<% ns_puts [mkm_getnavbar] %>

Advanced Tennis: Sampras Serve
Deception, page 2

by John Yandell 

A common desire among club players is to develop a variety of spins on serve. You often hear players say things like, “I want to learn a topspin serve, a slice serve, a kick serve, and a flat serve.” Often they seem to believe they need to develop 3 or 4 different motions to do this. 

The reality is that few club players develop one good technical motion. The idea of having 3 or 4 different “serves” is therefore ridiculous. Even if it were possible, the differences in the tosses and the motions would be so obvious they would telegraph what the server planned to do to any halfway perceptive opponent. 

Even some advanced players often suffer from a less extreme version of this same misconception. For example, they believe to serve wide in the deuce court, they have to toss the ball further to the right, and hit more around it to generate slice. Similarly, they will pull the ball back and further to their left when trying to hit a big kick serve in the ad court. In both cases, unless the server hits a perfectly positioned serve for an ace, the tip off from the toss can make a huge difference in the returner’s ability to hit successful returns. But there is another disadvantage in moving the ball position to vary the spins. When a server moves the ball to the right to hit slice, or back and to the left for topspin, he may generate more spin, but typically he loses significant ball speed at the same time. 

Contrast this with Pete’s motion. Serving down the T’s he is able to generate up to 125 or even 130mph while still hitting spin of over 2500rpm. Going wide in the ad court he can also exceed 120mph. Even on the wide serve in the deuce court, where he generates spin of 4000rpm or more, he still typically serves at over 100 mph. All off the same toss and the same core biomechanical motion. 

As we discovered in Part 2 of this series, Pete’s movement of the racket to the ball from the racket drop position can best be described as a “high five” with the palm of the hand.  Pete varies location and spin by varying the angle at which the palm approaches and contacts the ball with this “high five” motion. 

In the deuce court when he is hitting down the T, he turns the palm so it is flatter to the ball, almost parallel to the net. To serve wide in the deuce court, he turns the palm slightly less, so the racket head moves up to the ball on a sharper angle, with the front, leading edge of the racket closer to the ball and the rear edge slightly further away. 

On the serve to the middle, the racket moves more outward and forward, through the line of the shot. On the wide serve, it moves more from left to right, with the angle of the head a bit more open during contact.

In the ad court, the differences between a down the middle and a wide serve are similarly small. To serve down the T, the racket head again turns so that it is almost parallel to the baseline as it moves to the contact. To go wide in the ad court, the racket head come to the ball on a diagonal further from the left. 

In the deuce court, there is slightly more pronation after the hit on the serve down the T, and less on the wider serve with more slice. In the ad court, the pronation effect on the wide ball is slightly more extreme, and slightly less when Pete serves down the T. This is all controlled by the palm of the hand. The small differences in the angle of the racket head as it moves through the shot are the only changes required to produce Pete’s great variation in location and spin.

The first step in developing this deception is the ability to execute the basic technical swing path, as detailed in Part Two. We know Pete’s ball position for the Left Launch (Part 6) is further to the left than virtually any player in the game. Your own tossing position doesn’t need to be so extreme, but even without launching left it should be somewhere between the edge of your head and the edge of your shoulder. Within this window for the toss placement, you should be able to develop the same diversity of delivery of a player like Pete.

Here are two drills to help. Set a target zone in all for corners of the service boxes using cones. Place 2 cones about 3 feet apart in each corner. Now video yourself serving to each zone. Evaluate the tossing position. Is it the same for all 4 zones? If not, work until you can hit all four target areas with a toss that appears identical on video replay. 

To control the placements, use the image of the palm of your hand moving to the ball so that the sweet spot strikes the ball directly along the target line. Down the T’s this means the racket is striking close to the center of the back of the ball, and somewhat underneath. The contact for wide serve in the ad court is slightly more to the left of the surface of the ball, and for the wide serve in the deuce court, more to the right, and probably, slightly higher. 

Now do the same drill Pete Fischer did with the young Sampras. Have your partner or coach call out the location when the toss is in the air, and work until you can nail all four corners consistently. You can actually do the same drill for yourself without a partner. Start your motion with no preconceived idea of the serve’s direction, and randomly decide with the toss in the air. 

The great servers keep their opponents off balance with great deception. Develop this same quality and watch your serving effectiveness increase. Combined with the other technical elements in this series, you have the basis to be as good a server as you can possibly be, maybe, someday, even as good as Pete Sampras.

Last Updated 12/15/00. To contact us, please email to: webmaster@tennisone.com

TennisONE is a registered trademark of TennisONE and SportsWeb ONE; Copyright 1995. All rights reserved.