A New Year's Serve

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Conclusion after a Trip to Court

Alter upward pathway more through stance than internal adjustment of arm.

Elbow coming straight up at right angles to the shoulders creates the longest steepest path to the ball for this particular server.

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Horrified at Film of Self

The shock of seeing cramped, arrhythmic motion with a bunch of stunted arm work low and out to right of bod hereby ends my experiment in Isner generis serves.

Already I'm back to platform, but with ha now leaving the station long before the ta train.

ha is first straight, bowling up at side fence. How high? Quite high. A guy with a trick arm like mine must concentrate above all on getting his elbow up and out of the way where it won't do its usual mischief.

Sounds like the exercise where you start with ha brandished like a tomahawk. The difference is that there is continuous motion as arm bends to its right angle or even less but think! Think!...

For ta is still in Grand Central.

So how to blend ta with ha in continuity forever? Easy, so easy. First relax. Then go up and to left with your ice cream cone but at the same time employ a huge liquid, oozing cantilever.

One need only ask, when contemplating all this a day or two later, did left shoulder get higher than right? Did upper and lower bod each segment in its own direction? Was ball given a high, uninhibited crossing ride?

And what about ha? Did ha, never stopped despite its brandishing keep moving at its original rate?

I tell you, I positively assert, if the answer to all these questions is yes, there will be no need for the artificiality and affectation of ta held up for an extra interval as in the Kirsten Dunst movie called WIMBLEDON.

No, ta will get tall just as legs kick like a double barreled shotgun (despite their carefully distinguished roles).

Where's ha? The hand of ha is just passing your head like a cloud across the moon.

Well, every picture tells a story. The arm, forced for months to needle too soon is now permitted to needle at its leisure at beginning of the leg drive and as part of easy racket drop about to plunge into a cushion of rising tension but not terrorism.

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Method in Madness

One takes stuff away from even or especially from a negative experiment without euphoria and hopefully with clear and sober eyes. Example: I no longer try to imitate the overall John Isner serve but retain a radically different rising path for hitting arm. My idea re needling also has changed.

Needling needn't be Trumplike. It can be a physical thing in tennis that greatly increases the distance of one's passive arm snap. John Isner seems to prove its effectiveness. Others may generate high racket head speed with a shorter tract of loose straightening arm.

One's possible control of spin direction quickly comes into play. Solution of this challenge could be exotic or unexpectedly basic for someone whose store of ESR is limited by physique.

Note: The right arm in new thinking never goes down but out and up. How high? Quite high. How bent will it be at top? To be decided. The feel up there will be of a cushion. The movement will be continuous but with a semblance or suggestion of a pause. The countervailing act (shoulders one way hips another) will reinforce toss while moving both arms.

Since the arm already is bent at address, it could simply remain that way on its trip to the top a la Djokovic.

I find that however a bit too dry and mechanical for me. I prefer a slight straightening and re-bending as elbow goes up.

But back doesn't just bend backward. It twists decisively backward too. This raises the base of left (tossing) arm while lowering the base of cocking right arm, hence hand and racket as well.

Too many minutiae of stroke technique here? Then shift to this other kind of tennis knowledge:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZaB...=EmailCampaign)

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So I Held Some, didn't Hold Some Last Night

The same thing was happening to the people around me, some of whom had good serves. That's what I had last night: a good serve. A good serve, don't you know, does not suffice on the homogeneous grit-laden hard courts that everybody plays on nowadays. Whether you have a good serve or a poor serve does not much differ. If you had an excellent serve, that would differ.

So, time to try something else-- anything, in the thought of sometime getting lucky.

Gladys Heldman did not want anybody to bend their knees while tossing. But I don' care what Mamma don' 'low, gonna play that eighty-eight anyhow.

All my serves start from the same address.

Even the persons hostile to my serves agree that I have a good address.

The bent right arm starts up.

A server can do anything he wants before he has tossed, and if he doesn't take all the time in the world for this, he is a nut.

As hand finally clears eyes, one does one's body and arm toss.

And kicks.

And proceeds as normal.

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Addendum

Haven't even tried # 4624 yet. Before I go to my netless court, I want to add another move to my radical scheme. The elbow rises slowly up, yes, but then makes a left turn for the left fence. It is still very smooth and slow in doing this.

There is no escape now for Mr. Congenitally Dropped Shoulder Server, no way for him to cop out on a really high upper arm. Even my camera will have to show it.

This is when unified toss and double bend will chime in, thus making the motion continuous with no stopgap.

The arm will be just open enough to clear head. Needling can begin any old time it wants to.

Also, need to remember to walk over to bangboard and hit some one bounce dinks, steering from finger pressure only. Hadn't done that recently and so missed a couple easy volleys on Friday night.

People say this is winter. Ha! The park attendants should leave nets up the whole year.

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Experiment was Fine

No lessening of quality from anything else I do. And yet there is more ease. The one modification I now plan (although others may emerge in my sleep but I hope not) is to transfer the elbow's left turn from something square in city traffic to a wide smooth arc that a motorcycle might follow on pastureland.

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Back to Square One

The turn in my new lift-and-turn motion must be a square one.

That is a joke and a very bad one.

My shoulder casing mushed when I suddenly twisted as I got born.

Maybe? I expect a doctor of obstetrics to dispute that one.

Regardless, any kind of athletic motion resembling a throw results in my elbow staying too low.

I have tried many such motions and therefore know.

I've filmed and filmed myself. Elbow low.

The only way I can see of getting elbow up where I want it is to lift it straight off, with arm still bent, up over my face as if I were taking off my T-shirt.

So I'm going to do it. I hope no one minds.

In terms of iteration, the toss now can begin: forearm up over head then toss.

With hitting elbow pulling toward left as part of toss.

Is there more range to be derived from the trick shoulder housing just then?

About eight inches which stretch I classify as part of my bod-dominant toss.

Ha can now cue the toss.

Ha rises and turns. To repeat the bad but necessary joke, this turn is a square one.

The ha shoulder double-winds: a) around and b) down.

The ta shoulder double-winds: a) around and b) up.

The ice cream cone toss goes across and up and back across.

The hips and shoulders form a cantilever too.

All this happened at once and now is over-- a good time to explode from the legs.

In what directions do legs, hips, shoulders go?

Legs: almost straight up yet a bit forward.

Hips: about one inch backward.

Shoulders: about two feet forward, from the hips.

This is the visible part of the serve at that point.

A notable relationship: bent ha goes toward left fence while bent ta goes straightening toward right fence.

Instruction for cueing the initial pre-serve lift: Make it slow and keep forearm parallel to court as you take hand up middle of mouth and nose and between the eyes.

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Am Looking for a Different Model

Just a few more days until New Year's Eve. My serve doesn't look right. Grigor Dimitrov is somebody who needles a lot. (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...1%20240fps.mp4)

What would I have to do? Toss higher for sure. One way or another I have got to see elbow above top of head as happens eventually in Grigor's case.

Have camera and tripod set up indoors. Am not recording in Hudl "technique"-- as did earlier-- am just watching myself move in selfie mode.

It seems, in Grigor's more normal looking serve, that the needled elbow winds to a certain point-- about 3 o'clock-- and then leaps.

"You use what you have." Would trying to imitate Grigor be the best way to get the most out of limited flexibility or is there a more suitable way?

P.S. Quite a lot of needling here too (https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...ar2_250fps.mp4).
Well, if HE can imitate HIM, then why can't I imitate HE? The only reason I can see is that I am an English teacher.

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Tennis Will Come to You

I need something really good for the new year. I call it "The Grigorian Chant."

One starts with slightly open racket face although mine is quite a bit higher than Grigor's. This allows me better to rock and roll. I enjoy the extra rhythm.

My favorite tennis writer John M. Barnaby (from reading him) had me starting with a neutral face then opening it a bit as racket dropped past right shin so as to avoid the subsequent complication of in-and-out curlicue.

But good result could occur if one starts with a slightly open face then lets it close as it falls by right shin.

The difference is that a natural palm down loop is facilitated without the handicap of subsequent over-complication.

This seems a good example of the Barnabian proverb "Bend the stick the other way."

My second thinking point in tweaking Grigorian Chant is to achieve a needle early and hold on to the needle until late.

"Oh you push the second valve down. And the music goes round and round. And it comes out here." (https://www.google.com/search?q=the+...hrome&ie=UTF-8)

That would be needle at three o'clock at which point you accelerate the needle upward.

That's two ideas-- more than enough. One can blend them in a continuous figure eight.

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An Alternate Topspin Serve (Small)

When I used to play singles I sometimes would be down love-40 and win the game with this serve.

Senator Laxalt once praised it while walking past his mountainside tennis court up in the Virginia woods. I was serving a basket of balls to my wife, the Front Royal city champ.

But I don't think I ever won a point with it in our (Paul Laxalt's and my) frequent matches against each other.

So, was the praise to set me up?

Not a chance. Paul was too interested in anybody's possible future game for that.

And as I say, against other opponents, I could be down love-40 .

Why would anybody abandon such a serve? 1) It wasn't big enough for me. 2) It blew hot and cold and I couldn't figure out why.

I'd start with racket perfectly vertical (on edge). In unison one arm would go straight up, the other a short distance backward parallel to the court.

Don't know what I did then. Now I'll try a total windup, cochleate, of the ha.

That could be arm squeeze first before elbow rise or these elements could be reverse sequence or SIM.

The beginning of the serve was all arms. Bod would then wind and compress and unwind all at once.

I do remember thinking these words to myself: "Toss. Press. Hit." Success came when the contact was very clean.

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How Lustily can You Throw when Your Arm is Completely Bent?

More so than when it isn't bent. Or am I just speaking of my own trick shoulder, which has no relevance to the larger tennis world?

Herewith a New Year's Resolution: to answer the title question.

To begin with, therefore, in my trial serve called "The Grigorian Chant," one tosses when and where Grigor Dimitrov does but then immediately clamps the two halves of the arm together while the ball is still on its way up.

Oh, does Grigor do that? Does Roger do that? If so it's just coincidence.

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One Wants to be a Tough Guy

That would be somebody who eats an avocado right out of its shell-- something I now often will do to start a meal.

Then and only then will one be ready to completely fold one's arm together while tossed ball is still on the rise.

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Bend the Stick the Other Way

"Whether it is a pendulum windup, whether it is an abbreviated windup makes no difference."-- Brian Gordon

If one has a trick shoulder that makes the challenge of getting elbow high uncommonly difficult, why not go with my abbreviated ta-ha sequence?

I did it for years in which I was in and out (mostly out) of excellence. The pattern therefore is engraved deeply enough for a return to it with more knowledge in old age-- if I want to. I do.

Begin with toss while partially bent ha goes back a foot, level.

As bod adjusts under the ball lift elbow straight up.

Stop. Think. What have you got? This is blueprint.

Toss arm is vertical, straight at elbow. Hit arm also is very high but still half bent as it was at address through level take back.

Now, finally, the two halves of the hitting arm are permitted to drop squeezing together on the leg drive.

To quote Brian again, the shoulder is "incredibly relaxed." The racket tip effortlessly sweeps to right as a result of what core body does.

Remaining question: Is elbow too high for the adduction necessary to fire passive arm straight before the release of ISR?

It seems like there should be a way for high, high elbow to breathe downward into firing position as part of the racket drop.

Time to return to the half-century-old green Arco book PLAY BETTER TENNIS and riffle its little pages once more. Yuppety-yup, here's John Newcombe with elbow very very high.

Look, Ma, no computer but I still can go frame to frame. But where am I? What is my vantage point? To Newcombe's left and slightly toward net. I'm a side viewer.

First frame: Newcombe's elbow is even with top of his head. Next frame: Newcombe's elbow is disappeared because it is going backward and down and is blocked by his head. Next frame: It's reappeared, is almost back to top of his head. Next frame: It's still bent but higher than his head and forward with upper arm perfectly vertical to the court.

That's what I need to know. But can I do it? Probably not. Will see.

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Becker-Edberg Backhand with no Don Budge Alteration of Racket Plane, Continued

It's the same unspoken provocation of Virginia Wade in the famous instructional video VIRGINIA WADE'S CLASS.

(You can get it on line but sadly not for free since it's considered a collector's item. Maybe someone will pirate it-- won't be me.)

Virginia, sponsored by Oldsmobile, starts off teaching her Hilton Head students to golf the ball with an upright swing on the backhand side.

But then, when she decides supposedly to hit more topspin, she reverts to the loopier, more classical figure eight of Don Budge and everybody else including most golfers.

Even Petr Korda uses it.

The most extreme version I've ever seen is Evonne Goolagong in the half century old Arco book where you riffle the pages to produce movement.

Evonne figure eights all the way to her left hip way around the back of her body.

This discussion either amuses or disgusts me in that it never happens.

People don't even try or bother to make the distinction with Becker and Edberg, who roll the racket directly forward in front of them instead of backward behind or to the side of them before another roll this one forward in front of them. Complicated but worth thinking about, even talking about, even writing about.

I'm thinking that today, although I will be playing with a different group of seniors men, I'll roll a wee bit earlier so that the inside out nature of the stroke will come with arm just "barred" to use Geoffrey Williams' term.

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A Big Humbling Lesson for the New Year

If you have a trick shoulder like Pam Shriver or me, then get the elbow as high as you can as early as you can, like John Newcombe whether he had to do that or not.

I played this morning with old guys who had nice strokes but couldn't move particularly well.

Their strokes were good enough to beat up on three of the four different types of serve I tried. But by the end I was holding at love.

The lesson, re-stated, is that although you think you have things figured out, you probably don't know nuthin.

I was so lucky to have a good partner, so that we were always way ahead-- a great time to fool around and try new stuff so long as you don't try to do that to every single stroke in your arsenal all at once.