Serve rock

 I asked Ryan in the 2minutetennis weekly group Zoom class what can I do at the beginning of each stroke that will help ensure all the checkpoints fall into place without thinking about them?

Answer for groundstrokes And Volleys: Keep your elbows out.

Answer for serve: Rock forward and back before starting to serve. Some servers were even lift the toes at the front foot if not the entire foot when beginning the service motion.

I tried that today. It worked but anytime I try something new it works for maybe 30 to 45 minutes. The next time I go out, I either forget something or else it just plain doesn’t work.

Initiate tennis serve with shoulders/elbow?

 I shot some video yesterday of myself trying to execute serve checkpoints laid out by various YouTube channels. One, to have my right elbow lined up with both shoulders, (I’m right handed.) I failed at after multiple attempts, by which I mean, 50 serves. I also tried knocking off the birthday hat as recommended by Ryan at 2minutetennis.  I wasn’t wearing the birthday hat. When I wore the birthday hat before the racket would sometimes hit the top of the hat and push it back away from my face. A lot of serves went in, but I should’ve been paying more attention to my technique. I often forget: pay attention to technique and how the strings contact the ball— the ball will take care of itself. Trust the process—the ball just goes in. 

How would I get y elbow in line with my shoulders? Before this morning, I thought about how I moved my racket when serving. My brain had sent instructions to my hand to move the racket; the elbow followed or just did some random thing. The change for the morning: Initiate movement with the shoulders or the elbow. I also remembered what Ryan had said about “elbowing the enemy” with my elbow and pulling it back to line up my elbow and shoulders. At the same time, I wanted to tilt my shoulders so that I could set up the shoulder over shoulder motion of the serve, as if performing a cartwheel. I also noticed that on some of the serves, I was hitting them flat, when I really wanted to hit a slice serve. That meant having the strings face the target while swinging across the back of the ball.

How was I going to make my serve better? I really needed to bounce the ball a few times and decide how I wanted the ball to move after contact. Did I want a slice or did I want a flat ball? Did I want to hit a kick serve? where did I want the ball to land? Could I place the ball there? How fast was I going to swing? Where was I going to make contact with the ball?

I resolved that I should execute several practice swings before serving every ball. Maybe even use a fake toss before hitting balls, (tossing the ball so far out of range I’d have to take two or three steps to reach it). I want to see how this goes

Text spam

 I gave money online to a few political candidates. In the process, I gave my telephone number. Lately, the number of texts being hit money from political actors associated with their parent organization has increased to maybe six or seven a day. Most texts ended with "Reply Stop to end”—that did nothing The organization put my name in an account that I could manage.  Once, I tried to stop the texts by deleting my phone number—nothing changed. 

I went back to my account profile and added a random phone number. The texts dwindled to one a day and recently to none. 

Racket as a weight vs tool

Posted to Tennis forum

One of my favorite YouTube channels is Feel Tennis Instruction. 

Over the past year, I’ve watched the videos “The Most Fundamental Tennis Serve Drills” and "Swing A Tennis Racket Like A Weight Instead of Using It Like A Tool” several times. Given example of weight: a heavy backpack. Given examples of tool: pen, phone, scissors, dinnerware, corkscrew. To swing the backpack, I’d need to use more than just my hands or arms. The tools require the precision of hands and fingers and no torso movement. 

My take home lesson: use the racket like a weight in serves and groundstrokes. With volleys and slices, use the racket somewhat more like a tool with a firmer grip. 

I put eight balls in a plastic bag as directed and swung it around, learning the loops of the service motion. After blowing out a few bags, I ran a cord through the balls and kept swinging.  I tried to transfer that motion to my serve. Because the eight balls weighed 16 oz and my racket only weighed 11, I didn’t feel the racket as a “weight” so I took off two balls. I could probably pull off another ball, but the effect of feeling the racket as a weight was already much greater. 

The next step, was hitting a ball without going back to “tooling” the ball. While trying to feel the racket swing my goal was to swing relaxed and toss the ball so that the ball would just “happen to be in the swing path.” I may be getting easier power, though I think consistency comes from understanding how the racket needs to orient relative to the ball position. I don’t have a coach nearby that that can help with this so I’m making slow progress but it improves over just hitting boxes of balls. The challenge is trying to remember my goal and not fall into the rhythm of hitting balls. 

No-ad tennis games with Tony

 We each warmed up hitting balls against the wall and agreed to play some games. No-ad games. First player to score 4 points takes the game.

I don't think we were evenly matched, given Tony's much more extensive, though distant, experience. When we finally stopped after maybe 75 minutes, we each  had won close to the same number of games. Luck is always a factor. 

After playing, I was glad not to have played doubles. It could have been the no-ad format, but I had low anxiety about losing points by double faulting. I didn't feel like I wanted to hit winners against two people on the other side of the court. Maybe I didn't have the anxiety of letting down a doubles partner. Whatever the cause, I had less anxiety about hitting balls and could feel myself paying more attention to the ball, my footwork and how I swung at the ball. I had plenty of moments where I had no sensation of myself, but it wasn't on all points. If I hit a short ball on which Tony could finish the point, I didn't try to run down the ball, nor did I feel bad. After almost four years, maybe I'm learning something. 

Before quitting, we played mini-tennis for three minutes, during which I felt a greater connection to tennis than before. I could control almost 80% of the balls I hit, dropping them in the service box and achieving some accuracy. Tomorrow will be another day, though.

Pickleball then tennis

 1.5 hours of pickleball this am. The whole court is 44' long and 20' wide. 

It's really hard to lob over anyone and not hit long. Should probably practice lobs, but doing it during games and not getting it deep enough invites smash responses. My operating theory for now is to hit them higher and shorter to keep them in. Timing would be a challenge for returning a high lob.

I'm having fun slicing back serves. Many rallies finish as the serving team often hits those into the net. I don't know how I'd handle one of my own returns, as almost no one else does it.

The dink (drop shot) is an art form. It takes serious concentration on the racket-ball contact. A touch deep or high and an opposing player can drive it back for a winner.

The pickleball group here has an aggressive schedule coming up. Three meets in five days.

I don't think it hurts my tennis game. My tennis game has its own load of issues. Ha

Tennis in the pm. Machine balls are easy, if I let myself camp at just the right place so I never have to move. I help myself if I plant myself squarely in front of the machine and skitter back diagonally to hit. I still must consciously tell myself how to do the unit turn. I forgot to check if my chin was on one shoulder to start and the other shoulder after the contact. Having intention for where to hit the ball is easy against the machine, but almost impossible when hitting with another player. Keeping a relaxed grip and a high rear elbow: still a challenge.  Leading with the non-hitting arm: also difficult to remember. Throwing vs pushing the racket: hm.

Had to stop playing tennis after 90 minutes due to mental fatigue--inability to concentrate on technique. This is how beginners and intermediate players struggle to improve.

Tennis lesson for Tom?

 Tom had an appointment for a lesson with a tennis coach yesterday. What happened? I didn’t ask and Tom didn’t offer. I’m guessing that it didn’t excite him enough to talk about it.

I was hitting balls when he came to the courts with his racket and two hoppers of balls. 

I can’t recall who asked who if they wanted to hit balls, but if I asked, it was one of those courtesy things you do involuntarily. We hit for about forty minutes. My footwork wasn’t great so I didn’t always get the best shots. I still have to consciously remind myself of technique points while hitting. I get lazy if we’re only using half the court, so I suggested using the whole court, thinking I’d want to chase balls more. I still struggle to recognize short balls, and Tom hits many of those, so I adjusted my bias to move forward more. After I quit, I watched Tom hit machine balls. He camps about 6-10’ behind the baseline hitting balls thrown by the machine from the baseline at the other end of the court. For most balls, he started his take back after the ball bounced. If he had that tennis lesson, a more timely take-back wasn’t his homework assignment. 

It’s really hard to learn new habits—the old ones have a tenacious hold of us. When I started playing in late 2019, I never even thought of that aspect of human nature, so I didn’t take lessons. I must have thought my tennis from the 70s was a good enough foundation. I had an old school forehand with a  Continental/Eastern grip and I hit with my arm.  That may have made learning the modern forehand more difficult.  And performing a shadow swing of the modern forehand is easy—if I never had to hit a ball, it would always be perfect.  Add the ball, and my ancient muscle memory kicks into high gear—good luck finding the modern forehand. It takes tremendous mental energy to lead the stroke with my non-hitting arm. It’s exhausting!

I can understand if Tom doesn’t want to replace old habits with new ones. It’s difficult. One has to consciously fight old habits—mental fatigue develops. Unfortunately, better results (hitting the balls in the court consistently) don’t come without hard work. Doing the same thing over and over is easy, but it is magical thinking (or insanity) to expect different results. 

If listening to jazz music makes you not want to improve your tennis, turn the volume to minus four, please.