Your Strokes: Arthur Gosnell: Serve

Did Arthur copy Wawrinka a little too closely? Let’s see.

This month’s Your Strokes analyzes the serve of Arthur Gosnell, a high school player at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware, sent in by his coach and a long time Tennisplayer subscriber, Chris Childers.

And everyone thinking about sending in video please take note of the great job Chris did. Not only is it high def, Chris set the high speed shutter so we have clear still frames of the key parts of the motion.

But, besides the quality, there was something else unusual about this footage. Chris told me that in working with Arthur, he followed a convention that is much more common in video analysis in golf than in tennis.

That was to try to match the player with a pro model based on body type and swing characteristics. So for Arthur, he picked Stan Wawrinka, first because of his height and body type, and second because he hit with a pinpoint stance.

I have no idea how that all works in golf. But I have doubts about how well it translates to tennis, and particularly on the serve. In fact after looking at Arthur and Stan, my…