A New Year's Serve

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One Backhand in the Old Video Cassette TENNIS OUR WAY

It was Arthur Ashe demonstrating an easily topped backhand short angle that hit sideline and serviceline both with ball then hopping right at the camera. One could see, if one knew what to look for, that Arthur hit this shot with no muscle at all, just the down and up of a gravity-based wheel in which the double-ending racket picks up natural speed in bottom arc of its on-edge path. (On-edge like a coin that hasn't fallen over yet.)

Hey, I didn't know what to look for. Only in the last weeks of being 76 years old did I figure out the backward revolving waterwheel image that allows one to hit such easy topspin.

I could blame myself but choose to accuse tennis instruction in general instead.

I argue for keeping the same gravity driven feel and exact same timing at the center of all of one's topped ground strokes no matter how hard you can hit them.

Once you add bod rotation, dipping, rocking, squaring, straightening, these shots no longer look like a waterwheel but still are a waterwheel. Actually, they look more like tennis strokes. Try them. I predict you'll love them.

[bottle]

To Build on #'s 3373 and 3375

So difficult ever to describe everything going on at any point in a serve, much less remember it all which one of course should never try to do-- not during a serve anyway. To build on # 3375, the arm coils out to form a tent but then coils more to put strings up on outside of the ball. This more prolonged arm coil, consisting of two sequential but blended parts, seems then like something one ought to try.

Unless one was born knowing how to perform this short acceleration serve along with how to walk and do calculus. Despite what you've heard, reader, humans even great athletes usually are not that good.

[10splayer]

One Backhand in the Old Video Cassette TENNIS OUR WAY

It was Arthur Ashe demonstrating an easily topped backhand short angle that hit sideline and serviceline both with ball then hopping right at the camera. One could see, if one knew what to look for, that Arthur hit this shot with no muscle at all, just the down and up of a gravity-based wheel in which the double-ending racket picks up natural speed in bottom arc of its on-edge path. (On-edge like a coin that hasn't fallen over yet.)

Hey, I didn't know what to look for. Only in the last weeks of being 76 years old did I figure out the backward revolving waterwheel image that allows one to hit such easy topspin.

I could blame myself but choose to accuse tennis instruction in general instead.

I argue for keeping the same gravity driven feel and exact same timing at the center of all of one's topped ground strokes no matter how hard you can hit them.

Once you add bod rotation, dipping, rocking, squaring, straightening, these shots no longer look like a waterwheel but still are a waterwheel. Actually, they look more like tennis strokes. Try them. I predict you'll love them.

Happy birthday

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Thanks.

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More Temporary Distortion of Form Before and After Contact

Now we disguise our waterwheel even more by using ESR (external shoulder rotation) to lift the racket tip up having also lead with elbow up.

This move entails a terrible revelation for us, which is, "Although we learned from sport science and actual serving that ISR (internal shoulder rotation) is the quickest move in the physical sphere, faster than the dart of the eyes, we no longer shall use it in hitting a ground stroke, not at least during contact. We'll still use it before and after contact at a relatively slow and smooth speed in both cases."

"Speed but without force." That is the mantra for racket work before contact in the waterwheel ground strokes I now envision.

"Deceleration after contact": the corresponding mantra for the windshield wiper that occurs after double-ending in such forehands.

Unless of course one wants to continue waterwheel imagery after contact to create what is popularly known as a "reverse forehand."

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On Non-Response to Attempts at Technical Improvement in Tennis Strokes

I'm mostly amused, seeing this as lack of seriousness often in one's chosen profession.

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Squeezy vs. Right-Angled Arm

To me this is a huge question contemplated without much help from anybody throughout the entirety of my tennis life.

By "squeezy" I mean serves in which, to use Ivan Lendl's words in the otherwise lousy book called HITTING HOT, "the two halves of the arm press together."

One can see that phenomenon in Lendl's own serves and that of Mark Phillippoussis and many others. Not however in the serves of Sampras and Roddick.

This is a seldom discussed topic that every tennis player in existence must deal with. And a very sad, lonely and uninformed decision it is if you ask me.

So that 50 per cent of all servers are better or worse than they ought to be. The decision whenever it is made is either lucky or unlucky. And certainly slows down a lot of servers, in fact screens out half of them from having the best serve they could have.

The argument for squeezy arm I guess is that it creates a longer runway up to the ball. The argument for right-angled arm that never squeezes the last bit is that it puts a cleaner focus on the ESR-ISR combo (upper arm rotations where the real thunder lies in any serve).

I've had a fully squeezy arm but now am willing to try the structure of right-angled maintenance once again.

This effort will obviously affect overall motion as in a baseball pitcher's motion, but I am unafraid. If the conversion isn't successful I'll simply return to squeezy mode.

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.

We'll see.

That is what I always say.

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Waterwheels

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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.