A New Year's Serve

[bottle]

Wrist Movement in John McEnroe and Arthur Ashe Topspin Backhands

When we’ve come speculating here before we’ve almost reached an understanding but never completed our puzzle.

So, should we beat up on ourself or anyone else or should anyone else beat up on us? Since wrist movement remains essential and yet is the most difficult thing to explain in a one-handed topspun backhand—98 per cent of instructors don’t even bother—aspiring players are left abysmally on their own.

Who among these wretched, abandoned players has the chance for actual understanding? A very limited group starting with people who already possess great one-handers and must, most likely, also be foosballers or feathering oarsmen or passionate indulgers in some other exotic activity where “it’s all in the wrist.”

FOOSBALL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e5Is2c-CzA

EIGHT-OARED ROWING

http://www.row2k.com/video/view.cfm?vid=10569

What the foosballer and beginning oarsman have in common is a wrist action that is inextricable from forearm roll. The wrist motion is straightening or depression or transition from concave to convex or vice-versa. The forearm roll must happen—if it didn’t, how could the foosballer’s two rods at a time ever turn? From whole arm? I’m not a foosballer but whole arm seems slow to me. In rowing one again must turn a round, rod-like object, in this case the oar handle. It goes 90 degrees in opposite directions at the beginning and conclusion of every stroke in a non-disruptive way that neither misdirects the oar up or down. So wrist and forearm motions are linked, with their co-dependency increasing control. The hand is slightly angled on the oar so that one could almost be turning a dial.

As the oarsman improves, perhaps after a year or two of experience, fingers gradually take over the feathering responsibility. I don’t know of anything like this learning transition in another sport.

Tennis now. In a John McEnroe type shot, the wrist first hunches then straightens. But would the hunching, rolling wrist also have to roll oppositely during the straightening phase? Why couldn’t wrist alone passively straighten—centrifugate, you might say—in response to the change of direction provided by shoulder-blades clench? It could, it can, it does, but haven’t you lost some control?

Arthur Ashe also would hunch his wrist early in the atypical way of John McEnroe, but with the likely difference that he spun his whole arm during the subsequent straightening.

Ashe wanted to see elbow facing down at the finish of a topspin backhand but McEnroe concludes with elbow faced more sideways. Ashe would advocate finishing a flat backhand that way—with elbow faced sideways—and finishing a slice backhand with elbow faced up. He thought the followthroughs determined everything and that he could even use this fact to teach the different strokes to a beginner—true within his system.

Most topspinners on the backhand side do appear to roll from both whole arm and forearm to varying degree, but John McEnroe rolls whole arm little or not at all. That means pronounced forearm roll. How else could he keep racket square at contact on a high ball like this one?

https://www.tennisplayer.net/tp_player/john-mcenroe/

The moral of this narrative is that one can be precise in delineating wrist action in one’s topspin backhand. The mind-blowing aspect is that someone with an eastern grip—Federer, say—rolls the same way but simultaneously moves his wrist the opposite way from the the c-grippers Ashe and McEnroe when all three reach the area of contact.

The foosballers, I believe from what I just read on the web, make a similar distinction between what they call “push” and “pull” shots.

[bottle]

New Information from Sampras Serve: Thriple

One of the unique things about this finding (https://www.tennisplayer.net/article...lder-rotation/) is how the hips keep leading the shoulders over and over again-- three times.

But I would suggest that the first two instances are little dance moves generating rhythm and feel.

It's all a set-up for a full-out throw from transverse stomach muscles when you are in the air, i.e., 67 degrees of shoulders driven by 30 degrees of legs (I'm sorry, I mean hips) all in the last tenth of a second before contact, as the article says.

Can one combine these rotational movements with archer's bow? Charlie Pasarell is one famous player who spoke of the serve in terms of a "double
coil."

If one is having trouble, perhaps one should develop the two basic types of serve separately-- cylinder and archer's bow-- before trying to combine them again.

[bottle]

Inevitable One-Handed Backhand Experiment

Personally, I returned to eastern backhand grip. But, using same wave theory,
try Johnny Mac C-grip hunched wrist and let the clenching shoulder-blades straighten it. Go hunch to clench.

[bottle]

Three Sizes of One-Handed Topspin Backhand

Eleven sizes, four, eight or two might be better-- anything to get away from mono-size, with infinite sizes the long-range dream. But I'll limit the variations to three at first, starting with the fastest of all time-robbing balls shearing, veering and leaping away from me.

Wave theory is still in effect, providing rhythm and structure. None of these change-of-direction shots is going to feel very different from another. But the oncoming ball is difficult. I'm moving well but almost am still in ready position. The shoulders are continuing to turn. No back-swing required nor will one be entertained, permitted or admitted to this party. I rotate shoulders forward and stop them perpendicular to the net-post. Would do that anytime. The racket butt points at left fence post-- that's to right of the net-post on this court. The racket tip is being held back, down and in, i.e., there is tension in it even though I've already let go with the left hand. The right arm is straightening, pushing. It stopped being a stiff and pulling board three years ago. The wrist-- well, wrist is relaxing not wanting to do too much or too little, looking for some magic from the shoulder-blades clenching together and redirecting energy toward the target.

Hmm, that shot wasn't too bad. Look at that dribbler coming back across the net. Could slice and follow it down the line. No. Have plenty of time. Think I'll repeat the last shot and take the ball off the court just inside the short T. Don't want to hit hard anyway, do I? Of course not.

My God, he got to it. Too bad I'm not young and didn't follow my shot in. But why does he keep hitting to my backhand-- is he nuts? Oh, this one is down the middle, just far enough away not to be a problem. I could jam myself by hitting too big but won't. A medium backhand then. Arms back with racket head sliding down by left pocket and everything else just the same as before.

That got him. A fairly deep return but a sitting duck. Think I'll read three novels before I hit it. No, there's a better way to use the time: Racket to loop up and around and down to left pocket with everything else the same as before.

[bottle]

Wave Action in a One-handed Topspin Backhand

Big body, small body-- this shall be the sequence in both directions. The rear shoulder rises (a mound of water swells). So the hand either rises and falls now or loops to fall down left side until racket head is at left pocket or perhaps loops farther out toward net post in a smaller way. The wave, too, goes down as the bottom comes out of it, the shoulders reverse their tilt, the hips go out to net post to move the lagging racket with forearm twisting the head down and in toward body. The wrist loosens slightly as the shoulder-blades clench as a new wave pushes down at the rising ocean floor.

[bottle]

"Don't forget the whip."-- Nietzsche

But I'm not sure that nuclear fizz does occur automatically unless you or your tennis teaching grandfather put some conscious thought into the different parts perhaps a year before.

[gzhpcu]

In respect to the role of the wrist in the Papas quote (am familiar with the site), IMHO, all you need to do is keep very loose, and just prior to impact, consciously accelerate vigorously, and the rest occurs automatically. The type of acceleration you use when cracking a whip...

[bottle]

Fun and Games as Sternum Rises to the Sky

“The now-documented conscious flexion that 'is a major contributor to racquet head speed near and at contact' shows the climax of a process that began first with a loose grip and spaghetti arm, then added radial deviation and extension at the low point and then ulnar deviation in the mid portion of the upward swing.”-- Mark Papas

This means, using the overall no rock back but start with body wound and weight on rear foot Papas model, and correct me if I’m wrong, that arm should be fey in response to the release of the archer’s bow, which next just isn’t going to automatically do any of these little hand things for you.

In other words, the twang of the bow is going to lift your elbow and fold your arm together but not much else. No one has told me that. I infer it. I will try it. It’s a present assumption which I like because it’s different from the other assumptions under which I’ve labored.

My next assumption comes from Mark Papas’ own comment on his wrist motion definitions—that not one of them specifies a prescriptive “how much.” But from our experience of other strokes we know that when the masses imitate the wrist movement of the pros they always use too much.

Just accept that on faith. I know I will when I try my experiment today.
Faith, hypothesis—exactly the same in this case. You need the faith for
whole-hearted immersion in whatever the experiment. You have to
believe in the process enough to risk the subsequent disillusionment which is the most frequent outcome.

Specifically, I’m placing radial deviation as Mark says “at the low point” while mentally classifying it not as the transition it is but rather part of the final upward hammer throw. If all the little hand motions then take too much time and prevent the desired splitting of the atom at contact, I move to another model.

And, I reduce ulnar deviation from A) cocked left to cocked right to
B) cocked left to neutral (hand centered between the two bones of the forearm). And, I reduce flexion to straight wrist or less by contact.

[bottle]

Back Door Hinge Revisited

If eliminating backward rock doesn't subtract from ball acceleration and more likely adds to it, why not serve this way all the time?

Admittedly, I've been very influenced by Mark Papas at the website "Revolutionary Tennis" yesterday and the day before and in past years, periodically, as well. I myself found a literary agent, Helen, at a Hollins College writer's reunion and proposed a book called "Rebel Tennis." When I then presented a year's work to her-- written proposal or query with a good USPTA pro poised to do the visuals-- she revealed that neither she nor anybody in her agency knew anything about tennis and I wasn't famous enough. So maybe the next book will be "Contrarian Tennis." But aren't ALL tennis books and tennis websites revolutionary, rebellious and contrarian? Or as a friend of the USPTA pro said when he first heard of my project, "How's Rebel Tennis different from other tennis?" It isn't. If you're willing to say anything about tennis other than just repeat what you've been told you're immediately a Jacobin headed for the guillotine in 18th century France.

I don't like Mark Papas so much when he attacks Vic Braden and other teaching pros whom he thinks "establishment" but I don't. In fact, when I finally met Braden I liked him a lot and immediately changed my views despite having been fermenting my huge potential jeremiad against him for several years.

But there's more to Mark Papas-- a great deal more-- than polemics. There's great substance as when he mocks every tennis player in the world for thinking he needs to point his racket at his opponent every time he serves. What this achieves, he asserts, is necessary backward shoulders rotation whose greatest contribution is to screw up one's toss.

So, in a conventional stance, one can line up one's shoulders square with one's hips as if one just rotated back. Weight is on the back foot. You stand tall. Your racket points to net post or to wherever this pre-wound condition dictates.

Now, instead of waiting to send your waistline out toward the net after the toss, and bending your knees, and doing many other things that people who may or may not be wiser than you have recommended, you concentrate from the first instant on forming a single image with your body, an archer's bow.

Bending your knees now becomes a "subset" (Some of Papas' language may come from his being good at math) of forming the archer's bow, which has two limbs, upper and lower, tossing arm and left leg. Your waistline is handle of the bow, so imagine you're wearing a belt even if you aren't. And understand, please, that making something-- in this case bending of the knees-- a subset of something else is what improvement in technique is all about.

One practices the archer's bow in front of a mirror. The extended upper arm,
weaker than the bent leg, has to work harder to contribute its half of the stretched bow's full tension.

The left arm should stay up after the toss, stationary, but the right arm can hinge back from the spine, stretching muscles across the chest.

I tried keeping palm down and helicoptering elbow around as in post # 419 but achieved better result with arm bending into right angle as part of the smooth stretch and toss and stretch forward, i.e., draw-back of the archer's bow.

So I quickly abandoned the New Year's resolution in post # 417 and kept elbow back and forgot helicoptering unless it was upward and was happy to own a simpler serve than two days before.

[bottle]

"Simplify, simplify, simplify"

Why not trip the serve with last minute bending of knee solo.

Why not simply bend body onto front foot as palm down hitting arm goes up with toss?

Martina Navratilova says that effective serves are usually three or two counts. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, she advises simplicity. Two counts, say I, are more simple than three.

So, first count will include body going back then forward bowing in a reverse C onto front foot (toss, wind-back and straight arm easing up to rear fence just occurred).

The second count will include additional bending of front knee and immediate minor extension of it to initiate forward rotation of hips and shoulders as well as folding and helicoptering of hitting arm followed by rest of the serve.

[bottle]

Tennis Language Rears its Ugly Head Again

We're all stuck with tennis language unless we've mastered brain transplants through the pressing together of two foreheads. And there are many fine (small and subtle) concepts beyond 40,000 frames-per-second video which have to do with the wrist.

At the conclusion of Post # 417 I spoke of flexing hand outward, then flexing it inward-- mistake. Very unscientific of me although I'm not inclined to be hard on myself since I received two positive emails from Doug King and one from Jeffrey Counts today, and who doesn't like encouragement.

Mark Papas at Revolutionary Tennis shows flexion, through photographs, as the wrist motion that moves the palm inward. And hand extension as the wrist motion that moves the back of the hand outward-- or upward if the hand started out flat on a table. Then the hand would stick up. I guess you could call it "extended"-- clear as mud.

Never mind. Tennis language is frequently in code, and we only have two choices: 1) Learn the code or 2) Learn the forehead trick, i.e., find a good tennis teaching pro and press your forehead up against his or hers.

So, to rephrase the last sentence of Post # 417: "One should try 1) flexing hand inward and 2) extending hand outward to see which of these preparations leads to a more nuclear release at contact."

Mark Papas, who provided that word "nuclear," also defines, through photographs, radial deflection of the hand as wrist motion toward the radius bone in the forearm, and ulnar deflection of the hand as wrist motion toward the ulna which again is in the forearm but on the outside.

The photographs are just photographs and not X-rays but hopefully one can still absorb the idea even if one has never broken his or her right forearm.

The quartet of these wrist motion definitions is essential to Mark's scheme of racket head travel from low point up to the ball.

From studying Brian Gordon's research here in TennisPlayer, Mark has concluded that the wrist moves in a very conscious and pro-active way even when you are relaxing it.

Which you do at low point. You extend the wrist with radial deflection in his view. Then, halfway up, you deflect the wrist toward the ulna. Near the top but before contact you unleash or flex the wrist. This is a brand new program for somebody who hasn't tried it!

[bottle]

Palm Down Discovery

While it's hard not to be influenced by my home run hitting seniors brother-in-law (he prescribes "No tension in the body, anywhere"), Pat Dougherty wants some starch in tennis serving, cylinder style-- think control, upright posture, shoulders drawn back from one another and slow deliberateness. All this in one's body but with a whip-like arm that seems by contrast completely loose. My brother-in-law was also a minor league pitcher so he'll go along with this, and the other obvious analogy is some great quarterback throwing a pass.

This method still goes when chest is facing up. I've decided to minimize any pause between backward and forward rotations. Palm down hand then facilitates a natural loop. I'm ready to give up preparatory right-angled arm forever or an open racket at address like Samantha Stosur.

The natural, helicoptering loop can be as slow and deliberate as the horizontal body rotation-- two wheels simultaneously turning in the same direction. But when you stop the shoulders, the elbow then continues another very fast inch to start the throw or heavy snap on the ball.

One should try 1) flexing hand outward, 2) flexing hand inward to see which
of these preparations leads to a more effective release at contact.

[bottle]

Re Video in Post # 415

These are stopped shoulder serves, which means that arm motion from a folded-together-at-the-elbow position takes place solo and uncomplicated by the body, which has already done most of its thing.

Weight is coming through in linear fashion like a tall streetcar on straight tracks, but that's the body's contribution at this point. Body rotation to resume after
arm motion up to contact.

So what should the arm do (in Dougherty's advanced version)? It should throw as a hammer throws so that impact makes a big WHACK regardless of raspy sub-noise or not.

So, would we spoil the excellence of this throw if we identified any cooking ingredients in its recipe? Probably, since sequence is involved. My dangerous knowledge for today nevertheless is one inch of adduction (elbow helicoptering forward), sudden arm extension from the triceps, elbow deflection of one inch to right as upper arm spins a lot more than that.

[bottle]

Pulling Hand toward Contact

stumphges,

Thanks for bringing my attention to this. Push or pull, however, does seem more academic to me than palm down or palm vertical or even palm turned up. Because these are actual serves where the racket forms what Vic Braden used to call "a natural loop" (I've always seen this as a helicoptering motion) and those where the racket tip simply goes down before it comes up as if it were a brush dipping into a paint bucket.

I think the Braden category of real servers would tip the can over as they try to "scratch the back of the person next to you." The other category would have the paint bucket over to the right so racket could go down hitting edge of the body, no?

That said, I was impressed recently by Pat Dougherty. He argued, in a U-Tube video, that arm motion coming up to contact is more pull or hammering than turning of the upper arm, but that that last instant turning was an essential if subservient ingredient in advanced serves. Okay, that's my take, here's his: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjXJGsRtm08

Note: I doubt I found the specific posts you wanted me to see, stumphges. I got sidetracked by a Talk Tennis discussion of whether fiction has any beneficial use in this life (It enables one to know another human being better than is possible any other way since the author can express a person's deepest secrets according to E.M. Forester). My other sidetracking had to do with a post that said, "I hate you all." To one degree or another, hatred is the lot of all tennis analysts since most tennis players want to say, "Just hit the
goddamn ball."

Every time a TV celebrity warns of overthinking in tennis, however, he or
she should also warn of underthinking in tennis.

[stumphges]

It's not that we're an item. It's just that neither of us can attain the serve we want.

Navratilaw I: If one uses sequence, one's timing must be perfect. In other words, "Don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself!" Navratilaw II: "The serve already is complicated-- so make it as simple as possible."

This brings me, if not Elena, to a new headline, title, proverb, bumper sticker,
prescription or question:

Complicated in and out or Simplified out?

This is a seldom discussed serving choice that everyone must make whether they discuss it or not. Rephrased, it's palm down or palm turning out.

Big advocate of palm down: Vic Braden. Big advocate of palm turning out:
John M. Barnaby. A tennis writer who advocates both-- palm down for more "niftiness" and control, palm turning out perhaps as racket goes back by rear
foot for more uninhibited power-- is Paul Metzler of Australia, but is this distinction he makes still valid, given overall service evolution and change of fashion (one essential, the other extraneous)?

Most servers unlike Metzler probably wouldn't do both in the same match. Does one want more movement of the racket or less to get it parallel to hitting edge of the body?

Today's on-court search shall begin with a turning out of palm but with palm turned so far over on handle (extreme serving grip) that even after one turns the arm out, palm still will face down. But if that experiment proves to be unworkable joke, it won't last for long.

Hey Bottle, I'm not sure exactly what you're thinking with the palm in and palm out stuff, but have you looked at the push vs. pull stroke mechanics "theory" expounded by the poster "tricky" at TT?

There's a fair amount to it, but on serve he says there are two basics styles: pull, or coil style, and push, or drive style. Tricky claims that, although Fed and Pete look to have a very similar motion (using a similar stance, etc.), Fed uses the coil style and Pete uses the drive style. The orientation of the hand and racquet during the backswing and at the trophy pose are "tells" one can use to distinguish the styles. Personally, I think there's more than a little something to this theory. You might want to check it, assuming this is at all relevant to your own process.