A New Year's Serve

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English Wafers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

Take idea at 3:14 of video and combine with a heaping dollop of crushed ginger-- Irma Bombeck or Julia Childs or http://www.historicfood.com/Wafer.htm along with post # 1050 here for a big league pitcher’s full windup.

Instead of integrating scapular adduction in forward motion per usual, employ SA as the starter motor in an old-fashioned automobile designed for the leg-impaired, the sciaticized and the rotorded.

The toss will fall, crowding you. Then and only then and before doing anything else employ the scapular adduction as part of the arm throw half demonstrated by the Hungarian teenager Naomi Totka (at 3:14 point of video as indicated). STRIKE BOTTOM OF BALL halfway up this throw with arm still partially bent.

From contact, i.e., as strings come off of the ball, fire the rest of the extensors (baby!). That would be both legs plus straightening and cartwheeling of the back with all of this simultaneous and intended to prolong upwardness of the snap.

Aim at Totka’s target only transpose it to ad court since most human beings are right-handed. Note: Left toes may remain in contact with court while other leg kicks at right fence.

Has one tried this yet? No. When one does, if one’s highest standards aren’t met, return immediately to the video at the beginning of this post.

In today’s featured match we have Manny Dullard (“Hit the same old boring shot”) vs. Stanley Varioso (“Most players have four or five recipes. Me, I use 500”).

Outcome? Beyond prediction.

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More Fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPLPV_EcG4&feature=related

I think there’s fun to be had and maybe an eventually good kick serve for oneself just in witnessing all the possible explanations of it.

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Reflection

Maybe no one person can ever say everything that needs to be said about kick serve. So I'm going to evaluate the last three opinings-- from Pat Dougherty, Tom Avery, and myself to see if any information in one explanation combines with any other in a startling way.

Additionally, I'm taken by how, the more intelligent someone's view appears, the greater the percentage of abysmally stupid reponses in the kite's tail of comments that follows each video. Avery fares well in this regard-- he draws little enemy fire. Maybe that's because his intelligence is so "homey" that it conceals its edge. People like him except for one abysmally snarky person who thinks Tom talks too much. That dope needs to learn that if you don't encourage people to speak in a loose, unguarded way they never will reveal their secrets to you.

And I'm sure that, personally, I need to unsay a point or two since "In science, you're always wrong or you're half right" according to Craig B. Mello, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine.

1) In saying, after seeing the Dougherty video for the first time, that arm still has bend in it (it's bent but extending) at contact, I was lucky to find immediate reinforcement in the Avery video. But I'm less pleased right now with the idea I had of starting bent arm throw with scapular adduction which I probably want to save till later if I use it at all in this violent but slow ball with maximum spin "touch" shot. Naomi Totka at least does nothing other than hammer straightforwardly in the exercise she demonstrates, with Dougherty pointing out the "compactness" of this little arm move which she's learned to use to generate huge racket head speed. Does hammering elbow hold back the possible extension so it releases all at once?

2) Tom Avery wants us to almost hit the ball with the frame then catch it on the strings continuing in the same direction. This contradicts all those who think there's a big change of direction just then. That happens later (though very soon).

3) I'm open to earlier leg drive than I advised at least as an option.

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Figure Eight

Naomi Totka's sick kick serve is a good example of a figure eight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

What I now see, putting aside for the moment my uncertainty about when/whether/where scapular adduction does/should occur in a Naomi or Naomi-like serve, is a certain lowering and then raising of the elbow, a small "double-clutch" as Don Brosseau might say.

The raising of the elbow corresponds to the hammered lowering of the elbow in Naomi's 3.14 video point upside down demonstration.

Pat Dougherty reveals to us that, at this particular juncture just before contact, we must attack the ball more vigorously no doubt than we have done in our whole life.

One must break down something difficult to understand it-- in this case compressed whirl with perhaps minimal arm extension before contact and pronounced triceptic arm extension then combined with ulnar deviation past the ball creating an English wafer or surgeon's incision in the air.

This climax enables one to scrape the ball thinly yet powerfully since one has just authorized oneself to use the forearm to brush and yes brush fiercely upward at contact perhaps for the first time. You wanna yell?-- exhale now!

Would imagining a ghost ball just above the real ball and to the right and forward of it so racket glances up both inside backsides help? I think so. But where should this happen? Question too much about this-- "What's forward?"-- and you may grow dizzy. Upward is better than forward anyway in this serve.

Pronation or turn-out of the racket or "usual catastrophe" or whatever this action is best termed is now permitted to happen after that and only after that.

But we must put all this stuff together having taken it apart.

Figure eight seems good overall structure for doing that.

But if scapular adduction can go down or around or up, choose up. And if the upwardness still isn't powerful enough, try the up down up vertical stirring of the elbow one can see by clicking repeatedly on the 0.53 number to give just one example. Does the elbow drop down from gravity on bone ball within the shoulder housing or with shoulder housing flex-- which? In either case you can lift elbow higher than you probably used to during the toss. From drop the elbow then reverses direction and hammers upward, maybe forward a bit, no?

The first time you try this, you may be amazed at how far around the elbow can align. And at how things appear to work better with pinky off racket butt to increase range and weaken the total finger contribution. If I had more guts I'd go with two fingers off.

Within the overall loops of the figure eight there is a rather small straight back, straight upward/forward movement as if of a pool cue (which is always about pendulum-like elbow movement unless you are a champion Philippino pool player doing sidearm stuff for really weird spins). Everything is not only backward but upside down. The domed sky is the pool table.

Seemingly, this timed scapular-retraction-scapular-adduction-sequence cocks and uncocks the elbow.

This total move, although not as dramatic as Andy Roddick's double-clutch, is a close cousin.

Note: The figure eight exercise presented in YouTube video by Don Brosseau uses regular service motion with the addition of a right-hander's clockwise curlecue down left so that one can replicate continuously ad infinitum.

Victoria Azarenka did this exercise as she waited for the coin toss in her recent finals match.

When Naomi Totka performs her "sick kick," she proceeds right past the curlicue point and returns the racket all the way up to where the racket first bent up, thus signifying a sufficiency of racket head momentum.

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More Possible Ingredients Identified

"Inside out topspin is all that kick is."-- Pat Dougherty

100 degrees of shoulders turn takes the right-hander's shoulders to MORE than perpendicular to target.

The arm action during this, even after it has gone up and right and returned down and left creates a feeling of total divergence from the hitting shoulder, i.e., ends to the right of it-- before it then swoops upward to where it wound up to in the first place.

I guess I'm fascinated by 360 degrees wherever I see it.

If the full 360 degrees doesn't easily happen for you...well, maybe you haven't generated enough relaxed racket head speed and need to go back to the drawing board. It's possible.

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Rotorded Kick: Use Totka, Dougherty and Avery Explained Mechanics, Pinky to Side

The tennis neologism "rotorded" means "having less flexibility in one's rotor cuff than Andy Roddick or Pete Sampras."

There are of course varying degrees of rotordation.

In an extreme case such as my own, one is supposed to quit one's kickerish goal forever and employ different spin for second serves. ("Well, you didn't get it by now.")

This approach is A) immoral and B) no fun.

The beginnings of effective rotorded kick are located on page 75 of TESTED TENNIS TIPS, 1978, by Bill Murphy and Chet Murphy under the title "Serve a Modified Twist."

This primitive promotive relies on subject swinging a bent elbow for almost horizontal racket attitude at contact.

A more modern but nevertheless effective way is to start with the seven downward chops of Naomi Totka starting at 3.14 of the following video. Get cursor on 3.14 and click repeatedly after each series of all seven chops, because, rotorded person, believe me, you really want to learn this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

Invert this exercise and incorporate it in a kick serve as Totka does.

For anti straight arm contact mechanics take Dougherty's suggestion in same video and Tom Avery's more elaborate explanation at 3.41, 5.02, 4.11 (watch elbow straightening past contact) and most importantly 8.01 in the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPLPV_EcG4&feature=related

Do you hear Tom starting at 8.01? "snap the wrist and forearm up..."

Do those explicitly stated words register with you, esteemed reader, lodging in your brain?

"AND FOREARM" !!!!!

My one other idea for today, to give pinky a ride, is for the most rotorded of the rotorded.

They may take the pinky off the racket but for purposes of concealment delay this act until a natural point partway through the serve.

At first, as someone tries to emulate the 360-degree forward racket work of Naomi Totka, he may hurt his pinky as racket butt grinds against it.

Remedy: Hold pinky farther to the side. The pinky won't get hurt. There isn't a rose bush growing on the baseline of most tennis courts.

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For First and Second Serve but Mostly First

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjXJGsRtm08

[gzhpcu]

What I have always envied are the "natural" players, (like my hero Pancho Gonzalez, for example), who, without any traing, any analysis, just went out and did it close to perfection.

We mortals are engaged in an never-ending quest for perfection, analyzing every biomechanical nuance, in the hope of having finally solved the riddle (while the actual execution of what we find remains very elusive...). Somewhat like Sisyphus...

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Or Tantalus standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit always eluding his grasp and the water always receding before he can take a drink.

The fruit however seems close now, a controlled low toss.

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The Serve Doctor's Dilemma

Yes, I'm one, too, and so is every tennis player. And we can't do much about water running out of the pond without 10 locusts of earth-moving equipment and top of the line materials like Pontius Pilate's concrete that already could cure underwater to make a pier.

But a toss that rises then falls then rises again? I see that as overly morbid and fanciful. So, since we are indeed faced with a dilemma, let's limit the problem-solving and direct our energy solely upward at the fruit.

We'll give it to Tuesday. Then we'll have to bring in a carpenter, somebody who's hammered nails every day of his life.

He's got to have the answer about how and how much the arm opens as the elbow drives down.

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Pancho's Training and "Analysis"

A natural athlete, sure, but who isn't? And he definitely was lucky enough not to have had formal training. But he didn't use analysis? I don't know about that. I remember a TV broadcast with Chris Schenkel from Hilton Head where Pancho explains how Virginia Wade's service motion allows for the occasional errant toss. And I've heard for a long time about how, during his early development, he wandered from court to court looking for the best strokes to emulate. And his written instruction whether collaborative or not is very sharp.

Not a real difference here. Of course he was physically exceptional. What I'm trying to say is that he worked more through synthesis, characteristically, could take in a whole stroke at once and then make judgments, etc.

No reason that, having shopped among the available tennis voices and views, we can't emulate him IN THIS.

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A New Service System Based on 8's

What I won't do: 1) change from right hand to left hand, 2) change from platform to pinpoint stance, 3) change gender.

All other changes are fair game. Question: Is this process desperate? Is it medical and remedial in nature?

No, no and no.

My readers could cite a thousand ways in which I am not the reincarnation of Pancho Gonzalez.

In one significant way, however, we are exactly the same, viz., when we see something in tennis we admire, we may go for it.

In my case, that would be the kick serve of Naomi Totka. Here's the video again that caused my burst of enthusiasm. Underneath it is a string of comments which taken together became more positive yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

We, you, one, me, I-- it's all the same-- we start with Totka's finish up past her opposite shoulder. Here's where we'll create the artificial curlicue that enables us to perform linked Totka sick kick figure eights until the novelty at the end of time.

Figure eight or moebius strip, which is a 3D figure eight, i.e., the loops have depth, is pretty much the same idea, and if someone has trouble understanding this, they can watch Victoria Azarenka during a coin toss.

Next, we'll work on flat serve figure eights putting the curlicue down by the left leg which some of us may have done all along.

As to slice, I want a slice specific figure eight as well and think I'll put the curlicue halfway between the other two curlicues for now. You'll see me performing all three figure eights as I wait for heads or tails.

Then, once I've added the Roddick-Davenport double-clutch combined with better hammering technique (if anyone has trouble learning this, that anyone should bring in a hundred carpenter-consultants but a good shop teacher may do), this new service game will be ready for launch.

Note: I won't even think about concealment until I can get all three balls to do what I want.

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How I Think it Works Today

Totka-like kick, I mean.

The elbow goes down, then it comes up TO THE OUTSIDE to a VERY HIGH POSITION. At that point Totka is ready to hammer, and she does hammer, but the hammering elbow does not drop as in Totka's seven special demonstrations, because the hitting shoulder drives upward just then.

My point: The elbow is trying to come down for the third of three times but can't.

Immediate benefit is possible.

But, driving shoulder also goes forward, not just upward. So, does elbow independently go forward and then get wedged backward by the whirling shoulder? Does elbow independently fly forward as it tries to dive downward, thus keeping up with the whirling shoulder?

We'll find the answer in Chapter Twelve bankruptcy if Uncle Wiggily doesn't have a sciatic attack.

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Double-Clutch and Pinky off End Throughout the Three 8's

Elbow up three times per 8 .

1) Down and UP finishing with bending of arm to a right angle.

2) Down in universal direction every time but UP in one of three possible directions.

There is time for a good hips-shoulders sequence. Spiraling hips equal all cocking of the arm. Shoulders however are saved for the hammer.

Rotorded servers, with whom my sympathies most lie, should try a return to the monumental hitting elbow of John Newcombe. That means taking elbow up higher than is regarded healthy during the toss. You wouldn't want to hit the ball with elbow that high. Arm would pull loose from its socket, or at least would if you were a plastic doll in a Vic Braden video. But little u-i won't take that chance. Our hammering, partially driven by downward scapular adduction, brings elbow to the normal place.

3) DOWNWARD IS UPWARD??? How can something go downward at this point? Doesn't make sense. Beep-beep, there goes the road-runner at bottom of the cliff. Well, shoulders are whirling up at the same time. So what's the sum of the actions, a positive or minus number? Two inches up.

I have to write like this before I go to the court at which time I will be swamped with new sensory impressions which might interfere with my concept.

Signed, Wile E. Coyote

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Reversal of Notion about Third 8

No, by now I think the elbow only goes up twice, and the second time, Naomi Totka is demonstrating the hammering or tomahawking motion she did as a 7-part exercise but upside down.

In addition as elbow rises upward for the second time, it curves to the side rather than following a linear path. Before, I took what I saw too literally, and I am first to admit it. The chopping down with the elbow was very straight. The chopping up with the elbow in the actual serve is on a curved path somewhat like a hook shot in basketball but for a very short path.

The shoulders meanwhile are combining end over end and horizontal rotations.