A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Re # 1080

Note how Amina's rear heel comes up before it turns in the figure eight exercises.

Then, when she actually serves, the front foot, flat until then, slightly leaves the ground and turns in mid-air.

Me, I'm holding the racket loosely at all times and with pinky off of the butt rim. I'm saying to myself, "You may be using gravity for your down and up, but, backward turn (a stretch actually) cannot be too slow or too long." In fact, I'm assigning the first half of this body turn to also facing the chest up at the sky. This can work well with toss, which can operate either in sequence or simultaneous with the forcing of the chest up at the sky.

With this new and early openness to the sky complete, the shoulders are then to wind back-- horizontally-- a short piece more.

Finally, I'm experimenting with stance more turned around than the conventional place, and with revival of a lower initial raising of the racket approximately to waist height.

The increased power this immediately produced on flat and slice serves I attribute to my rotordedness. If you don't have a big range of arm motion available to yourself, you should manufacture some. Its harder to counter body with perfect timing when your arm motion is minuscule.

For the out wide kick serve I have to remember to swing four times harder. Timing is everything, which means that, to swing harder, every single part of the serve has to go harder with no loss of proportion anywhere.

[bottle]

Toward Totka-like Kick

The ball has come down three inches when Naomi Totka hits it. The toss-hit rhythm is the same as for Amina. Toss, hit is rapid, flowing sequence.

Internal rotation, like a Ricky Fowler golf shot, is mostly what one practices when one forms figure 8's for these serves. "Internal rotation" in this case indicates power loading and releasing from the transverse stomach muscles. Evidence: the front foot stays flat. The back heel rises but doesn't turn in any direction (specifically in Amina's serve which is more of a platform) then finally does turn out. And the front foot finally does leave the court (barely) and turn to the inside in mid-air, but that's in the actual serve.

What's happening? Release of the tummy bands before the hips are finally allowed to whirl? Perfect understanding here is perhaps inadvisable, but I saw documents in which Don Sutton, Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina were encouraged to express themselves on the subject of pitching mechanics, and each of these guys was 5000 times more complicated than I am.

Today, I'd like to stay even more simple than usual. I must assert, however, that front knee stays directly over front foot for most of the serve. That knees don't turn in a backward direction but do, at the end, in a forward direction. And that the upper muscles of one's chest front pull and release very late.

A rule of hand for evaluating how-to-serve videos. Look at the circulation figure, i.e., see how many people before you have viewed the video. Then choose the videos in which this number is relatively low. Those are the ones that are apt to be most valuable, as in the case of Mary Carillo and other tennis-knowledgeable persons at ESPN making a special trip to the Bollettieri tennis camp:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgdXawklcZk&feature=relmfu

[don_budge]

The Chest...as a focal point.

I think it is interesting that you have used the chest in your discussion of the serve and the man from the Bollettieri camp used it in his discussion as well.

One of the comments below the video is a guy suggesting that the "chest to the contact point which is towards the sky!"

It seems to me that the service motion is an upside down golf swing in some respects, in many respects in fact...even though the ball is "teed" up at the top of the swing instead of on the ground. There are some rather compelling similarities in the sense that there is a backswing and forward swing and a very important transition point between the two swings where ideally gravity plays a pivotal role, addressing the ball is of significant importance and both motions are rather complex biomechanical chain reactions where each action is dependent upon the action that takes place before it. A beautiful golf swing and a beautiful serve both seem to have an intricate sense of rhythm...usually somewhat slow in nature with an explosive finish.

But back to the point about the chest. One key "swing thought" that I have used through the years in my golf game is one that was suggested to me by one of my Swedish golf mates here...a crusty dude named Sten, which translates to stone in Swedish. Sten suggested to me that one of the keys to hitting good bunkers shots was to "keep the chest on the ball". This thought really helped my bunker play and I continued to use it throughout the rest of my game from the driver to my putter. There is something very fundamental about this thought...something about balance and keeping the head still while rotating and so on and so forth.

I suggested to a couple of students today to try to point there chests to the sky at the highest point in their service motion. It didn't seem to hurt anything.

[bottle]

Terrific. And positive. And provocative.

Listen. I've heard plenty of pejorative stories about the Bollettieri camp through the years, some of them from Andre in his autobiography (though he always has had plenty of good things to say about Nick, too, and one should never forget that).

But I received an e-mail once from a teaching pro who introduced himself as an international tour technician, and it was either he or some other pro who complained that kids would come to Bollettieri with obvious technical flaws that nobody would bother to correct.

If that was true, it was foreshadowing of stuff I've seen in smaller "clubs," where the emphasis now is all on cardio, and nobody ever wants to take apart anybody's swing, and nobody ever does, especially the player himself or herself, and too many players end up with weird monstrosities even when they become advanced competitors. Could be good (e.g., Roddick's serve, Lendl's forehand-- imitate them at your own risk) but usually isn't.

You know, though, those criticisms came a long time ago. And Nick may have heard them and taken them to heart. If Pat Dougherty is any indication, Nick has since surrounded himself with first-rate teaching pros, and why wouldn't he? Isn't he a larger than life personality, always on the line, and very smart? Dougherty doesn't seem anything like Nick, so maybe the hiring of him was a stroke of genius if balance is good.

I'm mostly just surmising, per usual, but I liked what Nick said, publicly, about Judy Murray-- he didn't have to be that nice. And to see how relentlessly international Bollettieri is-- and not just about American tennis-- that seems true to the sport. And I love just thinking about how somebody like Naomi Totka could come to Bollettieri since I actually did time in Hungary and went inside some of the huge bubbles in Budapest and saw how the Hungarian tennis teaching establishment had fallen on hard times since the days of goulasch communism when all sports were heavily subsidized by puppet government with Russia at its worst behind everything.

I tell you, there were a bunch of old hirsute, lost-looking pros waddling about. They all looked like they'd been drinking too much and had gone to seed and were short in the energy department.

Reviewing any "franchise" isn't usually my idea of a good time, but I have specific, personal problems like a bum left leg-- not enough to make me quit tennis but enough to make me look for alternatives to an oarsman's leg drive in my serve (actually there seems to be only one alternative) . And I found Dougherty's little video-taped speech about the history of tennis serves as remarkable as anything I've ever heard, with implications for every level of the sport but especially for a gimp with tight rotors in his right shoulder due to a ski crash during a college athletic department race in which I was second and gaining coming into the final turn in Glens Falls, New York in a part of the upper state where the mountains are high.

Note: I've got to re-read the passage in Albert Camus where he talks about "the happiness of Sysiphus."

[bottle]

Another How-About for Backswing and Transition Only

Reduce leg movement by starting with knees comfortably bent. And determinedly keep front knee over or lined up with front foot, developing a strong push-pull love affair between front knee and rear shoulder. Turn from gut while lowering back. (But how does one lower back, i.e, open chest to the sky? By keeping impeccable posture and slightly bowing knees.) This total motion can occur with unbelievable slowness, this to happen during the first gravity drop and slight rise of racket on the opposite side of an imaginary gorge, with this combined motion of course to include a change of linear body direction and the toss.

Let there be continuity and flow. The crucial rhythm is "Toss, hit." The various motions must adjust to that constant rhythm.

Like a tranquil elephant, we'll always move something (or in this case maybe more than one thing). There is transition between the shoulders winding back from the gut and hurling forward, again from the gut. In the split instant when the shoulders are still, the arm is bending and the rear leg thrusts forward just enough to raise heel up on its toes.

Exactly when does arm begin its bend and how much bend will there be at first? (The two halves of the arm will micro-briefly brush together at last.) Should arm start bending in tandem with rising heel? Before? Mess around. Find out. The resultant serves answer one's questions.

This is more than enough information for anybody to try to absorb at one time.

Next: The Hit.

[bottle]

The Hit?

No, I'm not ready for The Hit. I've just been to the court where I decided to eliminate from future thought the clause, "the rear leg thrusts forward just enough to raise heel up on its toes."

We rotorded ones need an idea like that like a hole in the head. Our first concern must always be, "How can I get the racket tip down lower?"

Well, we're not driving to a dump to get the adhesions in our shoulder pulverized along with our car. So:

1) Little finger off butt cap. (Two or three fingers off were too radical and didn't feel good to me even when I prolonged the experiment.)

2) Relax fingers and hand generally.

3) Hit the retro serves being discussed, or, if hitting a modern serve characterized by early leg drive, learn to incorporate more pre-rule-change upper body rotational elements if you didn't already. As Dougherty argues, you'll be able, among other benefits, to swing better with racket head behind your neck.

4) A big one. Start with knees bent and then bow both of them to cantilever them one way while shoulders go the other. Both heels will simultaneously come off of the court. The ramrod straight back will get lower that way and with it the racket tip.

Trying all this together, I saw some kick on first serves I hadn't seen in 20 years. Slice looked more interesting since it now carried a small bit of topspin as well.

I'm wondering about something though. If hips have angulated toward net as almost everybody thinks is a good idea and which certainly is my habit, won't shoulders slope upward? And then with the new, fearsome upper body rotation (basically horizontal while we're learning before we tip our whole apparatus up), won't racket immediately rotate down, if axis is tilted toward the rear fence?

One solution lies in timing vertical body rotation toward the net so that the shoulders are level or even tilting down a little at contact. But for the rotorded server any tilting toward the net means he has lost the get-racket-tip-low contest. So I'm opting for perfectly "square" shoulders (don't know another word to describe this), i.e., no hip bulge toward net, at least for today, just as part of the quest for simplicity. One does what one must. All part of the search.

A complete report on my on court effort to learn shallow, short-angled kick isn't ready yet. Interesting that Llodra didn't hit this shot in Davis Cup Monte Carlo today the way he did in Davis Cup Winston-Salem four years ago, both against Roddick in singles and against the Bryan brothers. Winston-Salem was juiced up fast for Roddick and Blake, Monte Carlo is slow red clay-- could be part of the different outcome plus different partner plus not wanting to give the Bryan brothers the same look plus the Bryan brothers played great. Whatever the French strategy, it didn't work.

But let me say this. Taking both heels up together on toes near beginning of a serve no longer has to mean you're about to lift off from toes, ankles and legs-- sweet intelligence for someone feeling old in all of those joints.

Just because feet are on their toes doesn't mean that you can't wind shoulders past the knees in an elastic way. Just tell the knees to hold still and they will behave.

[bottle]

The Upward Glancing Contact for Short, Wide Kick

Cylinder has new meaning. The imaginary cylinder from knees to armpits doesn't restrict body twist from the gut, with gut's release or entire, whirling upper body now becoming the horizontal wheel on a ball machine. The second horizontal wheel is unfurling of the arm from the totally screwed up position it belatedly got itself into.

The ball scoots from between these two wheels spinning in opposite direction.

From this description, the arm motion sounds relaxed and uninhibitedly circular and is. Let's turn off the sound and watch the actuality in Naomi Totka's case at 1:37 but do study the other available slow motion sequences of her "sick kick" serve in the same video, too.

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

The racket comes down close behind her head and then helicopters away to the side.

It doesn't push up to the ball and then helicopter to the side, which may or may not be a successful pattern in other concepts of serve.

It rather spirals up to the ball and slings straight upward off of it before it quickly swoops downward and returns upward again to opposite shoulder.

This is not a model either in which the shoulders stop to accelerate the arm-- not at all.

The shoulders accelerate past contact and so does the arm, two wheels revolving in the opposite direction at the same time and squeezing the ball between them. Did I repeat myself? I hope so. Is the image mine? No.

A teacher came up with it in a print article in a professional journal long ago. He now writes that as he gets older he becomes more and more convinced of an essential relationship between excellent tennis and how it is described.

I've always been struck by this image of flat, opposite wheels squirting the ball between them but never could make it work for myself as well as I wanted. Why not? Because my overall service system was inappropriate for that image.

The seven chopping demonstrations in the Totka/Dougherty video show the elbow extending quickly, powerfully and easily in a linear context.

To think clearly, however, we must translate this purpose to a circular context.

What further guidance for this can we draw from Dougherty's commentary? How about his emphasis of the compactness of Totka's hammering motion?

We'll want similar compactness in the circular version, with upper arm internally rotating before arm has fully extended.

In some other video-taped kicks we've seen, the racket seems to make a nice incision in the air and then zip off to the side.

In this kick the racket rather goes down right after the incision.

I'm just playing here as usual and haven't tried this yet. Usual pattern (for right-handers) that most service videos teach us: Knife racket frame at ball and then take a 90-degree right turn.

The experiment here: Reverse these elements, i.e., be sharply circular and then convert the racket into an upward rearing horse. Scrape the ball with the straight part, not the curving part of your swing.

[don_budge]

Albert Camus..."the happiness of Sysiphus".

Note: I've got to re-read the passage in Albert Camus where he talks about "the happiness of Sysiphus."

Professor bottle...Most interesting to cite Camus in your discussion of the serve. I have to admit that when reading your dissertation on the service motion I become quite lost...but that is only in the sense as in when one reads Henry Miller trying to decipher just what it is that he makes of love. You see...I realize it is all about you and whether I get all of it or none of it is of no consequence...ala Miller. Recently I spent a couple of hours on the phone with dear old Dad talking about Camus' Meursault's contemplation of facing the guillotine. His resignation...his indifference...his acceptance of his fate.

I remember my dear old coach talking about being fatalistic when hitting a second serve. You might as well go ahead and swing at it and accept the consequences...that's better than trying to pussy it in and missing or having it pounded down your pie hole.

I cannot wait to find out just what it is in "the happiness of Sysiphus" that has perked your interest. Sorry to interrupt...please continue. Love your stuff!

[bottle]

Racket Tip Away from The Ball

Okay, I go to court now, Sysiphus later, with we, you, they (yes, it's all me) resolving to hit these serves four times as hard as any other.

"Sticking the racket in and trying to come up this way across the ball to get that spin effect happening" at 1:54 shall be the ONLY technical instruction permitted today.

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

But zounds!!! The way Dougherty's elbow is pointing-- away from the target or netpost or somewhere around there-- will bring the racket tip AWAY from the ball, not toward it or across it, n'est-ce pas?

[bottle]

Not too bad if I didn't hit them too hard. Got a blister because of having the pinky off of the racket. Not even my lifetime calluses from rowing could protect me.

[stotty]

Albert

That make's three of us who are Camus fans then...

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/msysip.htm

[bottle]

But don't forget Phil, who brought up the subject in the first place. It is absolutely great having the appropriate passage right here. Thanks, Stotty, thanks so much.

[don_budge]

From the Absurd one...

Thanks a million Stotty and bottle. Who said tennis players are stupid? Where did Phil initiate this pearl of wisdom, bot?

[bottle]

I did. #1058 . So how should one spell the name? Sisyphus or Sysiphus? Answer: Sissyfuss.

[bottle]

Complexify! Complexify! Complexify!

How high is the arm-squeezed-together conglomeration when it releases in these kick serves?

If there is a sequence between body and arm extension what is it?

You (I) have already suggested that both occur at the same time-- yes, but with stagger?

The elbow moving down during the hammering exercises is replaced by the body moving up-- particularly the shoulder. So the shoulder moves up even after contact. This adds upwardness of arm extension.

The gut-feet system (first gut for power and then hips for continuation and elongation of this power) should be strong but slow so that everything can be accomplished within it. If it stops, i.e., completes before the arm unfolds, you've lost the fight again for maximum upwardness.

This may happen frequently while you acquire this serve.

The idea that shoulders revolve (in two different ways) followed by arm extending like a fireman's ladder from the bed of a fire truck will not be bad if you can make the bed simultaneously rise up through contact as well.

A major idea emerging from the too many ideas is that one of them is particularly bad, i.e., that the racket should arise from one number on a clock face to another.

Since all the ideas must compete with themselves for our attention, why not declare that direction of ball rotations should be the concern, not the racket arc that produces them?

We'd be closer to the nub of the thing, no?

We could maybe introduce spiralspin to the discussion along with topspin and sidespin. Thinking of three different spins on a single tennis ball at once is daunting but preferable to some dumb old clock face.

Make the racket do whatever it must to produce the mix of spins that you want. Much of this will be determined by the facet of the ball that the strings actually scrape.

"Hit the left side of the ball" might be great advice if we knew where the person was standing when they uttered it.

I once asked somebody in these discussions-- Rosheem-- which side of the ball the racket was passing over in fantastic slo-mo video of Federer's kick.

Everybody else may have been thinking left side and "from seven to two" but Rosheem said exactly what I'd been thinking to myself all along, that the strings passed over the upper right quadrant.

Just sit in a chair and use a racket to roll ball in every possible direction in your hand. You can probably account for two of the three desirable spins that way. As for the third, spiralspin, you can, being left brain and right-handed, take your hand off the racket and twirl the ball against your palm.

Then go to a football field where Eli Manning is practicing 70-yard passes.
Wrench the ball from Eli's hand and throw a 70-yard pass yourself. The ball will spiral clockwise. Now practice 70-yard punts, striking the left bottom of the ball with your right instep. The ball will spiral clockwise. Return to the tennis court.

The three spins are, again, topspin, sidespin, and spiralspin. And maybe something-- the ball-- will divebomb left and kick unpredictably right when it hits the court.