A New Year's Serve

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More Awareness and Use of Variation in Racket Pitch at Address

Kill me if you must. I fully realize, readers, that some of you cannot stand my rumination.

Nevertheless, I am intensely interested in how far reason and invention can take one in tennis regardless of age, athleticism and knee replacement.

My favorite baseball pitcher ever-- the greatest of all time in the view not just of me-- is Satchel Paige.

He is known not just for discrimination against and giving a name to each of his numerous pitches, but for throwing from a variety of arm positions.

Well, one's arm position behind one's back is going to change with any change of pitch at service address.

For one's elbow will only straighten in one direction.

Paul Metzler of Australia wrote that he kept palm faced down for a feeling of nifty control but opened racket out for power and pace.

Me, I wouldn't go that far. I think there are all kinds of surprises at both ends of this spectrum and in between, so I advise any listener to perform his or her own experiments.

The lesson here, to repeat, is more variation in pitch at address. From second to second, minute to minute and day to day.

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Ground Bound Forehands With Better Recovery

I've been hitting some powerful forehands recently but resulting in extra steps that have to be viewed as stupid.

A little replacement of rear foot slightly to the side? Okay. But any more momentum catching footwork after that? Lunacy.

We want to get back to the middle, right? Or to wherever we want to go.

To this end I propose some forward rotation of the hips to lower rear shoulder but then let those shoulders take over.

This will keep your feet flat in the middle of the stroke as shoulders catch up to hips. Shoulders can then pass and pull hips to raise back heel up in a nice golfy rather than goofy follow-though.

With chaotic feet and greater hips violence saved for special occasions.

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Terrible Nothing Ball-- Not Today When Played Well but Last Week When Didn't

Noticed a flaw in my game, viz., my dealing with a terrible nothing ball in which I let the ball play me.

That to my mind is a hovering sinking ball not high enough to smash but not low enough for delivery of a normal stroke.

Various replies have been seen, experienced or read about.

Kneel down on court to simulate smashing a higher ball. No thanks. Knee replacements don't like to be knelt upon.

Hit a swinging volley. Well, one way or another YOU must be the person to supply some force.

When you think about it, pretty normal stroke mechanics require contact farther away from bod in dealing with a high ball.

So I'm for throwing out everything I ever learned in favor of a new invention, a three-quarter hybrid smack.

Some players, it would seem, have extremely high forehand loops in which arm and racket point at the sky.

These persons can just cut off bottom of loop and smack the ball level.

But why waste so much effort for lower ball? Lower loops or no loop for lower balls.

Then when one sees a terrible nothing blooping one's way, one can point racket at sky, keeping arm bent so that contact won't be far away.

How bent the arm? Anything from a lot to about 90 degrees. Racket tip then can drop a little (arm at less than 90 degrees at contact or right on 90 degrees.

If one then cranks upper arm (internal shoulder rotation or ISR) the forearm can scythe around with force. Followed by elbow leaving the barn to finish this flat, topspun or backspun shot.

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Pam

Pam has a supinated or fallen shoulder. She was born that way. But using willpower she can raise the shoulder to a normal position. Should she serve from the raised or dropped position natural for her?

Have Pam serve from both positions to determine which is more effective.

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Crispness, Brevity and Contact Point Seen as Related to Inside Out Structure of one's Volleys

Kill me if I'm being too simple here. My experiential store consists of three sets of mixed doubles. Every volley however was better than usual. Tomorrow these shots may not even be there. So what. Now I know the way.

Elbow on both sides moves slightly away from bod. And then crosses sharply sideways back toward bod a tiny amount to decelerate. The follow-throughs are easy to cut off and stop since all of one's calm energy went into contacting the ball.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk7m...ature=youtu.be).

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Pure Theory (Pre-Trial)

The ingredients or parts (katas) have been worked up. The progression now becomes about where to put what with which.

A huge consolidation has already occurred so that sequential backward hips rotation and backward shoulders rotation are a single rapid count.

One can feel in other words that one is already tossing as hips make their turn although technically speaking that is not true.

But we have the arms performing certain tasks throughout this packed first count. I even suggested that the two forearms bending from the elbows could act together to rake the sky. Although there would be nice symmetry in that, it was just a building block toward more evolved thought.

We could think about what Arnold Palmer, the late golfer, said about his rival Jack Nicklaus. Jack's golf came from his brain, Arnie said, while his, more intuitive, came from the heart.

Untrue of course since Jack's came from both the brain and the heart. Most important, Jack was the better golfer if one examines the cold record.

And we (or I or he or she or it or you) want to become better even if only to solve some specific physical limitation through a simple use of logic, i.e., cerebration or thought or brain.

So why must the two arms bend an equal amount at the same time? Because that would be pretty? Not good enough reason.

Instead, let bending hitting arm bend much more than bending tossing arm-- much more much farther in fact to where elbow twists, which gets racket tip pointing more straight down toward the court even in the case of a player with limited range to his twist of the upper arm since everything is happening farther back on a tilt.

To start forward part of serve now there is nothing to do but straighten arm with triceptic extension from the elbow. This practically defines the notion of speed without heft.

And heft comes next with sequential drive of both legs (back then front) as arm performs ISR or internal shoulder rotation balanced by horizontal shoulders rotation from the gut.

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Am Just Getting to Know these Serves

A good opportunity exists, it seems to me, for right leg to rotate one hip over the other rather than one around the other.

At same time the transverse stomach muscles can take the shoulders around in motion made more powerful in that the trailing hip stayed "back."

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Palm Down or Palm Up during Initiation of Every Serve?

This to me is the big question that nobody ever wants to discuss enough. Vic Braden was the firmest of all advocates for palm down.

But as his implicit debate opponent who never became famous-- John M. Barnaby-- wrote, these palm down serves lead to an unnecessarily complicated in and out motion. Barnaby thought one should, in a conventional down and up serve turn one's racket out as it passes right shin.

Me, I'll try palm down once in a while since this is the way I've served for most of my life.

But open faced address leads to the classic image of racket tip dipping into a bucket of paint and coming right out.

The paint bucket approach takes less time, it seems to me, is simple and lends itself to a compact, integrated serve in which toss and winding back/down of hitting shoulder can be one and the same thing.

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Speed and Carve to Paveload

Want to try this in the trick shot described in # 3476 . I'm thinking of more fingers loosening than on a normal serve, with fingers clenching next blending with cross-bone wrist action to take strings to outside of ball. In addition, turning strings out more at address (for who ever notices anything?) points elbow out so that right-hander's push/carve comes more from the right fence.

If serving to a smarty however one could for concealment simply turn racket out extra amount during the initial move (count one) which consists of first the hips turn and then the shoulders turn which supplies half the energy for the bending arm toss. The arm bends (which goes against everything we ever learned) as it is impelled upward by the rising shoulder.

Count 2 normally is the push and count 3 the scarecrow finish in these serves.

For this serve however one speeds strings to ball with hand and fingers then carves to the paveloader finish and is well advised to slow the overall pattern way way down...

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Tip for Increased Power and More Collected Recovery from "Stay Grounded" Forehands

You use forward hips rotation, right? So while doing this keep back foot flat before you let its heel rise up.

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Making New Serve Along with Other Strokes More Dramatic

The arms bend together, I have posited, so how can one involve the heavens in this simple gesture? Easy. Scrape the sky while supplicating with both hands.

This image might work better for a tosser who keeps palm up (but I'll keep my ice cream cone toss from up high, thanks). The fingers of both hands could scrape the heavens.

The same idea of more juice certainly applies to the dropshot. You give every indication of killing the ball and then ZING.

A recent article here on overhead (smash) suggested that all of these shots be hit at less than full speed and in differing amount according to circumstance.

But an early book by Rod Laver advocated just the opposite.

Don't just smash, he argued, smash to the full.

I can see this. I once hit somebody on the right cheek and don't want ever to do that again. Nor do I want to hit anybody between the eyes, which unconsciously I was probably trying to do. The guy, who was a real athlete and slightly ducked, recently died. He reacted well to my concern and we became great friends for the last couple of years.

So there is a time and place for a full smash, but again, it gets the juices flowing and focuses one in some ancient, atavistic way.

One becomes a caveman. And finds oneself easily using short smashes to bounce the ball high over the opponents' heads.

This like much ultimately is a matter of temperament. Personally, I hit all my smashes a bit better when I go full out.

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The Future with this Serve

Fiddle with amount of openness of strings at address. These minor adjustments will dramatically affect precisely to where on outside of ball the "speed" phase brings one's strings. In mantra "speed push crow."

Also, this serve renews the possibility of right-hander carving soft slice very short to outside line of opponent's service box.

"Carving" for many instructors is a dirty word since this is not the best way to serve and they are absolutely right about that.

Roger Federer, e.g., never does it but Patrick Rafter sometime did.

No matter what anybody says, carving does exist in the tennis universe, and tennis writer John M. Barnaby explains it perfectly in RACQUET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS.

To learn it, one starts backward from paveloader finish. Then one swishes the racket up and down the service tract a short amount. One does this to develop the feel without which this idea means nothing. Gradually, one extends the amount of racket rise but always swishes back to paveloader finish. SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH SWISH, etc. Finally one is swishing back and forth all the way to and from contact position. Also, Barnaby says something about making firm contact with ball before pushing around and down with lower edge.

There is no ISR (internal shoulder rotation) or pronation, not either, in this serve. That means you don't swing hard. If you swing hard your body is going to turn the racket out some to protect itself.

The expression often used to describe these trick serves is "peeling an apple, onion or pear." Which suggests too sharp a turn.

Also, the enemies of carved serves use this expression to dismiss them, arguing that physically speaking, such a carve can not possibly happen.

That is true. The language of carved serves is for cue purpose only.

This shot should be considered addition to one's ISR serves including a much more powerful slice that lands deeper toward one's opponent. As I already suggested, the carve should be viewed as a trick shot. I once saw Vic Braden, who loved trick shots, scrape the ball through the air at 1 mile per hour and hit the short target on his first try.

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New Rolling P. Gonzalez Genre Serve: Both Arms Bend Together

And an identical amount.

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"Worst Cooks in America" might apply to me (or you) in tennis.

In a recent episode of this television show, the instructors took away the notebooks of their culinary students.

Listen, nobody can take a notebook out on the court when they play.

Even looking at the notebook the night before a match might be too much.

None of these truths however mean that the notes weren't worthwhile.

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Toss

In any serve, there is overly much to discuss. Toss in this one may be the biggest difference. Using ice cream cone toss combined with elbow bending and shoulder rising could-- conceivably-- eliminate all errant tosses. One stretches and straightens arm upward on a 45-degree angle before one hook-shots with it.

A second huge, provocative and very sensible characteristic is that the serve is INTEGRATED. There is no separation between toss and winding under the ball. This all happens at once.

One can think that Andy Roddick, the teen-aged inventor, moved service action toward integration but did not completely arrive there.

I am not making any claim for comparison to or improvement upon the Roddick serve (the most amazing tennis stroke that I have ever witnessed in person).

That serve does however contain the idea of integration in it.

And this serve, the idea of which comes to me through the readily available videos of Doug King, will get better and better the longer one intensely sticks with it, according to King, and I believe him.