Your Strokes: Norman Ashbrooke Serve

An excellent swing path, but limited contribution from the legs. Recently I got some interesting video from Norman Ashbrooke, an elite senior player in Southern California, ranked in the top 5 in the men's 55 division. That's high level tennis. Norm wanted some advice about how he could improve his serve. I've done a lot of serve analysis in Your Strokes and, almost always, there are two basic technical issues that hold back our subscribers. These are the drop of the racket and the position of the ball at contact. When you look at Norm's motion, though, you don't see these problems which seem so universal in club and even in much tournament tennis. When I looked at Norm's motion, my thought was he should try to increase his leg action, and possibly also, his torso rotation. Legs and body rotation are obviously important factors in racket speed, which in turn results in ball speed and spin. But a lot of times in these articles, we never get to the point of discussing how that might work because of more fundamental problems. So this article gives us a chance to address some more advanced issues that can have a huge...