A New Year's Serve

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Reverse

Not enough is written and filmed and spoken nowadays on the subject of whirligig serves in which the leg drive is late and only amounts to several inches and the server never leaves the court. He may go to prison if his name is Roscoe Tanner but does that mean these serves should be discredited?

Reverse the speed gears hypothesized in # 1208 . Shoulders won't go fast then slow. They'll go slow then fast then slow.

Perform figure 8's where racket drops then you accelerate it (down) then you lift the upswing by leaning slightly backward as you toss. This first drop and acceleration and rise is a roller coaster. Yeah, hips go out toward net. Try to hear the whir of the cart's wheels against the tracks. SLOW, WHOOOSH, PUT-PUT-PUT ALMOST TO A STOP.

Now you start a new loop, smaller, with gravity drop again. Very little happens just then other than arm starting to bend more together from its right-angled position so this is a good time to relax. In fact, relaxing is essential. The racket starts to fall parallel to one's shoulders with complete ease.

Now you double-rotate the racket, but deliberately, not fast. "Double-rotate" means that the torso slowly rotates but so too, simultaneously, does the upper arm, turning inside out and getting racket tip to the right edge of the body as low as possible.

Precisely at the end of this action, which might otherwise be described as scapular retraction, the two legs can drive upward a few inches to stretch the elastic of your slingshot just a bit more.

Now torso and slingshot fire.

Since the best serves are kick serves and I'm always in rotorded mode (no cartwheel, thanks), I want to keep nose and chin up, i.e., head still.

Well, I wouldn't want to be upright or uptight since I'm a child of the sixties. The head could move sideways at last instant to get out of the way of the vertical swing-- what would the harm be in that?

Sideways but not forward!

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Snake Strike Aspects of the New Serve

The tour player I came to know best hated any talk about kinetic chain, preferring to say, "I am a snake."

He found kinetic chain discussions to be "cartesian thought," which had something to do with the French philosopher Rene Descartes thinking too much in straight lines.

Geometrically straight lines in tennis, I decided, had to do not only with weaker tennis technique but with the left brain hunter-lawyer's preference of setting a specific goal (death to the mastodon, one point five million in compensatory damages) and then setting up the tactical step-ladder for getting there, and God help one if one missed a single rung.

Fine, excellent, good scheme-- but what if the mastodon had already lost his wool and evolved into a smooth skin elephant?

So let's go with snakes, even older, and roller coasters which aren't very old.

Considering roller coaster from a snake's point of view, we're extremely aware of every vibration, which attracts or repels us or both.

We're better off going with attraction and totally becoming a snake-loving tennis player.

We allow ourselves to be fascinated with the two gravity drops that initiate our two connected loops. We buy as much time for each of these gravity drops as we can.

The racket falls, we accelerate back. The racket falls, we double-coil forward.

And strike.

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Narrative

That Jiggly Goerges hit the dropshot. What a dropshot! High and close to the net and broke poor Aggie's heart.

Julia, Julie Goerges, Julia Gorgeous Jiggles-- just what is the best name for this fast-serving, type I forehand stunner?

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Chuck it Ball Launcher

We've been dog-sitting Pawley, a big chocolate gray Lab Retriever. He came with a ball launcher, which is somewhat like a back scratcher, but is also somewhat like a tennis racket. At first I found I just wanted to snap the ball down at a hard surface and watch it bounce high enough that Pawley would catch it. Gradually however I incorporated the full service motion and sent the ball up over the garage and trees and the old Ford tennis house next door. It was time then to fetch another ball.

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Tanner

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJgl2K4E

[stotty]

Canon and canoes

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJgl2K4E

Interesting videos.

"You can't shoot a canon out of a canoe" I liked that one.

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Forward Knifing Elbow on Serve?

Although prolonged thinking about technique can profoundly damage one's tennis game, it can, obviously, expand one's stroke choice. But would that even be a good thing? No, "just hit the same old boring shot." Yes, "variety is the spice of life" (Tilden). Stay open to these opposing viewpoints, say I, but tend toward one's own personality?

A distinction in shoulder movement I drew up for myself decades ago is just now leading to questions on what position arm ought to sling from on the hitting side of the body in both serves and forehands.

For purposes of conversation, call hitting side of the body "the slot." Exactly to what positions within the slot then should arm backswing to create novel relationships between shoulders line and line of the upper arm once it's attained correct height?

Should these two lines-- upper arm and shoulders line-- always be the same line? Why do some good serves have upper arm out front and pointing more toward the net? If shoulder ball position doesn't affect the scapular retraction--scapular adduction (slingshot) mechanism, what's wrong with elbow in a more forward position? And how is all of this affected by stance and degree of upper body rotation away from the net?

Well, I've always thought that upper arm lined up with shoulders provides greatest leverage. When one is engaged however with different spin possibilities, I don't see why other relative positions aren't valid as well.

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Furniture Seventeen for Easy Topspin (again)

Wrist and forearm received good attention in forum discussions of forehand flip, but not "scapular retraction," which is equally important in keeping the racket butt spearing or flashlighting toward the ball.

General information, in other words, wasn't good. Similarly, if a tournament playing kid said (as happened to me yesterday), "I don't understand anything about how to make topspin," the instructor might take her to the net where both of them would practice upward movement with strings of racket pressed against the strings of the net.

While that is a very good exercise, the student might come to think that strength of upward lift was the important factor and shortly thereafter start showing up at the courts wearing an arm brace.

Neglected (in her understanding) would be the instruction to "press" the strings against the strings. For that's where nifty wipered topspin comes from if I have correctly understood the ATP forehand articles.

Furniture seventeen in one of these articles (the first or second) is a video in which butt of racket is sent ahead toward ball with racket handle moved only by thumb and forefinger. The racket tip comes last instant round and slightly upward all by itself. With more hand on the racket, the article suggests, this little movement converts to an even more upward direction.

Note: Scapular retraction must precede scapular adduction but isn't a mechanical set piece that you should forget the better to rely upon it-- at least not at first. All different directions of scapular retraction are possible, the main choices of which are down, up or back, so a short period of actual thought and choice-making could be in order.

One might intuit that "down" is the most interesting of the choices. Not in the forehand I have in mind. That one uses "back" to engender slingshot ahead toward the ball and net.

Position of arm (quite far forward!) and hinge in wrist (the wrist is a hinge as don_budge often says) then conspire for easy conversion of "forward" to "upward," which done properly (see the movie "The Knack" starring Rita Tushingham) will happen all by itself.

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Dog Tool Serves

I freely admit to being heavily influenced by
1) Partial replacement of Detroit auto industry by dog-sitting services for one percenters living in Grosse Pointe.
2) A film of Don Brosseau adjusting (increasing) downward acceleration right after first gravity drop by one of his students.
3) Old-fashioned idea of keeping hips canted upward for as long as possible with chest open to sky.
4) This video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJgl2K4E

Starting with 3), I wish to begin my serve with my feet quite close together and turned way around, knees bent. Since I am 72 with leg problems, I only want to exceed my body weight by one third. But I have to ask, Won’t using hips to screw body straight into the cement generate ground power akin to no fool oarsman’s double leg thrust with no twist in it at all? One might think of a screw jack used to lift one corner of a derailed box car.

Assuming the effectiveness of that along with diminishment of health risks through sensible if obvious measures, I need to figure out exactly how I do want my hips to rotate forward. I can see front knee and hip staying over the foot as leg extends. Conversely, I can see back hip stay low and travel around (far) with help from ankle and toes to take it ahead of back foot.

My idea: Keep the cant. Some will say I’m speaking of language. Sure. But I’m also speaking of body tilt.

Now the dog part. The chocolate lab we baby-sat for eight days came with a four-foot instrument designed for slinging a tennis ball (see post # 1219). I required six sleepy days to realize that the monster handle on the thing was monster encouragement to a real tennis player to use a frying pan grip. This tool needs new design in other words. But a right-handed player who owns one can for now (before I file for a patent), turn the fat handle sideways in his hand so that the half moon that grasps the ball points ball toward left fence.

From there, this serve is a simple matter of learning not to throw downward or forward but rather to launch the ball up over garage and trees. Accelerating the racket downward right after initial gravity drop—like Don Brosseau, I found—helped most.

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Screw the Screw-Jack

I'm very impressed with screw-jacks from my summer working on the New Haven Railroad. Three box cars derailed in Guilford, Connecticut. The Old Saybrook crew raised the corner of each one, then made a slim tower of wood blocks to hold things steady, next made a second tower of wood blocks on which to place the screw-jack to repeat the process until the box car was level. Then with nothing but shovels we filled in everywhere with dirt. And laid down new railroad ties. The spikers attached new rails.

Later, in Virginia, the Washington politicians who ran their SUV's halfway off the road would go back to their dachas to telephone the token liberal living on High Knob Mountain (no viral cell phones yet). Somehow the word had gotten out that I knew how to use boards and snow to construct a new road out over a cliff. I guess you could call that "respect."

I on the other hand just remember the acrimony and hysteria of family members in the vehicle shouting at each other with everybody giving too much advice, although I will say, they left me alone to do the work.

Oh well, it won't happen again. Not until Thornton Wilder's glacier reappears from his play THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. There won't be any snow in Virginia because of bad karma from deniers of climate and everything else among this group.

But you can see how impressed I am by boards and car jacks, am a bit overcome by the romanticism of a good screw-jack. Realizing this, I've decided to go with the strict Ted Williams delineation of hips then shoulders instead.

The overall service motion has become smooth and quick enough for this concept to mean something.

From second gravity drop one can wind racket to edge of body while slightly whirring the knees and hips and continuing to draw hitting elbow away from upraised tossing elbow.

In some great serves the racket continues to wind outward into the next phase of simultaneous firing of legs and gut.

Will scapula fire then, too? Yes and no. It will retract a small extra bit and then slingshot the other way.

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Just an Idea

This is just an idea. Which like so many ideas ought to be dismissed. It builds however on what has preceded it including the muttered utterance of my very good opponent Gary Rogers that he should keep his weight on his back foot more. He had just hit something he didn't like-- a rare miscue-- and he successfully applied the lesson he learned right away to a second serve not significantly different in intent from his first.

"Keep the weight on the back foot longer." One wonders, did the advice pertain just to him? How about to what I'm doing right now?

If I keep weight on back foot longer, combined with medium bend low golfy action, i.e., "full feel" knee and hips with no spiral upward, will I not then authorize better travel under the ball like Stefan Edberg characterized by no pitching of the head forward?

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Farther Out Yet

And more over the top. No, more under the bottom.

The goal: Body design in which the bent rear knee is lower than the bent front knee. With both feet flat. And with necessary kinetic rotation (some) of hips forward having just occurred.

Trying out this prescription for serving disaster or perhaps not is easier than I thought.

Using the double gravity drop described a hundred times here and elsewhere by now, one counter-rotates front knee up on front toes.

I started with both knees bent and both feet flat, so rear foot still is flat. Now I bend my rear leg just enough more so that front foot flattens again but with front knee holding its bend and the rear knee having descended a bit beneath it.

The key: Both feet flat once again.

This is what I always wanted. Both feet in old fashioned rowing shoes in which the entire soles are supported.

Now you'll obtain enough ground force as you "fire the extensors, baby."

Transverse stomach muscles as well as scapular adduction should contribute and, "What do you have in your arm today?"

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About Golf on Wheels

Hey, when I finished second in the Fenwick, Connecticut Long Drive Contest, one needed exceptionally straight drives—more even than if the residents of the Borough of Fenwick had decided to hold the event on their Scotch modeled golf course. Instead, one aims along a thin stripe of waterfront, swinging from the end closest to New York city. Insurance people from West Hartford prefer summer homes close to the water; therefore, the lawns in front of their houses are slim. Sliced drives splash right into the Long Island Sound. Hooked drives break windows on the left.

To hit my solid drive, I started my downswing with my knees, not with my knees and hips. This is a semantic distinction, I know, but have decided that semantics are everything in the instruction of sport.

And so, in the imitation Roger Federer forehand or “Federfore,” I have to say, once you have lifted hands up and extended arm backward and slightly downward to establish solid connection, start body forward from the knees rather than thinking about your hips which are going to turn anyway.

Knees, shoulders, flip, slingshot.

This imperative, unopposed more or less in the Tennis Player forum, does not preclude subsequent movement of anything and only refers to four initiations within a smooth stroke or swing.

One should have noticed in late Federer, e.g., in his seventh capture of the Wimbledon championship, his increased reliance on running crosscourt forehands in which his legs don’t extend as he hits the ball, rather in which he stays close to the court like Miroslav Mecir. If the ball is high, though, he does spiral upward and even flies as high as he finds necessary.

When I say, “Knees, shoulders, flip, slingshot,” I mean rotating knees that either don’t spiral upward or do.

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Credo

They often call me Speedo but my real name is Mr. Earle.

Oh, sorry, I've been watching Olympic diving again.

The rowing was really sad. NBC hired some lady who talked too much. She must have rowed in the engine room of some really dumb crew.

A theater major she definitely was not. And conveyed little excitement about what was passing in front of her eyes.

By the time of the men's eight final she had so thoroughly anesthetized us that I hardly felt the fourth place finish of the United States even though we were the defending champions.

In tennis, I have only one thing to say (today). I don't believe in golden nuggets of tennis information, only in tennis learning progressions. One out of ten of these progressions may be really good.

P.S. In philosophy, the road-runner always wins. In tennis, the coyote always wins. In politics...never mind.

[bottle]

Knees, Shoulders, Flip, Slingshot-- Nah

Knees, shoulders, slingshot-- is better.

Because the combination of knees and shoulders, performing passive scapular retraction, helps protract one's spear or flashlight (the flip).

Let's edit any time we can.

Besides, it's halftime of the Olympic gold medal basketball game and the United States is only one point ahead of Spain.

A good time to edit, if you ask me.