The Serve: A Research Overview

Movement science attempts to quantify the elements in elite serving.

Movement scientists who have studied tennis over the last two decades have made the serve a focus for biomechanical analysis. There are two reasons why more analysis has been done of the serve compared to the other strokes.

First, the serve is probably the most important stroke in tennis. It begins every point and is the only stroke in which the player has complete control.

The second reason is that the serve is much easier to film and therefore to analyze. This is because the players serve from set positions on the court. filming for three-dimensional analysis is generally done with fixed cameras that can’t pan or zoom to follow the players. The wide range of court movement in groundstrokes and net play makes the other strokes far more difficult to study.

Pete Sampras demonstrates the 5 phases of elite serving: toss, backswing, loading, acceleration, and followthrough.

The work of movement scientists has attempted to identify and to quantify the central elements in the motions of elite servers. The results to date show that the motions of elite servers are extremely complex–an opinion certainly shared by most working coaches. The…