Your Strokes: Olivier Lingband: Serve

Does this look familiar to anyone? We've taken a break from Your Strokes for a couple of months and looked at a lot of new material, but I've been surprised at the number of emails I've had wondering where it went and requesting we bring it back. So, by popular demand, we're back in the action this month. This month we'll look at an issue on the serve we haven't addressed in so much detail before, the tossing motion, as seen in the serve of Olivier Lingbeek. The interesting thing with Olivier is his basic swing mechanics look pretty good. This is different than with almost everyone else we've analyzed. Usually the fundamental issue we see is the racket drop--and this has even included top hundred players such as Paul Goldstein. (Click Here.) A great racket drop, but can Olivier take advantage? Olivier, on the other hand, apparently has a pretty flexible shoulder because he has a great racket drop position. His real problem is with the toss and his ability to put the ball where he can take advantage of that. His toss is all over the place. Problem like this with the toss are actually pretty common. They...