A New Year's Serve

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Report on 10splayer's Mental State

He is a vomiphile. He loves to vomit. That is why he keeps reading my stuff.

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Report on Serve Experiment

To restate it, hand goes down just once, on outside of racket butt, vs. going down on inside of racket butt (closer to body). Going down to outside greatly helped me to understand the other. Speed for both serves was about the same. Consistency was greater, however, when using hand closer to the body version.

Paul Metzler of Australia is a tennis writer intellectual enough to compare serves in which palm stays down vs. turns out.

Me, I may do both on occasion-- for fun-- but probably will turn wrist out from now on so long as I stay within the same service innovation program.

An unexpected advantage is that upward runway can become as long as it was when this server used to clench both halves of arm together.

One can simply keep elbow against body as racket tip topples over and shoulder goes down while other shoulder tosses the ball.

Whole arm can then rise like a double-jointed fire truck ladder only coiling at the same time!

The feel of this is "coming at bottom of ball." And to the outside. Followed by hi-5 on back of ball, combined push on inside of ball and turn with scarecrow arm to finish.

I recommend all TennisOne videos of Doug King (free to TennisPlayer subscribers). He lays out a bunch of serving principles which I find less restrictive and more conducive to innovation than those of any other teaching pro I have encountered in my life.

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Name calling. That is the extent of your arguments. It's boring and lazy.

Wrong. Inaccurate. My argument is in # 3394 , and there is no name-calling or even anything that resembles name-calling in that post. So sorry that you had to lose this argument. You can say anything you want, but in this case simple logic is more powerful than your voice. You lost. Period.

However, Donald Trump and I do advocate name-calling. It is what we have in common. Or should I say names-calling since you have several for me just as I have several for you. Although mine for you are more just. Well, reader here-- if there is a reader-- can decide.

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I am smart enough to understand delusional behavior.

How is behavior delusional when somebody tries something out, and it either works or it doesn't? What is delusional about that?

[10splayer]

Oh Oh Oh. He has rapier sharp wit, too. A much more formidable adversary than I anticipated! I'll never ask him for another tennis match, that is for sure. Oh, by the way, 10splayer. You suck. And you fail at civilized discourse.

Name calling. That is the extent of your arguments. It's boring and lazy.

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Oh Oh Oh. He has rapier sharp wit, too. A much more formidable adversary than I anticipated! I'll never ask him for another tennis match, that is for sure. Oh, by the way, 10splayer. You suck. And you fail at civilized discourse.

[10splayer]

Think I'll Write This Post Two Different Ways

A. I just went to the court. The new serve worked very well, something 10splayer is too stupid to understand.

B. I just went to the court. The new serve didn't work at all, but if it had, 10splayer would be too stupid to understand. Wonder if he could return it? I doubt that.

These are the words of a fake intellectual, a tennis player out to improve his game. The real intellectuals are the ones who understand tennis, don't you know. Tennis, despite what you may hear, reader, is a complex game. And the definition of an intellectual-- from its Latin root-- is a person who is able to "hold" a lot of different knowledge in his or her mind all at once.

So, I wonder if 10splayer would be smart enough to return my new serve, the one I hit today or the one I'll hit in six months? I doubt it. He's really dumb.

I am smart enough to understand delusional behavior.

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Think I'll Write This Post Two Different Ways

A. I just went to the court. The new serve worked very well, something 10splayer is too stupid to understand.

B. I just went to the court. The new serve didn't work at all, but if it had, 10splayer would be too stupid to understand. Wonder if he could return it? I doubt that.

These are the words of a fake intellectual, a tennis player out to improve his game. The real intellectuals are the ones who understand tennis, don't you know. Tennis, despite what you may hear, reader, is a complex game. And the definition of an intellectual-- from its Latin root-- is a person who is able to "hold" a lot of different knowledge in his or her mind all at once.

So, I wonder if 10splayer would be smart enough to return my new serve, the one I hit today or the one I'll hit in six months? I doubt it. He's really dumb.

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Fastest Movement the Human Body is Capable of

Got to get to court to try this before snow starts. Regardless of result, the concept does return one to the notion of long runway up to the ball. The rotorded or short skittle pull-string server can perhaps twist his stick the way opposite from most servers.

Everybody knows or does not know that the end of the humerus has bumps on the end of it with strings or ribbons or sinews or belts attached to each of those two bumps. One could consult a physiologist or read a book on basic anatomy. In any case, there is one long fleshy thing attached to one bump and another attached to the other. So if you want ESR (external shoulder rotation) you simply pull the string that spins the humerus one way. For ISR (internal shoulder rotation) you pull the other string and it spins the humerus the other way. Is it good to know this? I think so. If trying to translate to the opposite circular arrows in a seminal Brian Gordon animation, both strings might be pulling in opposition to each other at the same time for more generation of racket head speed when one string finally overwhelms the other.

So down the racket tip goes, on the other side of the hand from what a "normal" server does. But the most normal server ought to be the person with a great serve which would be all that mattered.

Perhaps some rotorded server, not hard to imagine since all servers are less flexible than Roddick and Sampras, has an unhealthily short pull string, one or the other. Or perhaps one of his strings is too long. Or maybe there is some obstacle-- scar tissue or adhesions or something-- to inhibit motion within the rotor cuff. Should not this player at least try to bend his stick the other way?

Perhaps radical surgery is the way. Doctor-mechanics could replace your drive belts. But resistance is growing to antibiotics, as is resistance to funding the invention of new ones. So one might get infected like the transgendering person in the movie THE DANISH GIRL.

We need to survive first, develop a great serve second. But I wonder how good a serve Cindy Jenner has? She used to be an Olympic gold-medalling decathlete after all.

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Re-introducing Gravity into the Pogressing Iterations of Development in One Unique Serve

What Worked Best
Nah, just got a high ready position and screwed thumbs back toward face. Got palms pointed the way I wanted in other words before I even started the serve.

Well, "the way I want" is with ice cream cone held ball with strings resting atop it.

The strings would squish a scoop of ice cream but a tennis ball perching on edge of the hand has more tensile strength.

So that the strings and trailing frame bump a little as hitting hand pulls away.

Then, because racket head is parallel with high elbow, it exerts some leverage, and gravity can naturally pull the racket head down while cocking upper arm at same time (as hitting shoulder winds and lowers and moves back toward rear fence with opposite shoulder performing the toss).

This accomplishes the scheme previously outlined in a slightly different way.

Just an idea, i.e., successful or unsuccessful invention with first trial next.

The need for this invention grows from a wish to keep elbow in a single position relative to dropping/moving shoulder.

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Suppression of Articulate People

This is one of the biggest problems in American tennis. I cannot believe that the players of other countries are so apt in this way to hit themselves in the foot. Part of the standard excuse is the true statement that sport is best learned on a sub-verbal level. Along with this comes a standard meme for standard America: anti-intellectualism in the anti-intellectual United States.

The antidote for such a benighted view is simple consideration of Ted Williams, Don Sutton, Jack Nicklaus, Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Pancho Gonzalez and a score of other athletes who relative to taciturn jocks turned out to be virtual blabbermouths.

Williams even attributed the excellence of older hitters and pitchers to the conveyance that took them to different cities.

Trains more than planes, he said, afforded time for discussion of baseball technique.

So one word will ways be worth a thousand images. And great interest (passion, one might say) leads to sub-verbal change. And passion, not always but often, is best grown through words.

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In Which Our Hero Decides that Uncle Vic is the Most Evil Man in the World

I almost had the New York literary agent convinced. I had applied every bit of wisdom in TENNIS FOR THE FUTURE to my own game. "You'll get over it," said the teaching pro who gave me free lessons.

But the agent, despite our association that lasted past the waste of a whole year, had never played tennis. Besides, I flirted with a different woman at the Hollins University writers reunion the night after our initial interview. And the agent's nose was red from too much alcohol-- not a good doubles partner.

Eventually I would meet Vic Braden, at which time I realized he was the funniest and most intelligent person in the tennis world.

Too much preamble, you say. Could be. Uncle Vic taught a big forehand apparatus that he thought the reader of his book ought to use all of the time. And one could even use the arm part of it all by itself if one were in a jam or wanted to hit an off-speed shot.

Now my apparatus is slightly diff. But I like to use just the arm part of it from time to time.

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Every Statement Must be Challenged

"Full down-and-up is best for a rotorded server." But a snake doesn't do that and neither shall I. Challenge, reader, any statement you want.

My serve du jour starts with slow, smooth and powerful backward hips rotation.

The high left hand, my tossing hand, goes no faster or slower than the hips rotation.

The right hand eases at same level away from left. As soon as racket is well clear, right hand turns the strings partway down toward the court. Now the shoulders, continuing the bod rotation, bend toward left fence to toss the ball while right palm presses down toward the court a little more.

That toss without independent hand movement is balanced by a small amount of independent downward right hand movement, in other words.

And hitting arm continues to coil up to the ball.

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What Worked Best

Squeezy vs. Right-Angled Arm
Postulating a certain lack of shoulder flexibility, I add the extra motion I just subtracted by forcing palms down on the fly during the initial wind-up.

Nah, just got a high ready position and screwed thumbs back toward face. Got palms pointed the way I wanted in other words before I even started the serve.

No squeezy. Just right-angled arm.

Now, during backward hips rotation, the two hands can move level but with right hand slowly pulling away as if they are in a horse race. Well how far ahead should hitting hand go? Far enough to establish height of elbow one wants and distance of racket away from bod that one wants. Easier to establish these parameters early than late.

Left arm doesn't do anything, just rides the hips rotation until the shoulders bop over, which is the total mechanism of the toss. That's right. Arm can be bent. Doesn't matter at all. The bopping shoulders perform the toss.

What's a different expression for "bopping shoulders?" Body bend performs the toss, I guess, a different expression along with desired act. But hitting shoulder obviously has to go down at the same time because of the way the bod is constructed. How high was the toss? High enough for right-angled arm to perform its full coil down around and up to outside of the ball. (The more rotorded the server, the shallower this loop. If he has a deeper loop he may have to perform some of it before the bopping toss.)

One could think of "finesse" (coil) or "attack" (get strings on the outside of the ball). I prefer "attack"as useful verb. We're doing speed but not force, but there is a vigorous if smooth throw right up to outside of the ball. The hi-5 that comes next is associated with the extending arm coil while shoulders are still down and behind the ball.

"Speed, push, turn" is the mantra. Maybe "speed, push, scarecrow" since scarecrow is what the arm does as body finally turns it. Like bent arm finish to a Sampras serve. But the arm got straight for a nanosecond first before it bent again.

Fact is, "speed" includes a coiling throw with hi-5 as the period at the end-- the way to organize. Then comes the famous ISR combined with a cartwheel graceful enough to impress my circus uncle George Hubler or P.T. Barnum himself.

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Waterwheels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpARpkF8WA