A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Ha!

[bottle]

Paul Laxalt and the Karsten Popp Forehand

Senator Paul Laxalt, the former boy's champion of Nevada, once saw me sweeping the High Knob Mountain Virginia tennis court and suggested that that was the way I ought to hit my ground strokes.

He may have been right, he may have been wrong. And I guess that neither he nor his close friend President Ronald Reagan was a fan of Pete Seeger:

I may be right
I may be wrong
Bring em home,
Bring em home
But I've got the right to sing this song.
Bring em home
Bring em home

But the good Senator may have been right about my forehand. (I'll work on my backhand later.) His own forehand, a dipsey-doodle learned from Helen Wills while she got a Reno divorce from her Moody husband, seemed to me nothing like a sweeping, industrial-sized broom but rather a sudden, totally unreadable flail.

When, in sober post World Series light (the poor Tigers!), I re-evaluate Scott Murphy's latest article,

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/classiclessons/scott_murphy/traditional_forehand/

, I look at the repeating video of Karsten Popp and notice something new: THE LENGTH OF HIS ARMS.

One's arms don't usually change their length much once one attains initial growth but the tennis player can always adjust his elbows for different scope.

I'm talking about waiting position: Karsten Popp's racket is way out toward the net. Different people ought to try this.

[stotty]

Swimming, flip...and Cuba

I see your point about the arms. A couple of other things:

1. Strange how Karsten's left arm peels right away from his body; almost like doing the breadth stroke, before folding in like it should.

2. Karsten has a very undramatic/minimal flip compared to Djokovic.


Have you ever been to Cuba, bottle?

[bottle]

No, but my ex (thanks to the influence of Hungary) and her new husband have. They are both experts on renewable fuels.

Maybe I'd better try that again. My ex and her new husband visited Cuba, according to my son. Something to do with renewable fuels, I think. But they didn't go to Cuba because of the influence of Hungary.

No, my ex became my ex because of the influence of Hungary. Hope it's all clear, and Hope may hope that too if she ever reads this.

[bottle]

Two Drops in a Don Budge-Patterned Serve

Not cough drops or condensation but one gravity fall succeeded by active work of the arm, specifically:

Acceleration upward with palm facing down.

Squeeze of arm to graze an imaginary mirror in palm of hand across the back of one's head (to check for cooties, of course. The cooties are in your peer group, no?)

Opening out of racket. Although some persons might call this a second drop, I choose not to because of the pro-active arm work-- more of a swirl...but this stirring of a pot does take racket tip down and out toward next desired phase, which is:

Racket along right edge of bod.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What are we trying for here anyway? A good pitching motion. First drop is at 32 feet per second per second-- all gravity-- so we needn't worry about that.

The faster the upward rise, however, the more time to check for cooties.

Once the cootie check is done, the serve gets immediately fast.

At least my one or two aces in four sets of doubles at 6:30 a.m. were struck in this manner. Opening out of the closed racket was the suddenly remembered innovation worked into figure eights while the other three geezers chatted.

Previously, I kept palm down all through the loop.

I apologize to somebody for the detail but not to myself. A detail here or there is what this current project is about.

[bottle]

The Serenity of Serena and More Tango

You see it in her serve when she plays her best. By her own admission, she didn't practice the serve for that match.

The question then for us ordinary tennis players is not "What does this mean?" but rather "What COULD it mean?"

That one has experimented and practiced plenty, i.e., has thoroughly paid one's dues, but isn't about to confuse practice with performance.

If you have a good serve, you'll come up with the very best version of it under situational pressure in a tight match rather than in practice, and this is good.

Am talking about confidence here, and in the case of a type A man, the most macho confidence possible as expressed in the song "Libertango," the key words of which are "Home with anyone he wants." I'm about to repeat those words now not because I advocate libertinism but because it's dance lesson time.

Home with anyone he wants.
Slow slow quick quick slow.
Slow slow tango close.
Home with anyone he wants.

Three syllables ("anyone") on one quick beat? Craziness. Of course. Crazy confidence.

Great God, I yam free!
Slow slow tango close.

[bottle]

More Racket Head Speed in Lloyd Budge Kick

I fully realize that I may be the only person in the world actively working on this particular challenge, but that doesn't mean somebody else shouldn't try it.

I wish to orchestrate this serve with my Don Budge imitations (flat and slice variations) while emphasizing one commonality between the two brothers, their threshing heels.

In Lloyd Budge kick, as seen in the illustration of Post # 1342, one can wind back hips early during the tossing phase as front heel goes up, and continue shoulders wind after that while holding hips in place.

In the other two serves, forward hip rotation is involved in front heel going down as rear heel goes up and shoulders continue their winding back.

Instead, I propose to hold the hips where they are for good sideways position and to draw more simple force out of the gut.

That keeps front heel up through major administration of force but with heels to swap level by contact.

Could work. We're here to experiment. Anything goes when looking for more RHS.

[bottle]

Geezer Mode Developed as a Young Man

The geezer doubles we play indoors at 6:30 a.m. is sufficiently competitive so as not to afford much chance to try something new.

In fact, once I was blinking my eyes and trying to wake up out on the Har-Tru, I completely forgot my proposed experiment of Post # 1357 .

I did hit some serves where I held the forward-hips-backward-shoulders combo in favor of shoulders winding back all by themselves since I'd learned that already both in advanced and retreated contact positions.

Where, though, was the delayed reversal of the heels during contact or just before-- the proposed reversal of ordinary sequence?

Forgot it. Unconsciously, I guess, I wanted to win. And so of course I lost, i.e., didn't hold serve since there weren't sufficient rpm's on my kicker.

But direction of spin must have been good. Once my kicker hit the center tape. Man did it veer. All three guys commented on that ace. Later, one of them, in explaining to his partner why he failed to crush a particular ball, said, "I let it get too high." That told me something.

But forget the late heel thresh? How could I do that? Absolutely crazy. Well, I hope to get to a lonely outside abandoned court today-- should be possible thanks to a warm globe.

[bottle]

More Spin: Expectation vs. Reality

Commonality between fiction and tennis: Reality gets pitted against expectation again, again and again.

The mood one wants when doing tennis experiment: Super-alive to possibility.

The tennis masses can have their cut-and-dried tennis knowledge since, invariably, it's insufficient.

Re Post # 1357: Increased racket head speed can come not from gut but from farther down.

Thus, one winds up as indicated but doesn't fire from the gut. Rather, one uses the transverse stomach muscles to form one's desired loop in the most natural and relaxed way. Very little force or range from the stomach gets used.

Now you sling your throw with threshing heels, but don't be in a hurry with them.

The threshing embraces contact, doesn't precede it nor coincide strictly with, say, last little effort of fingers and hand.

One benefit of this is that head will remain stationary or slightly rise but certainly won't sink at contact.

Note: Guess what. I penciled these words before I went to the court but decided afterward that I was mostly right.

But something must have happened at the court? Decided to 1) Join racket opening with shoulders still winding back. 2) Not fire the shoulders at all, just tighten the stomach muscles at same point where would have done that.

Real life result: Not exactly what I want but a significant increase in racket head speed which was part of the goal.

[bottle]

Perception in Learning a New Serve

The new serve, with some modification to the feet, occurs in this video:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/donbudge/donbudge_sa.html?DB1stSRear.mov

Some might call this rear view film of the early J. Donald Budge serve a Model A Ford. But there can be very good reasons for adopting its basic scheme, not least that one doesn’t have be a phony in pretending that one is Michael Jordan, specifically does not have to overcome one’s own body weight in delivering the shot, which could be basic advantage over older ways but just as likely is the pure affectation of current fashion.

This serve, like any good serve, sends energy toward the sky, but in a slanted direction slightly closer to being parallel to the ground. To further understand this serve’s subtleties, one may like me have to take a basket of balls to a court—repeatedly—trying out the imitation until one reaches one’s own conclusion or two.

Then one returns to the video and perhaps sees, for the first time, some of the speculative discoveries one just has made—you’re looking for confirmation, you might say.

First is the way the racket rises behind Don Budge’s body—toward us, the camera or viewer, as it turns out, and therefore is a bit difficult to see.

In one smooth movement the elbow and wrist coil and the upper arm twists to take the racket head farther behind the human head. Palm is facing down at the beginning of this rise but by the end of it faces forward, so that a big long ruler pressed against the palm would form a perpendicular to the court.

Next, the arm forms a needle, i.e., the two halves of the arm glue themselves together and stay that way for much longer than in many serves. They are glued together on left side of body, glued together directly behind the body, still glued together on right side of the body.

[bottle]

"You've watched me age before your very eyes."-- Barack Obama

If building on the needled elbow of post # 1360 one can ask what precise down-together, up-together configuration most comfortably fits this scheme.

Although I love the idea of a pure gravity drop 90 degrees to court, I am now ready to let vertical path veer about ten degrees to outside, to go down at 80 degrees. Setting of elbow when both hands lift together to prepare for initial drop accomplishes this goal.

This tweak winds the upper arm more naturally and less self-consciously as the arm coils the racket upward and around one's back. We've seen wrist arching then as well. Which means that one will twist the upper arm quite far (in my case as far as it will comfortably go) to achieve vertical palm if one thinks like me that vertical palm will help. With more spring to occur in this twist in the subsequent phase of the serve.

Which will be a continued body twist from down below during which scapular retraction also will occur. Tail end actions include extension of legs to increase the scapular retraction still more.

Two different phases occur in all such full exploration of some designated stroke, it seems to me. First is an opening of possibilities. Second is a closing of them down.

Admittedly I'm in first phase here. The prospect of hand (and therefore racket) whirling around the body at greater distance from it however excites me quite a lot due to the increased leverage this affords.

[bottle]

To Needle or Not to Needle

One can, from drawing number four here decide whether Don Budge's elbow already has "needled" on the left side of his body when viewed from behind.

Certainly the angle between the two halves of his arm is less than 90 degrees. Certainly Don Budge has just twisted his upper arm like an axle. Awfully early for that, some would say. And certainly the two halves of his arm have squeezed together at least somewhat.

Somebody might still call this "trophy position" but not I.

People throw that expression around far too much without ever making the important distinctions under the label. To Vic Braden, trophy meant a specific trophy in which elbow was still low and close to body-- seen as extremely bad. To Scott Murphy, in one of his early articles, trophy meant a nice right angle set fairly low in which hand aligns directly over elbow-- seen as a good thing.

Whatever one calls drawing/position 4 here, upper arm is parallel to court but lower arm, i.e. forearm, is tilted toward side fence, and, personally speaking, I want to get there fast.

To me this discussion is significant since an elbow that is needled for longer than in most serves, with consistency of motion always the goal, is not as much of a crap shoot.

One difference however in drawing # 4 from the scheme I've recently been advancing: The racket is closed. The wrist may still be curled. The palm is beveled, not vertical. Worth a try. The real point may be how many inches there are between DB's hand and his head, equaling leverage. Quite a lot.

[bottle]

The Drawing

Here:

[bottle]

To Flip or Not to Flip

Karsten Popp's forehand, as we've seen in "The Traditional Forehand: A Living Model" by Scott Murphy, contains the modern element of mondo or flip but not much of one. Stotty of Great Britain was among those pointing this out.

What determines how much one flips-- if one has decided to flip-- and can one still not flip, say on a service return, once one has adopted the flippant attitude?

Is amount of flip decided by fate, a broken arm, natural flexibility or simple willpower? Eric Matuszewski of Princeton asserted some time back that Roger Federer's wrist is extraordinary in its ability to bend backward and even suggested exercises to increase the ordinary player's range.

This to me was similar to rotor flex in the serve. Can you hold upper arm parallel to court and with a right angled forearm make it twist back to parallel with the court? Me neither.

Always, I've thought, the next time you junk a car, you can just stay inside. Perhaps the compactor can pulverize the adhesions in your shoulder and your wrist and your car all at the same time.

Another thing Matuszewski said was also of great interest: That mondo or flip consists of two simultaneous elements, layback of wrist and winding around of forearm.

Where I'm going with regard to closing the racket from an eastern grip: Instead of long arm from beginning of Karsten Popp or "bubble" in wind-back of Roger Federer, modify waiting position by carrying bent elbow farther to right. Then use the simplified backswing of Popp. Then use the timing element of arm extension like Federer. Then use the flip of Federer, driven passively by gross body, I would argue.

The difference in flip for a person limited in wrist range will be that he compensates with more winding of the forearm. This will naturally happen because of lower backswing. Racket butt will make as if to bonk the rear fence.

But is this a good idea? Worth a try-- my opinion always. Does a fuller flip help timing? Probably depends on what else you're not doing.

[stotty]

Flipping...

A fuller flip, in theory, would make timing more difficult, and make the shot more risky. The trade off, one would think, would be greater power. The flip is the very last event in the chain before contact with the ball...the last build up of energy to be unleashed.

A more minimal flip would equal less risk and more reliable timing, but perhaps less power. In the article, Karsten is attributed as being a rock solid player who makes few errors. I wonder how powerful he his compared to fuller flippers?