More Serve Questions

[robheath]

John
1. I have never stressed the "closed" stance on the serve. I have coached my college or junior players for years to start with more of an open stance on the serve and then turn the shoulders. Well after reading your sampras article and bruce's article,maybe it could be easier for my players to get more rotation from a more "closed" or sampras like stance. Now I think about it also
would appear to make it easier for the shoulders to "tilt" automatically.

2. And What starts the torso rotation into the court? To me seems like it should be the pulling of the tossing arm. That left arm also has the role at the same time of the "over the top" shoulder action.Do You agree?

thanks
robby

[John Yandell]

Click on the moive and you can control it with the arrows on the keyboard.

Well if you look at Pete, he DOES turn. His stance isn't open, but it isn't really closed at the start. His shoulders are pretty much square. The line of the feet is what determines how far the turn goes. The tossing arm has something to due with the start of the turn--the way it crosses the body, but the turn starts before it starts up. The drop of the racket arm and the turn of the torso along the line of the stance has more to do with the start of it, it seems.

So far as turning back into the court--again I don't think you need to initiate this! It will happen as the legs uncoil and the racket and hand move to the drop and up to the ball.

[davehagler]

serving stance + shoulder rotation

Dr. Elliot is right - but when you are teaching you have to think about what the player can do. Players need twist rotation and "teeter totter" or "see saw" shoulders. Too many players - especially those who are not really advanced have a very closed stance. This gives them the potential for more twist rotation (they can coil and load more) at the start of the motion but they can not "finish" for a variety of reasons. Look at Goran - he pinpointed (brought his back foot up) but he was pretty open when he served. He may have lost a little bit at the start but he finished pretty easily. He also had what was probably the toughest serve to "read" ever! I am not suggesting that everyone should copy his serve, but if you or your students are having trouble I would consider opening them up or at least having them serve less closed. In other words I'd copy Goran before I copied Johnny Mac, unless my spouse was an orthopedic surgeon. You can learn shoulder over shoulder by hitting serves from fence to fence and by tossing the ball in front and hitting the serve down and having it bounce as high as possible. The key to the shoulder over shoulder is getting the front shoulder up (That is why you see pictures of servers with the tossing arm extended well after the release of the ball) and having a "high" back elbow. If you look at Pete his elbow is very low BUT if you stood him up his elbow would be as high as his shoulder.

I've read different numbers as to how body segments contribute to serve velocity and all I know is there is a lot of disagreement out there!!

[courbie]

There are probably as many disagreements as styles. Sampras get lots of shoulder rotation nearly placing his back parallel to the baseline, Roddick is perpendicular to the baseline. I see many more pros closer to the perpendicular than the parallel.

[TPro2006]

If you look at Roddick in the Archives, you'll see quite a few examples of him turning away more than perpindicular. Federer is more like Sampras. Some of the men like Moya have much less turn and that goes with what you might expect.

[courbie]

We're looking at the same thing but seeing something different. I see more perpendicular than parallel, but do we really want to get into percent angle of the body rotation. Federer seems to be between Roddick and Sampras.