3D Serve - Upward Swing Part 1

[pnwtennis]

Without a doubt, this is the finest, most in-depth article I have ever read on the upward swing of the service motion. Brian Gordon has done a remarkable job researching and reporting the results. This scientific data should help a myriad of coaches prove the importance of the trunk and shoulder rotation and the upward swing on the service motion. I'm looking forward to reading "Part 2." Bravo! Keep up the great work!

[BrianGordon]

Thanks, and glad you found some value in part 1 - hope part 2 lives up to those lofty expectations - it has some good stuff in it - Brian

[bottle]

Two Underdiscussed Areas of Serving

I'm equally enthusiastic and hopeful, too. Please think of the following not so much as indictment of the field but as the personal frustration that is exactly what makes me so hopeful.

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Two underdiscussed areas of serving are orientation of the server and how to toss leftward to the perfect spot.

In contemplating necessary "orientation" above the head one might as well be discussing a city map of Budapest, Hungary-- that is how large and difficult the subject is up there. In addition, Budapest has a huge public transportation system that uses every conceivable type of vehicle.

Serving is exactly the same. I ask, How much of serving has to do with muscles, how much with design and architecture?

One tennis pro, after hearing my wildest ruminations, wondered if I even play tennis. He had a point. The game I play is "Netpost."

The new orientation I've hit upon, after far too much trial by error, is a catty-corner construction of body and arm. At contact, I figure, a perpendicular drawn from midpoint of my upward slanted racket should go to the right netpost on just about all serves.

That means the racket head, a little higher and to the left from there will more or less face the target.

This might sound vague but in practice isn't. This catty corner section of server's space is like a city square or obelisk or hotel room-- a specific place that one is trying to reach.

To generate the thing, you need to maintain a healthy angle of arm to racket in the split-second when arm has extended. If toss is TOO FAR left you'll straighten out this angle (See Brian Gordon's essays). You won't hit up with pace-- you can't--you will have spoiled what you wanted.

If, while determined to maintain this angle, you toss to left but way out front, you end up with something that looks like oldfashioned lightbulb or radio tube filaments-- think one stalk with a crosspiece.

The right arm might go both upward and straight toward the net.

The racket feels like it can come around parallel to the court-- which looks good for spin, right? Nope.

Yes the wrist and forearm can send the racket tip from low to high; the trouble, though, is what happened just before when the rotor muscles in the shoulder twisted the arm, straightening the elbow.

Because, due to the angle of the upper arm when this happened-- it was forward-- the twist made the racket face go leftward and down. Doesn't a good serve generate upward motion the whole way?

Logically, then, we pull the whole arm contraption, angle intact, way around right.

At this point in your private service research you may contemplate all the advice you've ever received to lower racket parallel to side of your body or to scratch the back of the person next to you (Braden).

What does "the side of your body" mean, though, and what should your stance be?

What about the TV announcers who said you never want to feel as if you're pulling on the ball?

I've already said I'm not a server who has extra backward looseness to burn in his rotor muscles.

To compensate, I thought, hit the ball way out front. Now I say, hit the ball with hand way out to the side, the racket higher, the upward slant of hand to strings before wrist and forearm action more acute, the contact close to forehead over one eye or the other.

If this doesn't feel powerful enough, then turn whole stance clockwise a little at a time until it does.

To sort of repeat (and all is speculation of course) you want upward slanting
(upper) arm in such a place that the upward motion caused by your rotor muscles release will be in the same direction as your subsequent wrist and forearm motions.

You might have gotten your body right before all this; you might get it right later. You need all elements to be perfect, of course.

If like the Kirsten Dunce loving fop who wins Wimbledon in the movie Wimbledon with his grotesquely awful amateurish serve, you don't comfortably point up at the ball for long enough, you might consider unstraightening your arm up high and delay elbow next to ear like Lloyd Budge on the cover of "Tennis Made Easy" or like the server in frame six, page 149 of the book "Visual Tennis."

From reading Brian Gordon I've decided I want to straighten a spaghetti arm from rotor muscles action rather than from triceps muscle.

There's a real opportunity to do this when you consider that thrusting and cartwheeling body cocks and/or raises the shoulder, that elbow next forcibly rearranges itself further around and upward from where it was, that forearm cocks an added amount at same time.

The racket tip is flying to the right and down, in other words, so if you suddenly twist everything hard left the arm has no choice but to passively extend-- FAST!

Thanks. I'm complicated and painful, I know. But I'm looking for the real thing and don't feel it's too far away.