Do you think this footwork added pace to Becker's serve or do you think it
hurt it?
hurt it?
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Good question and hard to say. If that was a big advantage I think you'd see many many top players do it however. -
Becker--serve landing
If you look in the stroke archive, you will see that Becker sometimes lands on his right foot and sometimes on his left foot following the serve. More often on the right foot, but not infrequently on the left.
At the link you provide, he lands quite far into the court on his right foot...but then he does not follow the serve to net, more so than in any other footage I can find on his serve. However, in studying the stroke archive serves, there seems to be little correlation between whether he lands on L or R foot and whether he then moves to net from the serve.
I studied this hard a couple of years back because I had osteoarthritis in my left hip (from an old skiing injury) and landing on the left foot exacerbated my pain. I had hoped that learning to land on my right foot after the serve would keep me playing. I have since had hip resurfacing surgery, and I'm back to playing pain-free, and landing on the left foot.
My conclusion, after watching Becker, and also footage of Roscoe Tanner, who landed on his right foot following his right-handed serve, is that it has no impact on the pace of the serve, or how far one is able to move into the court on the serve, as which foot one lands on is a function of whether one "scissors kicks" in the air, after serving, or not. It's a follow-through issue, not a "mechanics AT or LEADING UP TO impact" issue. Just as one can hit a mechanically sound forehand with any number of follow-throughs, one can hit a mechanically sound serve and land either on the right or left foot.
(And Becker does both, though he lands on the right foot more often.)
Best,
AO
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