A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

One Hander Thought Progresses Two Steps

As I walked out on the tennis court this morning, I felt a bit "müde," which is German for tired, I believe, and recalled a conversation I had over the weekend with a blonde lady I met in the Cafe Prada, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "How do you get emphysema? Not that I want to. And why did you then decide to take up the sax?" Her Southern accent was so thick I couldn't understand either one of her answers.

Use constant slow hand speed to touch ball, I was thinking, but...

There may not be any reason to avoid putting a little oomph in straightening of arm so long as you keep subsequent straight-arm easement swing slow enough to touch rather than slug the ball.

Which thought leads to the possibility of a completely passive easement swing.

Forearm swing then would be faster than whole arm swing, in fact would spring it?

This thinking relates to slice methods in which one extends arm actively or passively as integral part of forward swing, with muscular extension the "safe" version, e.g., for a shot into the open court and passive extension driven by rabbit punch the most blistering version of sidespun slice, a very aggressive, slashing, low and skidding shot.

Should one ever separate one shot from the others? For purposes of discussion, I suppose, but only with temporarily submerged awareness of the arbitrariness of this.

All subjects are related, Michel de Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson's hero, said. Since Montaigne really believed this, he could, unlike Emerson, pick any subject for an essay, start anywhere and be completely personal about it-- things that Emerson four centuries later with a bit of Puritan in him despite the likelihood of his being the greatest American philosopher, never would do or even consider.

If you're accustomed to using a little muscle to extend arm in some of your shots, doing so now will be easier, but the practice need not necessarily exclude players who straighten their arm BEFORE they start forward slice or hit slice in any other way.

So, for this one handed topspin drive, there now will be triceps muscle in straightening the arm but no muscle whatsoever in then easing strings around to outside of ball.

Two counts to get arm parallel to sideline; one count to turn ignition and fire the forearm; one count to feel the slow passive combined weight of racket and straight arm more than ten times heavier; a final count to hit ball with sudden change of direction rabbit punch.

One hopes that step-out and leg extension, if they occur, will take care of themselves, although step-out would probably come in count two and leg extension in count four.

This seems my ultimate interpretation of Arthur Ashe's reply to Vic Braden's probing as to the secret of Ashe's backhand: "I sling the racket head at the ball."

[bottle]

But if That (Post # 226), why not This?

Forget triceps. Anesthetize it if necessary. Turn ignition to close racket. Swing bent elbow slowly to situate strings. Clench shoulder-blades together to straighten arm passively as you rip over and around the ball.

[ochi]

Bottle, you have been on a roll.

Here is something for you to play with, to bounce off philosophers, or to ridicule.

Last week, I happened to see a still of Wozniack, or maybe it was Wozniacki, on the Tennis Channel. She had her racquet back for a forehand and it was just about fully open, palm up. It seemed to me it would cause her to impart plenty of topspin, but I haven't remembered to try it, and maybe it isn't worth trying, but I thought I'd bounce it off you.

While I'm thinking about takebacks, what about that great, unique, wonderful Ken Rosewall backhand? I have typical pictures of him with his racquet back at only shoulder height, completely closed. And I'm looking at another in which he was returning a ball that was descending to knee height. He's stretched out, his rear knee only six inches above the court and his right upper leg is almost parallel with the court. His racquet is parallel with the court, completely closed. To do that, you have to pronate a lot. It's something I cannot practice drop-and-bounce. Gotta find a good deal on a battery-powered ball machine on E-Bay. I hope that by tomorrow I will have forgotten this impulse.

[bottle]

How Much "Give" Should there be in a Forehand-- Reversal (again) on Doug King

The scientific drawing of a Federfore on page 135 of TECHNICAL TENNIS by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey was made from TennisPlayer videos.

To hit this particular shot, bowl unevenly, i.e., starting from point nearest rear fence (way back in Roger Federer's case) bowl slowly and shallowly downward, but rip through and upward to rejoin body rotation swing path. You rapidly but gradually! achieve a 30-degree rise before contact which turns into 50 degrees from contact, the forearm roll. Clearly, in this variation of a Federfore, mondo occurs at contact, cushioning shock. This doesn't by any means indicate that you should do things this way every time. Racket comes to ball hooded by eight degrees. Feel down, rip up. But rip before contact maximizing absorption. Two hundred pounds of pressure bend strings and wrist back to max. That means no more than conventional wrist layback (or a straight wrist!-- choose the best baseball catch setting) as you come into ball, say I. The mondo, anti-mondo Federfores discussed separately by me and Carrera Kent are a different form.

Thank you so much, Ochi, for putting me on to this excellent, mindstring pre-stretch book at Racquet Tech Publishing. It was slow to arrive and I had to endure a right brain chauvinist review on the web: "This won't help anyone." I repeat the central tenet of my tennis philosophy: Everybody needs to use both lobes of their brain at all times. Do you know where the next clinic entitled LEARNING EVERYTHING ABOUT THIRD AXIS TENNIS: HOW TO MAKE SPIRALSPIN WORK FOR YOU will be held?

I shall gladly puzzle over the Rosewall but am opposed to anything that costs money. As to the Wozniacki: I was so busy trying out the drawing described above (with all moments of change of speed perfectly delineated-- a first?) that I didn't get to my already planned experiment with open face. I want to see if I can get some spiralspin that way (or will I just hit the ball up into the sky-- don't know).

A fellow reporter at the Middletown (Conn.) Press, Richard Woodley, had been the open champion of East Hartford and before that was cut from the Syracuse varsity when he smashed the new racket his coach gave him, then went to CCNY where he played small man's varsity basketball. And was fired from the Middletown Press for talking too much in the office, although all the pool he and I and John Pekkanen (subsequent National Journalism Award at the Washingtonian) played during long lunch breaks might have had something to do with it along with a couple stories the bored Woodley faked, doing a very good job. Woodley went on to Life Magazine (as did Pekkanen) and I went around the world, which was cheaper than what they did and also cheaper than staying at home. Woodley then wrote illustrious books, end pieces for New York Times Magazine, etc.

Anyway (whew), Woodley made few distinctions between tennis and billiards.
He always aimed for an off-center spot on the ball. I'm sure he generated spiralspin that way (come to think of it he was a lefty quarterback in football, too). A mixture of spin on all three axes, on a lot of shots, now seems a promising way to go or at least to explore now that I understand the concept thanks to TECHNICAL TENNIS.

[rosheem]

Spin an axe, or spin on axes?

Nice post, Bottle.

TECHNICAL TENNIS was the first and only tennis book I ever bought.

I like where you are going with the spiral spin. I have pondered this myself. When I am hitting the ball well, I do feel like I am influencing the ball in more ways, more axes, than just two.

This is why I never liked the axe analogy for the serve or ground strokes. I'm sure you've heard it? (On the serve the swing up to contact is like throwing an axe). Not only does this advice mess with the way we should feel the weight of the racquet during the stroke, but it also limits the possibilities of what can be done to the ball.

Do the strings really grab the ball, twist it, and fling it? I like to think that if my hand can do it, my racquet can. On my serve, I am lifting the ball, pushing forward on it, and also twisting my hand (racquet) so that the strings are an extension of the base knuckle of my index finger, which is used to roll the ball through contact. (I try to get the body to re-engage close to the moment of impact so that this grabbing and twisting is a weighty one and not light and fluffy).

On many Federer forehands, you can see lift, drive, and close. The three combined must give better directional control than just two. Actually, power AND control. If three are better, how about four? I think this is where that leveraged pliability in the wrist comes in. It allows for enough grabbing of the ball to be able to put twisting influence on it. The use of longitudinal twist of the racquet can be a powerful influence, due to the difference in the radius of the handle compared to the racquet face.

This twisting can be used in conjunction with precisely locating the ball on specific parts of the stringbed and altering the angle of incidence between the strings and ball. On the serve, making contact just slightly below/left of center, combined with a twisting of the racquet in the counter-clockwise direction, is, in my opinion, the most efficient way to put spin on the ball. As contact moves further from the center, this twisting influence is even more pronounced.

Here, we come to the really crazy stuff, though. First of all, we can't get too far away from the center because power and stability will diminish. But I think that there is another reason we want to bring things back closer to center. SPIRAL. I visualize contact by taking it to the extreme: A spiraling tennis ball is shot into a spider web. As it makes contact and gets deeper into the backwards-stretching web, the spiral spin causes the web to twist all around the ball. Then, as the ball begins its rebound, the web not only propels it forward, but untwists at the same time, so that the ball rebounds with spiral spin.

(Here I would normally put a big disclaimer...I know the incoming ball can't have spiral spin because the bounce trues up the spin...I realize that the strings cannot twist....actual contact is only 1.235 nanoseconds or something like that....spiders can't seem to get along with each other, so we can't mass produce spider silk for tennis strings yet, etc. But I'm thinking that I'm mostly talking to you, Bottle, and I am just guessing that you are picking up what I'm putting down here.)

[bottle]

More on Spiralspin

Yes, I think your dramatic spider web video game image could help an unsure person understand spiralspin, and so can the image given by Cross and Lindsey, the authors of TECHNICAL TENNIS, the spin on a forward pass in football. If that's the only spin (not likely), the ball goes straight through the air but then kicks abruptly in direction of the spiraling the instant it contacts the court.

On a professional knife-thrower masquerading as a serving tennis player, I must confess I've used that analogy myself. But I've definitely seen a good server who's already twisting his arm as it extends from the elbow.

The best tennis player I ever compete against in this city (Winston-Salem) said he thought most good kick-servers don't know the term but stumbled on some spiral spin by trial and error.

I prepared a post on the subject but will not put it here until I consistently produce some really good kickers with it; otherwise, it's mere wishful thinking.

Yes, contact point A) for a serve sounds good where you put it. But what's the racket path from there? Tomorrow I'm going from A) to a spot on the top FRONT of the ball to see what happens. Of course I have unfolding rather than closing wrist which I suppose makes me some kind of freak.

On Federer forehand, I don't advocate closing of racket from forearm. I use forearm but I want racket to knife up rather than over. On this subject I recommend the forehand section of Rod Laver. He does both kinds. Rolling
over is much more high risk, it seems to me, especially since I really messed up my arm one time by trying to do it too hard.

On grab, twist and fling, I understand Cross and Lindsey as saying that scrape and bite is what actually happens, with all increase in spin ceasing at the moment of bite. Is the ball then flung? I guess so!

[bottle]

For People who find Learning Significant Kick very Difficult

Rain. Can't go to court to modify my ideas, wah-wah. Also, scanner won't work and don't have good drawing capacity and can't find the brilliant diagram "Six main ways to generate spin" on the web. An interactive feature, however, will supposedly make a deeper impression on you, dear reader, so you'll need a paper and pencil unless you have a copy of TECHNICAL TENNIS by Rod Cross and Crawford Lindsey in which case turn to page 127 (the three pairs of drawings are stacked there).

First drawing, topspin only (l); for second drawing, topspin & spiralspin, erase the vertical line and re-draw it a bit closer to left parenthesis, i.e., to left side of ball. Here's second pair: sidespin only (-) and sidespin & spiralspin for which you need to erase dash and replace it higher up. Third pair, topspin & sidespin (/) and topspin, sidespin & spiralspin, for which you need to erase line and redraw it closer to upper left corner. In each case the second line is parallel to the first but off-center.

We kick questers-- the rotorded ones-- need to flush from our consciousness all thought of players who already mastered kick. They don't exist. This is for us.

We use a provocative sentence of the authors as our strategic guide to our self-directed special education: "It is difficult to generate much topspin in a serve by swinging the racket upward as it contacts the ball."

So, dear reader, if you are like me, you can produce the straight up topspin
and even combined topspin & spiralspin serves of the first two drawings, just not in sufficient amount. Whether you're like me or not, let's eliminate the first two drawings, stop assessing their promise and simply forget them-- especially since there is a simpler, more viable way to go.

That is the second pair of drawings, which indicate a situation that anyone can handle. If you want sidespin, swipe sideways across the nose of the ball. If you want more sidespin, swipe harder. This holds true.

To add spiralspin is only slightly more difficult. You do what you just did only on the forehead of the ball. No immediate result? Then stick with it, altering the toss until balls both go in and KICK.

Still not pleased? Then stay at this level. Every morning at dawn, for the rest of your life, practice swiping side to side across the forehead of the ball, making all necessary, supporting adjustments until, perhaps or perhaps not, you can both put the ball in the service box and depend on a big, unpredictable kick.

Then and only then, go to the third set of drawings, which resemble the tennis magazine water torture drawings of clock faces we've seen so often. Typically, they show racket travel lines across them from 7 to 1:30 or 8 to 2 . That's for topspin & sidespin only, so why not eliminate this perennial source of suffering once and for all?

I'm recommending a program of three steps only: One, sidespin; two sidespin & spiralspin; three sidespin, spiralspin & topspin.

Note: Pure spiralspin characterizes forward passes and good punts in American football. Tennis spiralspin, when it occurs, is always combined with other spin.

To summarize then: KICK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TOPSPIN. SO GET SIDESPIN FIRST, SIDESPIN & SPIRALSPIN NEXT, AND ADD TOPSPIN LAST.

[ochi]

Bottle, you have Tony Trabert's "The Serve." Check out page 82, on the slice, in which he compares it to a hook in golf and a pitcher's outcurve. In part, he said: "This is accomplished by (1) contacting the ball with a fully extended racket arm and racket stretching in a fairly straight line into the court at impact, the racket's striking service toward the ball-arm side of the receiver's court; and (2) letting the swing actions immediately surrounding the actual strike (a) originate from a posture that sees no arch of the spine or flex in the knees and (b) end up with the body facing the net.

He also said -- and this reminder has helped me a lot to impart spin: "Accelerate the racket well beyond ball contact." I was hatcheting the ball. By accelerating way out and turning my feet to the right, as he said, I'm now imparting too much spin and not nearly enough pace. It sounds as if the strings are rasping the cover off the back of the ball. So I'm working on getting it just right, something I used to know how to do, but lost the knack.

How can one dispute what Trabert said about not arching the back or flexing the knees? He was a great player and student of the game. But a friend in my Wednesday night contract group has a vicious kicking topspin slice and does both to a clearly noticeable degree, just a few degrees each. It comes in fast, swerving, bounces short in the box, and then leaps high and to the right. I've only ever met two other guys who could do this. I have to move way in and hit or block it early to have any chance of making the return.

What do you think?

[bottle]

For Ochi: Slice Serves and Others

No, I don't have Tony Trabert's book (yet) so am glad you described its slice section so well. Thanks again by the way for putting me on to TECHNICAL TENNIS-- what an edition to any library. For slice I used to rely on SINISTER TENNIS, a thin, white book by Sterling Lord, left-handed literary agent for Mario Puzo and THE GODFATHER, who said if you're a righty you should toss six inches farther toward the net and six inches farther to the right. Then somebody in a magazine article urged both toss and swing toward right net post. Watching the Dennis Ralston film strips in this website got me swinging to where projection of singles sideline intersects with rear fence. But I go around and around on all of this stuff and my slice gets better then worse then better again (if I'm lucky). I'm tired of luck, though, want skill.

"Natural ability counts a lot," my golfer-dentist said. "I try not to think about that," I said through my just cleaned teeth undergoing inspection.

Right now I'm extending arm, triceptically on this one serve only, straight along baseline, then snapping wrist sidearm and rolling forearm and some elbow too so racket goose-necks in toward the net post. The strings rise and veer left at same time. Ball rotation is at least a little on its spiral axis. It grieves me terribly that from the deuce court I have ever hit serves out wide that then kicked the wrong way back into the court.

What Trabert says about straight spine seems great. And now I'll try no flex in legs for first time in a long time. But what are you doing, ochi, with your feet? Not moving them? Pivoting on left toes? Crossing with right foot? If I were still to flex and straighten on these attempts, it would be only enough to release the left foot for pivot in the air since I'm eager to protect my left knee. I'll experiment for alternatives since I want to hear the rasp and add soft slice to present hard. Also, I'll try some of Brian Gordon's upper arm twist to centrifugate loose arm most of the way straight before adding any triceps. Because, although the Ashe-like extension of open racket face followed by sidearm scaling of wrist and sharp roll the other way is producing fast, interesting results-- two balls which settling among the other balls sizzled and jumped over a small fence to the left in delayed fashion-- it's also hurting my already sensitized arm.

On other serves, I love the Cross and Lindsey demonstration of ruler rotating a coin on a table at different angles. "Pop-top" is not some separate natural phenomenon, it would appear, but topspin is topspin no matter where one administers it on the ball. A tall player is in perfect position, by birth, to egg the ball with a closed racket face in the horizontal direction no matter how tight his rotors are in the back fence direction. And tossing farther in front makes a longer path for acceleration, thus undoing or partially undoing the physical handicap. And I just beat my regular partner The Partridge 6-0, 6-0 once again (never used to happen). Don't worry though. An all round solid and very fast William and Mary graduate named Johnny Johnston cleaned my clock 6-3, 6-0 last Friday. I get another shot at him this Friday.

[ochi]

Bottle, unless I overlooked it, Trabert did not write about slice stance. Rather, he displayed it in sequential photos. He used the good old line-up-your-front-and-rear-toes-with-the-intended-target Pancho Gonzalez method on the deuce side, but didn't show the ad side. That is what I've been doing, but with my front foot parallel with the baseline. Serving to the ad side, I point my front foot back several degrees from the baseline; rear foot, too. This is deliberately exaggerated and experimental. I now must modify to get pace with a high degree of sidespin. I've gotta believe that it will work before long. Will let you know.

BTW, I used this ad side stance for flat serves on Sunday, and hit the outside line, or just inside it, many times. If the receiver read it, it didn't matter; the ball either did not come back, or was picked off by my partner, even though the guy has a good two-hand backhand. I don't care if the experts would disapprove; it worked for me. I did this last winter in a match with some early bird players. The opponent on the ad side had a terrific forehand and a reliable backhand, but he foolishly kept protecting his backhand by standing behind the outside corner. By turning my feet to the farther to the right, I could consistently serve to the corner and he would, in effect, jam himself every time.

As USPTA Master Pro Paula Scheb said in her "How to Hit A Wide Serve" tip in the latest Tennis magazine: "Don't worry if you telegraph your intentions. If you can consistently swing your opponents wide, you'll have the upper hand even if they notice your new stance." And you don't even need a lot pace. Sometimes lack of pace works better. It's certainly better for consistency, and for making the ball land closer to the net.

The drawing with Scheb's tip shows the old Trabert stance on the deuce side; it does not show how to change it for the ad side.

[bottle]

Excellent. I love hearing this informative first-hand testimony so different from the usual synthesis of all the observed experience of five hundred different tennis students. The generality the instructor comes up with, even when sharply perceptive and very good, has all too often-- alas!-- a certain canned-sounding quality, or as a black friend of mine said while we were sitting in Borders book store, Winston-Salem, "This place is missing something."

As for my own serves, I had a very good early morning. I was experimenting per our discussion and so lost serve twice-- my first two service games of the second set. Final score, 6-0, 6-2 . (Yes, from rowing at Brown I am an early morning athlete.) Mostly, I was serving to my opponent's backhand, not using the two slices which had to be totally unpracticed or still in developmental stage.

A great thing about being ahead in some informal match is that you can feel free to experiment, and should! So I tried the Trabert slice unrehearsed (no tilt and no flex) and hit something soft out wide. My opponent got to it but I won the point. On match point, however, I remembered Stan Smith's perfect advice: "The shot you practiced is the shot you play with." That would be hard slice using my normal body motion. My opponent, in deuce court again, barely touched the ball with the end of his frame.

"You're amazing!" he said.

I'm not, but that final serve did carry a bit of spiralspin.

[bottle]

Orchestration: Short One Handers and Two Kinds of Federfore

Option one: Extend arm to side. Roll wrist straight as hips go out to raise shoulders slightly backward. Rabbit punch. Counts: Three.

Option two: Extend bent arm to side. Roll wrist straight as hips go out to raise shoulders slightly backward. Rabbit punch with passively straightening arm. Counts: Three.

Longer backhands: Get arm parallel to sideline. Ease racket forward in some combination of lower and upper arm slow movement, i.e., sequence 1, sequence 2 or simultaneous. Counts: Five.

Closer to body Federfore: Mondo wrist back to absorb 200 pounds pressure at contact as if catching a baseball.

Farther from body Federfore: Mondo shortly before contact. Anti-mondo (straighten wrist) before contact also to hit ball WAY OUT to side, which indirection absorbs energy a different way while giving you Archimedes' lever, which means it's long enough, well fast enough in this case, for you to move the world.

[ochi]

Bottle, I played with and against our guy with the wicked serve last night, and asked him about it afterward while we drank beer. He's about 50, and doesn't get to play much because of traveling a lot. Doesn't get to practice at all. He said that when he was a young immigrant in Vancouver, he would hit serves in a huge gym, over and over and over, figuring it out. On his own, he developed his severe topspin with slight slice for the ad side, and severe slice with a lot of top for the deuce side.

He demonstrated. Up close, I could see how much he bent back for the topspin... a bit more than I thought. Very violent, fast upswing, of course.

By moving in maybe four feet, I was able to nail some of his serves from the ad side, before they exploded. The trouble was, I could never go inside out, only straight ahead, and once down the alley. Therefore, the net man was usually able to nail them right back. Still it felt good, really good, just to be able to return them at all.

I am never going to work on those serves. Bad for the lower back, I'm sure, and probably hell on one's shoulder. I am way too old to mess with them.

[bottle]

The beer afterward tastes especially good. I've certainly never solved those returns. But don't see them enough to give myself a chance. On the other hand a closed men's tournament of 24 topflight doubles players recently came to Winston-Salem, and every one of them had the kick serve you describe, the best of which was almost like Jared Palmer whom I saw up close on an outlying court in D.C. at Rock Creek Park one time.

I do think that TECHNICAL TENNIS gives plenty of great clues-- maybe the best ever?-- for solving this Rubik's Cube. First if you go the pop-top route and become confident enough with it you'll keep the ball down since you put a lid on it. This would be lot easier with a two-handed return, but may be possible with a one hander, too. If you go the slice route way of putting some lid on the ball as I'm planning to try tomorrow against Johnny Johnston, your timing will need to be spot on. Backhand slice happens to be my best shot in tennis but didn't work frequently enough last Friday against Johnny's added topspin. From the simplest and shortest of backswings I try to get the barrel going straight toward the net and then rip sideways by clenching my shoulder-blades together. Oscar says you can be turning your elbow down a little while you rip, with contact in top half of the strings. Turning elbow down has got to thrust top of the strings forward. Don't know whether Oscar ever bought into my passively straightening elbow or not, much less whether I can make everything work altogether, but I'll try.

As for delivering such a serve myself, I've tried much too much in my lifetime, but now TECHNICAL TENNIS is saying I needn't, that again I can put a lid on the ball-- since I'm tall-- and topspin is the same topspin no matter where administered. (From studying principles of literary criticism I know I don't have to say exactly what's in a book, can report instead on my reaction to the book if that's what I want, or do both, working the two things together--maybe best of all.)

In homage to Bill Tilden I don't belong to the USTA, which means I no longer get Tennis Magazine, but just drove down to Borders to read Paula Schweb's article on wide service and from there to the court to try her reduced stance idea, i.e, in deuce court draw up right foot to point left hip at target at the start. It worked somewhat but I went back to my more turned around stance same for all of my serves. The hard slice with a bit of spiralspin is just too interesting right now not to go with.

Spiralspin?! What's that? I've read most of tennis literature but never heard of spiralspin until last week.

Well, it's real and hugely important. (I'm thinking right now of the reviewer on the web who said that TECHNICAL TENNIS, the book, will never help anyone.
Boy am I glad I didn't listen.)

I've never thrown or punted a football particularly well but talked yesterday to a knowledgeable sports person. He agreed that the forward pass and the beautifully kicked punt rotate the same way, i.e., to the right for a right-hander. The difference is that the right fingers put the work on the right side of the ball, and the right instep puts the work on the left side of the ball.

Well, if a punter can do it, a right-handed tennis player can do it. He can put leftward spiralspin on a slice serve. Sidespin will swerve the ball through the air. Spiralspin will swerve the ball after the bounce. And if I had to choose
(I probably don't), I'm clear in my mind. Swerve out of the court after the bounce, please.

[ochi]

You didn't have to go to Borders, but to Tennis.com. The old World Tennis is out there now, too.