A New Year's Serve

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What Do you Think, reader, of the Forehand Tennis Instruction that Has you Place two Tennis Rackets Butt to Butt in your Hitting Hand?

The two rackets thus form a long baton that you get to twirl from the middle.

It would be easy to tell you the source of this tennis tip, but who really cares about sourcing other than a bibliographer or drone English teacher trying to give instruction in the writing of an academic term paper?

We as tennis players should care more about sorcery than sourcing, the idea for itself that may lead specifically to a better forehand.

I ask, Does the baton start its twirl when racket tip is pointed at rear or side fence? I go with rear for now with thought in mind that this big piper cub propeller will have come around to correct line of flight by time of contact.

I ask again, Does elbow in this process revolve to right of center pin in this propeller or baton?

Would depend on bend or not in the hitting arm. If there is bend while the player willfully maintains the mechanical integrity of his propeller twirl, the elbow must indeed turn slightly to right of pin or axle before turning back toward that pin and above it.

I see this exercise as corrective for forehand wipe that veers too much to the side in that category of forehand in which the wipe happens right on the ball.

And ask again, Does the baton image, maintained after one has returned to a single racket, also cause one to slow down the speed of one's wipe?

The Hollywood tennis instructor Al Secunda, universally reviled for his sucking up to the stars, used to advise his students to "sand" the ball when hitting up on a second serve.

The notion of sanding for the production of topspin in any shot implies moderation of speed, does it not? You sand a piece of wood carefully. And try to find the correct combination of speed and pressure that results in the ideal amount of friction.

That's one idea. At opposite extreme, I suppose, is the notion of cranking with all the strength and speed one can muster whether one thinks of himself as Rafa Nadal or Thomas Muster.

The most topspin I ever faced was from a 5.5 player in Winston-Salem who wielded a racket in a fashion comparable to those two guys.

He was built like an ox. I ask, Did he use his strength to crank as if starting a Model T Ford or did he have so much natural strength that he was able to control the speed and power of his cranking with true accuracy?

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High Forehand Oncoming Bloop: Where this Old Guy Fails

One tries to identify the worst hole in one's personal game and then do something about it.

One could just invent a simplified shot that allows one to swat the hell out of these balls-- use a double bend structure with arm and wrist at right angles, then turn the upper arm like a farm gate and be straightening the wrist at contact-- something I never would do with a waist high or lower ball although I know a kid who does that pretty well.

I'll try a few of these "bat-with-level-forearm" shots, closing wrist variation.

I'm betting though on a different combo of mechanics within the same design.

Forearm does bat around level, succinct and powerful, but wrist will stay straight until then. Now one mondoes right on the ball as elbow finally releases toward the net.

This imparts fast underspin for both power and control.

But if ball is farther from bod than is optimum, one needs to open racket face. That face will close during the forearm batting stage since you are reaching and the elbow is out to the side.

Another challenge-- and big hitters, not just me, often muff this situation. The nothing ball is apt to be descending as one hits it. (If it were a little higher one could bend one's knees and smash it.)

Since it is descending, one needs to match its trajectory a bit. I propose extension from the legs over more complex modification to one's arm, which I would prefer keep going on a smooth and level path.

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Ongoing Service Experiment

Objective: to apply the late Mark Papas' poetic image of "a teardrop" to expanded knowledge of movement possibilities within one's shoulder girdle on the hitting side.

If one purchases a used version of a very good book on human anatomy and then delves into the subject of shoulder girdle, one quickly learns of more parts than anyone really wants to memorize.

There is bone (e.g., spine of scapula), many muscles, a certain amount of connective gristle.

Rather than learning all the parts, I am suggesting that one follows Mark's poetic image to produce a common action known already to all serious students of the serve.

That would be first racket lowpoint as described by some followed by a second lowpoint to outside of the first. Different teaching pros have knocked themselves out trying to describe this essential transition that puts the racket on edge toward the tossed ball sometimes using between a hundred and thousand words in the attempt.

Well, this could be instance where poetic image once again is the most succinct of all language possibility.

Me, I think of Mark's teardrop as cartoon existing in two rather than three dimensions. I see a sharp point at top bellying out at bottom.

One may already form this teardrop every time one serves. I am proposing however that one tries to feel this motion deeper within the broad girdle or total housing around and under one's shoulder ball.

Maybe this won't make a positive difference to one's serve, maybe it will-- the very nature of all experiment.

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A New Shot with a Future

Many new shots do not have a future. This one does.

First one gets going some no loop, no mondo, no nonsense double bend forehands. Those would be forehands in which the arm right-angles (verb). As forearm winds back wrist winds back independently but in unison as if the two parts of the same arm are dance partners. Shoulders stay level. Posture is erect. A shove shot. Full body transfer in other words is late. The vertical upper arm approximates the bar pins in a farm gate. The forearm (the gate) closes level and parallel to the court. Are you tall, reader? If so, this design may be good for taking a medium high ball out of the air and driving it flat or with mild topspin. I also think that power ought to come from the trunk rather than the hips as in the unusual example of Ricky Fowler the golfer.

I would prefer to use more hips and heavier topspin on lower balls. But I do want a variation here with spin for extra control only backspin this time. Again, I see this level-shouldered shot, i.e, both shoulders are equi-high from the court, as a shove shot. That means the "gate" comes round before you shove with body and elbow in a unified push.

But in the new shot being proposed here you use a composite or Australian grip, described in Ellsworth Vines' book as halfway between eastern and continental. For me that means tip of thumb on pointy ridge or sharp crest numerically known to readers at TennisPlayer as 7.5 . And wrist is flat this time, not already laid back as during the forward farm gate part of the double bend shot.

The same bod-and-elbow shove then occurs but with a mondo right on the ball.

The advantage of this is two-fold. The wrist laying back provides give (dwell) on the ball while the forearm cranking down adds backspin to the backspin already being generated by the open strings thanks to the composite grip.

The ball should bounce in the court but barely come up

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Decels Happen when you Decelerate too Soon

But if you never hit a decel, you may be decelerating too late, which also can deprive your serve of the extreme (and succinct and sudden) acceleration it wants.

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Report

Went to the court with these thoughts. The tossing arm used scapular girdle along with other movements to get up in the sky. The trick is to keep it there. The idea of double elevation of the shoulders as part of hitting thrust is no good. But one can, without harm, easily expand one's notion of different motions in the hitting girdle, that would be on one side.

Depression of girdle, yes. Use of girdle to form a teardrop shape with end of the racket.

When should stomach bunch out? Why not during the archer's bow toss? That means you won't be trying to do too much when you turn shoulders back (but you are pulling elastic parts of the girdle crosswise as you do that, and you can depress the girdle toward the court right then too-- or should you wait for the whole body spring to do that? Youth wants to know).

No insecurely sexist comments on girdles, please. We just want pure thought here.

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Serves

Once one starts exploring all the possible movements of the shoulder girdle, one may come to the conclusion that one doesn't know anything.

Nothing new in that. Something that certain people have averred all along.

There is context here for such a statement of no-nothingness however which has to do with a wish for more Alexander Technique like Goran Ivanisevic and less cartwheel like Tim Henman.

In present iteration, I've got myself humping my stomach out before I suck it in all as part of a plot to telescope (shrink bod length) before again to telescope (extend bod length this time).

Obviously, legs compression before extension is part of the same plot. So why not add depression and elevation of the shoulder girdle to all of this simultaneity?

We come back to a certain lingering question same as for the lower bod-- one leg or two? One girdle or both?

I certainly don't have any answer yet although the prospect of extended tossing arm depressing down at the girdle before shooting back up like a rocket is something I never heard of before and therefore find amusing.

To do: A relaxed full toss including follow-up. Only when arm is completely up will shoulders turn back. That would be the time for depression of the girdles followed by elevation (think of a double shoulder shrug). Remember, the legs already compressed as part of the archer's bow toss.

Chris Lewit has always said not to arch too soon and he is a smart guy (smarter than Mark Phillippoussis who though probably a better player has always said to arch throughout).

The experiment here is archer's bow first followed by all of the scapular stuff combined with using shoulders to put racket on side of the bod opposite from where it started.

Bill Matthias, former national champ of Guyana badly beaten by Fred Perry in an exhibition, said in later life, "I have come to the conclusion that all power in the serve comes from arching the back."

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Must Be True

Since nobody disputed it. Encouraged, I add on to the same thought: No reason to get the racket tip far back for a shove forehand. So I now cut the amount of that in half.

Conversely, on a shove-while-wiping forehand the racket likes to point at rear fence (or more? Will have to look into that). Pointing at ball with racket tip-- if you believe in that-- would incorporate this pointing at rear fence in a big swirl.

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We Need, I think, to be More Clear about our Forehand Differences

A forehand in which the racket loops down and around and behind the ball with elbow held back until the final body shove can be plenty effective. One feature is that mondo occurs right during the shove for more absorption of the ball. The windshield wiper built into this stroke occurs after contact.

Conversely, a forehand in which mondo occurs earlier as racket descends in a "dogpat" uses its wiper right on the ball while retaining the same delayed but great body-and-arm extension.

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Things You are Better off Not Knowing (Tennis Instruction is Full of Them)

From MANUAL OF STRUCTURAL KINESIOLOGY, Thompson and Floyd:..."as a person stands from a squatting position, in order for the knee to extend, the femur must roll forward and simultaneously slide backward on the tibia. If not for the slide, the femur would roll off the front of the tibia, and if not for the roll, the femur would slide off the back of the tibia."

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Offset or Core-Turned Shoulders?

A first question pertaining to the new serve is whether to turn one's shoulders from one's core or rather from one's extended toss arm used as a long axle.

Toss arm centered this way certainly leads to more leftward lean of one's forehead but does one really want that now?

I've tried not shifting the toss arm once it is up but with limited success. I try now the opposite idea-- turning shoulders will shift toss arm, while up, a short distance to my right.

This latter approach will work better with simultaneous protrusion of one's stomach thus shrinking body length for the big thrust it seems to me.

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Disappointing it is

Disappointing it is, when the serve one has been pursuing turns out less effective than some of one's previous serves. That sounds negative. So consider the following statement near the end of John Cowper Powys' 1120-page novel A GLASTONBURY ROMANCE: "No philosopher has yet appeared who has realized as it should be realized, the creative power of the human mind."

A certain amount of unhealthy dismissiveness attaches to the air we breathe and the water we drink and certainly to the words we hear.

Only a kid, Andy Roddick, gets to create a really good serve. But I don't believe it. Doesn't a lifetime's experience count for anything?

The serve propounded by the late Mark Papas at his website REVOLUTIONARY TENNIS appears to have everything going for it: Closed shoulder, closed hip-- mantra for a great baseball pitcher as well as a promising tennis player.

Tossing with backward hips rotation established entirely through one's static sideways stance however may be too conceptual a notion. For one wants always to be a snake. Backward horizontal hips rotation if not extreme can writhe easily into backward vertical hips rotation-- where lead hip goes out toward net to good effect.

Maybe one did this before but now can do it more organically.

I therefore propose that small backward hips rotation occur to keep things simple with weight entirely on rear foot before one moves into the archer's bow forward energizing toss of Mark Papas.

Further, there is a way to retain Mark's essential design yet at the same time draw on the untapped power between shoulders and hips to create a second snake. One does it by starting with stance adjusted way around.

The second snake starts with small horizontal movement (but of the shoulders this time combined with bunching of the stomach) which melds into the vertical body extrusion of The Alexander Technique.

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20-Minute Afternoon Nap for Four Hours of Extra Energy-- Detroit Radio Baseball Announcers

But Detroit still lost the game to Oakland in bottom of the ninth for the second day in a row.

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Ascribe one Magical Property to Left Hand in a Mark Papas Serve

As the late Mark Papas teaches his revolutionary serve (at RevolutionaryTennis.com), he urges his students to post straight toss arm up at the sky and revolve hitting shoulder around the post.

But I may have squandered this opportunity with too low a lifetime toss.

To compensate, I divide the toss into two parts, pre-release and post-release, with turn of the hand to start from release.

First one can turn the hand using wrong method-- just turn the hand-- and then do it the right way through upper bod facilitation, i.e., hitting shoulder to revolve around posted toss arm and shoulder.

This authorizes your little twisting hand and wrist to turn the whole upper bod like a door hinge.

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If Goran Invanisevic Extrudes, Does He Intrude First?

Put another way, can Goran telescope his trunk in two different directions every time he serves?

Or, rather than sway his upper body much away from the ball, can he contract it before he extends it?

This may be hard to see but we shall try.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...tationSide.mov)

The implication, if there is any truth here, is a decrease of cartwheel in favor of more extrusion ("Fire the extensors, baby!") in one's own serve.

P.S. We'd like to know the exact best way to extrude the bod from groin to sternum. I speculate that protruding the belly before sucking it in might help.