A New Year's Serve

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One Thing about Verbal Tennis Serve Design

You're never going to control and describe everything that needs to happen. For instance, the rain needs to stop. If starting the serve with a big linked turn, how is that going to affect the vector of the tossing hand? You'd like both hands just passively to follow the bod, but that could worsen toss depending on initial stance and other possible factors. Should one lag hands? Straighten hitting elbow to create a better direction? As with so much in the inception of any stroke, one simply needs to mess around. The words then become a device, albeit a necessary one, to put one in the neighborhood of either fabled or real success.

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One Thing about Verbal Tennis Serve Design

You're never going to control and describe everything that needs to happen. For instance, the rain needs to stop. If starting the serve with a big linked turn, how is that going to affect the vector of the tossing hand? You'd like both hands just passively to follow the bod, but that could worsen toss depending on initial stance and other possible factors. Should one lag hands? Straighten hitting elbow to create a better direction? As with so much in the inception of any stroke, one simply needs to mess around. The words then become a device, albeit a necessary one, to put one in the neighborhood of either fabled or real success.

Back to a down and up roller coaster. But the up is a low up of the elbow as in Narim's serve. And the second part of his wave flows directly into opening out of the wrist near the ear.

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Prescription for When Forehands Go Stale: Bending Arm 243's to Straight Arm 243's

Let me explain. A 243 is a waist high neutral stance forehand in which the operator remembers and respects the giant clock of Welby Van Horn perfectly described in one of the best tennis books ever written, SECRETS OF A TRUE TENNIS MASTER.

One visualizes a giant clock that is chalked on a blackboard or better a bangboard directly in front of one.

If one can't visualize anything, then one needs to use actual chalk. Go ahead now and draw the clock. Make it big and symmetrical with 12 large numbers in place.

We're not going to look for high balls, low balls, curvy, quick, skidding, hoppy, off-speed balls hit by a diamond thief. We relegate all distraction to the future.

The oncoming ball we examine bounces and sets up for us at 3 o'clock-- waist high-- perfect.

What did we do to get ready? Took racket up to 2 . Straightened arm to take it down to 4 . Re-bent arm using the biceps muscle (!) to re-bring strings to the ball at 3 o'clock. Finished at 11 with arm still at a right angle and racket face slightly closed.

We now hit or mime a hundred of these smooth job round loop forehands, basking in the neat weight transfer they seem to engender.

Time now for some Federfores. These will be taken farther away from the bod. But we'll use the same silky smooth loop. The real difference will be that the arm stays straight once it reaches 4 o'clock. With hand follow through at 11 before going farther around. So what lifted racket head from 4 up to 3? The beginning of a windshield-wipe designed to remove any mist in front of one's eyes.

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Serve

Not only the wrists are lodged together, now, but the back of the two hands as well. A broader swatch of contact in other words. Not that this is essential. It is a curiosity.

I've just decided that one wastes an awful lot of energy and concentration in determining when the wrist should lay back as I believe it should at some point in every serve.

So I get that item out of the way.

The next thing is to keep the hitting arm bent through the first half of the serve.

People give you a hundred reasons not to do this. A counter-argument is that when your arm is in the shape of a giant key, you may be able to fool your humerus into twisting farther around (axle-like) than usual.

But I don't believe in throwing from a right angle-- not if you are "rotorded" or limited at the back end of humeral twist.

You'll need to squeeze the two halves of the arm together to generate a bit of extra motion up to the ball.

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Make Room for Wrist Throw, Pronation (Forearm Turn), Turbo-charge (ISR)

We'd like for pronation and ISR to be as last instant as possible but on the other hand we have reasoned that way for so long that there is a chance of nothing happening on the ball at all.

To this I add another essential-- as I now see it-- in the arm work. That would be a tightening of finger pressure due to the research Stanley Plagenhoef once did on mph in firm grip vs. loose grip at contact of the same serve.

Once one buys this, one naturally ought to look for the best place to have it happen.

Intuitively, one might like to firm grip while arm is straightening at elbow and wrist.

But the just outlined sequence precludes this. It's at the beginning of the famous ISR that the ball gets hit.

Try tightening during pronation (forearm turn) then, I say, to make sure one has firmness at beginning of ISR.

Firm up the grip too soon and you destroy whole motion's looseness and fluidity.

Another ephemerid to add to the same equation: external rotation of the forearm as if throwing a curveball in baseball. Could we accomplish this while elbow and wrist straighten? Or would we do better to save wrist straightening for the pronation (forearm twist)? Whatever works. Most of the serves people have are really lousy. So if you keep searching you are likely to come up with something better although that is not guaranteed-- the serve might remain lousy but one's high five become more potent, even dangerous, a hell of a thunderclap.

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Consider all the Permutations and Different Take-Aways Most Likely to Occur from Locked Hands

First you figure out how to lock the two backs of your hands (I ventured a reason). Then you figure out how to unlock them quickly and cleanly.

Tilden advised throwing rackets for distance.

In the Compton, California place where they lived, Venus put Serena in grave danger with rackets skittering down the hallway.

But Venus didn't have locked hands. And you, reader, probably don't either. But I do. And I want to explore this further.

The hitting hand can drop a little. The tossing hand can go up a little. Or stay at the level it started while hitting hand goes down then around a slightly uppercutting path. The curve of it could make it more organic. Straight squeeze to the side of neck seems robotic, mechanistic.

The fact is however that one can bypass the whole locked hand thing and just start with cocked racked nestled close to one's neck like a shot-putter.

Tossing arm won't care much; not if you carry it bent while holding ball in a light ice cream cone grip.

Just toss-- however it is that you toss-- and hit.

Some eccentric teachers will insist that the student hold to this routine for five years.

No, no, I am more impatient. Lock the hands out front and slightly to the left I say. Then separate them however you think best. Put emphasis on early bod turn. You know where bent arm is going, right? To side of neck, right? Just a question of where along the curved path you choose to toss.

Anywhere, anywhere! Even toward the end with squeezed arm already keying racket down. Keep the possibilities open. What better do you have to do?

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Locked Hands Gone

Wasn't as important as I thought. But contributed to a new path for the backswing. I just start with racket crooked to right now, which still allows left hand with ball to rest comfortably next to throat. A sidetrack but one I don't regret.

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"One man's meat is another man's poison."-- John M. Barnaby

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Canted Racket Tip to Right is Gone too

Habitual address and setup rhythm are fine.

Then however we take from our own early separation 243 forehand.

If opening the wrist to 2 on the giant clock feels great, then opening it to 1 or 12 or 11 will feel great, too.

One man's meat is another's poison.

For me, the poison is a full windup no matter how many experts, all too apt to be unsympathetic, declare that best for a rotorded server. They won't even use the neologism "rotorded" so what do they really know?

Abbreviated service motion is best for me and probably for a lot of other 78-year-olds.

Arm stays bent. It never straightens until I'm hitting the ball.

Tosses now are divided between those a foot out and those directly overhead.

Press straight out to ball with elbow somewhat forward and wrist lagged for slice and sliced flat.

Press straight up to ball with elbow kept back for serves in the topspin phylum.

Toss should look similar to the receiver. You count on his long perspective to keep him from knowing whether the toss was a foot toward him or directly over your head.

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Carved and Lagged Serves Once Again

Even as notable a former number one player in the world as Patrick Rafter has questioned the myth that carved serves are no good and won't work in tennis.

My great failing was that I believed those telling me not to peel an onion because 1) I couldn't imagine an onion as big as a jeep and 2) I didn't recognize the bias of instructors whose entire serving background lies in the topspin phylum.

The result was that those buzzards took away my best serve.

They simply never read John M. Barnaby's RACKET WORK: THE KEY TO TENNIS, or if they did they didn't read it with full understanding.

Me, I read it 20 times (since I was grateful to it for giving me an interesting and winning if not great serve). But I nevertheless achieved a comprehension breakthrough only on the 21st reading.

The author, Barnaby, wanted to come up with an everyman's serve that would win games for the old, the delicate, and the infirm.

He never denied the efficacy ot the other serves, the top serves in the game. But he probably didn't like the people who had them as much. So he wrote enough to show he understood them without making that kind of serving his central focus.

Press out, pull down. I want to retrieve my carved and lagged serves and give them new life.

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Make bending and straight arm 243 forehands dissimilar; orchestrate them for complement.

How bod rotation best works in the bending version I am not sure. There is a chance that the reason the shot plays well for me is that it somewhat resembles my old Ziegenfuss, an arm first bod second forehand. I played with that shot for a number of years. It made me more consistent but less mercurial than I would like since I am a romantic.

Assuming this assessment is correct, the straight arm version (a "Federfore" I call it) should tend toward more accepted sequence: knees then torso then arm. The shot for waist high ball and neutral stance step-out is still a 243 (backswing to 2, arm extension to 4, arm twist to 3), but the knees and torso rotations take place between 2 and 4 at the rear end of the stroke during straightening of the arm.

Full bodied arm throw from 4 to 3 and beyond will then have a much more forward component to it along with the optional roll from the humerus. If "the weight is where the racket is," as Stan Smith famously said, transfer of it will then extend all the way from torso rotation to one's chosen extension point out front and a bit to left before hand makes its full return.

Worst idea of the week: To flip the wrist open with other hand. Much better to leave this opening as single arm function: Hand lays smoothly back from wrist as part of attaining 2 on Welby Van Horn's big clock. The smoothness of this is very useful.

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Ice Cream Cone Grip but Upside Down. Ice Cream Seen as Not Good for you. So Hold the Cone Point up.

Method: 1) Pure theory, 2) Go to court.

Thinking of ball as a single scoop of lemon orange swirlbert, one decides not to let the ball fall out of the hand.

So we are happy to change the reference. I think of a left hand bridge in pocket billiards. Arrange the fingers in such a way that ball is supported either from underneath or from sides. The hand becomes a freer launching pad once it inverts. I plan to work out details at the court. Thumb and first finger or thumb and first two fingers to form an O smaller than ball seems likely.

From one's accustomed address, both hands fly up to right shoulder as bod performs a solid wind around. Now one tosses from bottom of hand to here for kick, to here for flat, to there for slice.

You'll need to forget your ready made ideas about best tossing mechanics. Forearm is more active. The hitting wrist is open.

But toss is not just an arm thing. Bod forms a bow. Shoulder housing stretches upward. I've always thought of this part of any serve as "turning inside out." The action of it contributes to kinetics and direction and confidence of the new toss, which is low with racket striking it at once at its apogee.

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Possible Report

Toss for kick is from forearm. Toss for flat and slice is from forearm and elbow both. The toss arm never gets fully straight. This is going to take a while.

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Actual Report

Forthcoming.

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Results

The whole thing is to drive to the court and let the more interesting part of your brain sort things out. Mine works best when I am asleep, but despite what everybody thinks, staying a bit sleepy at the court might be helpful as well.

First message from beautiful lizards: Hold one ball at a time. Second, don't worry about initial routine or usual grips of ball and racket-- they're fine. Third, let new design glom into previous experience just as bending arm 243 glommed into my old Ziegenfuss forehands but with a much more liquid loop. Fourth, don't take the two hands back nearly as high as conceived (conceptualized). Raising of arm can be part of turning the body inside out-- you already know this. Use what you know.

Fifth, tossing hand will now be inverted half as much as thought. Toss then will be more palm down Kramerisch. Let hand set itself at the angle it wants.

Slice serves (carved) and flat serves (lagged) were better than usual. Kick serves have room for improvement but when has that ever not been true.

Ease of production makes all of these serves a big go with a lot less to think about.