Advanced Tennis: Sampras Serve The Tossing Motion

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Throw the ball up in the air and hit it. The bio-mechanics of the serve seem complex, but how difficult can the toss
possibly be?

Pete Sampras’s motion is a perfect model for developing the toss,
and also for the motion of the opposite arm through the rest of the motion.

Ask Pat Rafter, who continually apologizes to opponents, “Sorry, mate,” when he catches another errant toss – or Karol Kuchera,
who caught so many tosses he drove Andre Agassi crazy at the U.S. Open. (Agassi lost the match – the first time a bad toss ever worked as a weapon.)

As with so many other aspects of his serve, Pete Sampras’s tossing motion is an excellent technical model for developing a consistent toss.
But the “tossing” arm, or the opposite arm, also has a significant – and controversial – role to play in the continuation of the motion after the toss.
Sampras also provides a perfect model for the motion of the opposite arm after the toss and as it moves through the rest of the swing.

Think about the toss closely. The ball has to be in precisely the right place for the contact point to…