Head Position in Pro Tennis: The Serve

Head looking forward toward opponent—the exception? We’ve looked at the controversy over the variety of head positions at contact on the forehand (Click Here) and the backhands (Click Here). Now let’s look at head position at contact on the serve. Surely that is not as varied—and controversial. Right? The commonly held view is that the server should keep his head up looking at the ball at contact. And our amazing high frame rate video allow us to test this empirically. 10 Players I thought this article would be more straightforward, maybe even boring. But I decided to look at serve video of 10 great servers, past and present. I was very surprised though what the video actually showed. The 10 players Pete Sampras Alexander Zverev Roger Federer Daniil Medvedev Andy Roddick Jannick Sinner Milos Raonic Stefano Tsitsipas John Isner Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard I knew from my previous study of Roddick’s motion that he was at least one exception to the head up look at the ball mantra. With him it was pretty obvious because his head appeared to be looking directly ahead at contact. But I thought that was the exception. And so I proceeded with the other players. Pete,…