A New Year's Serve

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Report

Despite what I planned, I hit all of these new serves except for probation in Seguran mold-- forgot to try that one.

The full windup serves all felt very good, especially the Seguran when I closed arm to the right angle in the same timing slot used for early ESR in the other serves.

"My serves felt very good," I just said. Unfortunately however I only held once. I shouldn't blame my doctor partners although some of them are very old and therefore have trouble coping with the volleys they are asked to perform off of faster returns because of faster serves.

Can I deny this: I got caught deep when I didn't come in on my serve.

But nearly the whole time when I was playing the three other stations I won. As Brent Abel would say, I "wanted to be the man."

The Harvard varsity player I was telling you about, reader, was 6' 7" in college. He didn't play on the varsity, it turned out, but on a backup team his freshman year.

But he was coached by the half century Harvard head coach John M. Barnaby, the tennis writer I am so curious about, and described him as looking frail and wiry.

Barnaby, I know, was great friends with Gardnar Mulloy, who recently died at well past a hundred.

We'll see in the morning against tough competition and with a strong partner how the new serves will fare including a very appropriate one in a video attached to an email from Stotty.

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Wednesday 4 p.m. with the Doctors: Plan

Toss twice as high with more rainbow to the left. Hit probation serves starting with 20 degrees of extra ESR before the significant racket drop. Hit probation serves in Seguran mold also. Hit conventional full windup serves with ordinary down and up to paused brandishment. Hit Seguran serve with its full staggered windup which is really different.

Much too much. Am sure to be embarrassed. Remember what Carrie's mother in Stephen King told her: "They're all going to laugh at you!"

Stan Smith: "Use the shot you practiced."

But I practiced them all. So make just one inspired choice. Stick with it and ask the former Harvard varsity player if John M. Barnaby was his coach.

And, when serving against that big guy, so enthusiastic about the world having just come back from The Australian Open and a tour of New Zealand, make sure to come in on your (my) serve every time.

Because if you (I) don't do this, he will put the ball deep in your (my) nearest alley every time and come into net behind it.

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Yes or No. Bend the Stick the Other Way?

This post is dedicated to the rotorded server wherever he or she is.

Oh no, I now see the hand is turned the wrong way in frame five. My theory is bogus. Bogus. Bogus!

But, Pancho Segura still opens out the racket until it points at left rear fence post just as I thought. Which is wait position for a probation serve if one has decided to go Seguran.

Things to watch: the right knuckles. They stay on rear fence side from brandishment through arm bend through low point through pro drop through A/A and arm extension. They only turn in for contact.

The unique hand movement in this serve is from out to in to out and up to tall contact.

What makes the hand move in toward bod? Elbow squeeze only.

Why isn't downward arm movement compromised? Because the forearm remains perpendicular to the court the same as in the usual form of probation serve. The difference is in racket head as halo over the human head.

Ignore it.

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What Other People Say Can Be Very Important

One of all the lifetime tennis players at the Superb Owl party I just attended accused me of hitting the ball much harder lately.

It's true, and I believe he was referring mostly to my forehand, but I'm quite sure there hasn't been some transformation of the animal in me.

It's just that I'm finally realizing in my old age that I'm playing doubles and therefore should flatten more of my forehands out.

Not all of them but many of them. Be less cautious and take more of a chance with them.

The finish line after all is coming up fast.

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Identity

Am I an actual researcher in the field of tennis stroke technique or not? If not, am I then a dilettante (https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C...71.vYsAXl5GhtA), a guy who copies the motions of different servers because he can but never with much result?

Well, if my research is serious, then Brent Abel's advice to apprentice oneself to Johannes Vermeer and paint exactly the way he shows you does not apply.

If an old guy is lucky enough to find a Vermeer of tennis who knows how to paint every square inch of a court with magnificence, then perhaps he should give up on the research idea.

The claimants of Vermeerness I've met however were more like narcissists, hardly people to whom you should want to entrust your soul.

But I do believe there are great men out there. How often do you encounter one and at an age and impressionability when their greatness will matter to you?

At other times you might be better off with a good teacher rather than a great one who probably would just irritate you despite your admiration for him.

When I was 19 I rowed in an eight-oared crew that beat all the little crews in the country.

Only 15 remained, big ones, and 13 of them lined up at the city end of Lake Onondaga, Syracuse, for a three-mile race.

Our coach, Gordon Whitey Helander, was a tough Marine who gave our crew a rough cut quality. But he had some Military duty to perform. So Charlie Butt Sr. of McLean, Virginia, one of the great crew coaches ever, picked us up.

We passed 12 of the 13 crews and coming up to the finish line were about to pass the University of Washington of Seattle when their number-three man fainted.

This should have made it easier for us to pass them, but their coxswain, instead of letting us by, veered in front of us.

That was for the college championship of The United States. To all intents and purposes we won it. So I do know something about great mentors-- both Whitey and Charlie qualified.

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Is it true that Pancho Segura twists his stick the other way from everybody else on the backswing of his serve?

If so, did Michael Stich do the same thing? I seem to recall the Stich stick being way around Stich's back and pointing to the left netpost, but I don't have the visual resources in his case to be properly led or misled.

This question re Segura comes from looking at 12 nice pen and ink drawings. But the drawings were probably made from 12 photos.

My approach is the same in all such cases of uncertainty (ex., Saltzensteins's dirty diaper drill shows ESR rather than ISR putting spin on the ball-- what gives)? Ignore one's non-responsive or nonexistent readers and get to a court and decide for yourself. See if you can give the idea a whirl without breaking your arm off. You may have some kind of an answer after a single serve.

This way you may never know if what you saw with your own eyes is true. And may always be in the dark about what the little guy Pancho Segura actually did to keep up with his tall and extremely formidable and famous opponents.

But you will know whether you want to do what you saw or go with something else.

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Yups

Yuppety-yup-yup-yup, as the old guys say in Eastport, Maine. Sometimes they'll string eleven yups all blended together by a single intake of breath. You can ask Tom MacDougald about it if you ever drive down the coast from your mother's to Eastport. Tom is a Vietnam vet and very expert on all matters pertaining to intake of breath, built his house with old rusted nails and other wreckage down at the south end of Moose Island, has a wonderful wife and, I've been led to believe by a poet friend, fine kids too. Last I heard one of Tom's sons was about to build my poet friend a house on a Canadian islet right next to The Old Sow whirlpool. Well, Tom would be happy to demonstrate for you the proper yup-yup-yups.

[stotty]

I read Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau many years ago and loved it. I liked The Social Contract too...."Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains".

Many things he wrote still hold up today.

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"A Growth Mind-set"

Ordinarily I don't like self-help books, but I highly recommend THE DANISH WAY OF PARENTING by Jessica Joelle Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandahl for its emphasis on "a growth mind-set."

Never praise anyone for their intelligence. Praise them for the work they do that can improve their intelligence.

What makes Denmark the happiest country in the world?

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Brent Abel has Many Accomplishments

One of them, however, is that he solved the problem of bottle not being able to email his self-made videos to his friends.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJ...vn9t_6IPKi7Jlw

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Supernumerary ESR or ISR on Superb Owl Day

One has to be a free thinker. If I am master of my own serve, as I think, I must do exactly as Chris Lewit advised in the three sole words he ever shot to me.

"Don't give up."

And the not giving up may be a physical thing although I doubt it, or a physical and mental thing combined, or a mere matter of solving Rubik's Cube.

I start from, to quote from my immediately previous post, "the minor gloss of 20-degree closure of racket right of brandishment to become a major feature of my pre-Superb Owl armchair serve."

Then I look again at frames three and four in post # 4703 and frame five in the Segura-Heldman book and see something different.

And conclude that Pancho Segura takes his racket down behind his back with ISR and arm fold, building pressure from latent ESR which, releasing, combines with arm extension at the elbow to form a far deeper toward rear fence pro drop than any present day known touring pro.

All of which helps Segura achieve his trademark contact in which his airborne legs, trunk, arm and racket form an exclamation point.

!

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Changing Perspective: No Time to Quit Now

We (I) search for the Kaizen that Doug Eng and Aunt Frieda talk about, the small thing that might make a big difference.

Also, today is another chance to bore my reader who says I bore him, the guy who every time he reads another installment of A NEW YEAR'S SERVE raises the counter an extra notch. His Super Sunday reading may take ANYS from 62,517 to 62,518 .

Lord knows he has bored me enough. A big difference between us however is that I will admit that he does not bore me all of the time.

I would bet that if one pored through all the posts at ANYS one would find something about the mechanics of snow shoveling, keeping in mind that Detroit has just been colder than Mount Everest and The North Pole. Donald Trump, are you reading this? Mount Everest and The North Pole have just been warmer than Detroit.

Today, before the Superb Owl party down in Ron's man-cave for tennis players only, I offer two new flourishes, kerfuffles or departures as I sniff for the Kaizen scent. That's one too many of a new idea, but Superb Owl Day (https://www.google.com/search?q=supe...hrome&ie=UTF-8) is a day of American excess.

1) Within the Segura frames, be realistic about what happens when a server who has served one way for eons now tries to serve another way as I did against fierce opponents at the gentle social on Friday night.

First, the feet did whatever they have done for decades and will continue to do.

Second, the two arms extended like insect feelers could not produce a seamless toss. My ta had to down-stroke a few inches thus spoiling everything.

I therefore propose that the serve start with both hands linked on the left hip, that they then straighten toward the net, separate and float...before one arm goes up at the same speed that the other goes down.

2) Brian Gordon is so good at saying what comes first, is essential, the main thing, the sine qua non, the game he and his students always play called probation.

So everything else pretty much if not a kerfuffle is a flourish, e.g., in my disquisition I have put mistaken emphasis on abduction/adduction.

But, a tennis bloodhound is always snuffling for Kaizen which could be anywhere.

And so, the minor gloss of 20-degree closure of racket right of brandishment will become a major feature of my pre-Superb Owl armchair serve.

For, 20 degrees of initiating pre-leg ESR should put more arm fold into the actual drop and certainly has never been tried so early before.

One may even resume a little ESR as elbow winds up?

It's all about desire.

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Re # 4703 (visual)

Frame three: The racket face is opened out.

Frame four: The racket face is a lid over player's head.

As in any serve where strings open out, one must ask which when is best. (At address? By right shin? Farther up?)

One may also ask how the maiden voyage of this imitation went.

Holds early perhaps from the novelty of the thing along with breakdown in the form of clobberings at crunch time.

Does this indicate that one should give up? My understanding is that there is no give up in tennis. There certainly isn't in rowing, my other sport.

Some previous alternatives to this pattern may produce excels rather than decels, but, basically, are mediocre enough to justify the experiment's continuation.

Was ist da zu verloren? What is there to lose?

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Reader, I Hope You Clicked on the Above Link

And clicked on "open" down to your left. The four drawings should come up.

It appears to me, that, no matter what Pancho says under frame 2, the hips are moving slightly forward to raise left heel even though upper body is prying backward.

Sooner or later weight will start to settle on rear foot-- I'll only find out when I try this serve for the first time at our weekly mixer tonight.

The answer to the weight question may be different for me than for somebody else.

In the next of 12 total frames, the not included number five here, the arm is pictured as completely wound up inside of itself with wrist straight or even curled a bit.

Thus the racket tip from frame four will have rotated a full 180 degrees down to low point.

With upward rotations to follow in the sequence that Brian Gordon has recently outlined for us.

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Segura Serve (first four frames).pdf