A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Idea for Old-Fashioned Walk-Through Court-Connected Serve

Go with Kramer although the walk-through alternatives of other tennis minds are beautifully expressed and seem highly intelligent.

Think only Kramer here. His step is simplicity itself. His right hip lifts his right foot which then skates. The weight is where the foot is.

Halfway through this skating motion the airborne foot pivots, actually just as it gets to the baseline.

Why? Rotation (horizontal twist) of Kramer's hips. But don't let this distract from vertical body roll of every smooth type and the banking alteration simultaneously going on.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...veBHVFront.mov)

Later note: I no longer think the right hip lifts the right foot. The foot goes up first then the right hip lifts part way through the serve.

[bottle]

Why Don't Other Teaching Pros Use the Welby Van Horn Expression "aeronautical banking" in their Tennis Instruction?

Because they are extremely slow and stupid in picking up on something good.

[bottle]

How to Develop the Kramer Skate-Step

Start first with the plan of moving weight forward during the toss. A good way of doing this is not lifting toes like Sampras, Federer or Becker but rather lift the front heel.

The idea is then to lift the rear heel as front heel goes down part or all of the way.

This alteration of heel rise accomplishes the desired forward move all by itself.

Next, replace the rear heel lift with a lift of rear foot.

[bottle]

Another Useful Expression Besides "aeronautical banking" Might be "orchestration"

Why teaching pros find such terms too high-fallutin' to bring into their vocabulary I don't understand.

Would they prefer to say, "First this shoulder is higher and then this shoulder is higher?" I doubt it. Too much about shoulders. The bad instructor would be all too apt to turn to another subject altogether and leave banking in the serve unaddressed.

Or maybe say, "Stand here then here then here. Hit slice that stays low then topspin that bounces high then a fast one then go out wide then down the center then straight at the returner."

A lot of words, right? To be brief, one could call all of this "orchestration," thus covering the subject but making time for another exciting subject such as the psychology of a feeble returner.

For best orchestration, I now ask, should one present a 90-piece orchestra or a chamber quartet?

It all depends on how many serves one has truly mastered and which are in trim, what is the common factor that unifies a group of them and thus forestalls meltdown on big points?

Me, I'm feeling especially good right now about my Kramer, my Ralston, my off-the-ground Becker and my tall slow Newcombe.

Tired of naming strokes, I now just cite their derivation. And note that what unites these alternating serves whether connected to the court or not is seminal movement of the right leg.

[bottle]

But, How Important is the Becker Toes-up to his Serve?

Pretty important, to judge from this video (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...euceFront6.mov).

That messes with my orchestration. I wouldn't want to do something entirely different with the front foot in one of my four serves.

Possible solution. Keep feet flat through the turning back. No one would ever notice that. And the challenge is not whether to raise the front heel on its toes but when. Both heels to rise together. Legs fairly close for a double leg explosion (as in crew), or, if doing as Welby Van Horn would prefer, letting the serve pull both legs straight.

And off of the ground.

[bottle]

It's Pouring Outside

Still, I need to get to a court to pit bending arm Becker type serves against bent arm Becker serves like Becker. I think I should try pigeon toes, too. How exactly are one's legs naturally constructed?

[bottle]

Or Bring Toes up No More than One Inch

I might get Becker's timing that way without anyone ever noticing the wind-up difference between this and the three other serves. However, I can't drive to the court to try anything out since someone broke into my car and disabled it (Detroit can be a pretty tough place). The guy is on film. Four cars were broken into. Happened between five and seven a.m.

[bottle]

Straight-Arm Forehand Cues

Cues are everything to me. Some people would call them tips. How about cue-tips? Or neuro-linguistic programming?

What I have noticed in my quest for a straight-armed forehand is that analyzing what Roger does at the top of his racket lift is an overly complicated task and doesn't work. Even if one's analysis were correct one probably would not be able to do it.

What does seem to work is absorption of two different ideas or simple corollaries that vary in inverse proportion to one another.

The first is an outside to inside and outside and straight stirring of a pot. The image that Tomaz Mencinger uses in his online instruction of this is a racket laid on the court. That can be the image of one's racket path.

But in one dimension only. The second idea is height and the use of gravity.

One wants moderate height of racket lift and modest adherence to the outside inside outside and straight formula, which is a distinct shape with handle pointing at the net.

I am just saying that if you use a bit of height and natural fall you can keep the curves of the racket rim image but minimize them.

[bottle]

Newcombe Variation of the Bottle Quartet

This of my four serves is least developed but on its way. It has little to do with John Newcombe or his tennis ranch other than that it lands on one's right foot which should make it very good in the far future for far forays into the net.

The main reason it takes John's name in vain if in vain this effort must be is the extremely high elbow it sports to begin.

Also of great utilitarian value is the image for keep-uppage of toss arm it engenders.

Think of how when you set your watch you pull out its nub perhaps with soft fingernails.

The time you want may be slightly in the past.

So you turn the nub backward. As you do so the minute hand goes faster and farther than the hour hand.

To achieve this seminal action you will eschew your usual gravity drop.

So you'll take the two arms down very slowly, with the understanding that everything will be on the up-and-up.

I've already said, I think, that arm/arms will come up from the side, not behind you, and elbows will squunch a small bit inward toward the ears.

If you do this too much you will lose the ability to throw the elbow quickly upward when you most need to do that which will be soon.

In the meantime you've tossed and both arms may now continue to move in the same direction toward the left fence.

The toss arm, the hour hand, will stop at 12 o'clock, the meridian, the highest point in the sky-- a cue for excellence which you (I) can use in the other three serves.

With everything synchronized, knees and hit arm will have started their fateful bend.

[bottle]

Report

With car in shop, I had to walk to the indoor facility to play with three tough players with no selfie or self-feed or practice of any kind first.

Tried a few Becker type serves. They carried neither sufficient depth nor direction so that they were returned off of the clay rather fast with their own speed.

I'm not sure, being old, I even want to jump onto the right leg or any leg. If I do jump however that is how I'll do it because of a partial replacement in the other leg.

Returning to ground-hugging serve by Jack Kramer as model: Bending front knee will never make the heel go down. So does Kramer bend knee before he simultaneously lowers heel (somewhat) and lifts rear leg?

Absolutely. Also note that downswing of toss arm is barely down and mostly horizontal.

(https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ServeFront.mov)

This abbreviates the total distance traveled by the toss arm.

Now: When is the toss, in relation to front knee bend?

Just before.

So front leg bend and (partial lowering of left heel simultaneous with lifting of right knee) is a 1-2 sequence that starts with ball release.

Forward travel starts before that.

The gliding leg shows where the weight is.

Glide leg's toes pivot in air unlike Don Budge who pivots toes first.

In both cases the right hip rises in mid-stride to help right shoulder also bank upward.

[bottle]

Low Point of Initial Gravity Drop in a Jack Kramer Serve

I insist that this is a type of serve that anyone can glom into if he wants.

And casually negligent persons, in their phony quest for natural spontaneity, may ignore something like this at risk to their own development of a future great serve.

Kramer's arm, in this video, opens gradually as it takes racket down to a low point way behind his back (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ServeFront.mov).

The formula "down together-- up together" can mean too many different things.

The racket doesn't fall down to low point at one's right heel and then start up.

Or fall to a low point anywhere else than what we see in the video.

Which creates a short amount of steepness for racket as both arms go up.

[stotty]

I wonder if Jack had arthritis in his left knee and hip like Stotty. The trouble with lateral pinpoint, as used by Jack and Stotty, is that the right leg is merely a stabiliser and takes almost nothing of the load. All the driving up is done by the left leg. Over 40 years this has wear and tear consequences.

[bottle]

Interesting Timing Here in View of my Next Two Posts

I've always wanted to get rear leg more involved. Comes with having been an oarsman. One learns a double-barreled push. Used it once in a short story where one kid ejected another from a tree house.

Maybe I sprang too high without knowing what I was doing. I'm quite sure the landing, not the lift-off was the start of my cycle of leg and back hurt.

[bottle]

From Four to Two

Such a decision can come about from a single evening of play. Just as the FEEL TENNIS videos of Tomaz Mencinger finally destroyed my very interesting but somewhat unpredictable McEnrueful by giving me two strong eastern forehand alternatives, the existing videos of Jack Kramer serving inspire my old guy's reluctance to jump up in the air.

And why did I want to do that anyway unless I was trying to jolt my knee replacement when I came down on my left leg or my squashed meniscus if hopping onto my right leg like Newcombe, Becker or Stich?

C'mon, Bottle, you sat in Jeffrey the orthopedic surgeon's flourescence drenched office one afternoon while he showed you your MRI, pointing to the meniscus oozing from both ends of the bone. Don't forget that. Not unless you have a death wish to withdraw from tennis. The idea is to play for as long as possible, nicht wahr? "We don't do cosmetic surgery," Jeffrey said.

So hip hip hooray for Jack Kramer's serve whether you would have liked him as a person or not. It's his serve that you need to love. He commandeered his own hellacIous slice. So why resort to Dennis Ralston's more extreme version with ball taken way way out front. Just one "way" in out front ought to suffice.

But what about the Newcombe take-off serve? Coming along nicely though causing me to hop onto the oozing meniscus. And a dull ache began to develop. One opponent was kind enough to say that it was succeeding in annoying him greatly with its high bounce.

Modify it then to the Kramer paradigm but with arm coming up from the side-- the only difference from a regular Kramer serve, which itself by the way can make the ball kick high but maybe not as much.

[bottle]

Backward Setting of the Watch

Attention must be paid to this small detail.

I join the ranks of all tennis thinkers who have ever tried to keep their own toss arm up or that of their students. Many of the cue-tips have been clever, amusing and even sure-fire if only the student will do them.

Pull on a stuck old fashioned toilet chain, hang from an inner ring high on the wall in your cell at The Spanish Inquisition.

My idea is to set one's watch backward until the hour hand is at the high point in the sky and the shorter minute hand keeps going.

But one must practice this all by itself. Do it a hundred times-- the only way to mildly overcome the bad habit of dropping the toss hand too soon.

Then, having done that, integrate one's new habit into the Newcombe since there one can reinforce it easier.

Next, integrate it into the Kramer you (I) envision, the serve that starts with hit arm (ha) turned way back square, the serve about to become my staple for the rest of my life.