Waitrees Technique

[tcuk]

If a young player (12 year-old) has mastered the continental grip but still has an open racket face (waitress style) throughout much of the service swing, what is the best way to correct it? I've tried starting the student from his throwing action with the racket face closed (palm down), which works. But when he tries to maintain a more closed racket face during a full swing, he can't seem to do it. Has anyone in the forum a good cure for this type of problem?

[johnyandell]

It can be tough with young players. Try starting from the racket drop position and having the player actually hit the ball with the edge of the racket.

But I think often this is a strength issue. As kids get stronger or train physically they may be able to make the positions better.

[bottle]

Just Sitting Here with a Glass of Wine

and I'm thinking, "know all the elements that close the racket face." There are a lot of them. For instance, where's contact? Over the forehead would be good. Behind that the racket might open up. AND, how much catapult or cartwheel is there in this person's swing before the contact? Age shouldn't matter about that. And where's the elbow at contact? The more behind the more closed the racket. And where's the throw coming from? Right behind the body or back from it a bit? And is whole body from toes to racket head tilted forward a bit (at contact)? A very good seniors player I know (far from a 12-year-old) holds his racket up in front of him miming contact, and he does this frequently right during a match to keep his whole serve in trim. I've never seen anyone else do it so often, but this is also one of the better players I've ever encountered. Also, what spin is this 12er using? And how tall is he? Six feet yet? Remember, a tall player, according to Harold Brody, can, with a foot of toss drop to contact generate some cheap topspin that makes a serve go in 40 per cent more of the time. How does the wrist look at mimed contact? Straight or still concave a bit?

Also, I'd want to know if the palm down approach is resulting in a full, Vic Braden type loop, or is the kid bailing out half way through and suddenly
turning the palm up? A lot of people think palm down full loop is the only way to serve. Simply untrue. It's more complicated is what it is. But waitress
with a tray of hors d'oeuvres sounds pretty bad. Maybe palm should be turned toward ear, neither open or closed, depending on the natural throwing action this person has already adopted or had thrust upon him. There just are many ways of doing it; hence, generalizing is difficult. How high is elbow getting before arm extends? How flexible is he? Does some forward twist of the upper arm when it's parallel to the court occur? That would close racket face. So would throw of the elbow forward simultaneous with arm extension. I think miming contact with racket face slightly closed is a good way to go, thinking "This is the position I must reach." From there one could work slowly backwards in slow, slow motion, figuring out the elements that working together will produce the good position.

I think that a powerful serve is more apt to achieve desired racket pitch.
I'll bet that a lot of people lose power as they try to send one shoulder ball
more vertically up over the other. Perhaps they've been told to keep a firm
left side but never figured out exactly what that meant. I don't see how you
you can catapult strongly rather than cartwheel weakly (I'm using the two terms as synonyms) without contracting the muscles on the front edge of your upper body-- which means the head is going to come down a bit whether
your body is firm or not. Do it and you close the racket a bit more.

Many servers are more powerful at rotating the shoulders horizontally
from their stomach muscles (probably for flat or slice serves). Carefully figure out the axis of this rotation at the crucial time-- that surely will affect pitch. I'm for a consideration of MANY factors, not one or two. It makes life more complicated, but does anyone really want a cheap fix that isn't going to hold up when something else gets out of whack?

If shoulders are turning too much and hand is directly above shoulder or
behind it the strings would open. Maybe shoulders not rotating so much in the horizontal plane would allow arm to slant forward a bit.

[uspta990770809]

If a young player (12 year-old) has mastered the continental grip but still has an open racket face (waitress style) throughout much of the service swing, what is the best way to correct it? I've tried starting the student from his throwing action with the racket face closed (palm down), which works. But when he tries to maintain a more closed racket face during a full swing, he can't seem to do it. Has anyone in the forum a good cure for this type of problem?

Probably because of all the time I spent working for VanDerMeer early in my career, I use a lot of learning progressions taking things apart and building piece by piece. I think the reason players go to that "tray" position is that they have a hard time with the necessary pronation. If the racket doesn't move over to the server's right behind the back (right handed server), before it starts to go up at the ball, it is moving at about a 45 degree angle to the intended flight of the ball and it's really hard to get the ball to go in the direction required. There is no such thing as a "backscratch" position in a true service motion. The "loop" felt in a normal continuous service motion is created as the racquet head keeps dropping even as the shoulders turn and the elbow starts to go up. That deep position reached by the racket head down near the right hip pocket before the explosive ascent to the ball can only be reached if the arm is relaxed and the head of the racket is allowed to fall in that "loop" even as the hips and shoulders are turning the body forward. When that loop is correctly completed, the racket head is in a position where it is moving at the contact point in a plane that is aligned with the target (takes 3 points to define a plane). This makes the movement of pronation less of a challenge and enables the player to generate some real snap.

But that doesn't really do you any good, but it is the background. Because your student is having trouble getting to that deep position by the hip pocket, he has to compensate by getting the face lines up at the target as early as possible and so he goes for the "tray" position. Of course, John has a good suggestion in hitting the ball from the unrealistic "backscratch" position. I like to use a drill like that against a fence: standing perpendicular to the fence and just an elbows width from the fence with the weight back and the backswing to the "backscratch" already completed, toss the ball as the weight moves forward and trap the ball against the fence with your outstretched arm. Do this first with a "dry" stroke emphasizing the shoulder, elbow, wrist nature of the upward swing. Once a little proficiency is accomplished with this, you can get up some real speed and actually crunch the ball pretty good, trapping the ball against the windscreen. CAUTION: do this on the same side of the fence as the windscreen and be sure the player is not going to hit one of the support poles of the fence. This is a good drill for the upward sense of the hit.

But more to the point of trying to get away from that "tray": I like to have the player hit the ball with a stick. Yes a round stick about 27" long with a 1" diameter. You can get them cut for you pretty cheap at a hardware store. AND yes, you can hit the serve into the box with such a stick. In fact I was once doing a lot of lessons with the future wife of a billionaire in the Hamptons and although she was a raw beginner, she hit the first three balls I asked her to try this with into the service box. I said, "How did you do that?" She told me it was simple. She had played stickball as a kid in Brooklyn. In any case, you can't do it if you are coming from out of the plane to the target. The shaft of the stick has to remain in the plane defined by the "deep position", the contact point and the target during almost the whole swing or at least the upward part of it. Imagine you were hitting with a racket that was only as wide as the shaft of the racket. That's effectively what you are supposed to be doing. If you stay in that plane, it's not hard to execute the pronation and hit the ball straight ahead.

Another simple drill is to start with your hands up above your head and make a very brief motion. Have your hands move down and up together, but the down is only a few inches from maybe your forehead level to your nose level as the racket is held off to the right slightly in a bad imitation of a Roddick toss. Keep a rhythm and a rock, but as your hands go up you make a short toss and your racket arm moves up to the "trophy" position from where the racket can drop easily into the "backscratch" it never gets to and because of the abbreviated motion it is a little easier for the student to swing the head of the racket over to where the buttt of the racket is pointed at the ball and they can execute a swing with the necessary pronation. I started using this a lot a few months ago after seeing the Oscar Wegner freebie video and seeing some of his initial serving drills. He has some great ideas there with the chocked up racket and going through that motion from the service line or even infront of the service line can be very helpful. I keep running into players who have developed all kinds of strange habits and the usual tricks I have always used don't seem to do the trick and I've had to reconstruct new drills. If you understand the basic mechanics of the serve and the pronation, you will enjoy your teaching a lot more as you try to apply those principles to the particular problem your student is having. Otherwise, it gets very boring. There is some great stuff in the instructional articles here on Tennisplayer that gives you a better feel of what those mechanics are. Sometimes the details are a little too technical for your students. They just need the drill they need to do today. Your challenge is to figure that out.

Sorry about the ramble. Wasn't ready to go to sleep!
best of luck with it,
don brosseau

[tcuk]

Thanks for the help. I will try to decipher all the suggested help. I think John Yandell is right with a point he made somewhere else on the website: It's hard to convey things thru text. A video would paint a thousand words.

I think the site could benefit from a 'workshop' where coaches could upload coaching tips and ideas, and videos of students being taught. I have lots to offer as a coach and am sure others have too. I am sure John could vet any coaching tips for their worthwhileness.

I know YOUR STROKES touches on this, but it could be developed further and aimed more towards coaches. Coaches could upload clips of students with problems that are tricky to resolve technically, and other coaches could offer suggested remedies. You can teach this game for 100 years but if you don't 'see' things or know how to correct problems your students will not reach full potential. This profession is all about knowledge.

Anyone who would like to view my student's clip for suggestions please email
glideandfloat@yahoo.co.uk. It's in slow motion. I could upload it to tennisplayer too.

[johnyandell]

Good suggestion! We should look into how to do this--after I get the Aug issue up!

[uspta1976603328]

Seconding the Video Upload Suggestion

Good suggestion! We should look into how to do this--after I get the Aug issue up!

John,
I have frequently wished a forum existed where coaches/players could go to share ideas/problems they had in teaching tennis concepts ect.

I realize the things I'm trying to convey are nothing new, just new to the student, and many before me have done this before, and many better. Hearing how others have accomplished that goal, or ways they have used to get it done, not to mention those of us who face a particular teaching challenge and would like to have others make informative suggestions.

Just thought I would throw in my two cents.

Greg Lumb

[johnyandell]

Yeah at it's best that is what goes on in this Forum. Just swamped but we need to make it easier for people to upload clips.