Further Thoughts: The Serve

I have continued to learn as we continue to film the most complex motions in sports. After 20 years of studying high speed footage and working with the best coaches and teachers in tennis I am still learning. As Brian Gordon has said, the motions associated with the strokes in tennis are by far the most complex in any sport. It's impossible to disagree with that. That of course applies to the serve, maybe especially. We first filmed Pete Sampras in high speed video in 1997. Since then we've have filmed several dozen of the world's best servers -- Greg Rusedski, Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, John Isner, and many more. It's all there in the archives. (Click Here, for example, to see Nick Krygios's serve this month in the Interactive Forum.) At each stage of this ongoing, evolving work I have continued to improve my understanding. I feel that my contributions on understanding the racket path (Click Here) the contact position (Click Here), as well as other technical factors, have advanced the understanding and teaching for a lot of players and coaches—for all the strokes. But on the serve, there are so many variables. Stance, windup shape, the tilting of...