Technical and Anatomical Analysis of Reilly Opelka Serve

Reilly Opelka: one of the tallest servers in tennis with one of the biggest serves. Reilly Opelka is one of the biggest servers on the ATP Tour–and he is also one of the biggest players, standing at 6′ 11” tall. I have followed his career closely since he was a junior and spent a week closely observing his game a few years back at a USTA training camp. The tennis serve is a complex biomechanical movement utilizing both the upper and lower body. In this article, I will analyze the serve movements during three main phases of the motion: Start to Power Position (Setup), Power Position to Contact (Acceleration), and Contact to Landing (Deceleration). These stages build on the research of Mark Kovacs and Todd Ellenbecker and their excellent study on the 8 Stage (3 Phase) Serve Model. I highly recommend this study for those who want to brush up on their serve biomechanics. And you can see more high speed footage of Reilly from an amazing overhead view in the High Speed Archive. (Click Here.) I will analyze the motion from both a technical perspective and—for those diehard biomechanics nerds out there—an anatomical point of view. Recently I took…