A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

And even better, now that I've tried it.

[tennis_chiro]

"Tried it?"

And even better, now that I've tried it.

Bottle,
I have to ask. How did you "try it"?

don

[bottle]

Glad to Try to Respond

I pretty much work on my serve all the time. I am definitely one of THOSE people. There was a woman in Winston-Salem who did the same thing, but I didn't have enough respect for her, thought she was spinning her wheels more than the ball, was pretty sure that she should be doing something healthy such as playing tennis more.

I'll play tomorrow, go to the tennis social for the food and three or four sets of doubles with a new group of people every round-- lousy players mixed with pretty good ones including an Australian or two.

In the meantime there have been two "practice" sessions since your "try to remember what the leg drive is really doing" post, which I immediately printed out. People talk about how I "practice." But I seldom practice, I develop, good ideas and bad ones both, then hope I have the wit to throw out the bad ones.

Keep tossing arm up, maintain a firm left side-- these are good ideas in need of constant renewal and refreshment. In my case I'd neglected them simply because I was distracted by other aspects of the serve, and maybe I never understood them well enough in the first place. Communication between human beings is always difficult though possible for anyone who call himself a teacher or a writer or both.

These lines of yours, Don, along with everything you said, had effect: "First you pull the slingshot back with the right hand, and then you release it; that is, you release the projectile. Nothing happens if you release the slingshot with the left hand that is holding it at the same time. There has to be a fulcrum or pivot point somewhere. Otherwise, no power."

Wow, does that notion re-focus the serve. And here I am studying Pat Dougherty, who wants his servers to open their chests to the ball more so that the muscles there can pull the racket. Muscles in front-- okay. Muscles in back (scapular retraction, scapular adduction)-- surely, they all have to work together. But "slingshot" covers it all.

I also appreciate the expression "shoulder capsule." A friend in Virginia, Bill Mathias, who had won the 65 nationals on clay and grass, declared at a very advanced age to all at the Winchester courts around him who wanted to hear: "I have just discovered that arching the back is the source of all true power in the serve."

It was kind of wonderful and very funny since everybody at that tennis center, even people who could beat Bill sometimes knew that Bill, a scrawny guy who spent his whole life developing his drop-shot from behind the baseline, was the best player there. But what does "arching the back" really mean? It's tennis code, isn't it? And codes in something as involved as tennis technique really suck, no? When one carefully reads a good young teaching pro like Chris Lewit, one realizes that he is re-defining arch from something that will damage anyone's lumbar region to a stretch up higher that will involve one or more of the shoulder capsules.

Okay, an immediate increase in power of 75 to 100 per cent is what happened for me when I envisioned or felt a slingshot in my hands. The first "practice" session was more dramatic but the principle still was there in the second. How I'll do at the tennis social is unknown since all power is double-edged. But I don't really care. The progress has been clear.

Okay, Don, so you know me by now in a kind of virtual way, which as it turns out is not as bad as some people critical of internet exchanges think. You probably know that I'll elaborate (unnecessarily) to drain the new information of its potential.

You would be right. I should just keep things simple if I want to serve well tomorrow night. Slingshot pure. Start feeling the elastic between the two hands right from address. Keep the left elbow up for a fraction of a second more-- that's when the difference in power occurs, just as for the fop in WIMBLEDON, the bad movie, who then won both the tournament and Kirsten Dunst.

But look at the following note. See where I'm about to go wrong.

"Try serves from gut and right capsule only. From gut and left capsule only. From all three. From the capsules with nothing from gut."

The hardest part of these proposals to understand might be anything that has to do with left capsule-- husking forward there seems a sure way to fatally slacken the rubber band, but what if left arm like a Tai Chi master refusing to be budged were so strong that it could remain stationary while the whole upper body slingshotted around it?

Maybe I can answer right now. Absurd! Too much mass in body.

So I'll just try to keep left arm solid and slingshot the "projectile," i.e., the racket tip, which I'm squeezing right now between my thumb and first two fingers.

[tennis_chiro]

Thanks

Thanks, Bottle. I was really curious how you went about applying that thought.

It certainly sounds like you made some progress.

don

[bottle]

Great Players Have a Single Toss for their Arsenal of Serves?

Great players may devise different ways of bending under and around the same toss for maximum deception, and as Pat Dougherty points out, the opponent is watching the ball right then and therefore won't observe the server's bod.

But there is at least one great player who doesn't do that or didn't in the following comparison between a first and second serve.

One way to see this is to click back and forth between the two videos at the end of this post, isolating the toss. That means noticing nothing else in the videos except toss. What are the toss characteristics? Are the two tosses the same?

Both tosses rise and fall to the left. Roger's head position is exactly the same distance to left of the center line. There however similarity ends.

For, in the first serve video, the toss goes right out of the top of the frame. Second serve toss doesn't do that. And it comes down farther to the left. Conclusion: If both tosses have a dome shape to them, the first is a taller dome, the second a shallower dome with a wider base.

So what does the hand do on the slingshot up as the result of this difference in shape of toss?

In first serve it grazes right ear as Vic Braden used to teach for a SPIN serve. For second or spin serve the hand goes up only a couple of inches to the left of there, rising this time between right ear and center of top of skull.

Next questions: Which variation is easier for the ordinary player to master-- body to toss or toss to body? And how worried is Roger about telegraphing his intention? And how worried should you (I) be about the same thing for us?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/1st_Serve&stroke=RF_1stS_Ad_Rear2_500fps.mov

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/high_speed_archive/phantom/Roger_Federer_HD_HS/index.html?dir=Serve/2nd_Serve&stroke=RF_2ndS_Ad_Rear4_500fps.mov

[bottle]

Hocus Pocus and Re-focus

The "re-focusing" provided by tennis_chiro in Post # 1109 could lead to whole new avenues of exploration. Not that I advise this, just get yourself a single great serving motion. Contemplate the following sequence however and accept it or dismiss it or try it.

You learned figure eight exercises a long time ago, so drop your hands down together and don't twist the racket in any direction-- not yet. But do make a turn around the back of your body with the racket.

Some might call this turn the "up" of down and up. Well, the racket certainly does come up some in addition to going around. This is a good time to turn your upper body as well.

The change of linear direction and toss occurs. I've turned upper body at many different times and protraction but never in this precise phase, so this will be a new experience for me.

Other areas of fooling around which can de-chunk a serve and make it truly horrendous include the twisting (cocking) of the upper arm I just talked about. Just where is the best place to do this? By right ankle? Not today.

Today the twist shall be a roil, in effect a swamp buggy's large fan or propeller describing a large arc.

Where are we going with all this? Toward a brief toss hit rhythm. And lots of internal power from the "slingshot," with that being the difference between a mechanical flailing of limbs and a unified throw.

So, the propeller will take care of the winding of the upper arm. Perhaps you did this winding or "twisting" of arm later like me. We all need to fiddle with the dial on an old radio until the ball game comes in. I envision however that most or all of this backward twisting of the arm will happen before the final leg-driven retraction of the shoulder capsule/pod.

[bottle]

Super Sonic Serve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is53xJBJlYA

[bottle]

Lassooing Azarenka's Forehand

And bringing it over here where I can look at it better and use it.

http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin/showthread.php?t=2062

I'm thinking of three elbow freeze points blended (chunked) into a single progression. During the learning, one can simply say (or THINK if one is quieter than Azarenka, "Bip bip bip.")

First bip is raising the elbow. Second bip is bringing the elbow back. Third bip is lowering the elbow. The three bips, soon to be forgotten, are to be taken together right now to form an easy, relaxed loop even though the beginning of it has been delayed on purpose to allow time for a distinct, post unit turn measuring of the ball.

Note how Victoria keeps her hips away from the ball. That will lower hand a bit. And how, the loop completed, the hips

1) drive the hand while legs and upper body straighten.

2) mondo the racket, which applies reverse action and produces lower positioning of strings without ruining alignment of hand.

As hip drive completes, the shoulders and arm take over, i.e., Victoria creams the ball by simultaneously

1) Firing the transverse stomach muscles.

2) Pushing open a cellar door with her elbow. One could shrink wrap arm a little or leave it in its precisely established bent position: Result in either case: It pushes up as well as forward.

3) Adds a hand wave from the forearm to magnify the upwardness of this scrape. One can hit shots both with and without this wave, which people like to call a wiper. The trick when waving is to lift the frame vertically without pushing it out of whack through turning the elbow.

P.S. If you do need to turn the elbow-- to close the strings some special amount-- do this before, during Victoria's hippy stage. The lateness of this will preserve disguise (idea from Chris Lewit).

[bottle]

The Body Straightening in # 1118

Try straightening the legs without changing body angle. See how much the racket rises.

Try straightening the upper body without using the legs. How much does the racket rise?

Try the forearm wave. How much?

The elbow push-lift. How much?

Add them all together for maximum topspin. Subtract something, possibly the wave, for slightly less spin but more penetration.

Etc.

Note: Once you've been an oarsman or an oarswoman, you know a rowing stroke when you see it.

[bottle]

Victoria is Free But Her Forehand is Not

Vica is entirely free to resume her winning ways, unencumbered by the recent ugly capture of her forehand by an international consortium of electronic ne'er-do-wells.

Understand this, reader: Victoria has her forehand even though I have it too. The experiments I shall conduct in my suite of underground laboratories will in no way affect Victoria's play. I shall not take responsibility for her record on the Women's Tour. Nor do I seek vica-rious credit for her future success.

My first step shall be to subject the captured forehand to 2000 grams of calcium chloride mixed with three liters of catch basin rain water.

Next, I'll hit a bunch of lobs. Why should I close my racket on the backswing by lifting my elbow any more just because Vic Braden taught that method long ago when playing here in Michigan for Kalamazoo?

Chris Lewit wants us to close the racket face late rather than early, and I usually tend to side with Chris even though I don't like the title of his book (THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE, VOLUME ONE).

So, if I'm going to close the racket late, then I'm going to open it early as I perform the "bip bip bip" of Post # 1118 successively hitting towering lobs.

But, are these lobs rising high enough? Power train may be strengthened through the addition of a new flourish to all methods previously discussed -- extend arm somewhat during the loop and then clench it somewhat during or perhaps even after hippy phase ("scissoring," one cynical tennis wag termed this phenomenon).

It's a pretty big order-- all this melding of mondo and late elbow turning up-- but when was tennis technique ever an easy subject?

We certainly don't want to kill Victoria's forehand with too much calcium chloride, and we trust the discipline of "bip bip bip" to keep us from doing that.

No pain, no gain, and so we plunge ahead with this more liberated version of something known already to be good.

[bottle]

To "Bottle" as a Verb

One thinks of vineyards and soft drink plants, or in my case The Apple House just off of Route 66 in Linden, Virginia, where Mitch, a tennis player, would add carbonation to cider. There was a show room/gift shop and outlying shacks and vats and pipes and heating coils and trademark fragrant smells and trucks for distribution and a restaurant where a Hungarian woman would come in sometime to help put my marriage into even worse shape.

http://www.theapplehouse.net/

This was all complicated-- many would later say unnecessarily so. And out on the doubles court Mitch would drive the ball at his opponents' feet, his preferred target. This would never change. Nor would his strokes. Or in real life his marriage and relationship to his kids, I would presume.

Mitch was an advanced intermediate who could beat the ancient warrior Bill Mathias of Winchester in singles half of the time, the other half being when Bill's drop-shot from behind the baseline was in tune. This shot won the national 65 and older championships for Bill on both grass and clay, and made him the singles champion of Guyana many decades before Jim Jones brought his Koolaid to that country. Bill's reward was an exhibition match with the world's number one player Fred Perry visiting South America just then. The contest wasn't exactly enjoyable since Fred Perry was perry, perry good.

It sounds as if I'm name-dropping here: Correct. I'm getting around to meeting Pete Seeger this past Saturday as a small incident at Risi Saunder's funeral in St. Philips Highland Church and on Saunders' farm in Garrison, New York. Before I get to that, however, I wish to reassert my central belief about tennis, viz., that tennis technique is NOT peripheral to the game, that of course it's just a part of it, but that a clever person like Fred Perry can become world champion if yes he gets himself in shape and has the best attitude, rituals, game psychology and strings and Marlene Dietrich for his girlfriend and a good night's sleep and all the other stuff that tennis people write and think about too much.

I can read Allen Fox or Jim Loehr on the subject of mental and emotional preparation for tennis all day long and never get one tenth as intrigued as when Allen Fox illuminates some fine point of tennis technique or Pancho Segura's personality.

So-- I free-associate from Pancho Segura to Pete Seeger because Montaigne says, that, when writing an essay, one can start anywhere since all things are related to each other. In Detroit, the kids are apt not to know Pete Seeger, only Bob Seger. But there, in Garrison, was Pete Seeger standing in front of me next to a beaver pond on lawn where he and my oldest friend Sandy Saunders, son of the wonderful and beautiful Risi (don't let me talk about the time I danced with her when I was seven years old), started the original fundraising for the Clearwater, the "educational" Dutch sloop that tacks up and down the Hudson River.

https://www.google.com/images?q=The%20Clearwater&biw=1920&bih=1111&sei=8PCfT-fMOIiG8QS3qpWVAQ

I don't really want to mention all the times I've mowed that lawn of Risi Saunders either but do want to mention Pete Seeger's back since he allowed that he recently slipped a disc. Fortunately, the pain had more than 90 per cent dissipated since he started drinking lots of water.

I have frequent discussions about sciatica with the people here in Michigan but no one has ever advised drinking more water. That solution would be simple thanks to the proximity of the Great Lakes.

I think that the world champion in table tennis could become the world champion in outdoor tennis if he could just figure out how to apply one to the other. (That would be Fred Perry.) Bill Mathias could become the 65's U.S. champion on both clay and grass if he figured out how to put his drop-shot in perfect tune exactly when desired. These men, as I've suggested, knew one another and cared about technique. They knew the virtue of perfect focus.

Much like the Pete Seeger song, "Bring 'em home, bring 'em home."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4-w2FYIJbw

The Bruce Springsteen version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yApAg0hl490

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxjqM4y5f4

[bottle]

The Tennis Serve and Public Speaking: A Comparison

You wouldn't want to be over-prepared, right? Or under-prepared?

Anyway, here once again is the best service video ever made. Its only flaw is that it calls itself a spoof. (Please note that the word "Its" in the previous sentence does not contain an apostrophe, which will come as a shock to most tennis players.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is53xJBJlYA

Believe me-- and I can't repeat this enough-- this video is no spoof. I can certify that the portrayed incident occurred to me at a public park in Winston-Salem NC.

The stranger who urged me to hit a grackle with my toss soon after underwent a series of tennis injuries, and, observing his pain, I failed to be my usual sympathetic self.

Soon afterward I incurred tennis injury of my own, so beware, respected reader, of drawing too much moral from this or any story.

[bottle]

Extremely Imaginative Work in High Backhand and Long Throw

I give a link to where this is happening:

http://tpatennis.net/

Although, in time, the content of the link will change, the new content will be equally good.

[bottle]

Constant Pitch Drop-shots and Tumble-down Slice

Like any tennis player, I thought I knew everything about everything, but then I read Chris Lewit's exposition on the drop-shot in his book THE TENNIS TECHNIQUE BIBLE: VOLUME ONE.

This is not information in requirement of three-year matriculation into one's nerves, but rather is something one can take to a match just an hour after the read. I did this and hit far more drop-shot winners than usual.

"Hit the back of the ball and then the bottom of the ball." This is the principle I learned and then almost suffered with for the rest of my life.

"Keep the racquet face angle on backswing, forward swing, contact, and finish very similar," Lewit writes of both forehand and backhand drop-shots, "to avoid excessive wrist movement."

He adds, "I remember Agassi's drop shot: very funky and wristy technique. But he almost always hit it effectively, especially off the backhand side. Does that mean we should copy his style? Of course not. Should we then conclude that technique doesn't matter at all? Of course not. Less gifted players need the advantage of having good, clean fundamentals."

If constant pitch drop-shots are superior for me, as I now have demonstrated to myself, how about constant pitch full backhand slice?

I spent a lot of time studying the backhand slice of Ken Rosewall and Steffi Graf, deciding that there is a lot of tumbling roll in Steffi and some arm roll in Ken despite the vast difference in overall structure.

Eventually, I chose the Steffi model as easier for me. The most difficult part is remembering to drop the front shoulder on the backswing.

This shot can really sizzle and therefore is extremely seductive. The new drop-shot information however could be a wake-up call to try full backhand slice with constant pitch the same way-- at least to check it out.

[bottle]

Maximum Connection Tennis

Whoops, I just took a shower. That means a new idea. The last one-- trying constant pitch full backhand slice-- was a good one. If that sounds self-serving to someone, I demur. Everybody has ideas all the time. They're a dime a dozen as my friend the late novelist Nancy Hale used to say. But everybody should ask, especially American tennis players, "Is my flow of new ideas sufficient to my needs? Am I being creative enough?"

The thing is, even a lousy idea can lead to another one that is better. If one starts with Lewit-type drop-shots which are constant pitch, and moves from that to constant pitch full backhand slice, the next question may be, "Should I swing a bent arm and straighten it from triceps just before contact without interrupting the overall arm motion?" Or "Should I let forward hips turn straighten the arm passively first and then swing it?"

The ball will not behave the same in the two cases, I believe, although I haven't run the experiment yet.

By "maximum connection tennis" I don't mean prolonged contact, certainly a good idea in itself, but rather maximum mental connection often from one kind of stroke to another.