A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

If You Wanna be Happy for the Rest of...

If you're not happy with the way your present service motion is or isn't producing kick, how about letting your body throw adjust to your arm throw-- instead of vice-versa-- for a change?

If one gets a good kick serve, then maybe one can apply the lesson of Camus' Sisyphus to other areas of one's life.

[bottle]

Re # 1089, Racket Tip Away from the Ball or Toward the Ball?

One can see, in reconsidering 1089, that the racket tip starts out toward the ball or as Pat Dougherty says, "Stick the racket in and try to come up this way across the ball."

"Stick the racket in." That's the phrase I didn't understand. All this stuff requires special thought and explanation since it reverses at least one item in our tennis conditioning. (I'm not speaking of workout type "conditioning" but rather the operant or psychological kind that conditions rats, monkeys and tennis players.)

I'm not saying we're all brainwashed, but we right-handers are certainly conditioned to know that when we turn our body forward the hitting surface of our racket will want to open or turn away from the ball, and this becomes an essential part of our conscious calculations or unconscious adjustments.

If we stick the racket in or point it at the target, like Naomi Totka, with the elbow pointed in the opposite direction somewhere on the rear fence, the racket's frame may look as if it's going to bisect the ball. Nothing unusual about that. What's unusual is that the bisection would occur in the direction of the rear fence.

The right-hander's elbow is pointed away from the target with the arm straightening as the shoulders rotate the racket into more of a push on the ball.

One can produce clockwise spiralspin if the flat of the racket is neither too much behind the ball or too much to the inside of the ball.

This is like the clockwise spiralspin caused by a right-footed punter in football although his knee will be pointing forward not backward. (I know little about punting, just hope I'm right about instep contacting the inside of the football.)

Right-handed passers administer the same direction spiral from the outside of the football.

You could say that in the majority of instances when most hackers serve (usually flat or slice or pitty-pat topspin) the racket tries to open or pull round from the ball as the body rotates toward the net. In this serve the racket does the opposite, tends to close toward the ball from the body rotation.

To put this another way, if you don't manipulate the racket, the body rotation alone will change it. It, the racket, will go from tip of frame toward the target (twice!?) to a bit of strings toward the target.

And, as we all agree, I'm pretty sure, the less one has to do, the better.

Maybe I'm dyslexic or just get confused when things are backward and upside down-- but this information, though not the answer to all the challenges in a rotorded person trying to hit kick, seems essential information I've never heard explained before (and so I explain it to myself).

[tennis_chiro]

Racket moving across the ball for second serve

Check the difference in the frames after contact of the ball for Roger's first and second serve

first serve:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/1st_Serve&stroke=RF_1stS_Ad_Rear2_500fps.mov

second serve:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/2nd_Serve&stroke=RF_2ndS_Ad_Rear4_500fps.mov

don

[bottle]

Thanks.

[bottle]

Rephrase (of my Own Stuff)

Any kind of manipulation will spoil the throw. So turn the body against firm, already bent knees. This body turn will include a bulging out of the hip and a determination to climb the mountain on the baseline and a change of linear direction and the toss.

At that point in the continuous, economical motion the arm will start to bend as the bent knees now start to bow.

Hurl the racket hard at the back fence.

Body will have closed it (the racket head) and directed it up past the ball and very hard at the side fence followed by deceleration down and around and up to your opposite shoulder.

The same hurl tries to knock down the back fance and the side fence in rapid succession.

[bottle]

Crash Crash

In between the ball got seared.

[bottle]

Orchestration for a Rotation Primary Serve

Note: I think I'll call the other kind a Thrust Primary Serve, but whimsy may be what I'm all about.

Recipe:

Bend and firm knees before you start the serve. Shoulders slowly wind and tilt with impeccable posture maintained from knees to back of neck.

Bow under toss (both heels come up) as front hip forms its bulge toward the net, i.e., "you cock the bow." That gets upper body drawing back from ball toward rear fence while opening chest to ball for a flat serve. Upper body tilts under ball along a line perpendicular to both side fences for a kick serve. Upper body draws back along a line between the other two lines for a slice serve. Chest has opened to the ball, i.e., to the sky, in every case.

One could steepen the imaginary mountain at the baseline. One might help oneself to hit over the mountain by bowing the rear leg even more than the front leg for all three serves. I was going to say Pancho Segura would be a great example of this but then checked his book CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY and noticed that front leg looked more bent of his two legs. Well, fooling around with respective length won't kill you. Hitting fiercely and spinningly over the mountain is the goal here.

Where is body weight at this point? Mostly likely on front foot for flat but evenly distributed for kick and slice.

[bottle]

Spiralspin

I told my chiropractor, who says that kids are definitely more flexible in their rotors than old persons, about SPIRALSPIN, introduced to the tennis community by physicist Rod Cross, of Australia, where the people don't even play American football, do they?

And how nobody will react to this actual ball phenomenon very much.

My chiropractor then told how divers went down to a recent shipwreck and opened a compartment with an air bubble inside.

A dozen people were standing in deep water with only their noses and mouths above the surface and cried,

"DON'T MAKE ANY WAVES!"

[bottle]

Upside Down Ziegenfuss to the Rescue Again

A Ziegenfuss (goat-foot) is a forehand in which the arm goes first, then the body blends in to lengthen the effective followthrough.

Bill Tilden on the serve: It's how the arm whips about the body.

The Ziegenfuss is not my preferred forehand but has won matches for me.

All my recent efforts at developing an effective kick serve-- not pitty-pat topspin which I can do all day-- have come to naught.

So my concept this afternoon shall be an upside down Ziegenfuss to lengthen my runway up and past the ball. You can lengthen a runway at either end. They never tell you that.

Any bulldozers I bring may tip over on such a steep grade. On the other hand, they'd be imaginary, so why not?

No, I'll go with late upper body rotation. By now I can simulate any possible elbow position using arm alone-- the arm doesn't necessarily have to react to the body the way it does on my flat and slice serves.

My flat and slice have improved by the way as a direct result of my efforts toward more violent kick.

So all is not gloom and doom-- very important to acknowledge that.

The backward racket work shall remain the same. We shall not yield that beachhead.

Using arm only-- but from the same windup/winddown, I'll start throwing up (sorry) and blend in with light energy from the gut followed by extension and hips-caused feet helicoptering all to extend my runway farther toward the sky.

[bottle]

Hoop Snake Server

Naturalist Raymond Ditmars, according to Wikipedia, placed $10,000 in trust at a New York bank for the first person to produce evidence of a hoop snake. But snakes will sometimes swallow their own tails. The following URL is for The Song of the Hoop Snake, a three-part round:

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=kzAM6Hoae1ifmM:&imgrefurl=http://www.dougskinner.net/%3Fp%3D465&docid=LMKvy7-NaAtVjM&imgurl=http://www.dougskinner.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/HOOPSNAKE1.jpg&w=1259&h=1611&ei=JlyIT8afKISm8QT1z-ThCQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=413&vpy=0&dur=2248&hovh=254&hovw=198&tx=84&ty=275&sig=103148401197654174215&page=4&tbnh=119&tbnw=93&start=39&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:39,i:178&biw=640&bih=370

More about hoop snakes:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/animals/comments/hoop_snake

When I studied old drawings of the rock-and-roll serve of Pancho Segura the other day in his book CHAMPIONSHIP STRATEGY, I thought of the legendary hoop snake and wondered if maybe I could find some video of Segura's serve on the internet.

The drawings show the knees tilted forward, i.e., front leg more bent than rear leg and yet, with upper arm nicely lined up with shoulders line and parallel with court, the racket still is able to slant in toward his right hip completing the hoop.

This serve is the opposite of what I can do since I am not that flexible and therefore is not for me.

I couldn't find the desired video but here's a nice article on Segura:

http://www.allenfoxtennis.net/pancho-francisco-segura-his-game-and-personality/

[bottle]

Kick But Not Enough

One feature of extreme stance serving, as I understand it, is that with feet splayed in slightly different directions, some natural spiral is imparted to the body as one's legs fire.

Today's experiment aims to do away with that spiral by aiming feet in same direction, or if not in exact same direction, in the two directions that enable the given person to jump as high as possible.

This would be a "standing jump" which ought to be classified, it seems to me, within the platform stance serving phylum.

Not that I'm advocating a high jump. I leave that to Federer. His hanging jump leaves him time to pull in his landing gear.

I do want maximum ease, however, which comes from maximum strength, which comes with drive from both legs together, and which can increase the opening of chest toward the sky.

So, here's my idea. One jumps slightly into the air but doesn't turn. When one comes down, the feet have turned.

What happened in between? The serve. I'm just the coyote up on a cliff planning this time to squash the roadrunner with a trapezoid-shaped boulder, but, my serves are undergoing intersport migration toward a Ricky Fowler golf swing where knees stay firm to better load the gut.

Sequence shall be: 1) mild liftoff from both legs, 2) the rest of the serve all of which will twirl the feet like twin propellers helping one to hang in mid-air. Ground energy may have run up the body but upper body action will work back down to the feet.

Note: Upper body rotation followed by arm produces kick for me but not enough. Arm throw followed by upper body rotation improves aim and consistency while producing kick for me but not enough. My experiment here is in more simultaneity and less sequence with hope that such summing of forces will generate more racket head speed.

[bottle]

BH, FH and SERVICE Loops: Decorative, for Timing Only, or Accelerative?

I've already made my decision.

The idea of a one-hand backhander's compact loop driven by body motion came to me by way of Geoffrey Williams in these conversations. I may seem to hold forth a lot, but often it is in response to something somebody else has said perhaps even long ago.

Geoff's is great and recent information but still I had to alter some faulty concept. I have a different grip from Geoff, too. Might that matter? Of course.

The breakthrough came when I saw an instruction video where the racket after being taken back pointed straight up although it was relatively low. I never even turned on the sound to hear what the instructor had to say, just stole that image of vertical racket and applied it.

Once at the court, I realized that my previous loop was too far forward and too far out, and that I needed to jettison any idea of closing the racket during the loop. If I want to close the racket I do it during the big part of the inside-out swing, not during the brief (and passive, I would argue) accelerating loop.

On forehand side we have talked forever about "mondo" and other forms of reverse action acceleration.

Well, what works on the backhand (goose) will work on the forehand (gander). But I've gained from my experiments in Federfore the opinion that the forehand loops of most tennis players are too mechanical and uni-sized.

Roger Federer keeps his elbow down, takes racket head high and extends his arm backward thereby changing its length.

Well, even in double-bend structure one can change the arm's length, too, as I told Alexandra Franco of Portugal in response to one of her wonderful private emails through this website.

The current TP videos of Azarenka's forehand show the start of a bigger loop that she then shrink-wraps into something smaller. Other such examples exist on The Tour. Anyone could try it.

Or, how about doing the opposite by changing arm length as following? One can shorten arm as racket goes up, which brings the racket tip in high and close. One can then extend the arm to late-determined length for lower loop and mondo.

Why do this? To create something organic and more forgiving characterized by "feel," where last instant adjustment becomes a virtue rather than a fault.

On serve people including me have used a lot of words to discuss a second low point behind the back next to hitting edge of the body. Here's where Brian Gordon in his TP articles has told us about "pre-load" with great animations. But let's just call this an acceleration loop, too.

My serve may not look like Amina's in the following video, which I recommend watching both with and without the sound. But the toss-hit timing of it is to be drooled after, along with its easy formation of passive loop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um5q7Lx107k

We (I) worry so much about when to bend the arm and how much and where. Instead, how about putting the whole passive loop a bit forward, a bit farther back, looking for the best, easy serves.

[bottle]

O Silly Bottle

Sorry I said that. O well, I can't undo it now.

"Not that I'm advocating a high jump. I leave that to Federer. His hanging jump leaves him time to pull in his landing gear." Yes, I did say that, too.

When I reconsider these videos of Federer's first and second serve, identified by tennis_chiro, I'm beginning to think that Federer gets the knees bent again to establish a strong structure in the air.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/1st_Serve&stroke=RF_1stS_Ad_Rear2_500fps.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/2nd_Serve&stroke=RF_2ndS_Ad_Rear4_500fps.mov

My current understanding is that, in an airborne service motion like Federer's, he'll get more power out of "horizontal" rotation from the gut because of his reasserted solidity of the lower body same as on a forehand.

[tennis_chiro]

What is really happening?

Sorry I said that. O well, I can't undo it now.

"Not that I'm advocating a high jump. I leave that to Federer. His hanging jump leaves him time to pull in his landing gear." Yes, I did say that, too.

When I reconsider these videos of Federer's first and second serve, identified by tennis_chiro, I'm beginning to think that Federer gets the knees bent again to establish a strong structure in the air.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/1st_Serve&stroke=RF_1stS_Ad_Rear2_500fps.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/2nd_Serve&stroke=RF_2ndS_Ad_Rear4_500fps.mov

My current understanding is that, in an airborne service motion like Federer's, he'll get more power out of "horizontal" rotation from the gut because of his reasserted solidity of the lower body same as on a forehand.

Try to remember what the leg drive is really doing. Sure, you get up a little higher in the air for net clearance, but that is minor, although still significant. What the leg drive really does is pull the rubber band back a little further. Take a look at those videos and notice the bottom of the back of Roger's head against the service line; it will give you a clear reference point. His head moves a lot as his hand rises and the racket moves around onto the power line where the butt of the racket actually points at the contact point and is in a place that includes the target. But then it is almost stationary against the service line as the tricep extends the radius and ulna on the humerus (straightens the arm). By this time the leg drive has already done its work stretching the shoulder capsule just a little extra for a little more pop. First you pull the slingshot back with the right hand, and then you release it; that is, you release the projectile. Nothing happens if you release the slingshot with the left hand that is holding it at the same time. There has to be a fulcrum or a pivot point somewhere. Otherwise, no power.

don

[bottle]

I like this (so far).