Sampras Serve: The Left Launch

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Pete Sampras’s explosive “left launch” and his unique contact point – offer another key to
understanding his serving superiority.

In this series we’ve been looking at the complex interplay of elements in the service motion of Pete Sampras, possibly the best server
in tennis history. These elements include Pete’s perfect racket swing path, beautiful tossing arm motion, advanced footwork, and radical
body rotation. (See Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).

This article analyzes an additional, unique technical element in the Sampras motion – his explosion to the ball on an angle
forward and to his left, “The left launch.”

The left launch is shared to a certain degree by some other top servers, notably Mark Philippoussis. However, as
with many other elements in his motion, Sampras appears to have taken the left launch toward it’s technical extreme. The left launch
is an important, advanced factor in his ability to produce a unique, heavy combination of speed and spin (See Part 1). In this article,
any player or coach has the opportunity to understand this previously unrecognized factor for the first time.

So what, exactly, is the left launch? The left launch is a missile-like, explosive launch…