A New Year's Serve

[stotty]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tennis-Strokes-Strategies-Magazine-Editors/dp/0671242016

There is a great photo sequence of Newk's serve in this book. I love Newk's serve. It's one of my favourites.

[bottle]

I recognize the cover. I used to own that book. Maybe I still do. I'll look around. It only would have had to survive 20 moves. The one from Virginia to Hungary was the killer. The one from Hungary to North Carolina wasn't as bad since I'd already thrown away most of my possessions.

(bottle, hurling, into the Virginia dumpster-- CRASH! Neli, Hungarian girlfriend, CRASH! One for one and all for one.
An American possession and then a Hungarian possession until my old G.M. pickup was empty after a couple more loads and drives back to her house. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!)

The idea of approaching contact from high rather than low now intrigues me although necessity may dictate the same thing (with necessity often being the big dampener of one's spirit).

Thanks for your post.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlcVqEn3v2s)

This video is super, but do read the comments and the comments under the comments afterward, particularly the ones about the Tony Mottram book which I've called "the Arco book" in recent posts.

That one did survive and I have it right here to my right on this table. I attribute its survival to its exceptionally small size. It's a bit worn but riffles as well as ever.

Mine is the third printing, 1974, 45 years old, 48 from copyright which is why I said it is a half century old.

Amazing that people from different countries value it so much-- a common experience, it would appear. And those who lost it wish they still had it. Well, if they immigrate I'll show it to them.

In the video above, the two arms go up together. In the Mottram book Newk's ha starts up first, then the ta seems to catch up and both arms then proceed higher like parallel feelers on the forehead of an insect.

[bottle]

Sometimes You Don't Have to Wait for Long When You Want to See More Video

You wait a day, and because of where you clicked the day before, your computer serves you up some more. "Tennis will come to you."
Who said that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI-zHsPvtTw

[stotty]

I recognize the cover. I used to own that book. Maybe I still do. I'll look around. It only would have had to survive 20 moves. The one from Virginia to Hungary was the killer. The one from Hungary to North Carolina wasn't as bad since I'd already thrown away most of my possessions.

(bottle, hurling, into the Virginia dumpster-- CRASH! Neli, Hungarian girlfriend, CRASH! One for one and all for one.
An American possession and then a Hungarian possession until my old G.M. pickup was empty after a couple more loads and drives back to her house. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!)

The idea of approaching contact from high rather than low now intrigues me although necessity may dictate the same thing (with necessity often being the big dampener of one's spirit).

Thanks for your post.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlcVqEn3v2s)

This video is super, but do read the comments and the comments under the comments afterward, particularly the ones about the Tony Mottram book which I've called "the Arco book" in recent posts.

That one did survive and I have it right here to my right on this table. I attribute its survival to its exceptionally small size. It's a bit worn but riffles as well as ever.

Mine is the third printing, 1974, 45 years old, 48 from copyright which is why I said it is a half century old.

Amazing that people from different countries value it so much-- a common experience, it would appear. And those who lost it wish they still had it. Well, if they immigrate I'll show it to them.

In the video above, the two arms go up together. In the Mottram book Newk's ha starts up first, then the ta seems to catch up and both arms then proceed higher like parallel feelers on the forehead of an insect.

I seem to remember that book. I think the front cover has him standing alongside his own children, Buster and Linda Mottram?

Tony died only a year or two ago in his mid 90's. Nice player by all accounts, and Buster became a pretty fine player too. I saw Buster play at Wimbledon when I was 13. He had huge feet and walked like a duck. He had a wicked sense of humour and deliberately mishit a serve in the hope it would land in the royal box and hit a Royal. A handful of insiders knew about this and waited for it to happen (I think he was playing McEnroe). Sadly it landed a foot shy of the royal box, and Buster thought it would look deliberate if he tried again...shame.

[bottle]

So great.

[bottle]

Buster Mottram

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZM_-u0S3cc)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Fdt4-TLsk)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-5G-VJ1Eg)

[stotty]

Buster Mottram

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZM_-u0S3cc)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Fdt4-TLsk)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-5G-VJ1Eg)

Nice. Great to see Frew McMillan. Strange ball toss he had, the way he 'shoved' the ball up like that. Frew was a great timer of a ball. Frew, Bob Hewitt, Tony Lloyd and Miroslav Mecir are the best timers of a ball I have ever seen. Lindsay Davenport is also very good and maybe the best of the lot.

[bottle]

Tic-Toc: Coming up on Midnight

Here is the exercise that can utterly transform the feel of John Newcombe "high elbow early" and that, I would assume, of other types of serve as well.

(https://www.feeltennis.net/secret-effortless-serving/)

Acceptance of pacified core movement is key. Or in Bill Tilden's thought as summarized in my own words, "You can sweat and haul and lurch and groan, but it won't do you any good, and you really need to whip your arm around (over) your body, which can only work if it comes from overall timing and not muscular strain at any one point along the way."

My wish is to combine Tomaz Mencinger's feel with snapping of a wet towel to kill airborne horseflies at an Ohio swimming pool with Brian Gordon's melded sequence of forward body rotation with torso twist.

To do the latter, it occurs to me, there should be the same sequence in the backswing first.

Hence body lean and torso twist backward, then body lean and torso twist forward, but with everything minimized.

Perhaps however the goal of supersonic racket head speed is too high.

If a big bang were to happen, great, but a slightly lowered expectation dictates the gradual build-up of momentum that Mencinger demonstrates.

One can still have the excellent serve necessary for the gritted-up uniglo courts that nearly everybody plays on nowadays where a good serve is not much different from a weak serve.

[bottle]

Great to see Frew McMillan. Strange ball toss he had, the way he 'shoved' the ball up like that.

My guy John M. Barnaby, in his book RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS, was not afraid to present a toss like that. He likened it, I think, to a reverse push-up.

[bottle]

Is This What I Think or Something I have Imagined?

I refer to the ritualized rocking motion of his arm that John Newcombe uses just before he serves in this video of the 1971 Wimbledon final.

Is the motion to develop feel for increasing momentum in the Tomaz Mencinger way or merely to loosen one's ha or both?

I'll post the video here and then watch it again.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI-zHsPvtTw)

Newk doesn't do it on every serve, but when he does, I think I see involvement of body and arm together, which could signify a supremely provocative waggle and the answer to my question as "both."

One thing for sure: There's less pause in Newcombe's motion than in Smith's. The backward momentum flows directly into the forward momentum which could be one reason Vic Braden was so taken with it. No value judgment is implied. Both Newcombe and Smith are great servers. I'm simply trying to see what is.

But, having read this, what do you think I'm going to try the next time I serve? Always, in my view, what you yourself are going to do next is more interesting than what somebody else, even a Wimbledon singles champ, does.

[bottle]

Mencinger the Messenger's Waggle Applied to ForwardBodRotation-TorsoTwist Sequence of Brian Gordon

Tomaz Mencinger believes that the main link in the chain is the hips, that the hips need to coil and uncoil, and that rec players don't even feel the hips.

And I believe Tomaz Mencinger.

I therefore propose a special waggle to begin every one of little u-i's serves. (Thank you, E.E. Cummings, despite your prejudices and bad politics, for giving me that name and also the word "manunkind." Ask Google, anybody, if Cummings was a black poet and you won't get a straight answer.)

And so, the waggle, the waggle.

Lightly holding the racket by its butt rim in three fingers, gently press with the left hip to start leaning bod toward rear fence. I also think there should be miniature contribution from body joint that also can be called "the hips" and miniature extension of one leg. The hips go one over the other rather than around. You squish grapes.

The detail here is more graphic than most persons will want-- I don't care.

Next repeat the same motion only forward with everything reversed.

Keep rocking in the free world.

To conclude each backward waggle combine torso twist with bending of arm from straight to a right angle.

If the new waggle-dependent serves don't immediately work revert to keeping ha bent through its take-up starting marginally ahead of ta's take-up since that is how I turned my serve around on Saturday from failing to hold to winning at love.

[bottle]

1/1/19 Report

Power train good but elbow not high enough, hence serve too much to side and not up over head.

So, bent arm rise of ha now must be adjusted close to head to get it up there.

ha first ta second.

Adapt this change to new power train.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

One has to enjoy this stuff; otherwise one can't do it, i.e., ever get the positive result one has always believed possible.

How cold the empty netless courts with only one person out upon them. How glum the overcast gunmetal sky although one's camera will film one in bright technicolor.

Next door people playing pickleball. One person wanted me to do that. That would have taken care of me. I no longer would talk or worse write about tennis.

No, no, I love being the only person using this huge tennis facility, waiting carefully for this day when the wind is light enough not to blow over my Chinese tripod.

But the result! It should have caused deep depression just as before. Mencinger: Once a habit is established it remains.

But no depression, not this time. I simply must lift ha before ta while keeping ha bent and bringing it close and high above my head.

There is relief in knowing exactly what one must do.

There is one day left, 1/2/19 before the next indoors play.

The challenge will be to match the different racket work to Mencinger's waggle.

What problem in that? I'll do it right here right now right next to my computer just as soon as I finish writing this.

Lower bod and hip rising over hip and a little break at the hips exactly the same. Torso twist exactly the same.

Minimal rocking back and forth to form the arm and bod waggle that in each little cycle will prefigure one's bod behavior in the big cycle still the same.

The difference will be that the ha will not first straighten and next bend.

That is two things less to do.

[bottle]

Never Underestimate the Difficulty of Doing Something New in Tennis

But don't be abjectly fearful about it either.

How about lifting both hands together like a baseball pitcher?

And then lowering ta just a little to give it a bit of rhythm...

While ha goes back almost entirely from bod movement.

How much should one's waggle ape this beginning motion?

Only in feel, not in appearance, is my first thought.

One can use an existing habit if one is definite in one's mind about when to abandon it?

If I'm right about that, then why shouldn't I pick the waggle that is most extreme in form? I won't be holding a sturgeon-killing plastic garbage bag with three tennis balls down at the bottom, but I can sway the two hands apart to create a modicum of momentum.

Twice backward and twice forward to rejoin the hands for immediate transition to a higher level.

[bottle]

Nah. An Experience with Manunkind.

Too fancy. I knew after the first ball I didn't want to do it.

But looking at film in the coffee shop afterward, I saw that the same elbow problem is persisting no matter what I do. Somehow I will always find a way to get the elbow low no matter how I start. I am nevertheless determined to conquer this problem.

I was so mad that I went back to the court for a second session. It was then I realized I had left my Chinese tripod, my most prized possession, there the first time and it was gone, somebody got it, probably the sassy looking kid who watched one of my lousy serves.

It's not that they don't go in. They all go in. Things would be better if I double-faulted once in a while. It's that they get clobbered.

Raising elbow of right arm first before the serve starts is one option. Turning the stance so far around that the action has to go up over the head is another.

Another thing that might be wise: Go on line right away for another tripod. The good one I had is advertised right now at Amazon for x dollars with several dollars for shipping for a total cost of x.

One might think, since I just turned 79, that I am getting Alzheimer's, but on the other hand I have been absent-minded my whole life.

(https://www.google.com/search?q=trip...hrome&ie=UTF-8)

[bottle]

Treading on Grapes

Amontillado 2019, Chateau de Lestad.

You're out to develop feel for the hips, specifically hip movement in the vertical dimension. As I read this, one leg straightens while the other bends. Do we want some variation of the Pancho Segura rock 'n roll serve or not?

So, arm stays very bent while springy legs provide the body impetus for easy racket momentum.

Front leg bends-- no grapes squished there. "But I washed my feet. They're squeaky clean!" As you straighten front leg grapes indeed get squished. Now to squish with the other leg. That's the beginning of the forward serve action.

In between the very bent elbow slowly winged up and even down. Why not? The coming down will prepare for great abduction/adduction in the opposite direction.

Toss needs to be high so that you get a good angle on the ball with significant upward component.

One prefigures all this with well thought out waggles.