Your Strokes: Ryan Serve

Ryan's serve: no major flaws but some suggestions. This month we look at junior player Ryan's serve from some excellent video sent in by his coach Ramiro. They are based in Texas, and Ramiro tells me he has been a subscriber since 2005 and in part used Tennisplayer video in developing Ryan's serve. He did a great job! I don't see any big flaws in the motion. But I do have some suggestions on how they might further improve it, using my favorite serve model Roger Federer. So let's go through Ryan's strong fundamental elements and then progress from there. Let's start with the racket path. Racket Path Ryan has a smooth, slightly abbreviated windup. As we have seen many times the exact shape of the windup varies from player to player. But all effective windups deliver the arm and racket to the trophy position at the right moment. Ryan's timing on this looks perfect. The trophy position. Good timing. Racket angle compared to Roger? Could the racket face be slightly more on edge, a little more perpendicular to the net? Possibly. That might increase the amount of backward or external shoulder rotation as he moves into the racket drop....