The Myth of the Archer's Bow

[jdcremin]

I feel in many cases you might be right. Players who can throw a tennis ball (or racket) a long way are half way there to start with. Nevertheless things can still go wrong, or be less than ideal, because an element is imperfect or missing. Andy Murray would seem to be an example of a top player with an element of his serve that is less than ideal.

I know nothing about baseball but I assume there are pitches and then there are pitches who pitch that bit better?

I think the best thing about Tennisplayer is it breaks down strokes so we can all fully understand and know what to look for. Players can become incrementally better by fixings small things.

I would say that it's a fact that if the ball is hit at a specific height and distance (in relation to the players body - forwards and backwards , up and down, of the body) - the ball will do about the same thing each time. So I would say - if you're having trouble getting your flat serve in, look at your contact point and your toss.

Perhaps if you're already hitting 120s mph, and getting it in, then trying to get a little more power by doing this kind of kinetic analysis, it makes sense. And yes, baseball players do analyze their throwing motions. For me, the speed I can get on the ball has never been an issue - it's always whether it goes in or not. Trying to get more power on my serve would be addressing the wrong issue - I think most people are the same - are there really guys who can't hit it hard? I doubt it but if so, go throw some racquets. The other issue is that if your thinking about the contact point is incorrect (maybe you think the serve is hit "out in front" instead of directly above your head - assuming you're not 6'8") then you'll never get any power regardless of your form. I see so many guys adjusting their form to their toss. The serve motion is easy - it's incorporating it with the toss that's hard.

[stotty]

I would say that it's a fact that if the ball is hit at a specific height and distance (in relation to the players body - forwards and backwards , up and down, of the body) - the ball will do about the same thing each time. So I would say - if you're having trouble getting your flat serve in, look at your contact point and your toss.

Perhaps if you're already hitting 120s mph, and getting it in, then trying to get a little more power by doing this kind of kinetic analysis, it makes sense. And yes, baseball players do analyze their throwing motions. For me, the speed I can get on the ball has never been an issue - it's always whether it goes in or not. Trying to get more power on my serve would be addressing the wrong issue - I think most people are the same - are there really guys who can't hit it hard? I doubt it but if so, go throw some racquets. The other issue is that if your thinking about the contact point is incorrect (maybe you think the serve is hit "out in front" instead of directly above your head - assuming you're not 6'8") then you'll never get any power regardless of your form. I see so many guys adjusting their form to their toss. The serve motion is easy - it's incorporating it with the toss that's hard.

Well you will certainly get a lot support on the forum with the theory that finessing the serve works better than muscling the serve. I think one of Cilic's great improvements is his greater use of spin and slice on his serve. I watched the first two sets against Tsonga last night and his serve was more effective than Tsonga's, whose serve tends to move in a straight lines.

I am less convinced than you that the service motion is easy....maybe for some players. But there is too much evidence out there to suggest it's tricky for a good proportion of players. A good toss helps but it won't resolve other fundamental defects.

I am, however, persuaded by your argument that teaching a good ball toss is paramount, and that the main focus should be to get the ball in and with spin. For the vast majority of players this would be excellent advice.

But what about rhythm....the mainstay of a good serve?

[jdcremin]

Well you will certainly get a lot support on the forum with the theory that finessing the serve works better than muscling the serve. I think one of Cilic's great improvements is his greater use of spin and slice on his serve. I watched the first two sets against Tsonga last night and his serve was more effective than Tsonga's, whose serve tends to move in a straight lines.

I am less convinced than you that the service motion is easy....maybe for some players. But there is too much evidence out there to suggest it's tricky for a good proportion of players. A good toss helps but it won't resolve other fundamental defects.

I am, however, persuaded by your argument that teaching a good ball toss is paramount, and that the main focus should be to get the ball in and with spin. For the vast majority of players this would be excellent advice.

But what about rhythm....the mainstay of a good serve?

I put rhytm and ball toss all in the same basket - the ball toss alone isn't that hard and the serve motion isn't that hard but combining the two is. Which is maybe where control does come into play - so let me correct myself.

One thing about the motion - I tend to oversimplify things so I'll add something. The general motion of the serve is a throw but its a throw that must be done in the same way each time. So I'm going to backtrack a bit on the control part (I said you don't want control). To make the throw the same each time I would do this if I were a coach: after a player gets the throwing motion, toss, rhythm figured out then they need to take out unnecessary motions so that the ball does the same thing each time. One thing I've found that keeps you in the proper serve motion so that you don't get wild (thus changing the timing) is keeping the backwards/sideways tilt throughout the whole motion. Your rotation should be around a certain axis of the spine (acheived at trophy position) which is not vertical. If looking from behind the server, the spine is tilted to the left and back about 10 degrees each direction at trophy position, this sideways axis is maintained through contact - there is rotation and forward tilt of this axis but the side tilt is always kept. The axis is not brought up to vertical.

In my mind, I'm rotating from a fixed axis that is tilted to the side. Quite hard to explain with words actually but once I started using this trick, I gained a lot of consistency. The final result visually is an arm that is not close to the ear but away from the ear - at contact.

[don_budge]

Simple is Beautiful…K. I. S. S.

One thing about the motion - I tend to oversimplify things so I'll add something.

I will always believe that the serve is nothing more than a throwing of the racquet. If you can throw a racquet the length of a tennis court, flipping fast end over end, then you can stop working on that part of the technique right now.

Actually…I found your "over simplification" as enlightening as anything I have read or heard. Throw that racquet over the fence! The beauty is in its simplicity…as I once observed in an Oscar Wagner video. Thanks for your comments.

[don_budge]

Side arm throwing…as related to forehand swing

It seems that this thread has run out of steam serving wise but here is a question for jdcremin about throwing motions as they are related to tennis swings.

I will always believe that the serve is nothing more than a throwing of the racquet. If you can throw a racquet the length of a tennis court, flipping fast end over end, then you can stop working on that part of the technique right now.

jdcremin…what about the relationship between sidearm throwing and the forehand swing. It looks to me as if there are some real fundamental similarities in the motions. I have posted several times asking forum commentators to comments on this but haven't had any luck. Perhaps you might have a thought or two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy35nsZOzik

[curiosity]

.........Your rotation should be around a certain axis of the spine (acheived at trophy position) which is not vertical. If looking from behind the server, the spine is tilted to the left and back about 10 degrees each direction at trophy position, this sideways axis is maintained through contact - there is rotation and forward tilt of this axis but the side tilt is always kept. The axis is not brought up to vertical.

In my mind, I'm rotating from a fixed axis that is tilted to the side. Quite hard to explain with words actually but once I started using this trick, I gained a lot of consistency. The final result visually is an arm that is not close to the ear but away from the ear - at contact.

This seems fundamental to me. In the context of a thread discussing (by and large) Sampras' serve, it is relevant: When Sampras was ready to launch his serve, this exactly at the moment his knee bend and hip shift visibly bottomed out, he was flexed at the hips to attain that spine angle much as you describe...and he kept it through the rotation up. The angle for his flat serve and twist serve were of course different, but in each he kept it, rotated around it.

I find much of this thread difficult to follow, perhaps because my perception of the elements of the serve is tied to an atypical view? The Archer's Bow was a concept heavily pushed (live and in writing) by Bolletieri. That certainly gave it life. I think, though, that the action of the tossing arm once it is fully up has nothing to do with a bow, but rather has to do with rotation. I'll explain.

Don Budge drew his upraised tossing arm back a bit just before throwing it forward as he launched his serve. Roddick did, as well. They both threw the arm to their side. They both pulled in the tossing arm elbow just as they began their extension of their hitting arm (the pulling up of the hitting hand and racquet as the racquet hits bottom, ready to loop back and up). The bowing back, then accelerating forward...of the tossing arm...is, I think, simply about adding a source of momentum for the initial rotation of the trunk. That it looks like a bowing is random.

For the tossing arm pull-in to provide useful momentum to help get the torso rotating (and it, after all, is going to power the hitting arm) that arm must be moving, have momentum. Preferably it should be moving fast. But there's more: the tossing arm must also have some acceleration radially, how ever slight. This is insured by timing, so that by the instant the tossing arm is pulled in, and the racquet elbow/hand is coming up...the legs have already imparted some rotation to the torso, a little. Therefore the tossing arm is not only accelerating downward, but 'around,' to the left: because of that its pull-in has momentum to surrender as its lever arm is shortened.

The great thing about the tossing arm's little bit of contributed momentum is that it can be timed, controlled, very exactly. That little hit of mo can therefore be synchronized almost perfectly with the leg extension and the racquet's progress.

As for Sampras' hip shift, use, I thought the hip bit was widely discussed back when. I actually called Bill Wright one evening years ago perplexed somewhat by Sampras' steep angle back of his right foot when turning back to trophy. It was luck that he was going to see Fisher at Laguna Beach that weekend. He asked about it. And so we became just another few people learning about the Chong, the use of the back foot positioning to enable farther hip rotation back (necessitating farther hip shift into the court)...followed by the foot's rotation counter-clockwise just into launch, thereby stacking tension between the hips and the extreme UB rotation. The turning of the foot, leg, back toward the baseline increased the power of the UB's 'separation angle' as rotation got serious.

Fisher said that trick was taught to Pete by EDIT: DEL LITTLE. Perhaps Pete's serving coach in Las Vegas also contributed.

Whatever the serve is, it rewards the covering of the longest loop you can handle in the shortest time you can manage, continued acceleration (2nd Deriv), joined to artful racquet manipulation in the last instants. Pete sure mastered the 'longest loop in the shortest time' bit!

[johnyandell]

OK who is Dell Little??

[curiosity]

OK who is Dell Little??

Glad you asked. I'm an east coaster, John. But EDIT: DEL was a tennis/athletics coach in the LA area. I think the extent to which Pete benefited from an assortment of specialized coaches is under-appreciated. I was always a PS fan, fan of his form. By chance my son ended up taking lessons for a time with Joe Brandi, who coached PS in the year or year and a half before P's first US Open win. What a gentle good coach he was/is.

I'll give you a quote from an interview with Dell, and then a link below that. Dell was a diamond in the rough, known mainly for helping players get their footwork together.

Interview:

S.M. - The Kramer Club has passed a number of world-renowned tennis names ..

D.L. - Club was really a magnet for top players already established, who came from all over the place and among others they were: Tony Roach from whom I learned the perfect volleys, Stan Smith, who had a brilliant technique and great footwork.I will always remember that in the summer of 1967 our best juniors achieved such success that rarely any tennis academy can achieve today. Our young players have won 113 trophies by playing in various tournaments throughout the United States that same summer. I am realy proud to be seeing that flyer where our juniors are shown with the trophies. Among others the Kramer Club created two young stars of tennis: Tracy Austin and Pete Sampras.

S.M. – How did the beginnings look like when you started working with the most successful junior tennis players?

D.L. - Tracy Austin began early to be engaged in tennis, in the age of two, I remember that we spent time on the paddle court trying to hit the ball. She was different from other children because she always listened and always approached training very seriously. Pete Sampras used to come for a long time to train with me on Tuesdays, when I moved to work on the courts of Tennis club "Racquet Swingers" in Lomita . We have devoted great attention to improve his footwork and balance. He trained after school and he always played a number of practice matches. He always had a strong desire to win and even then as a very young player, he was very focused on tennis and serious about all of his obligations.

For the rest of the interview: http://www.svetotennis.com/articles/...el-little.aspx

[curiosity]

OK who is Dell Little??

The Jack Kramer Club lives on, fortunately. Lindsey Davenport also grew her game at their facilities.

http://www.jackkramerclub.com/about-the-jack-kramer-tennis-club/

Ah, if only I, too, lived in the sunshine....

Edit: I just googled del. It led me to Pete's book "A champion's mind," which I haven't read. Looking at it now via Google Books, Del Little figures in several chapters, and the Chong is briefly but not fully referred to on page 12.

[johnyandell]

Great info. Here's an excerpt from Pete's book on Lansdorp:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/famouscoach/robert_lansdorp/lansdorp_and_champions_mind/lansdorp_and_champions_mind.html

[don_budge]

Rober Lansdorp and Pete Sampras…the racquets and the paradigm

Great info. Here's an excerpt from Pete's book on Lansdorp:

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/...ions_mind.html

Nice article johnyandell. Nice posts curiosity. Pete was a transition player as well…note the Jack Kramer Pro Staff with the stiff followthrough on the forehand. He's right out of my teaching paradigm. Strokes grounded in fundamentals will evolve with the soup of the day. Here is the evolving Pete Sampras in the 1989 U. S. Open against Mats Wilander. Here is a study in contrasting movement…lateral vs. longitudinal.

Wilander is coming off a stellar 1988 when he won three of the four Grand Slams. Pete Sampras is making his "debut" at the Open…just beginning to make his mark on the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA60Bko0Fjw

Check out the evolving service motion and the matching Sergio Tachini shirts. Tachini was my favorite tennis clothes designer back in those days. In the handshake Pete is almost apologetic after beating Wilander in five sets…obviously Pete has a lot of respect for the game and for his elders.

In this video he is on the other end of the stick. He is in decline and the once and future King is being coronated. Federer wins in five brutal serve and volley sets. Interesting to note the evolution of the serve…Federer's as well. Peter Fleming in the booth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrDW4MF_xMI

[bdole]

...

I will always believe that the serve is nothing more than a throwing of the racquet. All sundry body movements that we pick out are simply the result of a high level thrower. If you can throw a racquet the length of a tennis court, flipping fast end over end, then you can stop working on that part of the technique right now. If you can't - then practice that. Most people will never get even this far because they are so concerned about control and proper form - when in reality, control on a serve is the last thing you want to have and form is just that of a throw.
For the people that can let go and throw the racquet, they should focus all of their training on the toss and the correct contact point, then spins. Take an old racquet to a field and be done with all this nonsense.

...

This is such a great post. I've been meaning to do this for months, and the certainty of jdcremin persuaded me to finally try it.

I was surprised by the biomechanics of my racquet throwing motion. It is nearly all elbow lift and torso rotation. The elbow seems to do most of the work, rotating around a fixed point in the hand. The release of the hand at the end is more of a consequence rather than part of the motion.

Applying this to the serve, the motion becomes less mechanical when thinking of just throwing the racquet. While I appreciate JY's assertion that it's bordering on disrespectful to the tennis serve to compare it to other sports motions, tweaking a motion which comes naturally is working very well for me. I believe I'm achieving more racquet head speed by executing a simpler "throwing" thought process than a "tennis" thought process (ex. Trophy > Racquet Drop > Pronation).

[johnyandell]

BDole et all,

Actually I love the idea of throwing the racket. That's different than mimic a ball throw or a javelin throw or a golf swing--those analogies, yes, I think often mislead. Throw the racket on the serve as high and far as you can. Anyone have a padded racket???

JY

[klacr]

As a young junior, I would sometimes take a cardboard box of old discarded wooden and aluminum racquets that I found to my neighborhood courts. Maybe 6 or 7 of them. I would line up on the baseline and begin to practice my serve by tossing the ball and literally throwing the racquet up and out to the ball. The racquets would go flying, onlookers thought I was crazy (and I was, but not on this) but its something I got great pleasure out of. Once I tossed all racquets I would pick them back up as well as the balls and do it again from the other side.. It never got old.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[curiosity]

BDole et all,

Actually I love the idea of throwing the racket. That's different than mimic a ball throw or a javelin throw or a golf swing--those analogies, yes, I think often mislead. Throw the racket on the serve as high and far as you can. Anyone have a padded racket???

JY

I agree about the difference vis á vis throwing a ball or a golf swing. We used to describe the serve as (from trophy onward) "twist and fling," which sufficed for a time. Clearly, though, throwing for height, not distance, is the thing. No?