The Sampras Serve: High Speed and Heavy Spin

Recently, an article in a major national tennis
magazine made a startling claim. Pete Sampras hits his serve completely
wrong. Written by a teaching pro (and self-proclaimed former TV actor),
the article claimed Pete’s serving effectiveness was a matter of natural
ability and/or luck triumphing over terrible bio-mechanical
technique.

John McEnroe has voiced a different opinion, and has
described Pete’s serve as “the greatest of all time,” and “a serve I dream
about having myself." And Mac did have a pretty good serve. (Click Here.)

Was “Tom the Tiger” (as the magazine writer described
himself) right in warning players NOT to imitate Pete? Or was his article
a tremendous waste of scarce national media ink? Can the average
player learn really something from the greatest server of all
time?

For the last four years, the Advanced Tennis Research
Project has been studying the physics and bio-mechanics of pro tennis,
including the serves of many top players, including Pete Sampras.

What makes Pete Sampras the greatest server in tennis history?

In this exclusive Tennisplayer series, I want to report for the first time some of our results on Pete’s serve, and share the scientific data about spin rates that show what…