|
TennisOne Lessons 
The Economy Serve and the Supplemental Serve Which Is Best For You and Why Jerôme Inen Recently our friends over at Fuzzy Yellow Balls had an intriguing guest coach on video: double Grand Slam-winner and serve and volley-maestro Pat Rafter. The Australian gave tips about a lot of things concerning the serve, but the one that got my attention was this one on the toss: 'With the toss, let the arm go straight up. Especially for beginners, bringing the arm back to the body creates confusion and instability.' I think this is sensible advice, but as always I started contemplating the reverse. Obviously, the more control you have at the ball toss, the more reliable your serve will be. So why not save yourself the trouble and simplify the toss as Rafter advises? But that begs the question: why did master servers like Pancho Gonzales, Pete Sampras, Richard Krajicek, and at the moment, Roger Federer bring the tossing arm back to the body and toss the ball with an arc? So many players, so many serves, so can one just put it all down to "personal likes and dislikes?" Still, with the help from earlier articles placed on this website, I can still explain the logic, whether aware or unaware by the players themselves, of two types of serves. That is a rough division, I know, but it will help to make the lesson clear. Let's call those two serves: the Economy Serve and the Supplement Serve. Economy Serve and the Supplement Serve First let's understand one thing , there is no absolute best way to serve — no universal solution for everyone. You (with some skills!) can hit a 130 mph per hour serve with a low toss, a high toss, a big shoulder turn, a modest one, a short backswing or a long one, a deep racket drop behind the back or a shallow one, a deep knee bend, or no knee bend at all, with a fluent, continuous movement or a serving motion with a big pause in it. Even at the pro-level there are players who brake every golden rule in the Service Bible and still hit the serve at Indy Car speeds (read this TennisOne article by Doug Eng). Sometimes, to enlighten students who are too obsessed with their "improper service technique," I will do what I call "The Crazy Serve." I stand with my belly facing the net, feet shoulder-width apart. Then I hit a very, very fast serve with a low toss and almost no backswing. Not 130 mph per hour, mind you but definitely very fast. '"So why don't you always serve like that?" students often ask. My answer: There are more functions to the serve than hitting it in the box with a lot of speed. Lets get back to the original premise, the Economy-serve and the Supplemental-serve. The Economy Serve The Economy Serve is a serve that has:
An example of the Economy Serve is Bjorn Borg. His service position is now text-book stuff: back foot parallel to the baseline, front foot pointing at the right netpost, and both his hands positioned above the front foot. It is interesting to note that Borg learned this body position in 1976, relatively late in his career. By then, he had already won two Rolland Garros titles and had reached the quarters at Wimbledon twice. Borg, in his own words (My life and game): ‘In 1976, when Lennart (Bergelin, his coach) and I decided I had to improve my serve, the first thing we did was change my foot-positioning at the start of the serve.’ Borg wanted more power on his serve, but this position — in my view — also helped him with another problem. ‘My service-motion is very simple, though I’ve had problems with my toss in the past. You want to make sure the toss goes straight up and does not move in an arc.’ As simple as Borg service seems to be, it took him to five Wimbledon titles. And he wasn't just a counter-punching baseliner, that's mostly myth. Borg played serve and volley a lot at Wimbledon. In fact, in the fifth set of his final Wimbledon win in 1980, he played 95 percent serve and volley on his first serve… and only lost three or four points doing that. Today, most coaches teach the stance I call the Economy Serve as the basis for the serve — perhaps without even knowing why. So… What is the Why? In his excellent series, The secret Game of Tennis, Jack Broudy has shown that, as with every day objects like coffee cups and kitchen knives, we human beings manipulate tennis balls best at a certain angle. To be precise, 45 degree’s in relation to our belly-button. The contact point for the forehand is about at 2 o’ clock, if our belly is the face of a clock. The backhand is about 11 o’ clock. We hit a flat serve at between 1 and 2 o’ clock above our head. That is all, indeed about an angle of 45 degrees. The Economy Serve is centered around that angle. Your body position points at the 45 degree-angle. You release the ball at the toss at the 45 degree-angle. You shift your weight towards that angle. This serve actually pivots rather straight forward around that point, as if on an axis. The Supplemental Serve So why ‘mess’ around with that easy and really functional position? Well… because you might want to add a little something. Lets start with the first possible ‘supplement’ to your serve: changing the position of the feet for either more stealth, more movement into the court, or more spin — or all those together. (I’ll talk about ‘adding power’ later). If I asked who’s service stance has the most radical deviation from the Economy Serve, most people would answer almost in one breath, John McEnroe. Both his feet stood parallel to the baseline (or so it seemed). His back was turned to the court he wanted to serve into. His tossing arm went up, parallel to the baseline and he then gyrated into the shot and into the court.
Not everyone knows this, but John McEnroe only started using his famous serve-motion after he already had won a Grand-Slam tournament (Mixed doubles at the French) and got to the semi’s of Wimbledon. Why? He was having back problems and during a training sessions he started to stretch his back, by bending forward and sideways. He then noticed his body seemed to be drawn to and into the court he wanted to serve to. Hey, why not serve like that? He wanted to go the net anyway, didn’t he? Thus a famous serve was born. And you could use McEnroe’s serve as an example of a Supplement Serve:
If you watch the video of McEnroe’s serve, you will notice that some elements of the Economy Serve still come back. The tossing arm, for example, starts behind the baseline and McEnroe’s hip, but still the arm goes up at angle of 45 degrees (again!). Of course, because McEnroe brings back the tossing arm before the toss, and his weight shift during the toss, the ball will land deeper in the court than, say, with Bjorn Borg's service. But not by much. In the earlier mentioned article by Doug Eng, it is shown that the toss (not the motion but the effect of the motion) of different top players does not differ as dramatically as it seems to when seem on television. It is certainly not true (as I believed myself for a long time) that great serve and volleyers toss the ball about three and half feet into the court. According to Eng’s measurements, the farthest contact point of a male pro was 26,5 inches (about a racket length), and the farthest for a female pro was just 18,2 inches.
The same applies for the height of the toss. The average toss-height of pro players, male and female, is about 27 inches above the contact point. Again, that is about a racket length. Eng thus advises that, unless you have a very quick windup your toss should be at least 18 inches above the contact point. But why not be on the safe side and keep that 27 inches or that racket length above the contact point in mind? Returning to the dynamic finish of the Supplement Serve, it is interesting to note that landing into the court, with the weight moving forward during the landing does not necessarily translate to an effective serve-and-volley serve. In the photo below, Lisa Raymond, Andy Roddick, and Lleyton Hewitt are portrayed during the serve. With her somewhat awkward finish, Raymond would be advised to stay at the baseline. Hewitt lands very far into the court… but it is obvious that his landing does not facilitate him to run forward, while Roddick almost lands in a perfect sprint forward. And one can again lament that during his career he did not go the net more often.
If you compare Roger Federer's serve with that of Pete Sampras you can see that Federer's stance is closer to the Economy Serve than that of Sampras. Consequently, Federer lands less deep into the court than Sampras, who has a service stance somewhere between McEnroe and Federer.
So, to summarize: based on the evidence, a wider service stance will lead to a more dynamic landing into the court, created both by the toss (which lands slightly farther into the court) and the more dynamic movement of the body during the toss and the actual hitting of the ball. Another offshoot of the Supplement Serve is added spin, in the guise of slice or topspin. A rule of thumb for the service stance is — the more sideways the stance, the easier it is to impart spin to the ball. Sampras may not have had the fastest serve of his peers, nor did he have the serve with the most spin. What he did have was the highest and best combination of speed and spin, perhaps ever in the game, averaging a 120 mph on his first serve and combined with 2700 rotations per minute. On his second serve, he averages 85 mph, reaching an astounding 5000 rpm. So his second serve literally exploded off the court. Another aspect of the more sideways stance of the Supplemental Serve is that it provides for more disguise than the Economy Serve. However different the service stances are, the direction of the ball after the serve is determined by one thing only: the collision of the strings and the ball at contact. Where the strings 'point' at contact is where the ball will go. It's reall that simple. A topspin-serve hits the back of the ball with a dramatic upward direction, so the ball initially moves in an upward direction with the spinning of the ball bringing it back down into the service box. If the back of the ball is a clock, the strings bite the ball from seven to two o' clock. A 'flat' service (all serves have a certain amount of spin) strikes the ball from three o'clock to two o'clock. The ball will have a slight upward trajectory, but will go relatively straight toward its target. The slice service (for a right-hander) strikes the right side of the back of the ball. It will go the right first, and the spin will make it fly left again. So one could say that directing the ball with the serve is actually manipulating the strings here or there against the back of the ball. Of course it is very effective if you can disguise that manipulation from your opponent. With the Economy Service stance, much of the manipulation of the ball has to happen with the toss: as a right-hander you throw straight up for the flat serve, to the left for the slice serve and to the left if you want to hit a kick or topspin-serve. So, for the opponent there will always be 'a tell'. With the Supplement Serve as employed by McEnroe and Sampras, it is more difficult to tell where the ball is going. Pete Fischer, the coach of Sampras in his youth, made him serve to all directions, with all effects, from the same toss. That is viable, because Sampras and McEnroe have their backs to the ball (and to the opponent!) during a great portion of the serve. They have to rely less on the toss to impart certain effects on the ball. They can use slight changes in the way their body uncoils to impart a different effect. If Sampras, for example, hits a serve to the ad court he can go up to the ball and during the hit keep his torso sideways as it already is... and the ball, by the effect of the strings going from low to high on the back of the ball, will go to the backhand. Or, in mid air, he can turn the upper side of his torso just a tiny bit into the court and the ball will get more slice than kick... and will go the forehand of his opponent, The Supplemental Serve and Speed
Now about that last, and sometimes elusive Supplement of the serve: speed. Does the service stance and toss say something about being able to hit the serve with great speed? Well, no. Most biodynamic research indicates that most of the speed of the serve is not caused by the legs, arm, or wrist (though they all help), but by the internal rotation of the shoulder. Meaning: the shoulder head rotates around its axis, the arm follows suit by pronating (turning inside, thumb going to the ground). Recently I was attending a wheelchair tennis tournament and there were several male players who were hitting 100 miles per hour-serves… from a wheelchair! No surprise if you read Doug Eng’s comment from the afore mentioned article: ‘Fernando Gonzalez and Marcos Baghdatis typically make contact with the ball only six inches in front of the baseline and neither takes a big stride into the court, yet they can produce 130 mph serves.’ Conclusion So, how can you add supplements to your serve? Many ways lead to Rome. If, for example, you want to toss further into the court because you want to go to the net more, you can change your stance and your weight shift, and see if that brings the toss further into the court. Or, something that has helped me, you can shape your beginning position in such a way that you feel that from this starting point, you are able to jump into the court. Whatever you do, first formulate the goal you want to achieve. Don’t try to copy Federer's or Borg's serve, just because you favor them as players. If you are an aggressive baseliner, then perhaps you won’t need more spin or reach into the court, but would be helped by more power. If you are doubles specialist, you might want to sacrifice the rigid control of your toss for more leverage into the court. Dare to experiment, and even if you don’t change your serve, at least your confidence during matches will grow. Because you know you have more than one serve to hit in your pocket.
Your comments are welcome. Let us know what you think about Jerôme Inen's article by emailing us here at TennisOne.
"I’ve learned tennis the traditional, form-oriented way — and it is not the right way! Lijftennis is my attempt to show other people a way to learn quicker, with better results and less frustration. If I have one message: don’t copy others, play and learn from your own body and perspective!" |
Jerôme Inen of