A New Year's Serve

[gzhpcu]

"Rotorded," adjective: Inflexible in the rotors; characterized by not enough free play in the rotator cuff; unable like Phil Picuri or John Escher to twist racket tip low enough.

I am flattered to serve as a negative example in a semantical definition... but who is John Escher?

[bottle]

~

"Rotorded," adjective: Inflexible in the rotors; characterized by not enough free play in the rotator cuff; unable like Phil Picuri or John Escher to twist racket tip low enough.

[bottle]

One has to Keep Things Sufficiently Complicated to Untangle a Fishing Line

More low point, solution 9b:

Line up with racket pointed not at opponent but at side fence. Some of this is accomplished through stance, some by backward turn of the hips before the service motion even begins. Third, one can set the arm, independent of the body, farther around than normal.

Try then: Down and up with turn in and turn out, followed by turn out and turn in during the drop.

We've been through this before but with slightly different thought. To serial readers, the language may be familiar-- an advantage. And bad readers seldom understand anything, so why should we be overly concerned other than wishing for educational reform?

Basic starting point is the forward windmill drill at the end of the article in post # 663 on Phil Picuri's serve, http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...e_2_01_06.html

I am extremely glad that this article is about Phil and not me. Both author and Phil seem to think it beneficial but I wonder.

This particular knight of the rueful countenance has to say that the filmed flaw is frozen in his imagination.

From now on, I may not be able to think of Phil's serve, despite its vigorous
hurling of body against ball, as anything but flaw.

Yet Phil like me with my serve is ambitious for change.

The idealist's serve will always be protean, changing sometimes at a rate of once every seven seconds.

Was this filmed serve one of Phil's aces? If a serve of mine were destined for posterity, I would want it to be one of my aces.

So, the working idea shall be in and out racket work during a down-and-up. And out and in racket work during the drop with twice as much or more than usual happening just then.

Will more kinds of motion lead to a deeper drop? Will such an addition change overall timing?

Stay tuned (yeccchhhh).

[bottle]

~

Glad you got it. Maybe this will encourage others to get it, too. Rotorded
servers are the norm all over the world.

[don_budge]

???

Hi bottle, been meaning to ask you since quite a while: what is the meaning of "rotorded"?

Hi bottle. Me too. At first I thought you were misspelling "retarded"...as in slow and slower.

[gzhpcu]

Hi bottle, been meaning to ask you since quite a while: what is the meaning of "rotorded"?

[bottle]

In Praise of the First Subtle Distinction Among Serves

I refuse to keep things simple. There are enough people trying to do that in tennis already, and not one of them is playing at Wimbledon.

There are two basic ways to serve, although the espouser of one will seldom recognize the validity much less the existence of the other:

1) Leg drive is early

2) Leg drive is late

To his credit, the owner of this website once recommended that a person do the one or the other but not both-- although he might or might not agree with the way I have indexed them.

The first group includes nearly all the elite players we have seen on the tour except maybe for Roscoe Tanner and a few other alleged freaks.

Among recreational players, the two categories seem evenly split. The simplest version of way 2) occurs in the two bucket drill, where a lab rat student, with one leg in one bucket, other in the other, turns to and fro, with spaghetti arm folding up in response to the change of direction before extending again.

I wish to pursue my interest in both methods, lifetime.

As a rotorded server, i.e., one of the numerous servers in the world with tight shoulder rotors, I believe what one high level instructor told me about this: "There are compensations," he said.

What they were, of course, he wouldn't say without a fee, and besides, I don't like to give away my soul; also, one retains information better if one figures it out by oneself although this isn't always possible.

Any idea at all to get the racket lower is good, in my view, and every idea within the two categories is valid until disproved.

Why restrict oneself to one of the two kinds of serve when a lower racket drop might be possible in the other?

[bottle]

Progress from #'s 651 to 658

The out and in slow turns feel easier and therefore superior to one's previous, more roundabout racket work. One easily generates topspin whether one is rotorded or not, with pace scheduled to follow as overall timing adjusts to the change. Pendulum can fall close to body without then spoiling pitch and setting of the racket at its first high point.

In a snake and spaghetti variation, racket can initially drop in a similar way but close in a different way going up-- the wrist hinge can simply hump.

Or, more simply, one can simultaneously open racket and hump wrist, while both first fall, or do both later at bottom of the arc or behind one's back-- remember, this is simple search for good serves, but through bringing more than ordinary variety to the table.

For pitch and setting to work, will one have to open strings more (no matter
where one does it)? Probably.

The strike will come from way back.

Someone will have seen snake and spaghetti variation demonstrated as I did
on YouTube but then be unable easily to retrieve it a second time despite trying all kinds of search engine catchwords. The video I'm thinking of contains a tennis pro and a naive tennis student, both of whom play on the same softball team.

The pro opines that a snake and spaghetti throw is one of the most natural
actions in human nature. So he always teaches it to his students. Just think of all the anguish and paralysis by analysis that this will prevent!

Snake is simply a humping of the wrist like a snake's neck but with fingers
like the snake's fangs a bit closer to the target than they could be. Spaghetti is loose throw-- Vic Braden often has spoken of spaghetti arm. Don't think in other words-- always a good idea if you want to be a dumb tennis player. One might think of the desired amnesia that Rick Moody, the novelist, says is the reason that people have illicit love affairs.

The softball buddies play catch. Then the pro shows how you can snake and spaghetti against a wall, personifying the wall as if it's your buddy, saying "Hey, wall" somewhat like the Pyramus and Thisbe act in MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

Finally, the pro applies the same throw to serves with toss so low he hits the
bottom of the net, but, he hits that net very hard and, gradually, he raises toss until the ball goes in.

Both he and the naive buddy then try some real serves. The pro looks okay
and the naive buddy looks horrible, but he puts the ball in the service box.

He has made a beginning.

[bottle]

Coinciding Pointer Positions

Consider first the twin videos halfway down the page (and definitely don't buy anything). I see less similarity between the two than the author does:

http://optimumtennis.net/tennis-serve-lesson.htm

Roger: The racket strings, not the frame, largely face the target as arm first bends. The frame gets edge on later.

Good pitcher: Hand gets very low with ball looking at target, i.e., the flesh of the hand is behind it. The straight arm is a good indicator at this stage of where it (arm) is going and is a pointer. All the loop action, every bit of it, is embedded in the upward slant from this pointer position to a second one, which is 45 degrees off the target. The upper arm and elbow will echo the first pointer position, i.e., if you discounted the sequence between them they would form a single straight line.

Hunch: That if a tennis player could figure out out how to serve this way, his serve would rival that of Roger Federer.

[bottle]

A Naval Joke

I said "Naval," not "navel." This story pertains directly to the question of whether, once a person has decided to build a maximum amount of gravity into his serve, he then opens his racket a bit as it falls down and closes it a bit as it roller-coasts up.

Or should the racket close a bit as it falls down and open a bit as it roller-coasts up? Or do neither, just fall and rise with no complicating slow turns of the wrist?

Any of these possibilities and others will work. The server will put the ball in the court. This will satisfy all those coaches who don't mind having a low expectation so long as they get their check.

Actually, however, the answer may matter, and there may be better and worse choices similar to some crucial fine point of technique in another sport.

The U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, for obvious reasons, has always prided itself on rowing and eight-oared crews. There were the Navy Admirals who won Olympic gold in 1920, and a reincarnation crew by the same name and maybe even greater, who also won the Olympic gold in 1952 Helsinki.

In much of the late twentieth century the head coach at Navy was named Rick. (Sorry, Rick.) He went out in his single (that's one person with two small oars or "sculls") and meditated.

Right then, out in so much salt air all by himself, Rick performed experiments in extracting an oar from the water. He then taught his conclusion to all the Navy sweep oarsmen ("sweep" means one big oar per person).

In the 1980's, 1990's and beyond, there were no more major championships for Navy, Olympic or anything else, because in sports of technique, small details can matter. The other bigtime crews lifted their oars out of the water before they feathered them. Navy feathered in the water.

Is this twist-twist idea in tennis equally important? Who knows? The correct answer might lead to more championships or personal satisfaction.

[bottle]

Is This a Good Question or a Bad One?

Does Don open and close his racket during his down and up first to help achieve such a nice drop?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb70sir9BZw

[bottle]

A picture is worth a thousand worms.

[gzhpcu]

Maybe we just have a problem of semantics... which is why a picture is worth a thousand words...

[bottle]

Doesn't compute. If you had racket way closed and then opened it out a little it would still be closed. If you opened it a bit more it might have vertical or neutral pitch. But if you had palm up like the guy in the forward windmill video, the dropping racket could close racket naturally during beginning of the loop. But would this feel good? Would it lead to better serves? Why not be open-minded until one has run one's own experiments ad nauseam.

I totally agree that racket must be on edge until very close to the ball. All of my aces and good serves have happened that way.

[gzhpcu]

[QUOTE=bottle;14503
Palm turns in as racket goes down). Palm turns out as racket goes up. Why do this? Because it feels great.
[/QUOTE]
bottle, the palm should only turn out after impact. If you do it too soon before impact, you end up with the waiter's serve....