The Richard Gonzalez Serve...
Still occupied. The powers that be are not listening. Just like tennis power that be...they didn't listen either and look where we are now. I never gave up...I don't know how.
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Who are the best pro examples today of serve fluidity?. -
Superb question doctorhl. Where is the fluidity in the modern service motion?
There is none. To my knowledge there is nothing that strikes as being fluid. Serves are designed to "shock and awe"...like an attack on a soveriegn country under the guise of protecting your own. There is very little tactical acumen in play. stotty makes a poignant observation regarding the John McEnroe delivery. No kick back. Why? Because he is scooting to the net lickety split, as quick as he can. McEnroe's serve was fifty percent power and fifty percent tactics. Much as the Stan Smith video I posted along with this video. Smith had a beautiful and fluid motion as well. Both Gonzales and Smith were following a majority of their serves to the net.
I remember saying the same thing stotty is saying in his post. The kick back is a by product of the braking and retreat behind the baseline. Modern serves are all about speed with less regard for tactical manuevering. In my book this is another example how the modern game is fundamentally different from the classic game. To me this is devolving. Brute force replacing thoughtful tactical serving.
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Sampras kicked back slightly. (https://youtu.be/LC99glR53wE) Servers kick back their hitting side leg to stop their hip rotation, which is a key part of the accelerate-decelerate action of sequential links in the serve's kinetic chain. His kickback is not as extreme as other server's. He abbreviates it because he must get his right foot around, into the court. His serve-volley footwork is rarely seen among high-level players. It's LAND-STEP-SPLIT, which is the only way he can land his split step as close to Agassi's ball contact as possible, which allows him to take more steps toward the return than if he used the typical LAND-STEP-STEP-SPLIT footwork.
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Very insightful, BJ. Fascinating to see how this plays out with a great server like Sampras.Comment
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Consider how likely it is for a pro to miss a forehand when in position on an easy ball – one miss in 50, one in 100? Somebody probably knows the exact statistic, but I think we can all agree it’s low. Now consider how likely it is for a pro to miss a first serve – it’s more like 3 in 10, so 30 in 100. Thirty times more likely to miss…
To understand the serve, one needs to understand why the miss rate on a serve is so much higher than the miss rate on a forehand.
It’s because of relaxation. A high-quality serve requires a level of relaxation far in excess of that required for a forehand, and that’s why it’s more likely to miss. Relaxation goes up, control goes down.
A student of this site has no excuse for not knowing the precise biomechanics of the serve. I am grateful to Bruce Elliot, Brian Gordon and John Yandell for teaching me. And in fact, if you look hard enough, the point I am trying to make is buried within the articles on TennisPlayer.
I’m sure that readers of this post are totally familiar with terms like “kinetic chain”, “stretch shorten cycle” and “proximal distal sequencing”. But I’m not sure that all of those same readers know what it feels like to harness these terms effectively.
If you execute all the proper steps of a serve motion, from proximal to distal in a wave from legs to hips to torso to shoulder to arm to wrist, you are not guaranteed to produce a high-quality serve. This is because that wave of muscle contractions needs to be preceded by a wave of muscle relaxation. In this way, the currently contracting muscle group loads the next-to-be-contracted-but-currently-relaxed muscle group. That is how to maximise the effect of the stretch shorten cycle - loading the next-to-fire muscle group through eccentric contraction. In my mind, this is a technical description of oft-used terms like fluidity and frictionless.
I believe that the ability to master this wave of relaxation ahead of muscular contraction is what sets high quality servers apart. I also believe it’s why some great servers can’t communicate what the hell they are doing to lesser mortals. It is a very particular feeling to manage the sequencing of relaxation, and difficult to describe. It is fluidity and it is frictionless. It is a matter of setting the body up to do what it can do, and then letting go.
Anyway, that’s what I think about the serve.
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