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The tennis serve is an incredible marvel of the human kinetic chain and a beautiful sight to behold when performed well. The serve is generally considered the most important shot in the game by coaches and sport scientists.
The serve is also the most complex and difficult shot in the game to master. Mark Kovacs, a leading biomechanics expert, says that the tennis serve may be the most difficult skill to master in any sport.
Science
Remarkably, the first scientific study of the kinetic chain in nationally ranked players occurred only in 1986, and to this day there is still a relative scarcity of research on tennis serve biomechanics when compared to biomechanics research in other sports like baseball. This article and the one to follow will present some of the important biomechanical and technical details of the power serve to help coaches and players build a beautiful world class serve motion.
According to researchers Kovacs and Todd Ellenbecker, the tennis serve can be described using an eight stage model with 3 phases. I have found this biomechanical model of the serve to be very useful when trying to diagnose and fix serve technique.
The three phases are preparation, acceleration,…