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straight up in the air, if only for a short moment. He coils against his hip, twists his upper body during the toss so his chest is facing the back fence, and the toss arm goes straight up in the air, while he sits down in his leg drive. As the leg drive starts up, the left hip opens, the stick goes down and he arches his back extremely, to allow the elbow to go straight up, which allows the stick more room to achieve max. acceleration, so his chest is facing the sky, completely bent over. His pronation is always so easy looking and relaxed, yet extreme. Very common for top players to achieve the extreme while making it look so easy! His chest faces the back fence like Becker and Mac, his back arches extremely like Edberg, and his pronation is radically fast after contact, and higher up in the motion, like no one else, even on a slice or a kick serve! I wonder how he learned to do this motion so quickly and naturally at such a young age. No other Fischer student did.
All top servers coil into a compressed ball, and explode upwards off the compression. Sampras just did it smoother and more effortlessly than anyone else has before or since, like a smoothly rolling ball of compression, starting back, coiling all the way sideways, and rolling downwards, then forwards and then upwards into the strike. His motion reminds me of some kind of Jedi move, to defeat a robot or something!
His equip.: lots of lead at 3 and 9: six strips, on each side, 1/2", bringing total mass strung and gripped up to: 384-389g! All season vs all season gut first strung at 59lbs, then up to 71-73lbs later in his career. His sticks were from the other factory, slightly stiffer than stock sticks.
sampras motion
sampras serve oh
You can see from the oh shot, his left hip is open, yet, his entire right shoulder, is still coiling against his open hip, and the leg drive has not started up yet!
sampras serve sideways
All top servers coil into a compressed ball, and explode upwards off the compression. Sampras just did it smoother and more effortlessly than anyone else has before or since, like a smoothly rolling ball of compression, starting back, coiling all the way sideways, and rolling downwards, then forwards and then upwards into the strike. His motion reminds me of some kind of Jedi move, to defeat a robot or something!
His equip.: lots of lead at 3 and 9: six strips, on each side, 1/2", bringing total mass strung and gripped up to: 384-389g! All season vs all season gut first strung at 59lbs, then up to 71-73lbs later in his career. His sticks were from the other factory, slightly stiffer than stock sticks.
sampras motion sampras serve ohYou can see from the oh shot, his left hip is open, yet, his entire right shoulder, is still coiling against his open hip, and the leg drive has not started up yet!
sampras serve sideways