The Serve and Tennis Science

In 1992, after 10 years as a working teaching pro, I decided to try to learn more about the great game of tennis. When reading the popular literature about the game I would often note references to things like “forces” and “torques.” Even though I had no idea what the authors were talking about, I decided they must be important. My desire was to learn more about tennis, how to teach it, and how science could benefit real tennis players. And so I transited into the world of the academic study of tennis. The result of the mathematical combination of nine NCAA Division I players can be displayed in a computer graphic Now 10 years later, as I finish up my PhD, I still have no idea what many of the same authors are talking about. The problem is no longer that I don’t understand the technical meaning of terms like “forces” and “torques.” The problem is that the use of such terms was and continues to be so misguided. Unfortunately, reading the scientific journals is just as frustrating. It seems I usually need every bit of my eleven years of graduate education just to understand the title, not to…