A New Year's Serve

[gzhpcu]

What I have always envied are the "natural" players, (like my hero Pancho Gonzalez, for example), who, without any traing, any analysis, just went out and did it close to perfection.

We mortals are engaged in an never-ending quest for perfection, analyzing every biomechanical nuance, in the hope of having finally solved the riddle (while the actual execution of what we find remains very elusive...). Somewhat like Sisyphus...

[bottle]

For First and Second Serve but Mostly First

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjXJGsRtm08

[bottle]

Rotorded Kick: Use Totka, Dougherty and Avery Explained Mechanics, Pinky to Side

The tennis neologism "rotorded" means "having less flexibility in one's rotor cuff than Andy Roddick or Pete Sampras."

There are of course varying degrees of rotordation.

In an extreme case such as my own, one is supposed to quit one's kickerish goal forever and employ different spin for second serves. ("Well, you didn't get it by now.")

This approach is A) immoral and B) no fun.

The beginnings of effective rotorded kick are located on page 75 of TESTED TENNIS TIPS, 1978, by Bill Murphy and Chet Murphy under the title "Serve a Modified Twist."

This primitive promotive relies on subject swinging a bent elbow for almost horizontal racket attitude at contact.

A more modern but nevertheless effective way is to start with the seven downward chops of Naomi Totka starting at 3.14 of the following video. Get cursor on 3.14 and click repeatedly after each series of all seven chops, because, rotorded person, believe me, you really want to learn this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

Invert this exercise and incorporate it in a kick serve as Totka does.

For anti straight arm contact mechanics take Dougherty's suggestion in same video and Tom Avery's more elaborate explanation at 3.41, 5.02, 4.11 (watch elbow straightening past contact) and most importantly 8.01 in the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPLPV_EcG4&feature=related

Do you hear Tom starting at 8.01? "snap the wrist and forearm up..."

Do those explicitly stated words register with you, esteemed reader, lodging in your brain?

"AND FOREARM" !!!!!

My one other idea for today, to give pinky a ride, is for the most rotorded of the rotorded.

They may take the pinky off the racket but for purposes of concealment delay this act until a natural point partway through the serve.

At first, as someone tries to emulate the 360-degree forward racket work of Naomi Totka, he may hurt his pinky as racket butt grinds against it.

Remedy: Hold pinky farther to the side. The pinky won't get hurt. There isn't a rose bush growing on the baseline of most tennis courts.

[bottle]

More Possible Ingredients Identified

"Inside out topspin is all that kick is."-- Pat Dougherty

100 degrees of shoulders turn takes the right-hander's shoulders to MORE than perpendicular to target.

The arm action during this, even after it has gone up and right and returned down and left creates a feeling of total divergence from the hitting shoulder, i.e., ends to the right of it-- before it then swoops upward to where it wound up to in the first place.

I guess I'm fascinated by 360 degrees wherever I see it.

If the full 360 degrees doesn't easily happen for you...well, maybe you haven't generated enough relaxed racket head speed and need to go back to the drawing board. It's possible.

[bottle]

Figure Eight

Naomi Totka's sick kick serve is a good example of a figure eight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

What I now see, putting aside for the moment my uncertainty about when/whether/where scapular adduction does/should occur in a Naomi or Naomi-like serve, is a certain lowering and then raising of the elbow, a small "double-clutch" as Don Brosseau might say.

The raising of the elbow corresponds to the hammered lowering of the elbow in Naomi's 3.14 video point upside down demonstration.

Pat Dougherty reveals to us that, at this particular juncture just before contact, we must attack the ball more vigorously no doubt than we have done in our whole life.

One must break down something difficult to understand it-- in this case compressed whirl with perhaps minimal arm extension before contact and pronounced triceptic arm extension then combined with ulnar deviation past the ball creating an English wafer or surgeon's incision in the air.

This climax enables one to scrape the ball thinly yet powerfully since one has just authorized oneself to use the forearm to brush and yes brush fiercely upward at contact perhaps for the first time. You wanna yell?-- exhale now!

Would imagining a ghost ball just above the real ball and to the right and forward of it so racket glances up both inside backsides help? I think so. But where should this happen? Question too much about this-- "What's forward?"-- and you may grow dizzy. Upward is better than forward anyway in this serve.

Pronation or turn-out of the racket or "usual catastrophe" or whatever this action is best termed is now permitted to happen after that and only after that.

But we must put all this stuff together having taken it apart.

Figure eight seems good overall structure for doing that.

But if scapular adduction can go down or around or up, choose up. And if the upwardness still isn't powerful enough, try the up down up vertical stirring of the elbow one can see by clicking repeatedly on the 0.53 number to give just one example. Does the elbow drop down from gravity on bone ball within the shoulder housing or with shoulder housing flex-- which? In either case you can lift elbow higher than you probably used to during the toss. From drop the elbow then reverses direction and hammers upward, maybe forward a bit, no?

The first time you try this, you may be amazed at how far around the elbow can align. And at how things appear to work better with pinky off racket butt to increase range and weaken the total finger contribution. If I had more guts I'd go with two fingers off.

Within the overall loops of the figure eight there is a rather small straight back, straight upward/forward movement as if of a pool cue (which is always about pendulum-like elbow movement unless you are a champion Philippino pool player doing sidearm stuff for really weird spins). Everything is not only backward but upside down. The domed sky is the pool table.

Seemingly, this timed scapular-retraction-scapular-adduction-sequence cocks and uncocks the elbow.

This total move, although not as dramatic as Andy Roddick's double-clutch, is a close cousin.

Note: The figure eight exercise presented in YouTube video by Don Brosseau uses regular service motion with the addition of a right-hander's clockwise curlecue down left so that one can replicate continuously ad infinitum.

Victoria Azarenka did this exercise as she waited for the coin toss in her recent finals match.

When Naomi Totka performs her "sick kick," she proceeds right past the curlicue point and returns the racket all the way up to where the racket first bent up, thus signifying a sufficiency of racket head momentum.

[bottle]

Reflection

Maybe no one person can ever say everything that needs to be said about kick serve. So I'm going to evaluate the last three opinings-- from Pat Dougherty, Tom Avery, and myself to see if any information in one explanation combines with any other in a startling way.

Additionally, I'm taken by how, the more intelligent someone's view appears, the greater the percentage of abysmally stupid reponses in the kite's tail of comments that follows each video. Avery fares well in this regard-- he draws little enemy fire. Maybe that's because his intelligence is so "homey" that it conceals its edge. People like him except for one abysmally snarky person who thinks Tom talks too much. That dope needs to learn that if you don't encourage people to speak in a loose, unguarded way they never will reveal their secrets to you.

And I'm sure that, personally, I need to unsay a point or two since "In science, you're always wrong or you're half right" according to Craig B. Mello, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine.

1) In saying, after seeing the Dougherty video for the first time, that arm still has bend in it (it's bent but extending) at contact, I was lucky to find immediate reinforcement in the Avery video. But I'm less pleased right now with the idea I had of starting bent arm throw with scapular adduction which I probably want to save till later if I use it at all in this violent but slow ball with maximum spin "touch" shot. Naomi Totka at least does nothing other than hammer straightforwardly in the exercise she demonstrates, with Dougherty pointing out the "compactness" of this little arm move which she's learned to use to generate huge racket head speed. Does hammering elbow hold back the possible extension so it releases all at once?

2) Tom Avery wants us to almost hit the ball with the frame then catch it on the strings continuing in the same direction. This contradicts all those who think there's a big change of direction just then. That happens later (though very soon).

3) I'm open to earlier leg drive than I advised at least as an option.

[bottle]

More Fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPLPV_EcG4&feature=related

I think there’s fun to be had and maybe an eventually good kick serve for oneself just in witnessing all the possible explanations of it.

[bottle]

English Wafers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6CZ4qCXD4

Take idea at 3:14 of video and combine with a heaping dollop of crushed ginger-- Irma Bombeck or Julia Childs or http://www.historicfood.com/Wafer.htm along with post # 1050 here for a big league pitcher’s full windup.

Instead of integrating scapular adduction in forward motion per usual, employ SA as the starter motor in an old-fashioned automobile designed for the leg-impaired, the sciaticized and the rotorded.

The toss will fall, crowding you. Then and only then and before doing anything else employ the scapular adduction as part of the arm throw half demonstrated by the Hungarian teenager Naomi Totka (at 3:14 point of video as indicated). STRIKE BOTTOM OF BALL halfway up this throw with arm still partially bent.

From contact, i.e., as strings come off of the ball, fire the rest of the extensors (baby!). That would be both legs plus straightening and cartwheeling of the back with all of this simultaneous and intended to prolong upwardness of the snap.

Aim at Totka’s target only transpose it to ad court since most human beings are right-handed. Note: Left toes may remain in contact with court while other leg kicks at right fence.

Has one tried this yet? No. When one does, if one’s highest standards aren’t met, return immediately to the video at the beginning of this post.

In today’s featured match we have Manny Dullard (“Hit the same old boring shot”) vs. Stanley Varioso (“Most players have four or five recipes. Me, I use 500”).

Outcome? Beyond prediction.

[bottle]

Additional Adductional Rotation

carrerakent says that Sam Stosur's right shoulder isn't "torqued and involved enough" in her kick second serve. Let's use this idea for ourself.

Scapular retraction (max) to scapular adduction (to parallellism of spine of scapula with clavicle) affords an extra 45 degrees of racket head turn beyond that already provided by rotating body and supinating forearm and total compression of the two halves of the arm together and easing out of fingers and radial deviation of wrist. The scapular adduction stoppage point must be memorized. The maximum scapular retraction point reaches your physical limit by placing the racket head approximately parallel to the body (i.e., temporarily in close to back as in a Michael Stich serve). Another way of putting this is that you open out the shoulder as much as you can.

All small actions-- much too many to remember-- can reassemble into the single image of the slow racket traveling across the back in a long path which then inverts and continues across the back in the opposite direction as the racket tip continues to work down toward the court.

The racket head goes in a slightly accelerative way all along this switchback hike. If rate of movement isn't perfect the arm can get behind or ahead of one's bod.

If you wouldn't mind, reader, I'll now go maritime and then return to mountainclimb. My brother, in Rhode Island, sells (once in a while) the biggest catamaran I've ever seen much less slept in. All through the night Hope and I peered out a porthole in Tiverton Harbor, as the land, delineated by certain lights, went by in one direction and then the other. This is similar to the current Tennis Channel ad in which a lady up on the end of a rope wants one kind of a rock but not another. The camera appears to circle so that the horizon constantly swims past as she is poised atop the rock.

Always be deliberately turning the racket around you for as long as you can to obtain a beautiful serve and maybe even a good one.

[bottle]

Hmm. Nobody replied. Must be true then.

[bottle]

Projections

Physical problems are keeping me from challenging these ideas right away, but only mental problems would turn off the faucet of new ideas once begun-- that at least is my experience of pursuing inventive "progressions."

Working from 8), how about projecting a line through two ghost balls slightly to the outside of the imaginary line described in 4).

First ghost ball on a backhand then is to the left of projected contact. Second ghost ball is same small amount to left of projected down-the-line target. Result: a crosscourt.

Arm to rotate (twist) from hand for down the line, arm to twist from elbow for crosscourt, which latter method takes racket head to inside a bit. These twists occur coincident with upper body rotation before you abruptly stop it.

Forward action in every other respect is the same inside out swing re-coinciding with arc toward the actual target.

[bottle]

Figure Eights in Ground Strokes

"The best mental image to produce a draw is thinking of the swing as a figure 8."

That statement occurs in CURE YOUR SLICE FOREVER, a 1994 golf book by John Huggan.

Slice in golf and tennis is different and the same (and usually is quite lousy in golf), but draw is desirably powerful topspin mixed with hook to the inside in both sports.

How does one produce draw then? With an inside out swing. But what are the details of that? A plethora of material is available-- too much in fact. Here are some comments I've therefore written in the margins of the Huggan book in an attempt to personally index for myself so much stuff:

1) "Be counter-intuitive and don't go to the inside too soon."

2) "Don't conceal the racket behind you too soon." (If you believe in pronounced concealment as the teaching pro Chris Lewit does.)

3) "Show opponent the racket just before you hide it."

4) "Line up for a down the line shot, which means racket backswings along a straight line formed by projected contact point and the target point (i.e. project this line in both directions)."

5) "Use a compact body-driven loop within a loop, with said compact loop occurring to the inside of the projected line described in 4)."

6) "All this is a clever trick to make contact occur on that part of the figure 8 in which racket is accelerating to the outside."

7) "Shots in which contact occurs on the front part of a figure 8 cross the ball and therefore are weak."

8) "Use the same swing to produce crosscourt shots with a hand adjustment before contact."

In CURE YOUR SLICE FOREVER, John Huggan writes: "Players, for whatever reason, just don't listen to advice on the setup. Maybe it's because the fundamentals of anything tend to be boring. Maybe it's impatience; people just don't want to get worse before they get better."

[bottle]

Slide-Step

It's a dance step. I refer to furniture # 13 in "The Pro Return: Part 1: Compact Classical" just above the author's photograph. There are two recoveries shown in this video loop, so don't be distracted by the one that occurs in the ad court. The deuce court recovery is the one that requires special study.

https://www.tennisplayer.net/article...act-classical/

Deuce court recovery is a dance step of two beats with mid-stroke cross-over step already having occurred. First beat is right foot recovery step. Second beat is Michael Jackson type gravity step back toward the center. The inside foot slides a few inches toward the outside foot to help create starter block acceleration.

[bottle]

Twinkle-Feet

I'm already regretting my statement about twinkle-feet but won't delete it. It turns out that if somebody is trying to return a Raonic or Isner serve, they may have time for a limited unit turn off of a split-step where the outer foot doesn't splay even though there still is lower body torque involved.

Yes, this returner will have time for nothing else and certainly not for twinkle-feet or taking the racket back an extra amount as if it's detached from the body. Similarly, a slow-witted and slow-reacting dude can use good abbreviated technique against a slower serve and still be successful.

"The Pro Return: Part 1: Compact Classical" requires extra readings beyond the first because of the amount of information and ideas it contains. That's true of all the best written tennis instruction, I believe. (But I also think that most on-court and even video instruction doesn't go far enough, so maybe, reader, you'd like to dismiss my view. Too much detail in every case is the villain, but in the case of written analysis, with videos, present format is the absolute best since the viewer can come back again and again, if he has the will, to sort things out.)

How about the ideas of Federer's mid stroke step-across and long arm unfurling to the side rather than toward rear fence to reach the extreme wide serve with no available time? Is this move reserved for beautiful animals imbued with youth, genius and natural grace? Possibly, but I doubt it, especially if some geezer can teach himself the pure economy of gravity step basics for recovery from wide position in the deuce court.

[bottle]

One Aggressive Forehand Service Return

Turn position can be a moving thing, a film strip instead of a still photo. That must mean the old sequence taken from National Tennis Academy certification: Unit turn and then arm goes back a tiny bit. And since perfect uprightness seems uptightness to me by now, as arm goes back the extra little bit the body can angulate a little bit, i.e., the front hip go out toward the net preparing for extra push from the upper body. The notion of body rotation attenuated beyond contact to an ideal followthrough out front is anything but deceleration-acceleration as applied to some full forehands. This rather is a special concept applied to one version of a forehand service return. And I'm saying that two kinds of attenuated forward body rotation administered at once can increase the feel of shoving back at an oncoming serve. And can return racket face to verticality or just beyond all by itself at the same time.

But if oncoming serve looks to be extremely fast, one can stay hunched over toward the net like Pancho Gonzalez throughout the whole cycle. That will certainly help anybody keep their strings vertical or slightly closed even with a mild grip.

In that case, for added topspin, one would hook the racket down with one's arm as one went back the extra little bit.

But now the serve is coming even faster, it's an Isner. So don't take arm back at all. Just leave it where it started and angulate body a little to take racket down in a more forward position.

And don't forget your twinkle-feet. Do that and you'll be too far away from or too close to the ball.