very disappointing result.

I shall nevertheless persist in this design.

Just kidding.

A very promising result.

Note: This report was written before I went to court.

[bottle]

Better Late than Never: Graduation from Blocked to "Sticked" Volleys

Too many players are stuck for life with blocked volleys only.

Not that blocked volleys aren't great and necessary shots.

I remember playing up a level or two one time in northwestern Virginia and losing a tournament match to Greg Didden, seniors state champion of West Virginia.

He was very kind, always urging me to play up rather than beat kids just learning the game.

Once he even brought his family across the state border to watch him demolish me-- don't know why he did that but he did.

On the occasion I most remember however I hit a very solid volley winner that he thought was too good.

He and the other players of his level whom I knew well, he explained, usually didn't hit volleys as sound as the one I just hit but rather sloughed them into the open court or whatever space the opponent offered.

Blocked volleys, I now say.

But the time eventually comes when one wants to stick a volley, maybe hit it parallel to the net.

And one does this by squeezing one's fingers as one hits one's otherwise blocked shot. This whips the racket tip around just enough.

To stick a volley down the line one can do the same thing only from a new contact point farther back and more on inside of the ball.

The way to develop my new sticked volleys (you're stuck if you don't stick) is against a bangboard. Not as volleys, I have decided, but as little chipped slices off one or two bounces-- doesn't matter.

The limited goal is to learn more subtlety of finger pressure along with different contact points, to hit preconceived spots on the bangboard, to do all this in as unhurried and relaxed a manner as possible.

I won't even try to take the ball off the wall out of the air. That is for kids.

I save taking the ball out of the air for cardio drill or actual matches.

If this information is as good as I think, why didn't I learn it sooner?

Poor tennis instruction! As we know there are some tennis instructors in the world who are out to display their ignorance. And I had to read a hundred tennis books before I found one-- by Dennis Ralston-- that even discussed fingers compression as prime determinant of shot direction.

[bottle]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/sport...is-and-writers

Thanks for bringing attention to this admirable article and to these admirable tennis writers any one of whom should be a model.

I have in mind an image of Nabokov having a hit with his son Dmitri (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/27/dmitri-nabokov) when N. was quite old.

And both players hitting extremely well and keeping a single ball in play forever.