A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Cool.

[bottle]

Inverting Normal Sequence

O

The O above is either the moon or a tennis ball.

A question for which I didn't receive an answer fast enough, not even from Google: Is pronation or a pronated arm the safety device everyone talks about? If the latter, then one can pronate first and snap wrist second in a sliced serve out wide from the deuce court.

As I ran the experiment, I found that these serves didn't injure my already sensitized arm. In fact, they felt just as good as anything else. And combining sidespin, spiralspin, and poptop became easier, I think. The new serve worked not better but as well as the old. When in one day you come up with something new that works just as well as what you've done your entire life, shouldn't you give the new method a pretty good shake before you abandon it? Eventually, you may even keep it.

O

Take your pencil and draw arrows around the O indicating that some spiralspin toward the left fence will occur.

I was going to recommend that one point one's bent elbow in various directions until one finds the setting that makes the ball A) go in the service box and B), strike the target. However, in my case that was the previous elbow setting, quite far back. Smoothly twist elbow and forearm counter-clockwise to the outside as you use your triceps muscle to straighten the arm. (But don't let this triceptic extension habit infect your best other serves.) Keep wrist cocked until the last instant same as in golf and other ball striking sports.

Question: Gooseneck finish as before? Sure. One of the reasons wrist commentators give for pronation in the first place is that it lengthens and liberates overall hand motion. Well, this is true regardless of sequence. Because of pronation, racket butt doesn't run into the arm but slides past to the right.

[rosheem]

O

Smoothly twist elbow and forearm counter-clockwise to the outside as you use your triceps muscle to straighten the arm. (But don't let this triceptic extension habit infect your best other serves.) Keep wrist cocked until the last instant same as in golf and other ball striking sports.

Bottle, do you feel the racquet face twisting through contact on every serve?

For me, it feels like cradling a ball in the stick pocket in lacrosse.

The strings make contact at an angle. Then, there is hand and forearm rotation which helps to rotate the face angle while the ball is on the strings. Selective acceleration and pushing in specific directions and on specific parts of the ball is what creates the spins. The hand can rotate more slowly than the entire arm, which enables prolonged contact and delayed acceleration. As the ball exits, the face angle is being twisted away from it.

Curious to know if you've felt it this way before.

I was a volleyball player. The way I get the body involved is pretty natural, but this racquet action took me about a year and a half to figure out. Now I can hit the twist serve short and wide to the deuce court, or slice it and run it off the deuce court, or kick it wide to the ad court.

However, the most fun serve is the one without kick to either side. On this one, I aim to slice the ball in half vertically, leading with the elbow and with the butt of the knife like knife thrower. Stay on edge until the last possible moment and then open the stringbed to accept the ball while turning and pushing straight throught the original line so that at racquet halfway, the strings are perpendicular to the target and the intent of the entire swing is all going straight through to the target. End up feeling like flinging the ball off the thumb edge of the racquet face.

The key is that while the racquet rotates through contact, the momentum of the sweet spot never diverts from a line going straight through the ball to the target. The reason it's fun is because this is the serve I can land on a dime...exactly where I intend to, consistently. It has spin and thus energy and some good bounce, but no significant sideways motion.

Just wondering if you've tried this or know the feel I am talking about.

[bottle]

Rosheem-- Sounds like you're playing at a pretty high level for someone who hasn't been at the game for long. That's ENTIRELY if rarely possible. I saw it before and grabbed the guy as my doubles partner before anyone else realized how good he was.

And I've long been interested in volleyball serve compared to tennis serve. My ex played volleyball on an undefeated joint Brown-Rhode Island School of Design mixed gender team that competed against other colleges and universities. Though not particularly big, she was known for her awesome, idiosyncratic, no brain serve (quite a trick when you consider that she had a LOT of brains).

When she turned to tennis, she just hit first serves. For that reason the area pros rated her at 3.0 . After she tore up the northwestern Virginia leagues, however, the ladies of Middleburg (the snobby horse and tennis place) formally complained and she was re-rated at 4.5 .

She was much too busy with her painting and natural science illustration ever to work on her tennis other than an occasional hit with me. "Bot is beating his wife," Jim Kacian, the club pro, used to say. Mostly, he was right. But she saw the court like a canvas-- you could ask the college varsity player she defeated in one of her open championships in two different towns-- for which she won a free head heavy white Prince racket she didn't like.

She would laugh at your super articulations just as she laughed at mine. When I made some great discovery she would say, "Oh yeah, I think that's what I've been doing all along."

That said, I do believe in the power of tennis articulation, e.g., your attempts to communicate "feel" or your great description of a first serve. And to answer your specific question, one who plays enough has probably felt everything. It's doubtful, though, that any two players systematize exactly the same service patterns. Once you've succeeded in pretty fully saying something, however, you may be ready to move in a new direction. If so, don't be shocked if the new idea obliterates everything you thought you knew. A capacity and tolerance and even taste for uncertainty requires Richard P. Feynman type guts.

Sure I feel my racket twisting out on a good slice serve wide. But on the "everything ought to be challenged" theory, I just found, I believe, a perfectly good alternative with its own potential for developing or re-capturing ancient "feel." Contrary to popular belief, the notion of "carve" on a slice serve is not discredited. The trick is to do it with wrist snap (or maybe wrist "bend"). The world contains a lot of mysteries.

As for pointing the bent elbow toward the ball for a good first serve, well, I was doing that until a 5.5 player saw me hitting against a wall and asked me for a match. The match wasn't much. The guy was an ox. He wasn't Nadal but he was a Nadal. He hit more topspin than anyone I've ever encountered including USPTA and USPTR teaching pros and a number one college varsity player and Tony Pearman, third-ranked senior in Great Britain.

When it was over, he praised some volleys and overheads, but said he couldn't stand my serve, and since for some reason I was receptive, he pulled my elbow way back and pantomimed me hitting the upper right corner of the ball.

If any of this interests you-- or maybe you SHOULD be perfectly content with your present flat serve-- you could study Brian Gordon's articles in this website-- particularly the part with the animated barrel where he analyzes pre-load of upper arm twist along with another fantastic animation for that. Elbow has to stay back a certain interval then, I think. But all of this is and should be up to you and no one else.

And who would I be to tell you much if one of your sentences has application in the future. That would be, "The hand can rotate more slowly than the entire arm, which enables prolonged contact and delayed acceleration." That's a new idea. I've always been at full throttle and never considered anything else and am excited about trying this.

Thanks.

[rosheem]

Once you've succeeded in pretty fully saying something, however, you may be ready to move in a new direction. If so, don't be shocked if the new idea obliterates everything you thought you knew. A capacity and tolerance and even taste for uncertainty requires Richard P. Feynman type guts.

I know exactly what you mean. When I look back at some of the old messages I've written to myself, I have to laugh. Some have subjects like, "I'VE DISCOVERED THE KEYS TO THE TENNIS UNIVERSE."

New ideas are always obliterating everything I thought I knew.

[bottle]

New Backhand and Service Variations

Most persons thinking about tennis technique are either too detailed or not detailed enough. By crossing both lines all the time, I'm ever hopeful of finding the most productive balance between the two, which will happen, occasionally, through persistence (which can happen all the time) and inspiration (which can't happen all the time, but you can up the frequency by staying relaxed and open to anything).

Short One Hand Backhand

Straightening the arm early and to the side and then rolling wrist straight as upper body gets taller opens a new variation. This back-swing has been so short-- almost non-existent-- that one can hit the shot from start to finish with rabbit punch only.

If one takes the straight arm back just a bit farther-- though to the side and therefore still very short-- one can determine to hit the ball at the cusp between end of rabbit punch and beginning of an arm rip sideways. The rabbit punch now becomes very good at putting racket on outside of the ball. There are big differences among hitting ball at beginning, middle, or end of the rabbit punch.

Chopping a Kick Serve

Pancho Gonzalez is said to have done this: i.e., he'd wait for the ball to bounce high on purpose, then serve it back cross-court on an incredible short angle just over the net. Was this really a serve as I just suggested or a chop or a drop-shot? All three: a chop-drop.

I've only pulled this off three or four times in my life and all in one tournament match, which I lost in a tie-break at the end of the third set because I couldn't master this essential shot (one could call it a "chip"), and with two certified teaching professionals watching and continuously yelling to my opponent: "The kick, Dad. Don't use anything else!"

The best explanation I can find, both of essential technique and intrinsic difficulty, is "high backhand" on page 113 of the collector's book RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS by John M. Barnaby or on page 73 of ADVANTAGE TENNIS or on page 82 of GROUND STROKES IN MATCH PLAY by the same author. Barnaby's explanations are elaborate, beautiful, complex, intriguing and tantalizing, just like this special shot. A version in which I use rabbit punch to straighten passive arm is belatedly beginning to work, although I haven't seen a good kick serve yet so can't know for sure.

This shot, I would have to say, has taken the longest time of them all to mature: about 30 years. Maybe somebody can now take it from me in five minutes.

So what's the deal? Well, from normal slice preparation with bent arm send barrel butt up to the outside a little and forward but loop it back right and down so it-- the barrel butt-- points down now. Time to review. All of the preceding must be done in slow but rhythmic fashion. And it's all an arm rainbow with elbow bent throughout. Add this: Keep your head (i.e., the human head) perfectly still as racket butt goes up comfortably higher than where the ball will be. But lean backward to add a smidgen of body heft to the downward travel. And just as strings reach the ball clench your shoulder-blades together (ze rabbit punch). After that, good luck.

Barnaby's version-- the one I can't do-- employs longitudinal rather than lateral body muscles. He bows deeply from the hips, which then slides his
left leg forward toward the net as natural consequence.

Perfect downward chop is what you see from back of ball (l) . But this is what the same shot would look like from the left side if you could stand in two places at once (\) . You can't, so you have to visualize, and with the condition that the bottom of the slanting line is farther toward the net than the top.

Slice Serves Out Wide in Deuce Court

Alternative one goal: sidespin, spiralspin and topspin. Ball image:
(\) ( ) . Re-draw slant in space to right so top of line ends at TDC (top dead center). Beginning of slant is more than halfway up the right parenthesis. The rise is less than in the ball to the left. You take a shallow rising piece of upper right quadrant in other words. And toss toward net post. And extend arm with triceps along baseline and crack wrist straight in same direction then twist elbow and forearm both to create the racket path you illustrated in space to right. By the time you've done this the strings are even with net post, which is still way back! FYI, I am 6' 4" tall.

Alternative two goal: sidespin, spiralspin and topspin. Ball image:
(l) ( ) . The illustration on the left is just to get you going. Re-draw the vertical line closer to the right parenthesis. This is what you can see. But imagine same shot as seen from right side. Ought to look like this (/). In other aspects this shot is same as the first. But this time you twist elbow and forearm as you extend from elbow, using triceps muscle again. The wrist is now free for a full swipe.

Note: Even when you fail to achieve one of the three spins, these hard serves can be very good. Use the alternative that will win the point.

[bottle]

Waterfall Variation, Chipped Return of Kick Serve

Dispense with loop. Dispense with rabbit punch and passive elbow. Take racket straight up in front of you very high. The strings will look as if they are about to hit the ball very deep to the opponent's backhand corner.

Use gravity but assist it in five muscular ways: 1) Slightly compress knees, 2) Gently extend arm from the elbow, 3) Gently extend wrist, 4) Slightly jack-knife
from hips to add a little forward weight, 5) Pivot hips so left foot (on dead leg) slides forward and racket changes direction producing the short angle cross-court you want.

Note: A chip is a chop-- there's no difference. This post is response to, admiration of, and hope for perfect emulation of John M. Barnaby's instructions and the two line illustrations by George Janes at page 82 of GROUND STROKES IN MATCH PLAY, USTA Instructional Series, Doubleday, 1978.

[bottle]

New Serves for the Rotorded

Wind elbow all the way forward toward the ball. Now "pronate" both elbow and forearm (though Brian Gordon wants people only to use that verb for forearm. Pronation of elbow centrifugates the loose arm straight just as surely as when elbow is kept back with upper arm parallel to court and perpendicular to intended throw). Don't let elbow wander off to the right during its fast, final turn.

Now crack the wrist all the way to gooseneck position. When did you leave the ball? Was it when wrist was sending the hand downward? You can do that if you are tall. The topspin you administer is pop-top. You may use the Chet Murphy image of a clown face on the ball: You hit its chin, then its nose, then its forehead all in one motion. ("Won't work!" you cry. "Contact is only four thousandths of a second." But Lindsey and Cross, colleagues of Howard Brody, most fastidious of all tennis scientists, put the figure at five thousandths of a second. And they put service tract while racket is on ball at from eight to twelve inches.)

Try my first two service ideas here only straighten the arm this time with the triceps muscle instead of passive centrifugation. Try one where you don't pronate elbow at all until arm is straight and racket is practically on the ball. Elbow pronation then assists forearm pronation through contact.

Winding elbow all the way forward until it points at tossed ball is a unique effect disparaged by many. I call it "The Angie reverse helicopter system"
after an old Vic Braden VHS where he had the young girl Angie, among others, serve while blindfolded at top of a huge bounce from a trampoline. (Wonder if Angie still does all this stuff?) When Angie wasn't blindfolded and was on solid ground, he grabbed her arm and twisted everything counterclockwise (if you were in the sky, looking down). Then, with arm fully compressed at elbow, which pointed at ball like a knife, he immediately started twisting everything clockwise. Never made any sense till now as I turn seventy.

I'm for adding this body of new serves, which offers still more undiscovered variations, to the complete repertoire for rotorded serving started here in recent posts. Stalwart serves include the two hard serves out wide from the deuce court. The total racket path gains length from its start along the baseline. The delayed wrist variation works well down the center from the ad court, I've noticed. I don't understand why but am grateful. Also, the keep-the-elbow-back serves. Only when racket is in flight toward the ball will this natural throw permit the whole arm to snake out to the far forward contact point that all rotorded servers should have begun to love by now, possibly through independent determination without my help.

Note: Dennis Ralston is a rotorded server, at least in the great clips of his low slice out wide in this website. I don't know how far he got the racket tip down in his youth-- farther, no doubt-- but I'm basing my judgment first hand on what I see.

In perfect compensation for not getting the racket very far down, he tosses farther in front than almost any of the other servers you will read about. And that is my whole point. Rotorded servers, same as anybody, need a long runway to the ball.

[bottle]

First Strike Capability

Today I thought I'd like the forward rotorded phylum serve where once elbow is knifed toward ball, you combine triceptic extension with straightening of wrist to raise the snakehead, I mean the rackethead, higher than the ball, and then sink your fangs in the ball's skull through combined pronation of elbow and forearm.

That serve, however, proved mediocre. The serve that sizzled had arm turning one way and then the other-- if one remembered to maintain double closing wrist action once the arm was straight and pronated: up before down. With this latter serve one wouldn't be impotent and therefore wouldn't need to occupy Afghanistan.

[ochi]

Bottle, I think you might have a winner for the next annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest there. You have outdone yourself.

Here is my entry: "Howling gusts of wind and torrents of cold rain left the courts of Chubb Park littered with wet, slippery leaves reminiscent of the back alleys of Jersey City and Hoboken after thousands of Shop-Rite bags broke loose from the boxes that spilled out of a tractor-trailer driven by a bipolar highjacker with a sick sense of humor."

Lucky we had a big leaf-blower in the morning!

[bottle]

Sunday Service Ceremony

Excellent! I'm going to feel very underwritten here, after that.

The best serve-- the only possible addition to repertoire-- was, this Sunday, Angie reverse helicopter (see earlier post on Angie's trampoline-driven blindfolded experience at the hands of Vic Braden).

The serve's intrinsic set of discoveries includes this knowledge: Wind-up is passive reaction to body movement, but once the twisting reverses, everything is pro-active. There is no choice between triceptic extension and passive assist from twisting elbow; in fact, you do them both simultaneously, and if you abruptly stop the elbow on purpose the twisting forearm can almost bounce against its physical limit without harm as wrist finally accelerates hand somewhat from left to right up and down.

[ochi]

Overwriting for fun and sanity

Ho, Bot! If you want true inspiration for fun overwriting, go to www.bulwer-lytton.com. There's a lot of great wacky stuff there. Poor Bulwer-Lytton. That one wonderful paragraph is perenially used as an example of awful writing, but I love it. I am tired of the boring AP Stylebook (so was Jimmy Breslin), and have always thought Hemingway's ultra-simplicity an affectation. So, keep breaking the envelope of acceptable tennis writing, until it becomes Finnegan's Wake. Then throw us a change-up of clarity.

[bottle]

Bulwer-Lytton, Onward and Upward

It's all true and I've been there and explored (!) and bookmarked the site. My only fear is too much affected clarity at the wrong time, perhaps in the sentence after this one, which shall be about wrist motion in the Angie reverse helicopter serve, post # 251 .

Remember, exceptionally intelligent dear readers open to anything tennis, you're whirling your elbows (forget that you're also firing your triceps. You are doing that but forget it!).

The WHIRL of elbow provides a force girdle of support for a second WHIRL, this time of the forearm once rest of arm has straightened and stopped.

So it was back to unfolding wrist for me rather than the closing wrist I mistakenly brought to this particular serve.

The next development then was initial, way-around stance. The splayed feet typical of this formation lead to natural, spiraling rotation mid-air.

But Chris Lewit suggested retarding this rotation for a kick serve. The best way of doing that I've been able to figure out is keeping the two feet parallel to each other. Your opponents may notice the subtle distinction but mine are legally blind.

The back foot is WAY ROUND but parallel now. This gets you firing your gut more than ever-- very good.

You just have to figure out how far.

The parallel knees permit more thrusting, lowering knee travel toward the right fence, which means you get farther under the ball with more leftward lean at which time after some big body stuff you whirl your elbow and then your wrist, either unfolding it or keeping it where it is-- whichever works best.

[bottle]

Today I'm Trying to be like Mr. Laconic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8v_qQ3FHys&feature=player_embedded

[ochi]

Good, interesting post, Bot. And it gave your frenzied tennis mind a deserved rest.

I'm tempted to work on attempting to develop a kick serve, but if I hit the couch for a little while, the urge will pass over. I'm still trying to get back the severe, low-bouncing freak swerve-serve I once had for a while. Man, I miss that.

I have told several instructors that if they can hit a 90% pure slice, I will gladly pay the present exhorbitant fee for a lesson. Not one could do it. Maybe there is something on You-Tube?