A New Year's Serve

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Just Spinning it in

Proposed Gift to the Rotorded Servers of the World

Energy Wedged into the Ground

Service Tried First Gently to See how Knee Replacement likes it

Service Cartwheel Eschewed

These new ideas could not come at a worse time--during the day before a night when one deeply wishes to hold serve.

One squashes ideas however at one's own peril. Get in that habit and you don't have any.

The desire infusing the proposal is for more upwardness of serve even when that exigency seems thoroughly impossible.

We have been, it should be said, creeping nearer to experiential possibility with small changes and steps.

Level takeback at shake hands distance from core becomes bedrock. To cement it further, one actually does shake hands, the one with the other through the racket. Which is another way of saying that one's two hands stay together through the very solidly connected first phase of the takeback (or takearound, if you prefer).

Now, with on edge racket still parallel with court while continuing back, the vertically palmed left hand performs its parabolic toss.

Now, in a single constellation of movement, the rear leg skates bend into the bod while sending bod around a bit, while elbow rises, while arm which had become very straight now bends, while whole racket and arm arrangement actively tilts forward, while crooking elbow appears to ready itself to catch something.

The rear heel has risen. The tossing arm has continued its non-hesitant path into pressure down into the ground and clench back into the bod.

The essence in all this however lies in what the two legs do, in how they oppose one another with dissimilar drives.

The rear leg skates one's gently rotating butt out toward the net.

The front leg immediately counters by straightening with vigor, by braking, one could say, on a hypotenuse back and upward toward the rear fence.

Leg straightening as always becomes part of the total bod straightening as in the mantra "Fire the extensors, baby."

Can one successfully drive all the straightening along the same backward vector slanting upward?

Can the slantwise leg, body and arm extension continue to drive one's energy, wedge-like, down into the ground?

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS ALL THE TIME.

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If you want to make Sharp Angles get away from the ball.

If you want to grow up to be a big big man, get a little dirt on your hands.-- Maori song

It may start with volleys. You could have noticed that your stab volleys, taken way out to the side with a fully outstretched arm can be the sharpest volley angle you ever hit.

Part of the reason is that when hand is far from core it curves around more. Test this premise with the "spear" part of a forehand. "Shine a flashlight at the ball," says Nick Bollettieri-- the same idea. The racket butt points at the ball with good result.

Wait a minute. If you crowd the ball while pointing the stick end of the racket at the ball and spear with independent arm movement at the ball, you won't get racket around as far as if you keep racket butt angled at the ball but swing from the shoulder in a circular path to the outside.

I am very taken with Tim Mayotte's generous advice in the current issue to all tennis players on the subject of tightening up one's unit turn. He loves to see very connected unit turns in which arm movement is reduced to nothing or a minimum. And knows that without this economy the ground stroke is not going to be good.

He believes that anybody can go in this direction and feel immediate improvement.

I gladly accept this advice which once again leads me to wonder just how much connectivity vs. arm independence should exist in any ground stroke.

And so, in a mimed forehand using real racket but imaginary ball, we "shine our flashlight" at the ball while crowding it.

The racket is still rotating around the body, just in a more vertical direction which holds tip farther back while opening up the strings.

Compare this with similar arm independence but in a curved path to the outside. Compare the two likely contact points for aim that will occur when racket wipes or twirls or acts like a small plane propeller.

Racket tip gets farther around with bigger separation, right?

But how connected can one of these forehands be, i.e., how much independent arm motion before the easy twirl could we eliminate?

I see a down the line forehand working well out of that formula.

For a sharp crosscourt off of same rough footwork, however, some independence of flashlight might be called for.

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O Rotorded Ones-- Eliminate all ESR from Your Triceptic Blast

Put the ESR (external shoulder rotation) first before that quick triceptic extension.

Make ESR into a positioning and loading rather than kinetic tool.

A good boxer utilizes a short punch mixed in with ISR (internal shoulder rotation). So be like him in some respects but not in others. Manny Pacquaio's palm inside his fist turns from vertical toward horizontal.

My last service experiment was so negative (# 3842) that I can imagine a jury of peers advising me to conduct no more experiments ever.

Acceptance of this sickly biased viewpoint however would be neurosis rather than science.

Immediately here one can see that full wrist tilt, if employed for a kick serve, now becomes kinetic in that the tilt coordinates with the entire combination of triceptic blast and ISR. The ISR and the the wrist tilt now go in the same direction, hence the coordination possibility. The tail end of the tilt then may even happen on the ball (though how could one know without a maximum frame-per-second camera).

Any positive result to this experiment will be due to light rather than heavy racket work zipping upward.

The arm loading section of the serve, still quite far back, can include pre-loading of the ISR, i.e., the shoulder tries to rotate internally while it still is rotating externally.

Everything is calibrated toward racket head speed, not racket head heft. When racket head heft happens, it is lugubrious flaw in some attempted but not fully achieved tennis serve. Heft comes properly from the bod.

Another idea is to toss early so that upward force from front leg combines with inversion of the elbow to thrust racket tip farther down.

This service design is big departure-- precisely when to toss will need to be worked out.

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Disappeared Forehands

It is not often that good forehands get replaced by better ones.

And I am fond of three of my old ones, the Ziegenfuss, the McEnrueful and the Half-Baton.

Why even bother to describe them again? They are gone.

But could one of them make a comeback? I doubt it. The McEnrueful certainly was very good for low balls.

But so are the Federfores and Ellie-bams used interchangeably but especially the Federfore.

I see the Federfores as having many elements the most crucial for me being the spearing that happens simultaneously with the turning inside out of the bod.

Once spearing is accomplished one can properly fan the racket, use full baton or propeller, make angles sharper more consistently than ever before, deal with low balls by using the fan mechanism without much bod, deal with high balls by fanning racket to above level with the court-- for contact.

And the Ellie-bam also keeps evolving ever into a harder-hit shot.

I don't think I'm laying down excessive theory or wishfulness here but speak experientially.

Once one fully grasps the gradually straightening arm concept, one can slow the arm first part down farther and speed up the delayed pivot. First arm part begins to feel more like a catch.

Best, the two shots can be hit with same strong eastern grip and same tilt in loop toward the side fence. They can aspire to same separation and contact point.

Finding ideal contact point is worthy of an open-minded quest by anyone.

It might be an inch farther this way or that way than one thought.

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Achtung, Rotorded Servers, Bring Back Das Kabelgewirr Arm (Spaghetti Arm)

Rotorded servers have a hölle of a time. Maybe dey need new rotors in the front veels of dere car and a new rotor in den little cave in dere internal shoulder. I suspect, reader, dat you have stubborn adhesions und kurz drive belts in dere.

Everybody knows where LP (low point) should happen, next to recht beine, nicht wahr? Well, for purpose of this experiment I haff decided to unknow dat.

I vant a higher low point where arm twisting vun vay starts to twist the udder vay, and am not at all sure dat earlier achievement of vun's normal low point, however feeble an attempt dat ist, helps.

So I suche zum total squeeze of the two halbiert of the arm-- one of few good resources a rotorded server has-- not to happen until der big reversal, at which point hand vill try to be lower than den compressed elbow.

Try dat, rotorded servers, and report back with no expectation by jedermann.

Nope, not enough zip. The rotorded servr needs his runway to start at the lowest point he physically can achieve from a high arm..

He needs his final 180 degrees of racket length turn up up upward path to the ball to include ESR and ISR (and ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and any other alphabet soups he can think of, Wheaties too, the breakfast of champions-- Popeye does it with spinach).

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Achtung, Rotorded Servers, Bring Back Das Kabelgewirr Arm (Spaghetti Arm)

Rotorded servers have a hölle of a time. Maybe dey need new rotors in the front veels of dere car and a new rotor in den little cave in dere internal shoulder. I suspect, reader, dat you have stubborn adhesions und kurz drive belts in dere.

Everybody knows where LP (low point) should happen, next to recht beine, nicht wahr? Well, for purpose of this experiment I haff decided to unknow dat.

I vant a higher low point where arm twisting vun vay starts to twist the udder vay, and am not at all sure dat earlier achievement of vun's normal low point, however feeble an attempt dat ist, helps.

So I suche zum total squeeze of the two halbiert of the arm-- one of few good resources a rotorded server has-- not to happen until der big reversal, at which point hand vill try to be lower than den compressed elbow.

Try dat, rotorded servers, and report back with no expectation by jedermann.

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Snaky Coil as Developmental Cue

A developmental cue, it seems to me, is a cue that gets forgotten once the development is assimilated.

Snaky coil will happen back toward the rear fence in a serve that starts with a level takeback.

The hips and shoulders reverse while keeping that sequence in both directions.

During forward hips rotation the up-till-then level traveling arm rises while tilting racket toward the net.

Anatomy, not willpower causes the bending turning elbow to rise.

If bod were not rotating forward, the arm and even the hand would go around it a bit more.

This is a delicate and crucial part of the serve. One might almost think of an oncoming something snagging itself in the crooking arm.

But hand doesn't go farther around since slow forward bod rotation cancels that out.

As sum of the little motions the hand stays stationary but rises.

One should enjoy having all forward serves initiate from the same known place.

Options during the hand rise include wrist 1) keeping flat, 2) tilting to max to left, 3) tilting a little to left, 4) opening back toward rear fence which some people would call "extension. The term "extending the wrist" confuses me however so I refuse to say it.

A certain strangeness can be good if it helps one remember something. The elbow could be thought to push the hand or to pass by the hand. In either case the hand always rises to the same spot straight above where it was.

Note: I realize that any wrist adjustment will change the locus of the hand. Roughly though that locus stays the same.

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Refinement of Baseball Type Windup

It's refinement if the serve improves, meddling if it worsens.

Racket is perfectly on edge as the two hands go level a bit faster than the bod rotating back.

But the right hand goes a bit faster than the left hand too. One way or the other the separation between the two hands grows.

The right hand should not circle beyond the shoulders line. Which predicts that if one keep racket on edge it will go up.

"Aha," you might say, "a down and up serve." How about level and up. With up a short piece of tract. The easing arm goes naturally up after it finishes getting straight.

Much can be hung on this subtle transition. First and foremost, the slow bod gets to reverse direction sans pause. The arm bends at the elbow but with slight pressure on the racket to close from elbow staying back. The parabolic tossing hand lifts and goes down and clenches into your middle as one smooth move.

The total serve gradually builds speed. The rear foot pressure (pressure but not "drive") thrusts out toward net but down front leg too without compromising the tilt it simultaneously puts into the bod.

Could front leg be bending a bit right then to grow the downward force? Quite a trick that. The falling toss hand lends a bit of downward weight. The forward rotating bod (going faster now) sends its force downward by splitting the upper and lower bod.

The strangest characteristic of this serve is that the gentle forward rotation of the shoulders, initial, becomes part of the parabolic toss (from edge on palm in my case).

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Post Mortem: Straighten as You Go One Hand Backhand

I only hit three topspin backhands in the three sets of the whole evening but all three were winners.

So, two questions with possible answers: 1) Why didn't I hit more? Stupid, I guess and 2) What was I doing that was different?

Don't really know, do I? So don't know and don't tell and be happy and keep on doing it.

But that is the method of someone else. Me, I am a student of the game. I take as much pleasure in figuring something out as in winning the set.

(Sorry, my doubles partner, but that is the truth.)

And in figuring something out, I frequently go off in a new direction and lose whatever I started with.

Soon I will be at my twelve cracked, overgrown hard courts, the only person in the world ever to use them.

(I don't count the few people who, while taking walks in Rouge River Park, Detroit, come in one gate and go out another.)

The plan:

1) Build uniformity into the flying grip change so that in either case-- slice or topspin-- the wrist is straight if you look down at it.

2) Start building tension in the shoulder as part of the unit turn and step-out and flying grip change.

3) Realize that the unit turn does not affect the quality of the flying grip change since it takes both hands back equally. But both things are simultaneous.

4) Keep arms bent through the flying grip change.

5) The shot will be a topspin backhand, and you now can glom into the tremendous feel of a John McEnroe topspin backhand in that you like him will deal a playing card though from less curl of the wrist than he.

I don't remember when he curls his wrist or furthermore when he straightens his arm, but the topic here is meyouI, not he. He appears to be having a good life.

6) Like McEnroe, you get to do a solid (connected) lowering of the racket even though you have a different grip. Wrist will be slightly curled-- that is the point. And forward hips turn will lower the two bent arms. And you will continue to build conflict between your shoulder and your core-connected hands. And your wrist will transform from straight to slightly curled. So do all that now.

7) The front shoulder turned down as part of the unit turn. Did I say that? I guess not. It will stay down for slice, come up some for topspin. McEnroe's shoulder comes up for topspin-- has to if forward hips motion takes the rear shoulder down. But in the case of either slice or topspin one often won't have to take the racket back so high since one's tilting bod will place it where you want.

8) We're fast approaching a mystical launch ramp where we won't be, in spite of ourselves, so aware of what we think is going on. The arm now is able to rise steeply because of what the wrist will do, viz., become concave. Only concave will be convex because of roll of the arm.

9) The followthrough will be high, very very high, almost as tall as the top of a Chris Lewit one hand backhand.

10) Among the many accomplishments of the pulling left hand: It first changed the grip and then changed the wrist.

11) The change of wrist from straight to a bit curled was very subtle. More crucial, perhaps, is the continuing build-up of tension in the shoulder. The two hands are also involved in that.

12) The arm straightened through the forward swing. Was this abrupt or gradual? Gradual would probably be better, but I am determined not to think so much about whether scapular clench or other swing elements contributed to this task.

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More Feel in the Wrist

Down and up together serves have advantage in their use of gravity for repetition and solace, but at the same time are a bit mechanical.

A student of the game is too often apt to be trying to figure out when and how much to alter his wrist.

I therefore propose a baseball windup serve in which the racket starting from on edge position opens gradually but never to its full range.

This is a serve in which the wrist may tilt all in a rush-- at contact.

Thus, in the windup and even into much of the forward action, opening of the wrist is spaced out as much as is humanly possible, in other words is extremely gradual and slow.

And, in the contact, the wrist tilts (flexes) as abruptly as possible, thus joining with the abruptness of pronation and ISR right then.

The methodology of wrist is therefore "nuclear" to use the Mark Papas term.

And yet the nuclear explosion is a controlled one.

Controlled by amount of opening and closure.

Should wrist tilt even be happening at contact?

Those are other questions (and experiments).

Wrist tilt, incidentally, is a special procedure used only in such serves as kick, topspin and topspin slice according to Chris Lewit in THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE.

At least one separate caption writer on the internet has wrist tilt happening before contact and then ulnar deviation happening during the contact.

I, because of all the expressed variety in this topic distrust everyone and go with my own service experiments (which again I barely trust, the correct attitude for experiment as taught in science classes in college).

One place where people go wrong, I feel, is near the bottom of the behind-the-back racket drop.

Racket tip lowness is born of dynamic conflict between leg drive and the shoulder and forearm.

What did I just say? "Shoulder and forearm." Not wrist. When you add wrist into the equation you introduce a joker card but this isn't canasta.

So, perform any wrist adjustment-- forward or backward-- independently, I say, and be conscious enough of it to order precise amounts.

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Instrument

But a tennis racket is a stringed instrument. That is why Welby Van Horn did not encourage his students to use string dampeners.

Nor is there anything more remarkable in Socrates, than the fact that in his old age he made time to take lessons in dancing and playing instruments, and considers it well spent.-- Montaigne

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Change of Direction?

When I get tired of working on my serve, maybe I can think about the following:

We are great fools. "He has spent his life in idleness," we say. "I have done nothing today." What, have you not loved? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. "If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do." Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all. To show and exploit her resources Nature has no need of fortune, she shows herself equally on all levels and behind a curtain as well as without one. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.-- Montaigne

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Is the Ellie-bam the same as the ELA-bam?

Stay tuned, radio viewers.

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A First Windup to Try: Hands Start from their Usual Position of Being Together

Right hand then clears left by five inches.

Oscar-haters could love this since Oscar hates the influence of baseball on American tennis.

Now the two hands start moving at either constant or widening separation.

Backward knee and hip rotation chimes in at a time of your own choosing.

Hitting arm goes back and up any way you want, in little arrhythmic curliques, if you like, or perhaps in some type of smooth arc or straight line. The toss hand can get ready, too, with unexpected direction or movement. And computers can stop putting a red line under "curliques," which is a perfectly good and correctly spelled word.

Report: Didn't like the extra five inches in which to get nervous. Right arm can go down with gravity or assisted by gravity though as left arm does nothing. Which still opens variety which was the idea. I believe more possibility opens up with a baseball pitcher type windup than with traditional down together up together form despite the serenity that so much gravity offers-- sorry.

Also, I found the tip that seano reported on in the discussion he has been having with John in "Questions for Me" section to be useful for someone like me. At least when I tried to have elbow higher than hand at reversal point for internal shoulder rotation I immediately got better serves.

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Crazier Backswings and Wider Choice of Charter Schools

The same basic shot, topspin serve or attempted kick, can be hit as bod rocket vs. arch-the-back.

Present form will permit a great slowdown accompanied by steeper, higher down-and-up of hitting arm only. One should try different nadirs. The backswing cannot be too slow.

The form is slow rotation of bod accompanied by slow rotation of both arms around the rotating bod and therefore going farther.

Bent left arm always travels level whereas the hitting arm describes a myriad of shapes-- everything you can think of.

Around more, around less, round more on the drop part than less, in in, in out, etc. With no possibility left unexplored.

One is looking for more effective serves, obviously.

Similarly, in being a substitute ELA teacher (the term "ELA teacher" is popularly presumed to be better than "English teacher") one soon discovers in Detroit, Michigan that every day-long sub teacher gig includes an invitation for long term sub work. The big thing is passing the TB and expensive FBI fingerprint test.

One therefore should experience maximum variety before locating a place where one can feel most effective.

Me, I seek a school in which, if I have to teach a two-hour class and I have 20 students, and there is an interesting choice of books lying about, and we have already done writing and reaction to the writing and I say, "Now we're going to have free reading time," 20 students will walk over to the shelves and pick out a book and start reading it.

Not three students and the teacher, as happened yesterday, with 17 students deciding that this was playtime.

The book I chose to read was CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS by Rudyard Kipling.